This episode’s guest is Professor Laura Tunbridge, who is Professor of Music at the University of Oxford. Laura’s research centres on German Romanticism, with a particular interest in reception through criticism, performance, and composition. Her books include The Song Cycle by Cambridge University Press and Singing in the Age of Anxiety by the University of Chicago Press. Laura is the recipient of a three-year Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust for a project titled A Social and Sonic History of the String Quartet.

In this episode, we spoke about Laura’s new biography of Ludwig van Beethoven, titled Beethoven: A Life in Nine Pieces, published by Viking earlier this year. Apart from sharing about the beginnings of this biography and her encounters with Beethoven’s music, Laura elaborated on her discoveries on the social, political, and economical aspects of the composer’s life and how she sought to present this information to a wide readership.