The 2021 Anthony Burgess Lecture will be given on 14 October by Laura Tunbridge, Professor of Music at the University of Oxford and author of the award-winning biography, Beethoven: A Life in Nine Pieces.

This fresh look at Beethoven’s life reveals his oddly modern talent for self-promotion, how he was influenced by factors from European wars to instrument building, and how he was heard by his contemporaries.

Beethoven: A Life in Nine Pieces was first published for the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth. This event is the official launch of the paperback. The book will be available from Blackwell’s on the night, and the author has agreed to sign copies.

Anthony Burgess, himself a composer, admired the ‘storm and stress’ of Beethoven’s work. He famously has ‘the old Ludwig van’ as Alex’s favourite music in A Clockwork Orange. Burgess’s fictionalised biography Napoleon Symphony was written in four movements, taking its structure from Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony.