The First Four Notes: Beethoven's Fifth and the Human Imagination

A TIME Magazine Top 10 Nonfiction Book of 2012
A New Yorker Best Book of the Year
Los Angeles Magazine's #1 Music Book of the Year

This revelatory book of music history examines what is perhaps the best known and most-popular symphony ever written—and its famous four-note opening. Reaching back before Beethoven’s time, Matthew Guerrieri uncovers premonitions of the opening notes in the rhythms of ancient Greek poetry and the music of the French Revolut…