What Music!: The Fifty-Year Friendship Between Beethoven and Nannette Streicher, Who Built His Pianos
by Laurie Lawlor (Author) Becca Stadtlander (Illustrator)
Strings quivered. Notes shimmered. Meet best friends acclaimed composer Ludwig van Beethoven and bold female entrepreneur Nannette Streicher in this lively and lyrical nonfiction picture book.
In a tall, narrow building on a wide avenue
pianos plinked and plunked day and night.
Everyone in quiet Augsburg knew the Stein home.
What music!
In 1787, aspiring yet unknown composer Ludwig van Beethoven arrives at young Nannette Stein's home. What follows is a decades-long friendship that persists whether life hits a low or high note. Acclaimed nonfiction writer Laurie Lawlor deftly depicts how these two fascinating friends--a composer with hearing loss and a woman who became an innovative piano maker in a time that discouraged female entrepreneurship--fought the odds and worked together in perfect harmony.
The author of picture book biography Fearless World Traveler, Lawlor masterfully uses forgotten historical letters, a glossary, and rich back matter on both friends' lives and art to introduce readers to the man behind the music, from his loud laughter to his crushing handshake. Complete with Fearless World Traveler collaborator Becca Stadtlander's intricate mixed-media artwork, What Music deftly dives into musical history-and herstory-in an intimate yet expansive picture book biography that hits just the right note.
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Publishers Weekly
Lawlor broadly reconstructs the friendship between composer Ludwig van Beethoven and barrier-breaking businesswoman Nannette Streicher (1769-1833), whose innovative piano design produced instruments capable of withstanding the most tempestuous playing. After meeting as children in her father's piano shop, Streicher and Beethoven developed a connection despite being "as opposite as fast and slow, loud and soft, high and low." That connection endured, with Beethoven describing Streicher as " 'Beloved Friend, ' the one person who inspired 'an uncommonly good influence.' " Using metaphorical prose (both dreamed that the piano might become "capable of making music as perfect as a palmful of wild raspberries"), Lawlor focuses on the duo's bond and the context around their professional achievements. Delicate details in Stadtlander's gouache and colored pencil artwork invite close scrutiny of intricate historical scenes, while vibrant nature imagery conveys the excitement of the pair's work. Background characters read as white. Thorough back matter includes an author's note and bibliography. Ages 6-9. (Oct.)
Copyright 2023 Publishers Weekly, LLC Used with permission.Review quotes
Picture books
Composers
Austria
Piano makers
Beethoven, Ludwig van
Musical instrument makers
Streicher, Nannette
