The Story of Beethoven

By Stewart Ross

Published by Belitha Press

Price: pound;10.99 each

www.chrysalisbooks.co.uk

I played a CD recording of the famous opening from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in assembly last week. We were celebrating the arrival of a fleet of stringed instruments, which Year 3 are about to tackle en masse. Hertfordshire Music Service is letting our school take part in a pilot project to preserve and promote instrumental tuition. It’s a brave and generous gesture.

The sermon on instrument care was only slightly marred when my musical assistant added an odd snap of percussion by over-tightening a brand new bow, completely ruining my cello solo.

Although it’s not difficult to sell great classical music to children, it can be quite hard to remember the life stories that go with it. However, here are two entertaining biographies: The Story of Mozart and The Story of Beethoven.

Author Stewart Ross has written simple biographies that avoid patronising children or cramming every page with dry facts. Instead, he uses a very visual style of narrative that’s broken down into bite-size chunks, telling pacey tales which work rather like daily soap operas that children tune into before home time. Here’s a line or two about Mozart’s early life, to give you a flavour:

“Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in 27 January, 1756, in Salzburg, Austria.” By the end of page one, Wolfgang is 35 years old and has already moved to Vienna. “However he was not wealthy and he was not in the best of health....” And then, in The Story of Beethoven, you learn that it just so happens that Beethoven was also in Vienna around 1787 and - you guessed it - made friends with Mozart. He was just 17 years old.

Ross certainly uses writer’s licence and he should be arrested for some of the corny jokes. (Did Beethoven really mishear “finish the piece” as “finish the peas”?) However, he does succeed in bringing Beethoven and Mozart back into the world of entertainment. The composer becomes a human being, rather than a dusty bust or a portrait on a CD cover, and children can identify with them. These famous composers, 250 years ago, had families, experienced good and bad luck and had a fair share of health and money problems. They also had good friends, like us.

These books are an excellent introduction to biography as a writing form, even if a few very slight liberties are taken here and there. To help children put the lives of the composers into context, both books include a simple timeline and a list of further reading.