Lake Union Publishing
Featuring: Josef Hauser; Amelia Mason; Isabette Gruber
400 pages ISBN: 1503946835 EAN: 9781503946835 Kindle: B00UK001OA Paperback / e-Book Add to Wish List
Isabette lives in Vienna in 1827, when she attends the
funeral of the musical genius Beethoven. Isabette is a
virtuoso pianist, a shy, tall young woman with no great
looks to recommend her and no talents anyone can see but her
musical gift. She is, however, destined to be A WOMAN OF
NOTE.
I'm always keen to read about women who excelled during
times when most accomplishments were barred to them. The
atmosphere is instantly evoked as we meet a nervous young
lady in the grand salons and concert halls. Isabette Gruber
has a distressing background with a deceased father who
was a court musician and a sister in an asylum. She
suspects that her manager, who charms her strict mother,
will try to marry Isabette if her public concert is a
success. It's not as if she has many choices. When she
meets an American singer, Amelia Mason, over from
Boston to tour the grand cities of Europe, she finds a
friend.
Young Josef Hauser is an aspiring composer, and with a
piano in every Viennese drawing-room, he teaches music to
fill his purse. Hearing Isabette play inspires him to try
to be her instructor and write sonatas for her to perform.
With new works appearing by Herr Schubert, he's got stiff
competition. He doesn't realise that Isabette already
composes music better than his pieces.
Obviously, I've said enough by now that any reader who
loves classical music will be jumping up to search for this
book! If you're less a classics buff, why would you like
the tale of Isabette? Well, A WOMAN OF NOTE is the equal of
any London-set Regency romance with a determined heroine
at a disadvantage, wealth and formality, vibrant
characters, and young hearts in danger of being broken.
Instead of the usual Bond Street and Thames, we visit the
Stephansplatz, the Danube, and turbulent Paris. Instead
of the Pump Room at Bath, we enter a Schubertiade and the
first asylum ever built. A change is as good as a rest, and
I certainly had a great time sightseeing. The difficulty
of sustaining any kind of career after marriage is one
timeless topic visited. While Isabette is a fictional
person, the author Carol M. Cram researched the lives of
actual female composers of the day, who contributed much to
music but were hardly acknowledged.
Read this lively romantic and musical history by Carol M.
Cram. You'll enjoy A WOMAN OF NOTE and you'll learn a lot.
Women in history deserve to be celebrated for more than
pretty dresses.
Virtuoso pianist Isabette Grüber captivates audiences in the salons and concert halls of early
nineteenth-century Vienna. Yet in a profession dominated by men, Isabette longs to compose and
play her own music—a secret she keeps from both her lascivious manager and her resentful
mother. She meets and loves Amelia Mason, a dazzling American singer with her own secrets, and
Josef Hauser, an ambitious young composer. But even they cannot fully comprehend the depths of
Isabette’s talent.
Her ambitions come with a price when Isabette embarks on a journey that delicately walks the line
between duty and passion. Amid heartbreak and sacrifice, music remains her one constant. With
cameos from classical music figures such as Chopin, Schubert, and Berlioz, A Woman of Note is an
intricately crafted and fascinating tale about one woman’s struggle to find her soul’s song in a
dissonant world.
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