This book concerns the creative life of one of the most distinguished and influential musicians of the long nineteenth century. Joseph Joachim (1831–1907) was an internationally renowned violin virtuoso, quartet player, conductor, educator, administrator, composer of a short but laudable catalog of works, and a collaborator in the careers and creative works of others. As such, he interacted with and affected virtually every major European musical figure of his time. His circle of friends was wide and included not only musicians but many celebrated writers, artists, and politicians as well. By birth a Hungarian Jew, he rose to the pinnacle of the Prussian musical establishment and wielded enormous power as the founding director of Berlin's Königlich Akademische Hochschule für ausübende Tonkunst. In England, his second musical home, he was a beloved, avuncular figure, a Victorian Sage whose significance and cultural authority extended well beyond his musical métier. A formidable intellectual and commanding moral presence, Joachim helped bring about a fundamentally new understanding of the role of the performing artist in educating public taste and fostering a broad popular awareness of the depths, delights, and spiritual satisfactions of the European musical heritage. The richness and complexity of his life, the sweep of history that it comprehends, its universality, and its uniqueness make Joachim's life-journey a story of greatest interest and continuing relevance to the contemporary world.

It is therefore astonishing that in the century following his death, the only widely available sources of information devoted solely to Joachim's life were Andreas Moser's authorized biography, Joseph Joachim: Ein Lebensbild, and the three-volume edition of his letters, collected and edited by Moser, and Joachim's son Johannes. Other accounts, such as Karl Storck's Joseph Joachim: Eine Studie (1902) and J. A. Fuller Maitland's Joseph Joachim (1905), are shorter appreciations of Joachim's career and influence which rely heavily upon Moser's work. The first (1898) edition of Moser's portrait, published in Berlin by B. Behr's Verlag, was written in anticipation of the violinist's “Sixty Years’ Jubilee”: the anniversary celebration of his performing debut that took place in Berlin on 17 March 1899.