Berlioz Studies

This book contains essays by leading Berlioz scholars on various aspects of the great musician's life and work.

Peter Bloom (Edited by)

9780521412865, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 10 September 1992

300 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.3 cm, 0.569 kg

"...may be the calmest, most thoughtful assessment of the composer that has yet appeared." The World & I

This volume contains nine substantial essays by the world's leading Berlioz scholars. They cover various aspects of Berlioz's life and works and represent an important contribution to Berlioz research. The book includes essays based on documents, both biographical and musical, that give us, among other things, a portrait of the artist as a young man and a revealing view of an important but little-studied work of his maturity. There are readings of Romeo et Juliette and La Damnation de Faust that wrestle anew with the problems of the relationships between literature and music and - as Berlioz's music nearly always requires - with the problems of genre. Two views of Berlioz's Les Nuits d'été are presented which ask when and why the work was conceived, and how the work coheres. The practical question of Berlioz's metronome marks are here thoroughly studied for the first time. The volume closes with a novel piece, in dialogue form, by the elder statesman of Berlioz scholars, Jacques Barzun, who treats with exceptional grace the profound issues raised by Berlioz the man and musician.

Preface
List of abbreviations
1. The Reboul-Berlioz collection David Cairns
2. Berlioz and the metronome Hugh MacDonald
3. Romeo and Juliet and Roméo et Juliette Ian Kemp
4. In the shadows of Les Nuits d'été Peter Bloom
5. Les Nuits d'ete: cycle or collection? Julian Rushton
6. 'Ritter Berlioz' in Germany David B. Levy
7. The Damnation of Faust: the perils of heroism in Music Katherine Reeve
8. Berlioz's version of Gluck's Orphée Joël-Marie Fauquet
9. Overheard at Glimmerglass ('famous last words') Jacques Barzun
Index.

Subject Areas: Individual composers & musicians, specific bands & groups [AVH]