Music and Manners in France and Germany
A Series of Travelling Sketches of Art and Society

A fascinating eyewitness account from 1841 of the state of musical culture in France and Germany.

Henry Fothergill Chorley (Author)

9781108001892, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 20 July 2009

324 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.8 cm, 0.41 kg

Henry Fothergill Chorley was music critic of The Athenaeum for over thirty years. This three-volume book, published in 1841, originated in a journal written by Chorley while travelling in Europe. His aim was to 'illustrate the present state of theatrical, orchestral, and chamber music abroad', focusing on aspects that would be least familiar to an English readership. There are detailed accounts of Paris and Berlin, with prominence given to opera, theatre, art galleries and monuments. Chorley also describes visits to Brunswick, Leipzig, Dresden and Nuremburg, and performances by artists including Mendelssohn and Liszt. He intersperses anecdotes about transport, lodgings, landscapes and local customs. Chorley's incisive and entertaining eyewitness accounts will fascinate music-lovers and theatre historians, as well as others interested in the performing arts or travel writing in the nineteenth-century. Volume 1 describes his visits to Paris and Brunswick, focusing on opera.

Part I. The Grand Opera of Paris: 1. 'Esmeralda'
2. The drop-curtain
3. The 'mystery' of young France
4. The art of opera
5. The national opera
6. Duprez
7. The masterpiece of French opera
Part II. The Brunswick Festival: 1. The journey and the rehearsal
2. First day
3. Second day
4. Third day.

Subject Areas: Classical music [c 1750 to c 1830 AVGC4]