Full Description
Hector Berlioz combined writing music with lively and informed music criticism. This collection of articles, engagingly translated by Roger Nichols, covers the middle years of his critical career.
PRESTO MUSIC BOOK OF THE MONTH JUNE 2025
Berlioz's music criticism from 1837 to 1850 covers a period druing which he composed some of his finest works, and travelled abroad to perform them before appreciative audiences in Germany, Russia, and England. Roger Nichols has chosen and translated extracts from fifty-eight articles of particular interest, with commentary and notes identifying people mentioned. Berlioz scholars Peter Bloom and Julian Rushton provide an informative introduction and a comprehensive editorial apparatus.
In the selected articles Berlioz discusses Paris performances of early and modern music, including new operas and revivals, and concerts at the Paris Conservatoire. He comments freely but with understanding on conductors, singers and instrumentalists. The essays demonstrate the composer's concern with innovation in the design of musical instruments and assess the quality of performing venues. Berlioz writes on the musical life of London, France, and Germany, most entertainingly about the inauguration of statues of Beethoven and Rossini. The selection is framed by major articles on "Imitation in Music" and on Gluck's opera Alceste.
Contents
Translator's Preface and Acknowledgments
Sources and Abbreviations Used in the Text and Notes
Editor's Note
Introduction by Peter Bloom
The Articles:
1. On Imitation in Music (I)
2. On Imitation in Music (II)
3. Ninth Conservatoire Concert. Beethoven's Eroica and Taste in General
4. Esmeralda: on Fair Artistic Judgement
5. Paris Opéra: Revival of Le Siège de Corinthe
6. Third Conservatoire Concert; the Critic's Life
7. Le nozze de Figaro; Benefit Performance for Lablache
8. Second Concert of the Gazette musicale. Pauline Garcia; Gluck's Orphée
9. Adolphe Nourrit
10. Musical Instruments; Exhibition of Industrial Products
11. Premiere of Lucie de Lammermoor
12. Letter to Liszt: Music in Paris and London
13. Kastner's Treatise on Instrumentation
14. Miscellanea; Pauline Viardot at the Théâtre-Italien
15. First Conservatoire Concert; Gluck, his Critics, and Early Music (I)
16. First Conservatoire Concert; Early Music (II)
17. Paris Opéra: Revival of Fernand Cortez; Liszt and Batta in London
18. Third Conservatoire Concert; Haydn, Rossini, Viardot
19. Paris Opéra: Revival of Don Giovanni I
20. Liszt's Concerts
21. Paris Opéra: Revival of Don Giovanni II
22. Liszt's Concert at the Conservatoire
23. Poultier's Debut in Guillaume Tell
24. The Saint-Denis Organ
25. Fourth Conservatoire Concert
26. Cherubini
27. Sixth Conservatoire Concert
28. Thalberg's Concerts
29. German Theatre; First Performance of Jessonda
30. Castor et Pollux; the Score
31. Théâtre de l'Opéra-Comique: Revival of Le Déserteur
32. M. Berlioz's Concert at the Théâtre-Italien
33. Théâtre de l'Odéon. Premiere of Mendelssohn's Antigone
34. Large-scale Concert at the Opéra: the 'Droit des pauvres'
35. Michel de Glinka
36. Conservatoire Concert. Spontini: La Vestale
37. Cherubini's Messe du Sacre
38. Music Festival in Bonn; the Beethoven Statue
39. New Method of Instrumental Practice
40. Inauguration of Rossini's Statue
41. Théâtre de l'Opéra-Comique: Revival of Zémire et Azor
42. On the Harmonium
43. Paris Opéra. Premiere of Rossini: Robert the Bruce
44. Adolphe Sax's New Concert Hall
45. To M. Friedland; Musical Life in London
46. Opening of the Théâtre de la Nation
47. The Opéra; Mme de Lagrange's Debut; Otello
48. Distribution of Prizes at the Conservatoire (the Current State of French Music)
49. Théâtre de l'Opéra-Comique; Premiere of Ambroise Thomas: Le Caïd
50. Second Séance of the Société des Concerts; Beethoven, Haydn, and others
51. Third Séance of the Société des Concerts; Scene in the rue Bergère
52. Sixth Séance of the Société des Concerts; a Composer's Rights
53. Musical Instruments and the 'Droit des pauvres'
54. The Death of Johann Strauss
55. The Death of Chopin
56. A Method of Telephony by M. Sudre
57. Niedermeyer's Messe solennelle
58. Gluck's Alceste
Index of Names
