San Antonio College Library

A biography of the avant-garde French musician who learned to play only the flute, guitar, and drum, but who wrote operas, oratorios, and symphonies, and was well-known as a composer, critic, and conductor.

This book contains essays by eminent scholars on Berlioz's place in nineteenth-century French cultural life, on his principal compositions (symphonies, overtures, operas, sacred works, songs), on his major writings, (a delightful volume of memories, a number of short stories, large quantities of music criticism, an orchestration treatise), on his direct and indirect encounters with other famous musicians (Gluck, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner), and on...

Berlioz' "Fantastic Symphony" is widely regarded as one of the most important and representative pieces of the early Romantic period. Leonard Bernstein once called it "the first musical expedition into psychedelia" because of its hallucinatory and dream-like nature. German musicologist Wulf Konold describes the idea behind and the realization of this fascinating work. Mariss Jansons conducts the Berlin Philharmonic.

One of the foremost composers of his generation, Berlioz was even more influential as an arbiter of musical taste and a writer of critical essays for the Parisian Journal des debats. But professional journalism was sometimes an unwelcome task for Berlioz, who felt hindered by considerations of diplomacy and censorship. Letter writing, by contrast, provided him with a freer outlet for creative expression, and his surviving correspondences number in...

This text offers a concise overview of historical performance, taking into account the many significant developments that have taken place in the discipline, particularly in the 1990s. It addresses practical matters rather than philosophical issues.