Written for both music lovers and scholars, these essays probe some
of Berlioz's major works, including the Symphonie
fantastique (the period of whose genesis is newly explored),
Les Nuits d'été ...(whose origins are newly clarified by a
revelation regarding Berlioz's possible muse), the Symphonie
militaire (whose existence is examined in the period before it
became the Symphonie funèbre et triomphale ), Les
Troyens (whose epilogue is seen as a paean to Napoléon III),
and Béatrice et Bénédict (whose text reveals extraordinary
understanding of the original play). The essays consider anew
Berlioz's relationships with Franz Liszt (with whom the composer
shared intimate details of his marriage to Harriet Smithson) and
Richard Wagner (by whom the Frenchman was both charmed and
alarmed), his travels in Germany (revealed as having had a
specifically administrative purpose), his appreciation of English
literature and Shakespeare (on whose work he was considered an
expert), his modus operandi in composing the
Mémoires , and his major twentieth-century biographers. Of
conspicuous concern are the "politics" of a man sometimes
erroneously viewed as distant from the political arena.
Fourteen revealing essays by a prominent Berlioz authority on some of the composer's acclaimed compositions (the Symphonie fantastique, Les Nuits d'été, Les Troyens) and writings (the celebrated ...Mémoires). Written for both music lovers and scholars, these essays probe some of Berlioz's major works, including the Symphonie fantastique (the period of whose genesis is newly explored), Les Nuits d'été (whose origins are newly clarified by a revelation regarding Berlioz's possible muse), the Symphonie militaire (whose existence is examined in the period before it became the Symphonie funèbre et triomphale), Les Troyens (whose epilogue is seen as a paean to Napoléon III), and Béatrice et Bénédict (whose text reveals extraordinary understanding of the original play). The essays consider anew Berlioz's relationships with Franz Liszt (with whom the composer shared intimate details of his marriage to Harriet Smithson) and Richard Wagner (by whom the Frenchman was both charmed and alarmed), his travels in Germany (revealed as having had a specifically administrative purpose), his appreciation of English literature and Shakespeare (on whose work he was considered an expert), his modus operandi in composing the Mémoires, and his major twentieth-century biographers. Of conspicuous concern are the "politics" of a man sometimes erroneously viewed as distant from the political arena. This book is openly available in digital format, under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND, thanks to generous funding from The New Berlioz Edition Trust.
In 1844, Hector Berlioz published a small novel about a future land ruled by musical principles, Euphonia. Remake in 1852, in a different critical context, the novel is the last part of another book, ...Les Soirées de l’Orchestre. “L’Euphonie” is the last meeting when the theatre was already close « for works » and before the Epilogue of the book. These “works” seems to have a collective intention, since the social order is also a musical harmony. Euphonia and eutopia impose themselves on life, on literature and on music, but they seem voted to dystopia, utopia the representation of a non-place, perhaps the only place capable to recreate the world.
Hector Berlioz a publié en 1844 un petit récit où il imagine une ville de l’avenir régit par des principes musicaux, L’Euphonia. Republiée en 1852, dans un autre contexte critique, faisant partie des ...Soirées de L’Orchestre, il occupera la dernière soirée, après l’annonce de la fermeture du théâtre (« pour cause de réparations ») et avant l’épilogue de l’œuvre. Les « réparations » gagnent ainsi un symbolisme collectif, puisque l’ordre sociale est aussi une harmonie musicale. L’euphonie et l’eutopie s’imposent, à la vie, à la littérature et à la musique mais elles semblent indissociables de la dystopie, l'utopie étant la représentation de l'absence de lieu, peut-être le seul lieu où l'on peut recréer le monde ?
...works like the Symphonie fantastique, Les Troyens and La Damnation de Faust – in all their many recordings – are impressive and complex, often with large orchestras and choirs, original ...instrumentation and fascinating cultural context. Les Troyens, for instance, that opera in five acts which many thought (and still think) is unstageable, is examined by Annegret Fauser (University of North Carolina) and provides structure and storyline, political and cultural context, the composer’s aims and the work’s reception, and how we think of it now). Berlioz was also a prolific writer – of letters, of musical criticism and reviews and much else: in a comprehensive entry on his biography, sub-sections pick out the family, his life, his time (most of his life) in Paris, trips to Italy, highs and lows, catalogues of his works, how he composed and self-borrowings, what he wrote and why, writers he liked to read and whose plots shaped his music, and his work as a librettist.
Few aspects of Berlioz's style are more idiosyncratic than his handling of musical form. This book, the first devoted solely to the topic, explores how his formal strategies are related to the poetic ...and dramatic sentiments that were his very reason for being. Rodgers draws upon Berlioz's ideas about musical representation and on the ideas that would have influenced him, arguing that the relationship between musical and extra-musical narrative in Berlioz's music is best construed as metaphorical rather than literal - 'intimate' but 'indirect' in Berlioz's words. Focusing on a type of varied-repetitive form that Berlioz used to evoke poetic ideas such as mania, obsession, and meditation, the book shows how, far from disregarding form when pushing the limits of musical evocation, Berlioz harnessed its powers to convey these ideas even more vividly.
The ways in which biographers mythologize their subjects' lives (and the way they mythologize their own lives) have long been a topic of research in life-writing. Even though several musicologists ...have identified mythologizing "motifs," the mythologizing function of "death" and "resurrection" remains under-theorized in relation to musical biography. Such motifs appear in biographies of Berlioz and Liszt written during their lifetimes, beginning with the earliest biographies of the composers, which were written by a friend, the music critic Joseph d'Ortigue. The meanings of these episodes changed when they appeared in auto/biographies written towards the end of their lives: Berlioz's Mémoires and Lina Ramann's Franz Liszt als Künstler und Mensch (the first "official" biography of Liszt, written partly under his guidance). In both of d'Ortigue's biographical sketches, "resurrection" is associated with the broader social regeneration taking place in Paris in the wake of the July 1830 Revolution, thereby magnifying the composers' importance. The ability to understand and conquer death is also positioned as an integral part of the composers' apprenticeships, further inflating and mythologizing their status as artists.
Written for both music lovers and scholars, these essays probe some of Berlioz's major works, including the Symphonie fantastique (the period of whose genesis is newly explored), Les Nuits d'été ...(whose origins are newly clarified by a revelation regarding Berlioz's possible muse), the Symphonie militaire (whose existence is examined in the period before it became the Symphonie funèbre et triomphale), Les Troyens (whose epilogue is seen as a paean to Napoléon III), and Béatrice et Bénédict (whose text reveals extraordinary understanding of the original play). The essays consider anew Berlioz's relationships with Franz Liszt (with whom the composer shared intimate details of his marriage to Harriet Smithson) and Richard Wagner (by whom the Frenchman was both charmed and alarmed), his travels in Germany (revealed as having had a specifically administrative purpose), his appreciation of English literature and Shakespeare (on whose work he was considered an expert), his modus operandi in composing the Mémoires, and his major twentieth-century biographers. Of conspicuous concern are the "politics" of a man sometimes erroneously viewed as distant from the political arena.
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