Berlioz

著者

    • Cairns, David

書誌事項

Berlioz

David Cairns

Allen Lane, 1999

  • v. 1
  • v. 2

大学図書館所蔵 件 / 全1件

この図書・雑誌をさがす

注記

Vol. 1 originally published: London : A. Deutsch, 1989

Includes bibliographical references and indexes

Vol. 1. The making of an artist 1803-1832 -- Vol. 2. Servitude and greatness 1832-1869

内容説明・目次

巻冊次

v. 1 ISBN 9780713993851

内容説明

This first volume of David Cairns's biography of Berlioz, first published a decade ago (when it won the Royal Philharmonic Society's Music Awards, the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year and the British Academy's Derek Allen Prize) and now reissued in a revised and corrected second edition, transform our view of the composer of the "Fantastic Symphony" and has established itself as one of the outstanding biographies of any musician in English: "it is already clear", wrote one critic, "that Cairns is doing for Berlioz what Ernest Newman did for Wagner". In this book the author describes with unprecedented intimacy, affection and respect the early years of one of France's greatest artists. In researching the life, Cairns has had access to a wealth of family papers. He is able to portray all the people close to Berlioz in his boyhood and to evoke a detailed picture of their existence in an d around La Cote St Andre in the foothills of the French Alps. No artist's achievement connects more directly with early experience than that of Berlioz, whose passionate sensibility began to absorb the material of his art long before he had heard any musical ensemble other than the local town band, and few artists have had to fight their way through a more intense family drama in order to follow their vocation. To be given an authentic sense of the place and the people involved, and of Berlioz's response to them, is to be taken to the heart of the man. The same is true of Berlioz's student years in Paris, where he tried to please his father by attending medical school but soon found the pull of music irresistible. He immersed himself in the works of Gluck and Spontini; studied with Jean-Francois Le Sueur, at first privately, then at the Conservatoire; won the Prix de Rome at his fifth attempt; and spent the obligatory year in Italy. Those simple statements cover a turmoil of commitment, defiance, experiment, frustration and achievement, all of which Cairns brings to life. berlioz's development as a composer is fully described.so are his three great love affairs: his boyhood passion foe Estelle Dubeuf which was to run like a musical; theme through his life; his almost and obsession with the English actress Harriet Smithson; and his much less unreal love for the brilliant pianist Camille Moke. This volume ends when, after two years away from Paris, Berlioz has organized the concert which will launch him on his professional career.
巻冊次

v. 2 ISBN 9780713993868

内容説明

"What an impossible novel my life is!" Berlioz wrote in 1832 to his friend Albert Du Boys. To his sister Adele, "I am absorbed continually by the strangeness, the romanticness of my situation". What was continually absorbing Berlioz in 1832 was in fact his passionate pursuit of the actress Harriet Smithson, who for so long had resisted him, and whom he at last marries. To begin with, the marriage was a happy one, produced an adored son Louis, and released Berlioz's extraordinary creative energies. But harriet was unable to find work. The marriage became unbalanced. Its end as tragic for them both. "Oh to forget to forget" he wrote after her death. "What can relieve me of memory, blot out all those pages from the book and volume of my heart". The pursuit of love, and its defining place in Berlioz's life, is one of the great themes of Berlioz: servitude and greatness. It is only one among many brilliantly traced by the author, Cairns describes the genesis of the famous works of Berlioz's maturity - Benvenuto Cellini, the requiem, Romeo and Juliet, The Damnation of Faust and above all the crowning masterpiece The Trojans, neglected or mutilated for a century after its composition and which Cairns shows emerging from the classical passions of Berlioz's adolescence - which exceptional insight and understanding. rarely have the creative processes of a great artist been so amply revealed. But Berlioz stands in this volume not simply as a great and revolutionary composer: he was, in the opinion of Hans von Bulow, Sir Charles Halle and many others, "the finest conductor of his age", called upon all over Europe to perform above all Gluck and Beethoven as well as his own works. And it is evident, in this book perhaps for the first time, that he was also one of the finest critics and writers about music of the 19th century, in Cairns's opinion the finest until Shaw: "no one else combined his knowledge of music and the musical world with his command of language". The power and wit of Berlioz's writing, in his letters as well as his criticism, are one of the delights of the book. Struggles for artistic recognition and some measure of financial security, are the other two great themes of the book.

「Nielsen BookData」 より

詳細情報

ページトップへ