Berlioz and His World - (Bard Music Festival) by Francesca Brittan & Sarah Hibberd (Paperback)

About the Book

"A collection of essays and short object lessons on the composer Hector Berlioz, published in collaboration with the Bard Music Festival. Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) has long been a difficult figure to place and interpret. Famously, in Richard Wagner's estimation, he hovered as a 'transient, marvelous exception,' a composer woefully and willfully isolated. In the assessment of German composer Ferdinand Hiller, he was a fleeting comet who 'does not belong in our musical solar system,' the likes of whom would never be seen again. For his contemporaries, as for later critics, Berlioz was simply too strange--and too noisy, too loud, too German, too literary, too cavalier with genre and form, and too difficult to analyze. He was, in many ways, a composer without a world. 'Berlioz and His World' takes a deep dive into the composer's complex legacy, tracing lines between his musical and literary output and the scientific, sociological, technological, and political influences that shaped him. Comprising nine essays covering key facets of Berlioz's contribution and six short 'object lessons' meant as conversation starters, the book reveals Berlioz as a richly intersectional figure. His very difficulty, his tendency to straddle the worlds of composer, conductor, and critic, is revealed as a strength, inviting new lines of cross-disciplinary inquiry and a fresh look at his European and American reception"

Book Synopsis

A collection of essays and short object lessons on the composer Hector Berlioz, published in collaboration with the Bard Music Festival.

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) has long been a difficult figure to place and interpret. Famously, in Richard Wagner's estimation, he hovered as a "transient, marvelous exception," a composer woefully and willfully isolated. In the assessment of German composer Ferdinand Hiller, he was a fleeting comet who "does not belong in our musical solar system," the likes of whom would never be seen again. For his contemporaries, as for later critics, Berlioz was simply too strange--and too noisy, too loud, too German, too literary, too cavalier with genre and form, and too difficult to analyze. He was, in many ways, a composer without a world.

Berlioz and His World takes a deep dive into the composer's complex legacy, tracing lines between his musical and literary output and the scientific, sociological, technological, and political influences that shaped him. Comprising nine essays covering key facets of Berlioz's contribution and six short "object lessons" meant as conversation starters, the book reveals Berlioz as a richly intersectional figure. His very difficulty, his tendency to straddle the worlds of composer, conductor, and critic, is revealed as a strength, inviting new lines of cross-disciplinary inquiry and a fresh look at his European and American reception.

Review Quotes

"In the volume, Brittan and Hibberd pursue an engaging and enticing mode of organization, one that will surely appeal to musicologists, Berlioz afficionados, and music enthusiasts alike. . . Berlioz and His World serves the admirable role of providing 'starting points for further scholarship, inclusive conversation, and a shared contemplation' of Berlioz's 'rich histories and futures', a particularly timely goal when Berlioz, lacking a 'world' in his own age, has increasingly become a part of ours."-- "Notes: the Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association"

About the Author

Francesca Brittan is associate professor of music at Case Western Reserve University. She is the author of Music and Fantasy in the Age of Berlioz and coeditor of The Attentive Ear: Sound, Cognition, and Subjectivity, 1800-1930. She serves as coeditor of the Journal of Musicology and general editor of the series Recent Researches in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Music for A-R Editions. Sarah Hibberd is the Stanley Hugh Badock Chair of Music at the University of Bristol. She is the author of French Grand Opera and the Historical Imagination and coeditor of Music and the Sonorous Sublime in European Culture, 1680-1880. She serves as coeditor of the Cambridge Opera Journal and is on the editorial board of Music & Letters.