Experiencing Berlioz - (Listener's Companion) by Melinda P O'Neal (Hardcover)

About the Book

Experiencing Berlioz offers an accessible pathway into the underlying allure of Berlioz's music. His views on rehearsing and conducting, bumpy career ride and failures, the journey of a work through revisions and editions, and historical performance practices provide a backdro...

Book Synopsis

Experiencing Berlioz offers an accessible pathway into the underlying allure of Berlioz's music. His views on rehearsing and conducting, bumpy career ride and failures, the journey of a work through revisions and editions, and historical performance practices provide a backdrop to discussions of his most significant works.

Review Quotes

An engaging and informative exploration of the life, compositional style, and catalog of Hector Berlioz. Elegantly written with refreshing clarity, it is a wonderful resource and will be appreciated by lovers of music, lay and professional. I highly recommend this book!

Beautifully written, clearly organized, creatively detailed, and full of information and insight concerning the works of Berlioz being discussed. This volume will be both a helpful guide for the passionate listener and a valuable resource for the performing musician. Highly recommended.

O'Neal's reader-friendly volume is written for the average listener and contains excellent comments on how to prepare for and how to listen to a live concert. She obviously revels in the stunning sonic brilliance of Berlioz' writing and her love is contagious.

On first hearing Berlioz's music, many people report the experience as if they had been seized by the collar and shaken to the roots. If that happens to you, the perfect guide will be Melinda O'Neal's thoughtful tour through his entire output. For singers especially, this is essential reading.

This guide to Berlioz's music by an eminent choral conductor puts his vocal work front and center where it belongs, despite his fame as a composer of symphonies. O'Neal's entertaining, infectiously enthusiastic, perceptive, knowledgeable descriptions will serve listeners and performers alike.

About the Author

Melinda P. O'Neal is a choral-orchestral conductor and professor of music at Dartmouth College. Her fascination with the music of Berlioz began when rehearsing the final mystical chorus of L'enfance du Christ in graduate school. Berlioz has been the subject of O'Neal's teaching and writing, and she has prepared choruses and conducted in performance most of his vocal-instrumental works. Learn more about O'Neal and explore selected texts and translations referred to in Experiencing Berlioz at www.melindaoneal.net.