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Hector Berlioz, La critique musicale 1823—1863, vol. i: 1823—1834, edited by H. Robert Cohen and Yves Gérard. Paris, Buchet/Chastel, 1996. xxv + 517 pp. ISBN 2 283 01722 X.
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Hector Berlioz, La critique musicale 1823—1863, vol. i: 1823—1834, edited by H. Robert Cohen and Yves Gérard. Paris, Buchet/Chastel, 1996. xxv + 517 pp. ISBN 2 283 01722 X.
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References
1 See Cohen, H. Robert, ‘An Introduction to the Fourth “R”: Le répertoire international de la presse musicale du xixe siècle (RIPM xix)’, Periodica musica, 1 (1983), 1–2.Google Scholar
2 It may sound a little ungenerous in the context of the great benefit this resource offers, but nevertheless it should be noted that the bibliographical system used in compiling the RIPM indexes is not particularly user-friendly, since the indexes use different page numbers from those of the original journals. Unravelling the system takes time.Google Scholar
3 McWilliam, Neil, A Bibliography of Salon Criticism in Paris from the July Monarchy to the Second Republic, 1831-1851 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. ix, x.Google Scholar
4 For instance Pleasures of Music: An Anthology of Writing about Music and Musicians, ed. Jacques Barzun (London, 1952); Max Graf, Composer and Critic: Two Hundred Years of Music Criticism (New York, 1945); The Critical Composer: The Musical Writings of Berlioz, Wagner, Schumann, Tchaikovsky, and Others, ed. Irving Kolodin (New York, 1969); Music in the Western World: A History in Documents, ed. Piero Weiss and Richard Taruskin (New York, 1984).Google Scholar
5 Music and Aesthetics in the Eighteenth and Early-Nineteenth Centuries, ed. Peter Le Huray and James Day (Cambridge, 1981); Music in European Thought, 1851-1912, ed. Bojan Bujić (Cambridge, 1988); Theodore Fenner, Opera in London: Views of the Press, 1785-1830 (Carbondale, 1994).Google Scholar
6 Contemplating Music: Source Readings in the Aesthetics of Music, ed. Ruth Katz and Carl Dahlhaus, 4 vols. (New York, 1987-93).Google Scholar
7 Ellis, Katharine, Music Criticism in Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge, 1995).Google Scholar
8 McColl, Sandra, Music Criticism in Vienna, 1896-1897: Critically Moving Forms (Oxford, 1996).Google Scholar
9 Marie-Hélène Coudroy, La critique parisienne des ‘grands opéras’ de Meyerbeer (Saarbrücken, 1988); Robin Wallace, Beethoven's Critics (Cambridge, 1986).Google Scholar
10 Reeve, Katherine Kolb, The Poetics of the Orchestra in the Writings of Hector Berlioz (Ann Arbor, 1978); eadem, ‘Hector Berlioz’, European Writers, ed. George Stade, vi (New York, 1985), 771–812; Kerry Murphy, Hector Berlioz and the Development of French Music Criticism (Ann Arbor, 1988).Google Scholar
11 Berlioz, Hector, Correspondance générale, ed. Pierre Citron, 6 vols. (Paris, 1972-95); idem, Mémoires, ed. Pierre Citron (Paris, 1991).Google Scholar
12 Les musiciens et la musique, ed. André Hallays (Paris, 1903); Hector Berlioz: Cauchemars et passions, ed. Gérard Condé (Paris, 1981).Google Scholar
13 Katherine Kolb Reeve extensively examines Berlioz's writings on Beethoven in The Poetics of the Orchestra. Katharine Ellis has a valuable section in her book Music Criticism in Nineteenth-Century France, discussing Berlioz's criticism of Beethoven. See also Wallace, Beethoven's Critics.Google Scholar
14 See Reeve, Katherine Kolb, ‘Rhetoric and Reason in French Music Criticism of the 1830s’, Music in Paris in the Eighteen-Thirties, ed. Peter Bloom (New York, 1987), 537–51, for a further discussion of this issue.Google Scholar
15 'The Adagio, that miracle of modern music, in which art attains genius, and science becomes inspired, overflows with cascades of melody, harmony, instrumentation and rhythm to the most powerful of effects. The piece begins with a deep sigh uttered by the wind instruments, then the sublime plaint rises in strains of immense and boundless suffering, like that of the prophet of the Lamentations. The poet, for a moment lifting the sombre veil concealing his thoughts, appears before us, casting over the past that sweet and sad look of patience smiling upon grief; then Beethoven becomes Jeremiah again, re-enters his Valley of Tears, and, having traversed it, in parting, utters once more that ineffable sigh that had initially been torn from him at the prospect of the tale of grief that he was about to unfold.’ Gazette musicale de Paris, 27 April 1834; La critique musicale, 223.Google Scholar
16 'The words of L'aspirant de marine are less than brilliant; the drama, if there is drama, is so lightweight that we think that this time we could dispense with its analysis without failing our readers. Several of the composer's pieces, on the other hand, full of that easy charm that gives such pleasure to the French, aroused applause from all over the hall.’ Le rénovateur, 15 June 1834, La critique musicale, 275.Google Scholar
17 'Son metier de critique a évité à Berlioz de devoir composer pour vivre. N'ayant pas la facilité d'un Auber ni l'opportunisme d'un Meyerbeer, il en aurait été d'ailleurs incapable: … il avait dû se rendre compte assez tôt que l'originalité de sa musique la réservait à une élite restreinte de connaisseurs ou d'esprits sensibles.’ Condé, Cauchemars et passions, 19.Google Scholar
18 Berlioz, , Memoirs, ed. and trans. David Cairns (London, 1974), 124.Google Scholar
19 The Poetics of the Orchestra.Google Scholar
20 Berlioz, , Memoirs, ed. Cairns, 289.Google Scholar
21 Bloom, Peter, ‘Episodes in the Livelihood of an Artist: Berlioz's Contacts and Contracts with Publishers’, Journal of Musicological Research, 15 (1995), 219–73 (p. 229).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
22 Selected Letters of Berlioz, ed. Hugh Macdonald (London, 1995), 444.Google Scholar
23 Periodica musica, 1 (1983), 16. Two volumes of critical apparatus were originally announced in this article. A few paragraphs from this article of 1983 are translated and reproduced in the introduction to La critique musicale, i, pp. iii–iv.Google Scholar
24 Ibid., 99, note 3.Google Scholar
25 Ibid., 178, note 14.Google Scholar
26 This is taken directly from the editor's notes to the annotations, La critique musicale, i, p. xviii.Google Scholar
27 Ibid., 5.Google Scholar
28 Ibid., 441-50; 455-7; 469-71.Google Scholar
29 There are also a number of unnecessary footnotes identifying people. For instance the average reader of Berlioz's criticism should not need to have Quasimodo, Ariel, Oberon and Titania identified.Google Scholar
30 Correspondance générale, i, 55-6.Google Scholar
31 La critique musicale, i, 5, note 1.Google Scholar
32 Catalogue of the Works of Hector Berlioz, ed. D. Kern Holoman, New Berlioz Edition, 25 (Kassel, etc., 1987), catalogue of feuilletons, 435-88.Google Scholar
33 This is mentioned in Murphy, Hector Berlioz, and Holoman, Catalogue, and is also footnoted in Correspondance générale, ii, 40, note 2.Google Scholar
34 An index of works would be useful in itself and would also make crowded composer entries easier to use. For instance, Beethoven has 90-odd entries in the index. Subheadings of works would be of great benefit here.Google Scholar
35 I also do not see why cross-references could not be made to Kern Holoman's catalogue numbers (see above, note 32) in each volume, rather than awaiting the last volume of critical apparatus.Google Scholar
36 Quoted in Crabbe, John, Hector Berlioz: Rational Romantic (New York, 1980), 13.Google Scholar
37 Hector Berlioz, The Art of Music and Other Essays (A travers chants), trans. and ed. Elizabeth Csicsery-Rónay (Bloomington, 1994).Google Scholar