Celebrating its 100th anniversary, this extraordinary series continues to amaze and captivate its readers with detailed insight into the lives and work of music's geniuses. Unlike other composer biographies that focus narrowly on the music, this series explores the personal history of each composer and the social context surrounding the music. In a precise, engaging, and authoritative manner, each volume combines a vivid portrait of the master musicians' inspirations, influences, life experiences, even their weaknesses, with an accessible discussion of their work-all in roughly 300 pages. Further, each volume offers superb reference material, including a detailed life and times chronology, a complete list of works, a personalia glossary highlighting the important people in the composer's life, and a select bibliography. Under the supervision of music expert and series general editor Stanley Sadie, Master Musicians will certainly proceed to delight music scholars, serious musicians, and all music lovers for another hundred years.
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"Very well written...as a guide to the music [Macdonald] is vivid and evocative...the best-written and most authoritative study which the lover of Berlioz's music could wish for."--Opera
About the Author
Hugh Macdonald, Professor of Music, Washington University, St Louis.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
A MARVELOUS PORTRAIT OF AN INNOVATIVE EARLY ROMANTIC COMPOSER,
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This review is from: Berlioz (Master Musicians (Paperback Oxford)) (Paperback)
This volume in the "Master Musicians" series of Oxford University Press is a worthy study of Berlioz' life (the first third of the book) and his music.
Berlioz' father wanted him to attend medical school, and his mother disowned him when he refused to give up music. (In fact, his parents never even heard a note of his music.) To make ends meet, he worked in a chorus for a theatre, and eventually became a fairly well-known music critic, and a "specialist" conductor. MacDonald notes that "he eventually came to be thought of as a critic who composed rather than as a composer who eked a living from writing." He further notes that Berlioz "regarded writing as an accursed drudgery, a millstone which oppressed him body and soul." Nevertheless, he had no choice, since "for his work as a comoposer he made virtually no money." The story of Berlioz' fixation on the actress Harriet Smithson, and his turning this infatuation into his Symphonie Fantastique is told in detail, as well as his brief meeting with a young Brahms. Berlioz wrote several highly-regarded religious compositions (such as hsi Te Deum"), yet he was "contemptuous of traditional religion." For anyone interested in Berlioz and his music, this is an excellent book to purchase.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
The Berlioz family had been settled in the region between Lyons and Grenoble, the Isere departement of France, since the beginning of the seventeenth century, if not before, and from being tanners in earlier generations they had risen to the respectable professions of law and medicine. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Les Troyens, Benvenuto Cellini, Harriet Smithson, L'enfance du Christ, Prix de Rome, Rob Roy, Marie Recio, Pauline Viardot, Philharmonic Society, Villa Medici, Goethe's Faust, The Merchant, Don Giovanni, Exeter Hall, Friar Laurence, Holy Family, William Tell, Ferdinand Hiller, Mardi Gras, New York, Shakespeare's Act, Victor Hugo New!
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
The Berlioz family had been settled in the region between Lyons and Grenoble, the Isere departement of France, since the beginning of the seventeenth century, if not before, and from being tanners in earlier generations they had risen to the respectable professions of law and medicine. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Les Troyens, Benvenuto Cellini, Harriet Smithson, L'enfance du Christ, Prix de Rome, Rob Roy, Marie Recio, Pauline Viardot, Philharmonic Society, Villa Medici, Goethe's Faust, The Merchant, Don Giovanni, Exeter Hall, Friar Laurence, Holy Family, William Tell, Ferdinand Hiller, Mardi Gras, New York, Shakespeare's Act, Victor Hugo New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 37
books:
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- Romeo and Juliet (Folger Shakespeare Library) by William Shakespeare on 6 pages
- Romeo And Juliet (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition) (Saddleback Classics) by William Shakespeare on 5 pages
- Romeo and Juliet (Penguin Readers, Level 3) by William Shakespeare on 5 pages
- Romeo and Juliet (Simply Shakespeare) by William Shakespeare on 5 pages
- King Lear (The New Folger Library Shakespeare) by William Shakespeare on page 4, page 16, and page 96
See all 37 books this book cites
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