Experiencing Berlioz

Experiencing Berlioz: A Listener’s Companion is an in-depth entrée into the sound world of Hector Berlioz, recognized today as one of the most profoundly original and engaging composers in 19th-century Europe. Melinda O’Neal offers the non-specialist a 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. As O’Neal addresses the motivation and conception, sonic atmosphere, and compositional strategies of key works, she provides a new multifaceted experience not only to music historians and performers but also to any amateur music lover who has ever been entranced by Berlioz’s undeniable musical veracity. As the listener interacts with Berlioz's music, the ear's curiosity and imagination will take flight.

Praise for Berlioz, Volume I "We now have a biography that not only takes in the immense documentation of Berlioz's early life but goes far beyond it in piecing together an incomparably rich portrait of the man and his milieu. . . . The picture is so vivid and the prose so magnetic that not a word seems wasted. . . . Cairns's biography of Berlioz must take its place with the handful of great lives of composers, such as Thayer's Beethoven, Newman's Wagner, and Walker's Wolf."--Hugh MacDonald, The Listener "Even at this halfway stage, [Cairns's] Berlioz stands as one of the great biographies of our day, and also one of the great feats of literary sympathy with an artistic genius, filled with a love, knowledge, and understanding of his subject that flame up on every page."--Max Loppert, Financial Times "This biography is kindled by sympathy and enthusiasm for its subject, and is written with a lifelong professional experience of Berlioz behind it. It is also beautifully and interestingly written. The chapters flow together like Berlioz's own harmonic changes, and with equal resonance."--Roger Norrington, Independent

Experiencing Mahler surveys the symphonies and major song sets of Gustav Mahler, presenting them not just as artworks but as vivid and deeply felt journeys. Mahler took the symphony, perhaps the most tradition-bound genre in Western music, and opened it to the widest span of human experience. He introduced themes of love, nature, the chasmic depth of midnight, making peace with death, facing rebirth, seeking one’s creator, and being at one with God. Arved Ashby offers the non-specialist a general introduction into Mahler’s seemingly unbounded energy to investigate the elements that make each work an experiential adventure—one that has redefined the symphonic genre in new ways. In addition to the standard nine symphonies, Ashby discusses Das Lied von der Erde, the three most commonly heard song sets (the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, Kindertotenlieder, and Rückert-Lieder), and the unfinished Tenth Symphony (in Cooke’s edition). Experiencing Mahler is a far-reaching and often provocative search for meaning in the music of one of the most beloved composers of all time.

Claude Debussy holds a place as a one of the most recognizable and influential composers in the classical music. Debussy forged a new and influential sound for the twentieth century with his remarkable harmonies, fluid rhythms, airy textures, and an instinct for mystery and beauty. In Experiencing Debussy: A Listener’s Companion, Teresa Davidian welcomes readers into the infectious appeal of Debussy’s major works to consider how they can still attract and move audiences. In such works as the hauntingly beautiful Clair de Lune and the groundbreaking Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, Davidian looks beneath the surface of the music to explain its power, all the while drawing connections between different pieces to place them securely within the context of Debussy’s life and times. Written in an accessible style, Experiencing Debussy provides an engaging tour through Debussy’s works for the concertgoers, movie buffs, performers, and students regardless of musical background.

Covers sixty of the world's most celebrated composers, from Bach, Mozart and Beethoven to Tchaikovsky, Gershwin and Bernstein. It weaves five hundred years of history and music into a rich tapestry of sound and story.

Inge van Rij's book demonstrates how Berlioz used the sights and sounds of the orchestra to explore other worlds.

Ths text ffers an overall assessment of Berlioz's musical achievement as we approach the bicentary of his birth in 2003. This is a full-length musical study of the composer taking into account the rediscovered Messe solennelle.

Still chiefly known as the extravagant composer of the Symphonie fantastique, Berlioz was an artist caught in the crossfire between the academic classicism of the French musical establishment and the romantic modernism of the Parisian musical scene. He was a thinker in an age that invented both the religion of art and the notion of the 'genius' who preached and practised it. This Companion contains essays by eminent scholars on Berlioz's place in nineteenth-century French cultural life, on his principal compositions (symphonies, overtures, operas, sacred works, songs), on his major writings (a delightful volume of memoires, a number of short stories, large quantities of music criticism, an orchestration treatise), on his direct and indirect encounters with other famous musicians (Gluck, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner), and on his legacy in France. The volume is framed by a detailed chronology of his life and a usefully annotated bibliography.