Berlioz on Music
Selected Criticism 1824-1837
Edited by Katherine Kolb and Samuel N. Rosenberg
Reviews and Awards
"Elegantly written and meticulously researched, Berlioz on Music is a veritable treasure trove. It provides an indispensable resource for music and literary scholars by making an invaluable contribution to modern nineteenth-century studies." - Nineteenth-Century French Studies
"[A] remarkable volume ... most enlightening. Highly recommended." - W. E. Grim, CHOICE
"A fine and authoritative new translation of Berlioz's music criticism." - BBC Music Magazine
"This is a finely-judged anthology, impeccably presented and all the more valuable for its inclusion of some lesser-known treasures from the composer's early critical career. Rosenberg's translations give us Berlioz at full throttle, while Kolb's accompanying texts combine wisdom and empathy as they deftly set the scene." - Katharine Ellis, University of Bristol, author of Music Criticism in Nineteenth-Century France: La Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris, 1834-1880
"Katherine Kolb's searching essay on the role and function of music criticism in the early 19th century provides a brilliant introduction to this selection of articles written by Berlioz in his early years, years when his views on music were as colourfully expressed as the orchestration of the Symphonie fantastique and as deeply felt as the love scene in Romeo et Juliette." - Hugh Macdonald, General Editor of the New Berlioz Edition, author of Beethoven's Century (2008), Music in 1853 (2012) and Bizet (2014)
"Berlioz was forced to write criticism for a living, and hated the necessity, but he wrote marvellously, using his position to attack what was bad and exalt what was good, with the enthusiasm and caustic humour that were his trademarks. He collected and revised some of it later in books; but this welcome anthology shows him at grips with the day-to-day Paris music scene, at the moment of putting pen to paper." - David Cairns, author of Berlioz(2000).
