The art of music and other essays =
Subtitle: (A travers chants)
By: Hector Berlioz ; translated and edited by Elizabeth Csicsery-Rónay.
Contributors: Csicsery-Rónay, Elizabeth, 1946-
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 1994
Place of publication: Bloomington
Language: eng
Number of pages: 274
Subjects: Music -- History and criticism
Description: Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) was equally prominent as composer and author. According to Harold Schonberg, he was the "foremost music critic of his time, possibly of all time." A Travers Chants is the collection of writings he himself selected from his thirty-odd years of musical journalism.

These essays cover a wide spectrum of intellectual inquiry: Beethoven's nine symphonies and his opera, Fidelio; Wagner and the partisans of the "Music of the Future"; Berlioz's idols - Gluck, Weber, and Mozart. There is an eloquent plea to stop the constant rise in concert pitch (an issue still discussed today), a serious piece on the place of music in church, and a humorous and imaginative account of musical customs in China.

But Berlioz's writings also contain biting satire and ridicule - of opera singers, of the Academy, of dilettantism. This new translation, phrased in lively, idiomatic English and annotated for the twentieth-century reader, is illustrated with lithographs and drawings from Berlioz's lifetime. Berlioz's writings are a treasure-house of information on nineteenth-century musical life, performance practice, and taste.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.