David Cairns
Berlioz; Volume One: The Making of an Artist 1803-1832; and Volume Two: Servitude and Greatness 1832-1869.
University of California Press, 2000. First printings. 0520221990 0520222008 xxiv/647/xi/895 pages.
Volumes, each measuring approximately 6.75" x 9.75" and bound in black cloth, with stamped gilt lettering to spines. Books are new. Dust jacket of second volume has small closed tear at top edge of spine panel. Jackets are preserved in mylar cover.
"This biography of composer Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) describes with unprecedented intimacy, affection, and respect the life of one of France's greatest artists. After long being regarded as an oddity and an eccentric figure, Berlioz is now being accepted into the ranks of the great composers. Based on a wealth of previously unpublished sources, and on a profound understanding of the humanity of his subject...these two volumes together comprise a monumental biographical achievement, sure to stand as the definitive Berlioz biography.
In researching Berlioz's life, Cairns has had access to unpublished family papers, and in Volume I he is able to portray all the people close to Berlioz in his boyhood, and to evoke a detailed picture of their lives in and around La Côte St.-André in the foothills of the French Alps. No artist's achievement connects more directly with early experience than that of Berlioz, whose passionate sensibility began to absorb the material of his art long before he had heard any musical ensemble other than the local town band. Volume I also traces the student years in Paris and Italy and discusses Berlioz's three great love affairs, shedding remarkable light on his later character and development. Volume I ends on the afternoon of December 9, 1832, the day of the concert that launched the composer's career.
Volume II follows Berlioz's life from 1832 to his death in 1869, his most active years as a composer, conductor, and critic. This volume provides telling portraits of those close to Berlioz: his two wives, his son and his sisters, his friends and colleagues, fellow composers and critics. Cairns vividly evokes Berlioz's music and the music-making world of nineteenth-century Paris. Volume II also includes chapters on Wagner, Berlioz's career as a critic, the composer's concert tours in Germany, Russia, and England, and much more."
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