- Hardcover: 672 pages
- Publisher: University of California Press; abridged edition edition (30 Mar 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0520221990
- ISBN-13: 978-0520221994
- Product Dimensions: 24.5 x 16.7 x 5.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 4,405,546 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Amazon.co.uk Review
Life stories come in all sizes, from the smallest notice in a dictionary of musical biography to largest multi-volume epic. Fitting form to subject, David Cairns's enormous retelling of Berlioz's--of which this is volume one (running from 1803-1832)--is on the grandest possible scale. It contains a tremendous amount of fascinating detail, and conveys a real sense of what it was like to grow up in France in the aftermath of the Napoleonic defeats. But above all it is a completely convincing portrait of the character of Berlioz himself, and of his sense of his own artistic mission. He lived passionately, sometimes gushingly. When he fell in love, for instance, he did so hyperbolically ("my heart expands and my imagination struggles to comprehend this intensity of happiness");he suffered amorous reversals with melodramatic intensity ("wandering the streets at night with a bitter grief that haunts me like a red-hot iron on my breast"), and he spoke with gusto of the effect great art had on him("I came out of Hamlet shaken to the core by the experience; I vowed I should not expose myself a second time to the flame of Shakespeare's genius"). But one of the nice things in Cairns's account is the way the ordinary neatly undercuts Berlioz's self-dramatisation; for instance the letter to his mother that begins "thank you, dear Mama, for the handkerchiefs. What I am short of is stockings."
Volume One takes us up to the composition of Berlioz's early triumph, theFantastic Symphony, which Cairns describes in powerful prose. But most absorbing are the accounts of Berlioz's all-consuming love affairs: his boyhood infatuation with Estelle Dubeuf, his obsessive love for the English actress Harriet Smithson, for whom he learned to speak English, and his more realistic love for the pianist Camille Moke. You finish reading it eager to carry the story on in volume two, Servitude and Greatness.--Adam Roberts --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
Named a "Notable Book of 2000" by the "New York Times Book Review
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This massive two volume biography of the greatest French composer of the Nineteenth Century has been praised and showered with awards. Not only is it now the definitive book on the composer, written by the Berlioz authority of our times but it is a totally absurbing account, not only of the music (which is still underestimated by many) but of the cultural history of the period too (the two volumes cover the years 1832-1836). The boy Berlioz witnessed the heady days of Napoleon's return from Elba, the young man was writing his Prix de Rome composition when the 1830 Revolution broke out and he lived to witness the reactionary stultification of France after the 1848 revolution.
David Cairns analyses the music in enough detail to guide us through Berlioz' still strikingly modern style without losing any less musicologically minded readers. He also offers a profound and penetrating analysis of this wonderfully human man who suffered throughout his life for his two great loves: music and women. Perhaps no other composer of the period was so interesting, so intelligently engaged in his times and so given to emotional excess.
Cairns paints a vivid picture in a surprizingly informal style which reads more like a Romantic novel than a biography. You really do have to read the next chapter to find out what happens. There is no loss of quality however, Cairns keeps us heads down as he passes scrupulously through each year putting the music into context - no composer's life was more expressed in music - and putting the man into the context of the times.
If Berlioz comes over as almost larger than life, it only goes to remind us that life is maybe bigger than many of us dare make it.
Don't be put off by the length, a big man deserves a big book and it is so very readable that you will regret coming to the end.
David Cairns analyses the music in enough detail to guide us through Berlioz' still strikingly modern style without losing any less musicologically minded readers. He also offers a profound and penetrating analysis of this wonderfully human man who suffered throughout his life for his two great loves: music and women. Perhaps no other composer of the period was so interesting, so intelligently engaged in his times and so given to emotional excess.
Cairns paints a vivid picture in a surprizingly informal style which reads more like a Romantic novel than a biography. You really do have to read the next chapter to find out what happens. There is no loss of quality however, Cairns keeps us heads down as he passes scrupulously through each year putting the music into context - no composer's life was more expressed in music - and putting the man into the context of the times.
If Berlioz comes over as almost larger than life, it only goes to remind us that life is maybe bigger than many of us dare make it.
Don't be put off by the length, a big man deserves a big book and it is so very readable that you will regret coming to the end.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
5 reviews
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful
A Passionate Man
25 April 2000
Format:Hardcover
This is a wonderful book both for the lay reader and for the musically knowledgeable. It says a great deal about how well written this book is that someone like me who knows nothing about music could still enjoy the book so much. Mr. Cairns takes the tale from the birth of Berlioz in 1803 up until 1832, when he was in his late 20's. You learn about his relationship with his parents, who were opposed to his choice of composer for a career, and his sisters. We are very fortunate that this was a great age for letter writing. Mr. Cairns makes judicious use of the correspondence between Berlioz and his family and friends to the point where you almost feel yourself to be a friend or family member. You get inside the young composer's mind as he tries to convince his parents that his desire to write music is not just a "whim", but something that he is absolutely passionate about and must do. Berlioz was also extremely sensitive and romantic. After seeing the English actress Harriet Smithson perform on stage in several works by Shakespeare he developed an obsessive love for her, even though he had never met her. He had an apartment across the street from where she lived and would longingly watch her comings and goings. He eventually wrote her several notes expressing his feelings but she rebuffed him, quite understandably one would think! (She had also heard a rumor, which was untrue, that he was an epileptic.) Shortly after coming to the realization that Smithson was unattainable Berlioz met the virtuoso pianist Camille Moke and they fell in love with each other and eventually got engaged. Alas, when poor Hector had to go to Rome to live in order to receive grant money from winning the Prix de Rome, Camille dumped him and opted for security by marrying a wealthy man. This soured Hector on women for awhile but did not diminish his love for music, nature and life. Mr. Cairns has been a professional music critic and is also a scholar, so he understands and ably explains the technical aspects of Berlioz's music. I was totally lost in these sections but my ignorance did not diminish my enjoyment of this sympathetic and wonderfully written book.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Incredible.
14 May 2000
Format:Hardcover
This really is one of the best biographies of any subject to come my way.I didn't know a lot of Berlioz's music before approaching this but it didn't actually matter.All the elements of a gripping novel are here only for they're true!-fighting paternal disapproval,living in poverty in Paris,eloping with a virtuoso pianist-it's all here and Cairns paints such an intimate picture that you can't but fail to admire Berlioz and his dogged determination to be a composer and write HIS music only to be continually rebuked in his native homeland.The efforts that the man had to go to just to hear his own music is truly heartbreaking.Biography doesn't get much better than this-especially if you're only even remotely interested in music or art.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Great Scholar
20 Sep 2001
Format:Hardcover
David Cairns is a great Berlioz scholar. Like to meet him someday. His translation of "Memoirs" is much superior to Newmans.I bought the 1st volume of the biography some years ago when it first came out and the second a couple of years ago when it was first published. I revisit these volumes frequently. Berlioz was one of the really great romantics. At least 50 years before his time. Glad to see SF opera is planning on staging Cellini & B & B over the next few years. Sixtus Beckmesser
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