Music and Fantasy in the Age of Berlioz

An exploration of fantastic soundworlds in nineteenth-century France, providing a fresh aesthetic and compositional context for Berlioz and others.

List of contents

Introduction: hearing fantasy; 1. The fantastique moderne; 2. Melancholy, monomania, and the monde fantastique; 3. Le retour à la vie: natural magic and the ideal orchestra; 4. Grammatical imaginaries; 5. Listening in hell; 6. Fairyology, entomology, and the Scherzo fantastique.

About the author

Francesca Brittan is Assistant Professor of Music at Case Western Reserve University, Ohio. Her work focuses on music of the long nineteenth century, and has been published in a range of scholarly journals including 19th-Century Music, the Journal of the American Musicological Society, and the Journal of Popular Music Studies. She was the 2012 winner of the American Musicological Society's Alfred Einstein Award.

Summary

This book explores the evolution of, and interactions between, fantasy and music in Romantic France, providing new contexts for the study of Berlioz and his contemporaries. The volume will appeal to readers beyond the musicological community, drawing together musical, literary, scientific, and visual materials, and applying theoretical and historical approaches.

Product details

• Authors: Francesca Brittan, Francesca (Case Western Reserve University Brittan
• Publisher: Cambridge Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.01.2020
• EAN: 9781316501818
• ISBN: 978-1-316-50181-8
• Dimensions: 168 mm x 245 mm x 19 mm
• Weight: 850 g
• Illustrations: 8 b/w illus. 1 table 40 music examples, Raster,schwarz-weiss, Tabellen, schwarz-weiss, Notenbeigaben
• Series: New Perspectives in Music Hist; New Perspectives in Music History and Criticism
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Music > Music history; France, European History, Individual composers & musicians, specific bands & groups, MUSIC / History & Criticism, c 1800 to c 1900, 19th century, c 1800 to c 1899, Theory of music & musicology, Romanticism, Literary theory, Musicians, singers, bands and groups, Composers and songwriters, Romantic Music (C 1830 To C 1900), Art music, orchestral and formal music, Theory of music and musicology