Berlioz: Servitude and Greatness (Vol. 2)

Summary

The concluding volume of a monumental two-part biography of Hector Berlioz, following the French Romantic composer from his hard-won fame through his final years of loss and exhaustion, while vividly recreating the turbulent nineteenth-century arts world in which he worked. Cairns combines deep musicological knowledge with elegant prose to argue that Berlioz was among the most original creative minds of the century, persistently undervalued by his own country. The biography, which took Cairns thirty years to complete, is widely regarded as the finest musical life written in English.