4/6/2023 0 Comments Simon says in french![]() ![]() Unsurprisingly, a significant part of this collection is devoted to Nichols’s other writings on Ravel, on whom active scholarship and research are still under way, not least because of the publication in France in 2017 of a complete edition of his letters. Saint-Saëns, Fauré and Debussy, the last discussed in some detail in the book, are among the great names of the period, although the three composers represent only one aspect of the trajectory that music in France took in that era. All the grands fromages are here, starting with Berlioz, of whose Symphonie fantastique the author gives a lively account, raising the possibility that the composer was on opium when he wrote it.Īlthough Germany maintained its dominance of the classical canon throughout the 19th century, Berlioz led a remarkable procession of composers who, by the start of the 20th, had put France at the forefront of the art. One only has to read a few paragraphs to realise that his expertise is not limited to music: in addition to an exhaustive knowledge of the subject, he also has an instinctive understanding of its place in French life and in the wider context of classical music.įor years he has been a regular contributor to music magazines, learned journals and symposia: and his latest book, From Berlioz to Boulez (Kahn and Averill) is an invaluable collection of these writings, covering almost two centuries of French musical life. He has also published studies of Poulenc, Messiaen, Debussy and Saint-Saëns – and a wonderful book on music in Paris in the 1920s, The Harlequin Years. In happier times he was a regular broadcaster on the subject on Radio 3: his most celebrated work is a highly authoritative biography of Maurice Ravel, first published in 1977 and radically revised in 2010. ![]() Roger Nichols is probably this country’s leading authority on French music. ![]()
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