French Music Since Berlioz

Richard Langham Smith, The Open University, UK and Caroline Potter, Kingston University, UK Deirdre Donnellon, Tom Cooper, Tim Jones, James Ross, Richard Langham Smith, Nigel Simeone, Roy Howat, Robert Orledge, Deborah Mawer, Caroline Potter, Peter O'Hagan.

• Contents: Preface; French music since Berlioz: issues and debates, Déirdre Donnellon; 19th-century spectacle, Tom Cooper; 19th-century orchestral and chamber music, Timothy Jones; Music in the French salon, James Ross; French operatic spectacle in the 20th century, Richard Langham Smith; Church and organ music, Nigel Simeone; Modernization: from Chabrier and Fauré to Debussy and Ravel, Roy Howat; Satie & Les Six, Robert Orledge; 'Dancing on the edge of the volcano': French music in the 1930s, Deborah Mawer; French music and the Second World War, Caroline Potter; Pierre Boulez and the foundation of IRCAM, Peter O'Hagan; French musical style and the post-war generation, Caroline Potter; Index.

'The editors, Richard Langham Smith and Caroline Potter, have succeeded in covering the extraordinary richness and diversity of over a hundred years of French music. This period includes every type of music from Offenbach to Boulez, but all eleven contributors have a special sympathy for their particular allotments, so that justice is done to many figures who have been overlooked in our hasty consumption of the major masters. Debussy is not singled out as a solitary pioneer but placed fairly and squarely with Fauré, Chabrier and Ravel as part of a bold exploratory movement in a superb essay by Roy Howat, who writes in detail of the music without ever losing his head or the reader's attention. The 1930s, normally assumed to be barren, are brought to life by Deborah Mawer, and important recent composers, such as Dutilleux and Ohana, are sympathetically treated by Caroline Potter. James Ross's fascinating survey of the salon traces some vitally important and little explored threads in the fabric of French music. The intellectual curiosity of French audiences and critics and the extreme variety of the works they happily venerate or abhor makes French music an unusually rewarding topic for non-French writers; this team of Francophiles has uncovered many of the secrets of a brilliant repertoire without falling into the trap of imagining that there is a single characteristic that makes French music French.' Hugh Macdonald, Avis Blewett Professor of Music, Washington University, St Louis, USA 'French art music has its monstres sacrés, to be sure, but its full range and richness remain too little known and appreciated in the English-speaking world. This excellent volume is therefore most welcome. In it, an impressive team of British specialists, led by Richard Langham Smith and Caroline Potter, provides expert guidance to a vast and rewarding repertory ranging from Berlioz to Boulez and including music for the concert hall, stage, salon, and church. Not a history per se