Hector Berlioz, Les Grotesques de la musique (The Grotesques of Music). Undated (1871). 2nd Ed? Calmann-Lévy: Paris. Hardcover, Rebound with original spine and boards incorporated. Sextodecimo, 311 pp.
Hector Berlioz was among the most fervent, militant and radical Romanticist musicians, and one of the principal representatives of its avant-garde Frenetic subcurrent, through his wildly experimental, narratively-driven gothic pieces such as the Fantastic Symphony and Faust (based on the Bouzingo poet Nerval's translation of Goethe's text). He was also a gifted and lively writer, whose criticism and satire contributed substantially to the development not only of Romanticist musical theory but also to Romanticist satire. His prose-style – with its colourful but sardonic tone, jarring combination of informal flippancy with complex syntax, rare and archaic words, neologisms, mania for obscure, off-hand intellectual references, and an elliptical, disconnected discourse often marked off or disrupted by ironic subtitles, strings of punctuation, and interjections – connect his writing strongly to that of the Jeunes-France group and the Romanticist avant-garde generally. The word 'Grotesque' is a key term in French
Romanticist theory (particularly important to the avant-garde elements of the movement), denoting that in literature which is unique,
surprising, exceptional rather than typical, which flaunts convention
and accepted norms, combining humour, horror, idealism and cynicism.
This work in particular is explicitly inspired by the Jeunes-France co-founder Théophile Gautier's seminal 1834-35 work of avant-garde historiography, The Grotesques. (see the Historiography tab for this archive's later edition) In it, Gautier had sought out obscure or vilified writers and artists proscribed by the Classicist establishment, often out of print for nearly two centuries, and from them identified and brought together a subversive tradition upon which to build a subversive, pre-Romanticist arsenal of literary techniques. In this book, Berlioz extends Gautier's search for the grotesque into the realm of music, though in a less focused and more wide-ranging way that brings to light all kinds of obscure musical figures, practices, new instruments (including the saxophone and other, less durable innovations), and oddities both of the past and his own day. It is interspersed with scraps of libretti and popular songs and snippets of staff music.
This (probably second) edition includes a letter of protest from the professional singers of Paris, who are mercilessly skewered throughout the book, then Berlioz's drippingly sarcastic "apology". The copy was thoroughly read by an early reader (presumably its first), after which its binding subsequently damaged or decayed, and it was nicely rebound in the twentieth century with its original boards intact and much of the spine re-incorporated.
Though this work has not been translated (look for translations of some of the articles in future editions of Rêvenance, etc.), Jacques Barzun's translation of his somewhat similar, though less heterogeneous, Evenings With the Orchestra offers a look at Berlioz's fun, lively style.
This work in particular is explicitly inspired by the Jeunes-France co-founder Théophile Gautier's seminal 1834-35 work of avant-garde historiography, The Grotesques. (see the Historiography tab for this archive's later edition) In it, Gautier had sought out obscure or vilified writers and artists proscribed by the Classicist establishment, often out of print for nearly two centuries, and from them identified and brought together a subversive tradition upon which to build a subversive, pre-Romanticist arsenal of literary techniques. In this book, Berlioz extends Gautier's search for the grotesque into the realm of music, though in a less focused and more wide-ranging way that brings to light all kinds of obscure musical figures, practices, new instruments (including the saxophone and other, less durable innovations), and oddities both of the past and his own day. It is interspersed with scraps of libretti and popular songs and snippets of staff music.
This (probably second) edition includes a letter of protest from the professional singers of Paris, who are mercilessly skewered throughout the book, then Berlioz's drippingly sarcastic "apology". The copy was thoroughly read by an early reader (presumably its first), after which its binding subsequently damaged or decayed, and it was nicely rebound in the twentieth century with its original boards intact and much of the spine re-incorporated.
Though this work has not been translated (look for translations of some of the articles in future editions of Rêvenance, etc.), Jacques Barzun's translation of his somewhat similar, though less heterogeneous, Evenings With the Orchestra offers a look at Berlioz's fun, lively style.
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