Contents of this page:

Introduction
Contributors
List of contributions

Copyright notice: The texts and other materials published on this and the related pages are the intellectual property of the respective contributors and are subject to UK and International Copyright Laws. All rights of reproduction are reserved.

Introduction

    This section has been created to mark the bicentenary of Berlioz’s birth in 2003. Berlioz was born in La Côte Saint-André in the Department of Isère, France, at 5.00pm (4.00pm GMT) on 11 December 1803.

    The section was edited by Monir Tayeb and presents invited contributions by musicologists, musicians and writers on Berlioz. The texts, where appropriate and in consultation with the respective authors, are illustrated with our original photos of Berlioz-related locations (Paris, London, La Côte) and our own 19th century engravings and documents.

    Our friend Leo Wong kindly accepted our invitation to design a count-down calendar, the image of which is located on the top-left of this page. The calendar went on counting the weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds remaining from 1 January 2003 to 5.00pm, French time, on 11 December 2003; it then displayed the message which may be seen above [Louis Hector Berlioz was born!].

    The section consists of two parts. Part I originally began with a set of five mandalas created at our invitation by Leo Wong in 2001 as a homage to Berlioz on the occasion of his imminent bicentenary. These mandalas were subsequently removed, as they were no longer compatible with the current software. They were followed by two articles by Berlioz himself, which have remained on the site: the very first music critique that he wrote at the age of 20, in the form of a letter to the journal Le Corsaire, and the second piece, entitled Euphonia, first published in the Revue et gazette musicale in 1844, then incorporated in Les Soirées de l’orchestre (25th evening), which was first published in 1852. These two pieces are then followed by Part II, which consists of the invited articles, listed below in alphabetical order of authors; they cover a wide range of issues related to Berlioz’s life and his professional development and career, from his initial encounters with music in his native La Côte Saint-André and his early sources of artistic inspiration, to his cultural and musical internationalist outlook, his literary works, his travels, and his legacy. — Please note that the list of Contributors below was originally written in 2003 and may be out of date in some respects.

Acknowledgement

    We would like to express our deep gratitude to our invited contributors for their generous and valuable contributions to this special bicentenary section.

Contributors

Michel Austin is Honorary Senior Lecturer in Ancient History in the School of Greek, Latin and Ancient History, University of St Andrews. His research and publications have been in the field of ancient Greek history, particularly in the Hellenistic period, and include The Hellenistic World from Alexander to the Roman Conquest (CUP 1981; a new and enlarged edition was published in 2006).

Norman A Bailey is chairman of Global Resources & Solutions LLC and a Professor at the Institute of World Politics. He is the former Senior Director of International Economic Affairs, National Security Council, 1981-1983 (Ronald Reagan administration); former Professor, City University of New York; and former President of Bailey, Tondu, Warwick & Co., Ltd. (an investment banking firm). Dr. Bailey has published several books and many articles including, Latin America in World Politics, Operational Conflict Analysis and The Strategic Plan That Won The Cold War.

Diana Bickley completed her Ph. D. thesis on the concert overtures of Hector Berlioz and she is editor of volume 20 of the New Berlioz Edition (also the concert overtures). Her wide-ranging interest in music includes accompanying, performing piano duet in concerts, conducting a local choir and giving talks on Berlioz. Currently she is Head of Music of New College of Further Education in Swindon, Wilts, England, United Kingdom. She would be happy to hear from anyone who would like more information or from any organisation who might like her to talk to them about Berlioz.

Alastair Bruce (Lord Aberdare) is a London-based management consultant specialising in corporate social responsibility and reputation. He discovered the music of Berlioz while studying for his Literae Humaniores (Classical Studies) degree at Oxford University in the early 1960s, and has been a passionate admirer of the composer ever since. His taste for translation was developed over many years of practice with Latin and Greek; other languages which he reads better than he speaks include French and Welsh. He has translated Berlioz’s Grotesques de la musique under the title of The Musical Madhouse. He was Treasurer of the Berlioz Society from 1977 to 1985 and is currently its Chairman, and has contributed numerous reviews and other articles to the Society’s Bulletin over the years. It is no coincidence that his son is named Hector.

Elena Dolenko is currently affiliated to the Universität der Künste zu Berlin, where she is working on her book Arnold Schönbergs ‘Harmonielehre’. Eine vergleichende Studie der 1. und 3. Auflage. Before going to Berlin she was a teaching assistant at the Department of Music Theory of the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory.

    Her primary fields of research are the musical and pedagogical œuvre of Arnold Schoenberg and the historical background of guest performances of European musicians in Russia in the mid-19th century (Berlioz, Liszt and Schumann).

    She completed her dissertation on Schoenberg: The Early Years and received her PhD in May 2003, and her Russian translation of Schoenberg’s Models for Beginners in Composition was released in September 2003 by the Moscow publishing house Classica-XXI.  

    Dr Dolenko has published her Russian translation of Schoenberg’s Fundamentals of Musical Composition, with an introduction and explanatory notes (Moscow: Prest, 2000). She has co-edited (with Prof. Evgenia Chigareva) a collection of articles, entitled Arnold Schoenberg: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow (Moscow: Moscow Conservatory Press, 2002). From October 2000 to June 2001 she studied Schoenberg’s manuscripts in the archives at the Arnold Schoenberg Center in Vienna under a scholarship she received from BMBWK (Bundesministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft und Kultur, Austria, Vienna). Her most recent article entitled “Auf der Suche nach Reprise” appeared in Kunstpunkt (# 24, 2002) and is dedicated to the life and work of Philip Herschkowitz, probably the most talented of Anton Webern’s students.

David Cairns is one of the leading champions of Berlioz in our time. His authoritative two-volume biography of Berlioz, Berlioz: The Making of an Artist (London, 1989; rev. 1999; paperback 2000) and Berlioz: Servitude and Greatness (London, 1999, paperback 2000) has won the prestigious Whitbread (biography category) and Samuel Johnson (non-fiction) prizes. Both volumes have been translated into French [Tome 1, Berlioz. La Formation d’un artiste(Paris, Fayard, 2002) and Tome 2, Servitude et Grandeur (Paris, Fayard, 2002)]. David Cairns’ other Berlioz publications include his seminal English translation of The Memoirs of Hector Berlioz (1969; new edition 2002) and contributions to many books and academic journals.

    David Cairns is a member of the Comité International Hector Berlioz, the New Berlioz Edition Trust and the Editorial Board of the NBE.

Linda Edmondson is Research Fellow at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham. She is the author of Feminism in Russia, 1900-1917 (1984) and editor of four anthologies on aspects of modern Russian history. She has recently edited Gender in Russian History and Culture (2001). Her research has focused on civil rights in pre-revolutionary Russia, women’s emancipation, theories of sexual difference and issues of gender and citizenship in Russian history. Her current research is a comparative study of myths of nationhood in Russia and Europe.

Guillermo Figueroa was named Music Director of the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra in 2000, after serving as that orchestra’s Principal Guest Conductor for several seasons. In 2001 he was also named Music Director of the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra, becoming the first Puerto Rican-born conductor to lead an important orchestra in the United States.

    He began violin studies with his father Guillermo, and later with his uncle José at the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico, where he also worked with Pablo Casals. He attended the Juilliard School where his teachers were Oscar Shumsky and Felix Galimir. His conducting studies were with Harold Farberman in New York. In 1994 he made his Lincoln Center conducting début with the New York City Ballet. In his dual role as soloist and conductor he has appeared with the Kansas City Symphony, the Colorado Symphony and the Iceland Symphony. He has been guest conductor of the New Jersey Symphony, the Memphis Symphony, the El Salvador Symphony, the Orquesta del Teatro Municipal de Rio de Janeiro, and with Ballet Memphis and Ballets de San Juan. This season marks his début with the Phoenix Symphony.

    For ten years he was Concertmaster of the New York City Ballet, appearing in over a hundred performances of the violin concerti by Stravinsky, Berg, Prokofiev, Brahms, Barber, Adams and Glass. Figueroa is a Founding Member of the world-renowned conductor-less Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2003. With this group he has been concertmaster and soloist in acclaimed performances through the US, Europe and Asia. Orpheus made over fifty recordings for Deutsche Grammophon, many led by Figueroa. Figueroa has recorded the three violin sonatas by Béla Bartók on the Eroica Classical Recordings label, and an album of virtuoso violin music by Wieniawsky, Sarasate and others, with pianist Ivonne Figueroa.

    With a special affinity for the music of Hector Berlioz, Figueroa created, with the New Mexico Symphony, the most comprehensive Berlioz Festival in the US, to commemorate, in 2003, the 200th anniversary of the birth of the composer. Concerts and lectures with international soloists and renowned Berlioz scholars, staged plays, exhibits and interactive events, all recreated the life and work of that extraordinary composer. Many of these concerts were repeated with the Puerto Rico Symphony in San Juan in the course of 2003. Guillermo Figueroa, his wife Valerie Turner and their three children, live in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Richard Macnutt is a retired antiquarian bookseller, a collector and independent scholar. He is a member of the Comité International Hector Berlioz, the New Berlioz Edition Trust and the Editorial Board of the NBE. Among his publications are the second edition of Cecil Hopkinson’s A Bibliography of the Musical and Literary Works of Hector Berlioz 1803-1869, published in 1980, and with John Warrack he is editor of volume 26 of the NBE, Berlioz Portraits, by Gunther Braam. His Berlioz collection is now at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. He is at present working on a descriptive bibliography of Mendelssohn’s printed works.

Melinda O’Neal is Professor of Music at Dartmouth College and conductor/music director of the Handel Society, Dartmouth’s student and community oratorio society. She holds D.Mus. and M.M. degrees in choral-orchestral conducting from the Indiana University School of Music (Bloomington). She received the Julius Herford Award from the American Choral Directors Association for her doctoral paper on Berlioz’s L’enfance du Christ and an Individual Artist Fellowship from the NH State Council on the Arts.

    She studied conducting and score preparation with Julius Herford, Robert Shaw, Helmuth Rilling, Maurice Couraud, John Nelson, Fiora Contino, Thomas Dunn, Jan Harrington and Joseph Flummerfelt. Her articles appear in the Choral Journal, Journal of the Conductors Guild, and Becoming the Complete Conductor published by E.C.S. Publishing. Her continuing research and performance interests include the relationship of text and music, historical performance practices, and the music of Hector Berlioz.

    Professor O’Neal has conducted in performance many orchestras and vocal ensembles as principal and guest conductor in various parts of the United States. Her vast repertoire ranges from John Adams’ Harmonium, Haydn’s Harmoniemesse and Verdi’s Requiem to Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, Berlioz’s Roméo et Juliette and numerous vocal chamber works from the late Renaissance to the present.

Julian Rushton was West Riding Professor of Music at the University of Leeds from 1982-2002. He formerly taught at the University of East Anglia and the University of Cambridge. He is the author of The Musical Language of Berlioz, Classical Music: A Concise History; Cambridge Opera Handbooks on Mozart (Don Giovanni and Idomeneo) and Cambridge Music handbooks on Berlioz: Roméo et Juliette, and Elgar: Enigma Variations. His The Music of Berlioz was published by Oxford University Press in 2001. He has edited four volumes of the New Berlioz Edition including La Damnation de Faust, and for Musica Britannica, Cipriani Potter: Symphony in G minor (2001). He has edited The Cambridge Berlioz Encyclopaedia (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017). He has written several articles and chapters on Gluck, Haydn, Mozart, Berlioz, and Elgar, and contributed to The New Grove, The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, and other works of reference. He was President of the Royal Musical Association, 1994-9, and is Chairman of the Editorial Committee of Musica Britannica and a trustee of the Elgar Society Edition.

Pierre-René Serna, a distinguished music critic, has co-edited [with Christian Wasselin] Berlioz (L’Herne, Paris, 2003) and is the author of Berlioz de B à Z (Éditions Van de Velde, 2006).

Monir Tayeb (1946-2021) conducted a number of research projects in cross-cultural studies of leadership and management. She edited and wrote several books and articles in academic journals and contributed to a large number of edited books and academic conferences. She was Honorary Reader at Heriot-Watt University and acted as an external examiner for doctoral theses and MBA courses for a number of British universities.

Christian Wasselin has been a contributor to Opéra international since 1982 and is general editor of Fantastique, the online journal of concerts by Radio France. He divides his activities between musicography and fiction. He is the editor of Lettres à la Princesse (L’Herne, 2003) and author of Berlioz, les deux ailes de l’âme (Gallimard), Hector Berlioz (book with CD) (Gallimard, translated into English), Berlioz ou le Voyage d’Orphée (Édition du Rocher, 2003), numerous articles, fictional works for radio (la Ville inoubliée, France Culture), le Caravansérail (Callipyge) and the novel Rue du bois de la lune (Aléas, 2001). He is co-editor [with Pierre-René Serna] of Berlioz (L’Herne, Paris, 2003), and wrote the libretto for the opera by Gérard Condé les Orages désirés (which introduces on stage the young Berlioz and was first performed at Maison de Radio France on 22 November 2003).

Michael Wright is a retired librarian, and former editor of the Berlioz Society Bulletin. As well as contributing articles and reviews to the Bulletin, he produced in 1987 A Berlioz Bibliography: Critical writings on Hector Berlioz from 1825 to 1986 (St. Michael’s Abbey Press, 400p.), a section of which devoted to Berlioz’s centenary in 1903 is on this site. See also on this site his article Berlioz and Anglo-American Criticism. Among his other publications is a long poem on Berlioz: Mosaic of the air (University of Salzburg Press, 1997).

List of Contributions

PART I

Polémique musicale, by Hector Berlioz (in the original French)
Musical polemic, (English translation by Michel Austin)

Euphonia, by Hector Berlioz (in the original French)
Euphonia, (English translation by Michel Austin)

PART II

See also on this site:

Original contributions and other articles (English version)
Contributions originales et autres articles (French version)

The Hector Berlioz Website was created by Monir Tayeb and Michel Austin on 18 July 1997;
Berlioz Bicentenary Special created on 1 January 2003; substantial additions made since. Last revised on 1 May 2023.

© Monir Tayeb, Michel Austin and contributors to Berlioz Bicentenary Special pages.

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