Berlioz and Debussy: Sources Contexts and Legacies

This collection of essays by scholars of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French music has been assembled in homage to the influential and inspirational French musicologist François Lesure who died in 2001. Lesure's immense erudition was legendary and spanned music from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. Two French composers who were particular foci in his scholarship were Berlioz and Debussy and this collection is based on scholarship around these two composers and the sources, contexts and legacies relating to their work. Contents: Preface: In honour of François Lesure, Jeanice Brooks; Introduction: Barbara Kelly and Kerry Murphy. Part 1 Berlioz and his Time: Berlioz, Dalayrac and Song, David Charlton; Mozartian undercurrents in Berlioz; appreciation, resistance and unconscious appropriation, Benjamin Perl; 'Oratorium eines Zukunftsmusiker?' The pre-history of L'enfance du Christ, Julian Rushton; A new source for Berlioz's Les Troyens, Hugh Macdonald; Berlioz and the piano at the Great Exhibition; the challenge of impartiality, Kerry Murphy. Part 2 Debussy and His Contemporaries: Taming 2 Spanish women: reflections on editing opera, Richard Langham Smith; Grieg, the société nationale, and the origins of Debussy's string quartet, Mike Strasser; Symbolism as compositional agent in Act IV Scene 4 of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, Marie Rolf; A sociology of the Apaches: 'Sacred Battalion' for 'Pelléas' Jann Pasler; Ravel after Debussy: inheritance, influences and style, Barbara L. Kelly; Afterword: The Origins of the Å’uvres complètes de Claude Debussy, Roy Howat, Bibliography; Index.