Produced by David Newman, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net MUSICIANS OF TO-DAY BY ROMAIN ROLLAND AUTHOR OF "JEAN-CHRISTOPHE" TRANSLATED BY MARY BLAIKLOCK WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY CLAUDE LANDI [Illustration: Decorative] NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1915 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION BERLIOZ WAGNER: "Siegfried" "Tristan" CAMILLE SAINT-SAENS VINCENT D'INDY RICHARD STRAUSS HUGO WOLF DON LORENZO PEROSI FRENCH AND GERMAN MUSIC CLAUDE DEBUSSY: "Pelleas et Melisande" THE AWAKENING: A SKETCH OF THE MUSICAL MOVEMENT IN PARIS SINCE 1870 Paris and Music Musical Institutions before 1870 New Musical Institutions The Present Condition of French Music INTRODUCTION It is perhaps fitting that the series of volumes comprising _The Musician's Bookshelf_ should be inaugurated by the present collection of essays. To the majority of English readers the name of that strange and forceful personality, Romain Rolland, is known only through his magnificent, intimate record of an artist's life and aspirations, embracing ten volumes, _Jean-Christophe_. This is not the place in which to discuss that masterpiece. A few biographical facts concerning the author may not, however, be out of place here. Romain Rolland is forty-eight years old. He was born on January 29, 1866, at Clamecy (Nievre), France. He came very early under the influence of Tolstoy and Wagner and displayed a remarkable critical faculty. In 1895 (at the age of twenty-nine) we find him awarded the coveted Grand Prix of the Academie Francaise for his work _Histoire de l'Opera en Europe avant Lulli et Scarlatti_, and in the same year he sustained, before the faculty of the Sorbonne--where he now occupies the chair of musical criticism--a remarkable dissertation on _The Origin of_ _the Modern Lyrical Drama_--his thesis for the Doctorate. This, in reality, is a vehement protest against the indifference for the Art of Music which, up to that time, had always been displayed by the University. In 1903 he published a remarkable _Life of Beethoven_, followed by a _Life of Hugo Wolf_ in 1905. The present volume, together with its companion, _Musiciens d'Autrefois_, appeared in 1908. Both form remarkable essays and reveal a consummate and most intimate knowledge of the life and works of our great contemporaries. A just estimate of a composer's work is not to be arrived at without a study of his works and of the conditions under which these were produced. To take, for instance, the case of but one of the composers treated in this volume, Hector Berlioz. No composer has been so misunderstood, so vilified as he, simply because those who have written about him, either wilfully or through ignorance, have grossly misrepresented him.