Eduard Hanslick and Ritter Berlioz in Prague
A Documentary Narrative

Geoffrey Payzant

ISBN 091981381X

$12.95 paper
June 1991

iv + 139 pages
18 b/w photos, biblio., index

About the Book

In 1846, Hector Berlioz, one of the most revolutionary of composers, gave six concerts in Prague, at that time one of the most musically conservative cities in Europe. Debate raged in the journals and coffeehouses over whether Berlioz's compositions could rightly be considered music at all. Eduard Hanslick, aged twenty and destined to become the most influential music critic of his day, was in the midst of the excitement in Prague over Berlioz. As Geoffrey Payzant's documentary narrative tells, Hanslick there and then abandoned his youthful romanticism and adopted the formalistic view of the nature of music that characterized his writings for the remainder of his long working life.

About the Authors

Geoffrey Payzant is a retired Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto; his main area of research is musical aesthetics. Among his publications are the first (and for ten years the only) monograph on Glenn Gould and a new English translation of Eduard Hanslick's On the Musically Beautiful.

Table of Contents

1. Preparations
2. King Lear Overture: Review by "Ed.d."
3. Arrival and First Impressions
4. Hanslick's Essay "Ritter Berlioz in Prague"
5. Commentary
6. Berliozstadt Prag
7. "O Praga! quando te aspiciam?"
8. Volte-face: Eduard Hanslick and Bernhard Gutt

   Appendix: German text of Eduard Hanslick's "Ritter Berlioz in Prag"

Orders

For information on how to order this book, please click here.