New studies of the great French composer by Jacques Barzun, David Cairns, Joel-Marie Fauquet, Hugh Macdonald, Julian Rushton, and other prominent experts. These twelve essays bring new breadth and depth to our knowledge of the life and work of the composer of the Symphonie fantastique. A distinguished international array of scholars here treat such matters as Berlioz's "aesthetics" and what it means to write about the meaning of his music; the political implications of his fiction and the affinities of his projects as composer and as critic; what the Germans thought of his work before his travels in Germany and what the English made of him when he visited their capital city; what he seems to have written immediately after encountering Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (a surprise), and where he profited from Beethoven in what later became Romeo et Juliette. The volume closes with two reflective essays on Berlioz's literary masterpiece, the Memoires. Contributors: Lord Aberdare (Alastair Bruce), Jean-Pierre Bartoli, JacquesBarzun, Peter Bloom, David Cairns, Gunther Braam, Gerard Conde, Pepijn van Doesburg, Joel-Marie Fauquet, Frank Heidlberger, Hugh Macdonald, and Julian Rushton Peter Bloom (Smith College) is author of The Life of Berlioz (1998) and editor of The Cambridge Companion to Berlioz (2000).

This is the first complete translation into English of Berlioz's second collection of musical articles, originally published in 1859. The work is a uniquely Berliozian combination of light-hearted journalism and serious musical comment and analysis. Hector Berlioz's Les Grotesques de la musique is the only one of his books that has never been translated into English in its entirety. It is by far the funniest of all his works, and consists of a number of short anecdotes, witticisms, open letters, and comments on the absurdities of concert life. Alastair Bruce's fluid translation brings to life this important composer and bon vivant. He does a wonderful job of conveying all the puns, jokes, and invective of Berlioz's prose as well as the nuances of his stories. He even imitates a Tahitian accent in the translation, as Berlioz does in the original. The notes will give the reader insight into the innuendos and in-jokes that fill the pages. This translation will take its place among other translations of Berlioz's prose writings, bringing to the reader more lively examples of a still misunderstood composer caught up in the musical life of mid-nineteenth century Paris. Alastair Bruce is a London-based management consultant and former treasurer of the Berlioz Society. Hugh Macdonald is General Editor of New Berlioz Edition.

‘You would not think it to look at you, but your voice, when you use it: akin to a god’s. You must be careful what you do with it.’

Exiled Jacob Kitara takes in injured compatriots and nurses them in a boarded-up building. Social unrest has emptied the streets of London, movement into and out of the country has been suspended, and those who remain are in hiding.

When a young man makes his appearance, insisting that he is Jacob’s son – a man presumed dead, torn from Jacob’s life by war and guilt over the fate of the boy’s mother – Jacob is driven to anger.

But can this stranger offer Jacob a chance to reach back to a different continent, to the foot of Africa from where he has been banished, to atone for the past?

The Weight of Skin is a poignant tale of personal and political responsibility, and of the intricate narratives of family and nationality that bind us.

A tragic fall in the Karoo in which one of his brothers dies and the other loses all memory of the day changes the life of young John Hyde irrevocably. In London many years later, the reappearance of his remaining brother disrupts the delicate life John has built, and brings an unsettling recollection of the events that ripped their family apart. Pulled back to South Africa in spite of himself, John returns to the home he grew up in to face a past that haunts him. In language pulled so tightly it sings, Alastair Bruce’s Boy on the wire is an elegy to our fragile memory and the lives entangled in it.