New Releases by David Cairns

Berlioz, Volume I, previously published only in Britain, is now available to American readers in a revised edition, together with the eagerly awaited, new Volume II. These two volumes together comprise a monumental biographical achievement, sure to stand as the definitive Berlioz biography.

A l'un des plus grands compositeurs français, il fallait consacrer un monument. C'est chose faite avec cet ouvrage en deux tomes, où David Cairns allie la flamme de l'enthousiaste et la minutie du chercheur. Le premier volume, " La formation d'un artiste ", traite des premières années : l'enfance en Dauphiné, la vocation qui éclôt, les rapports familiaux difficiles, terreau d'un manque de reconnaissance où s'enracinent les frustrations futures. À Paris, ensuite, le musicien, qui prend de l'envergure, rencontre bien des traverses, tant dans son affirmation artistique (l'incompréhension des milieux officiels contraint Berlioz à plusieurs tentatives avant d'obtenir le prix de Rome) que dans ses amours (la comédienne anglaise Harriet Smithson, objet d'une adulation torturante, ne répond que par des rebuffades à ses démonstrations). Les tourments qui agitent cette âme tumultueuse se situent dans le Paris de la Restauration, creuset des arts et des lettres où se côtoient les principaux acteurs du mouvement romantique, avec qui Berlioz noue des amitiés consolantes. Malgré toutes les entraves, une œuvre capitale voit le jour, emblème romantique au même titre que l'Hernani de Victor Hugo : la Symphonie fantastique, véritable coup de tonnerre qui révèle des potentialités orchestrales inconnues. Ce premier tome se clôt sur le concert du 9 décembre 1832 au Conservatoire, jour mémorable où Berlioz, de retour de Rome, est accueilli avec ferveur à Paris et où son amour pour Harriet se voit enfin couronné de succès.

Berlioz was one of the towering figures of Romanticism: not only was he a great and revolutionary composer, but also the finest conductor of his day and an outstanding critic and writer. Yet throughout his life he struggled for money and his music was persistently reviled in his native France. With exceptional insight and sympathy, David Cairns draws together the major strands of Berlioz''s life: his tempestuous marriage to the actress Harriet Smithson; the genesis of his famous works, including the Requiem, Romeo and Juliet and his crowning masterpiece The Trojans; his friendship with Mendelssohn, Liszt, Princess Wittgenstein and Wagner; and, finally, his last years haunted once again by personal tragedy. Here, as never before, is Berlioz the artist - and the man.

The biography of Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) describes with unprecedented intimacy, affection, and respect the life of one of France''s greatest artists. Vol 1: 30 photos. Vol. 2: 50 photos.

"Writing Ireland is a provocative and wide-ranging examination of culture, literature and identity in nine-teenth- and twentieth-century Ireland. Moving beyond the reductionist reading of the historical moment as a backdrop to cultural production, the authors deploy contemporary theories of discourse and the constitution of the colonial subject to illuminate key texts in the cultural struggle between the colonizer and the colonized. The book opens with a consideration of the originary moment of the colonial relationsip of England and Ireland through re-reading of works by Shakespeare and Spenser. Cairns and Richards move then to the constitution of the modern discourse of Celticism in the nineteenth century. A fundamental re-reading of the period of the Literary Revival through the works of Yeats, Synge, Joyce and O''Casey locates them in a social moment illuminated by detailed considerations of poems, playwrights and polemicists such as D. P. Moran, Arthur Griffith, Patrick Pearse and Thomas MacDonagh. Writing Ireland examines the psychic, sexual and social costs of the decolonisation struggle in the society and culture of the Irish Free State and its successor. Beckett, Kavanagh and O''Faolain registered the enervation and paralysis consequent upon sustaining a repressive view of Irish identity. The book concludes in the contemporary moment, as Ireland''s post-colonial culture enters crisis and writers like Seamus Heaney, Brian Friel, Tom Murphy and Seamus Deane grapple with the notion of alternative identities. Writing Ireland provides students of literature, history, cultural studies and Irish studies with a lucid analysis of Ireland''s colonial and post-colonial situation on which an innovative methodology transcends disciplinary divisions."--