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 (Nièvre), 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 Académie Française for his work _Histoire de
l'Opéra 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