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.
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