This collection sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities focuses on a crucial moment in the history of music and musical life in Paris the capital of the 19th century. The contributions in either English or French by twenty-two distinguished scholars from seven countries are preceded by Jacques Barzun's brilliant new essay on Paris of 1830. With finely detailed articles on the lyric theater instrumental chamber and salon music Berlioz Chopin Meyerbeer Verdi Liszt Wagner and more this volume is an essential reference tool for students and scholars and a compendium of knowledge for all those interested in 19th-century French culture and the romantic generation of 1830.

Peter Bloom: Peter Bloom is author of The Life of Berlioz (Cambridge, 1998) and editor of five collections of essays on Berlioz and his era of which the most recent is Berlioz: Scenes from the Life and Work (2008). He is editor of volumes 7 (Lélio ou Le Retour à la vie) and 24 (Grand Traité d’instrumentation et d’orchestration modernes) of the New Berlioz Edition and coeditor of Flammarion’s Dictionnaire Berlioz (2003). He is a member of the editorial boards of the Critique musicale d’Hector Berlioz and the Correspondance générale d’Hector Berlioz and, with colleagues in France, is preparing a new critical edition of Les Mémoires d’Hector Berlioz. Bloom is the Grace Jarcho Ross 1933 Professor of Humanities at Smith College, in Northampton, Massachusetts.