Book Description
One word only! No more talk of money. I hate money--the word and the thing itself. If I am not rich, I am yet rich enough to give to my friend, and it is my joy to give all I can for him. Would not you do the same? And if I needed it, would you not be the first to give me all your fortune? But that shall never be! I have sound fists and a sound head, and I shall always be able to earn the bread that I eat. Till Sunday!Download Description
One word only! No more talk of money. I hate money--the word and the thing itself. If I am not rich, I am yet rich enough to give to my friend, and it is my joy to give all I can for him. Would not you do the same? And if I needed it, would you not be the first to give me all your fortune? But that shall never be! I have sound fists and a sound head, and I shall always be able to earn the bread that I eat. Till Sunday! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A biography on a musical genius
I read this first when I was in college and was enraptured with the writing, which is more prose than anything else to describe it. Every chapter is entrenched with such beautiful writing that I can only recommend that you read it for yourself. It is the biography of a musical genius--but it's really about those among us who use creativity as the very breath we breathe. Enjoy!

Great book!
What a wonderful book!As a composer myself, it is amazing to read a novel with such insight into the mind of these strange people we call composers.The writing is also superb.I reccomend it to everyone, musicians or no.

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Customer Reviews (8)

that's what we can call LIFE
If you want to love life, read this book; if you want to hate life, read this book, too. It makes you a hero.

A book for life.
Just like many of the readers, I first read it about ten years ago and surely it has since remained the best book I've ever read in my life. As a keen lover of music, I have experienced, am experiencing and will experience how music of Beethoven's gives me bravery and strength during dark and weak period of life. This book, too, certainly is the counterpart that will be accompanying me for life, sublimating my soul and give me
power and strength.

"Those who know not of 'suffer' ought not talk about it"
Jean-Christophe is a very touching story that does indeed prove the saying above.Jean Christophe may be the idea of a rascal, evil and full of hatred to the rich, but he's just a desperate man in need of comfort, of peace, and most of all, of appreciation. It just-in it's persuasive way-forces you to look upon the dirty, 'unworthy' ones with a new light, with pity-not disgust. The language simply cools down the heart like a mountain-full of ice by the beauty of it. And it's hatred for the world behind the mask just burns your heart as it did with Christophe. Down with pretense! Down with politeness! All in all, the tragedy of this impatient man who found peace in death will either pierce your heart with enlightment or choke you with laughter. Be it a long lecture, a 1600+ pages of enlightment, a rebellion, this is not a master of the great arts you will soon forget.

5 stars 10 years ago
I read this book when I was in high school. All summer nights in 1994!! I even felt bad as I progressed through the pages as if the book was a bag of cookies. Ideal, spiritual, as pure as the sound of a wood wind instrument.

A decade later I revisited this book this summer. The protagonist were no more as inspirational as before. First of all this Jean Christophe person is such a super moral man that I don't see any reality in his character. It is hard to imagine that Beethoven was such a character.( Another book by the same author. See how I was intrigued then.) Maybe I'm wrong. People born before WW2 could have lived different lives than our own.

A book of my life
I read it translated in Korean about 12 years ago. Though i felt it was somewhat boring at that time, i couldn't put it down, so i persisted. And now i know the book has been serving all these years as a formative novel to me. I am afraid I don't remember the details, but surely i remember how absolutely it absorbed me and arrested me. I want to get a copy of it now and read it again, for now I am sure i will be fully enjoying it, even loving the memory of boredom it gave me when i was a novice and dull reader. So sad it is out of print. ... Read more

Book Description
Translated by Gilbert Cannan ... Read more

Book Description
ROMAIJV HOLLANDS ESSAYS ON MUSIC IOW fc. ROMAIN ROLLAWS ESSAYS ON MUSIC ALLEN, TOWNE HEATH, JVC. NEW YORK THE ESSAYS, The Place of Music in General History Lulty Gretry Gluck and Alceste, and Mozart According to His Let ters are from Some Musicians of Former Days Henry Holt ir Co., 1915 The Origins of Eighteenth-Century Classic Style, A Musi cal Tour to Eighteenth-Century Italy A Musical Tour to Eight eenth-Century Germany Telemann A Forgotten Master Metas tasioi The Forerunner of Gluck and the - first part of the essay on Handel, The Man from A Musical Tour Through the Land of the Past Henry Holt 6-Co., 1922 the second part of the essay on Han del, The Musician pom Handel Henry Holt 6-Co., 1916 Ber lioz Wagner A Note on Siegfried and Tristan, Hugo Wolf and Camille Saint-Saens from Musicians of Today Henry Holt Co., 1915 Portrait of Beethoven in his Thirtieth Year from Beethoven the Creator Harper 6-Eros., 1929. Table of Contents Publisher s Note 1. The Place of Music in General History S 2. Lully 19 The Man The Musician The Grandeur and Popularity of Lully s Art 3. The Origins of Eighteenth-Century Classic Style 50 4. A Musical Tour to Eighteenth-Century Italy 69 5. A Musical Tour to Eighteenth-Century Germany 95 6. Telemann A Forgotten Master 121 7. Gretry 145 8. Metastasio The Forerunner of Gluck 166 9. Gluck and Alceste 179 10. Handel 213 The Man The Musician 11. Mozart According to His Letters 245 12. Portrait of Beethoven in his Thirtieth Year 262 13. Berlioz 284 14. Wagner 320 A Note on Siegfried and Tristan 15. Hugo Wolf 341 16. Camille Saint-Saens 362 Publishers Note THIS VOLUME is a distillation of five different books on music by Romain Rolland, all of them now out of print and three of them out of circulation for about three decades. It embraces some of the finest writing on music by Holland and y perhaps as an inevitable corollary , it represents some of the best musical writing of our generation. Few writers on music anywhere and in any period brought to their task Hollands seemingly inexhaustible reservoir of culture, Ms im mense musical scholarship., his sensitive understanding of the psychology of genius, his enviable, possibly unique, gift for making past epochs and musical personalities long dead live palpitantly and vividly for us. That such treasurable writing on music should be out of the reach of the average music lover that, indeed, so many music lovers of our day should be un aware of its very existence seemed an insufferable situation crying for remedy. The preparation of this volume for publication brought back to mind the all-too-few occasions upon which I had the oppor tunity to meet and speak to Rolland. The first time was in 1932. Though he was sixty-six years old and in poor health, he seemed to have retained a healthy balance and an almost youthful tolerance. His musical tastes were still expansive. If he had violent prejudices of any kind, he did not reveal them. It seemed that he preferred to speak only of his enthusiasms and his enthusiasms for music were still many and varied. He stitt had an extraordinary attachment for the music of the seven teenth and eighteenth centuries, about which he had written so many brilliant essays. Jet his passion for the very old did ix x Romain Rolands Essays on Music not obfuscate his enthusiasm for the very new. If he was now too tired and too sick to hear new scores or to study them, he had certainly lost none of his curiosity about them. At the time I first met him he was preoccupied with the subject of Beethoven, about whom he had completed two vol umes of what he hoped would be a definitive study. It was his lifes ambition to see this monument to Beethoven completed, and he jealously conserved his time and energy for that task. In his old age he found solace and comfort and happiness in the company of Beethovens music... ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An Antiwar Pamphlet
It is a valuable piece of writing, because there are only a few stories that came from Romain Rolland's pen. In other words, besides his voluminous novels "Jean-Christophe" and "The Enchanted Soul/L'Ame Enchantee", he wrote very little fiction; everything else is a writing of a different kind.

The love of two teenagers against the background of a war touches upon many things. It shows how a pure feeling can blossom during hard times; how values can be reconsidered (referring to the male character telling his brother that when he gets drafted, he will not kill and him being indifferent to the arguing of his four friends); how even the young ones unconsciously realize that when the war is on, their happiness will not be long-lived; how under those circumstances the piety finds its dwelling in the lovers' soul (referring to the two main characters' decision to go to church in that fateful day) and how even little children are affected (referring to the little girl that the two lovers met on their way to the church and inside it).

Historically, this story was written in response to the actual event. It was in 1918, while World War I was taking place, when one of the Paris churches was hit by a German aircraft bomb.
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