Romain Rolland

Musicians of To-Day Romain Rolland

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 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.