In 1969, the hundredth anniversary of Hector Berlioz’s death, the Association nationale Hector Berlioz began sponsoring a critical edition of the composer’s writings. The first part of the project finished in 2003 with the publication of the eighth volume of Berlioz’s letters, edited by the late Pierre Citron (a ninth appeared in 2016 after his death). Citron also edited and annotated Berlioz’s Mémoires, surely one of the most amusing autobiographies ever written. Also from the late 1960s, Les Soirées de l’orchestre, Les Grotesques de la musique, and the punning À travers chants, books containing Berlioz’s adaptations of his music criticism, made their way into print. The critique musicale, however, was an even bigger task. Six volumes under the Buchet/Chastel imprint appeared at intervals between 1996 and 2009, when publication of the remaining volumes was assumed by the Société Française de musicologie. The tenth, and probably final, volume of the set was published in late 2020 and, like its predecessors, makes for wonderful reading.1

Essentially a thirty-eight-year musical diary, Berlioz’s critique musicale runs from 1824, when he wrote as a bomb-throwing music student, to 1863, when, ill and tired, he laid down his pen. Its six thousand–odd pages describe Paris (with side trips to Italy, Germany, Russia, and England) seething with music, particularly at the Opéra, the Opéra Comique, and the Théâtre Italien. Berlioz’s feuilletonsfor Parisian papers and journals also included reviews of recitals and orchestral concerts, technical analysis, anecdotes, artists’ profiles,