Program Eight • Literary Romanticisms by Berlioz, Mendelssohn, F., Mendelssohn, Schumann, Noiztik (2024/2024), Fisher Center at Bard, Annandale-on-Hudson, United States

Among his peers, Berlioz was by no means the only eminent writer on music. Robert Schumann, whom he befriended in Germany, was a similarly influential critic with a comparably vibrant literary style; Ferdinand Hiller, Berlioz’s close friend for 40 years, corresponded with all the leading musicians of Europe; American pianist-composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk was another early memoirist; and Fanny Mendelssohn, as her correspondence reveals, was an astute commentator on musical life in Berlin. Felix Mendelssohn, with whom Berlioz made friends in Italy, was a true man of letters who met and impressed Goethe as a child, became a skilled amateur poet, and wrote some 8,000 letters in German, French, and English.