BERLIOZ: VOL I: THE MAKING OF AN ARTIST 1803-1832 AND VOL 2: SERVITUDE AND GREATNESS 1832-1869, BY DAVID CAIRNS (PENGUIN, £12.99 EACH)

It is a good many years now since Jacques Barzun's two-volume biography-study of Berlioz revolutionised the view of a composer still generally regarded as a talented eccentric entirely outside the mainstream of western music. Since then, Berlioz has become a classic both in the concert hall and the opera house, not to mention the countless recordings of his works which sell daily. David Cairns has a special insight into the composer as well as access to a great deal more relevant material than was available to previous generations. He traces the young medical student's fight with his Dauphinois family to take up music as a career; the hopeless infatuation with the actress Harriet Smithson whom, nevertheless, he later married; the tours through Germany and Russia that spread his fame abroad; the indifference of the Parisian public; and the semi-failure of The Trojans which, along with the death of his only son, finally broke Berlioz's will to live. It is hard to see this biography being supplanted for a very long time.