Musicians of To-day collects the essays of Romain Rolland, the French writer and music critic who would later win the Nobel Prize in Literature. The book offers penetrating studies of composers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including Berlioz, Wagner, Saint-Saëns, Debussy, and Richard Strauss.
Rolland writes with deep musical understanding and a humane breadth of culture, placing each figure within the artistic and spiritual currents of the age. His essays are as much reflections on the meaning of music as portraits of individual artists. Translated from the French, the book stands among the finest critical writing of its period and remains a stimulating guide to modern music’s formative years.