Publisher's Synopsis
André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry (1741-1813) was born in Liège, Belgium, to a poor violinist, and went on to become one of the most famous and successful composers in Europe, producing a long succession of comic operas for the Parisian stage. Late in life he turned his pen from musical composition to writing prose, producing a volume of Memoirs or Essays on Music in 1789. This was republished in 1797 with additional essays. In 1802 he published a new work, On Truth, or What We Were, What We are, What We Ought To Be, in three volumes. Approaching the end of his life, he was working assiduously on a third and even larger work of philosophy, the Reflections of a Solitary Man. Although he had announced its imminent publication, it was left in manuscript at his death, and was only published more than a century later, by Solvay and Closson (1919-1922). This edition of the Major Prose Works intends to make the writings of this major musical figure available to the reader in an English-language edition for the first time, providing a different view of a leading European cultural figure at the transition from the Classical to the Romantic age.
