Accessible translations for GCSE students. The translated extracts in Livy: Stories of Rome are linked by commentaries which continue the narrative and discuss points in the text needing explanation.

a He plays the piano well, ' wrote the society hostess Mme de Saint-Marceaux in her diary on 18 March 1927. a His compositions are not devoid of talent but he's not a genius, and I'm afraid he thinks he is.' Intelligent though the lady was, she got this one spectacularly wrong. Poulenc has in fact outpaced his colleagues in Les Six by many a mile, as singers and instrumentalists all over the world will attest, and while he would never have accepted the title of a genius', preferring a artisan', a genius is increasingly what he appears to have been. Part of the answer lay in always being...

Born in 1916, Henri Dutilleux is one of France's leading composers, enjoying an international reputation for his beautifully crafted works. This is the first translation into English of a series of interviews between Dutilleux and the French writer and journalist Claude Glayman which took place in 1996. Dutilleux discusses aspects of his life including his early training at the Paris Conservatoire, the German occupation of France and the time that he spent in the United States. The interviews reveal much about his music and his approach to composition, as well as the influences on his musical...

Awarded the legion d'Honneur by the French government in 2006 for his services to French culture, acclaimed writer and broadcaster Roger Nichols invites the reader to accompany him on his journey through the century-and-a-half turbulent and fertile period in the history of French music from Berlioz to Boulez. In compiling his collection of articles, interviews, radio plays and talks, Nichols begins with Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique and ends with his obituary of Pierre Boulez. Along the way, he includes in-depth studies of Debussy and Ravel, connecting the two by a comparison of their...