The years between 1803 and 1832 are covered in this first of two volumes on the life of Hector Berlioz. The author is the Sunday Times music critic and translator of the composer's memoirs. As in the case of Mahler, the extravagance of Berlioz's unplayable music has delayed a true appreciation of his genius until our own times. The author places Berlioz in his age - brought up against the background of the Napoleonic Wars and quickly escaping the bourgeois philistinism (as he saw it) of his parents' home, he soon set out for the excitement of Paris. Once there, he was able to exercise his nature for grand passions. His stormy love affairs are stories of disguise, carriages driven through the night, the plotting of murder, disillusion, despair and reconciliation.