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Casual concertgoers would have been surprised if they could have peered over the shoulder of Alfred A. Knopf some years ago and seen a letter which had come to him from Critic Ernest Newman in London. Publisher Knopf had asked his favorite writer on music to do a book on Composer Hector Berlioz, the erratic red-haired Frenchman who shocked his igth Century contemporaries with what then seemed to be defiant and unaccountable music. Critic Newman agreed with his publisher that Berlioz' story was fascinating. But, he pointed out, Berlioz was unlike most musicians. He had been able to talk about his trade, to handle words in as lively and vigorous a fashion as he handled musical notes. Berlioz' own Memoirs, according to Critic Newman, had wit, humor, raciness that made the language of his biographers seem like cold tea after champagne. Better to brush up the translation of the Memoirs than do another biography. Publisher Knopf agreed and now comes a noteworthy book with omissions and distortions of the original carefully corrected.— The facts of Berlioz' early life go far toward making his accomplishments remarkable. His father was a smalltown doctor in the hilly South of France. Son Hector was allowed to toy with the flute, the flageolet, the guitar, but medicine was to be his profession. He had no sound musical grounding. Not until he was sent to Paris, set to dissecting corpses did he rebel and on his own account go after the rudiments of music which most musicians learn as children. For years Berlioz scraped along on next to no money. He had a few pupils to whom he taught singing, flute, guitar. He sang evenings in the chorus of a second-class theatre, ate his meals of dry bread and raisins at the base of Henri IV's statue—all so that he could study at the Conservatoire. Conservatoire students were supposed to bow down to the Academicians but in spite of his inexperience, Berlioz developed theories of his own. He wrote scores which called for an incredible number of players. He combined instruments in ways that had never been done before. He even endorsed the mongrel saxophone which the instrument-maker, Adolphe Sax, had introduced into the clarinet family. An Irish actress. Harriet Smithson, came to Paris and Berlioz was fairly beside himself. After staging a suicide in her presence he persuaded her to marry him but the romance ended there. Marie Recio, a mediocre singer, accompanied him on his tour through Europe. She often spoiled his music by insisting on singing it, kept him from being friends with Wagner. But abroad Berlioz was a lion. His countless quarrels were with Parisians and their frothy musical tastes; with Parisians because they rarely performed his music to his liking, or did not trouble to perform it at all. Berlioz blared out his indignations as he did much of his music. When a French editor undertook to improve on one of Beethoven's symphonies. Berlioz introduced a monolog into his Lelio cursing out all such desecrators: "They are like the vulgar birds that swarm in our public gardens and perch arrogantly on the most beautiful statues; and when they have fouled the forehead of Jupiter, the arm of Hercules, or the bosom of Venus, strut about with as much pride and satisfaction as if they had laid a golden egg." Composing never made a living for Berlioz and his double menage. For years he wrote magazine articles but he resented