Rolland, Romain (1866–1944)

French musicologist and author. He also contributed essays on music to various periodicals and wrote plays and other literary works. His works include books on Handel and Beethoven, on early opera, Musiciens d'autrefois, Musiciens d'aujourd'hui, Voyage musical au pays du passé, and the ten-volume novel Jean-Christophe (1904–12), with a musician as hero. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915.

He had a first-rate general education and devoted himself to music and other artistic studies. In 1901 he became president of the music section of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Sociales, Paris, and lectured on music first at the Ecole Normale Supérieure and from 1903 at the Sorbonne, Paris. From 1913 he lived in Switzerland, having retired owing to bad health. He returned to France in 1938 in order not to evade the war, was interned in a concentration camp by the Germans, and was released only when he was mortally ill.