[en] In the past, development work to increase the energy and intensity of particle accelerators tended to be pursued in separate directions, but now almost all modern applications have to achieve an intensity as high as possible at the desired energy, along with a very good beam quality in terms of the beam confinement, aiming, or focusing. The figure of merit used is the beam brightness, defined as the beam power (or current when the energy is fixed) divided by the phase space appropriate to the problem at hand. Phase space for the beam as a whole is six-dimensional, describing the physical size of the beam and change in size with time or distance; the area projected on one plane is called emittance. Achieving high intensity and good quality simultaneously is difficult, primarily because of nonlinear space- charge and focusing forces at nonrelativistic velocities and because of beam-breakup effects for relativistic beams. In recent years, substantial progress has been made in understanding the physics of these effects; some aspects are reviewed here and related to their impact on practical design aspects. 7 refs