French musical life : local dynamics in the century to World War II /

Submitted by Joseph Hafner on 5 January, 2023 - 23:18

Publication Type:

Book

Authors:

Ellis, Katharine,

Source:

Oxford University Press,, New York, NY, United States, p.xv, 417 pages, 4 unnumbered pages of plates : (2022)

Call Number:

ML270

Keywords:

(OCoLC)fst01030269, (OCoLC)fst01030347, (OCoLC)fst01030414, (OCoLC)fst01093233, 19e siècle, 19e siècle., 19th century, 19th century., 20e siècle, 20e siècle., 20th century, 20th century., Aspect politique, Étude et enseignement, fast, France, Histoire et critique., History and criticism., Instruction and study, Instruction and study., Music, Music., Musique, Political aspects, Political aspects., Regionalism in music., Régionalisme dans la musique.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 371-400) and index.Part I : Education. The National Conservatoire System ; Educational independence -- Part II : Concert rites. Choral voices ; Instrumental music and urban gravitas -- Part III : Stage musics. Opera against the odds ; Operatic competition ; Opera inside and out -- Part IV : Folk, region, nation. Folk musics ; Composition."This book is a study of French musical centralization and its discontents during the period leading up to and beyond the "provincial awakening" of the Belle Époque. The book explains how different kinds of artistic decentralization and regionalism were hard won (or not) across a politically turbulent century from the 1830s to World War II. In doing so it redraws the historical map of musical power relations in France. Based on work in over 70 archives, chapters on conservatoires, concert life, stage music, folk music and composition reveal how tensions of State and locality played out differently depending on the structures and funding mechanisms in place, the musical priorities of different town councils, and the presence or absence of galvanizing musicians. Progressively, the book shifts from musical contexts to musical content, exploring the pressure point of folk music and its translation into "local color" for officials who perpetually feared national division. Controlling composition on the one hand, and the emotional intensity of folk-based musical experience on the other, emerges as a matter of consistent official praxis. In terms of "French music" and its compositional styles, what results is a surprising new historiography of French neoclassicism, bound into and growing out of a study of diversity and its limits in daily musical life"--