French Musical Life
Local Dynamics in the Century to World War II
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press Inc
Published:2nd Feb '22
Should be back in stock very soon
Explicitly or not, the historical musicology of post-Revolutionary France has focused on Paris as a proxy for the rest of the country. This distorting lens is the legacy of political and cultural struggle during the long nineteenth century, indicating a French Revolution unresolved both then and now. In light of the capital's power as the seat of a centralizing French state (which provincials found 'colonizing') and as a cosmopolitan musical crossroads of nineteenth-century Europe, the struggles inherent in creating sustainable musical cultures outside Paris, and in composing local and regionalist music, are ripe for analysis. Replacement of 'France' with Paris has encouraged normative history-writing articulated by the capital's opera and concert life. Regional practices have been ignored, disparaged or treated piecemeal. 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 mainland 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 communities, 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. Control over 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.
All France is not Paris. Katharine Ellis trains her keen researcher's eye on concerts, opera, conservatories, and other aspects of music-making in Lyon and other French centers during the years from Berlioz to Les Six. Compendious, exquisitely precise, written with total clarity—and instantly indispensable. * Ralph P. Locke, Emeritus Professor of Musicology, Eastman School of Music/University of Rochester, author of Musical Exoticism: Images and Reflections *
Katharine Ellis's latest book, French Musical Life: Local Dynamics in the Century to World War II, is a significant achievement. It is the first in-depth study of French music in relation to decentralization and cultural regionalism. The scale of the study, covering the complex musical dialogues between Paris and the regions and within the provinces themselves from the 1830s to the 1930s, will set a new standard for future scholarship within French cultural history. Beautifully written and argued with consummate subtlety and sophistication, Ellis brings to life musical institutions and music making from across France in ways that challenge and entice the reader. * Barbara L. Kelly, Director of Research and Professor of Musicology, Royal Northern College of Music *
The book offers a timely lesson in archive theory and provides a template for scholars interested in the power of local archives to undo previous under standings of music and politics. * Fanny Gribenski, New York University *
The book is big in the sense of importance, as local musical life in nineteenth- and twentieth-century France has thus far only been researched piecemeal. * Madeline Roycroft, Musicology Australia *
- Winner of Winner, Otto Kinkeldey Award for Outstanding Work of Musicological Scholarship, American Musicological Society.
ISBN: 9780197600160
Dimensions: 244mm x 170mm x 38mm
Weight: 726g
438 pages