French Musical LifePub Date : 2021-10-28DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197600160.003.0005
K. Ellis
{"title":"Instrumental Music and Urban Gravitas","authors":"K. Ellis","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197600160.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197600160.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"Bands, chamber ensembles, and (especially) orchestral societies acted as indicators of the musical maturity of urban centers. Together with conservatoires and opera houses, orchestras formed centers of gravity often overseen by town councils as an interconnected unit or as a set of overlapping units. A relative lack of state regulation resulted in less focus on centralization and more on internal organization (including dealing with the progressive unionization of musicians), rivalries between concert societies, and distinctive patterns in repertory selection and programming. Nevertheless, a strong touring circuit for composer-conductors, the soft power of Parisian institutions (notably the Concerts Populaires of Jules Pasdeloup), and town council demands for standard repertory rather than new music, meant that regionalist particularism had little part to play. Angers, Bordeaux, Montpellier, Nancy, and Toulouse provide case-studies of the intersections of local politics, concert administration and orchestral professionalization; Lyon, Lille, and Strasbourg emerge as centers with an especially distinctive mix of chamber and orchestral music, especially during the Third Republic.","PeriodicalId":158296,"journal":{"name":"French Musical Life","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115364412","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
French Musical LifePub Date : 2021-10-28DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197600160.003.0009
K. Ellis
{"title":"Folk Music, Class, and Nation","authors":"K. Ellis","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197600160.003.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197600160.003.0009","url":null,"abstract":"The identitarian nature of French folk music (both in itself and within art music) is introduced as presenting a challenge to long-standing official French policies of national unity—whether expressed as traditional unity in uniformity or via a newer Third-Republic formulation of unity in diversity. This challenge explains why official French art-musical culture never joined in with the celebratory ethnic-national folk-music practices of other European nations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Instead, French folk music’s relation to the state is characterized by wide-ranging attempts to control and neutralize difference, resulting in invented traditions presented to schoolchildren as their unified patrimoine and composed into an emerging strand of neoclassical dance-form composition that brought together the modal and the folk-like. At the same time, folk music was usefully harnessed as an internal exotic within world’s fairs and as an element of modern tourism, while within opera, the particularism of regionalist composers was censored (sometimes self-censored), and often replaced by vague indicators of childlike Frenchness.","PeriodicalId":158296,"journal":{"name":"French Musical Life","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125042892","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
French Musical LifePub Date : 2021-10-28DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197600160.003.0004
K. Ellis
{"title":"Choral Voices","authors":"K. Ellis","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197600160.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197600160.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Discussion of why choral and instrumental concerts were only lightly regulated by the state provides a springboard for examining the freedom the French provinces enjoyed and the considerable expansion of concert life that was based on individual and collective initiative. Core institutions such as the orphéon, “concerts populaires” and reconstituted cathedral choir schools (maîtrises—some of them state-subsidized) complemented private clubs and chamber ensembles in a bourgeois musical economy that often displayed a varied mix of high and low genres in comparison with Paris. Local administrative machinery aided a “democratizing” shift from private to public (accessibility). Parisian modes of choral and orchestral concert life are introduced as a prelude to discussion in chapters 3 and 4 of the distinctiveness of provincial centers. Discussion touches on provincial attitudes to touring ensembles from Paris and the increasing extent of soft power exerted by the capital.","PeriodicalId":158296,"journal":{"name":"French Musical Life","volume":"37 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123513357","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
French Musical LifePub Date : 2021-10-28DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197600160.003.0006
K. Ellis
{"title":"Opera against the Odds","authors":"K. Ellis","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197600160.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197600160.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"Until 1864, provincial opera operated within a Napoleonic system designed to ensure hierarchically ordered provision for large and smaller towns nationwide and in the colonies. Discussion of how the system worked, how it was funded, how it served indirectly to erase regional difference, and how raw material from Paris (Grand Opera and the voice types it required) became too expensive, helps explain why the system was already at a breaking point by the 1830s, catalyzing heated local and local–national debates. The significance of provincial opera’s travails, its competitors in the entertainment sector from café-concert to radio, and the importance of two regional triumphs—Wagner and open-air opera—become clear in the light of this Paris-generated organizational history. Considerations of decentralization shift at this point to those of the tensions between genre of “national opera” and the centrifugal forces of cultural regionalism (with its attendant identitarian concerns), using the nature and significance of operatic “local color” as a test bed.","PeriodicalId":158296,"journal":{"name":"French Musical Life","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128003752","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
French Musical LifePub Date : 2021-10-28DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197600160.003.0010
K. Ellis
{"title":"Composition","authors":"K. Ellis","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197600160.003.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197600160.003.0010","url":null,"abstract":"Despite its “regional” label, the 1937 Exposition offered meagre support for folk-related art music written by regionalists, suggesting that the tempering of folk music’s power was just as important here as in its popular sung and danced forms. Consistently across the century from the 1830s, provincial career paths for composers offered many more opportunities for decentralized or centralist activity (secular or as a maître de chapelle) than for regionalist expression, and the Schola Cantorum was not the catalyst for change to the extent that has hitherto been assumed. Discussion of the influence of the “Russian Five” on French music, and the contrasting ways regions (native and adoptive) are presented in new music, leads to case studies of operas by Bruneau, Séverac, Ropartz, Canteloube, and Leroux to show how French local and regionalist content played out in Paris during periods of changing nationalist intensity, including during World War I. The allegorical tactics of creative anachronism (Ropartz) prompt a broader discussion about the folk-historical nexus in French music from Chabrier to Poulenc, underpinned via modality. This nexus is what explains why France emerges with one of the few European modernisms to eschew folk sources except as folded into an upper-class patrimoine—the balletic dance that underpins much French neoclassicism.","PeriodicalId":158296,"journal":{"name":"French Musical Life","volume":"44 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115735474","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
French Musical LifePub Date : 2021-10-28DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197600160.003.0002
K. Ellis
{"title":"The National Conservatoire System","authors":"K. Ellis","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197600160.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197600160.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"Discussion of the educational situation in Paris prepares the main arguments of chapters 1 and 2 in relation to nationalized and independent conservatoires in the provinces. Here, the soft power of the state-financed Paris Conservatoire (founded 1795) is contrasted with the more haphazard attempts of the privately funded Schola Cantorum (founded 1896) to act as a centralizing force. After the Revolution the cathedral choir school (maîtrise) system was initially replaced by the Paris Conservatoire alone, but the need for a deconcentrated national system of succursales was keenly felt. However, the Paris Conservatoire’s pedagogical approach could not immediately be imposed on provincial institutions, and some municipalities guarded their independence. A mixed economy of resistance and compliance resulted in a general trend towards homogenization (unity in uniformity) but more decentralist variety and ambition than the government ministry overseeing them found ideal. The Schola Cantorum showed similar centralizing tendencies but could not achieve significant institutional traction.","PeriodicalId":158296,"journal":{"name":"French Musical Life","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126040654","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
French Musical LifePub Date : 2021-10-28DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197600160.003.0008
K. Ellis
{"title":"Opera Inside and Out","authors":"K. Ellis","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197600160.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197600160.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"In three main sections, the discussion takes the reader from standard municipal opera in town theaters to the new phenomenon of open-air opera that started fitfully in the late 1860s but which became fashionable and important for decentralist and regionalist reasons from around 1900 onward. In the first case study, Wagner’s Lohengrin is detoxified in 1891 via seven municipal French stages, in advance of its successful appearance at the Paris Opéra. This provincial coup nevertheless indicates the stranglehold of French repertorial centralization, since it was possible only because Wagner was already embarrassingly famous and the violent history of his reception in Paris had paralyzed the capital’s ability to function as normal. Lohengrin was acclaimed in Lille as “local” but contained no audible couleur locale. It was through such “marked” music that opera acted as a vector for the “picturesque” presentation of the French provinces. Changing critical and audience attitudes to couleur locale from the 1830s onward prepared the conditions necessary for the development of regionalist operatic commentary, especially in Brittany and Provence. Identity, whether local and/or national, could also be enacted by audiences attending festival and commemorative performances of opera and stage spectacle in open-air venues. Catalyzed by performances at Orange, a tradition of open-air opera presented a distillation of meridional musical identity from around 1900 in ancient classical venues and their modern equivalents, while the new music it spawned remained stubbornly difficult to transplant to Paris.","PeriodicalId":158296,"journal":{"name":"French Musical Life","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125787617","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
French Musical LifePub Date : 2021-10-28DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197600160.003.0003
K. Ellis
{"title":"Educational Independence","authors":"K. Ellis","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197600160.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197600160.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"Two underresearched aspects of French provincial education concern the centralist (but “alternative”) ambitions of the Paris Schola Cantorum across France and the distinctive character of conservatoires which either freed themselves from the national system or refused to join it. Discussion centers on Montpellier (the Schola set up by Charles Bordes in 1905), Strasbourg (a proudly municipal conservatoire which retained many Germanic elements after its return to France in 1919), and Bordeaux (the Société de Sainte-Cécile, also independent, and which, unusually, included a plainchant class alongside its secular provision). Composition emerges as the elusive yet defining feature of the finest and most ambitious of the provincial conservatoires, whether national or not, while the pedagogical commitment of the “scholistes” to regionalist composition (ostensibly one of their calling cards) is revealed as both belated and fragile.","PeriodicalId":158296,"journal":{"name":"French Musical Life","volume":"146 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132573780","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
French Musical LifePub Date : 2021-10-28DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197600160.003.0007
K. Ellis
{"title":"Operatic Competition","authors":"K. Ellis","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197600160.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197600160.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"The impact of the café-concert on the activity of residential opera companies was significant in French towns with significant working-class populations. Among stage-music genres, operetta was also a threat because it was staged by secondary theaters (and by café-concerts in breach of their licenses) and because large numbers of bourgeois patrons preferred it to either Grand Opera or opéra-comique. These forms of competition for licensed managers for opera and spoken theater characterize the 1850s onward, resulting in heated exchanges with all layers of local and national government and debates about how to preserve operatic decorum and status in the face of operetta’s popularity. A notable exception is 1870s Strasbourg, where French operetta acts as a vehicle of resistance. The role of touring companies (often from Paris) as a centralist threat to the resident company from the 1880s, especially, is contrasted with their enrichment of smaller towns; the increase in guest artists (often Parisian too) is discussed as a factor in the longer-term shrinking of permanent opera company personnel. A coda examines the often brutal impact of broadcast technology on opera management and audiences in the 1920s and 1930s.","PeriodicalId":158296,"journal":{"name":"French Musical Life","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121330747","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}