French Musical Life Local Dynamics in the Century to World War II

by Ellis, Katharine

• ISBN13: 9780197600160
• ISBN10: 0197600166
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2021-11-02
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Author Biography

Katharine Ellis is 1684 Professor of Music at the University of Cambridge. She is widely published on the history of musical France in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her previous monographs cover canon-formation and the press, the early music revival, and Benedictine musical politics
c.1900. She has been elected to the Academia Europaea, the British Academy, and the American Philosophical Society.

Table of Contents

Introduction
-Centralization and its discontents
-Decentralization, deconcentration, regionalism
-Politics, then and now
-A Study in four Parts
-Approaches

Part I Education

Introduction

Chapter 1: The National Conservatoire System
-Class and access: working-class men
-Class and status: young bourgeoises
-Power, hard and soft
-Directorial discretion: curricula
-The 1930s: towards reform

Chapter 2: Educational Independence
-Pedagogical Difference c.1900
-The Schola's ghostly presences I: Montpellier
-The Schola's ghostly presences II: S?verac's vision, Le Havre and Nancy
-Strasbourg
-Bordeaux
-Composition: the final frontier

Part II Concert Rites

Introduction

Chapter 3: Choral Voices
-Orph?ons: uniformity and regional identity
-Cathedral ma?trises
-Mixed choirs: Poitou-Charentes and Strasbourg
-Belle ?poque ambition: Bordes, Witkowski and Lyon

Chapter 4: Instrumental Music and Urban Gravitas
-Private, public, "populaire"
-The Symphony orchestra as musical hub
-Amateur to professional
-Provincial programming: orchestral, chamber and specialist ensembles
-Local vs. (inter)national

Part III Stage Musics

Introduction

Chapter 5: Opera Against the Odds
-The 1864 libert? des th??tres
-Municipal perspectives
-Industry perspectives

Chapter 6: Operatic Competition
-The Caf?-Concert
-Operetta
-Touring: individual and collective
-Technology

Chapter 7: Opera Inside and Out
-Wagner's "tour de France"
-Couleur locale in Paris and at home
-Open-air opera

Part IV Folk, Region, Nation

Introduction

Chapter 8: Folk Musics
-The French folk-music problem
-Politics of collection, transcription, and classification
-Soundscapes of popular Catholicism
-Folk music, the peasant, and the bourgeoisie
-Display, domestication, tourism
-Coda

Chapter 9: Composition
-A View from 1937
-Provincial career paths
-Rethinking the Schola's regionalism
-The Allure of the Russian Five
-Back to opera: regionalism and nation
-Mode, multi-regionalism, and patrimoine

Conclusions
-"Decentralization" through the lens of Lyon
-Musical localism
-Repositioning the rural

Bibliography
Index