From Servant to Savant Musical Privilege, Property, and the French Revolution

Before the French Revolution, making music was an activity that required permission. After the Revolution, music was an object that could be possessed. Everyone seemingly hoped to gain something from owning music. Musicians claimed it as their unalienable personal expression while the French nation sought to enhance imperial ambitions by appropriating it as the collective product of cultural heritage and national industry. Musicians capitalized on these changes to protect their professionalization within new laws and institutions, while excluding those without credentials from their elite echelon.

From Servant to Savant demonstrates how the French Revolution set the stage for the emergence of so-called musical "Romanticism" and the legacies that continue to haunt musical institutions and industries. As musicians and the government negotiated the place of music in a reimagined French society, new epistemic and professional practices constituted three lasting values of musical production: the composer's sovereignty, the musical work's inviolability, and the nation's supremacy.

Rebecca Dowd Geoffroy-Schwinden is an Associate Professor of Music History at the University of North Texas who works on eighteenth-century music cultures and musical labor during the early Age of Revolution.

Preface
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Note on Translation of Sources

Introduction
On Privilege, Property, and Professionalization
The Abolition of Privilege
The Politics of Historiography and the Archive
Chapter Summaries

Part I Musical Privilege
Chapter 1 Legal Privilège and Musical Production
The Privilege to Perform
Musical Privilege in Publishing, Commerce, and Manufacturing
Privilege as Property
The "Dilution" of Privilege

Chapter 2 Social Privilège and Musician-Masons
French Masonry, Music, and Parisian Sociability
Brother Servants and Occasional Brothers
Talented Brothers, Architects of Music, and Free Associates
Fellow Professionals and Savants
"A Little Lesson in Social Harmony"

Part II Property
Chapter 3 Private Property: Music and Authorship
Proprietary Tremors on the Eve of Revolution
From Musical Privilege to Musical Property
The Declaration of Rights of Genius

Chapter 4 Public Servants
From Pleasing Paris to Serving the Nation
An Institution of Their Own
Patriotic Servants
Professionalization and Public Patronage

Chapter 5 Cultural Heritage: Music as Work of Art
Music and the Fine Arts under the Revolution
The Conservatory's "Museum" of Musical Works
The Museum's Imperial Agenda
"The Edifice is Rising"
Cultural Property and Artworks for the Future

Chapter 6 National Industry: Music as a "Useful" Art and Science
Music, the Useful Arts, and Mechanical Invention
Interlude: A Method in the Madness
Mechanical Innovations: Useful to Whom?
The Conservatory's Design for a "Romantic Machine"
Postlude: A "Detractor" Breaks his "Silence"

Conclusion: Privilege by Any Other Name

Appendix
Bibliography
Index