Paris: Conflicting Notions of Progress

For a study of the social history of music in turn-of-the-century France, nothing substitutes for consulting primary sources. Most still lie buried at the Bibliothèque Nationale or the Bibliothèque de l’Opéra, Paris, or at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center in Austin, Texas, or in other libraries and private collections.Google Scholar

Among those which are published, the most important are composers’ letters. Several large volumes have appeared: Claude Debussy: Lettres 1884–1918, ed. F. Lesure (Paris, 1980);Google Scholar

G. Fauré, Correspondence, ed. J.-M. Nectoux (Paris, 1980),Google Scholar

trans. J.A. Underwood as Gabriel Fauré: his Life through his Letters (London, 1984);Google Scholar

A. Roussel, Lettres et écrits, ed. N. Labelle (Paris, 1987);Google Scholar

and Stravinsky: Selected Correspondence, ed. R. Craft, 3 vols. (New York and London, 1982–5).Google Scholar

A. Orenstein is preparing a volume of Ravel’s letters that will supplant the earlier Ravel au miroir de ses lettres, ed. R. Chalupt (Paris, 1956). These volumes are not complete but are the largest and most accessible collections of composers’ correspondence available.Google Scholar

Memoirs too can provide invaluable information and detail, though they sometimes contain a bias, especially those written long after the period being recounted. The interested reader should start with A. Bruneau, Bruneau-Zola: A l’ombre d’un grand coeur: souvenirs d’une collaboration (Paris, 1932);Google Scholar

H. Busser, De Pelléas aux Indes galantes (Paris, 1955);Google Scholar

M.-D. Calvocoressi, Music and Ballet: the Recollections of M.-D. Calvocoressi (London, 1933);Google Scholar

A. Casella, Music in my Time, trans. S. Norton (Norman, Oklahoma, 1955);Google Scholar

J. Durand, Quelques souvenirs d’un éditeur de musique (Paris, 1924);Google Scholar

H. Février, André Messager, mon maître, mon ami (Paris, 1948);Google Scholar

D.E. Inghelbrecht, Mouvement contraire (Paris, 1947);Google Scholar

P. Lalo, De Rameau à Ravel (Paris, 1947);Google Scholar

L. Laloy, La musique retrouvée (Paris, 1928);Google Scholar

J. Massenet, My Recollections, trans. H. V. Barnett (Boston, 1919; first pubd 1912);Google Scholar

Ravel par quelques-uns de ses familiers (Paris, 1939);Google Scholar

C. Saint-Saëns, Portraits et souvenirs (Paris, 1900);Google Scholar

and the special issues of the Revue Musicale focussed on Debussy (May 1926) and Ravel (December 1938).Google Scholar

Certain biographies must also be considered primary sources, for the authors knew their subjects personally. See V. d’Indy’s César Franck (Paris, 1914);Google Scholar

C. Koechlin’s Gabriel Fauré, trans. L. Orrey (London, 1946) and hisGoogle Scholar

Debussy (Paris, 1941);Google Scholar

Roland Manuel’s Maurice Ravel, trans. C. Jolly (New York, 1972; first pubd 1947);Google Scholar

L. Vallas’ Vincent d’Indy, 2 vols. (Paris, 1946);Google Scholar

E. Vuillermoz’s Claude Debussy (Paris, 1957) and hisGoogle Scholar

Gabriel Fauré, trans. K. Schapin (New York, 1969; first pubd 1960).Google Scholar

Contemporary criticism illuminates society’s perception of itself as well as current taste. The most important composers who wrote sometimes ironic but always perceptive criticism are Bruneau, Musique de Russie et musiciens de France (Paris, 1903);Google Scholar

Debussy, Monsieur Croche et autres écrits, ed. F. Lesure (Paris, 1971),Google Scholar

trans, and rev. R. Langham Smith as Debussy on Music (London, 1977);Google Scholar

Dukas, Ecrits sur la musique (Paris, 1948);Google Scholar

Saint-Saëns, Outspoken Essays on Music, trans. F. Rothwell (London, 1922);Google Scholar

and Satie, Ecrits, ed. O. Volta (Paris, 1981).Google Scholar

Influential critics who reissued their work in book form are H.-G. Villars, numerous volumes from Lettres de l’ouvreuse (Paris, 1890) toGoogle Scholar

Garçon l’audition (Paris, 1901);Google Scholar

J. Marnold, Musique d’autrefois et d’aujourd’hui (Paris, 1911);Google Scholar

Romain Rolland, Musiciens d’aujourd’hui (Paris, 1921), whose last chapter, ‘Le renouveau de la musique française depuis 1870’, presents a particularly good overview;Google Scholar

J. Tiersot, Un demi-siècle de musique française, entre les deux guerres 1870–1914 (Paris, 1918);Google Scholar

J. Cocteau, Le coq et l’arlequin (Paris, 1918); and those by J. Aubry, C. Bellaigue, A. Coquard, H. Imbert, A. Jullien, A. Pougin and E. Vuillermoz.Google Scholar

Music journals reveal the day-to-day functioning of the musical world as no other publications. Monthly or bi-monthly ones review the most important concerts, publish box-office receipts of performances at the Opéra and Opéra-Comique, announce competitions, list prizewinners and discuss analytical and aesthetic issues raised by the music being performed. The major music journals in Paris were the conservative Le ménestrel, owned by the publisher Heugel; Revue d’histoire et de critique musicales, orientated towards serious history, criticism and analysis; Le courrier musical, which later merged with Le mercure musical to form S.I.M., one of the most progressive; and Le monde musical, owned by a piano maker and written for a broad public. Regular music criticism also appeared in intellectual journals, like Revue des deux-mondes, Revue de Paris, Mercure de France, Revue blanche and many others. For more information on the nature of these journals and their music criticism, consult C. Goubault, La critique musicale dans la presse française (Geneva and Paris, 1984), andGoogle Scholar

J. Pasler, ‘Pelléas and Power: Forces Behind the Reception of Debussy’s Opera’, 19th-century Music, (1986–7), 243–64.Google Scholar

Besides the work done by scholars outside music, like R. Shattuck and J. Siegel, the best study of music in its social context during this period is M. Faure, Musique et société du Second Empire aux années vingt (Paris, 1985).Google Scholar

Although a Marxist ideology lies at its centre, the book is far from being pure argument. Its rich detail, thorough research and perceptive insights make it a landmark in turn-of-the-century studies. While Faure’s attempts to find analogies between musical style and ideology are not always convincing, his descriptions of Saint-Saëns as a parnassian eclectic and a republican ready for combat, of Fauré as republican opportunist, of Debussy as a nationalist with monarchist sympathies, and of Ravel as an anarchist-bolshevek are as revealing as they are provocative. No other work comes close to Faure’s. M. Cooper’s French Music from the Death of Berlioz to the Death of Fauré (London, 1951) deals more narrowly with music and biography.Google Scholar

E. Brody’s recent Paris: the Musical Kaleidoscope 1870–1925 (New York, 1987) offers an overview of the issues of principal concern at the time — exoticism, Wagner, relationships between the arts and the influx of foreign musicians in Paris, but without taking a critical stance. The strongest chapters are the two based on primary sources: the journal of the Spanish pianist Ricardo Viñes and contemporary documents concerning the Universal Exhibitions.Google Scholar

A number of composer biographies and monographs shed light on the period. E. Lockspeiser’s Debussy: his Life and Mind, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1962), explores the influence of painters, writers and other musicians on Debussy.Google Scholar

In his Debussy, Impressionism and Symbolism, trans. R. Myers (London, 1976),Google Scholar

S. Jarocinski argues convincingly that Debussy’s music is rooted in symbolist theory more than impressionist painting. R. Orledge’s Debussy and the Theatre (Cambridge, 1982) shows the composer’s ties to the theatrical world.Google Scholar

The biography that best places a composer in his social-political milieu is M. Marnat’s Maurice Ravel (Paris, 1986).Google Scholar

Although much of this book consists of citations of other published sources, Marnat goes further into Ravel’s elusive life and his politics than previous biographers have. Nectoux’s lengthy introductions to Fauré’s letters unveil life in the salons; but for a detailed study of this subject, see E. Carassus, Le snobisme et les lettres françaises (Paris, 1966).Google Scholar

New journals devoted to a single composer — Cahiers Debussy (1974–), Cahiers Roussel (1978–81) and Cahiers Ravel (1985–) — continue to make available previously unpublished material.Google Scholar

For quick information on the more obscure composers during this period, there are no better sources than R. Dumesnil, La musique française contemporaine, 2 vols. (Paris, 1930), andGoogle Scholar

O. Séré, Musiciens français d’aujourd’hui (Paris, 1911).Google Scholar

In A. Lavignac, Encyclopédie de la musique, 6 vols. (Paris, 1931),Google Scholar

Cinqante ans de musique française de 1874 à 1925, ed. L. Rohozinski, 2 vols. (Paris, 1925), andGoogle Scholar

R. Bernard, Histoire de la musique, 2 vols. (Paris, 1961), one will find invaluable information on such broader issues as education, genre studies and institutions.Google Scholar

Good bibliographies are contained in Brody’s Paris, Goubault’s La critique musicale and D. Pistone’s La musique en France de la révolution à 1900 (Paris, 1979).Google Scholar