Focusing on the evolution of music criticism in nineteenth-century France, the book explores the impact of aesthetic and philosophical movements on the perception of composers like Bach and Beethoven. It highlights the significance of the Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris as a key publication, detailing the formation of the music canon and the rise of French musicology. Additionally, it addresses the tension between commercial interests and artistic values in the context of new music, providing a comprehensive analysis of performance practices and critical sensitivity during this era.
In an era of heightened patriotic fervor following France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, Parisians packed concert halls to hear performances of Handel's oratorios and Bach's organ works. At the same time, both royalists and republicans called for the re-evaluation of the once detested musique francaise of the ancien regime. Musicologist Katharine Ellis examines these unlikely aspects of cultural life in the new Republic as part of a broader study of the early music revival in nineteenth-century France. This revival gives us a vivid sense of how music's cultural meanings were contested, distilled into dominant visions, and then often revised. Peppering the century are famous fakes, pastiches and other creative negotiations between past and present. Descriptions of these phenomena by contemporary witnesses reveal how dissent could run along social, religious and political lines, and why certain genres became idealized while others were disparaged. After providing an overview of trends and contexts throughout the century, Ellis examines specific repertoires that evoked unusually spirited advocacy and debate. She explores the attempts to revive French Baroque stage music in the 1870s; arguments on the appropriateness of Palestrina's liturgical music; the reception of Bach and Handel, and their relation to French choral activity; and, finally, musical "Frenchness." Four case-study chapters focus on key debates and repertories stretching from Adam de la Halle to Rameau, via Josquin, Janequin, Palestrina, Bach and Handel. Interpreting the Musical Past discusses what is at stake in the construction of a musical heritage, and how ideology informs musical value judgements. In its focus on the nature of musical experience and the meaning of music in society, the book explores amateur and professional music-making; working-class, aristocratic and bourgeois cultural life; national pride; religious politics; and ritual, both liturgical and secular. Based on extensive primary research in Paris and the French regions, Interpreting the Musical Past is at once a history of culture, of reception, and of historiography. Covering five centuries of music (from the mid-thirteenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries) and a century of French history, it explains long-term changes of cultural meaning while celebrating the richness of local detail. This study of musical revivalism offers a penetrating analysis of what lies at the heart of the construction, championing, and development of a musical cultural memory
Intertwining three narratives, the book reshapes our understanding of plainchant reform in the early twentieth century, emphasizing the significance of liturgical music history in the context of French anticlericalism. It chronicles the ascent of the Benedictines of Solesmes to prominence in Catholic plainchant editions, examines the challenges faced by the French liturgical publishing industry amid a global crisis, and reveals how French Catholics navigated and manipulated Republican anticlericalism for their benefit.
Exploring the intersection of liturgical music and French anticlericalism, this book presents three interconnected narratives that reshape our understanding of plainchant reform in the early twentieth century. It delves into the ascent of the Benedictines of Solesmes, revealing how their influence on liturgical music played a crucial role in broader cultural and political contexts. Through these stories, the author emphasizes the significance of music history in comprehending the complexities of French governmental attitudes toward religion.
