Reading with Provincial Eyes: The French Musical Press beyond the Capital

Katharine Ellis (University of Cambridge) [email protected]

The centralised nature of in the nineteenth century and beyond encourages the assumption that its towns are simply pale and small-scale versions of the capital. On close inspection this assumption proves to be illusory in various ways: firstly, there comes a point when is simply not scalable; secondly, we find decentralist or regionalist resistance to Parisian norms; thirdly, local conditions spark local initiatives that have little to do with models available elsewhere, whether in the capital or not. As published in the daily papers or in specialist periodicals, music criticism is no exception to this phenomenon. When the hundreds of critics who worked in the capital are reduced to a few influential names, the ramifications for critique and debate are radically different. Local rivalries are lived out in greater relief, meaning that losers pay a higher price; by extension, the relationship between writers, local musicians and readers is more intimate, and more obviously so. Among specialist publications, the relative absence of publisher journals and competing titles makes for a less rampantly commercial arena; instead, questions of local solidarity and aspiration loom large. Relations with Paris itself need careful handling. Matters of local pride reach peak intensity not locally but in the breathless dialogue of regional correspondents and their editors in Paris, where «Nouvelles» columns often present French provincial music-making through rose-tinted glasses. Finally, discourses that might in Paris seem self-evidently important for the whole of France become transformed or even displaced on account of the regional, or municipal, coverage of each publication1.

1. For an example, see my analysis of the national versus the local reception of the 1876 Rameau festival in Dijon. Ellis 2008.

Journal of Music Criticism, Volume 5 (2021), pp. 1-19 © Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini. All rights reserved. Katharine Ellis In this article I shall take a small sample of critics, newspapers and specialist periodicals to illustrate the nature of provincial difference in French music criticism, and to encourage closer study of provincial music-critical activity, both in comparative perspective (by genre of publication, or in terms of geography), and as a window onto a holistic view of individual local musical cultures comprising composers, performers and listeners, and embracing everything from folk festivals and military bands to chamber music, amateur and professional concerts, opera, and appearances by touring virtuosi. This article opens up some of those perspectives via a discussion of the workings of music criticism during the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in two types of context: the mid-size town in a single region (, Angers and Nantes), and in a regional powerhouse (Lyon)2. The first three centres allow for discussion of interconnections and regional solidarity or competition, enhanced by the centrality of the figure of Étienne Destranges and the availability of some of his incoming correspondence at the Bibliothèque Municipale in Nantes; the last, in addition to being France’s second city, recommends itself because the rare survival of a back-office archive within the Vallas Collection at the Bibliothèque Municipale in Lyon illuminates key aspects of music-critical ambition and practice.

The Musical Press and the Mid-size Urban Community

A cluster of journals in the north-west of France at the end of the nineteenth century offers an idea of what regional co-operation could achieve in the attempt to provide local music lovers (and musicians) with a journalistic support-structure of the kind that Parisians could take for granted. The three papers on which I shall concentrate are Angers-revue (which became Angers-artiste and then Angers-musical (1880-1936), Nantes-Lyrique (1876-1894), run by the formidable local critic Étienne Destranges (1863-1915), and the much shorter- lived Le Sonneur de Bretagne (1892-1895) run by two members of the Collin dynasty of Breton church musicians. Oriented respectively towards concert life, to opera, and to local and regional musical , between them they also illustrate several aspects of provincial difference that should in turn inform our manner of reading their content.

2. Census figures from 1881 illustrate the disparities: Rennes c.61,000; Angers c.68,000; Nantes, c.124,000; Lyon c.380,000. 2 Reading with Provincial Eyes: The French Musical Press beyond the Capital Angers-revue began on 30 September 1880 as the transformation of Angers’s only arts journal, L’Abeille, into a music journal attached to the local orchestra, the Association Artistique d’Angers, which had been established in 1877. As Yannick Simon makes clear in his history of the orchestra, this relationship of support for the Association Artistique was explicit from the outset, couched in an opening editorial as a promise of support for a valued local cause that brought honour to the town; indeed, Simon refers to it as the Association’s «bulletin»3. Hence its lead articles routinely reviewed the orchestra’s concerts, while its closing articles offered previews of forthcoming programmes, making the journal an interesting mix of the concert review and the educational programme note. In between were news and reviews colums of more general interest. Two local luminaries were at the journal’s head: Jules Bordier (1846-1896), also President of the Association and effectively head of programming until the orchestra’s dissolution in 1893, and Louis de Romain (1844-1912), Vice-President of the Association and chief editor of the journal itself. Despite changes of title, and even when its title page replaced mention of the Association with the grander Revue artistique de l’Ouest — the journal remained true to its roots. From the point of view of its insertion into the social fabric of music- making, Angers-revue and its successors had no analogue in Paris. The orchestra itself channelled the spirit of Édouard Colonne’s Association Artistique du Châtelet, but Colonne did not run an associated journal: neither was there ever a journal allied to the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire (founded 1828), or Jules Pasdeloup’s Concerts Populaires (founded 1861), or the Concerts Lamoureux (founded 1881). There is no real analogue for Angers-artiste and its successors until 1895 and the Tribune de Saint-Gervais, which was a mouthpiece for Charles Bordes and his Chanteurs de Saint-Gervais, and for the concerts of the Schola Cantorum more generally. Some but not all of this is explained by questions of institution and personnel; some is explained by questions of scale. Most of Paris’s orchestral societies were run by their founding conductors — who were also in large part their funders. The most famous trio of Jules Pasdeloup, Charles Lamoureux and Édouard Colonne are in this group. Working within the mainstream of concert life, all could depend on a wide variety of coverage in the capital’s daily and periodical press. They doubtless worked hard to garner positive coverage; but they did not need to manufacture it themselves. As to the Paris Conservatoire

3. Simon 2006, p. 95. 3 Katharine Ellis orchestra: by the 1880s both its repertory and its reputation had ossified and it garnered less press attention than more recent arrivals performing more exciting fare; but its finances were secure because of its being nested within the Conservatoire, and its concerts were in any case famously over-subscribed. In direct contrast to the founder-conductor orchestras, the Conservatoire orchestra could afford to plough its own furrow irrespective of the press. The Angers orchestra was in a different situation: it needed a mouthpiece. The Association required increased subscriptions and ticket sales to pay its players because season by season it ran a near-permanent deficit, performing in a hall that could accommodate 1700, a full 600 seats larger than the Paris Conservatoire. It had to be entrepreneurial. Bordier and De Romain understood this: they ran the journal itself at a deficit as a way of supporting the orchestra, and with a print run (2000 copies) that by the late 1880s outstripped the capacity of the hall in which the orchestra performed4. In relation to content, I would argue that they also understood that the journal had to be upbeat: any claim to critical ‘objectivity’ would have defeated the object, as well as being disingenuous. This was more than self-aggrandisement or self-delusion; it was to do with sustaining the fabric of music-making in Angers. The Angers orchestra was also the municipally-run theatre orchestra, and between them these two musical institutions dominated municipal-funded musical life in the town. If one went under, so would the other, leaving potentially hundreds of musicians and theatre workers without employment. There is no analogue for this level of consequential financial fragility in the capital because the subsidy system for national theatres, and the generally larger scale of employment opportunity, meant that complementary employments did not overlap systematically and symbiotically. A journal such as Angers-artiste and its later incarnations had to meet its own ‘local’ needs, and these bring their own surprises. Brussels looms large, and often larger than Paris. This is not just because of Louis de Romain’s Wagnerism — which meant he took in interest in what was happening at La Monnaie. And neither was it a crude gesture against French centralisation. It was a gesture of respect to orchestra members and their families, and further cements the function of the journal as a «bulletin». One of the founding principles of the Association in 1877 had been to replace local (and inferior) theatre musicians with professionals — and the most available high-quality professionals were to be sourced from Belgium. The first orchestra of 40 musicians included 35

4. Ibidem, pp. 78 and 97. 4 Reading with Provincial Eyes: The French Musical Press beyond the Capital Belgians, gradually diminishing to 16 by the 1890s5. There was always a close relationship with Brussels. In its different guises, Angers-revue lasted 56 years — an astonishingly long run for a provincial journal. Its secret seems to have been that of a combination of institutional underpinning, a clearly-defined core market and a sense that what it offered was value-added in relation to the concerts. Added to which, it was accepted as an expense in the service of the wider publicity of the Association — precisely in the manner of journals attached to Parisian publishing houses or, more common in the provinces, attached to music shops (e.g. the Semaine musicale de Lille, 1881-1903, or the Gazette musicale/Journal musical de Nice, founded 1880). Significantly, when the Angers Association Artistique folded in 1893, the journal attached itself to the orchestra’s replacement, the Concerts Populaires d’Angers. It was clearly a winning formula. Nantes, which did not have such a prominent symphony orchestra during this same period, nevertheless displayed related traits via a more mainstream route: a journal focused on the local opera industry. Nantes-Lyrique, which went through various incarnations between its founding in October 1876 and its merger with the rather more high-society Le Korrigan in February 1892, was not officially tied to the municipal theatre, the Théâtre Graslin. However, it existed in a symbiosis so close that during the summer period when the theatre was closed it ceased to publish, ready to open its pages again in October. This was strikingly non-Parisian behaviour: journals in the capital changed the balance of their coverage in the off-season to prioritise features rather than musical news, and very occasionally moved from weekly to monthly periodicity; but taking a summer break was never on the cards. The starker rhythms of artistic life in the provinces — even in a town twice the size of Angers — made such a move sensible. Between 1889 and the end of 1891 the journal’s leading critical light was its editorial secretary, the young Wagnerian Étienne Destranges (1863-1915), a hugely well-connected and influential figure in Nantes. His critical voice was unavoidable within musical circles in the 1880s and 1890s: he was music critic for the most widely-read newspaper, the Phare de la Loire; he contributed to a general arts journal, Ouest-Artiste (1891-1922), alongside his work at Nantes- Lyrique; and further afield, he contributed to the BrusselsGuide musical as both a feature writer and as a foreign correspondent — a source of «nouvelles» from Nantes. Destranges was a prime case of the local critic who had the social and

5. Ibidem, p. 107. 5 Katharine Ellis cultural capital to influence patterns of musical life. As the composer Camille Erlanger put it in an effusive note of c.1902, every town or region needed an Étienne Destranges6. And indeed they did. It was Destranges who corresponded with Cosima Wagner and her agent to secure Lohengrin for the Théâtre Graslin in 1891, and it was he who badgered successive theatre directors to put it on and the municipal council to support the idea7. He also used the journal as a shop-window for book-length analyses of new operas he wanted the residents of Nantes to know about, and which he was keen for the Théâtre Graslin’s directors to stage. These ranged from Verdi and Wagner to Chabrier, Saint-Saëns, D’Indy, Humperdinck and the many Zola-based operas of Alfred Bruneau — another personal friend. This was a different and more polemic manifestation of the ‘education’ function of the programme previews in Angers-Artiste: it was a way of developing public complicity and stoking public expectation in the face of transient and risk-averse theatre directors who tried to stay in the black and see out their contracts by sticking to the standard repertoire. Such battles found the industries of criticism and publishing engaged in a new kind of complicity, as in 1894 when the Paris publisher Auguste Durand wrote to Destranges: «You can rejoice. Your campaign has borne fruit and M. Castex [director at Nantes] has just contracted for Lohengrin [revival] and Samson et Dalila. It’s not everything you wanted, but it’s already good!»8. Nantes-Lyrique, however, was not a one-man show: the well-connected Destranges involved a range of writers based in music and in literature, including the Nantais writer and poet Hugues Rebell, the Charentais writer Édouard d’Aubram, the young Breton composer Guy Ropartz, the Nantes composer Frédéric Toulmouche, and the Brussels critic Maurice Kufferath, who was his

6. Letter from Erlanger to Destranges, Bibliothèque Municipale de Nantes, MS2643 (papiers Destranges), no. 65, undated but clearly from 1902 or 1903: «Cher Ami, Voici une belle victoire! Une fois de plus vous avez bien mérité de l’Art. Que n’avons-nous un Etienne Destranges dans chaque ville et dans chaque pays!». The updated version of Destranges’s Le Théâtre à Nantes depuis ses origines jusqu’à nos jours had appeared in 1902, including the opinion that Erlanger’s Le Juif polonais (Nantes premiere 30 November 1900) should become a Graslin repertory staple (Destranges 1902, p. 305). 7. See Simon 2015, pp. 71-72 and 75; and Ellis 2013. 8. «Vous pouvez triompher! Votre campagne a porté des fruits et M. Castex vient de signer pour Lohengrin et Samson et Dalila. / Ce n’est pas tout ce que vous désiriez mais c’est déjà bien!». Auguste Durand to Étienne Destranges, 20 May 1894. Bibliothèque Municipale de Nantes, MS2645 (papiers Destranges), no. 106. 6 Reading with Provincial Eyes: The French Musical Press beyond the Capital main contact at the Guide musical and a personal friend. Finally, there was the regional link with Angers, forged through regular contributions from Louis de Romain. The overlap between this team and that of Ouest-Artiste (Destranges, Kufferath, Rebell, De Romain, Ropartz, Toulmouche) is so extensive that the two journals must have looked like twins. Together they showed Nantes as a busy and outward-looking cultural and musical centre, with a strong regional identity and Destranges himself as musical linchpin. We should not underestimate that ‘linchpin’ aspect: more shadowy (meaning completely opaque) on the masthead of Nantes-Lyrique was the identity of Paolo de Lerne, the journal’s editor in chief, whose name is so resistant to bibliographical research as to suggest that it is another pseudonym for Destranges, whose professional name was already a nom de plume9. The team-work between Angers-Artiste and Nantes-Lyrique offers a striking example of regional co-operation on several levels. De Romain and Destranges were Wagnerian friends: both engaged in campaigns of public propaganda to ensure that Wagner was accepted in their town; both wanted the north-west to be the region that put on France’s first publicly-funded Lohengrin after all the 1880s nationalist battles. When it became clear that Rouen would beat them, De Romain and Destranges even engineered to present their premieres of Lohengrin on the same night in both towns, thereby creating a double regional event. De Romain also reviewed the Lohengrin performances in Nantes; and when De Romain found himself too busy with Lohengrin rehearsals to write up a review of the Association Artistique’s latest concert for Angers-Artiste, who should step in and do the job, but Destranges himself10? Readers in search of ‘objective’ reviews will be disappointed by such trading of responsibilities; but its cultural- historical import is high. Solidarity of this kind kicks against what we are used to in Paris, where a one journal’s esprit de corps was so often someone else’s esprit de cénacle. The categories of music criticism that Emmanuel Reibel presents from a slightly earlier period remain instructive in the post-1870 era: a picture very close to Balzac’s vision of Parisian journalism in Illusions perdues11. They include

9. Destranges’s real name was Étienne Louis Augustin Rouillé. On 5 September 1891, Paolo de Lerne, cited in the opening editorial of Nantes-Lyrique as its music critic, left the journal to concentrate on other activities. Destranges was not mentioned; but he, too, disappeared from the masthead at the same moment (Nantes-Lyrique, xviii/493-1 [5 September 1891], p. 1). 10. Angers-Artiste, 21 February 1891, pp. 307-308 (Destranges) and L’Anjou, 23/24 February 1891, p. 3 (De Romain). 11. Reibel 2005. 7 Katharine Ellis criticism as play, as joke, as competition, as courtroom defence or attack, as entertainment, as judgment. Everything has a veneer of cynicism; nothing is sincere. More recently, Shaena Weitz has highlighted the venality of Parisian criticism of this period, notably in journals owned by publishers: expressions of pure commercial rivalry and the settling of scores12. There is apparently no room in either model for criticism as social action or as loyalty, or even as civilised debate. Editors of newly-launched journals continued to promise readers that they would provide a unique source of ‘independent’ and ‘unbiased’ opinion — while imposing, to the extent that they could, an editorial line. If journals were the Parisian salons of the printed word, then like their conversational counterparts they undoubtedly included friendships and collaborations; but they also constituted aesthetic cliques. This is why it is so unusual to find major disagreements within the pages of a single journal; instead, arguments tend to play out between rival titles — of which there are enough to make such a system work. And it also explains why when internal disagreement does occur, a tell-tale editorial footnote often indicates whose side the editor is on. Which means that someone else is publicly undermined. Yet in the provincs we find other ways of dealing with disagreement. To return briefly to Angers-Artiste: there was considerable difference between De Romain and fellow contributor Guy de Charnacé on the question of Wagner. This was not a nationalist spat in the tradition of much post-1870 Parisian criticism13: it was more a question of ‘classical’ versus ‘modern’ taste in music. And the manner in which De Charnacé introduced his own critique could not have been more un-Parisian:

I have hesitated a lot, as one might well imagine, about offering my opinion on Lohengrin in the journal of a resolute and passionate admirer of Wagner, in the journals of the learned musician to whom the Angevin public is indebted for the excellent performance of an opera whose premiere it greeted with enthusiastic applause. M. de Romain, sure of Lohengrin’s success, has decided to demonstrate that even though the official review of his journal rendered homage to Wagner’s work, which was itself acclaimed by the majority, space ought to be given over to the opposite view. In light of the sollicitations of my friend and also the entreaties of

12. Weitz 2019. 13. For an exhaustive documentary study of Wagner reception in Paris, see Mrozowicki 2016. 8 Reading with Provincial Eyes: The French Musical Press beyond the Capital several other people, I have resolved to pick up my pen and give free rein here to my own impressions14.

There follows a reasoned, if conservative, critique of Lohengrin. And there is no polemic. As that opening reference to intellectual ownership indicates, De Charnacé was well aware that he was writing in someone else’s journal — there is a clear sense of ‘turf ’. Equally, De Romain is presented as graciously offering a platform to the opposing side — but he does so only once the triumph of 21 February is safely in the bag, meaning that the opposing side is the one acknowledging defeat. The exchange, then, is not shorn of rivalry; but rivalry is contained and stage-managed as an almost courtly dance. There is a sound rationale to such behaviour, in that whereas to an extent in Paris one could make critical enemies without destroying one’s career, in a relatively small town with limited outlets for music criticism, its exponents had to live and work in close proximity, both with each other and with the objects of their critique. In a town such as Nancy, critics might even find themselves sitting side by side on examination panels at the local Conservatoire — a phenomenon unthinkable in Paris — which ensured that potentially blunt or adversarial voices were brought inside the institutional tent15. In other centres, such as Lyon, critics might find themselves corralled en masse to support a new musical venture by serving on its advisory committee. This is precisely what Georges-Martin Witkowski did in 1903 when he set up his choir, the Schola Cantorum. And while he did not secure (and therefore could not muzzle) everyone, he succeeded in bringing the majority on side16. Did such closeness result in corruption? It is the word that springs immediately to mind; but from a hermeneutic point of view we perhaps need to re-calibrate our ideas about what ‘corruption’ might entail. It is more productive to see a network of competing demands and to bear in mind the fragility

14. «J’ai longtemps hésité, on le comprendra facilement, à donner mon opinion sur Lohengrin dans le journal d’un admirateur convaincu et passionné de Wagner, dans le journal du savant musicien auquel le public angevin est redevable de l’excellente interprétation d’un opéra, dont il a salué la première apparition de ses applaudissements enthousiastes. / M. de Romain, sûr du succès de Lohengrin, a tenu à montrer que si le compte rendu officiel rendait hommage à l’œuvre de Wagner acclamé par la majorité, une place devait être laissée à l’opinion contraire. Devant les sollicitations de mon ami, et aussi à la prière de plusieurs personnes, je me décide à prendre la et à livrer ici mes impressions». Angers-Artiste, iii/22 (28 February 1891), pp. 346-348. 15. This happened from at least 1906, under the directorship of Guy Ropartz. Archives Municipales de Nancy, 1 R 73. 16. Ferraton 1984, p. 65. 9 Katharine Ellis of much provincial musical endeavour. Critics knew that polemic could be successful only if its target was not liquidated in the process17. We are back to the «insider» critiques of Angers-Artiste. The result can be a different kind of rhetoric from those that Reibel presents for Paris: a topsy-turvy one where personal connections are acknowledged in the name of transparency but the critic finds a way to carry on nevertheless. Nantes-Lyrique presents a good example in 1890, when the editor in chief de Lerne/Destranges reviews a Théâtre Graslin festival dedicated to one of his own writers, Edouard d’Aubram.

It is difficult to offer too much encouragement to these attempts at literary or musical decentralisation, which work to create in our provincial towns a current of creativity and distinctive activity instead of reducing them to unquestioning copycats who swallow the crumbs from the feasts of Parisians (whose cooking is not always, in any case, as good as the gullible might believe). D’Aubram is a friend, but for now I want to forget that and not know him. If I treated him as a friend I would flay him too hard […]18.

In other words, the end justifies the conflict of interest. And the end is not just to chronicle and critique what happens in the provinces, but to celebrate what is there, to help create the conditions for growth, and to contribute to the deveopment of local pride in the generation of a distinctive culture. Once more, this is a case of journals doing cultural work that is fundamentally distinct from that of the capital. There is an even stronger, if more narrowly-focused, sense of local advocacy in my final choice of north-west journal, Le Sonneur de Bretagne. Published in Rennes every month for just three years between February 1892 and January 1895, the Sonneur was edited by Sullian Collin (1867-1951), the only dedicated music critic within a church-music dynasty in which his father Charles- René was organist at the cathedral in their native Saint-Brieuc, and his elder brother Charles-Augustin and younger cousin Joseph-Pierre attended the École

17. Cocteau 1918, p. 11. 18. «On ne saurait, en effet, trop encourager ces tentatives de décentralisation littéraire ou musicale qui tendent à créer dans nos villes de province un courant d’intelligence et d’activité particulière au lieu de les réduire simples moutons de Panurge, à avaler les miettes du festin des Parisiens, dont la cuisine n’est pas toujours, du reste, si bonne que les naïfs sont à le croire. / D’Aubram est un ami, mais en ce moment je veux l’oublier et ne pas le connaître. Si je le traitais en ami je l’éplucherais trop […]». Nantes-Lyrique, xvi/460-6 (4 October 1890), p. 2. 10 Reading with Provincial Eyes: The French Musical Press beyond the Capital Niedermeyer in Paris and became organists in Rennes itself19. Charles Collin père contributed and signed articles alongside his son. As Le Moigne-Mussat puts it, Sullian Collin had three main aims: to develop musical understanding through theoretical and analytical articles, to enhance local pride in through increased respect for the region’s composers, and to facilitate professional networking20. Rennes in the 1890s was a hotbed of (divisive) regionalist activism and historical exploration, much of it centred in and around the university and with its musical expression focused on folklore. In this vein the journal sported on its cover a traditional player of the bombarde — the Breton high-pitched shawm usually teamed with bagpipes (which lie at his feet). He is the ‘sonneur’ of the journal’s title, presented in classic local costume and backed by the Atlantic, its seabirds, the famous ancient standing stones of Brittany, its equally famous gorse-bushes, and heraldric references. The cover, though, was primarily a Romantic gesture: the journal’s content focused mostly on art music (though folk-inspired works received especially favourable treatment), church music (reflecting the Catholicism of the Collin family), opera, orphéon competitions and salons — not just in Rennes but across the entire Breton peninsula, including Saint-Nazaire, Nantes and even Angers. As at Nantes, local writers teamed up with the musicians. By its third year, 1894, Collin’s list of contributors numbered 26, including key Bretons such as Ropartz (as Paris correspondent), the poet and folklorist and the playwright Louis Tiercelin (himself the editor of a regionalist literary journal, L’Hermine), and familiar representatives from Nantes and Angers (Destranges and Louis de Romain). Regional solidarity even extended to the publication of a black-bordered ‘death’ notice for the Association Artistique d’Angers following the withdrawal of its municipal subsidy in 189321. The entire journal was based on the premise that what Brittany needed was not music criticism per se, but publicity and encouragement — a platform for musical recognition and profile-raising. The 25-year-old Sullian Collin’s opening editorial was a call to arms in the wake of the setting up of a music section within the Association bretonne and the inauguration of concerts by the local Association artistique et littéraire de Bretagne in 1890. It was also an explicit

19. Educational history listed in Sako 2007, p. 216. On the dynasty, see articles by Marie- Claire Mussat in Fauquet 2003, pp. 291-292. The most extensive study of Le Sonneur de Bretagne is in Le Moigne-Mussat 1988, pp. 368-372. 20. Le Moigne-Mussat 1988, p. 368. 21. Sonneur de Bretagne, ii/3 (March 1893), p. 44. The notice doubled as an invitation to the Association’s 443rd and last concert (i.e. its funeral). 11 Katharine Ellis manifesto of faith in the work of Tiercelin and of Guy Ropartz (who wrote incidental music for Tiercelin’s plays), who are the leaders, here, of a truly Breton music. Collin wrote: «What I want musicians to understand is that I am opening a museum for them where, just like painters, they can exhibit their works. If composers send me their scores I will note the fact that they have appeared, more by highlighting their qualities than criticising their faults»22. In yet another swerve away from ‘objective’ criticism, Collin instead offers a shop window and a virtuous circle of local consecration. Hence in relation to the premiere, at the Grand-Théâtre de Rennes, of Tiercelin’s play Pêcheur d’Islande, with music by Guy Ropartz (i.e. two of his own contributors), he offered an extended preview in which he named them as friends, an enthusiastic analysis of the score, and a «revue des revues» gathering together selected Parisian journalism — all across three issues of the Sonneur 23. In 1893, when Collin set up a competition for composers, he put together a jury representing all aspects of Rennes musical life: a local winner of the Prix de Rome (Aristide Hignard), military music (Léon Kasen), the church (abbé Lepage), organists (Pierre Thielemans), the Conservatoire and theatre (the director and conductor André Tapponnier-Dubout)24. Yet consecration by the Sonneur came on very particular terms, suffused with the family’s Catholicism and for that reason potentially less than welcome in municipal circles where Republican loyalty was prized. In Le Sonneur, the news that Fauré had in 1892 been made a national Inspector of Conservatoires was welcomed specifically because of Fauré’s training at the École Niedermeyer, «towards which the Sonneur de Bretagne’s director is hugely sympathetic» («pour laquelle la direction du Sonneur de Bretagne a de vives sympathies»), and because of his four years as organist in Rennes, at the church of Saint-Sauveur25. As we have seen, the Collin family included two Niedermeyer alumni, and the combination of Fauré’s Catholic education and local church practice trumped all mention of his (overwhelmingly

22. «Ce que je veux bien faire comprendre aux musiciens, c’est que je leur ouvre un musée où, eux aussi, pourront, comme les peintres, faire leur exposition. Que les compositeurs m’envoient leurs œuvres, j’en soulignerai l’apparition, plutôt en faisant valoir leurs qualités qu’en critiquant leurs défauts». Sonneur de Bretagne, i/1 (25 February 1892), p. 3. 23. Sonneur de Bretagne, i/8 (September 1892), pp. 137-138. 24. Le Moigne-Mussat 1988, p. 372. 25. Sonneur de Bretagne, i/5 (30 June 1892), pp. 85-86; ii/2 (February 1893), pp. 17-22; ii/3 (March 1893), pp. 36-37. 12 Reading with Provincial Eyes: The French Musical Press beyond the Capital secular) compositional achievement. Even the mock funeral notice for the Angers orchestra was tagged «Pray for them!» («Priez pour eux!»)26. Equally, the journal’s social appeal was narrowly targeted at the haute- bourgeoisie. A column on spa-town music indicates as much; another regular and extended column reported on local society marriages, where the wedding marches by Mendelssohn and Wagner were regularly teamed up with Gounod’s take on Bach or extracts from Samson et Dalila. While the journal was never attached to a particular club, the sense of socio-musical bubble is almost as strong as with Angers-Artiste. The fragile coalition of musical actors represented in the journal’s pages was seriously undermined by an April 1894 spat with Tapponnier-Dubout, when the conductor (who also directed the Grand-Théâtre) serially reneged on staging another Tiercelin/Ropartz work, the opéra-comique Le Diable couturier. But what killed Le Sonneur was closer to home: for all that it boasted numerous writers, its fate was sealed when Sullian Collin decided he could make a better career in Paris.

Decentralist and Internationalist Ambition in Lyon

The network of journals in Angers, Nantes and Rennes creates a sense of a regional journalistic conversation that is more than the sum of its parts, and where local solidarity is highly prized. In France’s second city, Lyon, we find slightly different expressions of solidarity, allied to the view that publicity for Lyon’s musical life is as important for reasons of competition with Paris as for bolstering musical confidence within the city itself. To illustrate this dual role I propose to concentrate here on a single weekly journal founded in 1903 and accompanied by a dedicated chamber-concert series from 1905: La Revue musicale de Lyon. This was the brainchild of yet another bright twenty-something, Léon Vallas (1879-1956), an early historical musicologist and biographer of Debussy and D’Indy, who taught music history at the Lyon Conservatoire and forged a career shuttling between Lyon and the capital. In 1912, Vallas incorporated the Revue musicale du Midi, published by Jean Barlatier in Marseille, to produce the Revue musicale française — a title notable for its ambition in reflecting the whole of France while emanating from the provinces. Under this latter title and that of La Nouvelle revue musicale (from 1920), Vallas’s journal continued to 1929.

26. Sonneur de Bretagne, ii/3 (March 1893), p. 44. 13 Katharine Ellis A recurrent problem for anyone trying to research the musical press is the absence of historical traces of back-office operations. Target readerships, geographical reach and contributing personnel have to be gleaned from title pages, their lists of agencies and prices, and subscription renewal notices. Print runs are often impossible to ascertain. We are lucky that a clutch of administrative papers for Vallas’s publication survives as part of his personal archive at the Bibliothèque Municipale in Lyon. Vallas could never claim to be Lyon’s principal critic since in a major city there were too many competitors for the title27; but his contemporaries for the daily papers tended to fulfil the standard responsive-mode role of the local critic, whereas Vallas set his sights wider even than had Destranges in Nantes. Specifically, alongside his local journalism he brought together the roles of Lyon correspondent for the Guide musical in Brussels and the Paris Mercure musical; he also maintained correspondence with London-based critics such as Edwin Evans and Dmitri Calvocoressi, the latter of whom requested Vallas’s permission to send him articles for publication in Lyon28. At first, in the decentralist manner of Lyon itself — where rivalry with Paris was and is a driving force — Vallas seems to have concentrated on educating the Lyonnais in modern music (not just French) and putting musical Lyon on the map with a journal that had impact well beyond the local. By the time his merged journal hit the presses in 1912, he was looking to upend French norms by creating a national title from outside the capital29. There were few precedents for such ambition, all of them connected with the more thoroughly decentralised phenomenon of Catholic sacred music30. Which is to say that there was no direct precedent. Vallas and Barlatier wrote: «The goal of the Revue musicale française is

27. One of those competitors, Antoine Sallès, sketches the local scene in Sallès 1911, 10-11. 28. Letter of 20 April 1905 from Calvocoressi to Vallas, Bibliolthèque Municipale de Lyon, MS Vallas 201. 29. That this ambition remained undimmed in 1920 is indicated by Vallas’s change of title to Nouvelle Revue musicale, in the very same year that Henry Prunières launched his La Revue musicale in Paris. 30. Third-Republic titles include: Musica sacra (Toulouse, 1874-1901), Sainte-Cécile (Reims, 1890-1901; Arras, 1901-1905), Revue du chant grégorien (Grenoble, 1892-1940), and the Revue de musique religieuse et de chant grégorien (Marseille, 1895-1900). Vatican centralisation provided an increasingly effective counterweight to Paris, even during the Concordat; but the revival of liturgical music in major cathedrals, and the presence of major sacred-music publishers in the French regions, all contributed to a significantly decentralised economy for Catholic sacred music in France. 14 Reading with Provincial Eyes: The French Musical Press beyond the Capital to chronicle musical activity across the whole of France and not just in Paris, as is the general practice among Parisian journals, disdainful of the provinces»31. Countering that disdain is what lies behind the inner title page of Vallas’s journal, which challenged Parisian primacy with almost insolent directness. Under the header ‘Rédactions régionales’ (Regional editorial offices), Vallas and Barlatier listed contact details for Paris, Lyon, Provence, Languedoc, Guyenne & Gascony, and Brittany. The sole concession to hierarchy was that Paris came first, while the header indicated that, far from including a capital city, everywhere was regional in the Vallas/Barlatier journalistic vision of France. But Vallas, who was undoubtedly the driving force of the merged journal, did more. We find him actively decentring Paris in the opening issue (1 March 1912). He opens with a belated eulogy for Albéniz, who had died in 1909, and follows with a long article on German, Russian and English music by the German-Swiss critic William Ritter. It takes 25 pages for the first Paris-centred article to appear (on Sylvio Lazzari’s opera La Lépreuse at the Opéra-Comique). And even here, the focus is on «new music» (the title of the column is ‘Œuvres nouvelles’) rather than «new Parisian music» — a policy cemented on 15 March when the Marseille premiere of Isidore de Lara’s opera Les Trois masques shared the column with a piece without geographical centre of gravity: the piano-duet version of Florent Schmitt’s Psalm 46. Rivalry with Paris infects other paratexts. Ostensibly, Vallas and Barlatier felt the need to explain themselves to Parisian subscribers when, in the second issue, the ‘Chronique lyonnaise’ preceded the ‘Chronique parisienne’: «In the page-setting of this issue we have had to give priority to the ‘Chronique Lyonnaise’ over the ‘Chronique Parisienne’. This ordering, which runs contrary to precedence, should not be interpreted as an aggressive demonstration of the provincial spirit that animates us. It was forced on us by a postal delay […]»32. What followed was an excruciatingly long explanation of delivery mishaps. Had this defence been printed at the start of the ‘Chronique lyonnaise’, as a preventative measure, we might be inclined to take such explanations at face value. But instead, subscribers encountered the disclaimer only after having read

31. «Le but de la Revue Française de Musique est de rendre compte du Mouvement musical de la France tout entière et non pas seulement de Paris, comme le font généralement les revues parisiennes, dédaigneuses de la Province». Revue française de musique, x/1 (1 March 1912), p. 1. 32. «Dans la mise en page de ce numéro nous avons dû donner le pas à la ‘Chronique Lyonnaise’ sur la ‘Chronique Parisienne’. Cet ordre, contraire à la préséance, ne doit pas être interprêté comme une aggressive manifestation de l’esprit provincial qui nous anime. Il nous a été imposé par un retard postal». Revue française de musique, x/2 (15 March 1912), p. 35. 15 Katharine Ellis five pages of Lyonnais news: it was placed at the head of the delayed ‘Chronique parisienne’. Surely a case of a disingenuous denial of ‘aggression’, accompanied by some Schadenfreude behind the scenes. What, then, did that back office look like? The difference of ambition between the Revue musicale de Lyon and the Revue française de musique is reflected in their subscriber base. A log-book from 1906 to 1912 shows a maximum of 468 subscribers to the Revue musicale of whom 362 were Lyonnais, 84 elsewhere in France (often regional, in Vienne or Saint-Étienne), 12 Parisian and 10 international. By contrast, for the Revue française in 1912-1913 the proportions were very different: 201 Lyonnais, 107 regional, 65 Parisian and 26 international33. Perhaps even more interesting is the section, in each log book, headed ‘Services’, which must surely refer to gratis copies. These were substantial: 116 for the Revue musicale de Lyon and 150 for the Revue française de musique. For both, 23 copies went to journals from other French regions; beyond those, 38 copies of the Revue musicale for Paris expanded to 69 for the Revue française, and 9 international copies increased respectively to 20. Vallas also needed to cultivate other power-brokers and influential friends in Lyon and elsewhere: within Lyon, his gratis list included the conductor Georges-Martin Witkowski, the veteran critic Antoine Sallès at the Salut public, the editors of the society magazine Lyon-Sport, the resident Wagnerian soprano Louise Janssen, and Édouard Herriot, mayor of Lyon from 1905. Beyond Lyon he sent copies to Destranges in Nantes, to the Guide musical in Brussels and the Musical Standard in London, and to the main Paris musical weeklies. Vallas was a difficult man with which to sustain a professional friendship, and correspondence relating to the two journals reveals hints of rifts (temporary or permanent) with other Lyon critics, such as Henry Fellot (who nevertheless addressed him as «tu»), Henri de Curzon at the Guide musical in Brussels, and even Witkowski himself 34. The situation with Witkowski is especially striking because at the beginning of the century, when their respective concert and journalistic ventures were in their infancy, he and Vallas had a symbiotic relationship. Witkowski needed Vallas’s help to launch his Schola Cantorum with all due pomp in 1903. When D’Indy, who had agreed to conduct, fell ill and was unable to attend, Witkowski fretted that his absence might be capitalised on by

33. Bibliothèque Municipale de Lyon MS Vallas 43. 34. Bibliothèque Municipale de Lyon MS Vallas 45 (Fellot), MS Vallas 201 (no. 33: Henri de Curzon, 21 May 1908); MS Vallas 201 (nos. 196, 203, 204 Witkowski, 4 March 1906, and 6 and 15 September 1907). 16 Reading with Provincial Eyes: The French Musical Press beyond the Capital sceptics to undermine the entire project: could Vallas please scotch in the press any hint that D’Indy might have abandoned support for Lyon’s new Schola35? Perhaps in return, on the eve of the Revue musicale de Lyon’s launch a few months later we find Witkowski offering backroom help with the journal — so long as that help remained «occulte» (hidden), with Vallas breathing not a word about it36. The message is clear: Witkowski expects to be cut some critical slack as he, an inexperienced conductor, launches first his choir and then, in 1905, his symphony orchestra. The situation is all the more complex in that Vallas not only sat on the advisory board of Witkowski’s Schola, but served as the Schola’s Secretary and wrote its manifesto37.

Conclusion

Where does this brief account of the ecosystems of provincial music periodicals leave us as musicologists? It seems to me that these journals demand different historical eyes and a different scholarly mindset from those of Paris. They respond to local needs and local priorities that we are only just beginning to understand, and which are predicated on levels of complicity, publicity and team work that render any analysis of critical ‘aesthetics’ even more fragile than in relation to cognate titles in the capital. Nothing about their models, their rhetorics and their terms of reference can be taken for granted until we have a better sense of their collective commonality, inter-connectedness and variety. And it is the latter that is especially important, because even beneath a veneer of similarity to Parisian practices, there is abundant evidence of local difference. To appreciate that difference it is necessary to reflect on the cultural work for which each journal is designed and to place it in comparative perspective at various scales: local relationships, dialogue with Paris, localism and/or independence from Paris, and dialogue with neighbouring and/or international centres. Individual critics, who turn out to be closely networked across and even between regions, present a microcosm of these more abstract relationships. Their inter-connectedness helps guard against the taking of a ‘silo’ approach to

35. Witkowski to Vallas, Bibliothèque Municipale de Lyon MS Vallas 201 (no. 193: 22 April 1903). 36. Witkowski to Vallas. Bibliothèque Municipale de Lyon MS Vallas 201 (no. 194, 19 October 1903). 37. Ferraton 1984, pp. 65-66. 17 Katharine Ellis provincial histories of music, of music-making or of the criticism that helped weave both into wider society. Most of all, as every one of these examples demonstrates, provincial critics who set up specialist journals emerge as much more than critics merely ‘receiving’ or even ‘consecrating’ musical work: the flipside of their apparent complicity with practicing musicians is their agency in creating and facilitating musical life, which they then open up to a wider public through discourse.

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