Debussy's Letters
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Sounding Nostalgia in Post-World War I Paris
University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2019 Sounding Nostalgia In Post-World War I Paris Tristan Paré-Morin University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Recommended Citation Paré-Morin, Tristan, "Sounding Nostalgia In Post-World War I Paris" (2019). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 3399. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/3399 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/3399 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Sounding Nostalgia In Post-World War I Paris Abstract In the years that immediately followed the Armistice of November 11, 1918, Paris was at a turning point in its history: the aftermath of the Great War overlapped with the early stages of what is commonly perceived as a decade of rejuvenation. This transitional period was marked by tension between the preservation (and reconstruction) of a certain prewar heritage and the negation of that heritage through a series of social and cultural innovations. In this dissertation, I examine the intricate role that nostalgia played across various conflicting experiences of sound and music in the cultural institutions and popular media of the city of Paris during that transition to peace, around 1919-1920. I show how artists understood nostalgia as an affective concept and how they employed it as a creative resource that served multiple personal, social, cultural, and national functions. Rather than using the term “nostalgia” as a mere diagnosis of temporal longing, I revert to the capricious definitions of the early twentieth century in order to propose a notion of nostalgia as a set of interconnected forms of longing. -
Paris, 1918-45
un :al Chapter II a nd or Paris , 1918-45 ,-e ed MARK D EVOTO l.S. as es. 21 March 1918 was the first day of spring. T o celebrate it, the German he army, hoping to break a stalemate that had lasted more than three tat years, attacked along the western front in Flanders, pushing back the nv allied armies within a few days to a point where Paris was within reach an oflong-range cannon. When Claude Debussy, who died on 25 M arch, was buried three days later in the Pere-Laehaise Cemetery in Paris, nobody lingered for eulogies. The critic Louis Laloy wrote some years later: B. Th<' sky was overcast. There was a rumbling in the distance. \Vas it a storm, the explosion of a shell, or the guns atrhe front? Along the wide avenues the only traffic consisted of militarr trucks; people on the pavements pressed ahead hurriedly ... The shopkeepers questioned each other at their doors and glanced at the streamers on the wreaths. 'II parait que c'ctait un musicicn,' they said. 1 Fortified by the surrender of the Russians on the eastern front, the spring offensive of 1918 in France was the last and most desperate gamble of the German empire-and it almost succeeded. But its failure was decisive by late summer, and the greatest war in history was over by November, leaving in its wake a continent transformed by social lb\ convulsion, economic ruin and a devastation of human spirit. The four-year struggle had exhausted not only armies but whole civiliza tions. -
Claude Debussy in 2018: a Centenary Celebration Abstracts and Biographies
19-23/03/18 CLAUDE DEBUSSY IN 2018: A CENTENARY CELEBRATION ABSTRACTS AND BIOGRAPHIES Claude Debussy in 2018: A Centenary Celebration Abstracts and Biographies I. Debussy Perspectives, 1918-2018 RNCM, Manchester Monday, 19 March Paper session A: Debussy’s Style in History, Conference Room, 2.00-5.00 Chair: Marianne Wheeldon 2.00-2.30 – Mark DeVoto (Tufts University), ‘Debussy’s Evolving Style and Technique in Rodrigue et Chimène’ Claude Debussy’s Rodrigue et Chimène, on which he worked for two years in 1891-92 before abandoning it, is the most extensive of more than a dozen unfinished operatic projects that occupied him during his lifetime. It can also be regarded as a Franco-Wagnerian opera in the same tradition as Lalo’s Le Roi d’Ys (1888), Chabrier’s Gwendoline (1886), d’Indy’s Fervaal (1895), and Chausson’s Le Roi Arthus (1895), representing part of the absorption of the younger generation of French composers in Wagner’s operatic ideals, harmonic idiom, and quasi-medieval myth; yet this kinship, more than the weaknesses of Catulle Mendès’s libretto, may be the real reason that Debussy cast Rodrigue aside, recognising it as a necessary exercise to be discarded before he could find his own operatic voice (as he soon did in Pelléas et Mélisande, beginning in 1893). The sketches for Rodrigue et Chimène shed considerable light on the evolution of Debussy’s technique in dramatic construction as well as his idiosyncratic approach to tonal form. Even in its unfinished state — comprising three out of a projected four acts — the opera represents an impressive transitional stage between the Fantaisie for piano and orchestra (1890) and the full emergence of his genius, beginning with the String Quartet (1893) and the Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un faune (1894). -
Nietzsche, Debussy, and the Shadow of Wagner
NIETZSCHE, DEBUSSY, AND THE SHADOW OF WAGNER A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Tekla B. Babyak May 2014 ©2014 Tekla B. Babyak ii ABSTRACT NIETZSCHE, DEBUSSY, AND THE SHADOW OF WAGNER Tekla B. Babyak, Ph.D. Cornell University 2014 Debussy was an ardent nationalist who sought to purge all German (especially Wagnerian) stylistic features from his music. He claimed that he wanted his music to express his French identity. Much of his music, however, is saturated with markers of exoticism. My dissertation explores the relationship between his interest in musical exoticism and his anti-Wagnerian nationalism. I argue that he used exotic markers as a nationalistic reaction against Wagner. He perceived these markers as symbols of French identity. By the time that he started writing exotic music, in the 1890’s, exoticism was a deeply entrenched tradition in French musical culture. Many 19th-century French composers, including Felicien David, Bizet, Massenet, and Saint-Saëns, founded this tradition of musical exoticism and established a lexicon of exotic markers, such as modality, static harmonies, descending chromatic lines and pentatonicism. Through incorporating these markers into his musical style, Debussy gives his music a French nationalistic stamp. I argue that the German philosopher Nietzsche shaped Debussy’s nationalistic attitude toward musical exoticism. In 1888, Nietzsche asserted that Bizet’s musical exoticism was an effective antidote to Wagner. Nietzsche wrote that music should be “Mediterranized,” a dictum that became extremely famous in fin-de-siècle France. -
At the Time of His Death in 1937, Maurice Ravel Was the Most Celebrated Contemporary Composer in France
PURLOINED POETICS: THE GROTESQUE IN THE MUSIC OF MAURICE RAVEL By JESSIE FILLERUP Copyright 2009 Submitted to the graduate degree program in Music and the faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy. ____________________________ Chairperson Committee members: ____________________________ ____________________________ ____________________________ ____________________________ ____________________________ Date defended: 6 April 2009 The Dissertation Committee for Jessie Fillerup certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: PURLOINED POETICS: THE GROTESQUE IN THE MUSIC OF MAURICE RAVEL Committee: ____________________________ Chairperson ____________________________ ____________________________ ____________________________ ____________________________ ____________________________ Date approved: 6 April 2009 ii To Michael and Rebecca Mahalo nui loa iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Early on, I wondered if my experience writing a dissertation would resemble the fictional Jack Burden’s, who entered a period of inert semi-consciousness known as “the Great Sleep.” Faced with the prospect of completing his dissertation, Jack slept fourteen or fifteen hours a night; when he finally woke, it was to contemplate this thought: “If I don’t get up I can’t go back to bed.”1 I was fortunate to have better reasons for getting up in the morning. Those reasons begin with my dissertation advisor, Roberta Freund Schwartz, a scholar of Renaissance music and the blues; she shepherded my project with such care and conviction that anyone not looking closely would think I was writing about Robert Johnson, not Ravel. Roberta encouraged me to strive for greater clarity by sloughing off the stylistic and scholarly accretions that cling to graduate students like barnacles. I am grateful for her patience and conscientious attention to my writing, as well as her sustained enthusiasm for this project; her dedication is inspiring. -
Le Cas Satie'
CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM AND 'LE CAS SATIE' by KARIN SANDBERG-BRENNAN B.Mus., San Francisco State University, 1980 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES Music Department We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA June 1983 © Karin Sandberg-Brennan, 1983 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the Head of my Department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of Music The University of British Columbia 2075 Wesbrook Place Vancouver, Canada V6T 1W5 Date: 10 June 1983 i i Abstract While scholars recognize Satie's important influence on the music of our century, the extent and specific nature of his influence has yet to be defined. Focusing on analyses of his personality and his music, modern literature continually neglects to study Satie's historical importance. It is his so- called bizarre and eccentric personality and the pretended simplicity of his musical style that have, in general, attracted modern authors' attention. Consequently, a controversy known as "Le Cas Satie" has developed: How could an eccentric composer whose music is frequently considered inconsequential, have truly exerted the great influence attributed to him in modern literature? If Satie's historical position is to be understood, modern literature's portrayal of the composer must be examined for accuracy, and the extent of his impact must be clarified. -
University of Cincinnati
UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI Date: 1-Sep-2009 I, James Alexander Hurd , hereby submit this original work as part of the requirements for the degree of: Doctor of Musical Arts in Voice It is entitled: From a Peacock to Apocope: An Examination of Maurice Ravel’s Text Setting in the Histoires naturelles, L’Heure espagnole and Other Pre-WWI Vocal Works. Student Signature: James Alexander Hurd This work and its defense approved by: Committee Chair: Kenneth Griffiths, MM Kenneth Griffiths, MM David Adams, MM David Adams, MM Barbara Honn, MM Barbara Honn, MM 10/30/2009 191 From a Peacock to Apocope: An Examination of Maurice Ravel’s Text Setting in the Histoires naturelles, L’Heure espagnole and Other Pre-WWI Vocal Works A document submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF MUSICAL ARTS in the Performance Studies Division of the College-Conservatory of Music 2009 by James Alexander Hurd B.A., Oberlin College, 1998 B.M., Oberlin College, 1998 M.M., University of Cincinnati, 2001 Committee Chair: Kenneth Griffiths ABSTRACT The groundbreaking Histoires naturelles (1906) were one of Maurice Ravel’s most important early works. Employing prose and a conversational vocal style, they redefined the mélodie—a genre that had been characterized by its use of poetry and aristocratic French diction. Performance of these five songs presents singers with formidable challenges. The vocal line, imitating speech, is notable for its rhythmic complexity. In some cases, it eschews a legato line entirely. Often, it favors a dry, even ironic delivery. -
Fashionable Innovation: Debussysme in Early Twentieth-Century France
Fashionable Innovation: Debussysme in Early Twentieth-Century France Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment for the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Jane Ellen Harrison, M.A. Graduate Program in Music The Ohio State University 2011 Dissertation Committee: Danielle Fosler-Lussier, Advisor Arved Ashby David Huron Copyright Jane Ellen Harrison 2011 Abstract This dissertation traces the development between 1890 and 1930 of a French musical trend referred to in the press of the era as debussysme. Based on analysis of over 250 pieces by more than thirty composers, I describe debussysme as a cohesive collection of techniques that emerged in the works of the earliest debussystes, such as Ravel, Debussy, and Florent Schmitt, with aesthetic roots in contemporaneous philosophy of the ¦§¨¨ © ¨ ¨ ¨ § ¡ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¢£ ¤ ¢ ¥ ¥ mind. a diverse group of composers embraced techniques that made new perceptual demands of their listeners: I examine these techniques by drawing on research in the field of music cognition. This study deepens our understanding of French musical modernism, of which debussysme was a key stage. A study of debussysme also teaches us about the nature of shared compositional practices: how they are generated, how they are diffused through social channels, and how individuals align themselves with or disavow fashionable usages. I explore the distinct phases of the debussyste movement and the social motivations of the composers who joined it, with the aid of concepts from sociological research on the diffusion of innovations. As the composers associated with debussysme gained prestige in the French musical community and on concert stages, their shared idiom became commercially viable. -
The Language of Enchantment
The Language of Enchantment: Childhood and Fairytale in the Music of Maurice Ravel Emily Alison Kilpatrick Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Elder Conservatorium of Music Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences The University of Adelaide April 2008 Introduction Prologue When Claude Moreau unlocks the doors of the Musée Maurice Ravel, she often calls out ‘Salut, petit Maurice!’. If you spend your working day in someone else’s house – sweep their floors, browse through their library, play their piano and scrub paint stains off their bathroom basin – you do begin to feel that you know them quite well. And sometimes you talk to them. Even if they’ve been dead since 1937. Le Belvédère, in which Ravel lived from 1921 until his death, does recall its owner with an immediacy that can be startling. The imprint of his personality is quickly discernible in the precisely arranged furnishings and objects that fill its small, oddly- shaped rooms. It is easy to imagine how Ravel used the space and how he moved about the house, because its construction and organisation compel the visitor into similar patterns of movement and interaction. There is a balcony perfectly shaped for sitting outside and talking, a balcony rail just the right height for leaning on and contemplating the view of the village and surrounding countryside. There is a flight of stairs so tiny that only a very small person could negotiate them in comfort. There is a separate, shadowy music room, placed at the end of the house, where one can move easily between desk and piano, and where the dark blue and black walls and small window contrast with the open, light-filled living spaces. -
AMS Pittsburgh 2013: Abstracts
Visit us in the exhibit hall… browse new titles, purchase display New Ashgate Music titles copies at 50% off, www.ashgate.com/AMS2013 or set up a standing order. And We’re All Brothers: Singing in Opera as Soundtrack Yiddish in Contemporary North America Jeongwon Joe Abigail Wood Ashgate Interdisciplinary Studies in Opera SOAS Musicology Series Includes 34 b&w illustrations Includes 8 music examples Sep 2013 / 224 pages / Hbk / 978-0-7546-6718-6 Jun 2013 / 218 pages / Hbk / 978-1-4094-4533-3 Music Asylums: Wellbeing The Ashgate Research Companion to Through Music in Everyday Life Minimalist and Postminimalist Music Tia DeNora Edited by Keith Potter, Kyle Gann Music and Change: Ecological Perspectives and Pwyll ap Siôn Includes 4 b&w illustrations Includes 9 b&w illustrations, 53 music examples Sep 2013 / 178 pages / Hbk / 978-1-4094-3759-8 and 22 commissioned essays Nov 2013 / 458 pages / Hbk / 978-1-4094-3549-5 The Politics of Plainchant in fin-de-siècle France Brahms Beyond Mastery Katharine Ellis His Sarabande and Gavotte, Royal Musical Association Monographs and its Recompositions Includes 9 b&w illustrations Robert Pascall Apr 2013 / 164 pages / Hbk / 978-1-4094-6373-3 Royal Musical Association Monographs Includes 3 illustrations and 9 music examples Readying Cavalli’s Operas May 2013 / 116 pages / Hbk / 978-1-4094-6557-7 for the Stage Manuscript, Edition, Production Contemplating Shostakovich: Edited by Ellen Rosand Life, Music and Film Ashgate Interdisciplinary Studies in Opera Edited by Alexander Ivashkin Includes 57 illustrations -
Boulanger, Satie, and Debussy: Their Spheres of Influence on French Melodie and American Art Song 1
ABSTRACT Title: BOULANGER, SATIE, AND DEBUSSY: THEIR SPHERES OF INFLUENCE ON FRENCH MELODIE AND AMERICAN ART SONG 1. THE LEGACY OF NADIA BOULANGER: HER INFLUENCE ON AMERICAN SONG COMPOSERS 2. SATIE, SELECTED MEMBERS OF LES SIX, AND ROREM IN FRANCE 3. DEBUSSY: A CATALYST FOR LES APACHES, RAVEL AND FALLA Young Hee Kim, Doctor of Musical Arts, 2011 Directed By: Professor Dominic Cossa Professor Martha Randall School of Music This dissertation project explored the spheres of influence on art song by Nadia Boulanger, Erik Satie, and Claude Debussy within Boulangeries, Les Six, and Les Apaches. After World War I, American composers flocked to Paris to study with Boulanger. Boulanger gave her students the confidence to explore their native talents instead of mimicking foreign models. Works by Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, Theodore Chanler, John Duke, and Richard Hundley were included in the first dissertation recital on January 31, 2010: The Legacy of Nadia Boulanger: Her Influence on American Song Composers. Satie established a new modern French musical style, and was a catalyst for the formation of Les Six. Ned Rorem came to Paris, and had a close association with Les Six. Works by Satie, and three members of Les Six, Francis Poulenc, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud; and Rorem were featured in the second recital on September 1, 2010: Satie, Selected Members of Les Six, and Rorem in Paris. Debussy was one of the most significant French composers in the late nineteenth century, predating Boulanger and Satie. Young composers exploring new directions were inspired by Debussy, forming the group Les Apaches. The final recital, April 7, 2011, featured works by Debussy and two members of Les Apaches, Maurice Ravel and Manuel de Falla: Debussy: A Catalyst for Les Apaches, Ravel and Falla. -
University of Cincinnati
UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI Date:___________________ August 19, 2004 I, _________________________________________________________,Janice Louise Minor hereby submit this work as part of the requirements for the degree of: Doctor of Musical Arts in: Clarinet Performance It is entitled: "WERE THEY TRULY NEOCLASSIC?" A STUDY OF FRENCH NEOCLASSICISM THROUGH SELECTED CLARINET SONATAS BY "LES SIX" COMPOSERS: ARTHUR HONEGGER, GERMAINE TAILLEFERRE, DARIUS MILHAUD, AND FRANCIS POULENC This work and its defense approved by: Chair: _______________________________Ronald de Kant _______________________________Sandra Rivers _______________________________Robert Zierolf _______________________________ _______________________________ “WERE THEY TRULY NEOCLASSIC?” A STUDY OF FRENCH NEOCLASSISM THROUGH SELECTED CLARINET SONATAS BY “LES SIX” COMPOSERS: ARTHUR HONEGGER, GERMAINE TAILLEFERRE, DARIUS MILHAUD, AND FRANCIS POULENC A thesis submitted to the Division of Research and Advanced Studies of the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF MUSICAL ARTS in the Performance Studies Division of the College-Conservatory of Music 2004 By Janice L. Minor B.F.A., State University of New York-College at Purchase, 1986 M.M., Northwestern University, 1988 Artist Diploma, DePaul University, 1995 Committee Chair: Professor Ronald de Kant Abstract The devastation of World War I had a great effect on the arts. Socio-economic collapse following this war played a major role in the musical transition from nineteenth-century romanticism to twentieth-century “isms. As many artists, particularly in France, sought a return to simplicity, the drama and emotions of romanticism, as well as the luxuriousness of impressionism was rejected. This “new simplicity” emphasized clarity, objectivity, reality, refinement, and concision. This new period of restraint and balance resulted in the neoclassic movement of the 1920s and remained strong until after 1945.