The Musical Legacy of Wartime France california studies in 20th-century music Richard Taruskin, General Editor 1. Revealing Masks: Exotic Influences and Ritualized Performance in Modernist Music Theater, by W. Anthony Sheppard 2. Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement, by Simon Morrison 3. German Modernism: Music and the Arts, by Walter Frisch 4. New Music, New Allies: American Experimental Music in West Germany from the Zero Hour to Reunification, by Amy Beal 5. Bartók, Hungary, and the Renewal of Tradition: Case Studies in the Intersection of Modernity and Nationality, by David E. Schneider 6. Classic Chic: Music, Fashion, and Modernism, by Mary E. Davis 7. Music Divided: Bartók’s Legacy in Cold War Culture, by Danielle Fosler-Lussier 8. Jewish Identities: Nationalism, Racism, and Utopianism in Twentieth-Century Art Music, by Klára Móricz 9. Brecht at the Opera, by Joy H. Calico 10. Beautiful Monsters: Imagining the Classic in Musical Media, by Michael Long 11. Experimentalism Otherwise: The New York Avant-Garde and Its Limits, by Benjamin Piekut 12. Music and the Elusive Revolution: Cultural Politics and Political Culture in France, 1968–1981, by Eric Drott 13. Music and Politics in San Francisco: From the 1906 Quake to the Second World War, by Leta E. Miller 14. Frontier Figures: American Music and the Mythology of the American West, by Beth E. Levy 15. In Search of a Concrete Music, by Pierre Schaeffer, translated by Christine North and John Dack 16. The Musical Legacy of Wartime France, by Leslie A. Sprout The Musical Legacy of Wartime France leslie a. sprout University of California Press berkeley los angeles london University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2013 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sprout, Leslie A. The musical legacy of wartime France / Leslie A. Sprout. pages cm. — (California studies in 20th-century music ; 16) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-520-27530-0 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn 978-0-520-95527-1 (ebook) 1. Music—France—20th century—History and criticism. 2. World War, 1939–1945—Music and the war. I. Title. ML270.5.S67 2013 780.944’09044—dc23 2012045796 Manufactured in the United States of America Chapters 2, 3, and 5 appeared in earlier versions in the following publications. Chapter 2: “Unlocking the Mystery of Honegger,” New York Times, Sunday Arts & Leisure section, 29 August 2010; © The New York Times. Chapter 3: “Messiaen, Jolivet, and the Soldier-Composers of Wartime France,” Musical Quarterly 87, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 259–304; © Oxford University Press. Chapter 5: “The 1945 Stravinsky Debates: Nigg, Messiaen, and the Early Cold War in France,” special issue on music and the cold war, Journal of Musicology 26, no. 1 (Winter 2009): 85–131; © University of California Press. 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 In keeping with a commitment to support environmentally responsible and sustainable printing practices, UC Press has printed this book on Rolland Enviro100, a 100% post-consumer fiber paper that is FSC certified, deinked, processed chlorine-free, and manufactured with renewable biogas energy. It is acid-free and EcoLogo certified. For my parents Contents List of Illustrations ix Preface and Acknowledgments xi 1. poulenc’s wartime secrets 1 2. honegger’s postwar rehabilitation 38 3. ignoring jolivet’s testimony, embracing messiaen’s memories 80 4. the timeliness of duruflé’s requiem 120 5. from the postwar to the cold war: protesting stravinsky in postwar france 151 Notes 185 Bibliography 249 Index 263 Illustrations figures 1. Political cartoon, Le Monde, 28 January 1997 xvii 2. Olivier Messiaen, Quartet for the End of Time (Deutsche Grammophon, 2000) 81 3. Illustration of music making in the Stalag 98 4. Certificate signed by Duruflé upon completion of his Requiem, 21 January 1948 128 5. Plainchant for the Introit to the Mass for the Dead (Liber usualis, 1930) 132 examples 1. Comparison of Claude Debussy, La Mer, and Francis Poulenc, Les Animaux modèles 21 2. Citations of Alsace et Lorraine in Les Animaux modèles 24 3. Francis Poulenc, Deux poèmes de Louis Aragon, “C,” mm. 37–41 28 4. Arthur Honegger, Chant de Libération 52 5. Marly, Druon, and Kessel, Le Chant des Partisans, first stanza, mm. 1–8 60 6. Chant de la Délivrance, end of refrain and fanfare, mm. 73–83 61 7. Chant de la Délivrance, beginning of verse 1, mm. 8–16 67 8. Émile Damais, O Nuit, mm. 85–103 99 9. Jean Martinon, Musique d’exil: Mouvement symphonique, op. 31, excerpts 101 x / Illustrations 10. Olivier Messiaen, Quatuor pour la fin du Temps, V. “Louange à l’Éternité de Jésus,” mm. 1–11 103 11. André Jolivet, Trois Complaintes du soldat, I. “La complainte du soldat vaincu,” mm. 1–12 104 12. André Jolivet, Trois Complaintes du soldat, I. “La complainte du soldat vaincu,” mm. 59–71 107 13. André Jolivet, Trois Complaintes du soldat, II. “La complainte du pont de Gien,” refrain, mm. 24–30 109 14. Comparison of Introit, Mass for the Dead 133 15. Maurice Duruflé, Requiem, op. 9, Introit, mm. 1–7 134 16. Comparison of Ubi Caritas, hymn for Vespers on Maundy Thursday 139 17. Comparison of Tantum Ergo, hymn for Feast of Corpus Christi 141 18. Comparison of Sanctus, Mass for the Dead 143 19. Jacques Ibert, Capriccio, mm. 117–22 159 20. Igor Stravinsky, Danses concertantes, III. “Thème varié,” mm. 43–46 160 21. Serge Nigg, Piano Concerto no. 1, first movement, excerpts 182 tables 1. Uses of Chant de la Délivrance in the soundtrack for Un Ami viendra ce soir 63 2. Un Ami viendra ce soir: First montage (details) 65 3. Orchestral performances of Honegger’s music in Paris, 1945–1946 71 4. AFAA recordings anthology of contemporary French music (1944) 87 5. Selected performances of Messiaen’s music in wartime France 92 6. Stravinsky Festival programs, Orchestre national (Paris, January–July 1945) 152 7. Concert program, Société privée de musique de chambre (Paris, 27 February 1945) 153 Preface and Acknowledgments In 1994 I received a Fulbright grant to join a research group at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) in Paris to study French musi- cal life during the Second World War. I arrived in August to a city celebrat- ing the fiftieth anniversary of France’s liberation from German occupation. I assumed that, in exploring the wartime activities of French composers, I would be conducting historical research—writing a case study, as it were, of music, politics, and national identity. Yet, at a Fulbright reception before the research group’s first meeting, two elderly French music lovers insisted to me that no French music had been performed in wartime France. The only music they had heard in occupied Paris, they informed me, was German music played by German military bands. At the same time, French radio stations were marking the anniversary of the liberation by airing com- memorative broadcasts of wartime recordings by French ensembles, inter- spersed with interviews of aging French musicians about their wartime experiences. This startling juxtaposition of denial and homage was the first of several indications that the highly charged circumstances of the Second World War in France—the swift defeat by the German army and the humiliating armistice with Hitler in June 1940, the ordeal of foreign occu- pation, the moral complexities of France’s wartime Vichy regime, and the unresolved ambiguities of the French Resistance—were still a matter of lively national debate. This book addresses three misconceptions about music in France during the Second World War. The first, expressed to me by the elderly music lov- ers at the 1994 Fulbright reception, is that French music and musicians played a negligible role in the cultural life of wartime France. The decades- long reluctance of the French to acknowledge that their compatriots played key roles in any aspect of life in wartime France inspired the historian xi xii / Preface and Acknowledgments Henry Rousso in 1987 to devote an entire book to what he memorably called the “Vichy syndrome”: the postwar French pattern of alternately repressing and obsessing about the traumas of Vichy and the German occu- pation.1 Although several historians—particularly after Robert O. Paxton’s landmark Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order was published in 1972—have written in detail about life in wartime France, French musical life during the war has been slow to receive scholarly treatment. The 2001 publication La vie musicale sous Vichy, a collection of essays summarizing the findings of the CNRS research group I joined in 1994, was the first comprehensive study of the subject to appear.2 My current book builds on subsequent publications by members of the CNRS research group, includ- ing my 2000 doctoral dissertation, in narrating the cultural and political significance of French music during the war. More specifically, I investigate the ways in which both the Vichy regime and the French Resistance were heavily invested in fostering creative expression through contemporary music in wartime France. The second misconception that I address in this book is that we can now, nearly seventy years after the liberation, make definitive moral judgments about the activities of composers who lived and worked in wartime France.