COMPOSING SYMBOLISM’S MUSICALITY OF LANGUAGE IN FIN-DE-SIÈCLE FRANCE Megan Elizabeth Varvir Coe, B.A., M.A. Dissertation Prepared for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS August 2016 APPROVED: Peter Mondelli, Major Professor Hendrik Schulze, Committee Member Steven Friedson, Committee Member Frank Heidlberger, Chair of the Division of Music History, Theory, and Ethnomusicology Benjamin Brand, Director of Graduate Studies, College of Music John Richmond, Dean of the College of Music Victor Prybutok, Vice Provost of the Toulouse Graduate School Varvir Coe, Megan Elizabeth. Composing Symbolism’s Musicality of Language in fin- de-siècle France. Doctor of Philosophy (Musicology), August 2016, 364 pp., 9 tables, 15 figures, 31 musical examples, bibliography, 520 titles. In this dissertation, I explore the musical prosody of the literary symbolists and the influence of this prosody on fin-de-siècle French music. Contrary to previous categorizations of music as symbolist based on a characteristic “sound,” I argue that symbolist aesthetics demonstrably influenced musical construction and reception. My scholarship reveals that symbolist musical works across genres share an approach to composition rooted in the symbolist concept of musicality of language, a concept that shapes this music on sonic, structural, and conceptual levels. I investigate the musical responses of four different composers to a single symbolist text, Oscar Wilde’s one-act play Salomé, written in French in 1891, as case studies in order to elucidate how a symbolist musicality of language informed their creation, performance, and critical reception. The musical works evaluated as case studies are Antoine Mariotte’s Salomé, Richard Strauss’s Salomé, Aleksandr Glazunov’s Introduction et La Danse de Salomée, and Florent Schmitt’s La Tragédie de Salomé. Recognition of symbolist influence on composition, and, in the case of works for the stage, on production and performance expands the repertory of music we can view critically through the lens of symbolism, developing not only our understanding of music’s role in this difficult and often contradictory aesthetic philosophy but also our perception of fin-de-siècle musical culture in general. Copyright 2016 by Megan Elizabeth Varvir Coe ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I openly acknowledge the impossibility of thanking everyone who has supported and assisted me throughout the dissertation research and writing process. With this caveat in mind, I wish to extend my deepest gratitude to Dr. Peter Mondelli, my advisor, without whom this project would never have advanced beyond the conceptual stage, and to my committee members, Dr. Hendrik Schulze and Dr. Steven Friedson, for their insight and advice. I also wish to thank Dr. Clair Rowden for her mentorship and continual kindness. I thank my colleagues Clare Carrasco, Ben Dobbs, Jeff Ensign, Kimary Fick, Andrea Recek, Cole Ritchie, Jon Sauceda, and Shana Southard-Dobbs for their unwavering support and friendship. I am eternally grateful to my parents, Mark and Lee Ann Varvir, from whom I learned to love music and so much more. None of my life’s achievements, academic or otherwise, would have been possible without my husband, Jude P. Coe, whose name deserves a place on the title page as much as mine. Lastly, I dedicate this dissertation to the memory of Ken Holley whose excitement about my earning this degree rivaled only Jude’s and my own. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................... iii LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................................ vii LIST OF FIGURES ..................................................................................................................... viii LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES ................................................................................................ ix CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .....................................................................................................1 Composing Symbolism’s Musicality of Language ..............................................................3 Music as Message, Medium, and Method in Symbolist Literature .....................................7 Why Salomé?: Musicality of Language in Oscar Wilde’s Play .........................................12 Organization of Text and Chapter Summaries...................................................................20 Note to the Reader .............................................................................................................23 CHAPTER 2 CAUGHT BETWEEN AESTHETICS AND POLITICS: MARIOTTE’S SALOMÉ ........................................................................................................................................24 Part 1: Musicality of Language in Mariotte’s Salomé .......................................................26 Antoine Mariotte ....................................................................................................26 Mariotte’s Libretto .................................................................................................29 Mariotte’s Score .....................................................................................................36 Leitmotifs ...................................................................................................37 Musical Symbols ........................................................................................46 Text-Setting, Vocal Timbre, and Declamation ..........................................53 Part 2: French Nationalism and the Critical Reception of Salomé ....................................60 “Le Cas Strauss-Mariotte” .....................................................................................60 Critical Reception (1908-1912) .............................................................................72 iv French Cultural Politics at the fin-de-siècle ...............................................72 Press Reception ..........................................................................................78 Dueling Salomé Operas in Paris, 1910 ......................................................93 Language, Text-Setting, and French Nationalism ...................................101 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................105 CHAPTER 3 MUSIKDRAMA OR DRAME MUSICAL?: STRAUSS’S TWO SALOMÉ OPERAS ......................................................................................................................................108 Richard Strauss as Librettist ............................................................................................109 Strauss and Romain Rolland ............................................................................................111 Analysis of Text-Setting in Salome and Salomé ..............................................................132 Premiere of Salomé in Brussels and Paris........................................................................147 Critical Reception ............................................................................................................153 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................163 CHAPTER 4 A MYSTIC SYMBOLIST SALOMÉ BETWEEN ST. PETERSBURG AND PARIS ..........................................................................................................................................165 Part 1: Wilde’s Salomé in Silver Age Russia...................................................................167 Mystic Symbolism and Ivanov’s Theater of Inoy Svet ........................................167 Ida Rubinstein as Mystic Symbolist ....................................................................179 Part 2: Salomé in St. Petersburg, 1908 .............................................................................187 Rubinstein’s Collaborators as Mystic Symbolists ...............................................187 Léon Bakst, Décor ...................................................................................189 Vsevolod Meyerhold, Staging .................................................................195 Michel Fokine, Choreography .................................................................199 Aleksandr Glazunov, Music.....................................................................205 v Performance and Reception .................................................................................221 Part 3: Salomé in Paris, 1912 ...........................................................................................225 Conception and Performance ...............................................................................225 Pre-Performance Concert .....................................................................................231 Critical Reception ................................................................................................236 Wilde’s Musicality of Language ..............................................................239 Musicality in Rubinstein’s Production.....................................................244 Glazunov’s Music and the Pre-Performance Concert ..............................247 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................251