Following France’s embarrassing defeat during the Franco-Prussian and the subsequent formation of the German Empire, many French musicians sought to manufacture a unique French national identity by defining France’s national style. Championed at the time by composers such as Fauré, Saint-Saëns, and Franck, they opened the way for the innovations of Debussy and, later, Satie. While Debussy was, at the time, undeniably considered the greatest French composer of his era, if not of all time, the musical innovations of Satie would come to dominate the French musical conversation following WWI.
Following France’s loose “victory” in the Great War, French nationalism soared, reigniting the debate over what constitutes French music, primarily defined through anti-German sentiment, as it was some fifty years prior. The idea of “neo-classicism” was supported by the majority of composers in France of the time, but to varying degrees. Conservatives saw neo-classicism as a way of returning to tradition and rationality, whereas leftists saw neo-classicism as having a larger scope, as more of a universal musical idea (Burkholder 877-8).
The debate over the future of French music following WWI was dominated primarily by a group of composers knows as Les Six. Staunch admirers and followers of Erik Satie, the members of Les Six rejected the choice between these two opposing views of neo-classicism, accepting both a return to classical form and accepting the influence of outside musical ideas into France’s musical identity while also denying both the styles of Richard Wagner and that of the great French composers Debussy and Maurice Ravel. In a way, France’s national style in the 1920s was defined by this influx of outside styles, be it the influences of jazz, brought over by American soldiers in the 1910s, the music of Schoenberg and his followers in Vienna, and other musical styles particularly from the global east, as well as inside influences guided by Satie and his desire to have ‘everyday’ music.
Paris in the 20s was, in many ways, a melting pot of musical ideas from across Europe and the U.S.. Similarly, American popular music today takes influence from a variety of different musical styles, particularly from R&B and Latin music. Popular music today sometimes seeks to embody the everyday as well, and Satie’s idea of “furniture music” has been fully realized. However, the discourse surrounding popular music in America today is much more polarized than it seems to have been in Paris. Many conservative leaning critics today lament the vulgar-ization of popular music, calling for a return to the ‘ideal’ of popular music from the mid-late 20th century. Even this idea, however, existed in inter-war Paris — an idea that a return to the classical was necessary for music to again be great. Webster A. Young, a composer of classical music in an article published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute titled “Where Have All the Great Composers Gone”, calls for a new neo-classical movement to return, blaming this apparent lack of great composers on what he identifies as innovation that is “merely a kind of diminution or destruction”.