Many of the composers and writers we’ve read have discussed the differences between national and individual identity in French music, as well as the way these identities overlap. I enjoyed Bauer’s examination of the Belgian born composer César Franck. After studying and performing his violin sonata I found it interesting to make new meanings of Franck’s long melodies based on Bauer’s1 argument. I had always considered his long phrases to sound loving and romantic, but now view them as reflecting a French musical movement against the two and four bar phrases of German Romanticism. Ravel wrote 2of how composers embody both a national and individual consciousness, and I see this in Franck’s sonata. He develops long “anti-romantic’ themes through his French consciousness, but continually presents them in unique ways through his individuality as a composer, especially through haunting contrasts in the third movement, Recitativo-Fantasia.
Another part of the French nationalist musical movement I found interesting was the way that French composers challenge Wagner’s musical presence in France. Composers took recognizable elements of Wagner’s music, such as the use of tritones as a consonance and the formidable length of his works, and used them as parody. They took elements associated with the heaviness of his music and made them light and comedic, designed for popular consumption. For example, in Satie’s piece Vexations, a short passage consisting of many tritones is asked to be repeated 840 times. While this is a parody, and probably meant to make fun of the length of Wagner’s compositions, it really isn’t fit for popular consumption due to its length. I find it ironic that composers like Satie were critiquing Wagner with pieces that aren’t likely to be performed, while much of Wagner’s music was being performed in Paris between 1870 and 1920. They were still using Wagner’s musical ideas. This seems relatable to many aspects of American popular music today, where popular artists are using similar musical forms and structures under lyrics that are meant to be entertaining and applicable to the masses, and arguably lack depth.
However, I initially found some of Ravel’s ideas 2 in his 1928 speech on ‘contemporary’ music much less comprehensible. He speaks of how composers shouldn’t understand their work in a way that allows them to explain it to other people. Like other French composers at this time, Ravel longed for a distinct simplicity to be characteristic of French music. However, in his 1928 speech he claims that a successful work won’t be comprehensible at the first hearing. He wants audiences to find depth within the simple, a high expectation for audiences that simultaneously adored the extensiveness of Wagner while growing to enjoy French music designed for popular consumption. Perhaps Ravel is hoping for French audiences to have high expectations and tasteful ears compared to German audiences, as Cocteau claims in the Cock and the Harlequin.3 Either way, Ravel seems to be incorporating aspects of his national and individual identity into the French musical movement, demonstrating its continued complexity past 1920.