When I signed up for this class, I was excited. Music and history are the two academic subjects that interest me the most, and the classes I like most are the classes that look at the intersection of those two disciplines. It is impossible to understand music without understanding its historical context. Tensions between France and Germany were a major part of European history from the Middle Ages until 1945, and so naturally they played a role in French music and nationalism.
One example of this that I find especially fascinating is how French composers used Asian and African elements in their music as a way of making their music non-German. France was once one of the world colonial powers, Germany never had very many colonies, and they lost the few they did have after losing WWII. As you can see below, in addition to most of West Africa, France also owned Indochina, Syria, Lebanon, Madagascar, Djibouti, French Guiana, and several small islands. Germany owned nothing except for Germany itself. This context makes the Negrophilia (and also Debussy’s earlier work inspired by Southeast Asian music) much more understandable, rather than merely being a fad, it was a way for French composers to use the exotic other to set themselves off from the German other.
