Many of the things we’ve addressed this semester are particularly familiar to me, and others were completely strange and things I’d never considered before. While not having known specifically how it affected the French people, I knew that WWI had a serious impact on the French people as a whole, but I had no idea it was responsible for the liberation of French women and non-binary identities. I was also completely unaware that French society – to a certain extent – was tolerant of these people, and they were allowed to express themselves openly and still find mainstream success. These considerations were important for my paper on Virgil Thomson. Despite the fact that he was an American, he still had a large influence on the French culture of the time and the musical landscape of the nation. Another thing I was already fairly familiar with was the interest in jazz, but I also had no idea there were so many more layers to it. I found a direct parallel to myself – a white man who makes music heavily rooted in the blues, an African art form – and to the French composers, who borrowed Jazz influence as if it were something they could just flirt with, and abandon whenever they were over it. The blatant sexism was also one I sort of understood but was further saddened to hear about specific occurrences. I already wrote this in either a blog post or a paper, but I had a visceral reaction to when certain critics downplayed Germaine’s music because it was “pretty”, but the same critic (I’m sure) would laud over Bach and some of his most beautiful pieces of music. Despite the fact that she was a part of Les Six, she never got the same level of respect as the other members. Truly depressing considering this was barely a century ago, and especially when considering how much further we have to go.
Things I was genuinely shocked to find, however, were examples such as the notion of patronage. It’s so obvious that I should’ve seen it, but I’d never really considered it before as an opportunity for female empowerment. The Princess de Poulignac and all the other women who, because they had money and were able to support the arts, were able to – in a way – force themselves into the conversation on what is culturally important, and what they will not support.
Another was how French composers and intellectuals tried to marry the every day with surrealism, which I still grapple with but understand for the most part. Things like the surrealist operas and how they were supposedly supposed to be more for the average person, despite the fact that every single action was implicit, yet intentional. Satie’s Parade blew my mind, especially when we read what exactly everything was supposed to actually mean (I still remember thinking WTF when one of the articles mentioned “The Chinese man chops off his head and bows”, the only interpretation I could think of being, “man that dude goes through a LOT of effort to demonstrate the formality of exposing one’s neck to another”).
Lastly was the whole notion of institutions, because they demonstrate power in legitimizing certain identities. It’s not just that an orchestra decides to play a piece or a venue decides to host it, the converging identities and intersections are either endorsed or denied by these groups. This was especially important when considering my second paper, as I had to decide whether a made-up composer would actually consider the history of an orchestra and their relationship to nationality/patriotic pride, or if they catered to foreign compositional powerhouses.
Overall, I leave this class with a lot on my mind. This era of France has always interested me, and I never thought I’d learn about the day-to-day life of 1920’s France through a rigid academic setting.