Nationalism has been an important lens for French music throughout this semester. Before this class, I only thought of nationalism as extreme patriotism that leads to dictatorships and invasions of other countries. But now I have learned that nationalism played a large role in the shaping of French music and identity in the 1920s, and […]
I am researching for a paper on Pulcinella by Igor Stravinsky. This piece has always been one of my favorites, which I discovered from a book of trumpet excerpts. I always thought it was neoclassical, but as we discussed in class it really wasn’t thought of in that way. In fact, some critics thought that it […]
The papers by Samuel Dorf and Christopher Moore examine the influence of sexuality on the music of Eric Satie and Francis Poulenc, respectively. The former article focuses on the sexuality of Winaretta Singer-Polignac more so than that of Satie. Dorf uncovers some details about her love life, but emphasizes Polignac’s efforts to hide her sexuality– […]
Negrophilia is a captivation with a caricature of Blackness, which blurs the boundaries of black identity and fetishizes “primal roots” for entertainment value. This was especially common in Paris in the 1920s. It is an odd phenomenon to modern sensibilities, as there was a somewhat positive attitude toward blackness but was nonetheless demeaning and racist. […]
Arthur Honegger was important to French music as a member of Les Six, but according to Harry Halbreich’s biography of the composer, he was the black sheep of the group. Halbreich’s biography leads the reader through a timeline of Honegger’s life, and the section for 1920 details the beginnings of the famous group of French […]
Between 1870 and 1920, French music was in the midst of an identity crisis. The horror and embarrassment of the Franco-Prussian war and the First World War created a desire for a distinct French identity, which asserted itself in the music of the time. French music became the antithesis of German Romanticism, which was glossed […]