At the beginning of the semester, coming to this class felt like the informational equivalent of standing in front of a firehose. The readings were a largely indistinguishable soup of names and -isms. But after spending over three months untwisting the serpent (Daniel Albright pun intended) of Parisian musical life in the 1920s, I’m pleasantly […]
Tag: Darius Milhaud
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Understanding 1920s Paris
I think it is impossible to ever fully understand a certain place at a time in the past. This class has exposed me more than ever before to this fact. No matter how much scholarship we read and how many actors we know about, we will be left with the biases of the writers of […]
Reception towards the influx of black cultural products in 1920s France consisted of equal parts attraction and enjoyment but also revulsion and fear. Reading through French author’s impressions of La Revue Nègre, which they describe as “soft, splenetic, brutal, lustful, or sad,” “something animal,” and “frenetic and devilish,” it is clear that what 1920s Parisians […]
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A Glimpse of Greece
A strong supporter of modern music, Paul Collaer, musicologist and musician, spent a considerable span of his professional life giving lecture-recitals on the works of his contemporaries. He created the Pro Arte concerts in Brussels to further promote the music he dedicated so much to, was a director of Belgian Radio, and was acquainted with […]
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Influenced by Everything
Composers and writers were obsessed with establishing national identities through music in the early 20th century, in France and many Western countries. The disdain Cocteau’s writing1 shows for German music and the “mudiness” of Russian influence in Debussy’s music is at once familiar and bizarre. Certainly many people experience national pride; one need look no […]