From the moment he landed in Paris, Georges Auric was a social butterfly, flitting around from group to group and making connections with exactly the right people. This was not the image I had in mind. I had this idea of Auric as the old moth stuck outside the window, watching all the butterflies dance […]
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 […]
For this project, I’m focusing on Louis Vierne, who was the organist of Notre Dame in Paris from 1900-1937. Louis Vierne in 1915. (Source: WikiMedia Commons.) The first source I examined is French Masters of the Organ by Michael Murray. 1 The chapter on Vierne discusses his life from birth until 1900, when he was […]
When picking my topic for the first paper I was immediately attracted to Josephine Baker. I was familiar with her work as a civil rights activist for both France during World War II and America in the 1950s. While I was aware of her French performing career, I was entirely ignorant of her popularity and […]