![\"\"](\"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1254\/2020\/02\/horse-300x225.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Firstly, the horse<\/strong>. I can\u2019t stop thinking about the way the horse moves<\/a>. However, in all seriousness, I think the horse is a very fitting representation of one of my main takeaways from class so far: a distinct French musical identity did not passively come into existence; composers and thinkers deliberately constructed it. The horse looks like a horse, but it\u2019s just two people in a well-constructed costume. This isn’t to say that there’s no such thing as musical Frenchness; rather, the idea is a composite of many different and sometimes conflicting views. <\/span><\/p>\n In Le Coq et L’Arlequin, <\/em>Jean Cocteau argues for French music as “music on which one walks,” meaning music drawn from the everyday lives of the French people (19). He also warns of outside influences, saying that “Russian-French music of German-French music is necessarily bastard…The music I want must be French, of France” (19). I think Cocteau’s need to be so uncompromisingly divisive means that he misses out on the nuanced interplay of national identity and music. As Professor Epstein pointed out in class, even if French composers like Debussy and Ravel were reacting against the influence of “musical Germanness” like Wagner, they still draw on and profit from the musical traditions that came before. I disagree with Cocteau that a national music could or should somehow emerge from a black hole, “untainted” by other influences. <\/span><\/p>\n Another important aspect of establishing French musical identity that I find hard to understand is how the influence of colonialism and the 1889 <\/a>Exposition universelle <\/em>in Paris led to exoticism. Some composers, like Debussy, interacted with musics of other places as a self, by using Javanese gamelan as an inspiration for his Pagodes<\/a>. <\/em>Some composers played up the “otherness” of these musics, like the “Prestigiditateur chinois” section of Satie’s Parade<\/a>. <\/em>I still don’t fully understand how choices to identify or distance oneself from “the other” would influence the conception of Frenchness.<\/p>\n I relate much more with the arguments of both Ravel and Milhaud, who acknowledge the influence of nationality on composition, but also highlight the role of the individual. As we pointed out in class, it is dangerous to explain away everything a composer did through the lens of nationalism. In his lecture “Contemporary Music,” Ravel talks about how composers of many different nationalities have taken inspiration from the blues. He says that “the individualities of these composers are stronger than the materials appropriated” (217). Essentially, Ravel is saying that a composer’s appropriation or use of other music reveals more about the composer in question than it does the influence they drew from. This provides a useful contrast to Cocteau’s ideas, and a much more productive way to think about the selfing and othering present in the work of Debussy, Satie, and others. I think Ravel’s argument has stood the test of time, and is the point that resonated with me the most.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My initial thoughts on these questions are as eclectic as the plurality of opinions and musics I\u2019ve attempted to digest over the first two weeks of class. Firstly, the horse. I can\u2019t stop thinking about the way the horse moves. However, in all seriousness, I think the horse is a very fitting representation of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3594,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[13,15,12,14,2],"class_list":["post-101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-claude-debussy","tag-erik-satie","tag-french-nationalism","tag-jean-cocteau","tag-maurice-ravel"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3594"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":248,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions\/248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}