{"id":168,"date":"2020-02-24T22:42:06","date_gmt":"2020-02-25T04:42:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/?p=168"},"modified":"2020-02-24T22:43:21","modified_gmt":"2020-02-25T04:43:21","slug":"168","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/2020\/02\/24\/168\/","title":{"rendered":"National and Individual Identity in French Music from 1870-1920"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many of the composers and writers we\u2019ve read have discussed the differences between national and individual identity in French music, as well as the way these identities overlap. I enjoyed Bauer\u2019s examination of the Belgian born composer C\u00e9sar Franck. After studying and performing his violin sonata<\/a> I found it interesting to make new meanings of Franck\u2019s long melodies based on Bauer\u2019s1<\/sup><\/a> argument. I had always considered his long phrases to sound loving and romantic, but now view them as reflecting a French musical movement against the two and four bar phrases of German Romanticism. Ravel wrote 2<\/sup><\/a>of how composers embody both a national and individual consciousness, and I see this in Franck\u2019s sonata. He develops long \u201canti-romantic\u2019 themes through his French consciousness, but continually presents them in unique ways through his individuality as a composer, especially through haunting contrasts in the third movement, <\/span>Recitativo-Fantasia<\/a>.<\/em>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Another part of the French nationalist musical movement I found interesting was the way that French composers challenge Wagner\u2019s musical presence in France. Composers took recognizable elements of Wagner\u2019s music, such as the use of tritones as a consonance and the formidable length of his works, and used them as parody. They took elements associated with the heaviness of his music and made them light and comedic, designed for popular consumption. For example, in Satie\u2019s piece <\/span>Vexations<\/span><\/i><\/a>, a short passage consisting of many tritones is asked to be repeated 840 times. While this is a parody, and probably meant to make fun of the length of Wagner\u2019s compositions, it really isn\u2019t fit for popular consumption due to its length. I find it ironic that composers like Satie were critiquing Wagner with pieces that aren\u2019t likely to be performed, while much of Wagner\u2019s music was being performed in Paris between 1870 and 1920. They were still using Wagner\u2019s musical ideas. This seems relatable to many aspects of American popular music today, where popular artists are using similar musical forms and structures under lyrics that are meant to be entertaining and applicable to the masses, and arguably lack depth.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, I initially found some of Ravel\u2019s ideas 2 <\/sup><\/a>in his 1928 speech on \u2018contemporary\u2019 music much less comprehensible. He speaks of how composers shouldn\u2019t understand their work in a way that allows them to explain it to other people. Like other French composers at this time, Ravel longed for a distinct simplicity to be characteristic of French music. However, in his 1928 speech he claims that a successful work won\u2019t be comprehensible at the first hearing. He wants audiences to find depth within the simple, a high expectation for audiences that simultaneously adored the extensiveness of Wagner while growing to enjoy French music designed for popular consumption. Perhaps Ravel is hoping for French audiences to have high expectations and tasteful ears compared to German audiences, as Cocteau claims in the Cock and the Harlequin.3<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Either way, Ravel seems to be incorporating aspects of his national and individual identity into the French musical movement, demonstrating its continued complexity past 1920.<\/span><\/p>\n

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1\u00a0Bauer, Marion, \u201cNationalism in France: \u2018La Societe Nationale De Musique,\u2019 Cesar Frank and his followers\u201d (New York: G.P. Putnam\u2019s Sons, 1947), 74-87.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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2\u00a0Ravel, Maurice, \u201cContemporary Music,\u201d Lecture given at Rice Institute, April 7 1928, reprinted in <\/span>Revue de Musicologie<\/span><\/i> 50, No. 129 (December 1964), 208-221.<\/span><\/a>
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3Jean Cocteau, <\/span>The Cock and the Harlequin<\/span><\/i>, 2nd ed., trans. Rollo Myers (London: Verso, 1926), 14-21.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Many of the composers and writers we\u2019ve read have discussed the differences between national and individual identity in French music, as well as the way these identities overlap. I enjoyed Bauer\u2019s examination of the Belgian born composer C\u00e9sar Franck. After studying and performing his violin sonata I found it interesting to make new meanings of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3393,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168","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\/3393"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":180,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168\/revisions\/180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}