Drama! Intrigue! Passion! Sorrow! Music in Paris in the 1920’s had all of it, not to mention wide-sweeping sexism, racism, exoticism, and classism. So what is there to make of the chaotic, competitive, and altogether alluring mess that makes up this unique period of music making? In my opinion, it begins with surrealism.<\/p>\n
The significance of musicking in the inter-war period should not be overlooked. France was desperately grappling with the loss of so much young life, while trying to build back economic strength. I believe this sorrow does transfer into surrealist works such as Les Mari\u00e9s de la tour Eiffel constructed by Jean Cocteau, and even the exquisite and over-the-top sets and costumes of the Folies-Bergere.<\/p>\n
While as much at it is tempting to see so much of the music that came out of 1920’s Paris as a pure artistic expression of the composer, I find myself always coming back to the role of the patron. Figures like the Princesse de Polignac had enormous sway over the creation of new projects and organization of concerts, and its hard to imagine how the music landscape would’ve functioned without them.<\/p>\n
I learned that investing in a ballet company is a generally horrible financial move, one that I will not be making anytime soon considering our current circumstances. I also learned that the ballet world was cutthroat and risky, frankly if there was a reality show set during these times there’s no chance I wouldn’t be watching it.<\/p>\n
More than anything it seems like musical life in 1920s Paris was about trying on lots of different identities and rapidly discarding them. Could Jazz be French music? Nadia Boulanger would likely say no, while Josephine Baker became the darling of Paris. Could women compose French music? Germaine Tailleferre certainly tried but the critics thought otherwise. Was the popular music performed in dance halls and cabarets suitably French? Some people loved it, but I doubt Poulenc would’ve agreed.<\/p>\n
The reward of focusing on such a specific period of music making means that the tangled web of composers and musicians and patrons and dancers becomes a little more clear, but there is loss there as well. Choosing one thing to focus on will always mean discarding others, an unfortunate truth of all research. However, in the case of 1920’s Parisian music, by peering into the kaleidoscope of identity one thing becomes clearer, everything was French and nothing was French.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Drama! Intrigue! Passion! Sorrow! Music in Paris in the 1920’s had all of it, not to mention wide-sweeping sexism, racism, exoticism, and classism. So what is there to make of the chaotic, competitive, and altogether alluring mess that makes up this unique period of music making? In my opinion, it begins with surrealism. The significance […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3054,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-868","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\/868","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\/3054"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=868"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":946,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868\/revisions\/946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}