The nationalistic obsession with French music is one that was logical for the time. In the late 18 and early 1900’s, after a devastating defeat in the Franco-Prussian war, the French people needed something “uniquely French” to cling to. However, what I find to be an unrelatable fact of the era to modern day is that \u201cuniquely French\u201d music is free of external influence. To ignore that is to make the conscious decision to refute that music can be – and is – enhanced via external influence. In modern day, the effects of globalization can be felt and observed in almost all aspects of life whether that be music, food, culture, or language. The influence of cultures other than one\u2019s own is unavoidable, and most of us are comfortable with, and probably enjoy, that fact.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n What is strange to me is that the effects of globalization and foreign influence were already known by Milhaud and others that argued over the importance of a French musical identity, but they chose to ignore it. For instance, when Milhaud discusses that Debussy\u2019s compositions are impressionistic in nature, he states that they \u201c…possess a wonderful sense of criticism and a sensitive nature\u201d. But when discussing impressionism under the Russian influence of Rimsky, he believes the compositions, \u201c… led French music into a blind alley\u201d. One where the music was full of unnecessary complications and didn\u2019t focus enough on the all important melody (Milhaud 5). These excerpts displayed side by side clearly show the nationalistic driven hypocrisy behind opinions of music that is \u201ctruly French\u201d.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Of course not every composer at the time had the same mindset as Milhaud. In fact, one French composer to sympathize with – and one \u201cdisdained\u201d by Milhaud, Poulenc, and Auric – is Maurice Ravel (Kelly 25). He drew inspiration from multiple art forms such as poetry by Edgar Allen Poe, and admired many foreign composers including Mozart. Ravel\u2019s and Poe\u2019s philosophies of making art for art\u2019s sake aligned, which led Ravel to construct his music in a similar fashion to how Poe constructed his poetry (Kelly 16). This is a much more realistic and accepting ideology.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sources<\/b><\/p>\n Kelly, Barbara L. \u201cHistory and Homage.\u201d <\/span>The Cambridge Companion to Ravel<\/span><\/i>, edited by <\/span>Deborah Mawer, Cambridge University Press, <\/span>Cambridge, 2000, pp. 16\u201326.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Milhaud, Darius. \u201cThe North American Review.\u201d <\/span>The Evolution of Modern Music in Paris <\/span><\/i>and Vienna. <\/span><\/i>Apr. 1923. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Good question… The nationalistic obsession with French music is one that was logical for the time. In the late 18 and early 1900’s, after a devastating defeat in the Franco-Prussian war, the French people needed something “uniquely French” to cling to. However, what I find to be an unrelatable fact of the era to modern […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4388,"featured_media":1014,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1254\/2022\/02\/348141849_90690006df_b.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/996","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\/4388"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=996"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1013,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/996\/revisions\/1013"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}