The French Symphony At The Fin De Si Cle

The first extended study of seven beloved French symphonic masterpieces, from Saint-Saëns and Franck to d'Indy and Dukas.

This is the first book-length study of the rich operatic repertory written and performed in France during the last two decades of the nineteenth century. Steven Huebner gives an accessible and colorful account of such operatic favorites as Manon and Werther by Massenet, Louise by Charpentier, and lesser-known gems such as Chabrier's Le Roi malgré lui and Chausson's Le Roi Arthus.

A bold application of the concept of canonical works to the development of French operatic and concert life in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Reveals how in the culturally volatile 1930s the symphony, long associated with ideas of selfhood, was a flourishing transnational phenomenon.

Presents thirteen studies that engage with the notion of formal function in a variety of ways

Central to the repertoire of Western art music since the 1700s, the symphony has come to be regarded as one of the ultimate compositional challenges. In his series The Symphonic Repertoire, the late A. Peter Brown explored the symphony in Europe from its origins into the 20th century. In Volume V, Brown's former students and colleagues continue his vision by turning to the symphony in the Western Hemisphere. It examines the work of numerous symphonists active from the early 1800s to the present day and the unique challenges they faced in contributing to the European symphonic tradition. The research adds to an unmatched compendium of knowledge for the student, teacher, performer, and sophisticated amateur. This much-anticipated fifth volume of The Symphonic Repertoire: The Symphony in the Americas offers a user-friendly, comprehensive history of the symphony genre in the United States and Latin America.

"This book examines the shifting attitudes toward Wagner reflected in the Parisian press during the period of the Third Reich. Paradoxically, during one of the darkest periods of French history, as the German threat grew more tangible and then manifested in the Nazi occupation of France, Parisians chose to see in Wagner a universality that transcended his Germanness. As Franco-German diplomatic relations gradually worsened in the 1930s, Wagner became an increasingly integral part of French musical culture. Parisians were unwilling to surrender Wagner to German exclusivist claims. In previous decades the French had used Wagner to symbolize a diverse array of political arguments and positions, from right-wing nationalism to left-wing humanism and egalitarianism, In the 1930s, however, the Parisian press depicted him as a universalist. Although Wagner had stood in for German nationalism and chauvinism in recent periods of Franco-German conflict, in the 1930s Parisians refused this notion and attempted to reclaim his role in their own national history and imagination. Even once war was declared in 1939 and a ban on the performance of Wagner's music was implemented, commentators insisted that it was simply a temporary measure designed to avoid public disturbance. Simultaneously, they maintained that 'music has no borders,' and that 'it is childish to mix art and politics.' The Wagner discourses that emerged from the 1930s Parisian press paved the way for the dominant Wagner discourse in the German-controlled Occupation press: Collaboration through Wagner. By a great irony of history, the concept of Wagner the universalist that had been used to resist the Nazis in the 1930s was transformed into the infamous collaborationist rhetoric promoted by the Vichy government between 1940 and 1944"--

This book appraises the contribution of Paul Dukas (1865–1935) to a wide variety of French musical practices. As a composer, critic, artistic collaborator and teacher, Dukas was central to the fin de siècle and early twentieth-century Paris musical scene (and more broadly to the French scene). Significantly, his compositional style mediated tradition through the modern language of his present, while his critical writings pioneered a new mode of musical discourse in the French press. Of further interest are Dukas’s professional relationships with iconic figures such as Gabriel Fauré and Claude Debussy, and his role in fostering the next generation of French composers. In addition to mentoring famous names such as Olivier Messiaen and Tony Aubin, he staunchly supported his female students, notably Elsa Barraine, Claude Arrieu and Yvonne Desportes. This unique essay collection offers a panoramic perspective on a comparatively neglected French musician. Paul Dukas: Legacies of a French Musician traces two aspects of his work: Part I treats Dukas as a composer, thinker and artistic collaborator; Part II constructs his intellectual legacy as seen in his creative and pedagogic endeavours. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in fin de siècle and early twentieth-century French music, women in French music, music criticism and composition education in the Paris Conservatoire.