You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
For the three forces competing for political authority in France during World War II, music became the site of a cultural battle that reflected the war itself. German occupying authorities promoted German music at the expense of French, while the Vichy administration pursued projects of national renewal through culture. Meanwhile, Resistance networks gradually formed to combat German propaganda while eyeing Vichy’s efforts with suspicion. In The Musical Legacy of Wartime France, Leslie A. Sprout explores how each of these forces influenced the composition, performance, and reception of five well-known works: the secret Resistance songs of Francis Poulenc and those of Arthur Honegger; Olivi...
Brings new insights to the music of well-known European composers by telling a fascinating, little-known story about French music publishing, specifically through the lens of Jacques Durand's Édition Classique. French composers, performers and musicologists acted as editors of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European 'classics', primarily for piano. Among these editors were Fauré, Saint-Saëns, Debussy, Ravel and Dukas; the objects of their enquiries included core works by Rameau, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Chopin. Presenting six composer-editor case studies, the volume shows that the French 'accent', both musical and cultural, upon this predominantly Austro-Germ...
In The Composer as Intellectual, musicologist Jane Fulcher reveals the extent to which leading French composers between the World Wars were not only aware of but also engaged intellectually and creatively with the central political and ideological issues of the period. Employing recent sociological and historical insights, she demonstrates the extent to which composers, particularly those in Paris since the Dreyfus Affair, considered themselves and were considered to be intellectuals, and interacted closely with intellectuals in other fields. Their consciousness raised by the First World War and the xenophobic nationalism of official culture, some joined parties or movements, allying themsel...
Transnational connections between African American and German histories in the “century of extremes” are often misunderstood or overlooked. Intimate Histories uncovers important links and sites of struggle in the history of race, the Nazi period, and the fight for civil rights in both East and West Germany. Historical investigations take their points of departure from anti-miscegenation laws, forced sterilizations, or casual sexual, cross-racial encounters to frame the shared pasts of African Americans against broader developments surrounding German Fascism, the Cold War, and global struggles for Black liberation.
This book offers a critical reflection of the historical genesis, transformation, and problématique of “humanity” in the transatlantic world, with a particular eye on cultural representations. “Humanity,” the essays show, was consistently embedded in networks of actors and cultural practices, and its meanings have evolved in step with historical processes such as globalization, cultural imperialism, the transnationalization of activism, and the spread of racism and nationalism. Visions of Humanity applies a historical lens on objects, sounds, and actors to provide a more nuanced understanding of the historical tensions and struggles involved in constructing, invoking, and instrumentalizing the “we” of humanity.
In a book that challenges modernist ideas about the value and role of music in Western society, Composing the Citizen demonstrates how music can help forge a nation. Deftly exploring the history of Third Republic France, Jann Pasler shows how French people from all classes and political persuasions looked to music to revitalize the country after the turbulent crises of 1871. Embraced not as a luxury but for its "public utility," music became an object of public policy as integral to modern life as power and water, a way to teach critical judgment and inspire national pride. It helped people to forget the past, voice conflicting aspirations, and imagine a shared future. Based on a dazzling su...
This book explores the historical-cultural interactions between French concert music and American jazz across 1900-65, from both perspectives.
Examines the change in memory regime in postwar France, from one centered on the concentration camps to one centered on the Holocaust.
The dissertation analyzes the projects of popular theater devised by the republican governments and assemblies, 1878 to 1893, in order to understand the conflicted point of view of republicans with regard to the democratization of art. In the 1880s, the four state-subsidized theaters (the Opéra, the Opéra-Comique, the Comédie-Française, and the Odéon) had a very select audience. Yet, republicans were divided on the issue of its diversification. On the one hand, the purportedly inferior moral capacities of the popular public made dramatic performances hazardous without a prior education of its will. On the other hand, it was fair to let people who paid for the upkeep of state-subsidized ...
World War I gave colonial migrants and French women unprecedented access to the workplaces and nightlife of Paris. After the war they were expected to return without protest to their homes?either overseas or metropolitan. Neither group, however, was willing to be discarded. ø Between the world wars, the mesmerizing capital of France?s colonial empire attracted denizens from Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States. Paris became not merely their home but also a site for political engagement. Colonial Metropolis tells the story of the interactions and connections of these black colonial migrants and white feminists in the social, cultural, and political world of interwar Paris and of how ...