French Music, Culture, and National Identity, 1870-1939

New, insightful essays from musicologists, historians, art historians, and literary scholars reconsider the relationship of Debussy, Gauguin, Zola, and other great French creative artists to cultural and political trends during the Third Republic. This collection of new essays examines the relationships between discourses of French national and regional identity, political alignment, and creative practice during one of France's most fascinating eras: the Third Republic. The authors, from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, explore the ways in which the architects of the Third Republic [re]constructed France culturally and artistically, in part through artful use of the press and [at the 1889Paris World's Fair] new technologies. The chapters also investigate changing attitudes toward Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande, attempts by composers and critics to define a musical canon, and the impact of religious education, spirituality, and exoticism for Gauguin and Jolivet. Tensions between the center and region are seen in celebrations for the national musical figurehead, Rameau, and in the cultural regionalism that flourished in the annexed territories of Alsace and Lorraine. Contributors: Edward Berenson, Katharine Ellis, Annegret Fauser, Didier Francfort, Brian Hart, Steven Huebner, Barbara L. Kelly, Detmar Klein, Deborah Mawer, James Ross, Marion Schmid, and Debora Silverman. Barbara L. Kelly is Professor of Musicology at Keele University.