Academic literature on the topic 'Parisian music scene'

In the 1890s, Paris's three pre-eminent music halls – the Folies-Bergère, the Olympia, and the Casino de Paris – staged ballets on a nightly basis alongside circus acts and song-and-dance routines. As music-hall ballet librettos and scores show, these productions were closely related to ballets staged by the Paris Opéra, with similar large-scale structures, scene and dance types, and dramatic, choreographic, and musical conventions. What music-hall ballets looked like, however, is less clear: they have left few visual traces, and virtually no prose descriptions of choreography or staging. The one plentiful source of information is press reviews, but relying on reviews poses many problems for the historian. Critics’ various culturally situated viewpoints and interpretations may be used to create a composite picture of what might have been happening on stage, but they can also leave us with a hazy understanding of the genre. This paper examines the multiple and sometimes contradictory critical responses to 1890s music-hall ballets both to highlight what effect such contradictions might have on our perception of music-hall ballet (in particular as art or salacious spectacle) and to call attention to the problems inherent in using the press as a documentary source.

Musik kontemporer di Paris pada tahun 1970an didominasi oleh musik serial, dan spektralisme hadir memberi alternatif. Di tulisan ini, saya berargumen bahwa fenomena naiknya musik spektral ini bukan hanya sekedar masalah domestik musik kontemporer Eropa, tetapi fenomena ini berkaitan erat dengan masalah hubungan dengan yang “Liyan”, termasuk dengan budaya musik non-Barat. Dalam analisis saya, saya menemukan tendensi pada komposer musik serial untuk menjadi eksklusif melalui apa yang saya sebut mekanisme Othering, yang muncul pada tulisan-tulisan Schoenberg dan Boulez. Sebaliknya, komposer spektral menunjukkan sikap yang lebih inklusif terhadap musik di luar musik kontemporer Eropa. Musik spektral menawarkan terobosan dalam cara pandang terhadap musik, baik dalam ranah teknis mau pun kultural. Sebagai contoh, menggunakan spektrum inharmonik untuk basis komposisi daripada spektrum harmonik—spektrum harmonik sering digunakan sebagai landasan teori untuk membingkai musik non-Barat sebagai “alami” dan “belum tersentuh”. Contoh lain adalah memblurkan perbedaan antara warnanada dan harmoni, di mana konsep ini memperluas konsep harmoni, hingga tidak terbatas pada definisi harmoni klasik Eropa. Musik spektral membuka jalan baru untuk menghadapi pertanyaan-pertanyaan tentang inklusivitas. The Parisian contemporary music scene was dominated by serial music in the 1970s, and spectral music came to provide a musical alternative. In this essay, I argue that the rise of spectral music is not merely a domestic phenomenon within the European contemporary music scene, but that it is deeply tied with the issues of Othering, including the relationship with non-Western musical cultures. My analysis points out the tendency of exclusivity of the serialists via what I call mechanisms of Othering, as appears in the writings of Schoenberg and Boulez. On the contrary, the view and approach of the spectral composers tend to be more inclusive towards various musical system. Spectral music proposes viewpoints that are groundbreaking on the technical and cultural level. For example, putting the focus on the inharmonic spectra as a compositional basis, which negates the obsession towards the harmonic spectra, as it is often used as a theoretical justification to frame non-Western music as being “natural” and “untouched”. Another example, blurring the distinction between timbre

If I had to sum up Martinů's opera Julietta in one word, it would be ‘strange’. Strange and wonderful, strange bordering on the weird, the otherworldly, the dream-like. This last redefinition is apt, since the opera is based on Georges Neveux's play Juliette, ou La clé des songes – the Key to Dreams, a benign nightmare where a Parisian bookseller, Michel, searches for, finds, loses and finally searches again for a girl encountered briefly three years earlier. The action opens with his return and discovery that she lives in a town where no one has much depth of memory beyond the previous ten minutes! And when random shafts of recollection from further back do occur – as in the scene in the Forest with the Wine Waiter and the Old Couple – they only add to the surrealism of the situation and Michel's deepening confusion, with that pointed imprecision so natural in dreams yet so out of place in reality.

This article follows the way the Austrian composer Dieter Kaufmann has gone with his conceptions taken from musical and extra-musical domains, as literature, visual arts, religion and politics, describing some of his theatrical works. For him the function of music is to improve the society and therefore his works are a critic to politics or to religion. Having studied in Paris by Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Schaeffer, François Bayle and René Leibowitz, he contributed to the development of the electronic music in Austria with his creation and his teaching of electroacoustic composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. He went further than the Parisian ‘musique concrète’, which worked with sound objects, and consciously selected and worked with objects of sound ambient in order to manage the sound environment, to musically shape it. The acousmatic art deals with sound objects, which are recorded and projected in another space, the theatre scene being an ideal space of it. A large part of his works are included in the genre of New Music Theater of the 20th and 21st century, where sound (tone and word) and movement come together, each of them having the same weight. Keywords: musique concrète, sound object, acousmatic art, multimedia, electroacoustic composition

This article addresses the transatlantic financing of pre-revolutionary French salons and the amateur music-making that featured within them. It does so by reconstructing the context of a paradigmatic image of enlightened leisure: a portrait by Louis Carrogis (known as Carmontelle) inscribed “Mlle Desgots, from Saint-Domingue, with her Black servant Laurent, 1766.” The likeness is representative of Carmontelle’s style in subject and setting. It features a fashionable noblewoman—the French-Caribbean heiress Charlotte Louise-Desgots—who plays a gilded harpsichord. What is unusual about the scene is the identity of Desgots’s interlocutor; the aristocrat poses with a teenaged valet de chambre, Laurent, whom her family had enslaved. The soundscape evoked in the drawing—the domestic repertoire of the midcentury galant—is often described as a sonorous analogue to conventions of salon politesse. And yet, Laurent’s forcible participation in the artistic exchange destabilizes this “sociable” analytic framework. Tracing Laurent’s experiences in the decades before and after the portrait was made underscores how the dynamics of Caribbean slavery were inflected in the most prestigious of Parisian cultural spaces, and through the most anodyne and “convivial” of eighteenth-century sound worlds. Like Desgots, the musical engagement Laurent demonstrated was the result of an education attained in the metropole. Unlike Desgots, this training was not gifted for the pursuit of leisure but imposed in the formation of labor, as adornment to the artistic habits of his repatriated colonial enslavers.

AbstractWhile Moulin Rouge! (2001) riffs on and even exaggerates conventions from classic Hollywood backstage musicals, it owes a clear debt to an even earlier musico-dramatic genre – the opera. Combining operatic and film musical elements with those of pop videos, contemporary cinema and the rave scene, Baz Luhrmann's film engages with many of the thorny issues that have concerned opera critics of late, such as power, gender, exoticism, authorship, and identity construction and performance. The spotlight on the central love triangle of a consumptive courtesan, a writer and a wealthy patron makes possible a deeper scrutiny of traditional gender roles in the production and reception of Western art. The film's formulaic plot and the backstage musical format render transparent the commercial impetus behind the creative process and demystify the role of the Romantic artist-genius. Finally, the transnational and transhistorical elements of the film – a mostly Australian production team and crew, American and British pop songs, a Parisian backdrop, the Bollywood-inspired show-within-a-show, numerous anachronisms that refuse to stay confined within the specified time setting of the late nineteenth century – disrupt the Classical ideals of artistic unity and integrity and suggest new postmodern geographies and temporalities. This article considers how Luhrmann, by simultaneously paying homage to and critiquing operatic practices in Moulin Rouge!, deconstructs and reinvents opera for the postmodern age.

AbstractThe purpose of this article is to demonstrate that Wassily Kandinsky’s geometrical paintings were inspired by the ballet world, and by the body movements of the ballerina. Moreover, painting and ballet communicate with each other. And geometry has helped that. Then, the idea of this article starts with the necessity in relating Kandinsky’s Spiritual theory on non-materiality exposed in Über das Geistige in der Kunst with Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes brought on Parisian scene between 1909s and 1929s. Ballets Russes is the term which names all the ballet representations thought and designed by Sergei Diaghilev after his musical-cultural conflict with Nikolai Rimski Korsakov. Starting with 1907s, Kandinsky had initiated Der Blaue Reiter group and he starts with various drawing techniques. Were favourable years in which Kandinsky’s evolution from simple drawings to sophisticated Compositions got up. We are witnessing a cultural increasement. So, the ballet, the music, the theatre and the painting can not be separated any more or, at least, or, at least, cannot be thought of separately as systems of aesthetic theory. The aesthetic evolution from ballet and theatre had influenced the evolution in painting. What we will try to show as novelty in our investigation, is the kinetic and spiritual relation between Kandinsky’s Compositions and some representations from Ballets Russes by Sergei Diaghilev, especially with the «L’Oiseau de feu». In conclusion, we want to show how the lines designed by Wassily Kandinsky are describing ballet’s movements. The methods used in our research have consisted in the inter-artistic comparison between Wassily Kandinsky’s theory of painting and the ballets designed by Sergei Diaghilev. We also brought a philosophical and personal perspective on both worlds.

Propped up in his bed, for all the world the quintessential fin-de-siècle invalid, Marcel Proust listened to the perplexing sound of music far away. He heard it from beyond the walls of his room, through a connecting tube: the famous théâtrophone, a permanent subscription telephone line that could connect Proust's apartment in the boulevard Haussmann to a number of Parisian theatres, opera houses and concert halls. The operatic scenes that succeeded in penetrating those walls were not scenes at all: they were disembodied voices, issuing instructions for the visual imagination. Those moments that progressed further — onto the pages of A la recherche du temps perdu — were of course even less corporeal: both invisible and soundless. In the passage from opera house to author to novel, who can say how much was lost? All that remains are words, hundreds of thousands of them, pouring noiselessly into a space where the music has sunk without trace; the fevered patient added reams more supplementary material (inflations, substitutions, emendations) as fast as the opera came in through the wall, papering — soundproofing — the room with words.

Abstract Among a community of Italian political leaders and artists who settled in Paris after the failed Italian revolutions of 1831 was Count Carlo Pepoli, author of the libretto for Bellini's I puritani. During his years in Paris, Pepoli also wrote the poetry for two song collections: Rossini's Soiréées musicales and Mercadante's Soiréées italiennes. Both collections are conceived as a series of picturesque images of Italian locales interspersed with pastoral scenes; they are also linked by allusions to a character named Elvira, perhaps a projection of the heroine of I puritani. This article explores the connections between the Rossini and Mercadante songs and their possible link to Bellini's opera, in relation to two distinct audiences: the Parisian salons of the 1830s, with their strong Italian expatriate presence, and the market of amateurs who purchased sheet music. In both contexts, the poetic content and musical style of the songs may have fostered favorable attitudes to Italy and to Unification, showing that even music composed for private and domestic uses could be politically influential.

AbstractIn the summer of 1828, the Entreprise générale des Dames Blanches launched a fleet of white omnibuses onto the streets of Paris. These public transportation vehicles were named and fashioned after Boieldieu's opéra comique La dame blanche (1825): their rear doors were decorated with scenes of Scotland, their flanks painted with gesturing opera characters, and their mechanical horns trumpeted fanfares through the streets. The omnibuses offered one of the first mass transportation systems in the world and were an innovation that transformed urban circulation. During their thirty years of circulation, the omnibuses also had a profound effect on the reception history of Boieldieu's opera. When the omnibuses improved the quality of working- and middle-class life, bourgeois Parisians applauded the vehicles’ egalitarian business model, and Boieldieu's opera became unexpectedly entwined in the populist rhetoric surrounding the omnibus. Viewing opera through the lens of the Dames Blanches, Parisians conflated the sounds of opera and street, as demonstrated by Charles Valentin Alkan's piano piece Les omnibus, Op. 2 (1829), which combines operatic idioms and horn calls. Through these examples and others, this study examines the complex ways that material culture affects the dissemination and reception of a musical work.

La musique klezmer, autrefois pratiquée par les musiciens juifs ashkénazes pour animer les célébrations liées à la vie juive en Europe de l'Est, s'est enrichie par les migrations et appauvrie par les nombreux pogroms subis par le peuple juif. Parallèlement au « revival » de la musique klezmer aux États-Unis dans les années 1970, la scène musicale klezmer parisienne a connu un renouveau et elle s'est depuis lors développée avec divers ensembles pratiquant exclusivement la musique klezmer, d'autres combinant musique klezmer et chant yiddish, et des ensembles pédagogiques. La scène musicale klezmer s'est alors démarquée par sa démarche musicale, à la croisée de la conservation et de l'innovation. En adoptant une approche ethnomusicologique, cette thèse explore les multiples dimensions de la scène musicale klezmer parisienne actuelle, en se concentrant sur sa définition, son rapport au contexte, son interprétation musicale et sa transmission. Par une analyse précise des discours, cette thèse montre comment la définition du mot "klezmer" évolue au fil du temps et s'adapte aux contextes de pratique et aux interprétations des musiciens, pour différer parfois de celle donnée par les écrits musicologiques. En adoptant une démarche comparative et grâce à l'observation des rassemblements yiddish tenant une place importante dans la transmission internationale de la musique klezmer, cette thèse vise à enrichir la compréhension de la diversité culturelle parisienne en observant quelle place la musique klezmer tient dans le paysage urbain parisien d'une part, et dans une communauté klezmer internationale d'autre part
Klezmer music, formerly practiced by Ashkenazi Jewish musicians to enliven celebrations linked to Jewish life in Eastern Europe, was enriched by migrations and impoverished by the numerous pogroms suffered by the Jewish people. Parallel to the "revival" of klezmer music in the United States in the 1970s, the Parisian klezmer music scene experienced a revival and it has since developed with various ensembles practicing exclusively klezmer music, others combining klezmer music and Yiddish singing, and educational ensembles. The klezmer music scene then stood out for its musical approach, at the crossroads of conservation and innovation. By adopting an ethnomusicological approach, this thesis explores the multiple dimensions of the current Parisian klezmer musical scene, focusing on its definition, its relationship to the context, its musical interpretation and its transmission. Through a precise analysis of the discourses, this thesis shows how the definition of the word "klezmer" evolves over time and adapts to the contexts of practice and the interpretations of the musicians, to sometimes differ from that given by the musicological writings. By adopting a comparative approach and thanks to the observation of Yiddish gatherings holding an important place in the international transmission of klezmer music, this thesis aims to enrich the understanding of Parisian cultural diversity by observing what place klezmer music holds in the landscape. Parisian city on the one hand, and in an international klezmer community on the other

La thèse traite la réception de l’air italien à Paris 1687 et 1715. Elle est structurée en deux parties : la première est consacrée à l’analyse des recueils d’airs italiens, manuscrits et imprimés, produits et circulant à Paris entre les deux siècles la seconde, à la pratique des airs dans le contexte du théâtre parisien (Comédie Italienne, Comédie Française et Opéra) entre la mort de LuIIy (1687) et celle de Louis XIV (1715). En complément du travail de réflexion, on présente le catalogue du corpus étudié. Le corpus choisi place l’air italien du dernier quart du siècle au cœur du phénomène de la réception et de son impact sur le monde théâtral parisien. Le travail d'identification des sources, pour la plupart anonymes, montre qu’il s’agit d’extraits d’opéras. Quant au périmètre géographique des sources, l’axe Versailles-Paris a paru comme le plus logique pour suivre la circulation d’un répertoire apanage dans un premier temps des élites et ensuite, en conséquence de la décentralisation artistique qui investit la cour à la fin du règne de Louis XIV, touchant davantage la ville. L’analyse des œuvres représentées aux deux Comédies ci à l’Opéra à la fin de règne en illustre les modalités d’appropriation par les interprètes, les poètes et les compositeurs, renfermant ainsi le cercle idéal du parcours de l’air d’opéra italien de sa scène d’origine à celle d’accueil. La continuité dans la pratique des airs italiens sur la scène parisienne en ces décennies témoigne de l’intérêt grandissant du public pour ce répertoire, anticipant les Goûts réunis et l’inclinaison pour la musique italienne de la Régence
The study concerns the reception of Italian airs in Paris between 1687 and 1715. It consists of two parts: the first one is devoted to the analysis of French volumes containing Italian airs, manuscript and printed, circulating in Paris among the two centuries; the second one concerns the performance of the repertoire of Italian airs in Parisian theatres (Comédie Italienne, Comédie Française and Opera) between the death of Lully (1687) and the death of Louis XIV (1715). As a complementary part of this work, a catalogue of the sources has also been constituted. The documentary corpus consists of Italian airs of the last quarter of the l7th century as the core of the reception of the Italian repertoire and of its impact on the Parisian theatrical world. The identification of the sources, mainly anonymous at the beginning, shows that the airs are Italian opera excerpts. As far as the geographical area concerned. the axis Versailles-Paris appeared as the most appropriate for following the circulation of this repertoire: firstly known by the élite (aristocracy. collectors), it subsequently reached Paris as the consequence of the artistic decentralization from the court to the city at the end of the reign of Louis XIV. The analysis of the Italian airs sung at the Comédie Italienne, the Comédie Française and the Opera show how performers, poets and composers seized this repertoire, closing the ideal cercle of the path of the Italian opera excerpt from its originary stage to the French stage. The continuity of this practice in Parisian theatres during several decades shows the growing interest of the public for this repertoire, anticipating the Goûts réunis and the inclination towards Italian music of the Regency

Aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, des représentations théâtrales sont régulièrement donnés dans les différents collèges parisiens de plein exercice, les dix attachés à la faculté des arts de l’université de Paris, comme celui tenu par les jésuites (le collège de Clermont devenu Louis-le-Grand), avec un faste et un retentissement variables, où la musique et la danse peuvent prendre une large place. Cette thèse est consacrée aux pratiques musicales et de danses en usage dans ce théâtre collégien. À l'issue d'une recension des représentations (établissement d’un catalogue des représentations et d’un répertoire de sources) et d'une reconstitution de plusieurs fragments musicaux, ce travail envisage l’inscription des scènes collégiennes dans l’espace artistique de la capitale, tout en les replaçant dans les usages pédagogiques de chaque établissement. Les conditions de ces représentations, leur publicité et les nombreux écrits qu’elles génèrent, enfin les acteurs et les milieux professionnels impliqués dans ces spectacles, sont successivement étudiés. La deuxième partie de la thèse est consacrée à un genre remarquable par sa continuité et son prestige, le ballet, l’élément le plus marquant et le plus polémique des spectacles de collège depuis le milieu du XVIIe siècle. Les spécificités du ballet de collège et leurs évolutions au cours de plus d’un siècle de répertoire sont analysées. La scène collégienne parisienne apparaît dès lors comme une interface, où se mêlent des acteurs et des usages chorégraphiques et musicaux de diverses origines et de diverses esthétiques
During the 17th and 18th centuries, there were regular performances given by Parisian Colleges, the ten belonging to Paris University, and the one held by the Jesuits (College de Clermont, later College Louis-le-Grand), with variable pomp and success, in which music and dance took a significant role. This thesis studies musical practices and dances as part of these performances. A complete catalog of the performances and the preserved sources along with a reconstruction of musical fragments gives an image of the artistic life in these pedagogical institutions in particular and in the Parisian theatrical context of the period. The specific conditions for these performances, the numerous publications (programmes, commentaries, manuscripts, posters, etc.), the actors and their professional environment have been studied. The ballet, with its continuity and prestige, is the subject of the 2nd part of this work. Since the mid-17th century, it holds an important and polemic position within the theatrical performance. The particularities of the college ballet and its century-long evolution are analyzed. The Parisian College Scene appears as a place of multiple assimilations, with actors, chorographic and musical practices from various origins and styles

L’étude du fonctionnement des reprises parodiques d’Hernani en 1830 et l’édition de Harnali, N, I, ni et Oh ! Qu’Nenni, établie à partir des manuscrits, des rapports de la censure et de différentes versions imprimées, permettent de constater que les parodies d’Hernani sont à la fois déterminées par la pièce qui sert de modèle référentiel initial et par des intertextes contemporains avec lesquels elles dialoguent. Les conventions des spectacles du temps, le goût du public, font que la parodie sert paradoxalement d’imitation subversive au service d’une norme. En effet, la déconstruction parodique devient une source de construction des pièces qui, à travers les incohérences et les invraisemblances relevées dans Hernani, se positionnent dans un fonctionnement de spectacle qui leur est propre. Au-delà d’une simple critique, satire ou imitation d’une pièce initiale à travers l’écriture, l’intertextualité et les genres, les reprises parodiques renvoient ainsi une image du contexte du temps et des spectacles joués sur les théâtres secondaires. Ces parodies sont donc également des spectacles, qui s’inscrivent dans la contemporanéité de jeux d’acteurs, d’airs et couplets des théâtres secondaires parisiens de 1830
The study of procedures used in parodies of Hernani in 1830, together with an edition of manuscripts of Harnali, N, I, ni and Oh! Qu’Nenni, of censors’ reports, and of different printed versions, show that parodies of Hernani are at the same time informed by the play that serves as an initial model and by cultural intertexts with which they establish a dialogue. Performance conventions of the time, as well as public taste, create a paradoxical situation in which parodies act as subversive imitation in the service of a norm. Indeed, parodic deconstruction becomes a source of construction of plays which, pointing out the incoherencies and improbabilities in Hernani, create their place in a type of performance that is unique to them. Beyond simple criticism, satire, or imitation of an earlier play through style, intertextuality, and genre, parodies also reflect an image of the context of the times and of plays performed on secondary theatres. These parodies are thus plays in their own right, a part of contemporary style of acting and of the use of airs and refrains in Parisian secondary theatres in 1830

Chapter 3 considers the effects of the contingencies of music and cultural history on reputation. The arrival of new artists or aesthetic tendencies on the Parisian scene forced writers to reconsider the recent musical past and to reshape it in accordance with present-day concerns. Cocteau, Les Six, Stravinsky, and Schoenberg all had significant implications for Debussy’s posthumous reception as historical frameworks were revised to integrate or denigrate Debussy’s position vis-à-vis recent musical developments. Chapter 3 examines three musical currents of the 1920s—debussyism, anti-debussyism, and neoclassicism—all of which had a notable impact on the early formation of Debussy’s legacy. Whereas the postwar turn to anti-debussyism was undoubtedly harmful for the composer’s legacy, Chapter 3 considers how the development of neoclassicism over the course of the 1920s was ultimately beneficial for the first stages of its recovery.

After a dispute with Diaghilev over money and after a long-standing feud with fellow music critic Emile Vuillermoz, Auric abruptly made several shifts in his career in the late 1920s. He briefly moved out of Paris into the suburbs. He began collaborating frequently with avant-garde theatre companies and, beginning in 1930, would compose his first three film scores. He also dreamed of composing major works of absolute music, resulting in his 1930–31 Sonate en fa. In 1930, he married the painter Nora Vilter and the two settled in Hyères, in a home given to them by Charles and Marie de la Noailles. As the Great Depression settled into France, the Aurics struggled financially and his career reached its lowest point.

In Santiago, Copland met composer Domingo Santa Cruz who, both at home and in the United States, advanced the idea that Chilean music was fundamentally “occidental” (i.e., European). For Copland nearly all Chilean composers were too indebted to Europe, especially Pedro Humberto Allende, in whose music Copland sensed little more than a “Parisian veneer” and “lack of … vitality.” In an interview with the journalist and jazz enthusiast Pablo Garrido, Copland learned of the capital city’s thriving jazz scene. (Garrido also reported in the Chilean press on Copland’s left-wing activism of the 1930s.) Copland performed several of his works with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Chile, including his jazz-tinged piano concerto, which prompted one Chilean critic to reflect on jazz and its threat to “occidental” identity.

Abstract This chapter focuses on the composer Aurélio Cavalcanti. A main figure in Rio de Janeiro’s entertainment venues, he worked as a pianist in salons, dance halls, and movie theater waiting rooms, and as a musical director and conductor of one of the most prestigious movie theater orchestras. Cavalcanti had the experience and creativity to instantly adapt many musics to the fast-moving scenes of silent movies, a skill that he used to write music suggestive of many peoples and places, even if he had never met the people or had never been to the places that his works were set to portray. Cavalcanti wrote waltzes and polkas that became local staples during his time; they had suggestive titles that served to project imaginations of places beyond the city through music. The chapter also traces the arrival and dominance of the cakewalk in Rio de Janeiro and explores how the dance served to articulate both Parisian fashionable trends and African-derived cultures within complex racialized cosmopolitan urban networks.