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Rouget de Lisle's famous anthem, La marseillaise, admirably reflects the confidence and enthusiasm of the early years of the French Revolution. But the effects on music of the Revolution and the events that followed it in France were more far-reaching than that. Hymns, chansons and even articles of the Constitution set to music in the form of vaudevilles all played their part in disseminating Revolutionary ideas and principles; music education was reorganized to compensate for the loss of courtly institutions and the weakened maitrises of cathedrals and churches. Opera, in particular, was profoundly affected, in both its organization and its subject matter, by the events of 1789 and the succeeding decade. The essays in this book, written by specialists in the period, deal with all these aspects of music in Revolutionary France, highlighting the composers and writers who played a major role in the changes that took place there. They also identify some of the traditions and genres that survived the Revolution, and look at the effects on music of Napoleon's invasion of Italy.
Introduction -- Part I. Musical Privilege. Legal Privilège and Musical Production ; Social Privilège and Musician-Masons -- Part II. Property. Private Property : Music and Authorship ; Public Servants ; Cultural Heritage : Music as Work of Art ; National Industry : Music as a "Useful" Art and Science -- Postlude : A "Detractor" Breaks his "Silence" -- Conclusion : Privilege by Any Other Name.
Laura Mason examines the shifting fortunes of singing as a political gesture to highlight the importance of popular culture to revolutionary politics. Arguing that scholars have overstated the uniformity of revolutionary political culture, Mason uses songwriting and singing practices to reveal its diverse nature. Song performances in the streets, theaters, and clubs of Paris showed how popular culture was invested with new political meaning after 1789, becoming one of the most important means for engaging in revolutionary debate.Throughout the 1790s, French citizens came to recognize the importance of anthems for promoting their interpretations of revolutionary events, and for championing their aspirations for the Revolution. By opening new arenas of cultural activity and demolishing Old Regime aesthetic hierarchies, revolutionaries permitted a larger and infinitely more diverse population to participate in cultural production and exchange, Mason contends. The resulting activism helps explain the urgency with which successive governments sought to impose an official political culture on a heterogeneous and mobilized population. After 1793, song culture was gradually depoliticized as popular classes retreated from public arenas, middle brow culture turned to the strictly entertaining, and official culture became increasingly rigid. At the same time, however, singing practices were invented which formed the foundation for new, activist singing practices in the next century. The legacy of the Revolution, according to Mason, was to bestow new respectability on popular singing, reshaping it from an essentially conservative means of complaint to an instrument of social and political resistance.
British Music and the French Revolution investigates the nature of British musical responses to the cataclysmic political events unfolding in France during the period of 1789–1795, a time when republican and royalist agendas were in conflict in both nations. While the parallel demands for social and political change resulted from different stimuli, and were resolved very differently, the 1790s proved to be a defining period for each country. In Britain, the combination of a protracted period of Tory conservatism, and the strong spirit of patriotism which swept the nation, had a profound influence on the arts. There was an outpouring of concert and theatrical music dealing with the French Revolution and the subsequent war with France. While patriotic songs might be expected when a country is at war, the number of recreations on the London stages of events taking place on the Continent may surprise. Initially, such topical subjects were restricted to the summer or “minor” theatres; however, government restrictions were relaxed after 1793, giving Londoners the opportunity to see topical theatre in the royal or “patent” theatres, as well. The resulting repertoire of plays and recreations (often propagandist in nature) made considerable use of music, and those performed in the “minor” theatres were all-sung. Consequently, there exists a large repertoire of music which has been little studied. British Music and the French Revolution investigates this repertoire within a social and political context. Initial chapters examine the historical relationship between France and Britain from a musical perspective, the powerful symbols of national identity in both countries, and the complex laws that governed commercial theatres in London. Thereafter, the materials are presented in a chronological fashion, starting with the fall of the Bastille in 1789, and the Fête de la Fédération in 1790. The period of the Captivity was one of growing tension and fear in both France and Britain as war became an ever-increasing threat between the two nations. Two subsequent chapters examine the war years of 1793 until first half of 1795. The choice of a five-year period allows the reader to follow British musical reactions to the fall of the Bastille and subsequent events up to the rise of Napoléon.
In May 1968, France teetered on the brink of revolution as a series of student protests spiraled into the largest general strike the country has ever known. In the forty years since, May ’68 has come to occupy a singular place in the modern political imagination, not just in France but across the world. Eric Drott examines the social, political, and cultural effects of May ’68 on a wide variety of music in France, from the initial shock of 1968 through the "long" 1970s and the election of Mitterrand and the socialists in 1981. Drott’s detailed account of how diverse music communities developed in response to 1968 and his pathbreaking reflections on the nature and significance of musical genre come together to provide insights into the relationships that link music, identity, and politics.