The period 1940–4 in French history is often referred to as les années noires: the dark years. A dark time for those who lived through it, it is now too considered a dark time by those who look back on it: war, invasion, occupation, deprivation, and a surfeit of moral dilemmas. Yet Paris was also, paradoxically, the center of a brilliant, lively cultural life during this period, where music played an important role, both for ordinary Parisians and for the authorities who ruled over them. This is not to say that the massive political rupture suffered by the entire nation had no effect on culture; rather, that culture—and particularly music—became integral both to the ways that authorities exercised their power and attained their political goals and to the ways Parisians responded to the new political circumstances. If music became a political tool for both the Vichy and German authorities, it also became a means for Parisians to make their own political decisions according to the unique set of circumstances in which they found themselves. As Henry Rousso states, “Yes, the French sang under the Occupation, but not always to the same tune, nor at the same tempo, nor for the same reasons.”

The discourse surrounding Wagner's music was subject to a variety of complex shifts and negotiations between 1939 and 1944, as French cultural engagement with a political enemy—and later with an occupying force—adjusted and transformed according to political circumstances and exigencies. This shifting discourse was the result of careful attention and sensitivity to multiple factors: the history of French rejection of Wagner in response to Franco-German tensions, the important place of Wagner's music in French musical life during the interwar period, the need to maintain a sense of national cultural identity under the occupiers’ yoke, and the imperative to bend to the agenda of the occupiers. This chapter examines Wagner reception in all areas of Parisian musical life except the Paris Opéra, which is the subject of chapter 5. I cover two discrete periods: the first begins in September 1939 with the declaration of war and ends in June 1940 with the arrival of German troops in Paris; the second covers the period of the Occupation (June 1940 to August 1944).