Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Musical Examples
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Dedication
- Introduction: Consensus, Resistance and New Music in France
- 1 Remembering Debussy: Nostalgia and Modernism in Interwar France
- 2 Musical Allegiances and Factions: Ravel, Satie and the Question of Leadership
- 3 Polemics and Publicity: Composer-Critic Partnerships
- 4 Musical Continuities: Sonority, Exoticism and Abstraction
- 5 In Search of the Musical esprit du temps
- 6 Surface Division, Deep Consensus: Classicism and Secularism and their Challenges
- 7 Conclusions: Music for the Patrimoine – Remembering Interwar Music in France
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Polemics and Publicity: Composer-Critic Partnerships
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Musical Examples
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Dedication
- Introduction: Consensus, Resistance and New Music in France
- 1 Remembering Debussy: Nostalgia and Modernism in Interwar France
- 2 Musical Allegiances and Factions: Ravel, Satie and the Question of Leadership
- 3 Polemics and Publicity: Composer-Critic Partnerships
- 4 Musical Continuities: Sonority, Exoticism and Abstraction
- 5 In Search of the Musical esprit du temps
- 6 Surface Division, Deep Consensus: Classicism and Secularism and their Challenges
- 7 Conclusions: Music for the Patrimoine – Remembering Interwar Music in France
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Writing about the critic Gaston Carraud's death in June 1920, Paul Landormy described him as ‘the good soldier’, who despite ‘his sometimes obstinate biased opinions”, wrote articles that were the ‘model of sincerity, of conscience and were nearly always insightful’, Carraud, the renowned critic of La Liberté, was an interesting case in having started as a Debussy supporter, before becoming sceptical of Debussy's value and influence from La Mer onwards. He participated actively in the bipartisan musical politics of his generation, which centred round supporters and detractors of two groups, the debussystes and the scholistes. Debussy acquired new supporters, most notably Louis Laloy and Emile Vuillermoz, both of whom remained active in the interwar period. This chapter examines what happened to these critics in this changed musical climate. It shows how critics and composers actively forged new partnerships, created new battle lines and fought over issues of aesthetic orientation and stylistic direction. Building on Debussy's active and often aggressive style of music criticism, it reveals the younger generation's advertising tactics, which had a lasting impact on their reputations. It also examines the relationship between music criticism and the emerging discipline of musicology in the interwar period.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Music and Ultra-Modernism in FranceA Fragile Consensus, 1913-1939, pp. 67 - 94Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013