Citation (1)
Map of France
Citation (2)
Garland Encyclopedia of World Music
The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music by Call Number: Online Access
Read about France Music
Books
French Music from the Enlightenment to Romanticism by
(Amadeus). Covering the period between the Revolution and the appearance of Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique, the author discovers an era that produced no masterpieces but set the stage for the flowering of Romanticism.
Call Number: ML270.4 .M6513 1996
French Opera by
French opera is second only to Italian opera in the length, breadth, and diversity of its history. Yet most people, if asked to come up with titles, could mention only a handful of titles--Carmen, Faust, Pelleas et Melisande, Samson et Dalila--a small list for an operatic tradition that began in the seventeenth century and is still very much alive. This book provides a full, single-volume account of opera in France from its origins to the present day. Vincent Giroud looks at the leading composers, from Lully to Messiaen and beyond; at the development of French operatic form and style; at performance, performers, and audience; and at the impact of French opera beyond France's borders. Lovers of opera will find this an ideal companion to their appreciation of the form.
Call Number: ML1727 .G57 2010
French Organ Music from the Revolution to Franck and Widor by
In Europe and America alike, 19th-century French organ music continues to attract performers and devotees. Scholars and critics are examining the organ music of Cesar Franck and other distinguished composers - Boely, Guilmant, Widor - and exploring the impact uppon this repertoire of the organ building achievements of Aristide Cavaille-Coll.
Call Number: ML624 .F74 1995
The Lure and Legacy of Music at Versailles by
Louis XIV and his court at Versailles had a profound influence on music in France and throughout Europe. In 1660 Louis visited Aix-en-Provence, a trip that resulted in political and cultural transformations throughout the region. Soon thereafter Aix became an important center of sacred music composition, eventually rivaling Paris for the quality of the composers it produced. John Hajdu Heyer documents the young king's visit and examines how he and his court deployed sacred music to enhance the royal image and secure the loyalty of the populace. Exploring the circle of composers at Aix, Heyer provides the most up-to-date and complete biographies in English of nine key figures, including Guillaume Poitevin, André Campra, Jean Gilles, François Estienne, and Antoine Blanchard. The book goes on to reveal how the history of political power in the region was reflected through church music, and how musicians were affected by contemporary events.
Call Number: ML2927.8.A39 H39 2014v
The Musical Legacy of Wartime France by
For the three forces competing for political authority in France during World War II, music became the site of a cultural battle that reflected the war itself. German occupying authorities promoted German music at the expense of French, while the Vichy administration pursued projects of national renewal through culture. Meanwhile, Resistance networks gradually formed to combat German propaganda while eyeing Vichy's efforts with suspicion. In The Musical Legacy of Wartime France, Leslie A. Sprout explores how each of these forces influenced the composition, performance, and reception of five well-known works: the secret Resistance songs of Francis Poulenc and those of Arthur Honegger; Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, composed in a German prisoner of war camp; Maurice Duruflé's Requiem, one of sixty-five pieces commissioned by Vichy between 1940 and 1944; and Igor Stravinsky's Danses concertantes, which was met at its 1945 Paris premiere with protests that prefigured the aesthetic debates of the early Cold War. Sprout examines not only how these pieces were created and disseminated during and just after the war, but also how and why we still associate these pieces with the stories we tell--in textbooks, program notes, liner notes, historical monographs, and biographies--about music, France, and World War II.
Call Number: ML270.5 .S67 2013
The Musical Sounds of Medieval French Cities by
Drawing upon hundreds of newly uncovered archival records, Gretchen Peters reconstructs the music of everyday life in over twenty cities in late medieval France. Through the comparative study of these cities' political and musical histories, the book establishes that the degree to which a city achieved civic authority and independence determined the nature and use of music within the urban setting. The world of urban minstrels beyond civic patronage is explored through the use of diverse records; their livelihood depended upon seeking out and securing a variety of engagements from confraternities to bathhouses. Minstrels engaged in complex professional relationships on a broad level, as with guilds and minstrel schools, and on an individual level, as with partnerships and apprenticeships. The study investigates how minstrels fared economically and socially, recognizing the diversity within this body of musicians in the Middle Ages from itinerant outcasts to wealthy and respected town musicians.
Call Number: ML3917.F8 P47 2012
Paris Blues by
The Jazz Age. The phrase conjures images of Louis Armstrong holding court at the Sunset Cafe in Chicago, Duke Ellington dazzling crowds at the Cotton Club in Harlem, and star singers like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey. But the Jazz Age was every bit as much of a Paris phenomenon as it was a Chicago and New York scene. In Paris Blues, Andy Fry provides an alternative history of African American music and musicians in France, one that looks beyond familiar personalities and well-rehearsed stories. He pinpoints key issues of race and nation in France's complicated jazz history from the 1920s through the 1950s. While he deals with many of the traditional icons--such as Josephine Baker, Django Reinhardt, and Sidney Bechet, among others--what he asks is how they came to be so iconic, and what their stories hide as well as what they preserve. Fry focuses throughout on early jazz and swing but includes its re-creation--reinvention--in the 1950s. Along the way, he pays tribute to forgotten traditions such as black musical theater, white show bands, and French wartime swing. Paris Blues provides a nuanced account of the French reception of African Americans and their music and contributes greatly to a growing literature on jazz, race, and nation in France.
Call Number: ML3509 .F7 F79 2014
Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913 by
This pioneering study of Parisian music-hall ballet brings to light a vibrant dance culture that was central to the renewal of French ballet at the turn of the twentieth century. Long thought a lost period for ballet in France, the fin de siècle in fact saw a flourishing of choreographic activity. More than four hundred ballets were created to great acclaim, half of which were full-scale pantomime-ballets, with entertaining narratives, catchy music, titillating choreography, lavish sets and costumes, appealing corps girls, and star ballerinas. Most of these productions were staged not at the elite Paris Opéra but in the city's trendiest commercial venues: music halls. Between 1871 and 1913, the Folies-Bergère, the Olympia, and the Casino de Paris brought together the era's leading authors of light theater and comic opera to produce a flurry of imaginative ballets that combined the conventional structures of high art with the popular idioms of mass entertainment. They also drew unprecedented numbers of people who had never before attended ballet. Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913 rediscovers this repertoire and culture, supplying a missing chapter in the history of French dance. Sarah Gutsche-Miller is Assistant Professor of Musicology at the University of Toronto.
Call Number: GV1650.P3 G88 2015
Popular Music in Contemporary France by
While music lovers from all over the world have tried to recreate the ambience of French caf¿s by playing music from stars such as Piaf, Tr¿net and Chevalier, intellectuals, sociologists and policy makers in France have been embroiled in passionate debate about just what constitutes 'real' French music. In the late 1950s and 1960s a wave of Anglo-American rock 'n' roll and pop hit Europe and disrupted French popular music forever. The cherished sounds of the chanson were sidelined, fragmented or merged with pop styles and instrumentation. From this point on, French music and music culture have been splintered into cultural divides - pop culture vs high culture; mass culture vs 'authentic' popular culture; national culture vs Americanization. This book investigates the exciting and innovative segmentation of the French music scene and the debates it has spawned. From an analysis of the chanson as national myth, to pop, rap, techno and the State, this book is the first full-length study to make sense of the complexity behind the history of French popular music and its relation to 'authentic' cultural identity.
Call Number: ML3489 .L65 2003
Music of France
Facts in Brief
Capital: Paris
Official Language: French
Location: The French Republic is situated in Western Europe. It is bounded to the north by the English Channel (la Manche), to the east by Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland and Italy, to the south by the Mediterranean Sea, Andorra, Monaco, and Spain, and to the west by the Atlantic Ocean.
Area: 543,940 sq km (210,016 sq miles)
Current Population: 64,897,954
Climate: In the north the climate is temperate, with warm summers and cool winters. The climate in the south of the country is Mediterranean, with mild winters and warm, dry summers.
Money: Euro
Main Religion: Christianity
Citation (3)
French Music
Traditional Music
The majority of traditional songs are monodic and performed as solos.
Themes of traditional songs draw on historical events, tales, legends, miracles and drama. A number of songs in traditional repertories deal with the state of mind of a bashful or rejected lover, or a fiancé(e) still ecstatically happy or already disappointed. These themes often mingle with local anecdotes, praise of nature, humorous or dramatic situations, and religious subjects. The melodies are very often constructed on timbres, existing tunes not linked to a single text but used to accompany a number of songs.
The musical structure of songs is generally simple; a single melody is repeated for each stanza, and the refrain is sung to the same musical phrase; it is unusual for the refrain to be sung to a different musical phrase from that of the couplets. Parlando-like sections may also be introduced into songs. Sometimes the melodies even contain imitations of animal noises or of the sounds of certain instruments.
Apart from recitatives in free rhythm, song rhythms are usually the same as the metre of the texts, and the rhythms of dance-songs match the steps of the dance. Most songs are usually syllabic. Melismatic settings have most often been reserved for sacred performance. In all cases, rhythms or styles of utterance are linked to the context of performance, so that the same tune can be used to accompany a lament or a bourrée.
Citation (3)
Streaming Video: JVC Video Anthology of World Music-France
Streaming Video: French Musical Plays
Composer Highlight: Claude Debussy
1826 - 1918
French composer. One of the most important musicians of his time, his harmonic innovations had a profound influence on generations of composers. He made a decisive move away from Wagnerism in his only complete opera Pelléas et Mélisande, and in his works for piano and for orchestra he created new genres and revealed a range of timbre and colour which indicated a highly original musical aesthetic.
Debussy’s inventions bear equally on harmony, rhythm, texture and form, and might be summarized as a lifelong quest to banish blatancy of musical expression. His harmony inseparably binds modality and tonality. Although French music had never lost its variety of modes, Debussy extended and revitalized their range and tonal potential, developing the explorations of Chabrier and Russian composers and the different modal languages of Asian music.
Lesure, F., & Howat, R. Debussy, (Achille-)Claude. Grove Music Online. Retrieved 7 Jun. 2023.
Citations
(1): "Paris Panorama" by "Debarshi Bhaumik"
(2): Country Map (France), in Europa World online. London, Routledge. University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Retrieved 21 July 2021 from http://www.europaworld.com/entry/fr.MAP
(3): Country Flag (France), in Europa World online. London, Routledge. University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Retrieved 21 July 2021 from http://www.europaworld.com/entry/fr.FLAG