French without fears

Musical Times, Spring 2003 by Simeone, Nigel

Review-article

NIGEL SIMEONE hails an instant classic of musical activity in inter-war Paris

The harlequin years: music in Paris 1917-1929 Roger Nichols Thames & Hudson (London, 2002); 288pp; L24.95. ISBN 0 500 51095 4.

IT MAY HAVE TAKEN almost two decades for this book to be written, but it has been well worth the wait: there is no more absorbing, informative, rewarding and eloquently written history of French music during the 1920s. Nichols presents the reader with a vast range of musical activity which is not all high-- jinx and frivolity down at the Boeuf sur le Toit something which is cause for particular rejoicing since such a frequently-encountered misrepresentation of these years is, to put it kindly, simplistic.

The structure of the book is broadly genre-- based. The introductory matter includes a useful map and a splendid chronology which reveals all sorts of curiosities: for example, brand new ballets by Prokofiev and Auric were given their premieres in different theatres on the same night (21 May 1929), and two years earlier the same thing happened with Stravinsky's Oedipus rex and Ravel's Violin Sonata (accurately, if a little fussily, described here as his `Second Violin Sonata'). It is a remarkable chronology indeed that includes humour, but this one does: on 21 May 1923, we read that `The International Congress of Dancing Masters condemns the foxtrot and the tango'. One question raised is that of the first concert broadcast on French radio: the chronology gives 26 November 1921 from the Melun transmitter, whereas the text (p.130) gives - more properly, I think - 22 June 1921, from the Eiffel Tower (where, incidentally, one of the earliest regular performers was Joseph Canteloube, who needed an assistant to hold an umbrella over him whenever it rained as the roof leaked).

Chapter 1, `The legacy of peace and war', is a wide-ranging survey of musical Paris during and in the immediate aftermath of - World War I. There are some particularly perceptive observations on the influence (or otherwise) of Debussy's final masterpieces, and interesting comments on the arrival of Schoenberg's music in Paris. Then there is the delicate matter of anti-German sentiments among French musicians. The Ligue nationale pour la defense de la musique franqaise was a particularly virulent outfit which sought to `banish from our land, for many years to come, the public performance of contemporary AustroGerman works', among other things. The leading lights of this xenophobic organisation were not obscure figures: they included the elderly and embittered Saint-Saens, Gustave Charpentier (whose successes after Louise at the turn of the century had been close to zero) and, almost inevitably, Vincent d'Indy, whose influence had become enormous. (A slightly contentious thought in parentheses: among other things, d'Indy was anti-Dreyfusard, anti-Semitic, anti-[modern] German music, anti-Ravel et al., and, one is mischievously tempted to suggest, anti-more-or-less-- everything that wasn't in his personal pantheon of excellence. On that basis, one is tempted to wonder whether it was a wholly Good Thing for the director of the Schola Cantorum to have such a powerful position in French musical life. D'Indy's place is certainly worth debating, and the important international conference `Vincent d'Indy et son temps' held at the Bibliotheque nationale de France at the end of September 2002 did just that. Many of the papers suggested a more positive view of the composer and the man. Mind you, before too much rehabilitation of a sadly misunderstood figure goes on, it's worth recalling Charles Tournemire's view, writing to Felix Aprahamian in 1934: 'I was not a pupil of V d'Indy. That's a mistake, false information. I don't like this musician much: very cold!!')

AFTER his expert and immensely readable context-setting prologue, Nichols moves on to `Orchestras, conductors, chamber ensembles' for Chapter 2. Just how reactionary was the repertoire of the Orchestre de la Societe des Concerts du Conservatoire is demonstrated briefly but (rightly) mercilessly: the orchestra's complacency was outdone only by that of its large cohort of loyal subscribers. Gabriel Pierne's tenure as conductor of the Concerts Colonne was very much more enterprising and Saint-Saens - by 1920 more or less fossilised - rebuked the former Franck pupil for ,opening the door to lunatic aberrations' when Pierne programmed Milhaud's Protee. The Concerts Colonne were also notably strong proponents of new music, though Paul Paray (appointed conductor in 1923) was not to everybody's liking: in the 1940s Honegger lambasted him for his unadventurous programming of French music in America. In an extraordinary article, unambiguously entitled ''L'ignorant Monsieur Paray' (printed in Honegger's Incantation aux fossiles of 1948), he accused the conductor of sticking only to the safest repertoire (Franck, Faure, Debussy, Ravel and Dukas). The only concession to the unusual, wrote Honegger, was the inclusion of music by Paray himself.