Music and Ultra-Modernism in France: A Fragile Consensus, 1913–1939 by Barbara L. Kelly (review)

Abstract

Music and Ultra-Modernism France: A Fragile Consensus, 1913-1939. By Barbara L. Kelly. (Music Society and Culture.) Woodbridge, Suffolk, Eng.: Boydell Press, 2013. [x, 257 p. ISBN 9781843838104 (hardcover), $95; (e-book), various.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, index. Successfully walking tightrope between cultural-historical musicology and reception history, Music and Ultra-Modernism France: A Fragile Consensus, 1913-1939 tackles wide range of issues, all of which assert sense of purpose (to further the development of French musical style), whether national, political, religious, or academic, felt by composers and during the period question. Although musicologists have often sought out the frictions and significant differences between artists, identifying their original and significant contributions, Kelly's volume searches for variety of forms, whether aesthetic, critical, stylistic, harmonic, structural or contextual. She probes reception history' the period, line with her other work on Maurice Ravel and the cultural practice of music France. As she noted previously: apparent political unity that emerged before the Great War also appears to have created some consensus among musicians (Barbara Kelly, French Music, Culture, and National Identity, 1870-1939 [Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2008], 9). Music and Ultra-Modernism France significant contribution to the field as it acknowledges the history of the musicological discipline within France before World War II, as well as detailing the debate not only between critics, but also between composers, and between and composers, as well as among those identifying themselves as musicologists (the informed critics). The title of this book intriguing, and the subheading an accurate reflection of the book's content. The reference to ultra-modernism, though, perhaps not the clearest way to illustrate the main focus of the book, which does not aim to define this term, but rather refers to its use contemporaneous criticism (see pp. 4--7) before probing the issues where consensus can be found. Kelly responds to Edmondstoune Duncan's book, Ultra-Modernism Music: A Treatise on the Latler-Day Revolution Musical Art (London: Winthrop Rogers, 1915), by exploring a whole generation of composers who contributed some elements of the 'visionary' (p. 5) to advancing musical ideas and techniques, and to Jacques Maritain's Anti-modernisme (Paris: Librairie de l'art catholique, 1920; 3d ed., Rouart, 1935). The interwar period had perception of lack of great (p. 6) beyond Claude Debussy, but this volume asserts who those figures are by drawing out the leading and changing trends French interwar music, particularly asserting the force of Ravel's musical leadership (chapters 2 and 3), that of Charles Koechlin and Olivier Messiaen (chapter 3), and that of Francis Poulenc and Georges Auric (chapter 6). As Kelly notes, the aim of this book is to identify and trace the evolution of sonority as distinctive French modernist strand, seeing it as central, enduring and consistent preoccupation French musical traditions from Debussy's generation onwards, which was subjected to transformation the 1920s and 1930s (pp. 8-9). There are copious citations from critical reviews as well as of letters from numerous archival deposits. As Glenn Watkins identified his book Pyramids at the Louvre: Music, Culture, and Collage from Stravinsky to the Postmodernists, critics and composers alike had begun to explore similar musical ideas in tandem with the cultural trends of the day (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1994, [p. 146]). Kelly takes up this baton. Notably, the archival research presents correspondence previously not explored, particularly as regards Leon Vallas. Kelly raises significant questions regarding the way that thematic consensus on various composers shared--and some respects, developed and promoted--in the press as result of composer-critic partnerships (chapter 3). …