Performing Propaganda: Musical Life and Culture in Paris during the First World War by Rachel Moore

Abstract

Reviewed by: Performing Propaganda: Musical Life and Culture in Paris during the First World War by Rachel Moore Julianne Lindberg Performing Propaganda: Musical Life and Culture in Paris during the First World War. By Rachel Moore. (Music in Society and Culture.) Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell, 2018. [xii, 243 p. ISBN 9781783271887 (hardcover), $99; ISBN 9781787442238 (e-book), $24.99.] Illustrations, tables, facsimiles, bibliography, index. As Rachel Moore explores in the introduction to Performing Propaganda, historians often make faulty assumptions about musical activity during times of war. Moore dismisses the notion that musical life diminished in the face of life and death, pointing out the myriad, and sometimes opposing, ways that French composers, culture leaders, government officials, and even music publishers used music to contend with the intense rupture caused by the First World War. Moore's study is limited to "art" music of the period, focusing on elite institutions, venues, and composers. As such, her study tends to chronicle official musical responses to war rather than those that were overtly critical of governmental bodies. This book is part of Boydell's Music in Society and Culture series and is thus self-consciously interdisciplinary. It will appeal to readers interested in the histories of French music, French institutions, the French press, French publishing, and, more generally, the cultural history of France during World War I. Moore's book looks specifically at music as a tool of propaganda used by the French during World War I, both at home and abroad. Moore is careful to contextualize the idea of propaganda within this time and place, underscoring that it could also mean "publicity" or "dissemination" (p. 7). While she does highlight the more aggressively nationalistic rhetoric displayed in some musical propaganda, Moore spends much of her book looking at French efforts to strengthen ties with allied countries and to bolster morale at home. Perhaps surprisingly, the "Marseillaise" plays just one small part in this history. Moore's study is based heavily on archival research; her work required visits to multiple archives, where she trawled the collections for concert programs, personal letters, institutional records, publishing records, and less obvious sources (including police reports). Her book is organized into six chapters preceded by a useful introduction that frames her work. The introduction sets up the parameters of her [End Page 606] discussion of propaganda, drawing a distinction between patriotic approaches, based on the "inclusive principles of love of one's country," and exclusionary nationalistic approaches, "defined primarily by race" (p. 11). Throughout, Moore shows how France grappled with the canonic and cultural legacy of Austro-German works, which for the most part remained in rotation, and the desire to promote French artistry. She organizes the chapters thematically rather than chronologically. Each chapter chronicles a discrete wartime history from a particular perspective, including the reaction of Parisian institutions to the war, the establishment of official government-backed propaganda programs, the tension between generational attitudes toward the war, the creation of new wartime concert series, the effects of war on France's most prestigious musical institution (the Paris Opéra), and the reaction of French music publishers to both political and commercial pressures during the war. Chapter 1 looks at the difficulties faced by musical institutions and the different methods, both practical and ideological, that they used to address them. For example, Moore points out that the loss of orchestra personnel from the Paris Opéra, due to the conscription of young men, resulted in an increase in the number of women participants. She also addresses the charity tax that was imposed on ticket sales for all entertainment organizations. While devastating to some, the tax in some ways "legitimized" entertainment, as revenue would go "directly back into the war economy" (p. 27). Moore also underscores the continued tension between the conservative Société nationale and the Société musicale indépendante, which resulted in the temporary closure of the two societies by 1915. Moore uses this closure to highlight a theme that appears throughout her book: despite the official state policy of a union sacrée—a term first used by France's warring political parties to describe their promise to unite in the face of a common...