ABSTRACT

Title of dissertation: CHAMBER MUSIC IN FRANCE FEATURING FLUTE

AND SOPRANO, 1850-1950, AND A STUDY OF THE
INTERACTIONS AMONG THE LEADING FLUTISTS,
SOPRANOS, COMPOSERS, ARTISTS, AND
LITERARY FIGURES OF THE TIME

Susan Nanette Hayes,

Doctor of Musical Arts 2006

Dissertation directed by: Professor William L. Montgomery

School of Music

This dissertation, together with the accompanying recital recordings, constitute an

examination of chamber music for flute, soprano, and piano and for flute, soprano, and

chamber ensemble written by French composers between 1850 and 1950. This

examination includes an annotated bibliography of the music, a written document

studying the interactions of the leading flutists, sopranos, composers, artists, and literary

figures of the time, and two recitals of representative works from the repertoire of about

120 minutes, which were recorded during performances at University of Maryland in

March of 2004.

The text examines the various types of chamber works written during this period

for flute and soprano, with and without additional accompaniment. The amount of
repertoire written for flute and voice during this period by composers of a single

nationality is exceptional in the history of music. The annotated bibliography lists about

100 pieces in the genre, a truly substantial repertoire.

As a performer, I was intrigued by the possibility that several generations of

highly gifted, individualistic performers may have inspired these composers to produce

this tremendous outpouring of repertoire. With the proximity of so many great singers

and flutists in Paris at the time, it can hardly be coincidental that so many composers,

both the most well-known and some who are quite obscure today, produced so many

exceptional works for these combinations of instruments with voice. Indeed, I contend

that the composers were influenced both by specific musicians and by their

contemporaries and colleagues in literature and the visual arts, who inspired them to give

so much attention to the development of what would have been regarded as a small form.

Part of my historical research has been to search for the intersections between performer,

poet, and composer and to determine some of the ways in which they affected one

another.

A second purpose of my study is to develop an annotated bibliography of these

works, thus providing extensive, useful information regarding first performances,

instrumentation, vocal range, flute range, keys, time signatures, dedications, timings of

the works, publisher, availability, and the relative merit of the works themselves. Many

of the compositions for soprano and flute are, admittedly, of dubious musical value, but

some are masterworks of the chamber music repertoire, and few are actively performed

today. In addition, a large number of the pieces listed in the bibliography are out of print.

Because so many of the composers no longer have a significant prominence, their works
today lay generally unperformed and undiscovered. The annotated bibliography also

serves as a reference guide for today's performers of this repertoire.

A final purpose of this study is the performance and preservation through audio

recordings of a number of works associated with this project. The recordings will serve

as a means of documenting some of this remarkable music.

CHAMBER MUSIC IN FRANCE FEATURING FLUTE AND SOPRANO, 1850-1950,
AND A STUDY OF THE INTERACTIONS AMONG THE LEADING FLUTISTS,
SOPRANOS, COMPOSERS, ARTISTS, AND LITERARY FIGURES OF THE TIME

By

Susan Nanette Hayes

Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the

University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Musical Arts
2006

Advisory Committee:

Dr. William L. Montgomery, Chair

Professor Carmen Balthrop
Professor Mark Hill
Professor Donald Sutherland
Professor Edward Walters
 © Copyright by

Susan Nanette Hayes

2006
DEDICATION

To my father

ii
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The completion of this degree, and in particular this dissertation, would not have

been possible without the help of many people. I would like to thank Lyndy Simons, my

friend and collaborator of twenty-five years, for first introducing me to this repertoire in

her kitchen back in Illinois. Had I never met this talented singer, I never would have

discovered the cadenzas in the Estelle Liebling book. It is with joy and nostalgia that I

think on those days and how far we have come as performers and artists. I know we will

continue performing this repertoire together for years to come.

I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. William Montgomery, for his tireless efforts

throughout the entire degree program. His guidance, support, and determination helped

me to become the best performer that I can be and to bring this degree to fruition. I would

like to thank the members of my committee for their care in reading this document and

attending the performances. I also appreciate the excitement that my committee has

shown for these works and their encouragement in the performance of this music. I would

like to thank Bruce Nixon for his care and concern in editing this manuscript. For his

deep knowledge and all-seeing eye, I am truly grateful.

I must also acknowledge the lifelong support of my mother and father. It was my

father who bought our first piano and my mother who recognized my talents. They have

both been unstinting in their encouragement. Both my life and my sense of identity have

been shaped by my decision to become a musician. I am grateful that they always

supported me in every way as I pursued my hopes, dreams, and desires in music.

iii
 Lastly, I would like to acknowledge the love, patience, and support of my

husband, Kirk Wilke. He has never complained or begrudged me the time that it has

taken to finish this degree. Through it all, he has been my cheerleader, my conscience,

and my guide. I will always be grateful.

iv
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii

LIST OF TABLES x

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW 1

Historical Overview — Social and Artistic Change 5
Musical Education and Composition 10
The Influence of Wagner 12
Exoticism 13
The Paris Opéra 15
New Directions in French music following the
Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) 19
The Salons 21
The Sociétés 23
The Mélodie 24
Poets and Writers, 1850-1950 25
The Flute, 1850-1950 27
The Sopranos, 1850-1950 29
Prominent Musicians, 1850-1950 30

CHAPTER 2: HISTORICAL OVERVIEW 32

Romanticism — The Early Works for Flute and Soprano 33
Romanticism — Political and Social Life 38
Romanticism — Artistic and Cultural Life 41
Post-Romanticism 43
Lyricism 45
Religion 48
Nationalism 49
New Teaching Methods for Flute at the Conservatoire 56
Impressionism 58
La Belle Époque 63
The Avant-Garde 69
The Dreyfus Affair 75
World War I 78
The Period Between the Two World Wars 84
World War II 93
Post-World War II 97

CHAPTER 3: MUSIC EDUCATION IN FRANCE 103

The Conservatoire 104
French Composers and their Teachers 106
The Prix de Rome and the Music for Flute and Voice 111

v
 Reform at the Conservatoire 113
The École Niedermeyer 115
The Schola Cantorum 117
Other Composers of Music for Flute and Voice 122

CHAPTER 4: WAGNER 127

Wagner and Nationalism 128
Wagner in Paris 130
Pro-Wagner Factions in France 134
Debussy and the Anti-Wagner Factions 136
Fauré and the Development of French Mélodie 140
Satie and the Development of a French Style 141
World War I, Cocteau, and Les six 143

CHAPTER 5: EXOTICISM: THE INFLUENCE OF LE JAPONISME

AND L'ORIENTALISM 148
The Near East 149
Folk Idioms 152
Le Japonisme 153

CHAPTER 6: THE SALONS AND THE INTERACTION BETWEEN

MUSICIANS, ARTISTS, AND WRITERS 156
An Introduction to the French Salon 157
Composers of Flute and Voice Music and the Salons 160
Parisian Salons at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century 165
Other Gatherings of Artists at the Turn of the Nineteenth
Century 171
Maurice Ravel and Les apaches 172
Les six and their Collaborators 175
Triton 179
La jeune france 182

CHAPTER 7: THE CONCERT SOCIÉTÉS 186

Société des concerts du Conservatoire 191
Société de Sainte-Cécile 197
Société des jeunes élèves du Conservatoire
and the Concerts populaires de musique classique 197
Société nationale de musique 199
Société musicale indépendente 202
Other Sociétés 203

CHAPTER 8: THE RISE OF FRENCH MÉLODIE 207

A History of Mélodie: The Romance 208

vi
 The Beginnings of Mélodie 212
Mélodies for Flute and Voice 216

CHAPTER 9: THE WRITERS 221

The Parnassians 222
Naturalism 224
The Decadent Movement 225
Symbolism 226
Symbolism in Music 228
Dada and the Surrealist Movement 231
World War II 233
The Collaboration of Writers and Musicians 235
The Music for Flute and Voice and Its Poets 238
Ravel and the Music for Flute and Voice 242
Les six and the Music for Flute and Voice 245

CHAPTER 10: THE RISE OF THE GREAT FRENCH FLUTISTS 247

The Boehm Flute in France 248
Flute Teaching at the Conservatoire 251
Jean-Louis Tulou (1786-1856) 252
Louis Dorus (1813-1896) 253
Joseph-Henri Altès (1826-1895) 257
Claude-Paul Taffanel (1844-1908) 258
Taffanel's Teaching Methods and His Students 262
Successors to Claude-Paul Taffanel 264
Music for Flute by French Composers 265
French Flutists Premiere Works by French Composers 269
Philippe Gaubert (1879-1941) 272
René Le Roy (1898-1985) 275
Georges Barrère (1876-1944) 277
Louis Fleury (1878-1926) 282
Marcel Moyse (1889-1984) 284
French Flutists Premiere Works for Flute and Voice 291

CHAPTER 11: THE RISE OF THE GREAT SOPRANOS 293

Sopranos and the Creation of Operatic Roles 295
Great Sopranos in the Years Prior to 1850 297
The Coloratura Soprano 299
Sopranos of the Late-Nineteenth and
Early-Twentieth Centuries 302
Maria Malibran (1808-1836) 303
Rosine Stoltz (1815-1903) 303
Nellie Melba (1859-1940) 304
Emma Calvé (1859-1942) 305

vii
 Sybil Sanderson (1865-1903) 306
Mary Garden (1874-1967) 306
Claire Croiza (1882-1946) 307
Sopranos and the Creation of Mélodie and
Chamber Music for Flute and Voice 308
Pauline Viardot (1821-1910) 314
Caroline Miolan-Carvalho (1827-1895) 320
Adelina Patti (1843-1919) 322
Jane Bathori (1877-1970) 325

CHAPTER 12: THE COMPOSERS AND THE MUSIC

FOR FLUTE AND VOICE 338
Auguste Panseron (1795-1859) 339
Félicien David (1810-1876) 340
Charles Gounod (1818-1893) 343
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1892) 345
Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) 348
Cécile Chaminade (1857-1944) 355
Mélanie Hélène Bonis (1858-1937) 356
Maurice Emmanuel (1862-1938) 358
Claude Debussy (1862-1918) 362
Charles Koechlin (1867-1950) 371
Albert Roussel (1869-1937) 376
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) 380
André Caplet (1878-1925) 391
Jean Cras (1879-1932) 395
Maurice Delage (1879-1961) 397
Jacques Ibert (1890-1962) 402
Alexis Roland-Manuel (1891-1966) 404
Georges Migot (1891-1976) 405
Arthur Honegger (1892-1955) 410
Darius Milhaud (1892-1974) 413
Jean Rivier (1896-1987) 420
Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) 424
Henri Tomasi (1901-1971) 434
Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur (1908-2002) 435
Other Composers 439
Conclusion 439

APPENDICES

I. ANNOTATED MUSICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 441

viii
II. RECITAL PROGRAMS 496

III. SONG TRANSLATIONS 504

IV. SELECTED FRENCH COMPOSERS OF MÉLODIE 542

V. PRIX DE ROME WINNERS IN MUSICAL COMPOSITION 1850-1950 547

VI. SOLOS FOR FLUTE OF THE CONCOURS DU PRIX AT THE PARIS

CONSERVATOIRE 1850-1950 552

VII. A CHRONOLOGY OF SELECTED EVENTS IN POLITICAL AND ARTISTIC

HISTORY 1850-1950 556

VIII. FLUTE PROFESSORS OF THE PARIS CONSERVATOIRE

1795-PRESENT 577

BIBLIOGRAPHY 578

ix
 LIST OF TABLES

Table 1—Music for Flute and Soprano on Oriental and Exotic Themes 68

Table 2—Works from the Annotated Bibliography Written Between

1918 and 1940 in Chronological Order 87

Table 3—Conservatoire Students 106

Table 4—École Niedermeyer Students 116

Table 5—Schola Cantorum Students 120

Table 6—Notable French Composers Who Studied Privately

Away From the Established Schools 123

Table 7—Music for Flute and Voice by Member of Les six 145

Table 8—Music for Flute and Voice by Members of Triton 180

Table 9—Most Performed Operatic Works at the Paris Opéra Between 1800-1850 188

Table 10—Principal Flutists of the Société des concerts du Conservatoire

1850-1950 193

Table 11—Conductors of the Société des concerts du Conservatoire 1850-1950 195

Table 12—Music for Flute and Voice with Names of Poets 239

Table 13—Flute Professors at the Paris Conservatoire1850-1950 252

x
 CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

For me, there are not several arts, but only one: music, painting, and literature
differ only in their means of expression. Thus, there aren't different kinds of
artists, but simply different kinds of specialists.1

—Maurice Ravel

A Ravel Reader, 393.

1
 This dissertation proceeds from the supposition that artists working within a

specific period share a world of ideas with other members of their society. Because their

works are sponsored by and often addressed to their fellow citizens, the tastes of their

time, including social and aesthetic conventions, and the vocabularies of their period are

inevitably reflected in their output.

Specifically, I have focused on the creation of a body of repertoire that is unique

in the history of Western music: chamber music featuring flute and soprano; flute,

soprano, and piano; or flute, soprano, and chamber ensemble by French composers

between 1850 and 1950. At no other time and in no other place in history has so much

chamber music for flute and soprano been produced with such variety and for such an

extended period of time. The forces that brought about this phenomenon are complex and

involve the educational, social, artistic, and political institutions of modern France. My

purpose is to examine these institutions and the people associated with them in an effort

to uncover the intersections and connections that assisted this music being brought into

existence.

My choice of the period 1850-1950 coincides roughly with the introduction of the

Boehm flute into Parisian musical institutions and ends with the conclusion and aftermath

of World War II. The acceptance of the Boehm flute at the Paris Conservatoire about

1860 marks the beginning of a transformation in the repertoire for the instrument. As a

result, composers conceived of the flute as a solo vehicle in a way they did not in the

years prior to 1850. There is a steady increase in the number and quality of flute players

graduated from the Conservatoire during this period, and French composers develop a

2
body of French solo and chamber music repertoire that is significant in its depth and

breadth. This creative and artist output is sustained through the turn of the nineteenth

century until the end of World War II, when the ravages of two wars have decimated

France and most artists, musicians, composers, authors, and scholars have fled the

country. It is about 1950, in the aftermath of World War II, that this glittering period of

artistic activity comes to an end. During this period under consideration, at about 1900, is

a time when Paris could rightly be perceived as the artistic capital of the western world.

The various factors which contributed to the development of this repertoire are

complex and are played out against the backdrop of one hundred years of turbulent

history in France. Thus, the avenues of investigation will include aspects of musical,

social, artistic, and political history. As well, the individuals connected with this music,

be they composers, flutists, singers, writers, artists, or patrons, will be studied. My

method is to proceed by subject through the various fields of influence that lie behind the

development of wind and vocal chamber music. These will include chapters devoted to

the following subjects:

! an historical overview of the one hundred year period in question, focusing on

specific movements and events;

! the centralization of music education in Paris;

! the impact of Wagner and his music on Parisian musical society, both positive

and negative;

! the infiltration of exoticism into French popular and musical culture through

international travel and the Paris Exhibitions universelles and the immense

3
 influence that exoticism had on the visual arts, particularly impressionism and

symbolism;

! the evolution of opera and its place in artistic life;

! the salons, which were one of the primary centers of creative activity in Paris;

! the growth of musical sociétés, which promoted concerts and stimulated musical

development by commissioning and performing new, and often progressive

French compositions;

! the evolution of the French mélodie, from its beginnings as romance to its

culmination as vocal chamber music;

! the writers who contributed verse to this repertoire;

! the flutists who inspired French composers to give the instrument a primary role

in the development of mélodie and its related forms;

! the sopranos who became the social stars of the era, a number of whom played a

significant role in the expansion of mélodie and its emergence as a virtuoso

vehicle;

! and the composers who advanced this repertoire on behalf of their colleagues

among the flutists, singers, poets, and writers of their time. The last chapter will

deal with the specific pieces listed in the musical bibliography, pointing out the

various factors, which brought about these unique and engaging works for flute

and soprano.

The following is a short introduction to the contents of each chapter.

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW — SOCIAL AND ARTISTIC CHANGE

4
 Paris's place as the heart of musical life and, indeed, of all cultural life in France

is solidified between 1850 and 1950.2 Just as the country's social and political elite lived

in Paris, so too, did many of the artists and cultural luminaries of the day. Almost all of

the country's patrons, producers, composers, musical instrument manufacturers,

performers, publishers, critics, and teachers, together with a large public, formed a

synergistic network that became a highly concentrated center of artistic activity. A wide

range of performance venues and concert organizations including theaters, concert halls,

museums, private homes, brasseriés, jazz clubs, and parks, together made possible a

great deal of creative activity. The Conservatoire drew the country's finest performers to

the capital, assuring a succession of highly trained musicians. Extensive government

subsidies of the arts also brought the musical world into the world of politics.

Politically, this period saw a succession of monarchies, republics, wars, and

revolutions. Every French head of state from 1824-1877, whether king, emperor, or

president, was either overthrown by revolution or forced out of office.3 Despite this,

French composers were prolific in their output of new compositions, even during World

War I and World War II.

French society made progress as well. Several movements articulated this period

Paris was the center of Western art culture, including the United States, from the 1870s to the 1930s.
However, its influence, even in Europe, was over by World War II. The beginning of the true reign is the
1860s (with the emergence of Manet) to the early 1930s (ending with surrealism). Surrealism did not
migrate or translate into other cultures as previous movements had. As a result, symbolist and surrealist
poetry had a limited impact outside of France. Sowerwine, France Since 1870, 166.
3

See Appendix VII for a survey of selected political and artistic events between 1850 and 1950. Parry and
Girard, France Since 1900, 34.

5
of cultural growth in France, and included romanticism, nationalism, impressionism, and

surrealism. Each of these movements affected French composers and the music they

wrote for flute and voice.

By 1851, the romantic period was in full swing. New capital, made available by

innovations in the French banking system, found its way into the hands of investors.4

This influx of cash would fund the growth of heavy industries, railways, and urban

development. By the 1860s, Louis-Napoléon had set Baron Georges Haussmann to the

task of creating the perfect city. The old quarters and medieval neighborhoods were razed

for boulevards.5 An innovative sewer system was built, and elegant restaurants,

department stores, and apartment houses were built along the spacious, tree-lined

avenues. Paris was fed by expanding networks of railway lines and a growing leisure

industry, which sponsored international exhibitions in 1855 and 1867. During these

years, Offenbach's music contributed to the image of Paris as a capital of mirth and

gaiety, an image that persists in the modern imagination to this day.

Artists, too, were affected by the political upheavals of the day. By the 1850s,

romantic revolutionaries in the arts, like their political counterparts, were also initiating

widespread changes in their fields. In poetry they overthrew rules adhering to

versification in poetry and theater. In music they revolutionized long-established

Sowerwine, France Since 1870, 6.

5

Haussman’s street plans were revolutionary for the time and were meant to eliminate quarters where
political subversion could go on undetected. Slum districts were difficult to police and served as a hotbed of
revolt. The boulevards were designed straight so that canons could bombard barricades from a distance.
This was not a well-received undertaking at the time. However, it was the most expensive urban planning
project in Europe up to that time and thus made many Frenchmen rich. It preceded a period of rapid
industrial growth in Paris. Tombs, France 1814-1914, 400-401.

6
conceptions of harmony in the field of music theory and composition. In visual art they

challenged long-established theories of color and form in academic painting.6 They

revalued French culture from the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. They

found remote parts of the world attractive instead of barbaric and exotizied the foreign.

Their ideas and themes would be taken up by the next several generations as music began

to assume a more central position in Parisian artistic life.

Nationalism became a force in French intellectual life as early as the revolution

(1789).7 It became a common shared belief among average Frenchmen that their

civilization was universal, and that it must be protected from inferior, foreign influences

(such as the operas of Wagner).8 Partly as a result of their defeat in the Franco-Prussian

War (1870-1871) and partly as a result of vogues for foreign styles in the capital,

Frenchmen began to believe that their culture was in decline. As a result, there was a

conscious attempt on the part of the artistic society to redefine national identity as

particularly French. Musicians turned to their French heritage from the past and to their

own poets and writers for inspiration. A new radical nationalist movement emerged in the

1880s which placed an emphasis on unity and rejected pluralism, cosmopolitanism,

This period marks both the emergence of landscape painting as a major French form, as well as the radical
shifts in subject matter and the high drama seen in Théodore Géricault (1791-1824) and Eugène Delacroix
(1798-1863).
7

Post-revolutionary French nationalism was unique in the following attributes: the conviction that France
had a uniquely important role in world history; the insistence on unity within the nation; and the perception
of an intimate connection between France’s domestic well-being and her relations with outside countries.
Tombs, France 1814-1914, 83.
8

Ibid., 312.

7
materialism, and individualism.9

The extreme centralization of French creative life in Paris meant that composers

and musicians moved freely within artistic and literary circles. In 1863, the so-called

Salon des refusés (Salon of the Rejected Ones) exhibited paintings turned away by the

annual salon of the Académie royale. This new movement, anti-academic in its

orientation, can be characterized by moral detachment or disinterest, the lack of historical

or allegorical disguise, the freedom from familiar painterly narrative, and a revolutionary

conception of space and optics.10 These artists would become known as the

impressionists, and, although they were upstarts in the 1860s and subject to critical

derision, they would become the dominant figures of late nineteenth-century French art

(listed alphabetically): Paul Cézanne, Edgar Dégas, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet,

Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro, Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley.11 Their thinking

influenced the writers and composers of the day to explore similar ideas and to invent

forms of music and poetry that did not abide by old rules of versification, harmony, or

narrative.

By the late 1870s, impressionism had become a significant movement in visual art

and music.12 Alienated from the artistic establishment, visual artists reacted against the

Nationalism was also an excuse for purging the nation of its enemies, increasingly identified as Jews,
international socialists, and democrats. Tombs, France 1814-1914, 85.
10

Littlewood, History of France, 251.

11

Sowerwine, France Since 1870, 101-102.

12

It was a painting by Claude Monet, Impression, soleil levant, that gave the movement its name. In 1874,
artists such as Bazille, Cézanne, Degas, Monet, Morisot, Pissarro, Renoir, and Sisley exhibited at the

8
large emotional paintings and historical dramas that had been so prevalent during the

romantic period. They sought to capture reality as it strikes the eye through the play of

light and color. Their ideas inaugurated a radical shift for musicians as well, and

composers such as Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel would experiment with a new

tonal language that would also be labeled impressionistic.13

Partly in response to the atrocities of World War I, the surrealist movement and

the dada movement emerged in the early 1900s. In 1916, the dadaists expressed a marked

rejection of the enlightened culture of rationalism, creating a nihilistic form of anti-art

that exalted absurdity.14 By 1924, the poets Louis Aragon, André Breton, and Paul Eluard

formed the core of the surrealist movement, advocating the rejection of reality for

dreams, instinct, coincidence, and unexplained juxtaposition. These theories also

translated to the music of Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, and Erik Satie, among

others.15

MUSICAL EDUCATION AND COMPOSITION

During the period from 1850 to 1950, the Paris Conservatoire and the Schola

former studio of the photographer Félix Nadar. A derisive journalist latched on to Monet’s title and dubbed
them “impressionists.” Littlewood, History of France, 256.
13

Other nonliterary events often loomed large in the genesis of musical works. The paintings of Whistler, first
seen in Paris in 1857, captivated the imagination of Baudelaire and later Debussy. Javanese gamelan and
other Eastern music inspired Debussy to experiment with pentatonic and non-European scales and figures.
By the 1920s, even elements of American jazz rhythms had begun to find their way to French music. Ibid.
14

Sowerwine, France Since 1870, 96-97.

15

Myers, Modern French Music, 102-121.

9
Cantorum came to dominate musical education in France.16 The French Revolution had

completely altered traditional musical life by abolishing the musique du roi, which

accounted for many of the performing ensembles in Paris.17 The purpose of the new

institutions were, ostensibly, to give priority to the musical education of the less

privileged classes, though in effect, it gradually created highly elitist and monopolistic

institutions in the Conservatoire and the Opéra alike. As a result, music education

became highly centralized, and nearly every composer and performer of the period

studied in Paris at the Conservatoire or the Schola Cantorum.

For the flutist, lessons at the Conservatoire were usually given in group classes

and, until 1945, there was only one flute class.18 Entry was by competitive audition only.

Students were graduated from the school in public examinations, what are still today

called concours, and which include a set piece prescribed for each instrument as well as a

piece of accompanied sight-reading.19 A jury could award a première prix or deuxième

prix, meaning that the competition was against a required standard rather than between

individual performers. As a result, more than one première prix might be awarded in the

same year or it might be withheld altogether. Either way, the acquisition of a première

16

The Paris Conservatoire exercised sufficient dominance in flute that it actually gave rise to a “French Flute
School.” This term usually refers to a French-influenced style of playing that became dominant in Europe
and America as Conservatoire-trained players filled the orchestras and teaching positions in France and
beyond. Powell, The Flute, 208.
17

Fulcher, French Cultural Politics and Music, 26-28.

18

Ibid., 223.
19

For a list of the compositions performed for the flute concours between the years 1850 and 1950, see
Appendix VI.

10
prix marked a student's graduation from the Conservatoire and into public professional

life. Nearly all successful French flutists of the day studied at the Conservatoire, and the

number of professional flute graduates grew steadily between 1850 and 1950.20

For composers, the Prix de Rome was the pinnacle at the Conservatoire and

provided them with access to the major musical institutions of the day. Talented

composers competed for the Prix de Rome, awarded annually from 1803 onwards by a

jury that was made up of past winners (the professors of composition at the

Conservatoire were, likewise, past winners of the Prix de Rome). Prix de Rome winners

thoroughly dominated the musical institutions of the day, including the Opéra, the

musical sociétés, and the Conservatoire.21 Teachers developed a legacy of

composer-disciples who spread their artistic doctrines to the next generation of musicians

and to society at large. While all this remained an unofficial policy, these circumstances

conspired to exclude from the musical establishment any composers who had not

followed this course.22

Not until the acceptance of Gabriel Fauré as director of the Conservatoire in the

late nineteenth century did this practice undergo any meaningful change. As a result,

composers who were not Prix de Rome winners, not Conservatoire graduates, or were

otherwise outside the musical inner circle, were able to have their music performed and

20

Powell, The Flute, 224. See also my Chapter 10: The Rise of The Great French Flutists.
21

While the Prix de Rome winners may have found immediate success in the Parisian musical world, this did
not always translate into historical significance. Many winners are relatively unknown today. For a
complete list of Prix de Rome winners between 1850 and 1950, see Appendix V.
22

Cooper, French Music, 203.

11
championed by French musical institutions.23 This led to an exponential expansion in the

number of composers and pieces that were brought to production, including chamber

music for flute and voice.

THE INFLUENCE OF WAGNER

During the late nineteenth century, Wagner also left his mark on the French

capital. In 1860, he conducted three concerts of excerpts from his works at the

Théâtre-Italien. The premiere of Tannhäuser at the Opéra on March 13, 1861, caused a

disturbance that disrupted the performance and eventually brought about the withdrawal

of the production altogether.24 Thus, Wagner was introduced to artists, writers, and

musicians in France who were later to become mesmerized by his ideas.

Indeed, France was an early outpost of Wagnerism, and his music would become

a staple of the French orchestral repertory for decades to come, largely due to the efforts

of conductors such as Édouard Colonne and Charles Lamoureux.25

The impact of Wagner on other cultural practices, especially literature and the

visual arts, was substantial and far-reaching. The poet and critic Charles Baudelaire was

an early admirer of Wagner in France and other symbolist poets, including Paul Verlaine

and Stéphane Mallarmé, demonstrated their allegiance to the composer through their

verse and in articles in La Revue Wagnérienne. In the visual arts, the symbolists were

23

Ibid., Chapter IX.

24

Brody, Paris: The Musical Kaleidoscope, 21.

25

Cooper, French Music, 55-59.

12
most affected, in this case Gustave Moreau and Odilon Redon, who made liberal use of

Wagnerian themes in their work. Henri Fantin-Latour, better known as a realist, produced

lithographs and paintings of Wagnerian scenes as early as the 1860s. Eventually, almost

every French cultural figure of note had an opinion of Wagner and his influence, whether

they were convinced of his genius or they took an opposing view.26

French composers, meanwhile, including Vincent d'Indy, César Franck, Ernst

Chausson, and Henri Duparc, studied Wagner's scores closely and were clearly

influenced by them. Other composers, particularly Debussy, Ravel, and Roussel, worked

in reaction to the Wagnerian model.27 These two factions would debate Wagner's

methods for many years and, over time, the ensuing clash resulted in the development of

a nationalistic voice in French music that would continue for another half century.

Nationalistic ideas influenced the music written for flute and voice, especially after the

end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871.28

EXOTICISM

Exotic elements began to surface in music in France at the dawn of the nineteenth

century more or less concurrent with the rise of French colonialism.29 Exoticism has a

long tradition in the history of Western music and composers of different nationalities

26

Ibid.
27

Myers, Modern French Music, 41-60.

28

Hill, Modern French Music, 8-12.

29

Brody, Paris: The Musical Kaleidoscope, 60-61.

13
have written many exotic works in a variety of genres. Significant contributions to

musical exoticism have come from France, where composers exploited the possibilities

of the format into the early twentieth century.

For the purposes of this study, "exoticism" is defined as a foray into the

representation of another culture that evokes a certain mood associated with it by

outsiders, though it in no way may represent the indigenous music of either culture. The

composer's perception of the culture is operative, since many musicians did not travel and

were not exposed to foreign music in its own form or setting. As a result, exotic

compositions were imaginative recreations, the composer's observation of the exotic.

Certain motifs or characteristics of French exoticism were simply stylistic, codified by

the fashion itself.30 Many French, however, had firsthand experience of foreign cultures

— especially in North Africa and the Middle East — including many of the composers

discussed in this study.

Le japonisme, another more culturally specific and more internationally "exotic"

phase, had considerable impact on musicians, artists, and writers in nineteenth- and

twentieth-century France.31 Le japonisme may be described simply as the influence of

Japanese art and culture upon Western art and culture. Its mark can be seen clearly in the

30

The taste for oriental flavor in the arts in France emerged with Molière, who included a ballet of Egyptians
in the second act of his Le malade imaginaire (1673). Brody, Paris: The Musical Kaleidoscope, 64-65.
31

After an exhibit of art from Japan, China, India, and Java at the Palais d’Industrie (1873) and the
Exposition Universelle of 1878 Le Japonisme became part of the French cultural milieu. Brody, Paris: The
Musical Kaleidoscope, 62.

14
work of the impressionist artists,32 the Nabis,33 and the Fauves,34 as well as Paul Gauguin

(1848-1903) and Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890). Le japonisme was popular with the

general public as well. Japanese decorative arts were displayed during the Paris

Expositions universelles of 1867 and 1878, creating a sensation with Parisians, who soon

filled their homes with Japanese objects.

THE PARIS OPÉRA

During the nineteenth century, Paris was virtually the European capital of opera.35

Not only did many composers of eminence live there, but even those who were not

themselves French did not feel they had arrived professionally until they received a

successful Paris premiere.36 The French fondness for public spectacle was gratified

during the romantic period by grand opera. This form flourished through the efforts of

32

Japanese woodcuts, some of the first Asian art of any kind to reach Paris, inspired Edgar Degas, Henri
Fantin-Latour, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Odilon Redon, James Tissot, Félix Valloton, and James
Whistler. Brody, Paris: The Musical Kaleidoscope, 60.
33

The Nabis were a group of young French painters, including Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, and Paul
Sérusier, who were influenced by Japanese prints. They rejected the tenets of naturalism in favor of the flat
decorative patterning of the picture surface. Formed in the autumn of 1888, this group took their name from
the Hebrew word meaning “seer.” The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French, edited by Peter
France, 554.
34

The term fauvism was coined by the critic Louis Vauxcelles to describe the works of Derain, Marquet,
Matisse, Rouault, and Vlaminck which were exhibited at the Salons d’Automne in 1905. Fauvism briefly
brought together these painters who were seeking to explore the expressive potential of color. This
movement has been related to the emergence in literature of le naturalisme. Ibid., 302.
35

See Chapter 20 on French opera, opera comique, operetta, and lyric opera. Grout, A Short History of Opera,
329.
36

Wagner was among the European composers who tried repeatedly to obtain a Paris premiere of his operatic
works. Brody, Paris: The Musical Kaleidoscope, 21-31.

15
director and entrepreneur Louis Véron (1798-1867), who reigned over the Paris Opéra

from 1831 to 1835; the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791-1861);37 and the composer

Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791-1864), whose works exemplified all the best and worst

features of grand opera.38 In addition to Meyerbeer, other romantic composers of French

grand opera included (in order by date of birth) Daniel-François-Esprit Auber

(1782-1871), Louis-Joseph-Ferdinand Hérold (1791-1833), Gioachino Rossini

(1792-1868), Adolphe-Charles Adam (1803-1856), Hector Berlioz (1803-1869), Félicien

David (1810-1876), Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880), and Victor Massé (1822-1884).

Many of these composers wrote very early examples of French salon pieces for flute and

voice.

Around 1850, a new form of opera arose that would give a vehicle to the French

national genius for the measured, refined, lyrical expression of serious subject matter,

which was still combined with some ballet and stage entertainment. This new form was

called lyric opera and, in comparison to grand opera, it expressed more introverted

emotions, was smaller in scale, and was more unified in mood.39 The leading composers

37

Scribe was the author of grand operas such as La Muette de Portici (music by Aubert), La juive (music by
Halévy), and Robert le diable (music by Meyerbeer).
38

Grand opera was a particular invention of the French operatic stage and could be described as sheer
spectacle on a scale surpassing anything seen previously. Plots based upon shock and contrast were adapted
as long, complex musical scores, which in turn exploited every kind of novel orchestral effect. Ballets
became larger and more elaborate, while choruses and crowd scenes abounded. With the introduction of
coloratura arias, solo parts expanded in range, tone, and expression. In addition, impassioned dramatic
outbursts often appeared in juxtaposition with ballades and romances. Grout, A Short History of Opera,
329.
39

Ibid., 339-340.

16
of this kind of opera in France were Ambroise Thomas (1811-1896)40 and Charles

Gounod (1818-1893). Gounod also turned his lyrical gifts to music for flute and voice.

According to Ravel, Gounod single-handedly maintained characteristic French qualities

in serious dramatic music.41

Lyric opera attracted a new generation of French composers to produce works for

the stage, including César Franck (1822-1890), Ernest Reyer (1823-1909), Camille

Saint-Saëns (1835-1921), Léo Délibes (1836-1891), Georges Bizet (1838-1875),

Emanuel Chabrier (1841-1894), Jules Massenet (1842-1912), Emile Paladilhe

(1844-1926), Benjamin Godard (1849-1895), Vincent d'Indy (1851-1931), and Gustave

Charpentier (1860-1956). Some of their works, such as Carmen (1875), Samson et Dalila

(1877), Lakmé (1883), Manon (1884), Werther (1892), and Louis (1900) remain in the

repertory today.42 These works (featuring a soprano as the heroine) established the

soprano as the solo voice and influenced many composers to write vocal chamber music

for soprano and flute.

In the early twentieth century, the most radical influence on operatic style was

impressionism. It originated in France and its primary exponents were the composers

40

Thomas was a pupil of Jean-François Lesueur (1760-1837) and a teacher of Jules Massenet (1842-1912),
and thus he formed a link from the late eighteenth-century tradition to the late nineteenth-century tradition
in French music.
41

“The musical renewal which took place with us towards 1880, has no more weighty precursor than
Gounod.” Hill, Modern French Music, 45.
42

The line of French light opera, called operetta, which also was prominent in France and was established in
the nineteenth century by Adam, Auber, and Offenbach, was subsequently maintained by Charles Lecocq
(1832-1918), Edmond Audran (1840-1901), Louis Varney (1844-1908), and Jean-Robert Planquette
(1848-1903). Grout, A Short History of Opera, 335.

17
Claude Debussy (1862-1918), Gabriel Pierné (1863-1937), J. Guy Ropartz (1864-1955),

Paul Dukas (1865-1935), and Maurice Ravel (1875-1937). The seminal operatic work in

this mode, Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande (1902), changed the course of modern opera

in

France and elsewhere.43 An indirect and suggestive work built on a text by the symbolist

writer Maurice Maeterlinck, it marked a radical departure from the lyric opera of the

preceding generation.

While Pelléas et Mélisande was not the first work of Debussy’s generation to be

set to a modern French text and to incorporate a new harmonic language, it began a trend

amongst French composers to look to modern (and ancient) French writers for their

subject matter for vocal solos and vocal chamber music; to experiment with a more

concise, simplistic harmonic language; and to abandon the idea of development.44 In this

way, Debussy set the stage for the operatic and vocal chamber works of composers such

as Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, and Francis Poulenc, all of whom wrote opera and

chamber music in the new harmonic language while collaborating with French poets.45

NEW DIRECTIONS IN FRENCH MUSIC

FOLLOWING THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR (1870-1871)

43

Grout, A Short History of Opera, 497-502.

44

Since the classical period, the development of previously presented ideas in a piece of music had allowed
composers to expand musical forms considerably. As a result, symphonic works, concertos, operas, and
chamber music began to be larger and longer forms. This technique led to the mammoth operas of Wagner
(some four to five hours long) and the symphonies of Mahler, to give two examples. Cooper, French Music,
55-65.
45

Grout, A Short History of Opera, 561-567.

18
 The state of musical taste in Paris from 1840 to 1870, just prior to the

Franco-Prussian War, could be characterized by the adoration of Meyerbeer, the neglect

of Berlioz, and the craze for Offenbach. After the disaster of the Franco-Prussian War

(1870-1871), the rise of a new school and a new spirit in French music can be traced to

the establishment of the Société nationale de musique (1871), which advocated the

compositional device called Ars gallica.46 Undiscriminating acceptance of incongruous

musical styles, on the one hand, and a frivolous addiction to the trivialities of operetta, on

the other, were now succeeded by a strenuous effort to restore, in modern terms, the great

musical individuality which had belonged to France in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and

eighteenth centuries. As a result, the range of musical activities in France widened

beyond the operatic stage.47

Before 1870, composers had devoted themselves primarily to opera, but now they

began turning their attention to choral, symphonic, and chamber forms. In addition,

higher standards of musical education were introduced and a more cultivated, exacting

public gradually came into being. This renewal of national musical life made the opera

more vital, original, and adventurous. Although the highest rewards of popular success

still went to those composers who were able and willing to bend their talents to the public

fancy, the best works found hearing and appreciation.48 For the musician and the patron

alike, there were numerous theaters and opera houses now offering venues for orchestral

46

Hill, Modern French Music, 7-9.

47

Ibid., 20-30.
48

Ibid., 42-50.

19
work, operatic work, and for the premiere of new stage works, as well as many small

concert halls and fashionable salons for chamber music. The most coveted positions for

instrumental and vocal performers were in the Opéra and Opéra-Comique, which

flourished under government subsidy.49

Several other theaters of note were active during this period: the Théâtre-Lyrique,

the Théâtre-Italien, and the Bouffes-Parisiens. Competition between these theaters, along

with that of the Opéra and the Opéra-Comique, brought an excess of operatic premieres

and performances. Artists fared well and were paid high fees, while impresarios vied for

control of the houses.50 As a result, Paris became a city where the greatest singers of the

age lived and worked. Many of these artists inspired vocal chamber works by French

composers and collaborated with composers in the creation of operatic roles and

mélodies.

The great romantic orchestras of Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt, and Richard Wagner

disclosed a new symphonic concept, in which the instrumental material itself was seen to

have an expressive value of its own. This developed simultaneously with changes

assumed by the chord as an acoustic and aesthetic element.51 Thus, the use of harmonic

color combined with appropriate instrumental timbres became a primary objective of

musical thought and musical creation. Instrumental music was seen to have a validity of

49

Mongrédien, French Music from the Enlightenment to Romanticism, translated by Sylvain Frémaux, 66-71.
50

Ibid., 70-95.
51

Salazar, Music In Our Time, 166-167.

20
its own.52 As a result, symphonic music and instrumental chamber music were mediums

of exploitation by French composers in a way they had not been in the previous decades.

THE SALONS

The French salons were places for social gatherings during the seventeenth,

eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the

salons encouraged socializing between the sexes, brought nobles and bourgeois together,

and afforded opportunities for intellectual stimulation.53 By the nineteenth century there

were many kinds of salons that catered to the specific tastes and desires of the social

elite. In addition to various official salons, there were literary salons, musical salons, and

those identified with particular hostesses54 or celebrities. Salons were primarily for

conversation, but they were also places of distraction and amusement where people went

to gamble, sing, dance, play charades, listen to poetry, view art, or participate in

theatrical presentations.55 Throughout the political upheavals of the revolution, the

restoration, the monarchies, and the republics, salons persisted.

52

Even in the symphonic medium there were parallels developing between music and literature that would
become significant for instrumental music. For example, there was the realism of Richard Strauss and the
material elements of sonority as expressed by Claude Debussy. Such realism corresponded directly to the
realism in literature, from Gustave Flaubert to Émile Zola and the Goncourt brothers. As well, the idealism
expressed in subtleties of accent and of sensation in the music of Duparc, Fauré, Ravel, and others
corresponds to similar moments in the poetry of Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Verlaine, and
their followers in France. Brody, Paris: The Musical Kaleidoscope, 139-148.
53

Brody, Paris: The Musical Kaleidoscope, see especially Chapter 7: Music and Literature, 136.
54

Some of the more famous salons hostesses were Madame de Sévigné, Ninon de Lenclos, Madame de
Maintenon, Madame du Defand, Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, Madame de Stael, and Madame Récamier.
Hamel, Famous French Salons, preface.
55

Kale, French Salons, 6.

21
 Salons held a place of strategic musical importance until World War II. The

salons provided musicians a place of sociability with other artists. There, they had an

arena for social encounters, intellectual exchanges, and unconventional social

relationships. The salons were usually held at the luxurious home of an aristocratic

hostess (a salonnière), where selected company was invited for polite conversation,

which gave way to larger gatherings for dinner or to some planned activity for the

evening.56 These were places where all the genius of Paris was on display and, in the

Paris of 1830, there were as many salons as there were wives of men in high places who

possessed the skill to form and keep a stable of individuals wishing to be entertained.

Those wishing to belong to the social elite were regular visitors to eight, ten, or a

dozen salons. By 1850, artists began their own intimate gatherings for their friends (such

as Stéphane Mallarmé’s “Tuesday Evenings”) in an attempt to make connections

specifically with other artists. This social and artistic elite, playing the role of mediator,

often promoted meetings between composers, performers, poets, visual artists, novelists,

and critics.57 It was also at these gatherings that musicians and writers first performed

their new works in public. There, for a select audience, composers could put their latest

works to the test before the public premiere took place. Those who attended these private

performances were also in a position to attract a wider public to the concert halls. These

56

Ibid.
57

It was in the salon of the princesses Edmond de Polignac, for instance, that Francis Poulenc met Wanda
Landowska, and it was at Madame Mante-Rostand's salon that he renewed his acquaintance with Pierre
Bernac, who would later become Poulenc’s partner and the interpreter of Poulenc’s songs. Brody, Paris:
The Musical Kaleidoscope, 234.

22
connections, especially between composer, performer, and writer, would lead to the

creation of many works for flute and voice.

THE SOCIÉTÉS

The establishment of performing groups or sociétés for the purpose of

encouraging performances of French music is another hallmark of late nineteenth-century

Paris. The first group of this type, begun in 1871, was the Société nationale de musique,

which would ultimately be responsible for the revival and the efflorescence of French

music.58 It would prompt the establishment of many such groups with the intended

purpose of promulgating and disseminating music by French composers. These groups

assisted in inaugurating a wave of French nationalism.59 Many of the works for flute and

voice were premiered at and by these sociétés.

THE MÉLODIE

The chanson in France has a distinguished tradition, one that can be traced back

to a time when medieval polyphony was feeling the first effects of the renaissance.60

During the period from 1850 to 1950, French song again developed into an art form in its

own right. Known as mélodie, its inspiration was close to that of the German lied, and it

achieved its pinnacle in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries in the works of

58

Brody, Paris: The Musical Kaleidoscope, 17-18.

59

Ibid., 231-232.
60

Noske, French Song From Berlioz to Duparc, 1-2.

23
(chronologically) Gabriel Fauré, Claude Debussy, Henri Duparc, and Ernest Chausson.

Every composer in the musical bibliography wrote mélodie for flute and voice

which evolved in style over time. Beginning with the light salon works of Victor Massé

and Léo Délibes and also including the lyrical, pastoral mode of Charles Gounod and

Philippe Gaubert, the music progressed to the oriental chamber pieces of Maurice Ravel

and Maurice Delage and to the dissonant, polytonal works of Albert Roussel and Darius

Milhaud. This stylistic evolution in the music of these works can be traced to the

influence of the French poets of the day.61 French musicians such as (alphabetically)

Chausson, Debussy, Delage, Duparc, Milhaud, Poulenc, and Ravel, responded with

remarkable music to the verses of French poets such as Guillaume Apollinaire, Théophile

Gautier, Leconte de Lisle, Stéphane Mallarmé, Pierre de Ronsard, Arthur Rimbaud, and

Paul Verlaine. Through these poets, the literary trends of naturalism, realism, symbolism,

decadence, and surrealism would seep into the music for flute and voice.

POETS AND WRITERS, 1850-1950

In poetry, the decade after the proclamation of the new Republic (1870-1880) was

dominated by Victor Hugo. After his return from exile, and right up to his death in 1885,

his preeminence was scarcely contested. During the same years, those poets already

dubbed the parnassians (Théodore de Banville, François Coppée, Léon Dierx,

Charles-Marie Leconte de Lisle) were also rising to fame and before long could claim to

be the dominant French poetic school. In fiction, the main phenomenon of the 1870s was

61

Meister, Nineteenth-Century French Song, ix-xi.

24
the rise of naturalism.62 The naturalist movement, which regarded itself as a reaction

against the insipid novels published under the imprint of the Revue des Deux Mondes,

reached its peak in 1880.

After 1880, both the parnassians and the naturalist movements encountered

violent opposition from newcomers on the scene while also being weakened by growing

internal divergences. In the field of poetry, the decade beginning in 1880 was

characterized by the emergence of a number of new trends, all of which are now

embraced within the general term symbolism.63

One of these new trends was typified by a group of poets called the decadents.

They were most conspicuously influenced by Baudelaire, a poet of the preceding

generation. After his death in 1867 and during the first years of the Third Republic,

Baudelaire's influence, on the surface at least, does not appear to have been very strong.

The poets who openly declared themselves to be his disciples, Stéphane Mallarmé,

Arthur Rimbaud, and Paul Verlaine, remained somewhat in the background while the

parnassians continued to occupy the center of the literary stage. After 1880, the picture

changed quite dramatically with the rise of the new generation that regarded Baudelaire

as its most important teacher and guide, and he was returned swiftly to a position of

62

As a literary phenomenon, it was international and by no means restricted to France. In Paris, however, the
landmark year is 1871 when Zola began publication of his Rougon-Macquart series, which was to continue
until 1893. Zola, along with Flaubert, Balzac, and the Goncourt brothers, would become the center of a
growing constellation of younger novelists in the city. Brereton, An Introduction to the French Poets, 122.
63

The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French, edited by Peter France, 788-789.

25
preeminence.64

In the late nineteenth century, French writers were struggling to free their verse

from the constraints of classicism. Many musicians, meanwhile, worked closely with

writers and poets, seeking fresh ideas for their pieces with texts. Since the writer of songs

must deal with words as well as music, the literary climate of a period is a basic factor in

the development of its song style. The new poet-composer relationship became

established during this period, when the actual techniques of music and literature had

been brought nearer than in the past. It was only natural that, while the poets were

borrowing from music, musicians, on the other hand, should have shown themselves to

be especially sensitive to contemporary literature. Fauré and Duparc were pioneers in this

field, as was Debussy in his settings of Baudelaire, Mallarmé and Verlaine, in

particular.65

The poets whose works were most often used as song texts during this period are

Théodore de Banville, Charles Baudelaire, Théophile Gautier, Villiers de l'Isle Adam,

Leconte de Lisle, Armand Silvestre, Sully-Prudhomme, and Paul Verlaine.66 From time

to time, composers chose older texts for their songs. Many of Gabriel Fauré's early songs,

for instance, are settings of romantic poems by Victor Hugo; Claude Debussy went back

to the poems of Charles d'Orléans, Tristan L'Hermite, and François Villon; Henri Duparc

used a translation of an elegy by Thomas Moore; and Ernst Chausson set Maurice

64

Ibid.
65

Hertz, The Tuning of the Word, 56-59.

66

Noske, French Song From Berlioz to Duparc, 69-89.

26
Boucher's translations of Shakespeare to music.

THE FLUTE, 1850-1950

The romantic era saw little new flute music. This was due, in part, to the

perceived inferiority of the flute to other instruments of the day (such as the violin or the

piano). The wooden, keyed flute produced a relatively small sound and was not perceived

as a solo instrument by composers of the romantic period. This may seem surprising

since the Boehm flute, a technological innovation that was to revolutionize the

instrument, came into being during the 1830s.67 However, acceptance of the new flute

was slow in arriving (especially in France) and the difficulty with which players adopted

the new fingering system, along with the competition generated among instrument

makers, had a negative effect on flute literature.68

Although the flute and the piccolo did become valued members of the orchestra,

the growth of solo flute literature and chamber music including the flute was slow from

the mid-nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century. The flute was not

seen as an instrument with the capacity to produce the power and variety of tone that

67

Theobald Boehm introduced a metal instrument, with redesigned placement for tone holes in the flute,
along with a new mechanism and fingering system capable of controlling these holes in 1831. In 1832 he
began a series of experiments to determine the proper proportions of tone hole measurement and introduced
this second modification to the instrument, with public performances in Munich, Paris, and London. By
1833, Boehm had sold only one flute in London and he encountered similar resistance in Germany and
France. According to Nancy Toff, Paul Camus, the principal flutist of the Théâtre-Italien introduced the
Boehm flute to Paris in 1837. The Boehm instrument was officially introduced to the Paris Conservatoire in
1838, however, it would not become the instrument of choice until 1860 (largely due to the efforts of Tulou
to keep the new metal flute out of the mainstream). Even after 1833, Boehm continued to refine and modify
the instrument with the help of professional flutist and engineer Dr. Carl von Schafhäutl. The 1850 Boehm
flute is the instrument most similar to the modern flute. Toff, The Flute Book, 53.
68

Powell, The Flute, 212-215.

27
were the vehicles of romantic musical expression. Johannes Brahms, Franz Liszt, Felix

Mendelssohn, and Robert Schumann were just some of the notable romantic composers

who contributed no works to the solo flute repertoire. Even as it gained in acceptance, the

flute became an instrument of virtuosic display and programmatic salon pieces, such as

bird music. French composers of the romantic generation wrote no concertos for flute.

By the 1860s, however, the acceptance of the Boehm flute in France, as well as

the introduction by Paul Taffanel of new teaching methods at the Conservatoire, had a

direct effect on the music written for the instrument.69 Many celebrated flutists, including

(chronologically) Paul Taffanel, Philippe Gaubert, Adolphe Hennebains, René Le Roy,

Georges Barrère, Louis Fleury, Georges Laurent, and Marcel Moyse had taken their

places in the performing ensembles of the day. At the same time, a new generation of

French composers wrote prolifically for the flute as a solo instrument and as a

collaborative instrument in numerous ensemble combinations, including flute and voice.

The result was an outpouring of repertoire for the flute in many genres (including music

for flute and voice) during this period that has not been duplicated since.

THE SOPRANOS, 1850-1950

Not until the nineteenth century and the highly promoted careers of singers such

as Giulia Grisi, Adelina Patti, and Pauline Viardot, did the mantle prima donna come to

designate famous sopranos. To be a prima donna was not so much to be a great

interpreter of operatic music as it was to be an outrageous grand dame. This period saw

69

Dorgeuille, The French Flute School, 1860-1950, translated by Edward Blakeman, 25.

28
the rise of the diva, a near-goddess who received the homage of flowers, diamonds,

applause, and flattery and gained levels of power and prestige equal to those of their male

counterparts. 70

Not only were these singers known for their vocal prowess but as actresses, as in

the case of Emma Calvé (who became identified with the part of Carmen in Bizet's opera

of the same name)71 and Mary Garden (who inspired and premiered the role of Mélisande

in Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande).72 Meanwhile, other sopranos were known as

entrepreneurs, as in the case of Caroline Miolan-Carvalho (who created the role of

Marguerite in Gounod's Faust and the title roles in Roméo et Juliette and Mireille) and

Pauline Viardot (who was essential in the creation of the roles of Dalila in Saint-Saëns's

Samson et Dalila, Dido in Berlioz's Les Troyens, and the lead roles in Meyerbeer's

Robert le diable and Les Huguenots).

These singers, and others like them, were active in the salons of the day,

connecting promising young musicians with artists, writers, and impresarios to have their

new operatic and vocal chamber works financed and produced by the houses of the day.73

Toward the beginning of the twentieth century, they worked closely with composers to

create new operatic roles, to commission new works, to provide venues for performance,

70

Christiansen, Prima Donna, 1-4.

71

Ibid., 248.
72

Garden, Mary Garden’s Story, 60-72.

73

For example, Fauré was introduced into Parisian society via Pauline Viardot, the celebrated soprano, who,
along with her husband Louis Viardot, hosted weekly soirees to which the intelligentsia of Paris were
invited. Brody, Paris: The Musical Kaleidoscope, 148-149.

29
and to become the sole interpreters of new French vocal chamber music.

Their activities were not limited to the stage. They also encouraged French

composers to develop mélodies and works for voice with instruments.74 Composers

responded with an outpouring of song for singers like Mary Garden (who premiered the

songs of Debussy), Madeline Grey (who premiered the vocal works of Ravel), and Jane

Bathori (who premiered the works for soprano and flute Delage, Koechlin, Milhaud,

Ravel, and Roussel).

PROMINENT MUSICIANS, 1850-1950

In the early nineteenth century, Frédéric Chopin, Félicien David, Felix

Mendelssohn, and Robert Schumann were alive; Giacomo Meyerbeer was considered the

supreme master of opera; Hector Berlioz was striving (unsuccessfully) to obtain

recognition; Richard Wagner and Giuseppe Verdi were at the beginning of their careers;

Charles Gounod, having lately won the Prix de Rome, was earning his livelihood as an

organist; Honorée de Balzac, Alexander Dumas, Georges Sand, and Victor Hugo were at

the zenith of their fame; and Louis-Philippe, the citizen king, ruled the French.75

By the turn of the century, the period extending from about 1870 to 1920, French

music had achieved a veritable renaissance in the hands of a galaxy of remarkable

composers. Those who came to prominence during that brilliant period were Georges

Bizet, Emmanuel Chabrier, Leo Délibes, Henri Duparc, Gabriel Fauré, César Franck,

74

See Chapter 11: The Rise of The Great Sopranos.

75

Mongrédien, French Music from the Enlightenment to Romanticism, translated by Sylvain Frémaux, 343-
346.

30
Ernest Guiraud, Édouard Lalo, Jules Massenet, Louis-Etienne-Ernest Reyer, Camille

Saint-Saëns, and Charles-Marie Widor. They were soon followed by Alfred Bruneau,

André Caplet, Gustave Charpentier, Claude Debussy, and Vincent d'Indy, among others.

The beginning of the twentieth century saw the emergence of Maurice Delage, Roger

Ducasse, Paul Dukas, Charles Koechlin, Maurice Ravel, Albert Roussel, Erik Satie,

Florent Schmitt, and the members of Les Six: Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur

Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, and Germaine Tailleferre.76 Nearly all of

these composers turned their attention to music for flute and voice, some of which are

masterpieces of the genre. Their works (listed in detail in the musical bibliography,

Appendix I) and the history of their creations are the subject of this study.

76

Myers, Modern French Music, 21-41.

31
 CHAPTER 2

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

As the world now is, Paris forms the culminating point; all other cities are simply
stations along the way. It is the heart of modern civilization, drawing in the blood
before sending it out again to the limbs. When I decided to become a famous
opera composer, my good angel sent me straight to that heart: there I was at the
source, and there I was able to grasp at once things which at the wayside stations
would perhaps have taken me half a lifetime to learn.77

—Richard Wagner

77

Letter from Richard Wagner to King Ludwig II of Bavaria, July 18, 1867. Wagner Writes from Paris,
edited and translated by Robert Jacobs and Geoffrey Skelton, 7.

32
ROMANTICISM78 — THE EARLY WORKS FOR FLUTE AND SOPRANO79

About 1851, Jean-Louis Tulou (1786-1865), Auguste Panseron (1795-1859), and

Félicien David (1810-1876) wrote works for flute, soprano, and piano. Chanson by

Tulou, Philomel, On entend le berger, Le cor, and Deux rossignols by Panseron, and

Charmant oiseaux, the coloratura aria with flute obbligato taken from David's first opera,

La perle du Brésil (1851), are all what are now classified as “bird” songs. These are

romantic era salon pieces that were popular during this period for their frivolous text and

their imitation of bird’s song by the soprano and the flute. Victor Massé (1822-1884)

would soon follow in 1853 with his piece, Au bord du chemin, air du rossignol, as would

Joseph-Henri Altès (1826-1895) with his Le rossignol et la touterelle, both for flute,

soprano, and piano.80 Several historical factors brought this music into vogue.

First, the music reflected the frivolousness of the bourgeois society of Paris. The

shift from Charles X to Louis-Philippe and the July Monarchy symbolized a major social

transformation.81 1848 had only recently marked the fall of this regime that had seen the

78

The boundaries of the romantic movement are hard to define, and have sometimes been described by
scholars as a time period stretching from 1750-1870. However, for the purposes of this study, I am using
the period articulated by Jacques Barzun in his Classic, Romantic and Modern (1961) which defines
historical romanticism as comprising those Europeans whose birth falls between 1770 and 1815, and who
achieved distinction in philosophy, statecraft, and the arts during the first half of the nineteenth century.
79

For a chronology of selected historical events in France from 1850-1950, refer to Appendix VII.
80

Working in Britain during the same time period (1850s) was Sir Henry Rowley Bishop and Sir William
Benedict, both of whom wrote several pieces for flute, soprano, and piano that are bird pieces. Bishop’s
piece, Lo! Here the Gentle Lark was made famous by Jenny Lind and Adelina Patti, who performed this
piece (as well as his Home, Sweet Home) as an encore on their recital tours of Europe and the United States.
81

The new regime was seen from the start as a bourgeois monarchy. The tendency of many aristocrats to
withdraw from court life in protest against the overthrow of the Bourbons accentuated the social cleavage
caused by the July revolution. But the ruling elite was no longer a cross-section of the former Third Estate.

33
establishment of a new bourgeois style or ethos that was reflected in literature, music, art,

and political discourse.82 However, in French society of this period, there were gross

inequalities of wealth.83 An appalling poverty existed side by side with the affluence of a

small minority. To conservative thinkers of the time, such gross inequalities seemed

inevitable. Perhaps as an antidote to the sufferings of others, the aristocrats and the

bourgeois attended concert and opera performances of light-hearted, fantastical material.

They indulged themselves with lively salon performances of pieces such as those

described above. This relentless diet of opéra comique and the pretty, evocative pictures

of bird songs and exotic pieces had seduced the public from greater music, and a trend

towards sentimentality is clearly evident.84

Second, opera was the central musical institution in a politically centralized

nation and, therefore, it drew the close attention of aristocratic society as well as the

The leaders of the bourgeois monarchy included many with aristocratic titles and others who had been
ennobled under Napoléon or were elected to the peerage by Louis-Philippe himself. Land ownership
remained the major source of wealth for most of this new elite, but it also included bankers and
industrialists who had made their fortunes in the beginnings of the industrial revolution. Wealth now
allowed successful individuals to transcend old barriers of religion and status. Popkin, A History of Modern
France, 97.
82

The new king and his family were prime representatives of this shift in values. The king adopted bourgeois
norms of family life and became the first monarch to have his sons educated in the state-run lycées. The
new style was symbolically represented by Louis-Phillipe’s bourgeois play-acting with frock-coat and
umbrella. Tombs, France 1814-1914, 357.
83

In the first half of the nineteenth century, despite the beginnings of an industrial revolution, the national
wealth of France was not large enough to permit better wages, shorter hours, more leisure time, or better
housing. Lough, An Introduction to Nineteenth Century France, 37.
84

While there was sustained demand for the comic operas of Adam, David, and Massé, in 1846 there was a
largely unresponsive audience for Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust, arguably one of the great French
works of the romantic period. The French Romantics, ed. Charlton, 378.

34
middle class.85 Grand opera was a particular creation of early nineteenth-century

France.86 While many romantic ideas came from Germany in the field of poetry and

visual art, French romantic music is striking in its failure to acknowledge how powerfully

music can act on the human soul. German musicians acknowledged music as superior to

other arts, yet French musicians showed a certain reserve to the more powerful

manifestations of music.87 Instead, they clung to the traditional balances and

collaborations that gave music an important role in the theater, the concert hall, the salon,

the church, or in ceremonies of state. Abstraction found no followers in France, where

music continued to be allied to words in opera and in song. As a result, opera is the most

representative French musical genre of the period, though not the most romantic.

The enormous works which made up the Opéra’s repertory drew on all kinds of

romantic subject matter and fed the public taste for great outpourings of passion and

fantasy (religious, political, amorous, epic, patriotic, etc.) that were characteristic of the

85

Attendance at the opera was so prevalent that in 1830, Balzac made a discussion of Robert le diable by
Meyerbeer a central episode in his novel Gambara, apparently assuming that his readers knew it well. In
addition to the general public, Emperor Louis-Napoléon and Empress Eugènie were loyal patrons of the
opera and they attracted a wide following for opera in the period from 1850-1870. The French Romantics,
ed. Charlton, 355.
86

Grand opera consisted of sensationalized drama that was brilliantly contrived, usually in a precise historical
location. The verse was usually regular in accent and rhythm, with an obviousness of meter that produced a
sense of banality. Subjects were chosen to provide opportunities for local color or religious or political
conflicts in a strong dramatic framework. Some of the scenarios were clearly borrowed from romantic
drama, while others were fantasy. The opera company made use of the latest staging effects to create
illusions of movement and perspective that were previously unknown in the theater. Unusual musical
instruments were exploited for their novelty and special effect, including the bass clarinet, organ, harp, and
viola d’amore. The chorus took a prominent part in the story, and the operas inevitably contained a ballet.
There was a predictable move toward epic stories from history that focused on great conflicts of the human
race. Great singing was also a highlight of this period, with notable sopranos such a Cinti-Damoreau,
Falcon, Stoltz, and Viardot commanding high fees. The French Romantics, ed. Charlton, 361.
87

The French Romantics, ed. Charlton, 354.

35
times.88 The authors of this music were skillful architects who knew their audience’s

preferences and were able to devote unprecedented resources to the creation of these epic

works. Unfortunately, the creativity and originality of the music suffered. The verse is

resourceful but repetitive and lapses into monotony.89 All of these songs referenced at the

beginning of the chapter are taken from operas written by these composers, and it is a

demonstration of the frivolousness of the librettos that each contains a song for soprano

imitating a bird!

While operas by Auber, Donizetti, Halévy, Meyerbeer, and Rossini remained the

chief musical forms in Paris during the mid-nineteenth century, virtuoso show pieces

provided the flute’s most frequent opportunities in solo and chamber music.90 Another

form exploited during this period was the theme and variation. Several composers wrote

pieces for flute, soprano, and piano in this style, including O dolce concerto (Air

de Mozart avec variations) by Louis Drouet (1792-1873), and Variations on Ah! Vous

dirais (a theme attributed to Mozart) and Bravura variations on a theme attributed to N.

Dezède by Adolph Adam (1803-1856).

88

During the romantic period, the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau advanced the idea that in opera, the
whole should be a perfect union of painting, music, and poetry (Rousseau espoused this idea long before
Wagner developed his theory of the union of the three arts). Melody existed to express emotion not to
display the voice, yet every element of the opera should submit itself to the action. French operatic
composers at the height of the romantic movement were Daniel François-Esprit Auber (1782-1871),
Ferdinand Hérold (1791-1833), Fromental Halévy (1799-1862), and Adolphe Adam (1803-1856). Giacomo
Meyerbeer (1791-1864) exerted the greatest influence on the development of romantic opera, however,
firmly establishing grand opera in Paris for more than two decades. Grout, A Short History of Opera, 315-
319.
89

Neither David, Panseron, nor Massé were successful in disguising the sing-song quality of the verses they
set in their songs.
90

Powell, The Flute, 214.

36
 Throughout the nineteenth century, flutists and composers turned out fantasies,

variations on airs and opera melodies, and other similar works.91 Jean-Louis Tulou and

Joseph-Henri Altès were the flute professors at the Conservatoire during this period, and

their works dominated the repertoire that was performed by flute students. Between 1832

and 1860, every single solo required for the concours prize for flutists was a composition

by Tulou.92 Indeed, his compositions, along with those of Altès continued to be the main

Concours selections through Altès’s term as professor.

These frothy works were produced in other European countries as well as France.

Fitzgibbon (a British flutist of the late-nineteenth century) remarked that the public was

largely responsible for the composition of such pieces:

The public taste was not educated: it was the age of the air variée. The great
professional soloists naturally played the kind of music which pleased their
auditors and pupils most. Every suitable or unsuitable operatic aria, every Welsh,
Irish, Scottish, or English tune was adapted by them for the flute and tortured into
all sorts of interminable scales and exercises …with double-tonguing, skips from
the highest to the lowest notes and such like tricks written to show off the
executive skill of the performer and to make the audience wonder how it was all
done.93

Writing a generation later, Louis Fleury (a French flutist who studied at the

91

For instance, one of the most popular and frequently performed solos of the period was a set of variations
on God Save the King. Baines, Woodwind Instruments and their History, 317.
92

See Appendix VIII for a list of solos performed at the annual Concours for flute. Powell, The Flute, 214.
93

Fitzgibbon also quotes a reviewer in Musical Opinion (1890) who gave the following description of a flute
performance: “Air first, then common chord variation (staccato), “runs” variation, slow movement with a
turn between every other note, and a pump handle shake that wrings tears of agony from the flute; then the
enormously difficult finale, in which you are up in the air on one note, then drop with a bang, which nearly
breaks you, onto low C, only to bounce up again, to hold onto a note, shake it (wring its neck in fact),
scatter it in all directions and come sailing down triumphantly on a chromatic (legato) run with a perfect
whirlpool of foaming notes, only to be bumped and pushed about until you are exhausted.” Fitzgibbon, H.
Macaulay, The Story of the Flute, 109-110.

37
Conservatoire with Paul Taffanel) felt it was the fault of flutists themselves:

The moment flutists tried to compete with violinists, giving themselves over to
fireworks and the expression of hectic sentiment, people of good taste would have
no more to do with them.94

Whether in imitation of other instruments or to please the public, these pieces

were written well into the second half of the nineteenth century. Indeed, Léo Délibes

(1836-1891) wrote a bird piece for flute, soprano, and piano entitled Le rossignol as late

as 1882. It was not until the appointment of Louis Dorus as flute professor at the

Conservatoire (1860) and the ascendency of composers such as Charles Gounod and

Gabriel Fauré that the music written for flute by French composers underwent any

meaningful change.95

ROMANTICISM — POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LIFE

These sentimental songs were written against the backdrop of the Second Empire

in France. Of the three composers mentioned above, Félicien David was perhaps the most

well-known and was considered alongside Berlioz in making contributions to the

romantic movement. In addition to his musical ambitions, David was influenced by the

political and social inclinations of his times. One of the movements of the mid-nineteenth

century to affect musicians, artists, and writers was the Saint-Simonian movement.96 This

94

Fleury, “The Flute and its Powers of Expression,” translated by A.H. Fox Strangways, 384.
95

Ahmad, “The Flute Professors of the Paris Conservatoire from Devienne to Taffanel, 1795-1908,” 78.
96

The state, according to Saint-Simon, was to be replaced by a tripartite elite. First were the
intellectuals and scientists, who would discover useful laws and evaluate the projects of others. Here also
were the artists, or men of imagination, whose inspiration would provide society with moral direction. The
arts, and particularly music, could inspire humanity for the great tasks ahead, harmonize diversity, and

38
Christian technocracy was founded by Claude-Henri de Rouvroy, Compte de

Saint-Simon (1760-1825), dubbed "France's last gentilhomme and first socialist."97 David

became the leading musician of this group of utopian social thinkers.

Other artists of the time who counted themselves among the Saint-Simonians

were Honoré de Balzac, Hector Berlioz, Auguste Comte, Eugene Delacroix, Alexander

Dumas, Gautier, Victor Hugo, Alphonse de Lamartine, Félicité de Lamennais, Franz

Liszt, Prosper Mérimée, Jules Michelet, Alfred de Musset, Gérard de Nerval, George

Sand, Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, Stendhal pseudonym of Henri Beyle), and Alfred

de Vigny. While most of them died before Saint-Simonian ideals became accepted in

France, they were of great importance to one another. This movement provided a venue

for formal gatherings for artists of the romantic age who socialized and collaborated with

one another to create works of art.98

reinforce the ethic of brotherly love. Next, the businessmen and industrialists would administer and execute
the great social projects that would bring plenty for all. Everyone else was to be assigned the productive
functions that best suited their natural talents.
In the 1830s and 1840s, the movement attracted a wide circle of businessmen, engineers,
politicians, bureaucratic managers, welfare state advocates, writers, musicians, and intellectuals. While
Hector Berlioz and Franz Liszt were drawn to the ideals of the movement, only Félicien David was a formal
convert. Barthélemy-Prosper Enfantin (1796-1864), Saint-Simon's successor, regarded himself as the father
figure of the movement, and David enjoyed favorite son status. Thus David was entrusted with the task of
creating music that would assist in effecting a moral regeneration of mankind, following the Saint-Simonian
tenants. David's works were subsequently to aid in the propagation of the religious, social, and political
ideals of the movement. Hagan, Félicien David, 13-24.
97

Ibid.
98

The closest affinities between music and the other arts during the romantic movement may be found in a
comparative study of the music and the literature of the time. This is partly because French literary
romanticism expressed most fully the changes in aesthetic ideas and because the leaders in the literary
component of the movement tended to dominate French artistic society of the time. But, the general
tendencies of romanticism spread very rapidly to music, largely as a result of the growing intimacy between
musicians and other artists. Friendly intercourse may be noted between the composers Hector Berlioz,
Frederic Chopin, Félicien David, and Franz Liszt with the writers Honoré de Balzac, Victor Hugo, Alfred
de Musset, Madame de Staël, and Georges Sand, and the painters Eugene Delacroix and Théodore

39
 David turned his attention to chamber music exclusively in 1863 after renouncing

opera.99 As a result of this dramatic change, he would usher in a new interest in mélodie

and vocal chamber music at the start of the 1850s. During the 1840s and 1850s he wrote

numerous mélodies which were published in several collections, including Perles

d’Orient (1846) and Album de 10 mélodies et 3 valses pour le piano (1847). Because of

his Saint-Simonian sympathies, he was one of the first French composers to set

exclusively the texts of French poets, such as Le rhin allemand, a patriotic poem written

by Alfred de Musset in 1842.100 In addition, David was one of the first French composers

to be called “the French Schubert” for the lyrical charm of his songs and the sentimental

turns of his phrases.101

David was also one of the first composers to travel to the Middle East, where he

composed a number of works for piano in an oriental idiom.102 His orchestra work Le

désert (1844) was a piece written to evoke the mood of the exotic lands of Smyrna and

Egypt, and it was a great success in Paris. As discussed in Chapter 5, exoticism is a

Géricault. Lockspeiser, The Literary Clef, 1-3.

99

French Romantic Song 1830-1870, edited by David Tunley, xxii.

100

Apparently, this song so captured the French popular imagination during the Franco-Prussian war that the
song was revived and sung throughout France as a demonstration of French patriotism. David also set to
music the poetry of Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869), Emile Barateau (1792-1870), Marc Constantin
(1810-1888), Théophile Gautier (1811-1872), Edouard Plouvier (1821-1876), and Charles Poncy (1821-
1891). Many of these writers were themselves followers of the Saint-Simonian movement. Ibid., xxii-xxiv.
101

Ibid.
102

This trip came as a result of Enfantin’s directive to carry Saint-Simonian ideals into the provinces and
beyond, in particular to the mysterious world of the Middle East and Egypt. David traveled to the Middle
East shortly after the collapse of the movement, around 1835. Romantic French Song 1830-1870, edited by
David Tunley, xxi-xxii.

40
strong element in the music for flute and soprano, and Le désert spawned a number of

imitators as well as established the French taste for Eastern color which is so evident in

the operas and songs of the later part of the century.103

ROMANTICISM — ARTISTIC AND CULTURAL LIFE

In many western countries during the romantic period, and especially in France,

emphasis gradually shifted from the solitary painter or poet at work in a studio or study to

innovations by groups of artists or musicians, and by workshops of decorators, sculptors,

and directors, all working in close touch with the public.104 In literature, there were high

points in the great French theater tradition, including a succession of plays in the

nineteenth century that began with the works of Victor Hugo (in romantic dramas such

as Cromwell, 1827 and Hernani, 1830), Alexandre Dumas the younger (La dame aux

camélias, 1852), and Edmond Rostand (Cyrano de Bergerac, 1897).105 Meanwhile, the

older tragedies by Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine, the social comedies by Molière, and

the frothy comedies of love by Pierre-Augustine Caron de Beaumarchais (Le barbier de

Séville and Le mariage de Figaro) would provide texts and ideas for French opera and

song. Soon modern French writers would also supply the texts for French composers of

flute and soprano music.

103

Echos of Le Désert may be heard in Berlioz’s L’Enfance du Christ (1854), Bizet’s Pêcheurs de perles
(1863), Meyerbeer’s L’Africaine (1865), Massenet’s Le roi de Lahore (1877), and Délibes’s Lakmé. The
pieces for flute and voice written in the exotic style are considered in Chapter 5. The French Romantics, Ed.
Charlton, 378.
104

Salazar, Music in Our Time, 21-30.

105

The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French, edited by Peter France, 714-716.

41
 In music, France began producing native composers of world rank (such as

Hector Berlioz, Georges Bizet, Léo Délibes, Charles Gounod, and Jules Massenet) and

drawing important foreign-born composers to Paris to live and work (such as Frederic

Chopin, Franz Liszt, and Richard Wagner).106 The city also enjoyed preeminence in

ballet, dating from the time of Noverre (1727-1810) and continuing until the twentieth

century, with the residency of the Ballet Russe under the direction of Serge Diaghilev. As

in literature and the visual arts, the latter-nineteenth century was a fertile period in which

a number of excellent composers produced masterworks in every genre.

The appeal of French literature has resided in, perhaps, two main factors: a

passion for ideas and a strong sense of place and of detailed social observation. The

romantic movement, at its height, was led by four great poets: Alphonse de Lamartine

(1790-1869), Alfred de Vigny (1797-1863), Alfred de Musset (1810-1857), and Victor

Hugo (1820-1885). In addition, novelists Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850), Georges Sand

(1804-1876), Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), and Emile Zola (1840-1902) pioneered

important aspects of realism (in Madame Bovary) and naturalism (in Germinal).107 In

poetry the leading writer of this period was Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), whose

sonorous rhythms and sense of melancholy introduced a new sensibility into French

verse. His work influenced the equally evocative poetry of Paul Verlaine and Arthur

106

Hill, Modern French Music, 1-10.

107

Sowerwine, France Since 1870, 50-51.

42
Rimbaud. They, in turn, paved the way for the great symbolist Stéphane Mallarmé.108

French composers writing for voice and flute would eventually set texts by all of these

poets.

POST-ROMANTICISM

By 1854, the Crimean War had been fought with Russia, France had had its first

Exhibition universelle, and Queen Victoria had visited Paris. Several theaters were built

in Paris during this period: the Châtelet, the Théâtre-Lyrique, the Palais Garnier Opéra,

and the concert hall Salle Herz. Musical instruments also continued their technical

development, while, as a result of Conservatoire training, the gap between professional

and amateur players widened. At the Salle Pleyel and Salle Erard the performers

included international artists such as Joseph Joachim, Anton Rubinstein, and Clara

Schumann. The grouping of industrial populations led to the establishment of many

choral societies and, as a result, the composition of new French music for solo voices and

for chorales.109

Yet beneath the show of homage to art as represented in the glittering salon

performances and the performances of huge exhibition cantatas at the newly built Palais

Garnier opera house, there was little official encouragement of the arts by the

government of Napoléon III. Romanticism was primarily a movement of revolt, to a great

extent motivated by much-needed protests against conventionality, artificiality, and the

108

The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French, edited by Peter France, 70-71.
109

Brody, Paris: The Musical Kaleidoscope, 15-20.

43
hollow neo-classicism of the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries. In the name

of natural sympathy and feeling, romanticism broke down many of the barriers of formal

restraint in the arts, which had been codified and institutionalized by preceding

generations.110

Many artists who, in the 1830s, had believed in their mission to shape society had

no sympathy with a regime that was half-dictatorship and half-populist or with the tastes

of the rulers that shifted between the grandiose and the frivolous. Soon, romanticism was

over and its leaders were either disillusioned (like Berlioz, Delacroix, or Gautier) or in

exile (like Hugo). The pervasive materialism in government and society alike forced

artists and writers to detach themselves from the cultural mainstream. The mood of the

period also produced other movements such as the Parnassians (who elevated art for its

own sake) and positivism (which sought systems in everything), both of which rejected

outright the romantic belief in inspiration and genius.

The political and social changes that accompanied this post-romantic era found

cultural expression in the growing tendency of composers to free themselves from the

bonds of patronage, to take a more independent place in society, and to take a more

conscious role in the assertion of national individuality.111 It was during this period of

transition that the next generation of French composers wrote music for flute and soprano

110

The next generation of musicians experimented with the extension of form and tonality (as a result of the
influence of Wagner), turning away from sonata form in chamber music and in the symphony, and
cultivating smaller forms such as the mélodie in reaction to the excesses of romanticism. This would benefit
the repertoire for flute and soprano, which garnered increased attention after 1870. Salazar, Music in Our
Time, 24-26.
111

Lethève, Daily Life of French Artists in the Nineteenth Century, translated by Hilary E. Paddon, 195-202.

44
of a decidedly different character than the preceding generation.

Lead by Charles Gounod (1818-1893), the chamber music for flute and soprano

of the late nineteenth century began to incorporate the flute as an equal voice in the

texture of the music. These pieces had a pastorale quality that focused on melody and

line rather than technical display (by either the vocalist or the flutist). Some were based

on religious themes, others were in the style of the newly developed mélodie.112 Many

French composers turned their talents to this genre, producing works such as: Ave Maria

by Édouard Millault (1808-1887); Le ruisseau et la jeune fille by Louis Lacombe (1818-

1884); Sérénade (1866), Barcarolle: Où voulez-vous aller?, and O légère hirondellé by

Charles Gounod (1818-1893); Chant de Breton (1884) by Édouard Lalo (1823-1892);

Une flûte invisible (1887) and Le bonheur et chose légère by Camille Saint-Saëns; and

Agnus dei by Georges Bizet (1838-1875). Again, the historical context of the time

provides several underlying factors for this new repertoire.

LYRICISM

Even by the mid-nineteenth century, the opera house was still providing the

setting for fundamental changes in French music. Lyric opera was a form that developed

somewhere between the extravagances of grand opera and the merriments of operetta,

and which cultivated a measured and refined lyrical expression of serious subject

matter.113 The leading composers of this kind of opera in France were Ambroise Thomas

112

A detailed study of French mélodie is found in Chapter 9.

113

Lyric opera, by comparison with grand opera, was smaller in dimension, more unified in mood, and
generally expressed more inward emotions. Melody was cultivated in this form with exceptional sensitivity

45
(1811-1896) and Charles Gounod (1818-1893).

Perhaps the most well-known example of lyric opera is Gounod’s Faust (1859),114

a work that is conceived in a proportioned, elegant style containing attractive melodies

that are expressive but not overly so. Saint-Saëns described Gounod as the composer who

restored a genuinely French musical ideal to French musicians. It was the simple

expression of emotion with minimum effort that attracted composers of the next

generation.115 Saint-Saëns described Gounod’s later works:

Expressiveness was always his ideal: that is why there are so few notes in his
music…each notes sings. For the same reason instrumental music, “pure” music,
was never his forte. His aim in orchestration was to discover beautiful color and,
far from adopting ready-made the methods of the great masters, he applied
himself to the study of timbres and tried to invent new combinations suited to his
own ends.116

to the text. While some ballet still remained and there was some spoken dialogue in lyric opera, the subject
matter of the works turned to romantic drama, and the sensationalism of grand opera was abandoned. Grout,
A Short History of Opera, 340.
114

Faust was first staged as an opéra comique in 1859 with spoken dialogue. However, Gounod later arranged
the work with recitatives substituted for the dialogue, and this new form became the most popular French
opera ever written, attaining its two-thousandth Paris performance in 1934. In the intervening years since
the premiere, the work has been given in forty-five different countries in approximately twenty-four
different languages. Ibid., 341.
115

Lyric opera developed in France at about the same time that realism arose in the visual arts and naturalism
in the literature. While the Salon exhibited as many as 4,000 paintings in the 1855 Exposition, at least twice
that number were rejected. The Salon accepted some painting by new artists but only those that conformed
to the preferred genres and styles. The controversy surrounding the works rejected from the 1863 Salon led
the Emperor to allow a special Salon des Refusés, an exhibit of the paintings rejected from the Salon. This
occurred several times before the Republic finally abandoned the Salon in the early 1880s. The works
rejected were mainly conceived in the genre of realism, which attempted to depict the contemporary world
as people actually lived it. A famous work from this period is Edouard Manet’s (1832-1883) Olympia, a
nude female courtesan who confronts the viewer directly rather than looking demurely aside. In literature,
Emile Zola (1840-1902) represented the movement in realism with his Les Rougon-Macquart series. Zola
created characters that responded to their circumstances rather than acting in fixed stereotypes, as had
previous writers. Apparently, Zola researched his works arduously in order to obtain a gritty realism.
Sowerwine, France Since 1870, 47-51.
116

Cooper, French Music, 14.

46
 As a result of this change in musical expression, the old distinctions between the

forms of opéra and opéra comique began to disappear by the end of the nineteenth

century. Soon, serious, large-scale, or established operatic works were premiered at the

Opéra, while the new, often experimental works were given hearings at the Opéra-

Comique.117 Some of the composers who followed in the French lyrical style were César

Franck (1822-1890), Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921), Léo Délibes (1836-1891),

Georges Bizet (1838-1875), Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-1894),Vincent d’Indy (1851-

1931), and Jules Massenet (1842-1912). Their works, such as Bizet’s Carmen (1875),

Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila (1877), Délibes’s Lakmé (1883), Massenet’s Manon

(1884), Chabrier’s Le roi malgré lui (1887), Franck’s Hulda (1894), and d’Indy’s

Fervaal (1897) were all written in the lyric style and were to change the course of French

music.118 Many of these composers turned their lyric talents to music for flute and voice.

117

Opéra comique originally referred to French comic opera developed in the seventeenth century by Molière
and Lully, whose comedy ballet pieces, in which spoken dialogue alternated with songs and dances, were
presented before Louis XIV during the 1660s. During the late 1670s, the Théâtre-Italien (which had been
established on a permanent basis in Paris in 1661) began to intermingle French scenes, including music,
with its improvised comedies. Over the course of the next several decades, the repertoire was taken over by
the French, who used popular tunes (such as vaudevilles) to which the authors adapted new words. Little by
little, the theaters were brought under one management and formally established as the Théâtre de l’Opéra-
Comique in 1715. For a long time they continued performing popular comedies in which vaudevilles were
the principal sources of the music. At the same time new music replaced the vaudeville tunes and originally
composed songs began to replace the old music. The result of this intermingling of French and Italian
efforts led a new generation of French composers to create a national comic opera with original music, the
opéra comique. Opéra comique contains arias along with spoken dialogue, whose scenes and characters
represent idealized peasantry, usually with a naive heroine and a manly young hero who are saved from
destruction by either their virtue or their innocence. The music was most often tuneful and charming, with
an abundance of duets and other ensemble pieces. This term “opéra comique” is now used to refer to the
theater and to the form. When referring to the theater, I will use a hyphen and capitalization (Opéra-
Comique); when referring to the operatic form, I will not (opéra comique). Grout, A Short History of Opera,
245-257.
118

Grout goes so far as to describe Massenet’s style as “lyrical, tender, penetrating, sweetly sensuous, rounded
in contours, exact but never violent in interpreting the text, sentimental, often melancholy, sometimes a
little vulgar, and always charming.” Grout, A Short History of Opera, 435.

47
RELIGION

Many of the pastorale songs and songs based on religious texts for flute and voice

were written during the period after the 1860s, when France was in the midst of a

religious revival.119 The French revolution brought about great upheaval in religious life,

as Catholicism ceased to be the state religion, and the government attempted to “de-

Christianize” France.120 However, partly as a result of civil and foreign wars, and partly

in response to religious persecution, religious fervor among the French people remained

strong, as Catholics and Protestants in most of Western Europe were affected by a new

religious devotion and spirituality.121

Gounod, who wrote many lyrical and sacred pieces for flute and voice, was

certainly one of these pious, religious, and artistic individuals. In 1847, Gounod began

studying for the priesthood, but instead devoted himself to music. Encouraged by his

friendship with Pauline Viardot (the soprano whom he had first met in Rome and then

again in 1851), he turned his mind to opera and began producing the lyrical, balanced,

elegant music for which he is still known today. Gounod was, in turn, admired by Saint-

119

By the turn of the nineteenth century there existed, in essence, two Frances, one made up of Catholics and
one made up of Republicans. Religion was still the fundamental way that people identified themselves and
their expressions of family, community, and political identity were bound up in their religious beliefs.
Mayeur and Rebérioux, The Third Republic From its Origins to The Great War, 1871-1914, translated by
J.R. Foster, 104-106.
120

Tombs, France 1814-1914, 241.

121

Many of these believers were women, and Tombs argues that this religious devotion constituted a woman’s
major political act in French history. Indeed, by the 1870s, nuns outnumbered the male clergy three to two,
and the cult of the Sacred Heart, the cult of the Virgin Mary, and the pilgrimages to Lourdes were led by
women. Tombs, France 1814-1914, 242-243.

48
Saëns and Bizet, who both wrote lyrical pieces for flute and voice. In 1871, when

Gounod fled to England (as a result of the Franco-Prussian war), Saint-Saëns asserted

himself as the dominant composer in Paris.

NATIONALISM

Nationalism is a concept that arose in the nineteenth century among peoples who

became aware of their national identity without having a national state. In these cases,

nationalism had first to be affirmed linguistically and culturally; then be given political

embodiment. In France the state came first and, over the centuries, created a nation so

that the roots of national self-consciousness can be traced long before the concept or the

word existed. French nationalism was one of the driving forces of the revolutionary and

Napoleonic periods. However, the word nationalisme appeared in the French dictionary

in 1874, significantly, only after the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-

1871) and the loss of the Alsace and Lorraine.122

The loss of the Franco-Prussian war was devastating for France. The composer

Georges Bizet, who had joined the National Guard, described the situation in a letter to

122

Relations between Bismark in Prussia and Napoléon III in France had been deteriorating since the mid-
1860s. Although the French people had largely ignored this, concentrating instead on more appealing
affairs such as the Exposition universelle of 1867,which celebrated the country’s otherwise burgeoning
good fortunes, this could not prevent the inevitable declaration of war with Prussia on July 19, 1870. The
French entered the war full of patriotic fervor and the Marseillaise, which had been banned by the empire,
was heard again in the streets and theaters of Paris. However, the French troops were poorly prepared,
poorly supplied, and incompetently commanded. The Prussian armies were victorious at every turn. On
September 2, 1870, Napoléon III was captured at Sedan and surrendered. Two days later, France was
declared a republic. However, the war raged on as Paris refused to capitulate and, within weeks, Paris was
surrounded by Prussian armies. Four months of siege and starvation ensued until France was forced to sign
an armistice on January 28, 1871. The humiliating terms of the peace included France ceding Alsace and
Lorraine, paying five billion francs in restitution, and the triumphant march of the Prussian troops through
Paris. These terms, along with the many hardships endured throughout the siege of Paris, were several
factors that contributed to the outbreak of civil war in the form of the Commune. Tombs, France 1814-
1914, 83, 424-429.

49
his friend Edmond Galabert:

And our poor philosophy, our dreams of universal peace, world fraternity, and
human fellowship! Instead of all that, we have tears, blood, piles of corpses,
crimes without number or end! I can’t tell you, my dear friend, into what sadness
I am plunged by all these horrors. I remember that I am a Frenchman, but I cannot
altogether forget that I am a man. This war will cost humanity five hundred
thousand lives. As for France, she will lose everything!123

France now felt herself to be a mutilated nation that had fallen into cultural decadence.124

In the wake of this loss, there were many attempts to redefine national identity.

Politically, these included the establishment of political groups, such as the Ligue des

patriotes (1882) and Ligue de la patrie français (1899). In musical institutions, the

decades after the 1870s saw the establishment of the Société nationale de musique

(1871)125 and the founding of the Schola Cantorum in Paris (1894).126 Significantly, after

1871, works by German composers vanished from the list of pieces for the concours for

flute at the Conservatoire.127

The changes in French music were subtle and far-reaching. Nationalism in

nineteenth-century music was marked by an emphasis on literary and linguistic traditions,

123

Duchen, Gabriel Fauré, 29-30.

124

Tombs, France 1814-1914, 316-317.

125

The society’s purpose was to give performances of works by French composers. It can be credited with the
marked rise in the number and quality of chamber and symphonic works produced by the French after the
Franco-Prussian War. Grout, A History of Western Music, 677.
126

The Schola Cantorum was established to broaden the musical training of students, especially in the areas of
historical study of French music. This school consciously contrasted itself with the Conservatoire, which
was felt to emphasize opera to the detriment of other musical pursuits. Ibid.
127

Powell, The Flute, 216.

50
an interest in folklore, a strong element of patriotism, and a craving for independence and

national identity. A sense of pride in its language and its literature contributed to the

national consciousness that led to French unification.128 Another factor in the rise of

French nationalism in music was the ambition of composers to be recognized as equals to

those in the Austro-Hungarian orbit. By absorbing native French folk music and dances

and identifying and drawing on their musical character, composers could develop a style

with a pronounced ethnic personality that was their own.

It is striking that all the works written for flute and voice during this period

employ the text of French poets. A few examples from the musical bibliography are:

Élégie by Jules Massenet (1842-1912) with a text by Louis Gallet; Viens! Une flûte

invisible soupire (1900) by André Caplet (1878-1925) with a text by Victor Hugo;

Portrait (1904) by Cécile Chaminade (1857-1944) with a text by Pierre Reyniel; and Soir

païen (1912) by Phillippe Gaubert (1879-1941) with a text by Albert Samian. This is a

dramatic change from the bird songs of the previous era with their fluffy texts, usually

the creation of a librettist. Clearly, French composers looked to their native language for

inspiration and they endeavored to raise the quality of their mélodies by setting poetry.

In addition, French composers endeavored to elevate the quality of their music

through the exploitation of a French musical style that was unique and recognizable. If

we examine French music as a whole from shortly before the Franco-Prussian War to the

beginning of the twentieth century, it is possible to establish the gradual abandonment of

128

The French were hardly alone. The search for an independent, native voice was also keen in England, the
United States, Russia, and Eastern Europe, where the dominance of German music was felt as a threat to
native musical creativity. Grout, A History of Western Music, 677.

51
excessive dependence upon foreign models and, at the same time, the development of an

originality in musical style and thought indicating the emergence of a different type of

musical art. These characteristics are summarized by Hill:

Since the Franco-Prussian War, and to a large extend on account of it, French
music has made almost incredible advances in technical mastery, originality,
subtlety of expression, and above all in embodying national characteristics.
Within the past fifty years the achievements of French composers have outranked
all contemporary schools, with the possible single exception of the later Russians,
who somewhat antedate them, and to whom in turn they are considerably
indebted. French music, through its exploration of new fields of harmonic effect,
stylistic adaptability, clarity and fineness of emotional discrimination, has
exercised an influence upon the entire civilized musical world.129

Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) was one of these French composers who began to

create a new musical language.130 This is evident in his first volume of songs, which not

only set the poetry of Charles Baudelaire, Théophile Gautier, and Victor Hugo, but

demonstrate his complete mastery in music of the atmosphere of the poems. These works

are characterized by the often incantatory vocal line, cascades of piano arpeggios beneath

a soaring melody, harmonies that seem to move through chromatic slides with

129

Hill, Modern French Music, 2.

130

Fauré was seen to embody many traits of a new French asceticism. Quoting Rollo Myers: “Nowhere can
this more indefinable and subtle aspect of nationalism be better studied than in the music of France, and
more particularly in the works of composers like, for example, [Gabriel] Fauré and [Albert] Roussel whose
music is so “French” that foreigners are supposed to be unable to appreciate its great beauties. And yet the
Fauré idiom, for example, presents absolutely no features that are specifically French as regards externals;
the “Frenchness” of his music has its roots in the whole tradition of French culture in its widest sense rather
than in any particular manifestation of that culture as expressed in a type of melody or rhythm peculiar to
the French people. What is revealed in the music of these composers is, in fact, an instinctive aesthetic and
intellectual attitude having its roots in an age-long tradition of civilized living and thinking, and an
awareness of the essential values implicit in all great art which Roussel expressed so perfectly when he
wrote: ‘Le culte des valeurs spirituelles est à la base de toute société qui se prétend civilisée, et la musique,
parmi les arts, en est l’expression la plus sensible et la plus élelvée.’ [The cultivation of spiritual values is
at the base of all societies who call themselves civilized, and music, of all the arts, is an expression of the
most sensible and the most elevated].” Myers, Modern French Music, 9. Translation is my own.

52
modulatory implications, as well as the interplay of contrapuntal voices. His music is

seamless, with an element of ambiguity (especially in key) which make his music

colorful, seductive, and refined. He eliminates the purely decorative elements that are

extraneous to the core of the musical expression. The result is a richly chromatic,

texturally vibrant work.

Fauré’s one song for flute, soprano and piano, Nocturne, op. 43, no. 2 (1886) did

spawn a host of other works for this instrumentation in a new harmonic language. These

works for flute, soprano, and piano include Louis Diémer’s (1843-1919) Sérénade

(1884), Benjamin Godard’s (1849-1895) Lullaby (1891), Georges Hüe’s (1858-1948)

Soir païen (1898), André Caplet’s Viens! Une flûte invisible soupire (1900), and Léo

Sachs’ (1856-1930) Les nymphes, op. 188 (1909).

During the first half of the nineteenth century, French music, largely devoted to

opera, had been unduly eclectic in character. Its dominating personalities were Rossini

and Meyerbeer, despite the dynamic genius of Berlioz, whose importance was not

recognized until long after his death.131 With the establishment of orchestras and chamber

music societies and the consequent awakening of interest in their respective literatures,

there followed a period of revolution in public taste. César Franck, Édouard Lalo,

Camille Saint-Saëns, and other pioneers of instrumental music in France, may be

regarded as products of this movement.132

131

Cooper, French Music, 8-9.

132

Prior to 1850, as has been noted, musical life in Paris was dominated by opera, and Parisians demonstrated
a distinct disregard for orchestral and chamber concerts that made it difficult for French composers, such as
Berlioz, to have their works performed. Between 1850 and 1885, the establishment of concert sociétés that

53
 Several composers of flute and soprano music inherited this legacy for chamber

music and wrote small chamber works that feature these two voices with a collection of

other instruments. Melanie Bonis (1858-1937) wrote some of the first pieces for soprano

and small chamber groups, such as Le ruisseau, op. 21, no. 2 (for soprano, flute, oboe,

clarinet, cornet, harp, string quartet, and bass) and Noël de la vierge Marie, op. 54, no. 2

(for soprano, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, harp, string quartet, and bass). As well, Louis

Durey (1888-1979) wrote his Images à Crusoé, op. 11(1918) for soprano, flute, clarinet,

celeste [or harp], and string quartet. These experiments with instrumentation were

exploited to full affect by composers of the next generation in their music for flute and

soprano.

The Franco-Prussian War precipitated a concentrated reassertion of national

consciousness that affected every area of musical activity. Still, when the bitterness of

feeling after the Franco-Prussian War had subsided, musical Paris, and with it the

majority of French composers, fell under the spell of Richard Wagner.133 The inevitable

reaction to Wagner's dominance led to enthusiasm for Russian and Oriental music,

especially that of the so-called Neo-Russian composers.

Several composers for flute and soprano who opposed Wagner’s ideas did,

indeed, turn to Oriental and Russian music for inspiration. Influenced by the Exposition

universelle of 1889 were Claude Debussy (1861-1918), Maurice Emmanuel (1862-1930),

performed orchestral and chamber music began to change this state of affairs. French composers began to
create orchestral works, concertos, piano pieces, mélodies, and chamber music in response. Hill, Modern
French Music, 20-25.
133

In Chapter 4: Wagner is found a complete discussion of Wagner’s influence on French composers and on
French nationalism.

54
and Maurice Ravel (1875-1937), all of whom wrote pieces for flute and soprano on

Oriental or exotic themes.134 These works, Les chansons de Bilitis (1901) by Debussy,

Trois odelettes anacréontiques, op. 13 (1911) by Emmanuel, and “La flûte enchantée”

from Shéhérzade (1903) by Ravel were extremely influential on other composers of flute

and soprano music, especially Maurice Delage.

A secondary result of the Franco-Prussian war was an awakening to the value of

French composers of the past, from Lully to Rameau and even earlier. These two masters

were recognized as having established many of the essentials of French musical style, in

addition to embodying the dominant Gallic traits of their respective centuries. French

harpsichord music by Couperin and Rameau, among others, became the object of

extensive research and many tombeau were written by modern composers in homage to

composers of the past.135 French musical literature from the times of the troubadours and

the trouvères was resurrected as well, but this revaluation of the past was not limited to

music. Several French composers, among them Debussy and Ravel, sought to unify the

sentiments of centuries other than their own by setting to music poems by Tristan

L'Hermite, Clément Marôt, Charles duc d'Orléans, and François Villon. This would

become important to the composers of music for flute and soprano, as they wrote

134

The Universal Exhibition was a gigantic event, which brought together representations of decorative arts,
music, and architectural styles from far distant corners of the world. It is in this setting that Debussy first
heard the Javanese gamelan orchestra, an orchestra of pitched percussion instruments that performed
intricately woven rhythmic patterns. The exhibition was also a platform for Russian music. Fauré met
Tchaikovsky and Alexander Glazunov, who had come to Paris to conduct their own works. Duchen,
Gabriel Fauré, 94.
135

Ravel’s Tombeau de Couperin is a particularly well-known example.

55
hommages to Pierre de Ronsard and set the texts of ancient French poets for flute and

soprano.

NEW TEACHING METHODS FOR FLUTE AT THE CONSERVATOIRE

In 1829, Jean-Louis Tulou was elected flute professor at the Conservatoire.

Throughout the next three decades, Tulou solidified his position as the most prominent

flutist in Paris through his teaching and through his performing engagements, especially

with the Société des concerts du Conservatoire.136 As noted previously, until about 1860

he kept a tight hold on the repertoire performed at the Conservatoire (usually his own

compositions) and he staunchly resisted the introduction of the Boehm flute.137 French

flutists who favored the Boehm flute (including Paul Camus, Victor Coche, and Louis

Dorus138) were obliged to cultivate the instrument secretly, without the official

recognition of the Conservatoire.

136

Tulou enrolled at the Conservatoire at the age of ten and won the première prix in 1801, at the age of
fifteen. Soon, he was playing second flute in the Opéra orchestra under his teacher, Wunderlich. By 1804,
he was appointed first flute in the Théâtre-Italien orchestra. In that same year, his teacher retired from the
Opéra orchestra and Tulou succeeded him as principal flute. Tulou taught many students, some of whom
went on to have their own virtuoso careers as flutists, including Victor Coche, Jules Demersseman, and
Johannes Donjon. More information regarding the Société des concerts du Conservatoire is found in
Chapter 8. Amad, “The Flute Professors of the Paris Conservatoire from Devienne to Taffanel, 1795-1908,”
49.
137

Apparently, Tulou opposed the Boehm flute because he perceived that it would harm his business
connections as an instrument-maker. Tulou began manufacturing flutes in 1828 and three years later, he
formed a partnership with the flute-maker Jacques Nonon (1802-c1867). The two set up a workshop and
began to supply instruments to the Conservatoire. The firm employed six full-time workers and four part-
time workers by 1839, earning an annual gross income of 45,000 francs. Powell, The Flute, 213.
138

Dorus became convinced as early as 1833 of the superiority of the Boehm flute, and he practiced on it
secretly for more than two years to master the new finger system. In 1835, when he performed in public on
the instrument for the first time, his performance was a revelation and the instrument was a success. As a
result, France was one of the first countries to adopt the new flute. Amad, “The Flute Professors of the Paris
Conservatoire from Devienne to Taffanel, 1795-1908,” 69.

56
 In 1860, Louis Dorus succeeded Tulou as professor of flute at the Conservatoire.

Dorus brought much needed change to the flute class and was quick to make the metal

Boehm flute the official instrument, as well as promoting new repertoire that moved

away from the technical showpieces of the past.139 As flute professor at the

Conservatoire, Dorus was in a position to influence faculty and student composers of the

next generation. His emphasis on a singing tone with elegance and purity of style ushered

in a new style of playing for the flute. One of his most famous students was Claude-Paul

Taffanel, who was seminal in transforming the flute into an instrument that was widely

viewed as soloistic and capable of projecting its sound in the orchestra and in chamber

ensembles.140

In addition, Dorus formed the Société de musique classique (c1847) together with

a group of leading Parisian musicians, whose purpose was to promote classic chamber

music and to encourage French composers to write new works for chamber ensemble. He

often performed in concert with his sister, Madame Dorus-Gras, a renowned singer. It is

possible that they performed works together for flute and soprano. Both Tulou and Dorus

were frequent soloists with the Société des concerts du Conservatoire and did much to

further the flute as a solo instrument. It is significant that the great majority of the works

for flute and soprano were written after 1860 and the acceptance of the Boehm flute at

the Conservatoire.

139

Some of the examination pieces that Dorus included were by Lindpainter, Reissiger, Boehm, and Briccialdi,
in addition to Tulou and Altès. Powell, The Flute, 215.
140

More information regarding Taffanel’s position in the development of chamber music for flute is found in
Chapter 11.

57
IMPRESSIONISM

At the end of the nineteenth century, impressionism emerged as a vital stream that

would characterize and determine the future course of French art, literature, and music.

Impressionism derived its name from a derogatory remark made by a journalist about

Claude Monet's painting Impression, soleil levant, exhibited in 1874 in the first

exhibition organized by the Société anonyme des peintres, sculpteurs, et graveurs, which

included works by Cézanne, Degas, Monet, Morisot, Pissarro, Renoir, and Sisley.

Between this first exhibition and the eighth and last in 1886, this diverse group secured a

place in the official institutions of French painting which opened the way to the

modernist tradition of twentieth-century art.141

Impressionism was a rejection of the principles and practices taught by the

professors of the Académie, who also formed the jury for the annual Salon exhibition. In

the École des beaux-arts the student learned to represent an intellectual idea of a subject

141

Early nineteenth-century painting after the Revolution was marked by a conflict between neoclassicism and
romanticism. The leaders among the romantic painters were Théodore Géricault (1791-1824) and Eugene
Delacroix (1798-1863), who dominated French painting for decades with their bold, fresh colors and
expressive subject matter. Naturalism in landscape painting blossomed at the mid-nineteenth century,
primarily in the Barbizon school, a group of painters who worked in the village of that name near
Fontainebleau; the wistful landscape scenes of Camille Corot (1796-1875) and François Millet (1814-1875)
remain the most well-known examples. A bolder kind of realism emerged with the work of Gustave
Courbet (1819-1877), Edgar Degas (1834-1917), and Édouard Manet (1832-1883), and Manet became a
kind of unofficial precursor to the impressionists, a group organized around Claude Monet (1840-1926) and
Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) in the early 1870s. The impressionists, who concerned themselves with the
transient effects of light and shadow, had a revolutionary impact on art. It led in turn to various
counter-movements in artists such as Paul Cézanne (1839-1906); the symbolist Paul Gauguin (1848-1903),
whose passion for bold colors and exotic subjects eventually took him to Tahiti; Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
(1864-1901), who vividly depicted the bohemian life of Montmartre; Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890); and
symbolist Odilon Rédon (1840-1916). The early twentieth century saw two major developments in French
art: fauvism, in the opening years, and cubism, invented by Georges Braque, Juan Gris, and Pablo Picasso,
shortly before World War I. The fauves, whose emphasis on vitality of color and design dominated their
works, included Henri Matisse, Maurice de Vlaminck, and for a time, George Braque. Cubism, on the other
hand, would be the first new major style of the twentieth century. Lockspeiser, Music and Painting, 14-15.

58
through techniques based on drawing and chiaroscuro. Early in the nineteenth century,

alternate practices developed from which the impressionists would learn, notably

Delacroix's brush-stroke and use of color, the landscapes of Corot and the Barbizon

group, Courbet's realism, and Manet's treatment of modern subjects. Building on these

techniques and on new scientific accounts of color perception, they used more brilliant

color, wider tonal range, and broken brushwork to represent more faithfully the play of

natural light on objects. The effect of this new role of light and color as organic elements

of picture-making was to discredit academic theories of composition, drawing, and the

hierarchy of subjects.142

From the beginning of the movement, the works of Manet and the impressionists

painters engaged French writers143 and musicians. Musical impressionism shared many of

the same traits with pictorial and literary impressionism. The technique of musical

impressionism may be characterized by a neglect of formal development in favor of

instrumental coloring and harmonic piquancy. The clear articulation of a musical phrase

is abandoned for the swinging, undulating repetition of harmonic color. The phenomenon

of merging tones results in a changed role for the dissonance, whose use and desirability

142

Littlewood, History of France, 256.

143

In the 1860s, Emile Zola praised Manet's naturalism, and in the 1870s Mallarmé wrote an important article
on his open-air painting. Huysmans championed impressionism, especially the work of Degas, while
Laforgue related it to developments in poetry, music, and philosophy. Such artistic exchanges gave rise to
the idea of an impressionist literature with stylistic developments in prose and poetry that were analogous
with impressionist painting. Zola claimed to have applied impressionist techniques in certain of his
descriptions, and the term has frequently been used with reference to the novels of the Goncourt brothers, as
well as the poetry of Verlaine. In writing, the term usually refers to attempts to represent through syntactic
variation the fragmentary and discontinuous nature of the sensations of modern, urban civilization.
Sowerwine, France Since 1870, 50-51.

59
now depend entirely on its value as an agent of color. Now, chords unite many

far-removed intervals, such as chords of the ninth, eleventh, and thirteenth. By shifting

these harmonies, the simplest melody can be adorned without changing a note. These

harmonic progressions and coloristic effects usurp melody, making orchestral and

instrumental chamber music the overwhelming favorite of late nineteenth-century French

composers.

Several works for flute and soprano were written in the impressionist style,

including Charles Koechlin’s (1867-1950) Le nenuphar, op. 13, no. 3 (1897), Debussy’s

Les chansons de Bilitis (1901), Caplet’s Viens! Une flûte invisible soupire (1900),

Ravel’s “La flûte enchantée” from Shéhérzade (1903) and Trois poèmes de Stéphane

Mallarmé (1913), and Maurice Delage’s (1879-1961) Quatre poèmes hindous (1914).

Debussy’s Les chansons de Bilitis is a truly revolutionary work in several ways. It

is an early example of music for voice and chamber ensemble including the flute (the

instrumentation is for 2 flutes, 2 harps, celeste, and narrator) employing an

impressionistic compositional style and harmonic palette.144 Rather than being sung, the

voice part is a recitation of the poetry. This was an example of the tableau style which

was prevalent at the time.145 In addition, Debussy set the poetry of a contemporary French

poet, Pierre Louÿs, and the poems are written on an exotic theme. Debussy’s work

144

Several years earlier, Debussy had written his now famous orchestral work L’Après-midi d’un faune (1894)
which featured a solo for the flute that opens the work. This work is indicative of his impressionistic style,
which is apparently formless, exotic, and evocative. In the work, Debussy disavows the driving rhythms,
dynamic development, and harmonic progressions that were so characteristic of nineteenth-century music.
Sowerwine, France Since 1870, 97-99.
145

More information regarding the tableau and the development of mélodie for flute and soprano is found in
Chapter 9: The Rise of Mélodie.

60
influenced many French composers who came after him (such as Cras, Delage, Ravel,

and Roussel) who all wrote music for flute and soprano that included chamber ensemble,

who all experimented with exotic themes, and who all set the poetry of French

contemporary poets. In much the same way that Debussy revolutionized operatic

composition in France and elsewhere, he also contributed to radical changes in French

chamber music.

Claude Debussy is the composer most identified with impressionism in music.

His youthful talent disclosed itself while he was still a student at the Conservatoire,

where, at age fourteen, his strange chords and translucent harmonies surprised and

disconcerted his classmates and teachers alike.146 In later years, his friend Maurice

Emmanuel described the essential characteristics of Debussy’s work as: (1.) The

extension of harmonic relationships; (2.) Independence in the use of dissonances without

preparation or resolution; (3.) The free employment of notes foreign to the chord; (4.)

The formation of an arbitrary scale or of an oriental or modal coloring with the resulting

successions of chords, and; (5.) The use of enharmonic change as a means of modulating

to distant tonalities whose modality rests uncertainly between major and minor.147 These

ideas would create the musical language for the next generation of French composers

who wrote for flute and soprano, including Maurice Delage, Marcel Delannoy, Maurice

146

While studying and composing in Rome under a fellowship as the Prix de Rome winner, Debussy submitted
his work, Printemps, to an academic tribunal back at the Conservatoire. They wrote to Debussy that they
were concerned about his “feeling for musical color, an exaggeration of which readily causes forgetfulness
of the importance of preciseness in line and form. It is much to be desired that you should put yourself on
your guard against this vague impressionism.” Salazar, Music in Our Time, 173.
147

Ibid., 169.

61
Emmanuel, Maurice Ravel, Alexis Roland-Manuel, Albert Roussel, and Florent

Schmitt.148

LA BELLE ÉPOQUE

After a period of relative prosperity and economic growth which had

characterized the Second Empire, there came a prolonged period in which the French

economy experienced a marked slowdown. The “Great Depression of the nineteenth

century,” as it was later called, lasted from about 1873 to 1896.149 Then in the closing

years of the century, there came a new period of economic expansion that continued until

the outbreak of the First World War.150 After the war, this period was looked back upon

as La belle époque, and it was a time marked by rapid and profound cultural change.151

Many of these changes would have a lasting impact on French composers of flute

and soprano music before and after World War I. The first was the new popularity of

148

Meanwhile, two pioneers of progressive individuality, Emmanuel Chabrier and Gabriel Fauré, also
asserted modern French traits in music. Almost simultaneously, the pupils of César Franck, whose teaching
attempted to incite a restatement of classic forms and methods in individual guise, arose to champion and
extend their teacher's ideals. The most significant of these were Charles Bordes, Ernest Chausson, Henri
Duparc, Vincent d'Indy, Guillaume Lekeu, and Guy Ropartz.
During this period, one may also observe the beginning of that interaction between the arts which
has produced some of the most characteristic French music. Alfred Bruneau, the propagator of naturalism in
opera, and Gustave Charpentier, a socialist who brought his propagandistic instincts to a naturalistic style,
brought French music further on the path toward complete independence of foreign methods.
Afterward Les Six, together with Erik Satie, renounced the methods of Debussy and his successors.
They strived, instead, to develop a characteristic French conception of the contemporary spirit in music,
deriving much of their inspiration from Stravinsky and Schoenberg. Caballero, Fauré and French Musical
Aesthetics, 57-75.
149

Popkin, A History of Modern France, 153.

150

Rogert Shattuck, in his The Banquet Years: The Origins of the Avant-Garde in France, 1885 to World War
I, describes the period encompassing the belle époque and the beginning of modernism in France as the
years 1885-1918.
151

Lough, An Introduction to Nineteenth Century France, 147.

62
café-concerts, cabarets, and music halls, which contributed to the development of French

chanson and mélodie during this period, and to the inclusion of several instruments with

voice. Many of the composers for flute and voice, such as Debussy, Delage, Milhaud,

Poulenc, Ravel, Roussel, Satie, and Schmitt frequented these performance halls and were

influenced by the music they heard there.

During the 1880s and 1890s, cafes provided a space for gathering and interaction

for avant-garde artists. Several of these establishments were located in Montmartre,

including the Chat noir, the Alcazar, the Folies-Bergères, and the Ba-Ta-Clan (with

Chinese decor).152 Café-Concerts were located in places where people of relatively

modest means could come to drink, smoke, and be entertained at a low cost. The

chansons that were sung usually directed jibes at politicians, the boredom of traditional

family life, and the frustrations of work.153 During this time, many famous music hall

performers raised the stature of the French chanson.154 French song now became the

vehicle for social commentary and serious sentiment, elevating itself above the romance

152

Sowerwine, France Since 1870, 95-96.

153

The café-concert tradition is a unique one in French history and began as early as 1731 with the Café des
Aveugles in the basement of the Palais Royal. These concerts exploited the radical tendencies of the
revolutionary period and were eventually banned by Napoléon on the grounds that they provided
encouragement to insurgents. The café-concerts would be alternately banned and reinstated for many years
until around 1861, when they were sanctioned as a part of the effort to rehabilitate the Champs Elysées.
Irreverent and satirical, the songs of the café-concerts broke with the Enlightenment tradition of the past,
instead, expressing the hopelessness of “progress.” This entertainment was one of the seeds of future
movements such as decadence, surrealism, and dada. Brody, Paris: The Musical Kaleidoscope, 98-99.
154

Both Brody and Sowerwine mention Aristide Bruant (1851-1925), who sang in an abrasive voice, using
argot French (worker’s slang) rather than formal French. Accompanying himself on the guitar, his song
lyrics contained stories of the disenfranchised people of France, such as the homeless, unwed mothers,
prostitutes, and victims of social injustice. This radical departure from the old songsters of the day was
thought to have effected social change. Brody, Paris: The Musical Kaleidoscope, 105, and Sowerwine,
France Since 1870, 95.

63
of the 1850s, which had been characterized by the frivolous and meaningless lyrics.

In addition, the cabaret was a meeting place for musicians, artists, and writers

where improvisational performances took place. Again, chanson emerged as the principal

form of entertainment, and these songs were typically satires of the ruling authorities and

the government. A novelty of the café-concerts and the cabarets was the Théâtre

d’ombres (Shadow Theater). This type of production was the inspiration of the symbolist

painter Henri Rivières and featured oriental decor with cut-outs and Japanese puppets.

Many times these scenes included musical accompaniment with narrators supplying the

necessary commentary for the presentation.155 Debussy was a frequent participant in the

musical part of these performances, and these theatrical productions served as a model

for the composition of Les chansons de Bilitis.

Music halls, such as the Grande piscine rochechouart and the Nouveau cirque,

also emerged as places of entertainment and creativity. Beginning with a menagerie of

entertainments, such as ventriloquists or circus performers, the evening usually ended

with chansons. Later, these songs were augmented by instrumentalists in addition to the

piano, and composers (such as the operetta composer Hervé) began to write works for

music hall singers and to act as the conductor of small orchestras.156 The most well-

known of these music halls was the Moulin rouge, which has been immortalized in the

paintings and posters of Toulouse-Lautrec, and which is still known today for the can-

can.

155

Ibid., 104.
156

Brody, Paris: The Musical Kaleidoscope, 107-110.

64
 The proliferation of Exposition universelles during the second half of the

nineteenth century also influenced French composers for flute and soprano. Expositions

were common in various parts of the world, such as Britain and the United States, and

were initially concerned with industrial progress. The French, however, expanded their

focus to include the arts and crafts of the host nation as well as those of foreign

countries.157 Between 1850 and 1950, there were several Exposition universelles in

France, beginning with the Exposition of 1855.158 The Exposition of 1867 was truly an

international Exposition and was the first to have a theme — le travail (labor).

The 1867 Exposition universelle was the first to actively engage the artistic

communities of France and elsewhere, particularly the orient.159 Music played a

particularly important role in this Exposition. Not only were there displays on the

manufacture of instruments and the printing, publishing, and distribution of music, but

there were also many concert performances featuring French music as well as indigenous

music from other parts of the world. This included Hungarian, Chinese, Tunisian,

157

Ibid., 77.
158

The Exposition of 1855 saw the construction of a permanent exhibition hall, the Palais de l’industrie, along
with a Palais des beaux-arts to display fine arts such as Sèvres porcelain and Savonneries carpets. In
addition the French government, which financed these exhibitions, charged admission for the first time,
giving the event the feeling of a large bazaar. Ibid., 79.
159

The grounds were carefully designed by engineer/economist Frédéric le Play, with exhibition space for
visual artists such as Cézanne, Monet, Manet, and Pisarro, who submitted their works for display. In
addition, developments in musical instruments were on display (such as the Boehm flute and the
saxophone), and Victor Hugo was engaged to write the introduction to the Paris-Guide to the fair. Ibid., 80.

65
Russian, Turkish, Egyptian, and Japanese music.160

The Expositions of 1878 and 1889 continued to expand in size and grandeur.

Attendance reached 16 million in 1878 and, in 1889, the Tour d’Eiffel was officially

opened. Electricity was introduced at the 1889 Exposition, to which Saint-Saëns wrote a

hymn of celebration (Le feu céleste).161 The 1889 Exposition also had many concerts

devoted to French music and included works by a wide variety of composers, such as

Adam, Aubert, Berlioz, Bizet, David, Délibes, Dubois, Chabrier, Cherubini, Fauré,

Franck, Godard, Guiraud, Halévy, d’Indy, Massé, Massenet, Méhul, Pierné, Reyer, Saint-

Saëns, and Widor.162 Performing ensembles included the Concert Lamoureux, the

Association artistique de Colonne, the Société des concerts du Conservatoire, the Société

de musique de chamber pour instruments à vents, the Opéra-Comique, and the Opéra.163

Again, there were many programs of foreign and non-Western music. As mentioned

160

Oscar Comettant, an attendee of the Exposition, wrote a detailed remembrance of the event entitled La
musique, les musiciens et les instruments de musique chez les différents peuples du monde. After hearing
the music of Siam, Cambodia, and the Turks, the author remarks that Beethoven’s Ruins of Athens sounded
nothing like actual Turkish music. French musicians were equally surprised by the music of other countries,
in particular the music of Japan. The 1867 Exposition universelle was the beginning of a fascination in
France for all things oriental. Brody, Paris: The Musical Kaleidoscope, 80-81.
161

A month after Gustav Eiffel had signed the contract to proceed with construction of the tower, a petition
from the foremost writers, artists, musicians, painters, and sculptors appeared in Le Temps on February 14,
1887, denouncing the structure as a “menace to French history.” Some of the artists who signed the petition
were composer Charles Gounod and writers Guy de Maupassant and Leconte de Lisle. Duchen, Gabriel
Fauré, 110.
162

The inclusion of French music was by no means automatic. As official plans were revealed to have a
singular lack of national music represented, musicians of the day put pressure on the government. This
“group de la musique” included composers such as Alfred Bruneau, Camille Erlanger, Georges Huë, Xavier
Leroux, and Gabriel Pierné. As a result, a special commission was appointed by the Republic to design
musical programs that would provide a history of French music from its origins to the present day. Fulcher,
French Cultural Politics and Music, 37-41 and Brody, Paris: The Musical Kaleidoscope, 87.
163

More information regarding the concert sociétés in France during this period is found in Chapter 8.

66
above, the Javanese musical exhibit captured the attention of many, including Debussy,

Ravel, and Fauré. In addition, Russian music was of particular interest to these

composers, where they heard music by Balakirev, Borodin, Glazunov, Glinka, Liadov,

Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Tchaikovsky.

Several works for flute and soprano were written during the period of the

Expositions, and their subject matter and themes reflect the influence of these

Exhibitions. Works that may be categorized as oriental or exotic are found in the table

below:

TABLE 1
MUSIC FOR FLUTE AND SOPRANO ON ORIENTAL AND EXOTIC THEMES
In Chronological Order by Date of Composition

Composer Composer’s Title Instrumentation Date of

Dates Composition

KOECHLIN, 1867-1950 Le nenuphar, op. 13, For flute, soprano, 1897

Charles Louis no. 3 and piano
Eugène

HÜE, Georges- 1858-1948 Soir païn For flute, soprano, 1898

Adolphe and piano

DEBUSSY, 1862-1918 Les chansons de For 2 flutes, 2 harps, 1901

Achille-Claude Bilitis celesta, and narrator

RAVEL, Maurice 1875-1937 "La flûte enchantée" For flute, soprano, 1903
from Shéhérzade and piano

SACHS, Léo 1856-1930 Les nymphes (Écho For flute, soprano, 1909
d'Héllande), op. 188 and piano

EMMANUEL, 1862-1939 Trois odelettes For flute, soprano, 1911

Maurice anacréontiques, op. and piano
13

GAUBERT, 1879-1941 Soir païen For flute, soprano, 1912

Philippe and piano

DELAGE, 1879-1961 Quatre poèmes For soprano, 2 1914

Maurice hindous violins, viola, cello,
2 flutes, oboe, 2
clarinets, and harp

67
 Composer Composer’s Title Instrumentation Date of
Dates Composition

SCHMITT, Florent 1870-1958 Kerob-shal, op. 67 For soprano, flute, 1919

and orchestra

DELAGE, 1879-1961 Sept haï-kaïs For soprano, flute, 1920-1925

Maurice oboe, clarinet,
piano, and string
quartet

RAVEL, Maurice 1875-1937 "Air de la princesse" For soprano, flute, 1920

from L'Enfant et les and orchestra
sortliéges

TANSMAN, 1897-1986 Huit mélodies For soprano, flute 1922

Alexandre japonaises and orchestra

BONHOMME, M. n.d. Ballade anciènne, op. For flute, soprano, 1923

T. 98 and piano

PONIRIDY, 1892-1982 Deux poèmes dans le For soprano, flute, 1925

Georges style populaire grec clarinet, string
quartet, and piano

CRÈVECOEUR, 1819-? Haï-kaï d'occident For flute and 1926

Louis Deffès soprano
Joseph

RAVEL, Maurice 1875-1937 Chansons madécasses For voice, flute, 1926

cello, and piano

These works reflect a general expansion in the cultural horizons of the nation as France

began to show more appreciation for all aspects of human culture. By the Exposition

universelle of 1900, most French people showed a readiness to listen to the music of

other cultures and to tolerate the influence of non-Western nations. This is a decided shift

from the nationalism of the previous generation.

THE AVANT-GARDE

From the café-concerts and the cabarets developed a type of chanson that would

be known for its elements of pessimism and revolt. This satirical style of music would be

the primary inspiration of the early vocal chamber works of Darius Milhaud (1892-1974)

68
and Francis Poulenc (1899-1963). These include Poulenc’s Rhapsodie nègre (1917

version) for soprano, flute, clarinet, string quartet, and piano and Le bestiaire (1919) for

soprano, flute, clarinet, bassoon, and string quartet; and Milhaud’s Machines agricoles,

op. 56 (1919) for soprano, flute, clarinet, bassoon, violin, viola, cello, and bass and

Catalogue de fleurs (1920) for soprano, flute, clarinet, bassoon, violin, viola, cello, and

bass. These works reflected the efforts of a new avant-garde that emerged in Paris around

1890 and which rejected all notions of realism.164

The avant-garde was not a new idea in France, growing out of the nonconformist

tendencies of the romantic movement.165 This movement produced a determined group of

artists who maintained a belligerent attitude toward the world and a genuine sympathy

for one another. The need for new expression gave rise to the decadents and the

symbolists in poetry and in painting.166

It surfaced in music through the influence of Erik Satie (1866-1925) who was a

prominent personality in the café-concert venues of the Chat noir, the Lapin agile, and

164

Sowerwine, France Since 1870, 100.

165

Shattuck defines the origins of the avant-garde movement as beginning in 1863, with the beginning of the
Salon des refusés. Shattuck, The Banquet Years, 24.
166

Symbolism was a term adopted by Jean Moréas (1856-1910) in his manifesto article of September 18, 1886,
which described the rejection of the naturalist, parnassian, and decadent movements by young writers,
notably Dujardin, Ghil, Kahn, Moréas, Morice, Retté, and Wyzewa. The group revolved around Stéphane
Mallarmé between 1885 and 1895, and the term symbolism grew to refer to developments in French poetics
between Baudelaire and Valéry, which were then assimilated in different forms and to different degrees by
non-French literatures. Decadence was a late nineteenth-century phenomenon with its focal point in the
Paris of the 1880s and 1890s. It appeared in literature and visual art as a regenerative revolt against the
mediocrity of bourgeois consensus. With the help of large-scale printing and reproduction, the writers and
painters of the decadent movement distributed their elitist ideology to the masses of a new consumer
society. Sowerwine, France Since 1870, 96

69
the Montmartre cabarets.167 He had already written the Sarabandes (1887), the

Gymnopédies (1888), and the Gnossiennes (1889), which, in their harmonies, anticipated

the innovations credited to Debussy (such as sequences of unresolved chords of the

ninth).168 To this period belongs the kind of music that is popularly associated with him

today, characterized by the musical eccentricities (at that time) of suppression of time and

key signatures, the deletion of bar-lines, and the addition of a verbal running commentary

superimposed upon the music. While the titles of his pieces were sarcastic and irreverent,

the music itself is completely serious and straightforward.169

During World War I, Satie made the acquaintance of Jean Cocteau, and is perhaps

most well-known for his ballet Parade (1917), which was a collaboration with Cocteau

(librettist), Piccaso, (set and costume design), Massine (choreography), and Diaghilev

(director of the Ballet Russe). With its music-hall vulgarity and its mythologization of

urban folklore, Parade was a radical departure from impressionism. Stravinsky, who

witnessed the revival of Parade in 1920, later wrote in his autobiography:

The performance gave me an impression of freshness and real originality. Parade

confirmed for me still further my conviction of Satie’s merit in the part he had

167

Satie was an accomplished pianist who was engaged by various music halls to accompany singers and other
entertainments. At the Auberge du clou he made the acquaintance of Debussy, who became a close friend.
Apparently, it was Satie who suggested to Debussy that he take a subject from Maeterlinck for an opera,
which may have resulted in the creation of Pelléas et Mélisande. Harding, The Ox on the Roof, 27.
168

These pieces show the effect of Satie’s research into Gregorian chant and his visits to the Exposition
universelle of 1889, where he too was fascinated by Oriental music. Myers quotes Georges Auric who
wrote that “through these works, Satie gave expression to what was latent in the consciousness of the world
in which he lived. Satie foreshadowed the lines on which modern harmony was going to be developed by
Debussy and other twentieth-century composers.” Myers, Modern French Music, 114, and Ibid., 25.
169

Cocteau asserted that Satie gave comic titles to his music in order to protect his works from persons
obsessed with the sublime. Myers, Modern French Music, 113.

70
 played in French music by opposing the vagueness of a decrepit impressionism
with a language precise and firm, stripped of all pictorial embellishments.170

In program notes that were written by Guillaume Apollinaire, he made use of a newly

created word to describe the production: le surréalism.171

At this performance were several French musicians of the next generation who

were dazzled by Satie’s l’esprit nouveau and who began to meet at a painter’s studio on

Montparnasse.172 Satie called them the Nouveaux jeunes, but they became famous as Les

six. The oldest in the group was Louis Durey (born in 1888). Arthur Honegger, Germaine

Tailleferre (the only woman of the group), and Darius Milhaud (a Provençal Jew) were

all born in 1892. Georges Auric and Francis Poulenc were the youngest of the group,

both born in 1899. Modeling themselves after Satie, they all aimed for the qualities of

simplicity, terseness, and clarity in their music. They also intended, in the beginning, to

shock a largely bourgeois audience out of its perceived complacency. Shock would

become a crucial element in the l’esprit nouveaux and would remain a particularly vital

component of art throughout the twentieth century.

170

Gillmor, Erik Satie, 211.

171

Harding, The Ox on the Roof, 36. An in depth discussion of symbolism, surrealism, and decadence,
especially as these movements effected French literature, is found in Chapter 10.
172

The notoriety of Parade (due to vitriolic attacks in the press) brought Satie’s music to the attention of
Blaise Cendrars, a Swiss-born poet and novelist who was associated with the cubist movement in painting.
Cendrars organized a concert at a Montmartre studio in the rue Huyghens, where Satie played a duet
version of Parade; poetry by Max Jacob, Apollinaire, Cocteau, and Cendrars was recited; and three young
composers performed their own works. These composers were Georges Auric, Louis Durey, and Arthur
Honegger. Soon, they were joined by Germaine Tailleferre (a convert of Cocteau), Francis Poulenc (newly
released from the army), and Darius Milhaud (recently returned from Brazil). Thus, Les nouveaux jeunes
began associating with Satie and each other, and Satie was christened their “spiritual father.” Gillmor, Erik
Satie, 211 and Cooper, French Music, 184.

71
 Poulenc, especially, took whole-heartedly to this new aesthetic.173 In his early

works for flute and voice, Poulenc experimented with Satie’s ideas of nonsense syllables,

simple melodies that imitated the contours and emotional quality of nursery tunes or

music hall songs, and rhythms that were simplistic and included the primitive

syncopations of the fashionable jazz works. His Rapsodie nègre is an example,

containing parallel rhythm and harmony for the accompaniment parts and nonsense

syllables for the vocalist that have no pitch designations.

Milhaud experimented with bi-tonality and polytonality in his Catalogue de

fleurs, using complex harmonic procedures to set the text of a seed catalogue. Likewise,

in his Machine agricoles, he set as his text a manual describing agricultural machines

with an elaborate instrumentation. Performances of these and other works by Les six were

first given at the Thèâtre de Vieux-Colombier under the supervision of Satie. This new,

unfamiliar music, with its “wrong note” harmonies, crude dissonances, and carefully

cultivated irreverence, scandalized their audiences at first. The significance of these

works were soon clear, they overturned conventions and traditions to which serious

music in France had always more or less conformed. Thus, they prepared the way for a

break-through that ushered in new developments in French music.

Literature and visual art would also be occupied with the erosion of realism and

the desire to shock and appall late nineteenth-century French society. Joris-Karl

173

Sixty years after the publication of Le coq et l’arlequin (1918) by Jean Cocteau, George Auric, in his
preface, recalled meeting Poulenc: “Increasingly we were convinced of the value of Parade, of the lesson
Satie was teaching us through it. We used to discuss it every time we met, and a new admirer, Francis
Poulenc, appeared to our great delight. A current of fresh air had just begun to blow over our little world.”
Nichols, The Harlequin Years, 39.

72
Huysmans (1848-1907) wrote several novels in this new style, including Là-bas (Down

There, 1891), which involved Satanism and the ritual sacrifice of babies. Stéphane

Mallarmé’s masterpiece L’Après-midi d’un faune (A Satyr’s Afternoon, 1897) is an

obscure and difficult poem that portrays a dream of desire which replaces the material

world with a psychic one. By 1898, the poet Jean Moréas (1856-1910) had published a

“manifesto” that used the term symbolism and applied it to poets such as Mallarmé,

Verlaine, and Rimbaud.174

The painter Odilon Redon (1840-1916) delighted in images of the grotesque and

the sinister, including his lithography L’Araignée (The Smiling Spider, 1885). By the

1880s, Georges Seurat (1859-1891) prepared for a complete break with realism by

rejecting the use of line to define his subjects, instead using patches of color or dots. This

pointillistic technique was taken up by several of his friends, including Camille Pissarro

(1830-1903) and Paul Signac (1863-1935).

A complete break came with the next generation of painters who responded to

these new modes of perception. Henri Matisse (1869-1954) and Georges Braque (1882-

1963) became known as the fauves (wild beasts) because of their uncontrolled use of

color and their representation of reality through color itself and not form. The young

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) was influenced by their work and accomplished a clear

rupture with fixed, single perspective in his Les demoiselle d’Avignon (1907). Picasso

began the cubist movement by visualizing his subjects from many different perspectives

174

Sowerwine, France Since 1870, 97.

73
and using geometric, abstract forms to govern the use of color.175

The worlds of painting, literature, and music moved into what may be described

as a modernist phase where the perceptions of the nineteenth century were discarded. The

new world of the twentieth century would be inaugurated by war and would confirm to a

new generation of artists that the values and styles of the past no longer made sense.

THE DREYFUS AFFAIR

No comment on the history of late nineteenth-century France would be complete

without reference to the Dreyfus affair, a cause célèbre which divided families,

terminated friendships, provoked riots and duels, toppled ministries, brought about the

trial of Emile Zola for libel and forced his flight from France, involved the Church and

the Army in charges of anti-Semitism, split the nation into two bitterly opposed camps,

and resulted in a flood of anti-clerical legislation.176 This sordid affair was symptomatic

175

Picasso would later declare that “I paint forms as I think them, not as I see them.” Sowerwine, France Since
1870, 104.
176

The following is a short summary of the case: In December, 1894, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, an army staff
officer of Jewish background, was convicted of selling French military secrets to the Germans, and, in
January, 1895, he was sent into penal servitude for life on Devil’s Island. In the spring of 1896, Colonel
Picquart, chief of the intelligence section of the French Army, raised questions about the validity of the
evidence on which Dreyfus was convicted, but he soon found himself posted to North Africa. He was
eventually dismissed from the Army. However, on January 13, 1898, Emile Zola began championing
Dreyfus’ cause. In an open letter published in the newspaper L’Aurore, Zola accused the French
government of criminal conspiracy in the conviction of an innocent man. He attacked the government on
the basis of prejudice, claiming that “clerical passion” was behind the coverup. This ignited the classic
French political and ideological struggle between the Right and the Left. The Dreyfus family found their
cause being turned into a left-wing crusade, with the “Dreyfusards” using the affair as a struggle against
reaction, the church, and the aristocratic/military class. The “anti-Dreyfusards” claimed it was a struggle
against the forces undermining national unity and the great national institutions of the army and the church.
They were convinced that a vast “Jewish syndicate” was determined to free Dreyfus through bribery of
politicians and judges, all with the support of the Germans. By 1898, the government was involved in the
case, and the following years were filled with denunciations and accusations, charges and countercharges,
and a tangle of legal maneuvers and political repercussions. There followed a wave of anti-Semitic riots in
various large cities throughout France, as well as attacks against Jews in the press. In August and

74
of many of the controversies present in French life in the late nineteenth century. It

touched upon explosive issues that had smoldered beneath the surface of French social

life: class conflicts; the role of the Army in the government; anti-clericalism;

anti-Semitism; corruption in high office; and the value of the individual in terms of the

needs of the state.177 One result of the Dreyfus case was the political triumph of the

Dreyfusards, who instituted an elaborate program of anti-clerical legislation, including

purges within the armed forces, as soon as the Dreyfusards came to power.

The Dreyfus affair also occupied and polarized musicians, writers, and artists in

France, many of whom aligned themselves politically as a result. The Dreyfusard’s

Manifest des intellectuels was headed by prominent literary figures such as Anatole

France, Marcel Proust, and Emile Zola. Among the other myriad signatories were well-

known French composers, musicians, musical scholars, music historians, and critics of

music, for instance, composers Alfred Bruneau and Charles Koechlin and music

historians Lionel Dauriac and Henry Prunières.178 Those who signed the opposing

petition circulated by the Ligue de la patrie française (anti-Dreyfusards) were composers

Pierre de Bréville, Augusta Holmès and Vincent d’Indy, opera director Albert Carré, the

critic Henri Gauthier-Villars, and the professor of music history at the Paris

September of 1899, Dreyfus was given a new trial and was again found guilty of treason, but with
“extenuating circumstances.” He was granted a presidential pardon, however, in 1906, and the verdict of
guilty against him was dismissed. Dreyfus was restored to his rank and in July, 1906, he was awarded the
Legione d’honeur. Tombs, France 1814-1914, 462-468.
177

While the Dreyfus affair seemed to be a triumph of the ideal of individual rights, it has also been argued
that the efforts of right-wing, anti-democratic, and anti-parliamentarist politicians fostered the birth of
twentieth-century fascism. Popkin, A History of Modern France, 171.
178

Fulcher, French Cultural Politics and Music, 18.

75
Conservatoire, Louis Bourgault-Ducoudray.179

History has recorded that the basis for the choice of side among French artists and

intellectuals had to do with their social standing.180 Those who wished to uphold

positions of dominance in society or their professions (and consequently tradition) tended

to be anti-Dreyfusards. In the world of art and music, this tended to include members of

the Académie, those who had attained official positions in the educational institutions of

the day, or those who were recognized by society as established artists. Conversely, those

who were outside the established society and who were not interested in preserving its

traditions often tended to be in favor of Dreyfus. This led to a schism amongst musicians,

artists, and writers. The leading figures on both sides of the affair (both of whom went on

to make connections between political and artistic principals) were Alfred Bruneau

(Dreyfusard) and Vincent d’Indy (anti-Dreyfusard).181

d’Indy was particularly influential in the French music scene, where his bitterness

toward the Republic escalated with the beginning of the Dreyfus Affair. This incident led

him to merge his ideas for political reform with artistic reform. As a result, he would be

one of the founders of the Schola Cantorum (1894), a school of music that would espouse

179

Several composers hesitated to choose a side, but did sign the public petition circulated by the Comité de
l’appel à l’union in favor of reconciliation of the two points of view. These included composers Gustave
Charpentier, Claude Debussy, the music historian Julien Tiersot, and conductor Edouard Colonne. Ibid.
180

Ibid., 19.
181

Bruneau was a close friend and professional collaborator with Dreyfusard leader Emile Zola. d’Indy was a
fervent Roman Catholic, admirer of Wagner, and anti-Semite. Myers, Modern French Music, 35-39.

76
educational views that challenged the Conservatoire182 and the Republican state, and

whose views would become intertwined with the Ligue de la patrie français.183 The

Schola would advocate the teaching of religious music, which filled a gap in public music

education at the time and which drew attention to the quality of music that was being

performed in churches.184 By 1897, the official curriculum of the Schola included a five-

year course of study in music history, analysis, Gregorian chant, symphonic music, and

chamber music. It was a radical departure from the Conservatoire tradition, which was

oriented towards the needs of the lyric theaters and which stressed solfège, harmony,

counterpoint, fugue, and composition. The success of the Schola acted as a catalyst for

change at the Conservatoire. The ramifications of the Dreyfus debate amongst musicians

was a struggle that played out in the educational and performance institutions of modern

France. This struggle effected the composers of flute and voice music and will be

182

In 1892, d’Indy was named to an official commission that proposed a reform of the program of studies at
the Conservatoire. The commission produced a detailed report that called for sweeping changes, such as the
introduction of a class on the symphony, something that was not usually taught at the Conservatoire. These
ideas (which were called “Franckiste” due to their connection with the composer César Franck) were
shocking to some, given the relatively low status of symphonic music as compared to vocal music and
opera, as reflected in the Conservatoire’s instruction. Fulcher, French Cultural Politics and Music, 24.
183

Born into an aristocratic family, he was raised by his paternal grandmother in the utopian ideals of the
Saint-Simonian movement and with great admiration for Napoléon (his mother had died in childbirth). Her
belief in a utopian socialism may well have influenced d’Indy’s attraction to the Ligue de la patrie français.
Like the Saint-Simonians, the League believed in the social responsibility and the directive force of the
intellectual and financial leaders of society, maintaining that such a hierarchy guaranteed order. It was also
his grandmother who engaged private instruction in harmony and orchestration for d’Indy with Albert
Lavignac (who would later go on to become one of the more noted professors at the Conservatoire and as a
teacher of Claude Debussy). Fulcher, French Cultural Politics and Music, 21.
184

The Schola Cantorum was originally a school for the promotion and teaching of religious music, especially
Gregorian chant. Charles Bordes, the choirmaster of Saint-Gervais and the director of Les chanteurs de
Saint-Gervais, had the original idea to start the school. He soon enlisted the support of his friends
Alexandre Guilmant and Vincent d’Indy. d’Indy was enthusiastic and saw the school as an opportunity to
implement the reforms in education that he had proposed for the Conservatoire. Ibid., 26.

77
explored more fully in Chapters 3 (Music Education in France) and 4 (Wagner).

WORLD WAR I

The disturbance of the Dreyfus affair appeared at a time when militarism,

nationalism, and imperialism were all issues of tremendous importance, and enhanced the

general importance of the armed forces throughout Europe.185 Like the other great

European powers, France had entered the race for overseas possessions after 1900,

carving out an impressive empire in Asia and Africa.186 French aims clashed with those of

other nations,187 however, and recurring international crises preceded the final crisis of

World War I in 1914. By the turn of the century, too, there was a revived desire in France

for revenge (la revanche) against Germany, focusing upon the loss of Alsace-Lorraine

after the Franco-Prussian War.188 This, along with the Franco-Russian alliance and the

subsequent entente cordiale between Britain, France, and Russia, led to a steady arms

build-up in these countries and in Germany. The assassination of Archduke Francis

Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, and his wife in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, was

enough to ignite a world war.

185

Jones, The Cambridge Illustrated History of France, 233.

186

Sowerwine, France Since 1870, 88.

187

As late as 1898, a chance colonial incident at Fashoda in the Sudan had nearly brought France into armed
conflict with Britain. Ibid.
188

In one of the more surprising political reversals of the period, the Left began to move away from calls for
revenge with Germany, while the Right developed a nationalistic ideology. This new patriotic Right
developed a chauvinistic critique of corrupt centrist politics dominated (it was alleged) by Protestants, Jews,
freemasons, and aliens. Tombs, France 1814-1914, 458-459.

78
 Social divisions in France were temporarily blurred as French men and women

gave their support to a war of revenge against Germany in August, 1914. But France

would be sorely tested, for the war became a battle of attrition, and at home it brought

unemployment, inflation, and enforced austerity on the civilian population.189 The

northeast region of the country (the battle zone) was the most affected, as the populations

of whole towns were nearly wiped out. So great was the social, economic, and

demographic harm caused by World War I190 that, after 1918, the French prized security

above all else, and made severe demands at the Versailles peace conference of 1919.

Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929), prime minister since 1917, ensured that German

reparations and the demilitarization of the Rhineland were elements of the peace

settlement, along with the restoration to France of the Alsace-Lorraine.

World War I brought about a drastic change in the amount of musical activity in

Paris and, indeed, in all of Europe. At the outbreak of the war virtually all the large

musical organizations in Paris shut down. The Opéra and the Opéra-Comique had no

season at all in 1914. Two great concert organizations (previously rivals), the Société

musicale indépendente and the Société nationale de musique, merged in 1915. The finest

orchestras, the Concerts Lamoureux and the Concerts Colonne disbanded in 1914 and

189

Sowerwine, France Since 1870, 109-110.

190

Of the more than 8 million men between the ages of 18 and 46 that were mobilized by France during the
war, fully 63 percent were dead or mutilated by its end. During the war, marriage fell by 30 percent, and the
rate of childbirth slowed dramatically. After the war, there were simply not enough men to re-establish the
marriage and birth rate to pre-war levels. In addition, the infrastructure of the country was largely destroyed
and the franc lost half its pre-war value. Ibid., 117-118.

79
were not reformed until after the war as the Concerts Pasdeloup.191

Musicians were also mobilized in the war effort in great numbers. As the

Conservatoire began its academic year in the fall of 1914, most of the male pupils and

teachers had gone to war. As Milhaud later remembered:

I was rejected for military service on medical grounds and went back to Paris in
December [1914]. Apart from Henri Cliquet, who was in the auxiliary services
acting as a gardener at the Hospital of Versailles, and Honegger, who had been
mobilized for only a few weeks in Switzerland, all my friends from the
Conservatoire were at the front.192

Ravel was eventually allowed to enlist in 1915 as a private soldier in the artillery and was

later sent to the war zone at Verdun as an ambulance driver.193 Albert Roussel, at age

forty-six, joined up as a lieutenant in the transport division of the French Army.194

Albéric Magnard was killed in the early days of the war and André Caplet died in 1925

as a result of the complications from mustard gas.

The effects of the conflict were felt for several years in the form of strikes and

191

As the established performing and educational institutions closed their doors during the war, other types of
entertainment took their place. A rage for operetta seized the public imagination, and light works by
Vincent Scotto and Raoul Moretti were produced at theaters, such as the Théâtre des bouffes-parisiens. The
music hall also became a venue for musical entertainment, and popular singers such as Marthe Chenal
(draped in the tri-color flag and singing the Marseillaise), Polaire, and Gaby Deslys took center stage. This
was the beginning of a major shift in the musical life of Paris where popular singing and cabaret music were
elevated to the same status that opera had occupied in the previous generation. Harding, The Ox on The
Roof, 21-22.
192

Milhaud, Notes Without Music, translated by Donald Evans, 62.

193

Larner, Maurice Ravel, 155.

194

Nichols, The Harlequin Years, 30.

80
problems of reorganization.195 Composition was difficult yet artists struggled to produce

works, even compositions of great variety for flute and soprano. Works that were written

in the years leading up to World War I and during the war include Léo Sachs’

(1856-1930) Les nymphes (Écho d'héllande), op. 188 (1909) for flute, soprano, and

piano; Maurice Emmanuel’s (1862-1938) Trois odelettes anacréontiques, op. 13 (1911)

for flute, soprano, and piano; Philippe Gaubert’s (1879-1941) Soir païen (1912) for flute,

soprano, and piano; Maurice Ravel’s (1875-1937) Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé

(1913) for soprano, 2 flutes [piccolo] 2 clarinets [bass clarinet], string quartet, and piano;

Maurice Delage’s (1879-1961) Quatre poèmes hindous (1914) for soprano, 2 violins,

viola, cello, 2 flutes, oboe, 2 clarinets, and harp; Francis Poulenc’s (1899-1963)

Rhapsodie nègre (1917) for baritone or soprano, flute, clarinet, string quartet, and piano;

and Poulenc’s Le bestiaire (1918) for soprano, flute, clarinet, bassoon, and string quartet.

These pieces embody the prewar/postwar dichotomy and seem to straddle two

eras. First, they show the influences of the historical events and social trends that

preceded this period, such as a fascination with exotic themes (as in the case of Sachs,

Emmanuel, and Delage), experimentation with instrumentation (as in the case of Ravel,

Delage, and Poulenc), the collaboration with contemporary French poets (as in the case

195

What remained of the musical world of Paris had become hopelessly divided as a result of the Dreyfus
affair and its aftermath. The division of musicians and musical organizations into “progressive” and
“reactionary” groups was well entrench by 1914. Much of the controversy stemmed from the influence of
German music and Wagner in particular. There was much resentment among younger French musicians
towards the Société nationale de musique, which, under d’Indy’s headship, had been heavily weighted
towards Germanic music and especially Wagner. After the start of the war, a violent reaction against
Germany and its music surfaced among young musicians. They sought a pure form of French music that
was untainted by Germanic influences. As a result of this pressure, d’Indy eventually stepped down as
president of the Société national de musique (in 1917) and was replaced by Gabriel Fauré, with new
committee members Ravel, Schmitt, and Vuillermoz. Duchen, Gabriel Fauré, 189-190.

81
of Ravel), and the integration of café-concert elements (as in the case of Poulenc).

In addition, these pieces herald the next generation of musical thinking which is

heavily influenced by the music of Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Satie and the writings of

Cocteau and Apollinaire. Stravinsky’s influence was particularly strong in the case of

Ravel and Delage (who was a private pupil of Ravel). Ravel and Stravinsky first met in

1910, when Stravinsky came to Paris for the premiere of The Firebird. Both men shared a

love for the music of Mussorgsky, and when Stravinsky invited Ravel (and his mother) to

spend a few months with him in Switzerland in the Spring of 1913, Ravel readily

accepted. Here, Ravel first saw the score of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring196 and his Three

Japanese Lyrics, as well as Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire. Ravel was so intrigued by the

mixed instrumentation of the two works that he composed something similar in his own

Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé (1913).197 In it, Ravel introduced techniques that

were considered revolutionary at the time: no discernible melody (in the romantic sense)

and no regular patterns, but a line that is determined by the natural rhythms and pitch

inflections of the poetry.198 Ravel pushed the limits of tonality in the harmony of the

196

Ravel was so impressed by this piece that he wrote to Lucien Garban from the Hôtel des crêtes at the end of
March: “You must hear Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. I really believe that the first night will be as important
as that of Pelléas et Mélisande.” Larner, Maurice Ravel, 135-136.
197

Ravel did not know Pierrot lunaire at the time, but Stravinsky did. Stravinsky had been present at the 1912
premiere in Vienna and was particularly struck by Schoenberg’s instrumentation. It was after Stravinsky
had heard Pierrot lunaire that he settled on his instrumentation (2 flutes, 2 clarinets, piano, and string
quartet). Ravel’s instrumentation for Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé is identical to Stravinsky’s Three
Japanese Lyrics. Ibid., 136.
198

Ravel was aware that he was creating something quite unique that would shock French audiences. He
proposed a “scandal concert” to his friend Mme. Kahn-Casella (wife of the Italian composer Alfredo
Casella and assistant to him as the Secretary General of the Société musicale indépendente) with a program
including Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, Stravinsky’s Three Japanese Lyrics, and his own Mallarmé songs.

82
piece and wrote a scoring where the vocal line adopts the winding melody of the

instrumental accompaniment, making the two voices one.

Poulenc, on the other hand, fell under the influence of the writings of Apollinaire,

setting Apollinaire’s first collection of poems, Le bestiaire ou cortège d’Orphée (1911)

to music in 1917.199 Apollinaire advocated the abandonment of illusions in art and an

appeal to honesty.200 He used simple, direct language to come to terms with the

complexities of the modern world. This appealed to Poulenc, whose introduction to

Satie201 as well as the music halls and cabarets of Paris had taught him a blunt,

unadorned musical language that utilized the elements of surprise, simplicity, and

popular music. The result was Poulenc’s Rhapsodie nègre (1917) for baritone or soprano,

The performance did take place on January 14, 1914, however Pierrot lunaire was replaced on the program
by Delage’s Quatre poèmes hindous. Ibid., 137.
199

In the early twentieth century, four men stand out as giants in French literature: Paul Claudel (1868-1955),
André Gide (1869-1951), Marcel Proust (1871-1922), and Paul Valéry (1871-1945). About 1910,
Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) emerged as a particularly important figure in the avant-garde,
dispensing with punctuation, exploring surrealist imagery, and creating his Calligrammes, a highly visual
poetic format. Other leading poets of this era include André Breton, the founder of the surrealist movement,
Louis Aragon, and Paul Éluard. Sowerwine, France Since 1870, 161-163.
200

In his second collection of poems, Alcools (1913), Apollinaire begins the first poem with these lines:

A la fin tu es las de ce mond ancien

Bergères ô tour Eiffel le troupeau des ponts bêle ce matin
Tu en as assez de vivre dans l’antiquité grecque et romaine

[“Finally you are weary of that ancient world

O Effiel tower shepherdess the flock of bridges is bleating this morning
You have had enough of living in Greek and Roman antiquity”]

Nichols, The Harlequin Years, translated by the author, 29.

201

Poulenc would later write: “All I knew about Satie’s music, and I knew everything, seemed to me to signal
a new direction in French music.” “Satie’s influence on my music was profound and immediate.” Schmidt,
Entrancing Muse, 37.

83
flute, clarinet, string quartet, and piano; and Le bestiaire (1918) for soprano, flute,

clarinet, bassoon, and string quartet.

THE PERIOD BETWEEN THE TWO WORLD WARS

Musical ideas changed rapidly during World War I and a number of previously

revered composers including Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921), Gabriel Fauré

(1845-1924), Vincent d'Indy (1851-1931), André Messager (1853-1929), and Gabriel

Pierné (1863-1937), were disdained by the new generation. Albert Roussel expressed

these sentiments in a letter to his wife:

All that will now belong to “prewar things,” that is to say, things which will be
separated from us by a wall, a veritable wall.…We are going to have to start
living all over again, with a new conception of life, which is not to say that
everything made before the war will be forgotten, but that everything made after
it will have to be made differently.202

There soon emerged a group of composers who felt a disregard for the

nineteenth-century French traditions, especially the dominance of Wagner.203 This group,

under the influence of composer Erik Satie (1866-1925), included Louis Durey

(1888-1979), Darius Milhaud (1892-1974), Arthur Honegger (1892-1955), Germaine

Tailleferre (1892-1983), Francis Poulenc (1899-1963), and Georges Auric (1899-1983),

as well as their appointed spokesman, Jean Cocteau (1889-1963). They began to

202

Bernard, Albert Roussel, 31.

203

Anti-German sentiment was so prevalent, both during and after the war, that former supporters of the music
and compositional techniques of Wagner (such as Saint-Saëns, d’Indy, Charpentier, and Théodore Dubois)
would form a committee of the Ligue nationale pour la défense de la musique français. The Leagues stated
aims were: “By every means to expel and then hunt down the enemy; to prevent in future the recurrence of
baneful infiltration. Even if there can be no question, for us and our young successors, of repudiating the
‘classics’, which constitute one of the immortal monuments of humanity, it is our task to condemn modern
PanGermanism to silence.…” Nichols, The Harlequin Years, 25.

84
articulate radical new ideas in French music in direct opposition to Wagnerism,

impressionism, and realism.204 This group of composers, who would later become known

as Les Six, banded together to consolidate their efforts as musicians and, as a result,

became good friends.205

The period after World War I brought about a renaissance for Paris. In 1913 there

were some 700 concerts in Paris; by the 1920s, there were as many as 1,880 concerts per

year.206 Réne Dumesnil recalled this period as:

Years of light-hearted celebration, when the new music sang to the syncopated
rhythms of the triumphant dawn of peace regained.… Years varied and brief,
when performances abounded as in no other time: the Russian ballet of Serge
Diaghilev, the Swedish ballet of Rolf de Maré, the characterizations of Ida
Rubinstein, beautiful evenings at the Opéra and the Champs-Elysées when Dutch,

204

Cocteau explained the influence of Satie in this period of change in French music in his Le coq et
l’arlequin: “The profound originality of Satie gives young musicians a direction that does not force them to
abandon their originality. Wagner, Stravinsky, even Debussy are alluring octopuses: he who approaches has
trouble avoiding their tentacles. Satie offers an unmarked road where each composer can leave his own
imprint… Satie taught his era an extremely audacious value – simplicity.” Brody, The Musical
Kaleidoscope, 29.
205

While these composers were friends and collaborators, most felt that the grouping of themselves as Les six
was arbitrary. Milhaud expressed these sentiments, saying:

After a concert at the Salle Huyghens, at which Bertin sang Louis Durey’s Images à Crusoë on
words by Saint-Léger, and the Capelle Quartet played my Fourth Quartet, the critic Henri Collet
published in Comoedia a chronicle entitled ‘Five Russians and Six Frenchmen.’ Quite arbitrarily
he had chosen six names: Auric, Durey, Honegger, Poulenc, Tailleferre, and my own, merely
because we knew one another, were good friends, and had figured on the same programs; quite
irrespective of our different temperaments and wholly dissimilar characters. Auric and Poulenc
were partisans of Cocteau’s ideas, Honegger derived from the German romantics, and I from
Mediterranean lyricism. I fundamentally disapproved of joint declarations of aesthetic doctrines
and felt them to be a drag, an unreasonable limitation on the imagination of the artist, who must for
each new work find different, often contradictory means of expression; but it was useless to
protest. Collet’s article excited such world-wide interest that the ‘Group of Six’ was launched, and
willy-nilly I formed part of it.

Milhaud, Notes Without Music, translated by Donald Evans, 97.

206

Zeldon, France, 1848-1948, 488.

85
 German, Italian, and Spanish troupes passed through; innumerable new works and
brilliant revivals, the invasion of jazz and Negro spirituals disseminated by
recordings and radio in all their novelty.… The musical world fermented and
agitated; a fever of research was seen in composers in quest of new forms:
quarrels mounted, enormous disputes over "polytonality," the "return to Bach,"
and terms dynamisme and dépouillement made snobs faint. …Crazy years
perhaps, but particularly fecund ones as well, which it would be unjust to
condemn because we owe to them …some great works conceived without any
desire to please, which show at each rehearing that they have the power to last.207

It was during this period of optimism and creativity that the great majority of the

works for flute and voice were written. Between the years 1918 and 1940, forty-two

works were flute and voice were composed, of the one hundred and fourteen works listed

in the annotated bibliography. The table below lists these fourty-two works in

chronological order.

TABLE 2
WORKS FROM THE ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY WRITTEN BETWEEN
1818 AND 1940
In Chronological Order by Date of Composition

Year Composer Title Instrumentation

1918 DUREY, Louis (1888- Images à Crusoé, op.11 For soprano, flute, clarinet, celesta
1979) [or harp], and string quartet

1919 POULENC, Francis Le bestiaire For soprano, flute, clarinet,

(1899-1963) bassoon, and string quartet

1919 MILHAUD, Darius Machines agricoles, For soprano, flute, clarinet,

(1892-1974) op. 56 bassoon, violin, viola, cello, and
bass

1919 SCHMITT, Florent Kerob-shal, op. 67. For soprano and orchestra
(1870-1958). [containing flute]

1920 DELAGE, Maurice Sept haï-kaïs. For soprano, flute, oboe, clarinet,
(1879-1961) piano, and string quartet

207

Dumesnil, La musique en France entre les deux guerres, 9-10.

86
Year Composer Title Instrumentation

1920 MILHAUD, Darius Catalogue de fleurs For soprano, flute, clarinet,

(1892-1974) bassoon, violin, viola, cello, and
bass

1920 RAVEL, Maurice "Air de la princesse" from For soprano and flute
(1875-1937) L'Enfant et les sortliéges

1921 BERNHEIM, Marcel Clair de lune For soprano, flute, and piano
(n.d.)

1921 POULENC, Francis Quatre poèmes de Max For soprano, flute, oboe, bassoon,
(1899-1963) Jacob, op. 22 trumpet, and clarinet

1922 PILLOIS, Jacques Chanson de Yamina For soprano, flute, and piano
(1877-1935)

1922 SAUVREZIS, Alice La Chanson des soirs For soprano, flute, clarinet,
(1866-1946) bassoon, horn, trumpet, 2 violins,
viola, cello, bass, and harp

1922 TANSMAN, Alexandre Huit mélodies japonaises For soprano and ensemble
(1897-1986)

1923 BONHOMME, M. T Ballade anciènne, op. 98 For soprano, flute, and piano
(n.d.)

1923 CRAS, Jean Émile Fontaines For soprano, flute, and piano
Paul. (1879-1932)

1923 DELAGE, Maurice Trois Poèmes: L'aleuette For soprano, flute, and piano
(1879-1961)

1924 CAPLET, André Corbeille de fruits: écoute, For soprano and flute
(1878-1925) mon coeur

1924 HONEGGER, Arthur Chanson de Ronsard For soprano, flute, and string
(1892-1955) quartet

1924 ROUSSEL, Deux poèmes de Ronsard, For soprano and flute

Albert-Charles op. 26, no. 1 and no. 2
(1869-1937)

1925 DELAGE, Maurice Hommage à A. Roussel For soprano, flute, and piano, a
(1879-1961) reduction by the composer from
soprano and orchestra

1925 IBERT, Jacques Deux stèles orientées For soprano and flute
(1890-1962)

1925 LE FLEM, Paul Cinq chants de cröisade For soprano, flute, piano and harp
(1881-1984)

1925 PONIRIDY, Georges Deux poèmes dans le style For soprano, flute, clarinet, string
(1892-1982) populaire grec quartet, and piano

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Year Composer Title Instrumentation

1925 RAVEL, Maurice Chansons madécasses For soprano, flute cello, and piano
(1875-1937)

1926 CRÈVECOEUR, Louis Haï-kaï d'occident For soprano and flute

Deffès Joseph (1819-?)

1926 DELANNOY, Marcel Trois histoires For soprano, flute, bassoon, and
François Georges piano
(1898-1962)

1926 HONEGGER, Arthur Trois chansons de la petite For soprano, flute, and string
(1892-1955) sirène quartet

1926 LAPARRA, Raoul Bien loin d'ici For soprano, flute, and piano [or
(1876-1943) harp]

1927 BEYDTS, Louis La flûte verte For soprano, flute, and piano
(1895-1953)

1927 DELANNOY, Marcel Deux poèmes For soprano, flute, piano, and string
François Georges quartet
(1898-1962)

1927 CARTAN, Jean (1906- Poèmes de Tristan Klingsor For soprano, flute, harp, and string
1932) quartet

1928 AUBERT, L'Heure captive For soprano, flute [or violin], and
Louis-François-Marie piano
(1877-1968)

1928 CRAS, Jean Émile Paul La flûte de Pan For soprano, pan flute [or piccolo],
(1879-1932) and string quartet

1928 PETIT, Raymond (b. Hymne For soprano and flute

1893)

1928 ROLAND-MANUEL, Deux élegies For soprano and flute

Alexis (1891-1962)

1930 IBERT, Jacques Aria For soprano, flute, and piano

(1890-1962)

1930 IBERT, Jacques Chanson du rien For soprano, flute, oboe, clarinet,
(1890-1962) bassoon, and horn

1931 DELAGE, Maurice Deux fables de Jean de La For soprano, flute, oboe, 2 clarinets,
(1879-1961) Fontaine bassoon, horn, trumpet, piano,
string quartet

1932 FROMAIGEAT, Ernst Petits poèmes For soprano, flute, and piano
(1888-?) d'extrème-orient

1932 PILLOIS, Jacques Trois poèmes de Albert For soprano, flute, and string
(1877-1935) Samain quartet

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 Year Composer Title Instrumentation

1933 MIGOT, Georges Reposoir grave, noble et For soprano, flute, and piano [or
(1891-1976) pur … harp]

1934 MIGOT, Georges Deux stèles For soprano, flute, harp, celesta,
(1891-1976) double bass, and percussion

1937 BÜSSER, Paul-Henri Le seigneur vient dans le For soprano, flute, cello, and harp
(1872-1973) chemin

This is a truly remarkable list in the depth and breadth of music written for flute

and voice by a wide range of French composers utilizing unique combinations of

instrumentation. These pieces for flute and voice were markedly different from the

impressionistic works written prior to the war by composers such as Debussy and

Gaubert. Darius Milhaud described the influences and the atmosphere of post-war

France:

I returned to a Paris jubilant with the victory of celebrations.…The nightmare of

the war as it faded had given birth to a new era. Everything was changing, both in
literature, with Apollinaire, Cendrars, Cocteau, and Max Jacob, and in painting;
exhibitions followed close on one another; the Cubists were beginning to make
names for themselves, and pictures by Marcel Duchamp, Braque, and Léger were
hung beside those of Derain and Matisse. In music, activity was no less intense.
Reacting against the impressionism of the post-Debussy composers, what
musicians asked for now was a clearer, sturdier, more precise type of art that
should yet not have lost its qualities of human sympathy and sensitivity. Louis
Durey and Poulenc had been added to the musicians I had known before the war.
I met Poulenc at René Chalupt’s while he was still in the army. He played us his
Mouvements perpétuels and sang the Bestiaire, which he had just completed. I
thought that day of a saying of d’Indy concerning the development of music:
‘French music will become what the next musician of genius wants it to be.’ After
all the vapors of impressionism, would not this simple, clear art renewing the
tradition of Mozart and Scarlatti represent the next phase in the development of
our music?208

208

Milhaud, Notes Without Music, translated by Donald Evans, 94-95.

89
 Several artistic movements influenced these composers in their production of

music for flute and voice, such as futurism, fauvism, post-impressionism, modernism,

and cubism. It was against this backdrop that members of Les six and others developed

their close affiliations with the best French writers of the day. Milhaud, for instance,

worked especially closely with Paul Claudel, and Claudel soon became the favorite

author of this young generation of French composers. As well, composers set the texts of

Apollinaire, Aragon, Cocteau, Eluard, and Valéry. Poulenc eventually composed more

than thirty songs to the poems of Apollinaire, as well as his opera-bouffe Les mamelles

de Tirésias. Honegger collaborated with Claudel in songs and choral works, in addition

to his opera Antigone to a text of Cocteau. The situation had changed little from the days

of the symbolists and the parnassians, only now instead of Mallarmé, Baudelaire, Henri

de Régnier, and Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, the musically minded writers who collaborated

with French composers to produced a new generation of French songs were Claudel,

Cocteau, Gide, Proust, Rivière, and Valéry.209

Albert Roussel had particularl influence over other French composers in the

creation of the music for flute and soprano without accompaniment.210 It was after

209

Apparently, Claudel was especially involved with the creation of music set to his verse. He personally
supervised the work of any musician engaged in setting his texts to music, and both Honegger and Milhaud
have described how the poet would show them exactly what kind of music he wanted at any given point in
his text. According to Honegger, Claudel even indicated details of scoring. Myers, Modern French Music,
129.
210

During the post-war period, Roussel became the reigning elder statesman of French music. While Debussy,
Fauré, Saint-Saëns, and Satie had died by 1929, and d’Indy and Ravel were both composing only
intermittently, Roussel enjoyed a renaissance in his compositional ideas which was recognized in France
and abroad. His works were performed throughout Europe and several premieres of his orchestral music
occurred in the United States, under the baton of Serge Koussevitzky. His younger colleagues were
unanimous in their admiration for the composer, and the memorial issue of the Revue Musicale contains
tributes from composers such as Auric, Caplet, Delvincourt, Durey, Ferroud, Ibert, Milhaud, and Poulenc.

90
Roussel had written his Deux poèmes de Ronsard (April, 1924) that several others

followed suit with works for the same instrumentation, including Caplet (in September,

1924), Ibert (in 1925), Crèvecoeur (in 1926), Petit (in 1928), and Roland-Manuel (in

1928). Before Roussel, no French composer had written music for these two instruments

alone. After Roussel, his work inspired five French pieces for flute and soprano in quick

succession. His style of composition would also influence French composers for flute and

voice with its originality and free treatment of harmony.211 Bi-tonality in his music would

be exploited by his younger contemporaries, such as Georges Auric and Darius Milhaud.

He was also influential in his contributions to chamber music, including a Serenade

(1925) for flute, violin, viola, cello, and harp, a string quartet (1932), a solo work for

flute entitled Joueurs de flûte (1924) for flute and piano, in addition to his numerous

mélodies.

The influence of Maurice Ravel’s Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé (1913) for

soprano, 2 flutes [piccolo], 2 clarinets [bass clarinet], string quartet, and piano is also felt

in these post-war compositions. As noted above, Ravel, along with Delage, Schoenberg,

and Stravinsky were some of the first composers to experiment with works for voice,

Deane, Albert Roussel, 22-23.

211

Although Roussel studied at the Schola Cantorum under Vincent d’Indy, he did not follow the traditional
path of his teacher, but rather, worked towards a means of personal expression that was musically unique.
Roussel’s harmonic language is characterized by the use of altered chords, especially with the flat fifth, the
substitution of the fourth for the third in chord structures, the avoidance of perfect cadences, and the
preference for clear melodic lines and continuous rhythms. Roussel’s attraction to music of the east,
especially Hindu music and dance, also to influenced his compositional style. These ideas led him to exploit
oriental scales, bi-tonality, and rhythmic energy. While his music is primarily tonal, he allows himself a
large range of chromatic substitutions within a tonal scheme. His chord structures are made more complex
by the use of alterations and replacements, appoggiaturas, and auxiliary notes. In his phrase structure he
uses both regular and irregular phrases, according to the dictates of the text and musical architecture.
Deane, Albert Roussel, 26-34.

91
flute, and chamber ensembles of mixed instrumentation. Fully half of the compositions

above are such pieces, several of which favor the instrumentation of voice, flute, and

string quartet.212

During this period, the members of Les six began to distinguish themselves as

composers of merit and to choose individual paths of development. Satie was revered as

the father of this new group of musicians, including the last group of nouveaux jeunes,

known as the École d'arcuiel, including composers Henri Cliquet-Pleyel (1894-1963),

Roger Désomière (1898-1963), Maxime Jacob (1906-1977), and Henri Sauguet (1901-

1989). Sauguet and, along with him, Henri Tomasi would be the next generation of

composers to write music for flute and voice.

WORLD WAR II

The build up to World War II was felt throughout Europe in a series of

disturbances and political events. Darius Milhaud later described the years leading up to

1940:

The idea of war was increasingly becoming an obsession: for years it had never
been completely absent from our thoughts.…From 1933 on, the obsession grew. I
was present at a debate in the Chamber of Deputies after the remilitarization of
the Rhine. Protests were made against the violation of the treaty and the threats
that had been uttered, but no action was taken. One evening when we arrived in
Paris from Aix, our rest was disturbed by the news-vendors shouting the news of
the murder of Dollfuss. Then came the Abyssinian crisis, the slaughter of
Abyssinia before the very eyes of the impotent League of Nations, whose
sanctions were incapable of preventing the crimes of the monster in the Palazzo

212

It is likely that the leap from instrumental chamber works to instrumental chamber works including voice
and flute was made with the help of chamber works such as Debussy’s Sonate pour flûte, viola, et harpe,
(1915), Ravel’s Introduction et allegro (1905 for flute, clarinet, harp, and string quartet), and Roussel’s
Divertissement (1906 for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, and piano). Myers, Modern French Music, 82-
100.

92
 Venezia. The Auschluss and the murder of Austria, with no one saying a word!
The sinister sequence of events in the Sudentenland; the dismemberment of
Czechoslovakia after Munich, and the war in Spain, a dress rehearsal for the Axis
troops! The murder of Republican Spain. And yet life went on as before; it was
still peacetime, was it not? There was one’s work to be done, one shut oneself up
in it; what else was there to do in a world gone mad and caught in an iron grip
that grew tighter day after day? One more turn of the screw, each day one turn
more.213

The fall of France came on June 14, 1940, after the Germans had overrun the

Maginot Line and the Wehrmacht occupied Paris.214 Marshal Pétain, now the head of the

French government and 84 years old, suggested an armistice with Germany. The

armistice obliged the French to hand over Jews and anti-Nazi refugees, as well as

surrender the North of the country as an Occupied Zone (including Paris). Thus began the

mass exodus of approximately 10 million people to the south of France, or the declared

Unoccupied Zone.215 The government established itself at Vichy, and the resistance

rallied around their chosen spokesman, Charles de Gaulle.216

213

Milhaud, Notes Without Music, translated by Donald Evans, 261-262.

214

The “Maginot Line” consisted of a line of an elaborate series of towers equipped with artillery and linked
by a railway to carry supplies between the fortaments. It had been proposed to parliament in 1930 by the
then War Minister, André Maginot, who gave his name to this concrete defensive structure. Unfortunately,
the line was not completed due to financial constraints, and it ran from the Swiss border, stopping short of
the city of Sedan (where the Germans had invaded and defeated France in 1870) and short of the border
with Belgium (where the Germans had invaded France in 1914). Into this breech the German army
proceeded again in 1940, and the invading force quickly drove towards Paris as the French army retreated
in their path. Sowerwine, France Since 1870, 182-189.
215

Soldiers leaving their units, civilians, and refugees responded to the harshness of the German terms with
mass panic. In addition to the French refugees were over 1 million refugees from Belgium and other
countries overrun by the Nazis. Once in the Unoccupied Zone, they lived in squalor, camping in buildings,
railway stations, or by the roadside. Newspapers were filled with notices seeking lost relatives. Sowerwine,
France Since 1870, 190-191.
216

Apparently, the majority of the French thought the German victory inevitable and began to settle into a
period of subjugation. Even Albert Camus and Simone de Beauvoir reacted in this way initially. Charles de
Gaulle left France for London where he made his famous radio appeal to keep fighting. Ibid., 189.

93
 During World War II, many artists left Paris to escape Nazi persecution and many

of them never returned, but, with refugees from other parts of Europe, settled in the

United States. This included Darius Milhaud (who settled at Mills College in California),

Marcel Moyse (who escaped to the Unoccupied Zone and eventually emigrated to

Vermont), and Jacques Ibert (who reached Antibes in 1940). Many artists fled to the

Unoccupied Zone, including Maurice Delage and Marcel Delannoy. Others chose to

remain in Occupied Paris, such as Arthur Honegger and Francis Poulenc. While the Nazi

regime banned music that was considered “degenerate,” including some French music,

there still remained in Paris the remnants of a rather fertile concert life.217 Indeed,

Honegger and Poulenc reached what was the peak of their careers during the period

between 1940 to 1944.218 Others, however, did not escape the death camps. The end of

the war saw the capture and death of the poet Max Jacob in Drancy and the composer

Fernand Ochsé in Auschwitz.219

Only four works for flute and voice were written during World War II by two

217

Even in the occupied zone, the Germans left most daily administrative tasks to French citizens. Cultural life
continued to flourish, despite a certain amount of censorship. For the French film industry, the period of
World War II was considered a golden age, when competition from American-made films came to a halt.
Even writers like Jean-Paul Sartre, who was later active in the Resistance, continued to publish and produce
plays. Sartre was able to publish his major philosophical work, L’Etre et le néant (Being and Nothingness),
in 1943. Popkin, A History of Modern France, 239-241.
218

Biographers of both Honegger and Poulenc describe their continued musical activity, along with active
seasons at the Paris Opéra, the Concert champêtre, the concert hall Salle Gaveau, and the Théâtre des
Mathurins. Concert series were given in honor of Françaix, Honegger, Messiaen, and Poulenc, and many of
their works were mounted abroad at theaters in Zurich, New York, Basel, Brussels, and Vienna. Both
Honegger and Poulenc wrote incidental music for film directors Jean Giraudoux and Alexandre Alexeieff,
as well as theatrical productions. Schmidt, Entrancing Muse, 264-302 and Halbreich, Arthur Honegger,
162-191.
219

Ibid., 177-178.

94
composers. These include two works by Henri Sauguet (1901-1989): Madrigal (1942) for

soprano, flute, harp, violin, [or viola] and cello; and Beauté, retirez-vous (1943) for

soprano, flute, harp, viola, and cello; and two works by Henri Tomasi (1901-1971): Le

chevrier (1943) for soprano, flute, viola, and harp; and La flûte (1943) for soprano, flute,

viola, and harp. While this dramatic downturn in the production of works for flute and

soprano may be attributable to the changes brought on by World War II, other historical

trends were also responsible.

Technology played a large part in the changes in twentieth-century music.220

Recording, radio, television, theater music, and especially film presented new frontiers

for French composers. By the 1930s, film with sound was an exciting new medium for

artists. The film director Jean Renoir (1894-1979), son of the impressionist painter

Auguste Renoir, became particularly famous during World War II for his work, which

focused on the social and political struggles of the day.221 Musicians were especially

taken with this medium. Composers such as Cartan, Durey, Honegger, Ibert, Milhaud,

and Poulenc, who had previous turned their attention to works for flute and voice, now

wrote larger works for ballet (including commissions by the Ballet Russe), for films, and

220

Grout, A History of Western Music, 5th Edition, 694.

221

Renoir produced propaganda films for the popular front, including La vie est à nous (1936, Life is ours),
which were not widely distributed. Renoir’s widely seen commercial films were also shaped by the views
of the poplar front. The plots of these films centered around the shared hopes and values upon which a new
generation would build a coalition among the dispossessed and the decent middle classes fighting against
fascism. Sowerwine, France since 1870, 172-173.

95
for incidental music for plays.222

In addition, the new generation of French composers showed a renewed interest in

opera. At the beginning of World War II, Henri Sauguet produced his opera Chartreuse

de Parme (1939). Francis Poulenc wrote several operatic works, including Les mamelles

de Tirésias (1947), Les dialogues des Carmélites (1957), and La voix humaine (1959).

Jacques Ibert’s operatic output includes Laiglon (1937), Les petites cardinal (1938), and

his radio opera Barbe-bleue (1943). Arthur Honegger is best known for his operas Judith

(1926) and Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher (1938), while Marcel Delannoy’s Le poirier de

Misère (1927) has not survived the intervening years. Perhaps the most prolific opera

composer of this generation was Darius Milhaud, with over fifteen works to his credit.223

Unfortunately, Honegger and Milhaud never wrote another piece for voice and

flute with small chamber ensemble after their first two works in the early years after

World War I. Neither did Cras, Delage, Delannoy, Ibert, Le Flem, Manuel-Roland, Petits,

Pillois, Poulenc, Ravel, or Roussel. Indeed, it was more than ten years after the premieres

of Rapsodie nègre (1917) and Le bestiaire (1918-19) before Poulenc wrote his next great

work for solo voice: Quatre poèmes (1930, Apollinaire). For solo voice, Poulenc was

222

Some examples of French composers who wrote incidental music for film, stage, and dance are: Georges
Auric, who wrote the score for René Clair’s film A nous la liberté; Darius Milhaud, who wrote the score for
Jean Renoir’s film version of Madame Bovary; in collaboration with Honegger and Roger Désormière,
Milhaud also composed the score for the film Cavalcade d’amour, Arthur Honegger, who offered his
orchestral score Pacific 231 for a film about an express train; and Francis Poulenc who collaborated with
Jean Anouilh to produce incidental music for Anouilh’s play, Léocadia. Several French composers
collaborated with Serge Diaghilev and the Ballet Russe to produce stage works, including Debussy,
Milhaud, Ravel, and Stravinsky. Others collaborated with famed dancer Ida Rubinstein to produce ballets,
such as d’Annunzio, Auric, Claudel, Debussy, Honegger, Poulenc, Ravel, Schmitt, and Stravinsky. Brody,
Paris: The Musical Kaleidoscope, 213-224.
223

Myers, Modern French Music, 120-133.

96
quite prolific.224

POST-WORLD WAR II

Pablo Picasso, who spent the war years in Paris, described his existence there,

saying: “There was nothing else to do but work seriously and devotedly, struggle for

food, see friends quietly, and look forward to freedom.”225 These hopeful sentiments were

soon lost as liberated France struggled to form a government.226 The process of

establishing the new, Fourth Republic, was bitter and divisive, and this Republic soon

settled into a round of parliamentary wranglings which recalled the stalemates and

compromises of the Third Republic.227 Politics were also increasingly poisoned by the

bitter colonial conflicts in Indo-China and Algeria. As the French writer Simone de

Beauvoir described it: “No serenity was possible. The war was over: it remained on our

224

Poulenc wrote over one hundred and fifty songs for solo voice and piano. Especially after 1934, when he
began to play song recitals with the baritone Pierre Bernac, Poulenc steadily devoted himself to composing
songs and song cycles. His songs set the poetry of Apollinaire, Cocteau, Éluard, Jacob, and Vilmorin.
About these poets, Poulenc said: “I feel musically at ease only with poets I have known.” Nichols, “Francis
Poulenc,” from the New Grove Twentieth-Century French Masters, 214-215
225

Jones, The Cambridge Illustrated History of France, 276.

226

de Gaulle struggled to assert his authority as leader of the provisional government of the French Republic
while Roosevelt remained hostile to him. The allies landed in Normandy on June 6, 1944, but de Gaulle had
been left out of the planning of the invasion. The United States was still planning to install an allied military
government in France, but de Gaulle skillfully outmanoeuvred both Roosevelt and Churchill by landing his
own occupying force at Bayeux, and installing in each liberated town a Resistance leader. Resisters soon
rose up in Paris, and it was a Free French army division that led the Allied army into Paris on August 24,
1944. While this forced the Allies to recognize de Gaulle’s government, he still faced threats from
communists and resistance fighters. The Allies finally recognized de Gaulle’s government on October 23,
1944. Sowerwine, France Since 1870, 222-227.
227

Sowerwine, France since 1870, 222-227.

97
hands like a great unwanted corpse, and there was no place on earth to bury it.”228

The revelations of Nazi atrocities and concentration camps, confirmed by the

Russian arrival in Auschwitz in January 1945, brought home the enormity of the

Holocaust and the depravity of the Vichy collaborators. A purge of those who had aided

the Germans was demanded by de Gaulle and the Resistance.229 The significance of

words and music under the Occupation and the fierce struggle for cultural legitimacy

gave the purge of writers a central place in the retributive justice of the Liberation.230

Most artists and intellectuals justified their continued activity under the Occupation as

defying Germany with French Culture. However, the schism created between

collaborators and resistors would last for decades to come.231

The war created a kind of intellectual and artistic vacuum where all lines of

communication with the past for French musicians had, in a sense, been cut off. The

228

Jones, The Cambridge Illustrated History of France, 276.

229

Trials of leading figures such as Laval (sentenced to death) and Pétain (imprisoned for life) were the
beginning of a consensus of the French people to reject the leaders and institutions that had led the country
to catastrophe in 1940 and during the war. The leading Vichy officials, taken to Germany in the last months
of the war, were brought back to France and tried. Outrage at the way many leading industrialists had
willingly worked for the Germans led to the expropriation of a number of large companies, such as the
Renault auto company and the coal mines in Northern France. A spontaneous show of revenge broke out
across France in the first month or two after the Liberation. Women who were said to have cavorted with
Germans were paraded publicly with shaven heads, sometimes naked. Many men were beaten or killed and,
in the name of the resistance, summary executions were carried out. This went on for several years between
1942 and 1945 before the government took control of these purges and set up formal court proceedings.
Sowerwine, France since 1870, 228-229.
230

Resistance intellectuals divided over the ethics and politics of the trials; Camus, Debû-Bridel, and Claude
Morgan arguing for the necessity of a purge, and Mauriac and Paulhan warning against the use of
scapegoats. Ibid., 244-247.
231

Apparently, the prevalence of myths, judgements, and deconstructions of the war period in all branches of
history, literature, music, and film during the 1970s and 1980s led Henry Rousso to discern a permanent
syndrome de Vichy. The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French, edited by Peter France, 583.

98
moral and psychological repercussions of war left their mark on all the nations involved.

Rollo Myers describes the development of French music in the aftermath:

These war years — and, in the case of France, the Occupation — must be held
responsible for certain deviations and distortions in the arts and a deliberate cult
of eccentricity and sensationalism, sometimes pushed to extremes which have no
artistic justification whatever. In the case of music the tendency in some quarters
is to do everything possible to dehumanize and de-personalize it by the
substitution wherever possible of mechanical sound devices, such as electronic
vibrations or magnetic tapes of artificially distorted sounds (concrete music) to
take the place of instruments or the natural human voice. Some composers leave
everything to chance or to the computer; some would reduce music to a haphazard
succession of isolated sounds, or even to silence.232

In this environment, vocal and instrumental chamber music were rapidly

abandoned. The next generation of French composers, such as Olivier Messiaen (b.

1908), Maurice Ohana (b. 1914), Henri Duttilleaux (b. 1916), Maurice Jarre (b. 1924),

and Pierre Boulez (b. 1925), wrote large works for the orchestra and for electronic

instruments, but no works for the operatic stage.233 These composers were fascinated with

percussion and other exotic instruments.234 Works that have been written for voice have

completely revolutionized vocal techniques, and the characteristic tendency has been to

discourage pure singing. Instead, the voice part is one of rhythmic recitation.235

232

Myers, Modern French Music, 152.

233

Very few operas have been produced in France since World War II, and only two between 1960 and 1970.
Myers, Modern French Music, 187.
234

Ohana wrote several pieces that feature the zither. Myers, Modern French Music, 173.
235

This breakdown in “melodic” musical writing for the voice probably began with the introduction of vers
libre, where a composer tried to be scrupulously faithful to the author’s text by manipulating the vocal line.
Some examples of this style of writing for voice are Ravel’s Histoire naturelles, Satie’s Socrate, and
Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire. Ibid., 189.

99
 The five years following the war saw the last gasp of French music for flute and

voice. Five works were written which harkened back to the harmonic and melodic ideas

and procedures of the pre-war era: Louis Beydts’ (1895-1953) Chansons pour les oiseaux

(1948) for soprano and small chamber orchestra including flute and Trois mélodies

(1947) for flute, soprano, and piano; Jean Yves Daniel-Lesur’s (1908-2002) Quatre

lieder (1947) for soprano, flute, violin, viola, cello, piano, and harp; Georges Migot’s

(1891-1976) Six tétraphonies (1946) for soprano, flute, violin, and cello; and Florent

Schmitt’s (1870-1958) Quatre monocantes, op. 115 (1949) for soprano, flute, violin,

viola, cello, and harp.

These works cannot be identified with a particular “school” or “group.” Indeed,

the lack of a system is the characteristic feature of each piece. These composers have

become known in retrospect as “the Independents.”236 Their works are a conglomeration

of the influences of the preceding fifty years.

World War II not only hampered and paralyzed a music life in Paris which had

been exciting, controversial, and multifaceted; it also brought an end to international

exchanges and artistic cross collaborations. As one result, Paris ceased to be the world

capital of great art. Artists, writers, and musicians no longer flocked to live there. While

there had been some revival of the performing arts since 1940, French novelists,

playwrights, painters, composers, and film makers have been unable to return Paris to its

former position of cultural preeminence. France as the undisputed leader in the creative

arts seems to have passed on to elsewhere.

236

Rostand, French Music, 144.

100
 The reasons for this decline are many. A period of rapid industrial and social

change had diverted the nation's energies elsewhere, and the technocratic ethos had

damaged creativity. The rise of a consumer oriented society and the waning of the old

ideologies of the left caused many thinkers and artists to feel empty and bewildered.

After World War II, other nations emerged as the pre-eminent centers of music

education and culture. As a result, the great performers were no longer ensconced in the

French capital; nor did musicians feel they must conquer Paris to gain legitimacy. New

York and Los Angeles emerged as international centers of creative activity after the war,

and American composers took up the repertoire for voice and flute as a mode of artistic

expression. After 1950, three pieces for voice and flute were written by the composers

Pierre Boulez, Jean Françaix, and André Jolivet. Other than these pieces, music in this

form by French composers largely came to a halt.

101
 CHAPTER 3

MUSIC EDUCATION IN FRANCE

The path: Study at the conservatory; entry into competition for the Prix de Rome.
The first prize would be secured after several attempts and it entitled the winner
to a state-subsidized, two-year period of leisurely study at the French Academy in
Rome, and an additional year in Vienna. After returning to Paris, the laureate
would seek to make a debut on the stage, where impresarios rarely took a chance
on unknown talent.237

—Camille Saint-Saëns

237

Hervey, Saint-Saëns, 12.

102
 The development of French music for flute and voice could not have taken place

without the free intercourse of composers with one another to share ideas. The rise of

centralized music education in France, especially in Paris, was an essential ingredient in

the development of chamber music for flute and voice. The connection of composers to

one another, as well as to instrumentalists and vocalists of the day, began at the

Conservatoire and the Schola Cantorum.

This chapter on music education in France from 1850 to 1950 will touch on the

history of the educational institutions that developed during this period as well as the

teachers and educational lineage of the composers for flute and voice. This information

demonstrates that most French composers of the period studied with one another and

many musicians had the same teacher who disseminated ideas about music to them.

Therefore, each generation of composers was influenced by their elder colleagues

through educational institutions, mentorships, or professional collaborations. The result

was a sharing of musical ideas that would lead many French composers to explore the

same themes, texts, and genres.

THE CONSERVATOIRE

With the establishment of the Conservatoire nationale de musique et de

déclamation in Paris in 1795 (which would later include many provincial branches),

music education in France increased dramatically in significance. The number of teachers

grew within a decade from 70 to 115 and the number of students to nearly 600.238 By the

238

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edition, vol. 18, 110-111.

103
mid-nineteenth-century, new laws had been enacted to eliminate sex discrimination,

making the school co-educational.239

For several years preceding the creation of the Conservatoire nationale,

suppression of the académies and guilds during the Revolutionary era had brought about

great upheaval in traditional musical life.240 While the Conservatoire de Paris began as a

school to educate the children of former military personnel and veterans, it soon

developed into a highly selective institution, limited to the most gifted musicians, or to

students who were able to gain the support of a faculty member for entry into the

school.241

Both the Conservatoire and the Opéra thrived under the financial support of the

government. Classes training instrumentalists and singers were offered, as well as

courses in music theory, composition, and music history.

The Paris Conservatoire was also part of an ambitious scheme devised by the

revolutionary authorities to install music schools throughout France. By 1826, schools in

Lille and Toulouse became officially connected with the Paris Conservatoire. By the end

239

In 1851, The school enrolled 509 students, including 295 men and 214 women. The school admitted
approximately sixty percent of the students that applied. Irvine, Massenet, A Chronicle of His Life and
Times, 10.
240

Without a sacred music tradition of their own, the average Frenchman experienced a period of musical
deficiency during the nineteenth century with only military bands and male chorus societies in most of the
provincial regions. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edition, vol. 6, 315.
241

In 1792 Bernard Sarrette, a captain in the National Guard, founded the École de musique de la garde
nationale to provide music education to the children of military personnel and veterans and to supply wind
players for the grand revolutionary fêtes. Later, this school became the Conservatoire and was a practical
training school that “conserved” the music of the French nation. The Conservatoire was the first modern
institution of its kind, organized on a national basis with a secular (anticlerical) curriculum. It soon emerged
as the model for all subsequent conservatoires in the West. Ibid.

104
of the nineteenth century, the Paris Conservatoire dominated musical life in France.242 As

a result, almost all the young, gifted musicians in the country eventually made their way

to Paris to begin their formal musical training, including nearly every French composer

of music for flute and voice.

FRENCH COMPOSERS AND THEIR TEACHERS

The centrality of the Paris Conservatoire as a training ground for musicians of its

nation is exceptional. In few other countries has one institution dominated musical

development to quite the same effect. The course of French music may be traced, to a

notable extent, by the première prix winners in composition at the Conservatoire. Below

is a chronology of composers cited in this work who studied at the Conservatoire, as well

as their teachers (dates indicate the year each musician began their studies at the

Conservatoire):

TABLE 3

Conservatoire Students
Year Composer Teachers

1796 Jean-Louis Tulou Jean-Georges Wunderlich (Flute)

1799 Louis Drouet Etienne-Nicholas Méhul and

Anton Reicha (Composition)

1804 Auguste Panseron243 André Grétry (Composition)

242

Many sources attest to the dominance of the Conservatoire in music education during this time, including
Nichols, The Harlequin Years, Myers, Modern French Music, Salazar, Music in Our Time, Hill, Modern
French Music, and The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edition, see Conservatories (vol.
6) and Paris educational institutions (vol. 19).
243

Panseron eventually became professor of singing and of harmony at the Conservatoire.

105
 Conservatoire Students
1824 Adolphe Adam Henry Lemoine (Piano),
Anton Reicha (Counterpoint), François-Adrien
Boieldieu (Composition)

1827 Charles Gounod Antoine Reicha, Fromental Halévy, Henri Berton,

Jean François Le Sueur, and Ferdinando Paër
(Composition)

1828 Félicien David Antoine-François Marmontel (Composition),

François Benoist (Organ),
Fétis (Counterpoint)

1829 Louis Lacombe Pierre-Joseph-Guillaume

Zimmermann (Composition)

1834 Victor Massé 244 Fromental Halévy (Composition)

1839 Édouard Lalo François-Antoine

Habeneck (Violin),
Julius Schulhoff (Piano),
Louis Crèvecoeur (Composition)

1840 Henri Altès Jean-Louis Tulou (Flute)

1847 Léo Délibes Tariot (Solfège),

François Benoist (Organ),
Adolph Adam (Composition)

1848 Georges Bizet 245 Antoine-François

Marmontel (Piano),
Pierre Zimmerman (Solfège),
François Benoist (Organ),
Fromental Halévy (Composition)

1848 Camille Saint-Saëns François Benoist (Organ),

Fromental Halévy (Composition)

1853 Louis Diémer Antoine-François

Marmontel (Piano),
Ambrose Thomas (Composition),
François Benoist (Organ)

1859 Benjamin Godard Henri Reber (Composition)

1861 Jules Massenet Ambroise Thomas (Composition)

1871 Paul Dukas Théodore Dubois (Composition)

244

Massé won the Premiere Prix in solfège, piano, harmony, and fugue. He eventually won the Prix de Rome.
245

Bizet was later to be on intimate terms with Halévy’s family, marrying Halévy’s daughter, Geneviève.

106
 Conservatoire Students
1872 Claude Debussy Albert Lavignac, Emile
Durand, and Ernest Guiraud (Composition)
Louis Bourgault-Ducoudray (Music History)

1877 Melanie Bonis César Franck (Composition and Organ),

Ernest Guiraud (Harmony)

1879 Erik Satie Taudou (Harmony) and

Georges Mathias (Piano)

1880 Maurice Emmanuel Théodore Dubois (Composition),

Léo Délibes (Composition),
Louis Bourgault-Ducoudray (Music History)

1887 Gustave Doret246 Théodore Dubois

and Jules Massenet (Composition)

1887 Louis Aubert Antoine-François Marmontel,

Albert Lavignac, Louis Diémer, and Gabriel
Fauré (Composition)

1889 Henri Büsser Ernest Guiraud, Charles Gounod,

and Jules Massenet (Composition)

1889 Florent Schmitt247 Théodore Dubois (Harmony),

André Gédalge (Fugue),
Jules Massenet (Composition),
Gabriel Fauré (Composition),
Albert Lavignac (Composition)

1890 Charles Koechlin Taudou (Harmony),

Jules Massenet (Composition),
André Gédalge (Counterpoint),
Louis Bourgault-Ducoudray (Music History),
Gabriel Fauré (Composition)248

1891 Maurice Ravel Emile Pessard (Harmony),

Gabriel Fauré (Composition),
André Gédalge (Counterpoint)

246

Gustave Doret conducted the first performance of Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, on
December 22 and 23, 1894, by the Société Nationale de Musique.
247

Schmitt was a life long friend to Maurice Ravel, whom he had met in Fauré’s composition class. He also
studied the flute with Jean Gay, a friend of Koechlin.
248

In 1896, Théodore Dubois replaced Ambroise Thomas as the Director of the Conservatoire. When Jules
Massenet resigned following this appointment, Gabriel Fauré was appointed to replace him as teacher of
composition.

107
 Conservatoire Students
1893 Philippe Gaubert Claude-Paul Taffanel (Flute),
Raoul Pugri (Harmony),
Xavier Leroux (Harmony),
Charles Lenepveu (Composition)

1896 André Caplet Xavier Leroux (Harmony),

Charles Lenepveu (Composition),
Paul Vidal (Accompanying)

1899 Paul Le Flem Albert Lavignac (Composition)

1903 Raoul Laparra André Gédalge, Gabriel Fauré,

Albert Lavignac, and Louis Diémer (Composition)

1909 Georges Migot Charles-Marie Widor (Composition), Vincent

d'Indy (Orchestration),
Maurice Emmanuel (Music History)

1909 Darius Milhaud249 Berthelier (Violin),

Paul Dukas (Orchestration),
Xavier Leroux (Harmony),
Charles-Marie Widor (Fugue),
André Gédalge (Counterpoint)

1910 Jacques Ibert Emile Pessard (Harmony),

André Gédalge (Counterpoint),
Paul Vidal (Composition)

1911 Arthur Honegger250 André Gédalge (Counterpoint),

Charles-Marie Widor (Composition), Vincent
d'Indy (Conducting),
Maurice Emmanuel (Music History)

1919 Jean Yves Daniel- Lesur251 Jean Gallon (Harmony),

Armand Ferté (Piano),
Georges Caussade (Counterpoint)

249

Milhaud later became a professor of composition at the Conservatoire.

250

Among his fellow students were Georges Auric, Jacques Ibert, Darius Milhaud, and Germaine Tailleferre,
all of whom would become his close friends and would influence his compositional style.
251

Daniel-Lesur became the professor of counterpoint at the Schola Cantorum in 1935 and remained there for
twenty-nine years. He served as the Director there during the last seven years of his tenure.

108
 Conservatoire Students
1922 Jean Rivier252 Georges Caussade (Counterpoint),
Maurice Emmanuel (Music History), Jean Gallon
(Harmony)

1927 Henri Tomasi253 Philippe Gaubert (Composition)

In 1850, the Conservatoire was under the direction of Daniel-François-Esprit

Auber (1782-1871), a composer who turned out numerous light opéra comiques between

1811 and 1869. He was in a position to influence the curriculum at the school and during

his tenure, the training of musicians at the Conservatoire (in the early- to mid-nineteenth

century) focused mainly on operatic music and on singing.254 By 1850, this all-embracing

predilection for opera had brought about a striking neglect of the advanced study of

instruments and of other instrumental forms.

Although there were sporadic efforts to reform the curriculum during this time to

emphasize other musical genres, these efforts were defeated by the faculty, which

included mainly opera composers (Adam, David, Gounod, Grétry, Halévy, Massé,

Massenet, and Thomas, among others). The Conservatoire remained oriented toward the

needs of the lyric theaters, giving a practical emphasis in their teaching to solfège and

harmony. Because the repertoire of these theaters centered on the music of the nineteenth

252

Rivier would later become deputy professor of composition at the Conservatoire.

253

During the 1930s, Tomasi was among the founders of a contemporary music group called “Triton” along
with Prokofiev, Poulenc, Milhaud, and Honegger.
254

There were seven Conservatoire teachers of singing at this time including: Italian singers Filippo Falli,
Marco Bordogni, and Michele Giuliani; Parisian singers Louis-Antoine-Éléonore Ponchard, Auguste
Mathieu Panseron, and Laure-Cinthie Montalant Damoureau; and Louis-Benoit-Alphonse Révial from
Toulouse. Irvine, Massenet, A Chronicle of His Life and Times, 11.

109
century, the Conservatoire placed little value on music history or the performance of

works from the past.255

It is no surprise then, that composers (and Conservatoire trained students)

Auguste Panseron (1795-1859), and Félicien David (1810-1876), and Victor Massé

(1822-1884) wrote works for flute, soprano, and piano that were excerpted from their

operas. David's first opera, La perle du Brésil, in particular was extremely popular,

amassing sixty-eight performances in the 1852-1853 season. For this opera, his romance

Charmant oiseaux (1851) for flute and soprano was written. Panseron was, himself, a

teacher of singing as well as a composer, and he served as an accompanist at the Opéra-

Comique. He wrote many operas, French romances, and songs for flute, soprano, and

piano. Victor Massé (1822-1884) was also a successful opera composer in his own right,

and followed this trend in 1853 with his piece, Au bord du chemin, air du rossignol for

flute and soprano.

THE PRIX DE ROME AND THE MUSIC FOR FLUTE AND VOICE

Talented composers who were trained at the Conservatoire competed for the Prix

de Rome,256 which was awarded annually from 1803 until 1968. The jury included the six

255

Fulcher, French Cultural Politics and Music, 27.

256

The Prix de Rome was a prize awarded annually by the French government, through competitive
examination, to students of the fine arts. It entitled them to four years of study at the Académie de France à
Rome. The prize was open to all French painters, sculptors, architects, engravers, and musicians between
the ages of fifteen and thirty who had completed work at the École des beaux-arts or elsewhere. It was
originally instituted by Louis XIV in 1666 for the purpose of enabling talented artists to complete their
education by study of classical art in Rome. A music prize was added in 1803. Many other awards for
composition were instituted during this time, including: the Prix Cressent (opera composition); Prix Rossini
(lyrical or sacred composition); Prix Mombinne (Opéra-comique); Prix de Saussay (librettos); Prix Nicolo
(vocation composition); and the Prix Chartier (chamber music). However, the Prix de Rome remained the

110
members of the Académie des beaux arts, most of whom were Prix de Rome winners

themselves. Winners spent four years living and working at the Villa Medici, sending

their work back to Paris where it would be performed by Conservatoire musicians in

public concerts. This prize immediately conferred a degree of recognition upon the young

composers who won it and many of these former winners also became professors of

music at the Conservatoire. As a result, their students were well placed to win future

prizes and for their works to be accepted by the Opéra.

The requirements of the examination for the Prix de Rome consisted of

compositions for voice.257 As a result, the prize created circumstances for students at the

Conservatoire and elsewhere that predisposed them to choral and operatic music. Several

composers of flute and voice music were winners of the Prix de Rome including Auguste

Mathieu Panseron (1813), Georges Bizet (1857), Jules Massenet (1863), Georges Hüe

(1879), Claude Debussy (1884), Florent Schmitt (1900), André Caplet (1901), and Raoul

Laparra (1903). Panseron, Bizet, Massenet, and Hüe were able to satisfy both the

conditions of academic and professional success, their careers consisting mainly of

most coveted award. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edition, Vol 12, 101.
257

A trial exam took place on the first Saturday in May and consisted of two works: a fugue for voice in at
least four parts (the subject of which was given at the beginning of the exam); and a choral work in four
voices with orchestral accompaniment (the text of which was given at the beginning of the exam).
Contestants were allowed to compose for six days, at the end of which time, six candidates were chosen for
the final test. The final exam consisted of composing a scene for two or three unequal voices on a lyrical
subject with two or three characters. The text was dictated at the beginning of the test, and the scene had to
have parts in the style of a solo or melodic aria for each character, as well as a duet or trio. Recitatives for
arias were to be included and an instrumental introduction was required. The contestants had twenty-five
days in which to complete the score (this was changed to thirty days in 1898). The compositions were
performed with piano accompaniment and the contestants were free to chose their vocalists and to perform
the accompaniment themselves. Final judgement was made by majority vote of the members of the
Académie. Esser, “The Relationship of the Composer with the Conservatoire de Paris and the Music
Establishment in France in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” 9-10.

111
operatic output.

However, the Prix de Rome was by no means an indicator of historical longevity.

Some notable composers for flute and voice who were not winners of the Prix de Rome

were Maurice Delage, Gabriel Fauré, Charles Gounod, Arthur Honegger, Francis

Poulenc, Maurice Ravel, and Albert Roussel.258

REFORM AT THE CONSERVATOIRE

It was not until Gabriel Fauré became director (1905-20), himself a composer

mainly of solo vocal and instrumental works, that non-operatic interests received equal

opportunities for training at the Conservatoire.259 Some of the changes that were

instituted at Fauré’s behest effected the curriculum and teaching at the school. Fauré was

the first to separate the study of counterpoint and fugue from that of composition and to

mandate the study of music history. He liberated vocal students from the obligation of

choosing pieces from the repertoire of Paris’ two leading opera companies (the Opéra

and the Opéra-Comique) and stipulated that the first year students should concentrate on

258

In fact, many notable French composers (whose works are still in the standard repertory today) were not
winners of the Prix de Rome, including Emmanuel Chabrier, Paul Dukas, César Franck, Vincent d’Indy,
Edouard Lalo, Jacques Offenbach, Camille Saint-Saëns, and Erik Satie. A complete list of Prix de Rome
winners between 1850-1950 is found in Appendix V.
259

Fauré was so decisive in his reformation of the Conservatoire that he was nicknamed “Robespierre” by
several professors. He acted to end doubtful practices at the school, such as hopeful students taking private
lessons from Conservatoire professors in advance of entrance examinations, and he set about to reform the
repertoire that was studied at the school, substituting Monteverdi’s Orfeo for Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable
and J. S. Bach fugues for Moscheles concertos. Fauré specifically addressed excesses in operatic
performance: “ …the corruptions which, in the name of tradition, are inflicted [on masterpieces] by the
caprice or bad taste of certain performers. At the Conservatoire we should ignore these traditions and the
prime duty of our professors should be to make sure that scenes from opera or opéra comique are performed
not as they are sung in the theater but, strictly, in accordance with the composer’s written intentions.”
Nichols, The Harlequin Years, 182.

112
exercises.260 He expanded the repertoire that was studied and performed (Wagner was

still forbidden at the Conservatoire in 1905) and commissioned new pieces from leading

composers as set works for instrumental exams.261

These changes would have far reaching consequences for the Conservatoire, for

music education in France, and for French music in general. Gradually, instrumental

music rose in prominence while opera receded. French music history became a subject of

study and inspiration for modern composers. Experimentation and originality replaced

romantic conventionalities.

Debussy, along with Schmitt, Caplet and Laparra, were Prix de Rome winners

who became the sources of originality and individualism in music, forging a path away

from opera. It is after 1900 that Conservatoire graduates such as Louis Aubert, Henri

Büsser, André Caplet, Jean Yves Daniel- Lesur, Gustave Doret, Maurice Emmanuel,

Arthur Honegger, Jacques Ibert, Charles Koechlin, Raoul Laparra, Paul Le Flem,

Georges Migot, Darius Milhaud, Maurice Ravel, Jean Rivier, Erik Satie, Florent Schmitt,

and Henri Tomasi wrote works for flute and soprano that were conceived as chamber

music.262 This substantial change came about as a direct result of the change in teaching

methods at the Conservatoire.

260

Duchen, Gabriel Fauré, 154-156.

261

Debussy’s Rhapsodie for clarinet is among these works. As well, these concours pieces, as they have come
to be known to flutists, are now in the standard repertory for flutists, and were written by composers such as
Enescu, Fauré, Ganne, Gaubert, and Taffanel. Apparently, this broadening of the repertoire was officially
ordered in a ministerial letter to Fauré when he took over as director. Ibid.
262

A list of these works with instrumentation, is found in Table 2.

113
 With the broadening of musical life in the Parisian public through the salons and

the musical sociétés, there came a general movement toward a more liberal musical

education. By the early twentieth century, the Conservatoire embraced the genres of

vocal music, chamber music, and symphonic music, as well as opera. Two other musical

teaching institutions competed with the Conservatoire: the École Niedermeyer and the

Schola Cantorum. Pressure from Schola founder Vincent d’Indy and École Niedermeyer

founder Louis Niedermeyer would eventually be partially responsible for reforms that

took place at the Conservatoire.

THE ÉCOLE NIEDERMEYER

In 1853, Louis Niedermeyer (1802-1861), a musician and educator with an

enthusiasm for religious music and the inexhaustible treasures of plainchant, founded the

École de musique classic et religieuse [School of Classical and Religious Music]. Despite

Niedermeyer's initial ambitions for the school, its scope soon enlarged to include a

general survey of French musical literature. Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) became an

indefatigable teacher at the school. His most famous pupils were Gabriel Fauré and

André Messager.263

During the second half of the nineteenth century, the École introduced musical

training that encompassed a broader comprehension of music: it trained many organists

and maîtres de chapelle who took up appointments in the large regional cathedrals. It

263

Other students of the school included Alexandre Georges, Claude Terrasse, and organists Léon Boëllmann,
Albert Périlhou, and Eugène Gigout. The École Niedermeyer was largely responsible for the revival of
French sacred music and for the cultivation of organ masters and organ playing in France. Nichols, The
Harlequin Years, 178.

114
also became a source of inspiration for a more widespread study of religious music,

instigating tremendous zeal for archeological research in music during the second half of

the nineteenth century.

An important student at the École de musique classic et religieuse, also known as

the École Niedermeyer was:

TABLE 4

École Niedermeyer Student

Year Composer Teachers

1854 Gabriel Fauré Clément Loret (Organ),

Louis Dietsch (Harmony),
Xavier Wackenthaler (Counterpoint),
Louis Niedermeyer (Piano),
Camille Saint-Saëns (Piano and Composition)

In Fauré’s case, this exposure to the modal and contrapuntal thinking of the

sixteenth-century choral masters (such as Josquain, Palestrina, and Bach) left an indelible

mark on his music and his teaching. Later, as director of the Conservatoire, he was in a

unique position to influence the course of French music. His study of composition with

Saint-Saëns influenced him to revalue instrumental music and works for solo voice. The

reforms he instituted at the Conservatoire came directly from his experiences at the

École.

This change in emphasis from operatic music to vocal chamber music brought an

outpouring of music for flute, soprano, and piano in the last decades of the nineteenth

century. Fauré’s Nocturne, op. 43, no. 2 (1886) for flute, soprano, and piano was a

catalyst for this genre. Several composers wrote pieces mimicking this instrumentation,

115
including Louis Diémer’s (1843-1919) Sérénade (1884), Benjamin Godard’s (1849-

1895) Lullaby (1891), Charles Koechlin’s (1867-1950) Le nenuphar, op. 13, no. 3

(1897), Georges Hüe’s (1858-1948) Soir païen (1898), André Caplet’s Viens! Une flûte

invisible soupire (1900), and Léo Sachs’ (1856-1930) Les nymphes, op. 188 (1909).

Many of these composers studied composition with Fauré at the Conservatoire.

THE SCHOLA CANTORUM

In 1892, the Director of the Beaux-Arts, Henri Roujon, named Vincent d’Indy to a

body of officials who were selected to propose reforms to the program of studies at the

Conservatoire. The commission produced a detailed report that called for far-reaching

changes, including the introduction of a class on the symphony (which had traditionally

not been taught at the Conservatoire). These ideas were shocking to some, given the

relatively low status of symphonic music in relation to operatic music, as reflected in the

Conservatoire’s course of instruction.264 As a result, funding to implement these

recommendations was denied by the government, and the report came to naught.265

One result of all this activity was the founding of the Schola Cantorum in 1894 by

Charles Bordes (another gifted pupil of César Franck),266 Alexandre Guilmant, and

264

Because Vincent d’Indy had studied composition with César Franck, many at the Conservatoire felt these
ideas to be “Franckish.” Probably because of his adherence to the ideas and methods of Richard Wagner,
Franck was ostracized from the musical establishment. (Wagner was suspect in France following the
Franco-Prussian War.) Despite Franck’s stature as a composer, he was engaged at the Conservatoire to
teach only organ, not composition. Soon, Franck and his followers began to criticize the Conservatoire as
an institution and to condemn the official course of study. Fulcher, French Cultural Politics and Music, 22.
265

Ibid., 24.
266

Apparently, the Schola itself was Bordes’s idea. At the time of its founding, Bordes was the choir-master of
Saint-Gervais and the director of a performing group, Les chanteurs de Saint-Gervais, which specialized in

116
Vincent d'Indy. The stated goals of the school were the revival of the Gregorian tradition

in the performance of plainchant, the restoration of the church music of the Palestrina

period, the creation of a modern literature of religious music in France, and an

enlargement of the organists' repertoire. The Schola also took up the anti-Dreyfus ideals

of its founders and patrons (including the Comtesse de Loynes). This provided the school

with a base of support and a substantial audience that was receptive to the school’s

ideas.267

In 1896, the school became known as the École de chant liturgicale et musique

religieuse [School of Liturgical Chant and Religious Music]. Bordes died in 1909 and

Guilmant in 1912. At that point, d'Indy took charge of the organization and the policies

of the Schola. Partially in reaction to the emphasis on performance at the Conservatoire,

the Schola began placing particular stress on music history and the evolution of religious

music. Its aim was now to produce students who were not so much experts in the

technical aspects of their art (instrumental performing or composing) but were masters of

the musicology and the successive phases of musical thought over many centuries.

The École Niedermeyer and the Schola ignited an interest among French

musicians in rediscovering their national music history.268 As a result, there was an

performing Gregorian chant. Bordes soon enlisted the collaboration of his friends and colleagues Guilmant
and d’Indy. d’Indy saw this as an opportunity to implement the reforms in education that he had proposed
for the Conservatoire. Fulcher, French Cultural Politics and Music, 26.
267

Ibid.
268

Many composers made distinctive contributions to the historical and critical aspects of music and to
biography. Among them are Camille Belaigue, Adolphe Boschot, Robert Brussel, Alfred Bruneau, M.D.
Calvocoressi, Gaton Carraud, André Coeuroy, Jules Combarieu, Claude Debussy, Paul Dukas, Jules
Écorcheville, A. Gastoué, Henri Gauthiers-Villars, Paul Huvelin, Hugues Imbert, Vincent d'Indy, L. de la

117
awakening of scholarship and curiosity in France regarding historical research in

music.269 In addition to the work of musicians, the support of various publishing

houses in France at the time made possible the dissemination of this work to the public

through performance of these works and the availability of sheet music for purchase and

study. These organizations included: Choudens et Cie, E. Demets, Durand et Cie, Enoch

et Cie, E. Froment, J. Hamelle, Georges Hartmann, Heugel et Cie, Z. Mathot,

Rouart-Lerolle et Cie, and Maurice Sénart.

With the wide dissemination of the French music of the past and the knowledge

of French music history, many French composers of the late-nineteenth and early-

twentieth centuries began to incorporate the ideas and themes of the past into their new

works. Some examples were: song settings of the texts of sixteenth-century French poets

by composers such as Fauré, Debussy, and Duparc; a renewed interest in French folksong

by composers such as d'Indy, Ravel, Delage, and Roussel; the composition of homages to

Laurencie, Jean Marnold, Camille Mauclair, Marc Pincherel, Henri Prunières, Alexis Roland-Manuel,
Romain Rolland, Camille Saint-Saëns, G. Samazeuilh, Boris de Schloezer, Georges Servières, Julien
Tiersot, Léon Vallas, L. Vuillemin, and Émile Vuillermoz. These musicians beaome the next generation of
faculty members at the Conservatoire and the Schola Cantorum. Cooper, French Music, 60-77.
269

This research and study of the past manifested itself in a number of ways. A selective list includes: (1) From
1850 to 1860, the Benedictine monks at the Abbey of Solesmes began investigations of Gregorian
plainchant that resulted in the publication of several important books of historical information and music;
(2) during the 1880s, M. Henri Expert, a pupil at the Niedermeyer School, uncovered valuable historical
documents, among them an anthology of the French masters of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; (3)
Charles Bordes published collections of Basque folk songs, of French primitive religious masters, and the
choruses of Clément Jannequin, a sixteenth-century pioneer of descriptive music; (4) Pierre Aubry and
Julien Tiersot did important work in their catalogs of the songs of the troubadours and the trouvères and the
early French folksongs; (5) Henri Guy, professor at the University of Toulouse, made an able study of
Adam de la Hâle and his Le Jeu de Robin et Marion; (6) Vincent d'Indy revised and published works by
Monteverdi, Rameau, and Destouches, among others, for historical concerts at the Schola; (7) Alexandre
Guilmant, in collaboration with André Pierro, published the archives of French organ masters from the
sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; and (8) Saint-Saëns began editing the complete works of
Rameau, with the aid of other prominent musicians of the era. Ibid.

118
fifteenth- and sixteenth-century French composers; and the rediscovery of vocal chamber

music from the renaissance. These characteristics are indicative of the music written for

flute and voice by these composers.

Charles Bordes, as noted above, was a student of César Franck, and the Schola

Cantorum was guided in spirit by Franck's esthetic ideals. The following composers of

flute and voice music attended the Schola Cantorum (dates indicate the year each

musician began their studies at the Schola):

TABLE 5

Schola Cantorum Students

Year Composer Teachers

1894 Albert Roussel Vincent d’Indy (Composition)270

1903 Paul Le Flem Vincent d’Indy (Composition),

Albert Roussel (Counterpoint),
Amédée Gastoué (Plainsong)

1905 Alexis Roland-Manuel Albert Roussel (Composition)

1905 Erik Satie Albert Roussel (Composition),

Vincent d’Indy (Composition)

In 1901, Debussy pioneered music for flute, soprano, and chamber ensemble with

his Les chansons de Bilitis (1901) for 2 flutes, 2 harps, celeste, and voice. While this

piece was a direct outgrowth of the shift in educational emphasis at the Schola and the

Conservatoire, Debussy also chose to experiment with narration for the voice, rather than

singing. There followed a veritable explosion of chamber works featuring flute and voice

270

By 1902, d’Indy had invited Roussel to teach the counterpoint class. Roussel’s students included Varèse,
Satie, Le Flem, Raugel, and Roland-Manuel. He was also a mentor to a number of other composers, such as
Bouslav Martinu, Conrad Baeck, and Jean Cras.

119
in the years that followed. Most significantly were Ravel’s “La flûte enchantée” from

Shéhérzade (1903) and Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé (1913), and Maurice

Delage’s (1879-1961) Quatre poèmes hindous (1914).

Ravel, who had studied composition with Fauré at the Conservatoire, in turn

became the mentor and teacher to Delage.271 Ravel introduced Delage to Claude Debussy,

Florent Schmitt, and Igor Stravinsky, all of whom collaborated prior to World War I.

They each wrote works for flute, soprano, and chamber ensemble that were premiered by

the Société musicale indépendente. These works were Ravel’s Trois poèmes de Stéphane

Mallarmé (1913), Delage’s Quatre poèmes hindous (1914), Stravinsky’s Three Japanese

Lyrics (1914), Florent Schmitt’s Kerob-shal (1919), and Delage’s Sept haï-kaïs (1920)

The first three works employ nearly the same instrumentation.

Mélanie Bonis (1858-1937) also wrote pieces for flute, soprano, and small

chamber groups, such as Le ruisseau, op. 21, no. 2 (for soprano, flute, oboe, clarinet,

cornet, harp, string quartet, and bass) and Noël de la vierge Marie, op. 54, no. 2 (for

soprano, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, harp, string quartet, and bass). As well, Louis

Durey (1888-1979) wrote his Images à Crusoé, op. 11(1918) for soprano, flute, clarinet,

celeste [or harp], and string quartet.

OTHER COMPOSERS OF MUSIC FOR FLUTE AND VOICE

The composers who did not study formally at the Conservatoire, the École

271

Apparently, Delage became close friends with the poet Léon-Paul Fargue and the painters Francis de
Marliane and Paul Sordes. These men were part of a young artistic circle known as Les apaches, and
Delage was invited to become a member of the group. It was through this group that Delage met Ravel,
who seems to have been taken with the young composer’s talent. Thomas, Three Representative Works of
Maurice Delage: A Study of Style and Exotic Influence,” 14-16.

120
Niedermeyer, or the Schola Cantorum often studied with composers and performers of

the day who had attended these institutions. Cécile Chaminade (1857-1944), for example,

whose parents objected to having her attend the Conservatoire, studied privately with

Conservatoire professors Felix Le Couppey, Antoine-François Marmontel, Savard and

Benjamin Godard. Georges Hüe (1858-1948), who was encouraged by Charles Gounod

(1879), studied counterpoint with Emile Paladilhe and organ with César Franck.

Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) studied piano in 1914 with Ricardo Viñes, who

introduced him to Georges Auric, Erik Satie, and Manuel de Falla. Later, around 1921,

Poulenc studied composition formally with Charles Koechlin. World War I, combined

with the death of Poulenc's parents, kept him from a formal education at the

Conservatoire. As noted above, Maurice Delage studied composition with Maurice Ravel

on a private basis in 1902, and through him was introduced into Les apaches, an

important avant-garde group of French artists.272

Jean Cras (1879-1932) studied composition almost daily with Henri Duparc at the

turn of the century273 and while this was the only formal training Cras received, it led to a

life-long friendship. Henri Sauguet (1901-1989) came to Paris in 1923 and was mentored

272

“About 1900, the nucleus was formed of a group of enthusiastic devotees of the arts who were to call
themselves the apaches. The name was coined by Ricardo Viñes, and rather curiously it refers to
underworld hooligans. To some extent the young men considered themselves artistic outcasts S constantly
defending what they considered to be important, whether or not the public agreed.…With the distaff
element strictly excluded, the group met far into the night, discussing painting, declaiming poetry, and
performing new music. The coterie met fairly regularly until the outbreak of World War I.… Among the
members of the group were the poets Tristan Klingsor and Léon-Paul Fargue, painters Paul Sordes and
Edouard Benedictus, the writer Abbé Léonce Petit, the conductor Désiré-Emile Inghelbrecht, the decorator
Georges Mouveau, pianists Marcel Chadeigne and Ricardo Viñes, and the composers André Caplet,
Maurice Delage, Manuel de Falla, Paul Ladmirault, Florent Schmitt, and Déodat de Séverac. [Maurice
Ravel was also a member of the group].” Orenstein, Ravel: Man and Musician, 28-29.
273

Duparc would call Cras his “Spiritual Son.”

121
by Darius Milhaud. As a result of his connections with Milhaud, Sauguet heard the

French premiere of Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire (conducted by Milhaud) and was

introduced to Charles Koechlin and Erik Satie. Both of these musicians served as his

teachers, andSatie introduced Sauguet to Serge Diaghilev, who commissioned a piece

from Sauguet for the Ballet Russe.274

TABLE 6

Notable French Composers who Studied Privately away from the Established
Schools
Place of Study Composer Teachers

Bordeaux Louis Beydts Fernand Vaubourgoin

(Composition)

Paris Cécile Chaminade Felix Le Couppey

(Composition),
Antoine-François Marmontel
(Composition),
Benjamin Godard (Composition)

Paris Jean Cras Henri Duparc (Composition)

Paris Marcel Delannoy Arthur Honegger (Mentor),

Jean Gallon (Harmony),
André Gédalge (Counterpoint),
Alexis Roland-Manuel
(Orchestration)

Paris Louis Durey Léon Saint-Requier (piano,

solfège, harmony, counterpoint,
and fugue)

Paris Georges Hüe Charles Gounod (Mentor),

Emile Paladilhe (Counterpoint),
César Franck (Organ)

Paris Francis Poulenc Ricardo Viñes (Piano and

Mentor),
Charles Koechlin (Composition)

274

Austin, Henri Sauguet: A Bio-Bibliography, 3-11.

122
 Notable French Composers who Studied Privately away from the Established
Schools
Paris Henri Sauguet Darius Milhaud (Mentor),
Paul Combes (Organ),
Léon Moulin (Composition),
Canteloube (Composition),
Charles Koechlin (Composition)

Poland Alexandre Tansman ºódï Conservatory

The result of this largely centralized music education in France during this period

led to a condition of enormous significance for the development of French music: nearly

every composer in Paris either studied with, or was directly influenced by, other French

composers. An intricate and historically rare cross-pollination occurred amongst an

unusually large number of gifted musicians, one that led to a generous sharing of ideas

and the development of certain common themes within the main currents of French

music. These themes and ideas are seen in the music for flute and voice as it evolved

throughout the century. Below are a few examples of these connections:

< In the mid-nineteenth century, composers, such as Massé, David, Thomas, and

Adam ,wrote music for flute and voice that was extracted from their operas, the

dominant musical form of the day.

< They also were occupied with bird song themes, and their text settings and

musical devices reflected this interest.

< Composers, such as Gounod, Saint-Saëns, Gaubert, Godard, and Fauré, wrote

pieces for flute and voice on pastorale and religious themes, almost always

accompanied by piano.

< After 1870, composers, such as Debussy, Ravel, Delage, Emmanuel, and

123
 Fromental, wrote works for flute and voice that incorporated French folksong and

themes of exoticism, and they utilized modes and pentatonic scales in the

construction of their pieces for flute and voice.

< The composers mentioned above, along with Jean Cras and Daniel- Lesur,

experimented with various instrumentations and wrote pieces for flute, voice, and

chamber ensembles modeled after composers such as Arnold Schoenberg and Igor

Stravinsky.

< Composers such as Caplet, Roussel, Roland-Manuel, and Ibert wrote works for

flute and voice with no accompaniment, incorporating contemporary techniques

for the flutist.

< Koechlin, Milhaud, Honegger, and Poulenc all introduced polytonality into their

works for flute and voice.

These are only a few examples of the educational and artistic connections that

influenced the writing of these French composers. Other intersections will be explored in

the chapters that follow.

124
 CHAPTER 4

WAGNER

Wagner's influence considerably helped forward the progress of French art and
aroused a love for music in people other than musicians. And by his
all-embracing personality and the vast domain of his work in art, [he] not only
engaged the interest of the musical world, but that of the theatrical world and the
world of poetry and the plastic arts. One may say that from 1885, Wagner's work
acted directly or indirectly on the whole of artistic thought, even on the religious
and intellectual thought of the most distinguished people in Paris.275

—Romain Rolland

275

Rolland, Musicians of Today, 252-53.

125
WAGNER AND NATIONALISM

The idea of nationality in music, in other words, music that expresses nationalistic

or national characteristics by the deliberate cultivation of folk elements or by the

dramatization of heroic episodes in a country's history, is a comparatively recent one and

is exemplified in the music of Wagner.276 The extraordinary upsurge of musical activities

of every kind in Germany and Austria seem to mark the beginning of a new era in music

with the emergence of three composers: Beethoven, Haydn, and Mozart. These

composers were followed by Schubert, Schumann, and Wagner, making the supremacy

of German music in Europe something that remained virtually unchallenged for nearly

two hundred years.

However, by the mid-nineteenth century, the first attempts to break away from the

influence of Germany were seen in Bohemia in the works of Bedrich Smetana

(1824-1884) and Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904); in Hungary in the music of Franz Liszt

(1811-1886); and in Russia by the "Group of Five." These composers, and others,

deliberately set out to found a nationalistic school to counteract what they considered to

be the harmful influence of Germanic music.277

276

Grout asserts that a sense of pride in language and in literature in the music of Wagner was one of the
elements that formed part of the national consciousness that led to German unification (something that
Hitler later exploited, along with Wagner’s anti-Semitic leanings). While Wagner did not cultivate a
musical style that was ethnically German, he nevertheless searched for a native voice, an important aspect
of nationalism. Grout, A History of Western Music, Fifth Edition, 665-666.
277

These composers, as well as French composers, began employing their native folksongs and dances or
imitating their musical character to develop a style that had a recognizable ethnic identity. Many countries
in eastern Europe, along with England, France, the United States, and Russia felt the dominance of German
music and found it a threat to native expressions of musical creativity. Grout, A History of Western Music,
Fifth Edition, 666.

126
 In France, the struggle to develop a uniquely French style of artistic expression

was bound up with the music and the theories of Wagner. He would become the idol of

the symbolist school of poetry, led by Stéphane Mallarmé and Catulle Mendès. In French

music, however, Wagner was seen both as a savior and a demon.278 Wagner mania

engulfed Paris during the 1880s, and there were real enthusiasts amongst French

musicians, such as Chabrier, Chausson, Duparc, and d’Indy.279 However, postwar

developments in French music demonstrate that composers were driven by a desire to

react against Wagner and his musical theories.280 The development of this musical

nationalism in France and its effects on the compositions for flute and voice is the subject

of this chapter.

278

It is Mendès who points out to French musicians that Wagner's aesthetic theories are more valuable to them
than his music:

A great name awaits the French musical genius who first soaks himself in the musical and poetic
legends and songs of our race and at the same time assimilates all those points of Wagnerian
theory which are compatible with the French genius, for he, alone or with the help of a poet, will
rid our opera of the mass of outmoded and ridiculous shackles which now hold it in thrall. He will
achieve an intimate unity between poetry and music, for the sake of the drama and not for mere
brilliance. The poet in him will boldly reject literary ornament, the musician all those vocal and
symphonic beauties, which can hinder the flow of dramatic emotion. He will reject recitatives, airs,
strettos, even ensembles, unless these are demanded by the dramatic action, to which everything
must be sacrificed. He will break the back of the old four-square melody and his melody—without
becoming Germanized—will stretch out unbroken, following the poetic rhythm.

Cooper, Modern French Music, 45-46.

279

Wagner was the first musician who suggested to Vincent d'Indy that the music of Meyerbeer had
suppressed the cultivation of French poetry and folk song. Thus, it is Wagner who preaches musical
nationalism to his French admirers, beginning in them a new enthusiasm for their own French legends and
music, not for the Germanic tales, which were national inspirations to Wagner. Ibid.
280

Both Satie and Cocteau wrote vitriolically against Wagner and his music. Debussy and Ravel both
consciously avoided composing in the “Wagnerian style.” Nichols, The Harlequin Years, 19.

127
WAGNER IN PARIS

In 1860, the first performance of excerpts from Der fliegend holländer, Tristan,

and Lohengrin were given in Paris.281 By 1861, the French version of Tannhäuser had

been produced by Pierre Dietsch and by 1869, Rienzi was produced by Jules Pasdeloup.

Parisians were overwhelmed by the profound and deeply embedded sensuality and the

gorgeous sonorities of Wagner's music. However, at the same time French composers

such as Adam, Altès, David, Panseron, and Massé were still writing music for flute and

voice in the Italian vocal style.282

This would all change in 1870, when Wagner's pamphlet Eine kapitulation:

lustspiel in antiker manier, a parody of the French besieged by the Germans and later

281

The composer Victorin de Jocières wrote the following recollections of the premiere in his Notes sans
portées for the March 1, 1898 edition of Revue Internationale de Musique:

All Paris was there: The world of arts, of literature, the aristocracy, the world of finance, and the
critics. Behind the scenes the Princess Metternich, declared protective of the novel composer,
waited expectantly. In the first box sat Auber, wearing an indifferent air and accompanied by his
two inseparable female aides-de-camp, Edile Ricquier and Dameron; Berlioz sat laced tightly into
his redingote, his neck imprisoned inside a tie of black silk, in the fashion of 1830, his head
looking like a bird of prey, his huge forehead under a shock of gray hair, his eyes with their
piercing gaze. Fiorention, critic from the Constitutionnel, caressed, with a fat prelate’s hand, the
opulent beard that extended down to this white waistcoat. In the orchestra seats, Gounod, whose
Faust had just created such a sensation, chatted with conductor Carvalho. Blond Reyer, who had
[to date] produced but a short one-act opéra comique, a ballet sacountala, conversed with his
friend and collaborator Théophile Gautier of the leonine mane and flowing beard. Azevedo, the
intractable critic of L’Opinion Nationale, less grimy than usual, alternately cleaned his nails and
his teeth with a penknife. Deep in the pit stood Hans van Bülow, fervent apostle of the new
Messiah; he had rehearsed the chorus for a month in the Salle Beethoven. [He was] accompanied
by his young wife Cosima, Liszt’s daughter, who ten years later would divorce Bülow to marry the
author of Tristan und Isolde. Professors from the Conservatoire, Ambroise Thomas, Carafa, and
Elwart were also there.

Brody, Paris: The Musical Kaleidoscope, 36.

282

Chapter 2 contains a listing of these works.

128
condemned to suffer under the Commune, was published in France.283 It generated a

tremendous amount of political rancor, and Wagner quickly fell from grace among

French audiences and musicians. After the Franco-Prussian War ended with the German

acquisition of the Alsace-Lorraine, many Frenchmen felt a strong revulsion toward

Wagner and all things German.284

Indeed, these events were catalysts for the establishment of the Société nationale

de musique français, a concert society dedicated to the cultivation and performance of

French music. Prior to 1870, music by Bellini, Meyerbeer, and Rossini had dominated the

Opéra and music by Beethoven, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Mozart, and Weber had

dominated the Conservatoire. The stated aims of the Société nationale de musique

français were as follows: “The proposed purpose of the Society is to aid the production

and popularization of all serious works, whether published or not, by French

composers.”285 The altruistic unanimity of the members brought about the cultivation of

works by such diverse French composers as Chabrier, Chausson, Debussy, Dukas,

Gounod, Franck, d’Indy, Lalo, Lekeu, Magnard, Ravel, and Saint-Saëns.

Yet, France would not ignore Wagner indefinitely and many French composers

283

Brody, Paris: The Musical Kaleidoscope, 45.

284

In 1876, Pasdeloup’s performance of the Funeral March from Götterdämmerung at the Cirque d’hiver
provoked a violent anti-Wagner demonstration. Pasdeloup, thereafter, refrained from playing Wagner’s
music until 1879. Brody, Paris: The Musical Kaleidoscope, 47.
285

Hill, Modern French Music, 8.

129
traveled to Bayreuth to study Wagner's music firsthand.286 These musicians were

enthralled by the expressive force of the music, the glamour of his orchestral sonorities,

the logic underlying much of his dramatic procedure, and the comprehensive vitality of

the composer's intellectual and philosophical views. Not only did his ideas influence

musicians, but also writers and philosophers.

By 1885, the political furor that surrounded the composer had dissipated and that

year the journal Revue Wagnérienne was founded in Paris. Its contributors included

Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848-1907), Stéphane Mallarmé

(1842-1898), Catulle Mendès (1841-1909), Stuart Merrill (1863-1915), Jean Richepin

(1849-1926), Édouard Rod (n.d.), Paul Verlaine (1844-1896), and Jean-Marie-Mathias-

Philippe-Auguste, comte de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam (1838-1889), as well as other poets

and writers.287

Members of a group of painters known as Les nabis (The Prophets), which

included Pierre Bonnard, Aristide Maillot, Denis Ranson, Odilon Redon, Sérusier, Félix

Valloton, Jan Verkade, and Édouard Vuillard, were followers of the Wagnerian idea of

the total artwork. Les nabis focused most of their attention on the landscape but their

format tended to be an intimate, spiritually infused mode of post-impressionism. Like

many artists of the day, they also took interest in other image-based work, such as

286

This included Emmanuel Chabrier, Claude Debussy, Henri Duparc, Alphonse Duvernoy, Gabriel Fauré,
Judith Gautier, Ernest Guiraud, Vincent d’Indy, Antoine Lascous, Catulle Mendès, Gabriel Monod, Camille
Saint-Saëns, and the artist Henri Fantin-Latour. On his return to Paris, Fantin-Latour began working on
lithographs meant to convey his impressions of the Bayreuth festival. Saint-Saëns, meanwhile, wrote five
articles on the subject for l’Estafette. Brody, Paris: The Musical Kaleidoscope, 47.
287

The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French, Edited by Peter France, 788-789.

130
decorative arts of all kinds and such forms as posters, magazine covers, and covers for

concert and theater programs.

While this fashion held sway, all the arts, and even philosophy, were studied from

the Wagnerian viewpoint. In French literature, poets such as Réne Ghil (1862-1925)

sought to develop a new theory of poetic expression through a technique he described as

verbal instrumentation.288 As well, two major developments of the symbolist period, vers

libre [liberal verse] in poetry and monologue intérieur [monologue of the interior] in

fiction may be traced to Wagner's theories of the contiguity of the arts.289 Many French

poets believed this idea to be similar to the Baudelairean idea of correspondences. In art,

this theory of correspondences led to powerful statements of anti-naturalism, especially

in the paintings of Gauguin and Van Gogh. In the theater, Wagner's emphasis on

mysticism and ritual caused many French writers to experiment in all aspects of

stage-craft. The result were works such as Maurice Maeterlinck's Pelléas et Mélisande

and Paul Claudel's Tête d'or. While this devotion to Wagner among writers and painters

barely outlived the closing of the Revue Wagnérienne after just three years of publication,

the composer's musical influence persisted almost to the end of the nineteenth century.290

PRO-WAGNER FACTIONS IN FRANCE

288

Lockspeiser, Debussy, 37-39.

289

Ibid.
290

Cooper, French Music, 55-58.

131
 Wagner's lasting influence in France can be discerned from the two musical

factions that developed in response to his music. One was pro-Wagnerian, led by students

of César Franck, principally Vincent d'Indy; the other, which gathered around Claude

Debussy, was nationalistic in its orientation, and anti-Wagner. It would be this anti-

Wagner faction that would be particularly interested in composing chamber music for

flute and voice.

Vincent d'Indy studied at the Conservatoire, where he took lessons in piano and

harmony. He became acquainted with Henri Duparc in 1869 who furthered d'Indy's

awareness of the works of Wagner and introduced him to Franck.291 In time, d'Indy

became one of Franck's most industrious pupils, and by 1872 he began studying organ

with Franck at the Conservatoire. He also studied with Liszt and was at Bayreuth in 1876

to witness the first performance of the four full operas that make up Der Ring des

Nibelungen. In addition, d'Indy was an early member of the Société nationale and

eventually became its president.292 As noted in the previous chapter, he was on the

commission to revise the curriculum at the Conservatoire in 1892, though members of

the faculty overthrew this group.293

291

Cooper, French Music, 62-63.

292

d’Indy’s music is an interested melding of Wagnerian procedures and French nationalistic elements. He was
drawn to the study of plain-chant, to the counterpoint of the sixteenth century, to seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century Italian and German pioneers in the sonata form, to the fugue style of Johann Sebastian
Bach, and to the variation forms of Beethoven. He was a disciple of Wagner and yet a faithful student of
Franck. While he did write chamber music (including a work for flute, strings, and harp) in addition to his
large dramatic works, he never wrote music for flute and voice. Hill, Modern French Music, 110-120.
293

D’Indy was eventually seen as a reactionary by his fellow musicians, with his worship of all things
Wagnerian and his devotion to music of the ancient past. At the Schola Cantorum, (as is seen in Chapter
Three) he developed a curriculum that was the antithesis of that at the Conservatoire, emphasizing musical

132
 As a result of this humiliating setback, d'Indy established his own school, the

Schola Cantorum, with Charles Bordes and Alexandre Guilmant, musicians who were

also disciples of Franck and followers of the methods of Wagner.294 He wrote an

authoritative biography of Franck, a life of Beethoven, and continued his studies of the

music of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Weber, Schumann, and Wagner. As a

composer, he clung to the cyclical treatment of the sonata form as taught by Franck.295 He

kept his own list of French composers who, like himself, were influenced by the

Wagnerian style, including Georges Bizet, Pierre de Bréville, Alfred Bruneau, Emmanuel

Chabrier,296 Gustave Charpentier, Ernest Chausson, Paul Dukas, Henri Duparc, César

forms of the past rather than championing the procedures of the present. Cooper, French Music, 55-75.
294

Wagner had expressed his anti-Semitic beliefs in his prose text Judaism in Music and his similar social
analysis in Art and Revolution. It is probably not a coincidence that d’Indy, who himself had expressed anti-
Semitic views, chose Wagner as the musical model for his new school. d’Indy hoped to renew lyric drama
after an epoch of what he termed “Italo-cosmopolite-judaïque” influences in French opera. Fulcher, French
Cultural Politics and Music, 66-67.
295

Hill, Modern French Music, 119.

296

Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-1894) emerged as a pioneer in a more progressive type of French music
while continuing to work under the influence of Wagner. His music can be startlingly original, often
showing a wholesale disregard for convention and a fearless self-assertion. His highly unconventional piano
pieces belonged to no school and seemed to be free and unfettered expressions of his personality. In this
way, Chabrier was a transitional figure in French music from the imitation of Germanic models to the
Gallic expressions of Fauré and Debussy.
Ironically, Chabrier began his career as a lawyer and spent fifteen years in the Ministry of Interior.
During this period, he met and formed friendships with the Parnassian poets François Coppée (1842-1908),
Jean Richepin (1849-1926), Jean, comte de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam (1838-1889), and, especially, Paul
Verlaine (1844-1896). Chabrier had a genuine appreciation of the works of Édouard Manet, Claude Monet,
Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley, and he acquired many their paintings. His musical qualities may have,
in fact, emerged from his understanding of the complex, conceptually challenging developments that were
taking place in poetry and painting in Paris in the final decades of the nineteenth century.
Chabrier is the first French composer for whom the relationship between the arts was a source of
inspiration. In this respect, he was a forerunner of Debussy, whose association with artists in fields other
than his own would prove particularly fruitful. As a composer, Chabrier formed intimate friendships with
musicians Vincent d'Indy, Henri Duparc, Gabriel Fauré, and André Messager. He remained a fervent
admirer of César Franck and of Wagner, especially after a hearing of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde in 1879.
Myers, Emmanuel Chabrier and His Circle, 122-145.

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Franck, Charles Gounod, Édouard Lalo, Albéric Magnard, Victor Massé, Ernest Reyer,

Guy Ropartz, Camille Saint-Saëns, Ambroise Thomas, and G.M. Witkowski.

Because Wagner’s musical philosophy did not advocate chamber music, the

majority of French composers who wrote for flute and soprano were anti-Wagnerians.

However, several of the composers listed above wrote music for flute and voice in the

Wagnerian style. This includes the spiritual and lyrical works of Bizet and Gounod.

Georges Bizet’s (1838-1875) Agnus dei for flute, soprano, and piano [or organ] and

Charles Gounod’s (1818-1893) Sérénade (Quand tu chantes), Barcarolle: où

voulez-vous aller?, O légère hirondellé [Little Swallow], and Prière du soir, all for flute,

soprano, and piano [or organ] are written in the German romantic style. Other examples

of Wagner’s influence can be seen in Paul Dukas’s (1865-1935) Songs for soprano, flute,

horn, and piano; Édouard Lalo’s (1823-1892) Chant de Breton, op. 31 for flute, soprano,

and piano; and Jules Massenet’s (1842-1912) Élégie: O doux printemps d'autrefois for

flute, soprano, and piano.

DEBUSSY AND THE ANTI-WAGNER FACTIONS

The nationalistic faction was led by Claude Debussy, who had made two trips to

Bayreuth himself and, by 1889, felt only disillusionment with German romanticism.297

Debussy realized that the German tradition was too thoroughly imbued with its own

character and Wagnerian music traits. Therefore, Wagner's music could only have a

narrow appeal, beyond the reach of a wide French audience. Debussy concluded that the

297

Some of the strongest anti-German sentiments among French composers are to be found in Debussy’s
letters. Lockspeiser, Debussy, 283.

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music served only the purposes of Wagner himself.

Consequently, Debussy pushed for the rediscovery of sixteenth- and seventeenth-

century French music, a music that he believed had developed prior to the dominance of

Germanic models and which had been composed without the infusion of foreign

sentiments.298 This shift was already taking place in French painting (impressionism and

post-impressionism) and poetry (symbolism). Thus, Debussy's attitude coincided with a

general course of opinion that was moving further and further from the Germanic concept

of music, which had been present in French music since Beethoven's fashionability

earlier in the century.299

Debussy followed the model of Gabriel Fauré, and began composing songs to the

texts of French poets such as Verlaine (Ariettes, 1888) and Baudelaire (Cinq poèmes de

Baudelaire, 1890). In 1902, the premiere of Pelléas et Mélisande, accompanied by a

mood of tremendous emotional excitement, was a catalyst for a contentious public

discourse regarding the essential nature of the theater. Later, it would be seen as the true

beginning of an anti-Wagner movement in France. According to Romain Rolland:

Pelléas et Mélisande of M. Debussy seemed to announce, in 1902, the date of the

true emancipation of French music. From that moment, French music felt itself
definitely freed from its apprenticeship and set out to found a new art which

298

Debussy believed that the native tradition in France had been lost with Rameau, and he blamed Gluck for
filling French music, especially in the theater, with banalities and vocal artifice. Lockspeiser, Debussy, 38-
42.
299

Historian Paul Landormy described the French musical scene in the late eighteen-seventies and early
eighteen-eighties: “Those were the days when admiration for the last quartets of Beethoven, the works of
Wagner and the quintet and quartet of Franck knew no bounds. Feelings were violent in a way that was
altogether romantic. Such were the enthusiasms of the time and the state of delirium in which people
listened to music.” Cooper, French Music, 56.

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 should reflect the genius of the race with more flexibility than Wagnerian art.300

Romain Rolland also described Debussy's pioneering change in musical construction:

From the point of view of the stage, Pelléas et Mélisande is quite opposed to the
ideal of Bayreuth. The vast, almost unlimited proportions of Wagnerian drama, its
compact structure, the tension of will which supports these enormous works from
beginning to end, their ideology frequently developed at the expense of the action
and even of the emotion, are all as far as possible from the French taste for clear,
logical, and sober action. The little scenes of Pelléas et Mélisande are brief and
well knit; each of them marks without insistence a new stage in the evolution of
the drama, and have an architecture totally distinct from the Wagnerian theater.301

Because both music and music pedagogy in Europe had been so dominated by the

Germans and Austrians, many musicians in France reacted by emphasizing all the more

emphatically their own national traits. Debussy wrote in 1909:

Since those student days, I have tried to slough off all I was taught. I have tried
not to react against the influence of Wagner. I have simply given full play to my
nature and temperament. Above all, I have tried to become French again.302

And:

Without denying his [Wagner's] genius, one may say that he put the final mark of
punctuation to the music of his time, more or less as Victor Hugo absorbed all
previous poetry. We must, then, look après Wagner, not d'après Wagner.303

Sympathizing more with Debussy than with d'Indy were many contemporary

French composers and their students who came after them, including Louis Aubert,

André Caplet, Rogert Ducasse, Gabriel Fauré, Jean Huré, Charles Koechlin, Maurice

300

Salazar, Music in our Time, 178.

301

Ibid., 185.
302

Austin, Music in the 20th Century, 27.

303

Salazar, Music in our Time, 181.

136
Ravel, and Florent Schmitt.

Around 1900, several of these composers followed Debussy’s example in writing

for flute and voice. These include André Caplet’s (1878-1925) Viens! Une flûte invisible

soupire (1900) for flute, soprano, and piano; Cecile Chaminade’s (1857-1944) Portrait

(Valse chantée) (1904) for flute, soprano, and piano; Claude Debussy’s (1862-1918) Les

chansons de Bilitis (1901) for 2 flutes, 2 harps, celesta, and narrator; Gustave Doret’s

(1866-1943) Mirage (1903) for flute, soprano, and piano; Georges Hüe’s (1858-1948)

Soir païn (1898) for flute, soprano, and piano; Charles Koechlin’s (1867-1950) L'Album

de Lilian, op.139, no. 6, Skating-Smiling (1901) for flute, soprano, and piano and his

L'Album de Lilian, op.139, no. 7, En route vers le bonheur (1901) for flute, soprano, and

piano; Albert Moutoz’s (n.d.) Stances á une Marguerite, op. 3 (1900) for flute, soprano,

and piano; and Maurice Ravel’s (1875-1937) "La flûte enchantée" from Shéhérzade

(1903) for flute, soprano, and piano [transcribed from the orchestra by the composer].

These works express the new French aesthetic of clean, economical musical

writing. They feature the flute as an equal partner to the soprano and employ French

poetry for their texts.

FAURÉ AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF FRENCH MÉLODIE

Fauré, like other French composers, traveled to Cologne in 1878 to hear

Rheingold and Walküre and to Munich the next year, where he heard the whole Das Ring

des Nibelungen. What was unusual in Fauré's case was that his musical development

seems to have hardly been affected by his exposure to Wagner's music. Unlike his

contemporaries, he kept to smaller forms and began writing songs to the lyrics of French

137
poets such as Charles Baudelaire, Théophile Gautier, and Victor Hugo. By 1887, he

wrote his first songs to texts by Paul Verlaine, whose poetry would be Fauré's chief

inspiration for many years.304

His songs were characterized by their simplicity. He avoided Franck's

chromaticism, opting instead for rapidly shifting harmony and rhythmic detail. His song

cycle La bonne chanson (Verlain, 1892) represent a pinnacle in French song writing of

this period.305 They are typified by cascades of piano arpeggios beneath a soaring vocal

melody, slowly pulsing simple chords in slower movements, harmonies that incorporate

chromatic slides and modulatory implications, and a fluidity and seamlessness that

mimics the renaissance contrapuntalists (who Fauré admired). Frenchmen never left off

composing songs, of which there exist many fine, although little known, examples from

Berlioz to Délibes. But the chanson of Fauré, as a prelude to those which Debussy would

compose on texts of some of the same poets, created a new form for French music.

Fauré's student, Maurice Ravel, was influenced by Fauré's setting of French text,

which emphasized the natural accents of the language over that of the melody.306 As a

result, Ravel developed his stage works with an increasing emphasis on outline and

accents in the declamation. Opera, as well as song, now became a musical work based on

language, while the instrumentation took a more subordinate role, providing simple

harmonization and a lyric atmosphere for the stage action. Ravel's L'Heure espagnole is

304

Duchen, Gabriel Fauré, 75-77.

305

Ibid., 105-108.
306

Larner, Maurice Ravel, 49-50.

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this type of theatrical piece: in its brevity, sprightliness, and freedom of expression it

brings to the stage the atmospherics of the type of pianistic-vocal music suggested by the

writing of Jules Renard.307 Here, Ravel combined his experiments with the musicality of

the French language with the melodic and rhythmic motifs of popular Spanish song.

L'Heure espagnole had much in common with his setting of Fêtes galantes (Verlaine,

1907) with its natural observation of the inflections of spoken dialogue and provocative

dance rhythms. Ravel's interest in the natural inflections of language to determine rhythm

and melodic shape would influence him in his music for flute and voice.

SATIE AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF A FRENCH STYLE

The early works of Erik Satie, particularly his 3 Sarabandes (1887) and 3

Gymnopédies (1888), also demonstrate a conscious effort to break away from the

romantic teachings of the Schola Cantorum and of Wagner. About the relationship

between Debussy, Wagner, and his own work, Satie wrote:

Debussy's aesthetic is connected with symbolism in several of his works; it is

impressionist in his work as a whole. Please forgive me — am I not a little the
cause of this? So they say. Here is the explanation. When I first met him, he was
all absorbed in Mussorgsky, was searching avidly for a path not easy to find. In
this search I was far ahead of him: the prizes of Rome or other cities did not
impede my progress, since I carry no such prize on my person or on my back, for
I am a man of the race of Adam (of Paradise) who never carried off any prize — a
lazy fellow, no doubt. I was just then writing the Fils des étoiles, on a text of
Joséph Péladan,308 and I explained to Debussy the need for a Frenchman to give

307

Ravel latter said that his experience with Renard’s Histoires naturelles prepared him for his operatic setting
of the prosaic text of Franc-Nohain’s L’Heures espagnole. Larner, Maurice Ravel, 96.
308

Joseph Péladan (1859-1918) was a writer who caused something of a sensation in the literary world with
the publication of his novel Le vice supreme. Péladan was the head of the Rosicrucian movement in France
and had appointed himself the high priest or Sâr of the Rose-Croix du temple et du graal. Péladan’s main
subject as a writer appears to have been the reconciliation of the Occult with orthodox religion. In 1886, he

139
 up the Wagnerian adventure, which did not correspond to our natural aspirations.
And I made him note that I was not at all anti-Wagner, but that we ought to have a
music of our own — without sauerkraut, if possible. Why not use the means of
representation introduced to us by Claude Monet, Cézanne, Toulouse-Lautrec,
etc.? Why not transpose these means musically? Nothing simpler. Aren't these all
expressions?309

The means that Satie used to established a truly French style of composing was

characterized by such eccentricities as the suppression of time and key signatures as well

as bar-lines, the addition of verbal commentary superimposed upon the music, and

humorous titles to his pieces. The music itself created a new aesthetic for the twentieth

century, one of quietude, precision, acuteness of auditory observation, gentleness,

sincerity, and directness of statement. Satie's Socrate (1917), a musical setting of selected

passages from the Dialogues of Plato, is an example of this type of composition.

According to historian Rollo Myers, Satie gave expression to what was latent in the

consciousness of the world in which he lived; he anticipated the tastes and styles of a

coming generation of French musicians.310

WORLD WAR I, COCTEAU, AND LES SIX

During World War I, the French banned German music, perhaps as a result of a

series of articles by Camille Saint-Saëns that appeared in l'Echo de Paris under the title

offered Satie the post of official composer to the Rose-Croix organization, which Satie accepted. By 1892,
Satie had a falling out with Péladan and broke away from the group officially through a letter addressed to
the Editor of the Parisian review Gil Blas. Myers, Modern French Music, 112.
309

Austin, Music in the 20th Century, 163.

310

Myers, Modern French Music, 114.

140
"Germanophilie."311 The composer urged French musicians to return to a French music

untainted by Wagnerism, echoing the fierce nationalistic rhetoric of the ars gallica

movement of the 1870s. Writer Jean Cocteau, in his pamphlet Le coq et l'arlequin

(1919), commended to the next generation of French composers the example of Erik

Satie:

Debussy missed his way because he fell from the German frying pan into the
Russian fire. Once again the pedal blurs rhythm and creates a fluid atmosphere
congenial to shortsighted ears. Satie remains intact. Hear his Gymnopédies, so
clear in their form and melancholy feeling. Debussy orchestrates them, confuses
them and wraps their exquisite architecture in a cloud. Satie speaks of Ingres:
Debussy transposes Claude Monet à la Russe.312

Soon, French composers were writing crude melodies, with square rhythms, and

the atmosphere of circus bands, all tempered with elements of jazz and polytonal discord.

During this period, works were composed such as Milhaud's Le boeuf sur le toit, and

Cocteau's Les mariés de la tour Eiffel for which all of the composers of Les six wrote

music.

By 1918, the group of composers known as Les six,313 Georges Auric, Louis

Durey, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, Germaine Tailleferre, and

311

Brody, The Musical Kaleidoscope, 58.

312

Myers, Modern French Music, 118.

313

This group of composers was given the name Les six by the music critic Henri Collet, following a concert
on April 5, 1919 at the Salle Huyghens in which music by all six composers was featured on the program.
Collet’s review was entitled Les cinq russe, Les six française et Satie and was followed by another, with the
headline Les six français. His journalistic instincts had led him to dub the group in a manner similar to the
loose-knit “Russian Five,” Balakirev, Cui, Borodin, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov. Myers, Modern
French Music, 102.

141
their promoter, Jean Cocteau, began to dominate the musical scene of Paris.314 Cocteau

and the poet Blaise Cendrars founded Éditions de la Sirène, and its first publication was

Le coq et l'arlequin. This collection of epigrams and aphorisms gave Les six an aesthetic

doctrine: "The essential tact is daring."315 Cocteau was an outspoken advocate of all his

enthusiasms, which included a rejection of the music of Wagner, as well as that of

Debussy and Stravinsky. 316

Cocteau believed that art should be pared down; reduced to its essentials: "A poet

always has too many words in his vocabulary, a painter too many colors on his palette, a

musician too many notes on his keyboard."317 Ever the promoter of the new, he hailed

Erik Satie as the master of this new style, an artist who dared to be simple. Cocteau felt

that the time had come to reject the ambiguities and subtleties of impressionism. Satie

would thus become the hero of French music for the next generation of composers. His

314

To their surprise, the composers who had been known as Les nouveaux jeunes became, almost overnight,
Les Six. Yet their notoriety contradicted their real relationships. They were even less closely knit than the
five Russians who had inspired the nickname. The links that bound them were purely those of friendship,
time, and circumstance. Their tastes and inclinations were wholly different. Honegger’s models were the
German romantics; Milhaud drew upon southern French lyricism; while Durey persisted in his allegiance to
Ravel and Debussy. Auric and Poulenc alone were wholehearted in their support of Cocteau’s ideas, while
Germaine Tailleferre seemed simply ready to adopt the prevailing course. Myers, Modern French Music,
102-134.
315

Ibid., 117-118.
316

Debussy, he warned, had escaped the allures of Wagner, but not that of the Russians. Stravinsky was
tainted, his music visceral, burdened by the mysticism of the theater. Wagner, however, was the greatest
enemy, Cocteau argued: his long, boring operas had been a drug to French musicians. Consequently, the
new French music needed to strip itself of all foreign influences: "Enough of clouds, waves, aquariums,
water sprites and night scents; we need down-to-earth music, everyday music." Harding, The Ox on the
Roof, 66.
317

Ibid.

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stage work Parade (1917), based on a scenario by Cocteau, with scenery and costumes

by Picasso, became the model for the new aesthetic, embracing the techniques of the

music hall and the café-concert as appropriate settings for the return to an authentic

French music. But the origins of this essentially French entertainment reached back to the

eighteenth century, through Fauré to the French chanson.

Almost all the members of Les six wrote compositions for flute, voice, and

chamber ensemble that reflect the sentiments of Cocteau and the musical thinking of

Satie. As can be seen below, the pieces were written in quick succession of one another.

TABLE 7

Music for Flute and Voice by Members of Les Six

Composer Composer’s Title Instrumentation Year
Dates Written

POULENC, 1899-1963 Rhapsodie nègre For baritone or soprano, flute, 1917

Francis (1917 version) clarinet, string quartet, and
piano

DUREY, Louis 1888-1979 Images à Crusoé, op. For soprano, flute, clarinet, 1918
11 celesta [or harp], and string
quartet

POULENC, 1899-1963 Le bestiaire For soprano, flute, clarinet, 1919

Francis bassoon, and string quartet

MILHAUD, 1892-1974 Machines agricoles, For soprano, flute, clarinet, 1919

Darius op. 56 bassoon, violin, viola, cello,
and bass

MILHAUD, 1892-1974 Catalogue de fleurs For soprano, flute, clarinet, 1920

Darius bassoon, violin, viola, cello,
and bass

POULENC, 1899-1963 Quatre poèmes de For soprano, flute, oboe, 1921

Francis Max Jacob, op. 22 bassoon, trumpet, and clarinet

HONEGGER, 1892-1955 Chanson de Ronsard For soprano, flute, and string 1924
Arthur quartet

HONEGGER, 1892-1955 Trois chansons de la For soprano, flute, and string 1926
Arthur petite sirène quartet

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 These pieces, especially those by Milhaud and Poulenc, incorporate elements of

sarcasm (Milhaud set a catalog of agricultural machines, ironically, for performance at

the Salle Agriculteurs), whimsy (Milhaud set the text of a seed catalog), the absurd

(Poulenc set the made-up text “Honolulu”), polytonality (as seen in the Catalogue de

fleurs), as well as experimentationwith instrumentation (all the works use some

combination of strings and winds along with flute and soprano) and harmony. Embracing

Satie’s teaching about musical economy, the works by Honegger are approximately two

minutes long. The absurdist poetry of Max Jacob is an ideal text for Poulenc’s setting,

where he substitutes the trumpet for the traditional woodwind quintet instrumentation

(which contains french horn).

For the new generation of composers, those coming of age in the early decades of

the twentieth century, the Wagnerian doctrines were no longer practical or even

particularly useful. Meanwhile, attempts by d'Indy and Ernest Reyer to bring Wagnerian

dramas to the French stage were entirely unsuccessful.318 In the end, Wagner's influence

proved most compatible with symphonic forms as practiced by nineteenth-century

pro-Wagnerians such as Hector Berlioz, Henri Duparc, César Franck, Ernest Guiraud,

Franz Liszt, and Camille Saint-Saëns. The composers of the next generation, including

Roger Ducasse, Paul Dukas, Albéric Magnard, Maurice Ravel, Albert Roussel, Florent

Schmitt, and Déodat de Séverac (all contemporaries of Debussy) found the theater to be

318

Vincent d’Indy’s opera Fervaal (1889-95) and Ernest Reyer’s opera Sigurd (1883) are both unperformed
and virtually unknown today.

144
an enormous dead weight from which they were set free by pure instrumental or vocal

music. While the concept of a total integration of music and text became a dominant idea

in the French musical psyche, the symphony, the art song, and chamber music (all fed by

the same ideals) would become art forms distinct from opera and diverse enough to alter

the landscape of classical music.

By 1950, Germanic music was no longer the dominant force is Western music.

The influence of Wagner in France began as a conversion of the major French composers

to his style of writing. But, by the end of the century, Wagner's music would serve as a

catalyst for a wave of French nationalism that would change the style of French music to

a Gallic expression that was uniquely its own. French composers for flute and voice

explored this new tonal language and nationalistic themes in their works as a result of

these changes.

CHAPTER 5

EXOTICISM: THE INFLUENCE OF LE JAPONISME AND L'ORIENTALISM

In the time of Louis XIV, we were Hellenistic; today we're Orientalists. We are
now in a position to know the entire Orient, from China to Egypt. The result is
that the Orient, its thought and image, have become sort of a preoccupation to
which I unconsciously submitted. Oriental colors are imprinted in our dreams.
Hebrew, Turkish, Greek, Persian, Arabic, and Spanish, for Spain is still the

145
 Orient, it's half-African and Africa is half-Asiatic, inhabit our thoughts.319

—Victor Hugo

319

From the preface of Orientales by Victor Hugo. Brody, Paris: The Musical Kaleidoscope, translated by the
author, 69.

146
 A significant portion of the music for flute and voice employ texts and musical

devices that are exotic in nature. An examination of the period shows that many of these

composers engaged in international travel, that they were influenced by the music they

heard from the Orient at the Paris Expositions universelles, and that they were drawn to

the exotic writings of contemporary French poets. The result was an exploration that

resulted in an explosion of pieces for flute and voice that attempted to imitate the music

of other cultures.

THE NEAR EAST

Interest in "exotic" cultures, which had surfaced here and there in French musical

compositions as early at the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, now bloomed in

the 1850s as an infatuation with these distant cultures. In France, interest in the Near East

was awakened by Napoléon's 1798 campaigns in Egypt and Palestine. His army was

accompanied by a multitude of scientists, writers, artists, and archeologists, who returned

to Paris with statuary, sculptural fragments, sketches of the pyramids, drawings of the

desert, tall tales, and descriptive travelogues, all of which opened up a new and exciting

world to the European, and especially the French, public.320 Prior to that time, only

classical scholars who had read Herodotus and Strabo and a handful of intrepid travelers

had any real knowledge of ancient Egypt or the Middle East. In the wake of Napoléon's

campaign, new books and journal articles abounded, bringing the secrets of the Orient to

320

Brody, Paris: The Musical Kaleidoscope, 60-65.

147
the average Frenchman.321

Music was not the only art form affected by this great wave of interest. Rossini

composed L'Italiana in Algeri in 1813 and Il turco in Italia in 1814; Victor Hugo wrote

the poems of Les orientales in 1816; Delacroix's painting Algerian Women in Their

Harem, one of his many North African works, was exhibited in 1834; and Ingres began

painting the ambitious, multi-figured Turkish bath in 1852; and.322

During the last decades of the eighteenth century, this exoticism was especially

influenced by an interest in Turkish subject matter, which flourished in the works of

Austrian composers Christoph Willibald von Gluck, Franz Joseph Haydn, and Wolfgang

Amadeus Mozart.323 By 1850, French composers had become enthusiastic in their

response to these developments taking place across the culture, and these elements

infiltrated their orchestral works, operatic works, and mélodie.

Félicien David (1810-1876), a romantic contemporary of Berlioz, introduced

orientalism into the French concert hall with his symphonic ode Le désert. Composed and

performed in 1844, before Liszt had begun his series of symphonic poems, the work

321

Voyage in Lower and Upper Egypt by Baron Denon and Descriptions of Egypt by Edmond Jomard, both
came out between 1809 and 1813, to mention just two. Brody, Paris: The Musical Kaleidoscope, 60-65.
322

In music, precedents for the incorporation of orientalism or the exotic were already fairly well established.
Mozart, for example, had written Die entführung aus dem serail in 1782. Indeed, French operas and ballets
had made use of faraway locations among their settings, as well as impersonations of non-western
characters. These effects can be found in the works of Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687), André Campra
(1660-1774), and Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1763). Turkish characters, plots, and settings, as well as the
use of percussion instruments such as tambourines, cymbals, and triangles, were examples of the infusion of
musically exotic elements. Salazar, Music in Our Time, 160.
323

During the same period, the incorporation of Turkish clothing was a cue that the sitter was cosmopolitan
and well traveled in the work of even the most accomplished portraitists. By the 1760s, Turkish and Middle
Eastern clothing had become a fad among women of the upper classes. Salazar, Music in Our Time, 160.

148
contains a vocal line with orchestral accompaniment. He collaborated with the poet

Auguste Colin on the text. Earlier, David had traveled to Constantinople and Cairo in

March, 1833, returning to Paris in February, 1835.324 Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)

also traveled extensively, visiting the Canary Islands, Algiers, and Ceylon (now Sri

Lanka). His use of exoticism appears in his operas (including La princess jaune, and

Samson et Delila) and in his various instrumental genres.325

Exotic plots, characters, and settings found their way into any number of French

operas. George Bizet's Les pêcheurs de perles (1863), Léo Délibes's Lakmé (1883), and

Jules Massenet's Hérodiade (1888) were all examples of operatic orientalism.326 Albert

Roussel (1869-1937) was influenced by Indian culture after a tour to India and Southeast

Asia in 1909. Afterward, he composed two major works based on his experiences there:

the orchestral work Evocations (1910-11) and the opera-ballet Padmâvatî (1914-18). In

addition, the "Krishna" movement of his Joueurs de flûte (1924) for flute and piano is

based on elements drawn from Indian music.

Ravel wrote several pieces for flute and voice, demonstrating his own interests in

exoticism, including Shéhérzade (1903), L'Enfant et les sortliéges (1920), and Chansons

madécasses (1925-26). Maurice Delage visited India in 1912 and composed four works

324

While there, he wrote Brises d'orient, a limpid piano piece that he developed through improvisation. Hagan,
Félicien David, 45.
325

Hervey, Saint-Saëns, 18-20.

326

The French used the term orientale to describe the music not only of the Far East, but also of India, Persia
(now Iraq), Turkey, Arabia (now Saudi Arabia), Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. Brody, Paris: The
Musical Kaleidoscope, 64.

149
between 1912 and 1935 with Indian features: Quatre poèmes hindous (1913);

Ragamalika (1914); "Danse," from Contrerimes (1932); and Trois chants de la jungle

(1935).

FOLK IDIOMS

Ravel was also fascinated by folk idioms, making use of folksong and folk

materials early in his career while he was still studying with Fauré at the Conservatoire.

The Paris International Exhibition of 1889, which brought a wide variety of non-Western

music to Paris, seems to have made an indelible impression upon Ravel327 and, as a result,

he wrote pieces based on folksong settings. These include Cinq melodies populaires

greques (1904-06), Chansons populaire (1910), and Deux melodies hebraïques (1914).

He also wrote a number of pieces based on folk idioms: Sités auriculaires (1895-97),

Rapsodie espagnole (1907-08), L'Heure espagnole (1907-09), Vocalise - etude en forme

de habanera (1907), and Don Quichotte à Dulcinée (1932-33).328

Debussy was also in attendance at the Paris International Exhibition of 1889, and

it was there that he heard the authentic music of the East for the first time.329 He was

especially drawn to the Javanese village set up on the Esplanade des Invalides. There,

one could hear the famous gamelan orchestra that accompanied the Javanese dancers, or

327

Not only did Ravel hear the Javanese gamelan orchestra, but also the music of the Russian Five. After
hearing Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio espagnol (1887), he remained a lifelong admirer of the composer.
Brody, The Musical Kaleidoscope, 85-89.
328

Chabrier’s España (1883) and Habanera (1885) also had an impact on Ravel, which can be seen in the
succession of works he wrote in the Spanish vein. Larner, Maurice Ravel, 93-102.
329

Brody, Paris: The Musical Kaleidoscope, 86-89.

150
Bedayas. Debussy was fascinated, as many other musicians have been, by the manner in

which the Javanese musicians made use of all aspects of their instruments. He was also

captivated by the extraordinarily rich and subtle rhythms, the harmonies, and the

tonalities of which the drums and wooden percussion instruments were capable.

This was his introduction, outside of textbooks at least, to the pentatonic scale, the

basis of much Oriental music. As he listened to Chinese and Annamite (Vietnamese)

orchestras, as well as the Spanish, Hungarian, and others still closer to home, the

experience was profound and would continue to influence his musical thinking to one

degree or another in years to come.330 Debussy chose the exotic text Les chansons de

Bilitis (1901) as the inspiration for songs for voice and piano as well as a chamber piece

featuring flute and narration soon after his experience at the International Exhibition.

LE JAPONISME

Le japonisme was a related movement to exoticism that inspired its own

responses. Another movement, art nouveau, which was a cousin to Le japonisme, had its

greatest influence on the graphic arts, book design, pottery, and architectural

ornamentation.331 Baudelaire, Champfleury, Fantin-Latour, and Valloton all became

promoters of Japanese art in France. The jewelry, glass, and ceramics of Lalique owed its

330

Debussy chose Hokusai’s The Wave, a now famous colored woodblock print, for the front cover of the first
edition of his orchestral work La Mer (1903-05). He learned about Hokusai, a major figure among the many
great Japanese printmakers of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, through his friendship with
sculptress Camille Claudel, who apparently owned a number of Japanese objects. Brody, Paris, The
Musical Kaleidoscope, 64.
331

In Paris, art nouveau’s most enduring influence can be found at the métro [subway] entrances, which were
designed by Hector Guimard. Sowerwine, France Since 1870, 102-105.

151
inspiration to Le japonisme.332 In addition, the influence of Japanese art came through the

multi-color woodblock prints, called ukiyo-e, which existed almost exclusively in the

visual arts.333

The movement affected a handful of French composers following the Paris

Expositions universelles. One of the first was Camille Saint-Saëns with his one-act opera

La princesse jaune (1872). André Messager's opera Madame chrysanthème (1893) was

constructed around a plot similar to Puccini's Madama Buttterfly.334 In it, Messager

endeavored to evoke an oriental atmosphere through musical elements, including the use

of the pentatonic scale and imitation of the koto, a Japanese stringed instrument.

Stravinsky was in Paris when he wrote a composition for soprano and chamber ensemble

entitled Three Japanese Lyrics (1912) for flute, soprano, and chamber ensemble, using

texts by Japanese poets from the eighth and ninth centuries,335 the first golden age of

Japanese court poetry. These poems were collected in the Man'yoshu, or The Anthology

of Ten Thousand Leaves, a formative work in Japanese literature. Maurice Delage visited

332

Brody, Paris: The Musical Kaleidoscope, 63.

333

French artists were fascinated by the Japanese handling of spacial description, which utterly contradicted
the European attachment to perspectival space. The Japanese were frankly uninterested in this highly
artificial organization with space, and its influence is obvious in the impressionists, for example the works
of Whistler, Gauguin, Van Gogh, and Toulouse-Latrec. Ibid.
334

Pierre Loti’s novel, Madame chrysanthème (1888), was the inspiration for both Madame chrysanthème and
Madama Butterfly. Thomas, “Three Representative Works of Maurice Delage: A Study of Style and Exotic
Influence,” 45.
335

Stravinsky dedicated each movement to a composer friend: “Akahito” to Maurice Delage; “Mazatsumi” to
Florent Schmitt; and “Tsaraiuki” to Maurice Ravel. All three dedicatees themselves composed music that
demonstrated an interest in orientalism.

152
Japan in 1912 and composed his Sept haï-kaï (1924) for flute, soprano, and chamber

ensemble based upon the brief, seventeen syllable poetic form known as haikai, a more

traditional transliteration of the now familiar haiku.336 He also wrote a vocal composition

entitled In morte di un Samuraï (1950) for voice and orchestra.

A complete list of works for flute, voice, and ensemble on oriental and exotic

themes is contained in Table 1. In all there are sixteen works that span the time period

1897 to 1926. As we have seen in previous chapters, all of these composers were

acquainted with one another through educational and social collaborations.

336

Apparently Delage studied Japanese and may have had a basic ability to read and write the language.
Thomas, “Three Representative Works of Maurice Delage,” 46.

153
 CHAPTER 6

THE SALONS AND THE INTERACTION BETWEEN MUSICIANS, ARTISTS, AND

WRITERS

The salon of Madame de Stael is a mirror which represents the history of the
times. What one sees there is as instructive as many books, and gayer than many
comedies.…It is life, it is intellect that shines here, the illuminations of genius.337

—M.A. de Gustine

337

Hall, Famous French Salons, 288.

154
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE FRENCH SALON

Paris, at the end of the nineteenth century, was a place where an extraordinary

exchange of artistic ideas was taking place in the salons. These were places where poets

ardently discussed and even sometimes wrote music, where musicians attended literary

events, and where poetry aspired to express the meaning of life. This hotbed of creativity,

which launched many famous collaborations between musicians, writers, artists, dancers,

and actors also produced some of the seminal works of the nineteenth century and

became a common way of working well into the twentieth century.338

The French salons of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries were

among some of the most renowned social gatherings of the Western world. According to

Evelyn Hall:

The salon, as an institution, is wholly and exclusively French. The practical mind
of England always wants to be doing. The mind of France is more easily content
to talk. In its salons it talked to some purpose. They were the forcing-houses of
the Revolution, the nursery of the Encyclopedia, the antechamber of the
Académie. Here were discussed Free Thought and the Rights of Men, intrigues,
politics, science, literature. Here one made love, reputations, bon-mots, epigrams.
Here met the brilliancy, corruption, artificiality of old France, and the boundless
enthusiasms which were to form a new.339

338

A number of common themes attracted painters, musicians and writers, including scenes of nature and the
seasons, children and their games, the café and the cabaret, the circus, Iberia, orientalism, Wagnerism, and
the hommage or tombeau (composing in the style of an earlier master). Painters did portraits of musicians
while musicians wrote songs to the lyrics of the poets. Artists occasionally married into the families of other
artists. A natural process of collaboration developed in France, generating a rare outburst of creativity in the
arts. Brody, Paris: The Musical Kaleidoscope, 111.
339

Hall, Famous French Salons, preface.

155
In Paris, these assemblies began to gain prominence shortly before the Revolution.340 One

of the defining features of the French salon was that it was presided over by women (at

least initially). These gatherings gave conversation an extraordinary new prominence. As

a result, these French salons treated conversation as a fine art.341

Salon sociability was resilient. During the stormy one-hundred years of this study,

the salon was more or less constant in some form or other. As a gathering place for the

upper classes, the salons were extremely flexible, changing their size, function, and guest

list to suit the social, cultural, and political considerations of their time.342

In the late-nineteenth century, salon gatherings retained their character from the

time of the Revolution. These assemblies were organized and dominated by women of

the aristocratic elite who convened social gatherings in their homes, ideally fusing

political debates by the most educated minds with rigorous philosophical discussions.

Women such as Madame Récamier, Madame de Staël, and Madame de Sévigné were all

examples of such salonnières. Comtesse de Bassanville gave the following description of

the salon of princesse Catherine de Bagration:

340

The first true salon was created at the Hôtel de Rambouillet by the woman known as “la divine Arthénice,”
or the marquise de Rambouillet. Apparently, she received her guests lying in bed and seated them in the
ruelle, the space between the bed and the wall. This term came to designate any salon assembly. Salons
were also referred to by the day of the week on which they met. (Stéphane Mallarmé’s weekly “Tuesday
evenings” is an example of this usage.) The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French, edited by
Peter France, 737-738.
341

The conversational style – a blend of wit, elegance, and oral brilliance – was first concocted in the salon
and has often been considered the essence of the French style. The salons became the center of defining and
diffusing that which was intrinsic to French culture. These gatherings ushered in the period often
considered the golden age of French culture (1650-1789). Ibid.
342

Kale, French Salons, 2-3.

156
 With all the diverse personalities who came in and out of the salon of Madame
Bagration like shadows, one could not find a particular physiognomy there. The
princess loved noise, commotion, and newcomers; hence the innumerable
transformations that her house underwent. One day, it was a political salon; the
entire diplomatic corps could be seen there, distinguished foreigners, men of state,
indeed even princes and ministers, and, according to a rumor circulating quietly,
the soul of Metternich, although absent, animated this lavish residence. Then, all
of a sudden, one heard only laughter, song, joyous outbursts to the
accompaniment of a grand orchestra; and charming young women, smiles on their
lips and brightness in their eyes, crowded in to replace the grave serious men,
brilliant in their attire, dripping with diamonds in order to seek out the pleasure of
a ball.… Later, another complete change occurred: the orchestra went silent, the
echoes of the hôtel ceased to reverberate with bursts of joy, and one heard only
verse more or less well rhymed, prose more or less well written; literature had
replaced pleasure, the bluestockings, the fashionable women.343

By the early-twentieth century, salon assemblages had shed their preoccupation

with politics and had, instead, become gathering places for like-minded artists and

aristocrats.344 At the homes of artistically inclined wealthy patrons, such as Winnaretta

Singer (later the princesse de Polignac), countesse Greffulhe; or more middle-class

gatherings, such as Marguerite Baugnies, creative and talented artists, musicians, and

writers (many of whom were friends and colleagues) were able to enhance their

contacts.345 Sometimes their own artistry was also deepened through the stimulating

effects of discussion with other artists and cultured individuals. These artists had the

chance to hear the latest music and poetry and to discuss the latest artistic trends. It was

these types of links that made the salon world so important to French musicians and that

linked together much of the art, literature, and music of Paris at the turn of the nineteenth

343

Kale, French Salons, 6-7.

344

Ibid., 165-170.
345

Duchen, Gabriel Fauré, 85-89.

157
century.

COMPOSERS OF FLUTE AND VOICE MUSIC AND THE SALONS

Félicien David, one of the earliest composers in the period covered by this

dissertation, entered the musical society of Paris through the salons, making connections

with established writers, artists, and musicians there. David had come to Paris in 1830

under the patronage of an uncle.346 Soon after arriving in Paris, David had an interview

with Cherubini, who sent him to a Conservatoire subordinate for lessons. Not long after,

he made the acquaintance of the artist Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780-1867), who

presented him to composer Daniel-François Auber (1782-1871). Subsequently, David

became Auber's protégée.

By the time David was twenty-one, he had joined Enfantin and the

Saint-Simonian movement, attending their salon gatherings. At these meetings, he was

introduced to composers Hector Berlioz, Raymond Bonheur, Franz Liszt, opera star

Adolphe Nourrit, writer Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, and romantic moralist Émile

Souvestre. Later, his friendship with George Sand would catapult him into the rarified

circles of the literary elite.347 This, coupled with his musical contacts, provided David

with an entrée to the operatic stage in Paris, for which he wrote his opera La perle de

346

At the time, composers Daniel-François Auber (at the Conservatoire) and Luigi Cherubini (at the Opéra)
were in command at important Parisian musical institutions. David could have heard Berlioz's music in the
concert hall or seen Victor Hugo's Cromwell and Hernani at the theater. Hagan, Félicien David, 1-12.
347

George Sand introduced David to Balzac, Baudelaire, Chateaubriand, Dumas père, Musset, and Nerval.
Apparently, their ideas regarding the solemn singing of the people and the importance of the modalities of
popular music in the musical culture of a nation inspired much of his operatic and choral writing. Ibid., 115-
116.

158
Brésil (1851) containing an aria for soprano and flute.

Charles Gounod, who also wrote several pieces for flute and voice, was

introduced to the Paris social scene through the salon of Pauline Viardot (1821-1910).348

Viardot’s dynamic soirées attracted the greatest musicians and writers of the age,

including Hector Berlioz, Frederic Chopin, Franz Liszt, Alfred de Musset, George Sand,

and Ivan Turgenev (Viardot’s lover). Viardot introduced Gounod to these artists along

with the musical power brokers of the opéra. She secured Gounod’s operatic debut in

Paris through her connections with Nestor Roqueplan at the Opéra, even going so far as

to introduce Gounod to librettist Emile Augier at her salon.349 After this entrée into

Parisian musical society, Gounod wrote many operas (including his now famous Faust),

songs, and works for flute, soprano, and piano, including Sérénade (Quand tu chantes)

(1866), Barcarolle: où voulez-vous aller? (n.d.), O légère hirondellé (1887), and Prière

du soir (n.d.) as a result of his associations with Viardot and other singers.

Camille Saint-Saëns was a prodigy who awakened the admiration of the French

painter Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (as David had done some years earlier) when

Saint-Saëns was only seven years old.350 While Saint-Saëns was making his entrance into

348

Pauline Viardot was the daughter of the celebrated tenor Manuel Garcia and the sister of the famed soprano
Maria Malibran. She studied voice with her father and subsequently received vocal training from her
mother, lessons in piano from Meysenberg and Liszt, and lessons in composition from Reicha. She married
Louis Viardot, the director of the Théâtre-Italien in Paris, where she had a notable success in her debut as
Desdemona in 1839. She created the role of Fidès in Meyerbeer’s Le prophète (1849) and that of Sapho in
Gounod’s opera of the same name (1851). Through her efforts, the music of Gounod, Massenet, and Fauré
was given a wide hearing in Paris. Fitzlyon, The Price of Genius, 1-13.
349

Augier became the librettist of Gounod’s opera Sapho (1851), which was commissioned by Viardot and
was a vehicle for her. De Bovet, Charles Gounod, 85-89.
350

Hervey, Saint-Saëns, 2-3.

159
Parisian society he met librettist Louis Gallet early in his career in the salons, along with

musicians Georges Bizet, Charles Gounod, Franz Liszt, Anton Rubinstein, and Richard

Wagner, as well as the painter Henri Regnault. Gallet had provided librettos to George

Bizet, Charles Gounod, and Jules Massenet. Inspired by the current vogue for all things

oriental, Saint-Saëns and Gallet decided to set the Japanese tale La princesse jaune

(1872).

Saint-Saëns also met prominent authors at the salon of princesse Mathilde,

Napoléon's niece and cousin of Emperor Napoléon III. At her home on the rue de

Courcelles Saint-Saëns spent time with Jules Barbier, Michel Carré, Alexandre Dumas

père et fils, Gustave Flaubert, Edmond and Jules Goncourt, Victor Hugo, and Charles-

Augustin Sainte-Beuve.351 Saint-Saëns’ mélodie for flute, soprano, and piano entitled Une

flûte invisible (1887) is set to the poetry of Victor Hugo. Likewise his piece, Le bonheur

et chose légère, for flute, soprano, and piano (n.d.) is set to the lyrics of Jules Barbier and

Michel Carré.

Saint-Saëns introduced Gabriel Fauré into Parisian society in 1872 through the

salon of soprano Pauline Viardot, whose weekly soirees by then included the Russian

351

Other composers of the day made similar contact with writers and artists who influenced their musical life.
Louis-Charles-Bonaventure-Alfred Bruneau (1857-1934) was one of the first composers of opera whose
work absorbed the tenants of the naturalist movement that dominated literature at the time. The turning
point in his career came in the form of his friendship with the novelist Emile Zola, whom he met in the
salon of Marguerite de Saint-Marceaux. Bruneau became a disciple of the novelist, adopting naturalism as
the foundation of his dramatic principles. The result was a succession of operas with plots drawn from
Zola's works or with texts by Zola. In fact, all of Bruneau’s operas were based on Zola’s novels or libretti
written specifically for the composer. Bruneau discarded the mythological or romantic subjects currently in
operatic literature and replaced them with the dramas of contemporary interest, in which action and
psychological development were brief, tense, and persuasively truthful. He wanted to do away with the
empty conventions which had dominated French opera for so long and employ a musical style suitable to
the features of his plots. The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French, edited by Peter France, 121.

160
writer Ivan Turgenev, French writers Gustave Flaubert, Ernest Renan, and Georges Sand,

and the left-wing politician and historian Louis Bland. Fauré frequented many salons,

particularly those of comtesse Greffulhe, Madeleine Lemaire, and the princesse de

Polignac.352 At the home of Madame de Saint-Marceaux, amid a congenial atmosphere of

musicians, writers, and artists (who caricatured the musicians as they performed), Fauré

often presided at the keyboard. Among the guests on any given evening, one might

encounter writers Pierre de Bréville, the young Colette, and Marcel Proust, musicians

Claude Debussy and Vincent d'Indy, or composer/conductor André Messager.353

Fauré’s salon associations influenced him toward the direction of French mélodie. He

began collaboration with symbolist Paul Verlaine in late 1891, at the behest of princesse

de Scey-Montbéliard (later the princesse de Polignac).354 He eventually composed the

song cycle La bonne chanson (1892), setting nine of Verlaine's twenty-one poems.355

Fauré also set poems by the Parnassian and symbolist poets, Théophile Gautier and

352

The princesse Edmond de Polignac was born Winnaretta Singer, American heiress to the Singer sewing
machine fortune. She cultivated a lively salon at her home in Paris and commissioned works from many
composers, including Manuel de Falla, Gabriel Fauré, Francis Poulenc, Maurice Ravel, Igor Stravinsky, and
Germaine Tailleferre. She became especially linked with Fauré, who dedicated his songs “Mandoline” and
“Green” to her. Duchen, Gabriel Fauré, 84-88.
353

Ibid.
354

Wineretta Singer’s marriage to the prince de Scey-Montbéliard was dissolved in early 1892, due to her
preference for other women. Robert, comte de Montesquiou and the countesse Greffulhe later introduced
Singer to the prince de Polignac, who was many years her senior and himself a homosexual. By all
accounts their marriage was amicable, and they had a shared passion for culture, especially music. Duchen,
Gabriel Fauré, 86-87.
355

Apparently, the cycle was also inspired by Fauré's love for Emma Bardac (later, Debussy's second wife),
who participated in the collaboration by singing through each song as it was written and suggesting changes
to the composer. Brody, Paris: The Musical Kaleidoscope, 149.

161
Leconte de Lisle.356 Indeed, his song for flute, soprano, and piano, Nocturne, op. 43, no. 2

(1886), was composed to the poetry of symbolist Villiers de l'Isle Adam.

Fauré, in turn, introduced Maurice Ravel into the salon of Madame de Saint-

Marceaux in 1898. According to Ravel’s biographer Gerald Larner:

Success at the musical evenings of the formidable Madame de Saint-Marceaux,

wife of a fashionable sculptor, was almost as important in establishing a
composer’s reputation as favorable reviews in the newspapers. The Saint-
Marceaux house, not far from Fauré’s home in the boulevard Malesherbes, was
open to musical guests after dinner on Wednesdays, when formality was
discouraged but any hint of a whisper during the musical performances severely
frowned upon. It was here that Ravel first met Colette, future librettist of L’enfant
et les sortilèges…357

Apparently, Ravel participated in the informal performances of contemporary music and,

on one occasion, improvised at the piano as the young American dancer, Isadora Duncan,

performed interpretive dances.358

PARISIAN SALONS AT THE TURN OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

The salon of Madame René de Saint-Marceaux (1850-1930) was one of the most

highly regarded musical salons in Paris at the turn of the century. Marguerite de

Saint-Marceaux, known to her close friends as Meg, was an accomplished singer and

356

In the early 1860s, a group of poets known as the Parnassians formulated a reaction against romanticism,
and many members were associated with La Revue Fantaisiste, the journal founded by Catulle Mendès. The
group, which included Charles Baudelaire, Théodore de Banville, and Sully-Prudhomme, among others,
took as their motto a theme propounded by Victor Cousin in his Cours de Philosophie at the Sorbonne in
1818: “Art for art’s sake.”
357

Larner, Maurice Ravel, 54.

358

A Ravel Reader, 4.

162
pianist. From 1875 until 1927 she ritually received at her home, every Friday evening,

artists, musicians, writers, and dancers, most especially young and upcoming talents.

Musicians Alfred Cortot, Claude Debussy, Manuel de Falla, Gabriel Fauré, Reynaldo

Hahn, Giacomo Puccini, Maurice Ravel, and Ricardo Viñes, along with writers Colette

and her husband Willy, Pierre Louÿs, and Gabrielle d'Annunzio were among the regular

or occasional guests invited to her residence at 100, boulevard Malesherbes.

During World War I, Madeline Milhaud reminisced about these meetings:

Fridays gained in distinction what they lost in social brilliance.…Composers were

more welcome than ever. On February 7, 1917, Roussel came to play his still
unpublished opera Padmâvatî in front of Messager, who was being reluctant to
put it on at the Opéra, and on February 3, 1920, Falla played his Sombrero de très
picos which was being produced by Diaghilev and his Nuits dans les jardins
d’Espagne. On January 14, 1921, Ravel played La valse on two pianos with
Jacques Février and accompanied Claire Croiza in Shéhérazade, and on May 18,
1927, he played Ma mère l’oye with Marguerite Long. That same evening, the
young Poulenc, probably introduced by his teacher Ricardo Viñes, played Napoli
and risked singing his Chansons gaillardes.359

The princesse de Polignac (Winnaretta Singer, 1865-1943) convened another

influential salon during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Her assemblies

in St-Leu-la-Forêt were frequented by artists, musicians, writers, and performers alike,

including Jean Cocteau, Colette, Serge Diaghilev, Manuel de Falla, Wanda Landowska,

Claude Monet, Francis Poulenc, Marcel Proust, Erik Satie, and Igor Stravinsky, among

others.360 The music room in the de Polignac hôtel particulier on the avenue Henri

Martin was large enough to hold full-scale concerts. However, Winnie (as she was

359

Nichols, The Harlequin Years, 199.

360

Kahan, Music’s Modern Muse, 121.

163
known to her friends) preferred chamber music and would commission and premiere

many new chamber works from French composers of the day.361 According to Michel de

Cossart, she turned to the idea of chamber music during World War I, when she realized

that France was turning away from large musical works:

…not only because of increasing economic problems [but] because of their all-too
Germanic character. Also, as a fervent admirer of baroque music, Winnaretta
thought it would be a profitable exercise to study its musical structures afresh. So
she decided to try this out by asking various composers to write short orchestral
works which could be played by small groups of around twenty musicians. She
hoped that, once the war was over, she would be able to have the works she had
commissioned played in her music room.362

In this atmosphere of musical cultivation, French composers socialized with other

leading performers of the day and heard one another’s latest works. It was in the salon of

the princesse de Polignac that several works for flute and voice were performed,

including Poulenc’s Cinq poèmes de Max Jacob (June 15, 1932); Fauré’s Nocturne (June

17, 1933), and Roussel’s Rossignol, mon amour from Deux poèmes de Ronsard

(February 7, 1936).363 These works and others were performed by the leading sopranos

and flutists of the day, including sopranos Claire Croiza, Madeleine Grey, Suzanne

Peignot, Marie Blanche de Polignac, Germain Sanderson, Ninon Vallin, and flutists

361

Apparently, the princess held a concert rendition of Rameau’s Dardanus as well as the first performance of
Albéniz’s Iberia in her salon. She was instrumental in the establishment of the Ballet Russe in Paris,
holding their first performances at her home in 1909. She also commissioned and premiered such works at
Stravinsky’s Renard and Oedipus rex, Satie’s Socrate, Falla’s El retablo de maese Pedro, Tailleferre’s
Piano Concerto, and Milhaud’s opera Les malheurs d’Orphée, among others. Nichols, The Harlequin
Years, 199-201.
362

de Cossart, Une américan à Paris, 131.

363

Aaron Copland’s As It Fell Upon a Day for flute, soprano, and clarinet was also performed at the
princesse de Polignac’s home. Kahan, Music’s Modern Muse, Appendix A.

164
Gaston Blanquart, Rogert Cortet, Philippe Gaubert, Gérard Masson, Ernest Millon, and

René le Roy.364 From these contacts through the salons, it is not surprising that several

French composers went on to create works for specific artists that they had met (and

heard perform), as well as composing works for the same instrumentations and in the

same genres.

In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, other salons developed in

Paris which would make significant contributions to the arts. From 1890 to early 1900,

some of Elizabeth, comtesse Greffulhe's (1860-1952) regular visitors were Gabriel Fauré,

Robert, comte de Montesquiou, and Marcel Proust.365 During the same years, almost all

the young writers in Paris came to Pierre Louÿs's home, particularly those who wrote for

La Revue Blanche,366 along with Louÿs's close friend, the composer Claude Debussy.367

364

Ibid.
365

Elisabeth, comtesse Greffulhe was a renowned beauty and the uncontested queen of the salons of the
Faubourg Saint-German. At her salon on 10, rue d’Astorg, she regularly entertained the cream of Parisian
society in the arts, sciences, and politics. The comtesse was a cousin of Robert, comte de Montesquiou and
was in love with him throughout her life (although her love does not appear to have been returned). She was
a patron of the Ballets Russes and promoted many artists including Moreau, Rodin, and Whistler. She
probably inspired the character of the duchesse de Guermantes in Marcel Proust’s A la recherche du temps
perdu. Kahan, Music’s Modern Muse, 56-59.
366

La Revue Blanche was an important periodical associated with symbolism and other modern literary
movements of late-nineteenth-century France. Founded in 1889, it published the writings of Mallarmé,
Henri de Régnier, and others, with Debussy serving as its music critic and the young Léon Blum writing
theatrical and literary reviews. The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French, edited by Peter France,
695.
367

Given the close relationship between literature and music during this period, the French art song, or
mélodie, reached its apogee in the hands of composers such as Emmanuel Chabrier, Ernest Chausson,
Claude Debussy, Henri Duparc, Gabriel Fauré, and Édouard Lalo. The texts of a number of French poets,
including Guillaume Apollinaire, Théodore de Banville, Charles Baudelaire, Théophile Gautier, André
Gide, Victor Hugo, Alphonse de Lamartine, Leconte de Lisle, Alfred de Musset, Paul Verlaine, Arthur
Rimbaud, and Jean-Marie-Mathias-Phillipe-August, comte de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, among others,
continued to inspire and stimulate the musical imagination of French composers of mélodie. A complete

165
From around 1890 to 1914, the Godebski's salon included Ravel, the members of Les

Apaches (André Caplet, Maurice Delage, Marcel Delannoy, Manuel de Falla, Paul

Ladmirault, Florent Schmitt, and Déodat de Séverac), André Gide, Paul Valery, and the

painters Pierre Bonnard and Odilon Redon. Madeleine Lemaire's home was also a lively

salon, where, around 1900, writer Marcel Proust, artists Edgar Degas and Auguste Rodin,

pianist Alfred Cortot, composers Reynaldo Hahn, D. E. Inghelbrecht, Jules Massenet, and

Camille Saint-Saëns, dancer Isadora Duncan, and patrons Robert, comte de Montesquiou

and the comtesse Greffulhe were all frequent visitors.368

The Godebski family (Xavier Cyprien or “Cipa,” 1874-1937; his wife Ida, 1872-

1935; Cipa’s sister Misia, 1872-1950;369 and their children Mimie and Jean) were close

friends with Maurice Ravel, taking him into their country home after the death of his

father. The family was extremely artistic and held Sunday evening soirées at their

study of French mélodie is found in Chapter 9.

368

It is in her studio that Mme. Madeleine Lemaire begins by reuniting a few of her brotherhood and
her friends.…And when the princess of Wales, the empress of Germany, the king of Sweden, the
queen of the Belgians came to Paris, they requested permission to visit the studio of Mme. Lemaire
who could not dare to refuse them entry. Her friend princess Mathilde and her pupil princess
d’Arenberg also come from time to time.… But little by little we learn that some small reunions
have taken place in the studio where, with no prior preparation, with no pretensions of a soirée,
each of the invitees, “working at his trade,” and giving of his talent, the small intimate
entertainment had included attractions that the most brilliant galas could never hope to assemble
together. Because Réjane, who happened to be there by chance at the same time as Coquelin and
Bartet, had a desire to perform a sketch with them, Massenet and Saint-Saëns were brought to the
piano and Mauri even had danced.

Le Figaro, May 11, 1903.

369

Misia Godebska was an active patroness of the arts in her own right. She was a noted beauty and was
painted many times by artists such as Bonnard, Renoir, Toulouse-Latrec, and Vuillard. She was an early
patron of Diaghilev and the Ballet Russe and assisted Ravel in negotiations over the writing of Daphnis et
Chloë. Misia presided over a glittering salon that included artists such as Colette, Jean Cocteau, Coco
Chanel, Stéphane Mallarmé, Francis Poulenc, Marcel Proust, and Igor Stravinsky. Brody, Paris: The
Musical Kaleidoscope, 310-311.

166
apartment in the rue d’Athènes. Regular visitors to their salon evenings were writers Jean

Cocteau, Léon-Paul Fargue, André Gide, and Paul Valéry; painters d’Espagnat, La

Fresnaye, and Valentine Gross; and musicians Georges Auric, Alfredo Casella, Maurice

Delage, Manuel de Falla, Darius Milhaud, Alexis Roland-Manuel, Albert Roussel, Erik

Satie, Florent Schmitt, Igor Stravinsky, and Ricardo Viñes.370

French composer Ernest Chausson attracted an extraordinary number of artists to

his salon evenings, including artists Albert Besnard, Eugene Carriere, Edgar Degas,

Édouard Manet, Odilon Redon, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir; the sculptor Auguste Rodin;

writers Maurice Bouchor, Colette, André Gide, Henri Gauthier-Villars, Stéphane

Mallarmé, Camille Mauclar, and Henri de Regnier; musicians Raymond Bonheur,

Emmanuel Chabrier, Henri Duparc, Gabriel Fauré, Cesar Frank, Vincent d'Indy, Charles

Koechlin, Albéric Magnard, and Guy Ropartz; conductor Camille Chevillard; and critic

Sylvio Lazzari.371

Several works for flute and voice were written as a result of these associations

between French composers and writers. Debussy’s friendship with Pierre Louÿs

370

Cipa had given support to Toulouse-Latrec, who painted his portrait. Ravel later dedicated his Sonatine
(1903-1905) to Cipa and Ida. He also wrote his piano two hands version of Ma mère l’oye for Mimie and
Jean. Brody, Paris: The Musical Kaleidoscope, 145.
371

During the mid-nineteenth to early-twentieth centuries, musicians, artists, and writers made some forays
into the arts of their peers. For example, Claude Debussy and Gabriel Fauré both sketched their
contemporaries, as did Camille Saint-Saëns. Erik Satie became a master of calligraphy; Edgar Degas and
Édouard Manet both wrote music as young men, and Jacques-Emile Blanche studied piano, playing a
passable Bach. Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Manet, and Toulouse-Lautrec all decorated sheet music covers for
their musician friends, while many artists were inspired by the music dramas of Richard Wagner. Henri
Fantin-Latour and Odilon Redon were just two of the artists who depicted characters or scenes from
Wagner's operas in their works. Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and Verlaine, whose careers together cover the
decisive period from 1850 to the early twentieth century, all stressed an active interrelationship between all
the arts, with the importance and supremacy of music over all the other arts. Brody, Paris: The Musical
Kaleidoscope, 136-155.

167
prompted him to set Louÿs’s Les chansons de Bilitis for 2 flutes, 2 harps, celesta, and

narrator in 1901 (at Louÿs’s request).372 Maurice Emmanuel, who frequented the same

salons as Debussy and who was extremely interested in ancient French history, wrote his

Trois odelettes anacréontiques, op. 13 for flute, soprano, and piano, to the poetry of

medieval poets Rémy Belleau and Pierre de Ronsard in 1911.

Ravel benefitted from his salon associations with Colette and Tristan Klingsor,

writing pieces for flute and soprano based on their writings: "Air de la princesse" from

L'Enfant et les sortliéges (1920) by Colette; and "La flûte enchantée" from Shéhérzade

(1903) by Tristan Klingsor. The young Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) also wrote music for

flute, soprano, and chamber ensemble based on the poets he had met and admired,

including Le bestiaire (1919) from poetry by Guillaume Apollinaire and Quatre poèmes

de Max Jacob, op. 22 (1920) from poetry by Max Jacob. Alexis Roland-Manuel also

wrote a piece for flute and soprano entitled Deux élegies (1928). In this work, he

combined the poetry of the early French poet Francois Maynard and the fantaisistes poet

Jean Pellerin (1885-1921), whom he had met through Tristan Klingsor.373

OTHER GATHERINGS OF ARTISTS AT THE TURN OF THE NINETEENTH

CENTURY

372

Debussy met poet Pierre Louÿs around 1893. Louÿs was then beginning to attract attention in Parisian
literary circles. Despite the disparity in their ages (Debussy was thirty-one and Louÿs only twenty-two at
the time of their first meeting) they soon became close friends and remained so for the next twelve years.
They had much in common temperamentally and shared the same predilection for rare and precious objects
and sensations. Lockspeiser, Debussy, 62-64.
373

Les fantaisistes were a group of poets who came together around 1911 and worked toward a light, tender,
sometimes mocking poetry. This group included the poets Jean-Marc Bernard, Tristan Dérème (pseudonym
of Philippe Huc), Jean Pellerin, and Jean-Paul Toulet. The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French,
edited by Peter France, 298.

168
 The Parisian salons played a crucial role in bringing together the musicians,

artists, writers, poets, and critics of the day. In the café atmosphere of turn-of-the-century

Paris, musicians, artists, dancers, and writers were in frequent contact with each other.

They socialized and introduced one another to their artist friends. Soon they began

convening their own social gatherings outside of the official salons, even establishing

artistic groups of their own.

Since the mid-1880s, the symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé had been gathering

about him poets, musicians, painters, literary critics, and musicians.374 Mallarmé's

Tuesday evening receptions in his home, which began in 1880 and lasted over a decade,

took on such significance that everybody of any importance in the artistic avant-garde

felt distinguished by admission there. These meetings attracted an astonishing variety of

artists from several generations, various schools of thought, and various movements. A

partial list includes Jacques-Emile Blanche, Claude Debussy,375 Edgar Degas, Paul

374

Brody, Paris: The Musical Kaleidoscope, 310-311.

375

Debussy was twenty-five years old when he returned to Paris in 1887, following a period of time
spent in Rome as a result of winning the Prix de Rome. It was a time of literary and artistic ferment and
Debussy found himself stimulated by the variety of ideas that were openly discussed. He dabbled in
Wagnerism and also followed the English Pre-Raphaelites, the Russian Five, and Edgar Allan Poe, who had
a wide French readership after the translation of his works into French by Charles Baudelaire. There were
also the symbolists poets, the most important and influential group with whom he would become associated.
Stéphane Mallarmé was the guiding spirit of this literary movement, and he had rallied around him
like-minded writers such as Jules Laforgue, Pierre Louÿs, Henri de Régnier, and Paul Verlaine, while the
painters in the group included Odilon Redon and James McNeil Whistler. The young Debussy met them all
at the famous Tuesday gatherings in Mallarmé's flat in the rue de Rome. The friendships and acquaintances
he made in these distinguished circles had a profound influence on his artistic development.
During the 1890s, as Debussy began to frequent many salon gatherings, he subsequently
conceived the idea of creating a style of music similar to the methods of impressionism in painting and
symbolism in literature. By avoiding academic or traditional conventions, by relaxing some of the familiar
indications of tonality, and by using harmony largely as a means of colorist effect, he obtained results
strikingly analogous to those of poetry and painting.
The first work in which Debussy attempted this revolutionary procedure was the now-famous
Prélude à l'après midi d'un faune, which was suggested to him by Mallarmé's poem of the same title and

169
Gauguin, Édouard Manet, Stuart Merrill, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Edvard Munch,

Odilon Redon, Auguste Renoir, Arthur Rimbaud, Félicien Rops, Paul Verlaine, Gustave

Vielé-Griffin, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler. During these assemblies, there were

readings of poems and the issues of the moment were freely discussed, whether the

principles of symbolism or of impressionism.

MAURICE RAVEL AND LES APACHES

As a result of his salon activities, Ravel became intimate with a large group of

writers and artists. About 1900, he was instrumental in the formation of a group of

enthusiastic devotees of the arts who were to call themselves Les apaches. The name was

coined by Ricardo Viñes and referred to underworld hooligans.376 The apaches were

fervent supporters of new music and attended many performances of new works by

French composers. This group met fairly regularly until World War I, discussing

painting, declaiming poetry, and performing new music. Among the members of the

groups were poets Tristan Klingsor377 and Léon-Paul Fargue, the painter Paul Sordes, the

was composed in 1892. Debussy's next major work in this form was the opera Pelléas et Mélisande, based
upon Maeterlinck's play of the same name. It was produced in 1902 at the Opéra-Comique and caused a
sensation, ultimately being acknowledged as the most notable musical event since the premiere of Wagner’s
operas in Paris. Lockspeiser, Debussy, 68-78 and Brody, The Musical Kaleidoscope, 52.
376

Apparently, apaches was the name given to low-life criminals in the late 1880s and 1890s in Paris. These
wretched individuals were brought to the attention of the public through the songs of café singer Aristide
Bruant (1851-1925), whose hit song “A Biribi” referred to the disciplinary corps in North Africa where
recalcitrant army recruits were sent to break their spirit. Many became apaches as a result of the harshness
of the conditions there. There also seems to have been a homosexual connotation to this term for the artists.
Many of the members of the group were homosexuals and felt themselves to be outcasts from society,
constantly defending their artistic ideas. Sowerwine, France since 1870, 97.
377

Tristan Klingsor was the pseudonym of Léon Leclerc, an art critic and poet. He worshiped Wagner, and the
development of his nom de plum came about as a combination of two of Wagner’s operatic characters:
Tristan, from Tristan und Isolde, and Klingsor, from Parsifal. Some of Klingsor’s poems reveal a

170
writer Abbé Léonce Petit, the conductor Désiré-Emile Inghelbrecht, the decorator

Georges Mouveau, pianists Marcel Chadeigne and Ricardo Viñes, and composers André

Caplet, Maurice Delage, Marcel Delannoy, Manuel de Falla, Paul Ladmirault, Florent

Schmitt, and Déodat de Séverac.

The group met at the home of painter Paul Sordes on the rue Dulong, at the home

of Tristan Klingsor on the avenue du Parc Montsouris, and later at Maurice Delage's

studio in Auteuil. It would be difficult to capture the excitement of these meetings. Léon-

Paul Fargue wrote:

Ravel shared our predilections, our weaknesses, our manias for Chinese art,
Mallarmé and Verlaine, Rimbaud and Corbière, Cézanne and Van Gogh, Rameau
and Chopin, Whistler and Valéry, the Russians and Debussy.378

Several works for flute and soprano resulted from these associations. Probably the

most direct connection was between Ravel and Maurice Delage. Both worked in the same

vein shortly before World War I, composing two similar pieces within a year of one

another: Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé (1913) for soprano, 2 flutes [piccolo], 2

clarinets [bass clarinet], string quartet, and piano by Ravel; and Quatre poèmes hindous

(1914) for soprano, 2 violins, viola, cello, 2 flutes, oboe, 2 clarinets, and harp by Delage.

Ten years later, Ravel collaborated with Evariste Parny to write the Chansons

madécasses (1924) for flute, soprano, cello, and piano, with Luc-Albert Moreau

illustrating the music for Durand (the lithograph is still printed in the current Durand

Edition).

Wagnerian source of inspiration; he also wrote musical compositions. The New Oxford Companion to
Literature in French, edited by Peter France, 422-423.
378

A Ravel Reader, edited by Arbie Orenstein, 4.

171
 Other works for flute and soprano by members of the group include André

Caplet’s Corbeille de fruits: écoute, mon coeur (1924) for flute and soprano, with poetry

by Rabindranath Tagore; Maurice Delage’s Deux fables de Jean de La Fontaine (1931)

for soprano, flute, oboe, 2 clarinets, bassoon, horn, trumpet, piano, string quartet, with

poetry by Jean de la Fontaine; Hommage à A. Roussel