Michel Duchesneau

Bio: Michel Duchesneau is an academic researcher from Université de Montréal. The author has contributed to research in topics: Musicology & Digital library. The author has an hindex of 3, co-authored 14 publications receiving 32 citations.

Le Domaine Musical : Pierre Boulez et Vingt Ans De Création Contemporaine

Abstract: Jesus Aguila. Le Domaine musical : Pierre Boulez et vingt ans de creation contemporaine. Paris : Fayard, 1992. 506 p. ISBN 2-213-02532-0. La creation musicale et la diffusion de la musique contemporaine en France se trouvent depuis longtemps associees a des societes musicales, pour la plupart nees des revendications de jeunes compositeurs et, par consequent, tributaires de certains principes esthetiques. Ces societes avaient pour objectif de defendre les orientations des nouvelles generations contre un certain conservatisme vehicule par les compositeurs plus âges et des institutions telles que la Schola ou le Conservatoire. Ainsi, la Societe Nationale (constituee en 1871 par Cesar Franck et Camille Saint-Saens), la Societe Musicale Independante (fondee en 1910 par Maurice Ravel et Charles Koechlin), la Societe Triton (nee en 1932 et dirigee par Pierre-Octave Ferroud) et enfin le Domaine musical (cree en 1953 par Pierre Boulez) ont favorise l'essor de nouveaux courants musicaux en France, en marge des grandes societes symphoniques et des grandes institutions d'enseignement. Entre 1953 et 1973, le Domaine musical, principale societe musicale d'avant-garde de l'epoque a Paris, a donne en concert 460 uvres de plus d'une centaine de compositeurs francais et etrangers. Son role dans la diffusion et la defense d'oeuvres issues du postwebernisme a profondement marque l'evolution de la musique francaise. L'ouvrage de Jesus Aguila retrace l'histoire et les fondements de cette societe et analyse le role joue par son principal fondateur, Pierre Boulez, dans l'elaboration de ce panorama tres particulier de la musique contemporaine qu'offrait le Domaine. Professeur a l'Universite de Toulouse-Le Mirail, Jesus Aguila a soutenu sa these de doctorat a l'Universite de Paris IV-La Sorbonne en 1990. C'est cette these intitulee « Histoire du Domaine musical (1953-1973) : la pensee boulezienne et son institutionnalisation » qui, remaniee, est parue chez Fayard en 1992 sous le titre Le Domaine musical : Pierre Boulez et vingt ans de creation contemporaine. Comme le precise l'introduction, ce remaniement est complete par des conclusions d'analyses extraites d'un rapport de recherche redige par l'auteur en 1990 a l'intention du ministere de la Culture et intitule Etude de la pensee et des techniques postweberniennes : l'apport du Domaine musical. En realisant cette etude, Jesus Aguila s'est fixe un objectif relativement precis. Admettant d'emblee qu'il est difficile de definir « de nouveaux concepts capables de rendre compte avec pertinence de l'ensemble de Ia musique du XXe siecle » (p. 8), il s'oriente « plus modestement » et « a defaut d'une relecture radicalement nouvelle des evenements » a « recueillir les materiaux necessaires a une reflexion future » (p. 9). La reconstitution des activites du Domaine s'effectue a partir de trois approches : (1) historique, (2) socioeconomique, et (3) thematique et esthetique. Ces orientations methodologiques regissent en grande partie le developpement des trois principales divisions de l'ouvrage. Le livre I (« Naissance et fondements du Domaine musical ») fait appel a la demarche historique (reconstitution chronologique des faits) ainsi qu'a l'approche socio-economique qui donne lieu, selon l'auteur, a une mesure de « l'affaiblissement progressif de la resistance collective a l'innovation musicale » (p. 8). Le premier chapitre de cette partie est consacre a une analyse de la dixieme saison du Domaine et sert a tracer les principaux traits distinctifs de la societe. Suivent des chapitres ou l'auteur decrit les differentes etapes qui ont marque l'existence du Domaine ainsi que l'evolution qui l'a fait passer du statut d'association «marginalisee» a celui d'« institution» officielle. Les livres II et III font appel plus specifiquement a l'approche thematique et esthetique et sont consacres a l'etude de la programmation du Domaine sous la direction de Boulez (livre II :« Le Domaine de Pierre Boulez ») puis de Gilbert Amy, qui lui a succede en 1967 (livre III : « Gilbert Amy et l'heritage boulezien »). …

French Music Criticism and Musicology at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: New Journals, New Networks

Abstract: This article examines the efforts of French musicologists to create a specialized journal at the turn of the twentieth century that would clearly associate music criticism and musicology. Using as case study a set of music journals, from La Revue d’histoire et de critique musicales to the Mercure musical and the Revue S.I.M. that followed, I establish the connections that brought together the nascent musicological milieu, the musical press and the artistic affinities among the principal actors in their attempt to create a new network of music critics guided by musicological exigencies. Jules Combarieu, Romain Rolland, Louis Laloy, Jean Marnold, Emile Vuillermoz and Jules Ecorcheville are some of the musicologists engaged in this project between 1900 and 1914. But historical contingencies make this project a relative utopia, and requirements of the young musicology hardly meet that of a music criticism divided between disciplinary tradition and the necessity to support contemporary music. After the war, with the founding of a new Revue musicale, Rene Prunieres, prudently, would not hire musicologists to develop a music criticism. Instead, he took up the characteristically Republican project of promoting musical culture, and thus responding to the interests of both the cultivated bourgeoisie and the musical, literary and artistic milieus through diffusion of music knowledge.

Gallica: the Online Digital Library of the Bibliothèque nationale de France

Abstract: Gallica (http://gallica.bnf.fr) has been declared by the Bibliothèque nationale de France as ‘one of the most important digital libraries freely accessible on the Internet’.1 Certainly it is one of the richest online resources currently available to musicologists and the general public. This repository has been designed to give users unlimited access to nearly three million digitized and downloadable documents that are in the public domain or whose rights have been negotiated. That figure is continually growing, and in December of 2013, according to data available on the Gallica site, there were 475,761 books,2 65,937 maps, 43,178 manuscripts (of which 2,977 are musical), 997,281 images (of which more than 14,000 are associated with music), 21,356 scores, 3,265 sound recordings,3 and 1,282,724 newspaper files and periodicals. Obviously, Gallica offers a wealth of material relating to French music, but those pursuing research on other musical topics will find it valuable too. Among the collections of documents in Gallica’s catalogue that are most interesting and useful for musicologists are its digitized music journals and periodicals. A simple search returned 1,249 journal titles in connection with music. But the actual number of musical journals is much smaller, because this figure includes literary and theatre (spectacle) journals in which one finds articles relating to music. For the researcher, however, it is difficult to establish precisely the total number of music journals and periodicals available on Gallica.4 No list of these publications may be readily found, nor is there any ideal filter in the core

Histoire de la musique

Abstract: Ouvrages généraux BELTRANDO­PATIER, M. Claire, Histoire de la musique (coll. Honegger), Bordas, Paris, 1993 BERNARDEAU, T., PINEAU, M., La musique, Paris, Nathan, 2004 BOUCOURECHLIEV, André, Le langage musical, Fayard, Paris, 1993 BRISSON, Elisabeth, La Musique, Belin, Paris, 1993 CANDÉ, Roland de, Nouveau dictionnaire de la musique, Le Seuil, Paris, 2000 ­ Dictionnaire des compositeurs, Le Seuil, Paris, 1996 HODEIR, André, Les formes de la musique, PUF, collection « Que sais­je ? », Paris, 1951 HONEGGER, Marc, éd., Dictionnaire de la musique, I. Les hommes et leurs œuvres, 2 vol., Bordas, Paris, 1986 ­ Dictionnaire de la musique, II. Science de la musique, 2 vol., Paris, Bordas, 1976 LELONG, Guy, et SOLEIL, Jean­Jacques, Les œuvres­clés de la musique, Bordas, Paris, 1987 MICHELS, Ulrich, Guide illustré de la musique, 2 vol., Fayard, Paris, 1990 MASSIN, Jean et Brigitte, (sous la direction de), Histoire de la musique occidentale, Fayard, Paris, 1987 NATTIEZ, Jean­Jacques, dir., Musiques, Encyclopédie pour le XXIème siècle : Histoire des musiques européennes, vol 4, Actes Sud/Cité de la musique, 2006 VIGNAL, Marc, Dictionnaire de la musique, Larousse, Paris, 1999 Ouvrages spécifiques HONEGGER, Marc, et PREVOST, P., Dictionnaire des œuvres de l’art vocal, 3 vol., Bordas, Paris, 1991­1992 KAMINSKI, Piotr, Mille et un opéras, Fayard, Paris, 2004 KOBBE, Gustave, Tout l'opéra : de Monteverdi à nos jours, Laffont , Paris, 1999

Symphonic Culture in Paris, 1880-1900: The Bande à Franck and Beyond

Abstract: Symphonic Culture in Paris, 1880-1900: The Bande à Franck and Beyond Mark Seto Parisian musical life underwent a tectonic shift in the late nineteenth century. Throughout the 1800s, and particularly during the Second Empire (1852-70), opera and other forms of theatrical entertainment had dominated the French musical scene. In the final decades of the century, however, a generation of French composers devoted considerable efforts to large-scale symphonic forms. A driving force in the advancement of orchestral music was the “Franck circle” or bande à Franck—a group of more-or-less young composers mentored by an unassuming organ professor at the Paris Conservatoire. In their symphonic works, these musicians challenged the longstanding Austro-German dominance of serious instrumental genres and cultivated a distinctly French musical voice. This dissertation explores the burgeoning symphonic culture of Paris circa 18801900 by examining four representative compositions by prominent members of the Franck circle: Augusta Holmès’s Les Argonautes (1880), Ernest Chausson’s Viviane (1882-83, revised 1887), César Franck’s Psyché (1886-87), and Vincent d’Indy’s Istar (1896). Each of these pieces, the subject of an individual chapter, offers a study in the relationship between compositional practice and cultural identity. The critical success of Les Argonautes catapulted Holmès to national prominence and established her reputation as one of the most progressive composers in France. Chausson’s extensive revisions to Viviane, his first major orchestral work, reveal his evolving attitudes about descriptive music and Wagner—the composer who cast the longest shadow in fin-de-siècle France. Although Franck based Psyché on a legend from Greek antiquity, his approach to musical signification allowed his disciples to interpret the piece variously as a Christian allegory or as absolute music. D’Indy’s polemical stances on genre, artistic influence, and morality belie the ideological complexities and paradoxes in his Istar. In addition to illuminating these works through reception history, musical analysis, manuscript studies, and the composers’ own writings, the dissertation will address three interrelated topics in each chapter. First, I explore how the bande à Franck understood the concept of “serious” music, and how this conception shaped Third Republic attitudes about orchestral genres, absolute music, and program music. Second, I examine how French composers responded to the legacy of Wagner in non-theatrical genres. Finally, I discuss how these four musicians fashioned a cultural, national, and personal identity through—and sometimes in tension with—their orchestral works.

Continuity and Change in Eugène Ysaÿe’s Six Sonatas, Op. 27, for Solo Violin

Abstract: The Six Sonatas, Op. 27, for Solo Violin by the Belgian violinist and composer Eugene Ysaye (1858-1931), written in 1923/24, are increasingly adopted into the standard repertoire of violinists. Ysaye saw them as containing his legacy to future generations of violinists and composers and also as a statement of his aesthetic identity. However, not much research has been done on the aesthetics reflected in them. Yet, a greater awareness of Ysaye’s aesthetics will add to the understanding of this important historical figure who did so much to popularise French and Belgian music of the turn of the twentieth century and very much identified with the circle of composers around Cesar Franck. This thesis focusses on Ysaye’s relationship with music history as represented in Op. 27. It explores his aesthetics, in particular his attitude to the past, present and future as well as his insistence on the continuity of history. Part I examines Ysaye’s historical and biographical context as well as his aesthetic predilections. It particularly focuses on composers to whom he was close, notably the Franckists, as well as on the violin tradition of which he was part, with an emphasis on Henri Vieuxtemps. As each Sonata is dedicated to a violinist of the generation after Ysaye, their personalities and playing styles are also discussed. Part II turns to the Sonatas themselves and explores ways in which Ysaye engages with past and contemporaneous composers, notably J. S. Bach, Cesar Franck and Claude Debussy, as well as with the violin tradition and the possible influence of the dedicatees on their Sonata. It also demonstrates Ysaye’s contribution to music history, especially to the development of the technical and expressive possibilities of his instrument.