Renegotiating French Identity: Musical Culture and Creativity in France During Vichy and the German Occupation

R E N E G O T I AT I N G F R E N C H I D E N T I T Y

RENEGOTIATING FRENCH IDENTITY Musical Culture and Creativity in France during Vichy and the German Occupation

Jane F. Fulcher

1

1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2018 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Fulcher, Jane F. author. Title: Renegotiating French identity : musical culture and creativity in France during Vichy and the German occupation / Jane F. Fulcher. Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017050018 (print) | LCCN 2017054893 (ebook) | ISBN 9780190681517 (updf ) | ISBN 9780190681524 (epub) | ISBN 9780190681531 (online component) | ISBN 9780190681500 (hardcover : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Music—France—20th century—History and criticism. | Music—Political aspects—France—History—20th century. | France—History—German occupation, 1940–1945. Classification: LCC ML270.5 (ebook) | LCC ML270.5 .F87 2018 (print) | DDC 780.944/09044—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017050018 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

For my husband, Robert Muchembled

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments Introduction: The new historiography of Vichy

xiii 1

Initial new directions in larger studies of Vichy culture  2 New issues: Dual surveillance, the complex bureaucratic matrix, and the cultural field  4 Vichy’s musical culture and the still looming questions:  What did result, when, and where?  5 Concomitant theoretical issues: How were musical works inscribed, framed, and read?  8 Public and creative responses: The question of collective and individual French identity  9 What constituted resistance in music, and what kinds of innovations did it foster?  10 Reformulating older questions and posing new ones  13 1.   The essential political and institutional background

Beyond a monolithic view of Vichy and its doctrine of the Révolution nationale  15 Vichy and its relation to the Germans  16 Vichy’s brand of patriotism and nationalism  18 Beneath the apparent traditionalism  19 The evolution of the regime and the significant markers  21 German and Vichy repression and the development of the Resistance  23

15

v i i i   • 

Contents

Vichy’s reconstruction of French identity  26 Vichy’s negotiations of French cultural identity  27 Vichy and the question of the French national heritage, or cultural tradition  28 The limits allowed by the Germans in the reconfiguration of French national identity  29 Vichy’s cultural institutions and their complex, divergent, evolving mandates  30 A consistent Vichy cultural agenda?  34 Beyond conceptions of a Vichy patriotic “double game”  34 A Vichy musical program? Its evolving aims and the musical field  35 The roles of ministers of national education and of the secrétaire générale in music  37 The role of the Germans and their interest in concerts and in the musical press  42 German and French broadcasts of classical concerts  46 The Germans and the Paris Conservatoire  47 The Germans and intervention in French recordings  50 Vichy’s own constraints and shifting goals in music  51 Vichy “experts” in music and the case of Jacques Rouché  52 Another Vichy “expert”—​Alfred Cortot  54 Vichy and its goals in recordings  58 Vichy’s corporate organization of the musical profession  60 Vichy and state commissions in music  61 The case of the Opéra: Rouché’s initial latitude but growing Vichy and German pressures  62 Vichy’s interest in the Conservatoire and its regional branches  65 Subversion within institutions and performance venues  66 The development of the musical resistance and its response both to the Germans and to Vichy  67 2.  Reinscribing, framing, and subverting an operatic icon:

Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande The double advantage of both Berlioz and Debussy  72

71

Contents  • 

ix

Pelléas: Its nature, style, and the initial French reception of the performance in 1940  76 Désormière’s “classic” interpretation in a still relatively autonomous musical field  80 The 1940 production and the opera’s enunciation within the context  81 Ambiguity, liminality, and the opera’s impact at Vichy’s start  86 Pelléas at Vichy: Refocusing the opera’s national significance through performance  87 The recording of Pelléas and its increasing dissonance with the new discursive framing  94 Resistance responses to the Franco-​German cultural discourse  98 Pelléas and the problem of national memory: The 1942 commemoration and production in Paris  100 The discursive framing and context of the 1942 production of Pelléas  107 Vichy’s political turn, mounting resistance, and the 1943 Debussy commemoration  110 The Resistance appropriation of Debussy and of Pelléas  114 Debussy as emblematic of authentic French classicism  118 Debussy and Pelléas as cultural emblems of liberation  121 From propaganda to national healing: Debussy in the reconstruction of cultural memory  123 3.   From the legal to the illegal: Schaeffer’s journey toward

resistance and artistic exploration Vichy’s attempt to remake French youth and Schaeffer’s own personal agenda  126 Radio-​Jeunesse and Vichy’s new sound culture  130 Schaeffer’s quest to make tradition dynamic in Jeune France  135 Jeune France’s organization and range of projects  138 Jeune France and Mounier’s “revolutionary humanism”  142 Jeune France and the creative curation of tradition  147 Musical innovation within Schaeffer’s Jeune France  149 Schaeffer’s movement from the legal to the illegal  159

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Schaeffer’s subjective reassessment and reflection on the “language of things”  165 Schaeffer’s search for an “invisible theater” and new meanings or realms of perception  168 Schaeffer and the Studio d’Essai: From new perceptual fields to resistance  170 4.   The soft or hard borders of French identity: Honegger’s iconic role

and subjectivity during Vichy Honegger omnipresent  180 Honegger’s modernism and the modernist strain condoned by both Vichy and the Germans  183 Honegger’s supporters and their ideological trajectories  184 The evolution of the French fascist aesthetic and Honegger’s complex relation to it  190 Gaston Bergery and his support for Honegger  192 From state collaboration to collaborationism: The fine line and Honegger’s symbolism  194 Music and the goal of the group Collaboration  197 Honegger and the musical synthesis promoted by later 1941  198 The composer’s dual cultures and his style in Antigone  200 The original material inscription, enunciation, and reception of the opera  208 The context for the selection of Antigone at the Paris Opéra  209 Antigone’s physical and ideological reinscription at the Paris Opéra in early 1943  210 The multivalent potential of the opera’s text and style  213 The critical and public reception of Antigone at the Paris Opéra in 1943  214 The performative impact of Antigone in 1943 Paris  218 Honegger’s search for identity in Vichy and occupied France  219 Honegger’s contradictions as critic  221 The Second Symphony and Honegger’s subjective conundrum  226 Monologic or Dialogic? The critical reception of the Second Symphony  231 Honegger the resistant? His postwar sanctions  234

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xi

5.   Poulenc’s metamorphosis: His journey toward resistance

and a stylistic counterdiscourse

239

From one nationalism to another  239 Poulenc at Vichy’s dawn  240 Vichy traditionalism in Les animaux modèles?  244 From the search for personal authenticity to a new political awareness  251 Resistance nationalism and its artistic goals  255 Theories and models of the French musical resistance  262 Poulenc’s search for his own resistance style  266 Exploring the tactic of stylistic disruption: Poulenc’s Sonata for Violin and Piano  272 Poulenc’s turn to the literary resistance’s stylistic paradigms  280 Metamorphosis and its meaning in Poulenc’s Figure humaine  283 The importance of trajectories and of symbolic meanings within their context  288 6.   Messiaen in a Catholic Church divided: Spiritual authority,

subjective agency, and artistic breakthrough

289

Messiaen’s refusal and his nonconformist background  291 Mobilization, capture, and creativity  295 Internment, internal liberty, and Messiaen’s Quatuor  299 Levels of utterance in Messiaen’s Quatuor  304 Reactions to the Quatuor and to its textual framing  306 Release and recruitment into Schaeffer’s “Band of Christian Democrats”  309 Messiaen’s artistic explorations in Portique pour une fille de France  311 The politics of Messiaen’s appointment to the Paris Conservatoire  313 Performance of and support for Messiaen’s previous compositions  316 Messiaen’s new circles and private commissions  318 Vichy’s political direction, division within the church, and Messiaen’s creative choices  320 Sartre, Messiaen, Hello, and subjective choice  322 New content and approaches to form in the Visions de l’Amen  325 Responses to the challenge of Messiaen’s Visions de l’Amen  328

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Messiaen’s turn to resistance themes and models  331 Man and God in the Trois petites liturgies de la présence divine  334 The Resistance embrace of Messiaen and of his work  340 Conclusion: Vichy’s shifting cultural goals and tactics:  The results, the responses, and how to perceive them

342

Notes

349

Bibliography

445

Index

475

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am very grateful to my editor, Nancy Toff, for her expert guidance and advice throughout the submission and preparation of this book. I thank Suzanne Ryan, for her help and encouragement. I thank Kristen Clough for her assiduous assistance in the final technical preparation and proofreading of the manuscript. I also thank Lena Leson for her expert preparation of the musical examples. This study was begun while I  was the Edward T.  Cone Member in Music Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. During my year there several members of the permanent faculty of the institute were particularly generous with their time and expertise, and so I thank Glen Bowersock, Henrich von Staden, Caroline Bynum, and Joan Scott. As my work progressed, colleagues in both musicology and history, in the United States and France, were also generous in sending me references or their published work, and in offering their comments and suggestions after the lectures that I gave relating to the subject. And so I thank Philip Nord, Christophe Charle, Denis Herlin, Myriam Chimènes, Esteban Buch, Leslie Sprout,  Kern Holoman, and Glenn Watkins. My doctoral students at the University of Michigan, Kristen Clough, Elizabeth McLain, and Jessica Grimmer were always ready to bring additional references to my attention, and I thank them as well. Throughout the process of writing and preparing this book, the most essential aid and support came from my husband, Robert Muchembled, whose patience, love, and generosity in carefully proofreading the French meant more to me than I can possibly express.

INTRODUCTION

The new historiography of Vichy

Since the 1970s the historiography of occupied and Vichy France has undergone a sea change:  historians of culture have since begun to respond to its full range of implications. American historians of France in the later 1960s led the way, systematically challenging postwar French myths as they uncovered newly accessible archival sources. Robert Paxton first exposed the reality behind Pétain’s claim that Vichy merely acted as a “shield,” demonstrating how elites without power in the Third Republic seized the occasion to implement their own conservative social program.1 Other French historians then similarly observed that France was unique in her choice of total and definitive capitulation—​an option rejected by the other defeated nations, most prominently Holland and Belgium. For the governments of the latter two countries sought resolutely to continue their fight and hence departed for England, leaving only administrators to ensure essential services while bringing their colonial resources and naval fleets to the Allies.2 France rather accepted an armistice that was essentially dictated by the German authorities, one that allowed it a limited sovereignty in the unoccupied zone, where it governed under German surveillance. This simplified administrative tasks for Hitler, who then increasingly forced the French to cede in all domains in order to maintain their prerogatives, making no promises as to the nation’s future status until the war was over. Hence as historians have now revealed, the armistice did not truly benefit the French, who in some respects suffered more from their limited sovereignty than countries with none, particularly with the advent of total occupation in November 1942. France was henceforth reduced to a condition of nearly complete domination, as the Germans continued relentlessly to push the boundaries of the armistice, often putting the most trying decisions before French officials.3

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In sum, contrary to postwar assertions, Vichy did not protect the French: it was unable to prevent the forced labor of its citizens and to save the Jews (foreign and French) on its soil—​its principal rationale was rather power and political revenge. Paxton, together with the other pathbreaker in Vichy studies, Stanley Hoffmann, concomitantly pointed out the consequences as differentiated from the initial political motives of the regime—​cooperation, or state collaboration, with the German occupant. Attempts to meet, and in some cases to anticipate, the ever-​growing German demands led, as Stanley Hoffmann has observed, to a “collaboration d’État” that became increasingly indistinguishable in its effects from ideological collaborationism.4 More significantly for studies of Vichy culture, the regime’s nationalism differed from that of many Frenchmen in stressing the soil as opposed to political principle, and hence the imperative to remain on it. This, of course, was at the price of collaboration with an enemy occupying power, which in fact served as an umbrella for the regime’s desired far-​reaching political changes.5 Vichy’s purported intent to serve as a buffer was indeed more rhetoric than reality, and so too, as Paxton demonstrates, was its traditionalism and conservative moral order. For the small but visible and vocal group of French traditionalists at Vichy soon lost power: it was Vichy’s experts, particularly its technocrats, who determined and in some cases revolutionized domestic policy. Far from implementing Pétain’s stress on the rural and on decentralization they, in effect, promoted not only the urban but also greater national centralization and planning. And as Paxton and Hoffmann have noted, power shifted quickly among the warring factions at Vichy, which included not only adherents of the conservative Action française but also those previously to the left and French fascists. The result was an incoherent polity lacking unanimity in both its social vision and goals, and hence in its sense of French identity; what it meant to promote French values during Vichy was concomitantly far from clear.6 Moreover, during the final two years, despite the presence of traditionalist and nationalist proponents, those who wished to further more extreme collaboration gradually moved into positions of power in both the political and cultural realms.

Initial new directions in larger studies of Vichy culture If Vichy’s goals were initially contradictory, and then gradually shifted toward greater collaboration, what was the result for the culture that it fostered? What did different factions within it seek to advance in the first two years, and then as the regime subsequently evolved? These are some of the questions implicitly or explicitly addressed by a new generation of French scholars in the 1990s, who thus began another sea change. They also raised the issues of mounting resistance

Introduction: The new historiography of Vichy  • 

3

to the Germans and Vichy and of the alternative models of French patriotism, nationalism, and cultural values developed by resistance movements. In addition, employing the theoretical insights of the new cultural history that emerged in France in the 1980s, they focused on appropriations—​on how Vichy’s initially commodious programs were received, creatively adapted, and used. In the seminal collection that he edited, La vie culturelle sous Vichy, Jean-​ Pierre Rioux posed other important new questions that remain to be answered fully in most cultural fields. What was the changing role of culture in an individual, psychological sense, given material scarcity, political instability, secrecy, and isolation—​when “l’art pour l’art” no longer seemed tenable? How did acquired beliefs and practices interact with new experience? What eventually became signs of refusal among artists, despite superficial adherence to the norms that both powers either imposed or promoted? In sum, how could those who, at different points, rejected Vichy’s politics and culture remain subtly refractory or retain authenticity—​what could thus happen artistically within the larger context of “la culture sous Vichy?”7 As the scholars in Rioux’s volume point out, not only did apparent obeisance to tradition mask fundamental artistic innovations but also the existence of spaces for liberty—​for new approaches to communication, as explored initially by Resistance poets. Moreover as they demonstrate so vividly, cultural agency and contestation could continue through the development of new cultural practices and modes of appropriating or inscribing older art, even within French official institutions. In the same volume Henry Rousso concludes that realms of personal autonomy did not disappear: Vichy’s initially vague cultural initiatives could be reinvested and exploited, resulting in a dynamism that (particularly in the unoccupied zone) the regime could not control. Here the limitations of historical studies that presume French passivity or cooperation—​that French artists and intellectuals simply carried on as before—​on the basis of only cursory examination, become all too evident and call out for revision.8 Studies in both literature and the visual arts have recently developed new lines of inquiry in order to apprehend the kinds of innovations that emerged in both zones and how they were received by the public. In literature this includes not only the work of David Carroll and Gisèle Sapiro but also of Ingrid Galster and Susan Suleiman on Sartre and the modalities of response to his work. Moreover, the 2009 exhibition at the New York Public Library (repeated in 2011 in Paris at the Hôtel de Ville), “Between Collaboration and Resistance: French Literary Life under the Nazi Occupation,” revealed how clandestine publication combated the Vichy and Nazi glossy celebration of a purported “New Era.” For it exposed (in Edward Rothstein’s words) how the “moral muddiness of Vichy’s waters” also fostered the emergence of greater moral clarity, and in some cases

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with a truly visionary literary power.9 Finally, in the visual arts there have been important recent studies, especially by French scholars such as Laurence Bertrand Dorléac, that examine not only the restrictions that were placed on artists in both zones but also how the artists were creatively able to evade them.10

New issues: Dual surveillance, the complex bureaucratic matrix, and the cultural field To these questions and insights we must now append still others, based on our increasing awareness of the institutional ramifications of Vichy’s fractured, shifting, and dependent power and on now even greater archival access. Much more can open up to us if we deepen our perception not only of the regime but also of the functioning and the evolving goals of Vichy’s cultural institutions, as well as of the degree of control and interest taken in them by the German occupant. What did these institutions seek to project at specific moments? How did they conceive or construct French culture in the occupied and unoccupied zones as the political situation developed? And how were these goals refracted through the various institutional structures and mediated by the changing ministers and other key figures who influenced or implemented specific decisions and policies? Finally, to what degree was each cultural field and its associated institutions autonomous, or how did political priorities impinge on otherwise established professional hierarchies and concerns? As Pierre Bourdieu has enjoined, we must remain aware not only of the objective structure of relations within the cultural field but also of the changing position of the field itself with relation to political power as well as the evolution of the latter’s goals over time. One of the central issues here is the balance that Vichy sought over time between its desire to promote its initial vision of France and its agenda of collaboration, and thus entente with Germany. Clearly, the specific priorities and strategies in each of the zones developed along with the changing political situation: for example during the first two years institutions in the occupied zone were more intent on promoting collaboration d’État than those in the unoccupied or Vichy zone. During this period in the unoccupied zone we may rather observe attempts to implement the ambiguous programs of Pétain’s National Revolution, and hence an era of experimentation—​one that would be gradually curbed when Darlan and his technocrats came to power in 1941. In responding to all these issues historians of propaganda and theater have led the way, illuminating how, in both zones, projections of French cultural identity and the French “imagined community” were eventually subject to contestation, not only among Vichy’s obstreperous factions (most, in turn, in

Introduction: The new historiography of Vichy  • 

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power) but also with the ever-​vigilant German occupant.11 As Serge Added has revealed, a sense of the boundaries of French nationalism that could be projected through culture developed slowly, as the political goals of both Vichy and the German occupant evolved. Hence beneath Pétain’s rhetoric of French nationalism and the promotion of French cultural heritage lay the nagging, contentious question of how to conceive it and also of how to reconfigure French cultural memory so as to be acceptable to the occupant—​first primarily in the occupied zone, and then throughout France.12 Others have noted that awareness of Vichy’s escalating cultural compromise emerged incrementally as the regime itself developed, but among the first to grasp these changes were those artists and writers who could experience them from within French cultural institutions. Also prompt to denounce Vichy’s increasingly conciliatory version of French culture (as influenced by or close to the Germans’) was the emerging intellectual resistance, prominent among which were writers who exposed its pseudonationalism while developing their own tactics with imagination and ingenuity. This becomes clear in intellectual resistance journals, which have yet fully to be analyzed within this framework, for it is here that we encounter a persistent exposure of Vichy’s evolving tactics in culture in both the occupied and unoccupied zones.13

Vichy’s musical culture and the still looming questions: What did result, when, and where? Musicologists and historians have now recognized the importance that Vichy accorded music and the degree of interest and involvement with it on the part of the German occupant. As the historian Henry Rousso recently observed, music in this period must be seen within its exceptional historical context, and we must acknowledge that it was by no means understood as either politically disengaged or ineffectual by either national power.14 The first studies of Vichy’s musical culture, while valuable, did not consider the nature and evolution of the regime in depth—​its initial ambiguity and its gradual development, or shifting relation to the German occupant. They rather stressed Vichy’s professed deep reverence for the French tradition (generally seen as a whole) and its concomitant protection of great French musical works.15 Indeed Vichy, like the Germans, emphasized music as a marker of national identity and of cultural achievement, and thus developed institutional strategies to further its developing conceptions of both.16 Historians of French music have recently explored the resultant changes in French musical culture and institutions, if at first approached separately, thus partially obscuring the gradual shifts

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in Vichy’s political direction. Myriam Chimènes’s important collection La vie musicale sous Vichy (2001) contains a fund of information concerning institutional and bureaucratic transformations in music and their artistic results in both zones. The focus here is on the larger configuration of institutions and those who worked within them and on the musical politics in both French sectors, although not in general from the larger perspective of the regime’s ambiguities and gradual shifts in emphasis, both political and cultural.17 Their explorations were subsequently broadened and deepened in 2013, in the penetrating volume edited by Myriam Chimènes and Yannick Simon, La musique à Paris sous l’Occupation, which focuses on still other areas of Parisian musical life and culture, and on the attendant ambiguities and conflicts that we find in terms of Vichy and German interests. The contributors to the volume turn to individual composers and major figures in performance and administration, but not consistently from the perspective of their growing awareness of the political situation as it developed throughout these years, or their relation to those cultural symbols which were eventually promoted by the Resistance.18 In addition, such a compartmentalized approach precludes examination not only of how different French institutions articulated with each other but also of how they responded to the changing policies of the ministries to which they were ultimately responsible.19 Another group of scholars has thus attempted, in recent monographs and studies, to arrive at a more continuous and structured narrative, first of the institutional situation in France, and then of how composers either responded to their exigencies or sought to transgress or break with them. Yannick Simon, in Composer sous Vichy, perceptively stresses the reorganization of musical life, and French as well as German interests in general; like Leslie Sprout, in The Musical Legacy of Wartime France (which looks back on this period from the postwar perspective), he also studies the French state’s persistent encouragement of musical creation not just through its commissions but also through attempts to involve composers in its new collective spectacles, which were possible in the Vichy (or unoccupied) zone. Here he raises the important question of how Vichy affected their creativity, but frequently approaches the cultural politics of the state as stable, as opposed to mobile or shifting in response to major political conjunctures and the gradual imbrication of French and German cultural interests. Within this context Simon argues, as have others, that although Vichy (here seen as a whole) promoted no specific aesthetic—​apart from a reticence to encourage the most daring modernism—​we may discern the predominance of neoclassicism (here implying traditionalism), as well as the use of French folklore. However, we must recognize the greater latitude of experimentation

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during Vichy’s first two years (as in the case of Pierre Schaeffer’s Jeune France), as well as the relative degree of independence of the musical field, with its well-​ established practices, figures, and hierarchies. Although the latter continued to be respected, if less consistently during the last two years, between 1942 and 1944 we see a growing concern with placating the occupant and furthering the cultural goals of Hitler’s “new Europe.” Musical debates continued throughout this entire period, but here we must remain aware of the circumscribed realm in which they could be conducted, as Vichy sought increasingly to straddle the fine line between its interpretation of French nationalism and acquiescence to German pressures. Simon rightly points out Vichy’s emphasis on certain operatic works such as Paul Le Flem’s Le rossignol de Saint-​Malo and Marcel Delannoy’s Ginevra, associating these with “ce genre français par excellence” and proposing that they best incarnated “La France nouvelle.” But significantly, both of these composers were prominent members of the group Collaboration, which we shall examine as emblematic of the fine line, increasingly crossed, between French state collaboration and collaborationism. Here then lies the looming question:  what in reality was this “new France”—​in which zone and when, particularly with regard to the trajectory of Vichy’s “collaboration d’État”? For again, the regime’s agenda for French culture was not stable, but rather subtly shifted in both the occupied and unoccupied zones, especially as the traditionalists lost power and German surveillance increased. If, as historians have demonstrated, the French government’s political and cultural position did indeed evolve, we must examine not only how this affected its projection of France’s national cultural identity—​its basic values, historical narrative, and symbolic reference—​but also who perceived this and when. A range of visions could be projected onto the dominant symbols and goals during the first two years, as various Vichy factions sought to remake France along their imagined lines. But during the last two years, as it became more evident that Vichy increasingly sought to accommodate the occupant and define its place in the new Europe, what interpretation of the nation did it proffer culturally, and how did different groups and individuals respond? More specifically, how did the agenda of Franco-​German cooperation in culture, promulgated by Abel Bonnard, Pierre Laval’s minister of education, affect the music performed and the way it was presented and help determine those composers now to be favored? We cannot approach the responses of individual composers as consist­ ent or as static, for they responded not only to the gradual loss of autonomy of the French musical field but also to their own emerging perceptions, as influenced both by their place within the field and by their own respective backgrounds and experiences.20

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Concomitant theoretical issues: How were musical works inscribed, framed, and read? To understand how Vichy projected its shifting goals at specific conjunctures we must also address the issues that historians of culture have recently stressed, and in particular those that concern cultural practices and the construction of meaning. How were those musical works selected as cultural representations within Vichy’s musical institutions at specific moments inscribed, or physically instantiated and discursively framed? Here we must concomitantly turn to the theoretical insights of Antonio Gramsci and Pierre Bourdieu concerning the ways a regime may attempt to orient perception and achieve hegemony through subtle modes of symbolic domination. Their nuanced understanding of how power functions may then be complemented by more recent approaches to representation and to material culture, or to how the different arts communicate, as well as the varying modalities of transmitting or diffusing texts. As Gramsci so trenchantly articulated, ideology (which comprises an entire conception of the world) is implicit in art as well as in law—​in fact in “all the manifestations of individual and collective life.” Such “hegemony” shapes one’s conception of reality, or of political consciousness: it is a unified or coherent vision against which individual conscious, as it develops, must in some cases inevitably struggle. Bourdieu (himself influenced by Gramsci) has deepened this insight into the way in which power may infiltrate consciousness by analyzing the ways in which ideology tends to foreclose—​to limit the culturally open, or potentially polysemic symbols.21 Within this context we also now recognize more fully the role that varying instantiations or inscriptions of works—​through methods of performance, textual framing, recording, and means of staging or presentation—​may play in inflecting their message or their specific enunciation. It is with this in mind that we trace not only what specific Vichy functionaries sought to further and present but also the manner in which those responsible attempted to focus the meaning of particular works. Such strategies are indeed far more subtle than what some have recently referred to—​in the case of Vichy’s stress on Debussy—​as “instrumentalization” of the repertoire.22 Hence we are compelled to analyze the indirect manner in which shifting meanings could be inscribed in works, as well as the desired goal in each successive instantiation of particular French musical compositions, such as Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande. In sum, as recent cultural history has revealed, the forms assumed by texts are essential components in the creation of their meaning: accordingly we must remain aware of how a given public came to know a musical work—​how it was apprehended through specific means of representation or material reproduction. Vichy’s cultural practices here are thus of prime importance, in particular

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its means of diffusion or transmission of selected new or canonic works. But we must also remain cognizant not only of the message intended but also of that which was received, particularly through works with texts, or the gap between that which is communicated discursively and that which is represented—​shown, heard, or staged—​in sum, that which is “read” within the context. For cultural significations are necessarily refracted by the mode of enunciation inherent in each art’s unique means of communication, in addition to the changing modes of material inscription and the different communities of reception at a given moment. It is with such concepts in mind that this study shall concomitantly attempt to build on current insights into the regime’s loss of control in specific cultural projects—​as in Pierre Schaeffer’s Jeune France—​focusing on how the construction of meaning occurred and how this led to results sometimes distant from those the regime had intended. Here the theoretical concepts of the anthropologist Victor Turner are important, for he has focused on the phases of the ritual process in periods of social transformation, phases that we may discern in Vichy’s attempted use of theater. For all rites of passage involve a “liminal” phase: after the initial detachment, a subject or group passes through a cultural realm that has few or none of the attributes of either the previous or coming state. This necessarily implies ambiguity, since the older network of cultural classification that locates states and positions is lost or obscured before new meanings appear. Vichy confronted this phase not only in theater before its limits were firmly set—​and particularly in Schaeffer’s Jeune France productions—​but also in the opera, especially with Pelléas et Mélisande, the political implications of which, initially were open.23

Public and creative responses: The question of collective and individual French identity Given Vichy’s evolving tactics in terms of the presentation and inscription of works, and the possibility of its sometimes losing control, we must now ask how specific groups and individuals understood the regime’s changing political and cultural goals, and situated their own ideals in relation to these. How did they respond to the kind of French identity—​the values and relation to past traditions, and eventually to German culture—​that was often indirectly being proposed through French official culture, and then accordingly react? Here we cannot separate the questions of collective and individual French identity, for as the former shifted and was projected culturally, in keeping with Vichy’s sense of patriotism and its evolving collaboration, individuals—​including artists—​were necessarily compelled to respond.

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As the psychologist Erik Erikson points out, all individuals judge themselves within the context of what they understand to be the way in which others judge them. Hence Charles Tilly has observed from a historical perspective that the phenomenon of identity is not just private and individual but also public or relational, that actors deploy multiple identities, and that “language provides a medium for the establishment and renegotiation of identities.”24 Artistic and specifically musical language (or style), was just such a medium, not only for the regime in terms of its choices but also for composers within French official institutions, who implicitly defined themselves in relation to these decisions and their associations. Indeed the sociologist Craig Calhoun has aptly noted that the tensions that one may identify within persons may be related to “the contending cultural discourses that locate persons.”25 We shall see that composers during Vichy were confronted not only with Vichy’s shifting construction of what was valued within French culture, or that which it included and excluded, but also with the competing model of French identity—​its principles, traditions, and values—​that was eventually proposed by the Resistance. The historian Marc Ross has incisively observed, with particular relevance here, that because cultural identities are necessarily constructed they may also be consciously reconstructed.26 The Resistance gradually constructed or renegotiated its own definition of French cultural identity, one based on alternative French classic models—​that of the Enlightenment (and hence the French Republic) and of the French Renaissance (here incarnating individualism). It was these alternative representations on which some of the composers whom we shall examine now drew, as they gradually repositioned themselves within the evolving French cultural and musical field. Music was thus indeed important, not only in the repositioning of specific creative artists but also in that of the French public; together with Resistance writings, it helped to enunciate a different conception of the nation, of the collectivity, and of the values for which both stood. The art thus played a central role in the symbolic battle over conceptions of French identity, particularly during the tense period of hardening and repression by 1942–​1943. We may see this clearly not only in the new visual documentation of the inscription of operatic works but also in my close examination of Resistance press reactions, which to this point have not been fully culled.

What constituted resistance in music, and what kinds of innovations did it foster? In considering those who moved toward resistance, two major questions necessarily confront us: First, can we speak of different stages of resistance? For many

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were immediately anti-​German, but others also slowly distanced themselves from Vichy as the collaborationist policies of the regime, together with its concomitant repression, increased. In the latter case we may discern a growing disenchantment, which sometimes then elicited a conscious decision to resist, in some instances followed by formal entrance into specific resistance networks. Here we must also remain aware of the gradual organization and growth of the Resistance, of its precise chronology, its targets at successive moments, and when it became possible to join in each professional field and in the different zones. Second, we must pose the question of the different forms that French musical resistance could now assume, particularly if we approach it not in the philosophical manner of Adorno but rather in dialogic relation both to the occupant and to Vichy’s programs and goals at specific stages.27 Here it is important to remember that for some, like Poulenc in 1940, and especially in the occupied zone, it was possible to resent the Germans while still supporting and believing Pétain’s rhetoric. This would slowly change, as would Poulenc’s choice of symbols or of aesthetic models, which I examine here within a relational context—​in the manner of Pierre Bourdieu—​or as a response to the tactics and verbiage (as well as to the strictures) of both national powers at particular moments. And with all such composers who moved toward resistance, we must then ask what is it that they sought to do in their musical resistance works, and could they do so effectively through a variety of styles? Moreover, what kinds of tactics, models, and goals were promoted in Resistance publications, and which of them (for some composers) would prove difficult to realize? Finally, did resistance sometimes include the accommodation of a hegemonic as well as a resistance reading? The latter question is important for our understanding of the complex reception of works of those particularly visible French composers on whom I focus. This is also the background against which to trace these composers’ stylistic evolution or continuing explorations within this period, and their changing relations to the increasingly interlocked musical and political fields. It is essential to explore these specific issues in more detail and within the framework of recent studies of the intellectual Resistance and those who eventually entered it, some from within the regime itself. Such studies also address not only the uses of cultural representation by the Vichy regime but also often their appropriation by the Resistance and its own specific forms of symbolic resistance. Significantly, as the historian Julian Jackson points out, the Resistance notably sought to reappropriate a language or a cultural symbolism that Vichy had tried tenaciously to confiscate.28 Within the context of forms of resistance, we may in addition integrate the important theoretical insights of postcolonial theory, for it has similarly been concerned with the process through which the dominated may wrest

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language—​with all the power of signification that it embodies—​from the dominant culture. Postcolonial theory has also provided illuminating models of how a dominated group may reject the dominant culture’s assumptions with regard to a fixed meaning within specific works. Moreover, such a group can inscribe alterity not only through a process of distinctive appropriation but also by refusing specific official images and thereby turning its back on the regnant power.29 In sum, those who are on the margins or outside power and wish to address the center must both use and subvert the latter’s argument, or appropriate it in order to abrogate its fundamental categories, aesthetic values, and syntactic rules. In the case of certain works of Poulenc, resistance references had to remain close enough to those of the center so as to be comprehensible, and at the same time develop an idiom “sufficiently deviant to privilege the subaltern voice.”30 Recent postcolonial theory has also revealed—​with particular resonance here—​that resistant art may challenge dominant imagery by targeting the symbolic structure of power and then constructing its own symbolic patterns, sometimes reinscribing those very elements that it resists. A case in point is that of the gradual resistance reappropriation of Claude Debussy, who, as Simon has observed, became iconic throughout the Vichy regime. But again, it is important to differentiate the various modes of inscription of his works, which slowly changed in the course of the regime’s evolution, together with the nature of the texts around them. Contrary to the argument of some, it was not exclusively Debussy’s anti-​German and rabidly exclusive nationalism that the regime enshrined: while this was true at first, in time it was rather his initial attraction to Wagner and his appropriation of specific Wagnerian stylistic traits that it increasingly stressed. Hence Debussy’s later writings were not, as some scholars have asserted, fully compatible with or consistently used by those in sympathy with Pétain’s national revolution: claiming this without examining the successive modes of presentation and full range of writings surrounding his work flattens out essential ideological distinctions.31 While the Resistance shared an admiration for the composer, similarly elevating him to iconic status, it was rather consistently on the basis of his distinctively French traits—​his love of Rameau and Couperin as well as his clarity, elegance, and aggressive condemnation of German music. For as we noted, now cognizant of the interdependence of language (or style) and identity, the Resistance elevated specific stylistic elements—​those associated with its Enlightenment values, sometimes thus reappropriating Vichy icons in order, through them, to enunciate its sense of a different French political tradition. Again, the countermodels and ideals of the Resistance, which we see articulated and developed most fully in literature, stressed the French Renaissance and the Enlightenment; both models would eventually influence composers

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who gradually moved toward resistance circles, such as Poulenc and Messiaen. Resistance, then, did not necessarily imply a bold modernism nor an aggressive or ironic stylistic approach, but within the context could function dialogically with Vichy’s evolving models and values, asserting a contestatory national paradigm.32 And although the numbers of resistance artists were small, one should not underestimate their considerable symbolic impact. For they contributed to the development of another manner of thinking or talking about the French nation, redefining national memory and enshrining alternative political as well as cultural values.

Reformulating older questions and posing new ones Employing all the excellent research and new sources that now exist concerning musical life and culture during Vichy, we must combine this with our greater awareness of the regime’s nature, goals, and tactics as it evolved, as well as the shifting perceptions and responses to them among both artists and the public. Hence, instead of asking how the regime’s musical policies reflected the traditionalists’ proclaimed patriotism and nationalism, we must consider what, especially in the first two years (when the traditionalists were influential), could emerge from its particular conceptions of these. And what resulted from its internal rivalries and lack of clarity as well as from the changing hierarchies within the musical field and the complex bureaucracy in both zones of France? In addition we must ask how Vichy’s political development and gradually increasing collaboration with the German occupant influenced cultural and specifically musical policies during its final two years. While some musicologists now recognize Vichy’s collaboration, they interpret this only in terms of a necessary cooperation with the Germans, ignoring the emerging dominance of a more extreme and voluntary cooperation under Darlan and his technocrats (seeking France’s future place), and then under Pierre Laval. But it is essential to examine these shifts, both political and institutional, and the experiences and responses of several of the most prominent musicians to this gradually developing situation. We thus need to focus on those who worked, through performance or physical inscriptions, with Vichy’s cultural institutions—​their rituals and symbolic language—​beginning in the transitional or liminal stage, before a more overt cultural hegemony emerged. More specifically it is imperative to follow the developing awareness and strategies of figures like Roger Désormière and Pierre Schaeffer as the regime ineluctably progressed in its program of collaboration. But we must also turn to the successive responses of those composers now most in view to their changing positions within the gradually restructured French musical field. They consequently call for a hermeneutic

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study of the works they now produced. And here we confront the fraught issue of whether they chose to express resistance as the realities of the regime emerged; and if they did so how, particularly in light of resistance tactics in literature, which developed in dialogic relation to the hardening of the Vichy regime. My goal is thus to examine these years from a different angle—​that of the regime’s trajectory, its concomitant shifts in cultural policy (if often gradual) and of specific French musicians’ diverse responses to them. And perhaps the theoretical framework I employ in order better to understand hegemony in this context will stimulate subsequent historical studies of how Vichy employed culture to negotiate French identity in this period, when it became unclear or contested, and could do so subtly, sometimes through nuances of performance or presentation, sometimes through consciously vague rhetorical framings. This in turn may stimulate further musicological examination of how composers could resist such hegemony, or preserve their subjective autonomy, through a variety of styles and techniques. In sum, it is my hope that by following this new direction we may more fully understand how artists and the public understood or experienced these years and responded subjectively, seeking to define their own individual as well as collective French identity.

1

THE ESSENTIAL POLITICAL AND INSTITUTIONAL BACKGROUND

Beyond a monolithic view of Vichy and its doctrine of the Révolution nationale Vichy was no monolith but rather (especially at first) was composed of fractious groups, projecting a variety of different visions. The powers of some declined with time as a result of the changes in French political direction as well as German pressures and conditions within France. Concomitantly we cannot refer to either the Vichy regime or to its doctrine of the National Revolution as a simple stable entity, with consist­ ent principles, in either the political or the cultural realms.1 However, we do need to identify that on which its competing factions initially agreed, and in some respects continued as a whole to seek, before tracing the regime’s transformations as Pétain’s power and concomitantly his leadership waned. First, those at Vichy were unified in their refusal to continue the war and in the choice of state collaboration as well as in the general contours of the new political system.2 Central to the latter was a policy of systematic exclusion of the so-​called anti-​France, considered as those impure elements now held responsible for having caused defeat. The common desire was thus to regroup and marshal the purportedly pure or strong elements, and thereby in doing so fundamentally, or radically, to reconstruct the French national fiber.3 Hence one basic principle of the regime’s political doctrine of the Révolution nationale was exclusion:  it promptly targeted all undesirable elements, and most prominently the Jews and Freemasons, ejecting them from all public functions. The law of October 3, 1940, formally excluded Jews not only from any important position in the civil service, the judiciary, or the military but also from all domains with an impact on cultural life, including teaching.4 Exclusion was consubstantial with the Vichy regime, and so was the persecution of undesirable groups, which would also include the Communists:  in

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fact, as Robert Paxton has put it, “Anti-​bolshevism was the nearest thing to a Vichy common denominator.”5 Paxton also observes that action became possible because the conflicting visions within the regime overlapped on several points, which also included the quest for a “more elite social order.”6 This brings us back to Vichy’s National Revolution, one that was diffused from the top levels down, and it raises the question of all that it implied for various groups within the regime. As historians have established, the National Revolution cannot be reduced to the primacy of specific French values or, in terms of culture, to the so-​called French tradition.7 Julian Jackson has stressed the various ideas that French contemporaries held about that which the National Revolution comprised, as well as the fluid terminology that, in fact, was employed to evoke it. As he points out, Pétain disliked the term “revolution” (using it only four times), rather preferring to refer to “redressement” or “rénovation nationale.”8 Whatever the terminology, it was the antithesis of the liberal individualism that purportedly destroyed those natural or organic communities of the French family, the workplace, and the region. This concomitantly led to the celebration of the peasantry and of regional folklore, but it also implied measures targeting undesirable elements associated with the maleficent “other.”9 In its broadest sense the National Revolution was a response to the widespread desire for change or for reform, as well as for political revenge; hence it concomitantly extruded many Frenchmen. Pétain’s propaganda for the National Revolution centered on a return to a certain conception of French roots, which included peasant culture, as well as the Latin and classic, in addition to implying a political path that was neither fascist nor communist.10 Denis Peschanski has therefore stressed the ideological diversity of the National Revolution (as of Vichy) and the error of reducing it to a project of those traditionalists who initially surrounded Pétain. Its emphasis on youth transcended the purview of narrow traditionalists, and this resulted in a wide diversity of goals and styles that was especially evident among its various youth groups.11 Pétain’s definition of the Révolution nationale for the benefit of the Conseil national sagaciously underlined only the general desire for a rebirth from the depths, or a regeneration that had been necessitated by French errors and suffering. In fact, it was in part because of its vagueness and dependency on a state administration that was largely hostile to elements of its doctrine that the National Revolution lost credibility by the summer of 1941 and was never fully implemented.12

Vichy and its relation to the Germans Pétain nevertheless held the warring factions and visions together, acting as a sort of catalyst that allowed them to discern those interests they shared, while

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helping to conceal inner dissensions from the public. This was precisely what Hitler sought—​a regime dominated by a charismatic personality such as Pétain, so that the French public would acquiesce to the German occupation.13 Pétain, as the object of the “cult of the leader,” helped the nascent Vichy regime to achieve a new national cohesion, and hence it attempted to build a mass following around him. But Pétain also helped to conceal the gradually escalating collaboration of the regime, which he had not foreseen at the beginning of the armistice when the war’s conclusion seemed imminent.14 The initiatives for a voluntary collaboration of the French and Germans came from Pétain’s regime, which promised neutrality in Hitler’s quest to keep the Allied powers out of Europe, the reward eventually being a partnership in Hitler’s vaunted “new Europe.”15 Pétain, then, foreseeing a German victory and a future German-​dominated Europe, sought through the armistice and state collaboration not only to alleviate domestic hardship but also to position France favorably in the projected new disposition of nations.16 He was eventually successful in establishing the good relations that he sought with Hitler, with whom he was photographed shaking hands at their meeting at Montoire on October 24, 1940, two days after Laval’s own meeting (as vice president of his council) with the German chancellor. Indeed, it was Pierre Laval who had been the first to succeed in making contacts with those who now had Hitler’s ear, and particularly with Otto Abetz (to become the German ambassador to France) in the summer of 1940. But Pétain and Laval, despite their eventual rivalry, shared a willingness to go beyond the armistice agreement in accommodating Hitler’s plans for Europe, with Pétain announcing on October 31, 1940, “I enter into the way of collaboration.”17 However, to Pétain’s consternation, Laval arrogated negotiations with the Germans to himself, which led to Laval’s dismissal on December 13, 1940, and the concomitant wrath of the occupant. Yet Vichy continued to seek a working relationship with Hitler under Laval’s successor, Darlan, and finally succeeded in doing so by January 1941.18 In fact, Darlan was the figure who seemed most likely to restore collaboration and make an autonomous, neutral place for France in Hitler’s new European order. Hence Vichy persisted in its efforts to become a part of a new continental system under German domination:  by September 1941 Darlan even expressed to Abetz France’s willingness for a military collaboration with Germany. Moreover, on November 26, 1941, Pétain himself told high-​ranking German officials at Vichy that he himself was ready to acknowledge Hitler as the leader of Europe.19 In sum, as opposed to initial public perceptions, neither Pétain nor his supporters were resolutely anti-​German (a fact reflected in Vichy’s musical politics), and in fact Pétain helped to garner public acceptance for a more active collaboration. Indeed, by the summer of 1941 it was evident to many of those who were

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immediately anti-​German in the unoccupied zone that Vichy was also the enemy, which shall become evident in the case of the presentation of Pelléas together with Wagner’s Tristan at Vichy and in the surrounding texts. Vichy did not seek rescue from the Germans, and even in 1942 did not desire an Allied landing, even though its “shadow sovereignty” cost it an ever higher price.20 While the Vichy regime itself must be distinguished from the extremists (or fascist collaborators) in Paris who vociferously criticized its anachronism, the two groups never broke completely. Vichy even finally accepted two of them—​Darnand and Déat—​into the government in 1944.21 But to a great extent the Germans courted or attempted to seduce the French through cultural means, sometimes employing the collaborationists as intermediaries. Moreover, they allowed Vichy a carefully controlled space in which to exercise what they considered to be an unthreatening internal nationalism.

Vichy’s brand of patriotism and nationalism It is also important to note that, as distinguished from the collaborationists who sought entry into a German totalitarian system, those supporting Vichy still believed themselves to be both nationalist and patriotic. Stanley Hoffmann has incisively explained this skewed conception of patriotism as based on the government’s understanding of the connection between national sovereignty, soil, and collaboration d’État. For Vichy officials, the state was inseparable from the soil, or from the physical French territory, even though two-​fifths of it was currently occupied by a foreign power. De Gaulle considered that the state was consubstantial with political legitimacy and thus could exist in exile, following the examples of Holland and Belgium. Vichy, however, insisted that the soil had to be maintained by the state whatever the cost, and moreover that principles could be sacrificed for the opportunity to rebuild France along its desired new lines.22 Under the armistice agreement, however, Alsace and Lorraine were placed under Nazi gauleiters (regional administrators) as part of the Reich itself, and the departments of the Nord and Pas-​de-​Calais were now officially placed under the German military government in Brussels.23 Moreover, Pétain was aware that in order to put his plan for a Révolution nationale into action he needed, as Corcy-​Debray has pointed out, the benevolence or good will of the occupation authorities, and knew all too well that the survival of the regime depended on an ultimate German victory.24 Vichy’s nationalism, then, as Denis Peschanski has aptly put it, was “resolutely internal,” or centered on the idea of physical territory as opposed to larger political principles. Henry Rousso has thus observed that both those within the regime

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and the collaborationists in Paris indeed acted in conformity with their idea of France, thereby believing themselves to be patriotic.25 However, for Charles de Gaulle, and eventually for the Resistance within and outside France, the nation’s deepest values and political principals had to be maintained, hence one was obliged to disobey the legal state. As a result, for many Frenchmen by the summer of 1942 patriotism and nationalism were incarnated not by Vichy but rather by the Resistance.26

Beneath the apparent traditionalism Pétain’s doctrine of a National Revolution was broad and vague enough to accommodate a wide range of visions (including of French culture), and thus it harbored a diversity of views that cannot be reduced to a project of those traditionalists around Pétain, who were so evident in the first few months. Hence despite the common factors that held the Vichy regime together, the congeries of competing interests within it eventuated in inevitable disputes, and by extension a shift in forces as the war progressed and the political situation evolved.27 Scholars of Vichy have identified the larger poles of interest characteristic of these warring groups, between which the structure of power would glide under both German and French domestic pressures. One was the Catholic moral order as opposed to the “pagan” nationalist moral order; another was the federal state (based on the primacy of the regions) as opposed to the strongly centralized state. A third was the belief in a communal as opposed to a capitalist and technocratic system; and a fourth was a belief in political persuasion as opposed to overt coercion.28 In the first case it is important to note that the clericalism so closely associated with Vichy, particularly in the regime’s early stages, was in fact not shared by all. Most notably this included Pierre Laval, a former socialist who frequently expressed his overt contempt for Vichy’s clerical and traditionalist circles. This anticlericalism would become clear in French culture, including in music, when Laval returned to power in April 1942 and made Abel Bonnard his minister of national education. Moreover, even some traditionalists within Vichy, and others in the government, eventually felt the totalitarian temptation, desiring the total domination of French society by the state. According to some scholars, this was becoming evident already in later 1941 (when Pierre Schaeffer’s Jeune France was coming under attack), with Paul Marion in the Ministry of Information and Pierre Pucheu in the Ministry of the Interior.29 For Pucheu sought to suppress dissent and to mobilize popular support; here he was seconded by members of Darlan’s government, including Marion, who were interested in experimenting with fascist-​style methods of propaganda.30 However, despite the propagandistic

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efforts of Marion and others in Darlan’s circle, some traditionalists within Vichy would start to move into the Resistance, diverging from Pétain in their belief in the importance of removing the Germans from France.31 Yet in the beginning Vichy appeared to some to constitute a solid block of traditionalists, and indeed they were now in important positions. But they gradually split and lost their influence by the time of Darlan’s ascension, giving way to technicians and professional administrators, or those who represented professional and business interests. The traditionalists’ initial prominence and apparent power in 1940 has often misled historians of music under Vichy, who have thus occluded other values and goals that appear in French musical culture. This is especially true after 1942, and even earlier in the occupied zone (as is apparent in the case of Honegger). Traditionalists were indeed evident in Vichy ceremonies and in the spoken word (including in Pétain’s own speeches), but their power diminished over time and it would be the technocrats, professionals, and their protégés in the administration who determined social, and in some cases cultural and musical policies.32 In addition, although Pétain himself supported the church as a bulwark of society, and charged his first education minister, Jacques Chevalier, with restoring religious instruction in the schools, Chevalier’s successor, Jérôme Carcopino, was not a part of the clericalist faction, and simply allowed free time in schools for off-​site religious instruction. In sum, as Paxton notes, the Vichy-​Church embrace of 1940 loosened over time, and the Catholic left (which included Mounier, Schaeffer, and Messiaen) were especially disappointed with the dominance of big business as opposed to a true communal order. And it is also important to be aware that general discontent among Catholics spread with the massive deportation of Jews that began in 1942.33 However, it is true that the Peasant Charter of December 2, 1940, instituted a corporatist agricultural system, which resonated with Pétain’s celebration of the peasantry and regional culture and folklore (as reflected in Schaeffer’s Jeune France and in Poulenc’s Les animaux modèles). For official doctrine was anti-​ individualist and rested on the role of various intermediary bodies such as the family, occupation, and province as opposed to the urban and cosmopolitan. This some have attributed, in part, to the location of Vichy in rural southern France, in addition to the ideological influence of prewar leagues such as the Action française.34 The irony of course is that these rural, artisanal, and agricultural ideals were ultimately dependent in their realization on a still strongly centralized French government. In the end the traditionalists, who were stolidly opposed to centralized state dominance, were to be deeply disappointed by the results of Vichy’s regionalism in all of its dimensions, including culture, where the stress on folklore gradually waned.35 Even the project for the creation of a system of

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“Comités d’organisations,” intended to replace union and employer associations in all the professional domains (including music), was overseen by the state, which retained ultimate authority. In fact, every major decision concerning the establishment of corporatism eventually rather favored big business at the expense of the corporatist coordinated economy.36 Peschanski has identified the so-​ called golden age of the National Revolution—​when the traditionalists were still much in evidence—​as extending from July 1940 to early February 1941, when Darlan and his authoritarian technocrats came to power (and which would contribute to the demise of Jeune France).37 This was also the period of the regime’s articulation of the political project of the National Revolution, from which more and more Frenchmen gradually grew distant because so many in the nation were excluded. But Vichy was initially successful in winning general French public opinion (including Poulenc and Schaeffer), for in the summer of 1940 it presented itself as the only alternative to a gauleiter, although other models of a simple “gérance” (or management of essential services) did exist, as in the Netherlands and in Belgium. However, some of the apparent traditionalists already harbored fascist tendencies, one being Gaston Bergery (a supporter of Arthur Honegger), who was active behind the scenes at Vichy in the summer and fall of 1940, and drafted Pétain’s message of October 11, 1940, on the need to control the excesses of capitalism.38

The evolution of the regime and the significant markers The initial, golden age of Pétain’s conception of the National Revolution (or hopes that it would be achieved) was followed by the year that Darlan, who harbored a scorn for it, became head of the government—​from February 9, 1941, to April 18, 1942. When Laval was fired as deputy prime minister on December 13, 1940, he was initially replaced by the triumvirate of Flandrin, Darlan, and Huntziger (who would aid Messiaen’s release from a German prison), but when Flandrin resigned on February 9, 1941, Darlan solely took over the position. In addition, a significant government change occurred in early August 1941, when Darlan became minister of defense and of the interior, and then (on August 11) he entrusted the leadership of the latter to Pierre Pucheu, who brought in the more authoritarian technocrats who would seek to quell Jeune France.39 The period under Darlan, of growing resistance and thus of repression on German insistence, was also characterized by a greater role of the more overt collaborationists (during which Pelléas was reinscribed at Vichy) and the increased power, if behind the scenes, of the Vichy technocrats. Both Pétain and Laval believed in the importance of collaboration, but Laval was notably more vigorous, or uncompromising in his actions. Pétain thus fired

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him not only for trying to usurp his political role but also because he believed Laval’s lack of popularity would only hinder the politics of collaboration. Darlan himself desired a German victory, which he believed would allow France to assume a continental role, and at the same time would not threaten her empire. Moreover, by bringing technocrats into the government, Darlan hoped to prepare economically for an important place for France in the new Europe, but by the end of 1941 it was clear that his policies were not effective.40 The third period of the regime, beginning in April 1942 (the period of Honegger’s greatest acclaim) was marked by the return of Pierre Laval to power, under German pressure. By now the US government associated Laval overtly with military collaboration with the Germans, hence when Laval became prime minister President Roosevelt recalled the American ambassador to France, Admiral Leahy. The latter had arrived in France in January 1941, during a period of cordial relations with a still neutral United States: now he was replaced by only an American chargé d’affaires. In July 1942 the United States then sent an official representative to the Gaullist Committee of National Liberation in London, which some have seen as a major blow to Vichy legitimacy in the public eye. With Laval’s return not only was the National Revolution marginalized but also repression in France became more overt, and hence resistance grew.41 However, the undermining of the National Revolution upon Laval’s return was not overt, for he allowed himself to be presented as simply a partisan of greater collaboration, who would thereby help the National Revolution to succeed more fully. By this stage Pétain’s margins for maneuver were in fact being progressively reduced, and his projects for institutional renovation (including in the cultural realm) in order to construct “la France nouvelle” were being discarded or undermined. This was also the period when, as Robert Paxton has so aptly put it, “Pétain’s regime revealed its exclusive, vindictive side that would drive half of France out of the spontaneous unity of 1940.” As he also points out (and in the domain of culture, including music, under Bonnard) “experts,” or professionals, as opposed to those with overtly political concerns, began their ineluctable decline.42 By the first half of 1944 the regime had grown even harsher and more repressive, and collaborationists such as Marcel Déat now entered the Vichy government. Indeed, as Philip Nord has observed, by the spring of 1944 it was already clear to many that the Allies were going to win the war.43 With the advent of Déat (an avowed fascist theorist) as minister of labor and national solidarity, and of Joseph Darnand as secretary general for the maintenance of order (who had sworn an oath to Hitler when made a symbolic member of the Waffen-​SS), important figures from the collaborationist circle gained importance in a declining Vichy. This included Philippe Henriot, a pro-​German broadcaster on the

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radio, whom Pétain accepted into his government as minister of information and as the voice of Radio-​Vichy (and whom Schaeffer and his colleagues would subversively combat). For as the pétainists lost even more power they inexorably came to realize that they increasingly needed the support of such ideologically extremist groups.44 The Germans played a role, both overt and covert, in the evolution of Vichy. At first, after several months of feeling their way, German authorities and their collaborationist supporters organized a program aimed at winning favorable opinion among specific French sectors. This led to the projects of the group Collaboration, which was active in both zones and would play a substantial role in promoting a new conception of French music, past and present. In addition, although wary of the collaborationists (who threatened to undermine their more subtle goals), the Germans accorded them the power to influence French public opinion, particularly through the press, which will be evident in music criticism. This was clear first in the occupied zone, but eventually, after total occupation in November 1942, they would increasingly influence publications in the southern zone as well. It was in this manner that (again to invoke Antonio Gramsci) they sought to impose an ideological unity that, in this case, would prepare their hegem­ony in France within Hitler’s projected “new Europe.”45

German and Vichy repression and the development of the Resistance The other force that would impact the Vichy regime with time was the growth of the Resistance, which impelled the government to implement ever-​greater repression of its own citizens. For many historians a significant turning point in the history of Vichy was thus in August 1941, following Hitler’s June attack on the USSR and hence increased Communist resistance. This is the point at which Pétain, in his notorious speech of August 12, 1941, spoke of a “vent mauvais” (evil wind), or the contestation of his government and stirrings of French dissent and of resistance.46 Significantly, this was the moment when Debussy’s Pelléas was presented at Vichy (together with Wagner’s Tristan) in honor of Pétain’s aggressive propagandist support group, the Légion des combattants. In 1940 Vichy’s goal had been to stir up enthusiasm for the regime in face of public apathy, relying on a controlled press and radio as well as on cultural propaganda. But as early as the spring of 1941 (as plans for the Jeune France celebrations in honor of Jeanne d’Arc were underway) the regime was being forced to respond to a mounting public hostility and mistrust of the principles of the National Revolution; hence it gradually sought more overt propagandistic tactics, which would adversely affect

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Schaeffer. And as Paxton has observed, it is at this point that we may clearly discern how the armistice entrapped the regime into ever-​closer complicity with the Germans, who now demanded greater repression and retaliation against French internal dissension.47 Again, with Hitler’s attack on the Soviets on June 22, 1941, the Communist Party shifted its position of neither Pétain nor de Gaulle to one of active resistance—​a shift that would influence musicians sympathetic to communism, such as Roger Désormière, the conductor at the Opéra-​Comique. The Communist resistance now engaged in a series of assassinations of important German figures in France, as well as other terrorist acts:  the occupation authorities responded with vigor, pressuring Vichy to join in their repressive actions. Hence, with the increase of resistance sabotage in August 1941, there were already German pressures on French legislation, and in 1942 this included the application of Hitler’s final solution to Jews in France.48 By the end of 1941 and the beginning of 1942, Hitler had laid his plans for the extermination of the Jews; the first systematic deportation of stateless Jews in France from camps in the occupied zone took place in May and June 1942. As Paxton and others have pointed out, the Germans now relentlessly employed the French machinery of repression to impose this policy in France, under their supervision.49 On June 11 Himmler set large quotas for deportations from the west to the death camp at Auschwitz; this included 100,000 Jews in both zones of France. The mass deportations began with the roundup of 13,000 Jews in the Vélodrome d’Hiver (Vél’ d’Hiv) on July 16, 1942—​an event that finally provoked the protest of high French Catholic Church authorities, as Messiaen (still in Paris) and other Catholics would have been aware. Moreover, now Laval agreed to deliver 10,000 foreign Jews in the unoccupied zone to German authorities, and French Jews were to be included if the quota fell short: in fact, 60,000–​65,000 Jews were deported from France, among whom were some 6,000 French citizens. According to Peschanski, in the end massive numbers of not only foreign Jews but also about 75,000 French Jews, were deported, 95 percent of whom were to perish.50 Vichy’s persecution of a portion of its own constituency grew even harsher by the spring of 1943—​about the time that Pierre Schaeffer formally entered the Resistance, and Messiaen’s spiritual resistance culminated—​after total occupation and the draft of young Frenchmen to work in German factories. It was within this context that Joseph Darnand, under German pressure to increase repression, became the secretary-​general for the maintenance of order in December 1943. For the winter of 1942–​1943 had been a turning point in the war: Allied forces had landed in Morocco and Algeria on November 7–​8, 1942, leading to the German invasion of the southern (unoccupied) zone on November 11. Already,

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by late November 1942 the French Empire, which Vichy had fought so strenuously to preserve, was largely in Allied hands. And in a further setback for Vichy and the Germans, the Soviets counterattacked at Stalingrad in late November 1942, resulting in the surrender of General Paulus on January 31, 1943—​shortly after the premiere of Honegger’s Antigone at the Paris Opéra , here surrounded by Vichy’s Franco-​German cultural rhetoric. Indeed, by the time of Antigone’s pres­ entation in France in early 1943 the nation was being stripped of its last vestiges of independence; despite the façade of Vichy sovereignty, political conditions were now identical in both zones of France.51 Moreover, domestic conditions throughout France declined precipitously in 1942–​1943, especially with the reduction of food rations in July 1942 and the draft of young Frenchmen to work in German factories in February 1943. Vichy was quickly losing even more of its mass base of support; already, by the second half of 1942 (as Poulenc entered the Resistance) there were signs that the Resistance was having an impact on the wider French population. And the Resistance was now growing stronger as the Gaullists and the internal French Resistance began to coordinate their efforts, together becoming increasingly militant. For as of late 1941 the internal Resistance was still not integrated into the Gaullists’ strategy in France, but this began to change with the arrival of Jean Moulin in London.52 The initial Resistance group in France had been formed at the Musée de l’Homme in the summer of 1940, among a group of those who were already politically on the left. An organized Resistance in Paris, as well as in the north (in Lille), then appeared between October and December, and in the unoccupied zone in late November 1940. In the latter the Resistance journal Libération first appeared July 1941 (while Jeune France was most active), and Combat in November of that year, for in the unoccupied zone resistance meant, above all, propaganda. Meanwhile, de Gaulle’s first recruits in London were largely outcasts from the Vichy regime, and the total Gaullist movement numbered only 7,000 in July 1940, then 35,000 by late 1940 (when Messiaen, in a German prison, apparently found hope in de Gaulle).53 The general shift in support from Pétain to de Gaulle occurred in November 1942, with total occupation following the allied landing in North Africa, and some see the larger change in public opinion as early as the summer of 1942. By now the BBC was becoming highly influential, providing the French with information on the existence of the gas chambers. Hence in the course of 1942 the image of the Resistance changed in the eyes of the average French citizen, and some of the members of the elite (like Poulenc) who had wavered now ostensibly switched camps.54 In addition, greater militancy became evident with the development of the armed Resistance in the mountains—​the Maquis, who were opposed to the forced labor of youth (the Service du travail obligatoire) as well as to other

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repressive measures, and now reappropriated Vichy’s rural or regionalist values (as indeed would Poulenc in his Chansons villageoises).55 But they were confronted in 1944 by the infamous French Milice—​volunteers to combat the internal French Resistance, under the direction of Joseph Darnand. In December 1943 Pétain had made one last effort to oust Laval, and the Germans forced Vichy (on December 15)  to engage Darnand as secretary general for the maintenance of order. He promptly made the old paramilitary arm of the Legion (known as the Milice, as of January 1943) into a national parapolice of volunteers against the Resistance. Vichy still considered the Resistance to be a dangerous band of outlaws; hence, in order to crush it the regime grew increasingly complicit with the occupation authorities. Vichy now lost its moral authority over the majority of the French population, while the collaborators in Paris waited avidly to assume important French government positions.56

Vichy’s reconstruction of French identity Given this evolution, as well as the continuities and disputes that underlay the regime, we must now ask how Vichy—​as different groups within it gained power—​conceived of and presented itself and its image of French values and traditions, to its own constituents. This necessitated the use of cultural ritual; at first it was characterized by a liminal phase, or in Victor Turner’s conception a transition marked by ambiguity (following detachment), which was to precede a hoped-​for social reaggregation. The various obstreperous factions within the government believed themselves to be patriotic, although in a sense that not all Frenchmen shared. Again, Vichy’s nationalism was one that placed the ideal of French territory above political principle—​one that conceived of the nation as inseparable from the soil, even if this meant concessions to (or the tutelage of ) a foreign occupying power. Its nationalism thus rested on shared interests with the German occupant, which it promptly proceeded to use in order to carry out its desired domestic revolution within French institutions and values.57 In order to enforce its conception of nationhood, Vichy initially employed a cultural idiom developed by the Action française—​the stress on the provincial peasantry, although not all within the league concurred with its vigorous French state collaboration. For Vichy’s claim was problematic in light of the French tradition of thought according to which the nation is conceived in relation to both its institutions and its territory, or a conception of nationhood based not only on the soil but on political principles and on cultural unity. In the tradition of French political thinkers such as Ernest Renan, a nation is defined not only as a geographic, linguistic, cultural, and political unity but also as a moral conscience, or a consensus as to its values and role.58

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But given Vichy’s rhetoric the separation of these concepts that it proposed was not immediately perceptible to all; it was the legal state, even though Charles de Gaulle questioned its legitimacy because of its refusal to continue to fight the enemy, even from its empire. Yet the occupier wished to inflect perceptions of the German people, and eventually of the French themselves, through programs of mediation or indirect propaganda using French associations, political groups, and with time French cultural institutions. Like Vichy as it evolved, they thus sought to create a climate of opinion that would favor the integration of France into Hitler’s Europe, and Vichy itself both held and fed the illusion of its future significant role.59

Vichy’s negotiations of French cultural identity Under these restrictions and contested conceptions of French identity—​of French values, traditions, nationhood, and legitimacy—​how did Vichy attempt to redefine, or renegotiate French cultural identity? Here we define “identity,” turning to recent theoretical insights into the concept as a social and collective—​ in this case a national—​phenomenon. Important within this context is the antiessentialist critique of a nation’s political and cultural identity, or the tendency to consider such identities as “strategic and positional” as well as consciously constituted around specific cultural representations. This implies that we must avoid simply reifying a politically proclaimed identity, which has been the case in some previous studies of music under Vichy.60 For they have taken Pétain’s proclamations concerning a return to French tradition at face value, not recognizing that this tradition was itself a construction, and moreover one that was not used consistently. It is thus imperative to keep in mind that, as John Gillis has put it, “National identities are constructed and reconstructed, and it is our responsibility to decode them in order to discover the relationships they create and sustain.”61 Such a decoding of French national and cultural identity in order to perceive the political interests is thus central to studies of Vichy culture, and particularly so in the case of music. For it may reveal both why and how the regime, in each of its stages, sought to persuade the French to understand themselves, their situation, and their interests in a particular way. As Frederick Cooper explains with reference to all such efforts, in order to justify specific collective actions political leaders persuade their constituents that they are alike, or identical, and thus different from those outside.62 During Vichy the question of who was “other” was indeed complex, for initially it comprised the racially and politically undesirable, as well as for some the German occupier. However, as the regime developed it sought increasingly to present the Germans not as the antagonists but rather as

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part of a shared territorial, political, and cultural unity in order to justify increasing French state collaboration. Indeed it was the task of intermediary French groups such as Collaboration, which straddled the fine line between state collaboration and collaborationism, to convince the French of this “sameness,” or of shared interests and cultural values. Vichy’s sense of French national identity was contested among its factions and thus shifted over time; indeed, more recent approaches to identity—​collective and individual—​have emphasized (to use the words of the sociologist Craig Calhoun) its “incompleteness, fragmentation, and contradictions.” Calhoun concomitantly points out (with particular relevance to Vichy) that one is confronted with competing discourses concerning “who it is possible or appropriate or valuable to be.”63 Within Vichy, and especially at first, we may identify competing conceptions of the nature of French identity—​of its values, traditions, memories, and culture—​and hence with what constitutes its national essence. These would subtly shift in weight as the war and collaboration transpired, and the regime thus attempted to resituate French cultural borders, to the increasing consternation of the Resistance.64

Vichy and the question of the French national heritage, or cultural tradition In the complex case of Vichy and its shifts of power, or its internal evolution, we must begin by noting the initial vagueness of its conception of the national heritage. Here we may cite the finance minister (for the first two years), Yves Bouthillier, who implicitly expressed this in a circular of September 25, 1940, sent to the functionaries and agents in his administration: “The National Revolution aims to safeguard the common heritage of the French as well as to break with the methods, lies, and errors of the past.”65 But what exactly was this common herit­ age, and to what extent were conceptions of it shaped by various and conflicting interpretations of the nation’s past errors? Vichy’s initial conception of the French heritage was largely shaped by the traditionalists who embraced Maurras’s notion of the “pays réel,” as represented by French peasants. He and his followers portrayed the latters’ beliefs, customs, and practices as in effect growing from nature and indigenous to the French soil. This conception had already been challenged by the left in the mid-​1930s, when it confronted the issue of who spoke on behalf of the “essential France,” thus igniting a war over French cultural identity. For the left, any conception of true or essential France had to include the workers as well as industrial and urban life, if alongside the peasants and their life in the rural countryside.66 This debate would indeed

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continue not only within the project to collect and display French folklore in the Musée des arts et traditions populaires, but within the framework of Schaeffer’s Jeune France. Even among Vichy traditionalists conceptions as to how to construe the French tradition differed widely: its implications for high culture were equally problematic, particularly with regard to which values, tendencies, and models to include or to exclude. A conflict over such conceptions would crest in the course of 1942 and the rising power of collaborationist factions that believed in a continuous Franco-​German interaction, as supported within Vichy by Abel Bonnard. Holding up Arthur Honegger as an icon of such exchange, or as a site through which to represent the authentic French community, they even now sought to exclude specific French artists and composers, past and present. For the supporters of Bonnard were opposed to what they deemed “cosmopolitan elements,” which included the Jews and those interwar figures who had supposedly imbibed unhealthy influences—​a conception that Poulenc and Sauguet would attack.67 Bonnard’s purported “spiritual revolution” was substantially different from that of Vichy traditionalists, as was his conception of which past cultural figures to celebrate and what they embodied: in short, he promulgated a different vision of that which was to be included in or excluded from the French symbolic landscape.

The limits allowed by the Germans in the reconfiguration of French national identity The Germans realistically allowed Vichy its own restrained realm of internal nationalism, while foreclosing all possibility of its pursuing an international dimension, or any consequences beyond its borders that would conflict with their own plans. The problem was to convince the French population of the viability of this contradictory position by purporting to respect French interests, even if these were ultimately subject to German control. The occupant thus applied its own strategy of attempting to appease anxiety and assure French complicity by imparting the impression of continuity with previous Franco-​German exchanges.68 It was in January 1941 (shortly after the firing of Pierre Laval) that the Germans here assumed the ideological offensive, employing cultural institutions and performances to help further a Franco-​German entente. The goal of the Institut allemand (which was under the tutelage of the German Embassy) was to attract French intellectual and artistic elites to participate in such activities or cultural endeavors.69 This involved not only commissioning translations of German literature but also bringing illustrious German musical performers to work with their French colleagues.

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But here the evolving German goals were inflected by their own internal bureaucratic disputes, with Abetz’s faction at the embassy pursuing the cultural seduction of the French, while those at the Propaganda Abteilung rather sought to destroy French cultural influence and demonstrate German superiority in culture. In fact, the latter harbored the suspicion that the German Embassy was too Francophile, although Abetz in the end wanted to put the French in their place, perceiving France as a satellite state that would eventually be forced into a position of weakness.70 However, in general German cultural policy in France was relatively relaxed; the occupier, although being jealous and holding the French in contempt, believed in cultural distraction through both high and popular art, and in furthering French cultural weakness. For despite appearances they resolutely maintained the superiority of Germany in all domains and thus the importance of ultimately destroying French cultural hegemony in Europe. As a result they tolerated pornography as well as authors whom Vichy considered to be morally suspect (such as Jean Cocteau), which frequently angered officials at Vichy although they were powerless to intervene.71

Vichy’s cultural institutions and their complex, divergent, evolving mandates In the occupied zone the trajectory of collaboration d’État is, of course, evident earlier, as are specific German pressures to further it actively through culture. However, a common denominator in Vichy policy in both the zones of France was consistent exclusion of undesirable artists and inclusion of important figures who worked within established French institutions, thus ensuring their continuous functioning, prestige, and implementation of the regime’s agenda. This pragmatism was particularly apparent during the tenure of Darlan and his technocrats, who were above all concerned with continuity and efficiency within the cultural field. But, one must be aware of a gradual shift, particularly by the time of Laval’s return, away from Vichy’s internal nationalism and toward the political agenda of Franco-​German entente. This larger shift would necessarily affect even those bureaucrats who remained loyal to Maréchal Pétain, including the conserv­ ative and traditionalist director of fine arts, Louis Hautecoeur. At Vichy’s start, in the unoccupied zone, where the regime was attempting to gain mass consensus, it was essential to construct and to stage a shared narrative concerning the essence of French cultural identity, in order to redefine the nation-​state as a cultural and political entity. In its early traditionalist (if still ambiguous) phase it charged creative young individuals such as Pierre Schaeffer with doing so, through his new cultural association Jeune France. But by late 1941

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(under Darlan) the regime had already begun to restrict its new world of possibilities, slowly extruding the Catholic democratic vision that he promoted.72 And making the regime’s cultural project even more complex was that its need to legitimize itself internally was not its sole priority. For it had also to employ high culture to establish legitimacy and convey its goals to the outside world in a more conclusive and less exclusive manner. One of the relays that it employed to proclaim its legitimacy as heir to the great cultural achievements of the nation (a goal of the minister of education, Carcopino) was the Revue des beaux-​arts, which was under the administration of the Ministère des affaires étrangères.73 Within France the regime, in all of its stages, had to attempt culturally to define a sense of the French community, past and present, in order to exert an effective and hegemonic symbolic force on its constituents. But here it failed, for, as Bergès argued, Vichy in fact was never able to develop a coherent or consist­ ent cultural politics due to the competition between its ministries and factions, and to the physical fracture within the nation itself.74 It started to move toward a corporate organization within the arts, but as the different branches were not coordinated, plans for the long term were never realized. Moreover, Vichy did not stress culture as such, or as an isolated and lofty phenomenon: it rather most often referred to “loisirs artistiques ou populaires.” The aspect of the National Revolution with the most direct implications for this domain was thus its stress on youth; indeed the word “culture” was associated most frequently with the Secrétariat général de la jeunesse. Here we must also recognize that the eventually refractory cultural organization Jeune France was created and placed under its auspices, and not that of the Direction des beaux-​arts, which was overseen by Hautecoeur.75 Given these complexities, we need specifically to understand how Vichy’s successive governing factions and ministers sought culturally to project a sense of French identity, or of French values, symbols, and memories. Although the conditions were initially different in the two zones, in both cases the regime had to communicate its distinctive conception of patriotism and, as the occupation transpired, of the nature of its relationship to the Germans. For again as Baruch has put it, the government made the initial and fatal choice to profit from the “German umbrella” in order to impose an antiliberal, antidemocratic and anticapitalist government in France.76 In addition there were those who were immediately ultracollaborationist (or ideologically pro-​Nazi) and who became powerful in the Parisian press, with some eventually penetrating into the French government itself. One such figure was Abel Bonnard, who became minister of national education (thus in charge of the fine arts) as of April 1942, when Pierre Laval returned to power. Under his leadership French policy in the arts, including music, would

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take a perceptible turn in the direction of cultural entente with Germany, if still maintaining the veneer of French cultural pride. Even before this, toward the end of 1940 Fernand de Brinon became the head of the Délégation générale du gouvernement dans les territoires occupés, and in the name of French state interests brought collaboration d’État closer to ideological collaborationism. Bonnard himself, while still claiming to be faithful to Maréchal Pétain, was nevertheless overtly a “combatant de l’idée européenne.” He not only espoused the ideological fundaments of “the new order” in Germany but also promoted its style—​in the words of Baruch, a kind of “lyrisme néo-​wagnérien”—​and spent a great deal of his efforts proclaiming cultural similitude and promoting artistic exchanges between Germany and France.77 Such efforts were intended to persuade the French to understand themselves and their interests in a manner that furthered Vichy’s goals, as they were altered when the government evolved.78 The arts were valuable here as public representations of a subtly morphing French identity; this was particularly true of the presentation of French music, for it could subtly communicate the slowly changing amalgam of French values and traits promoted as cultural borders shifted. However, this would prove to be problematic with the rise of the French intellectual resistance, which specifically targeted such tactics and actively sought means to combat them. As it immediately recognized, traditional definitions of France were dependent on political, cultural, and territorial unity, which were now called into question with Vichy’s increasing subordination to the Germans as well as the physical and administrative division of France. Indeed French assimilationist self-​understanding (with all accepting the same cultural norms) had traditionally been predicated on the formation of the nation-​state around a single political and cultural center.79 But culture (broadly understood, on all its levels) remained important to Vichy; as Philip Nord has observed, the regime built a “cultural state” of its own, one that spurned the commercialism of the preceding (and now execrated) Third Republic. For the latter embodied a tainted culture as opposed to a now pure or exclusive model, one that (at least at first) allowed some room for experimentation.80 Yet it is important here to recall that Vichy’s conception of healthy culture evolved slowly with time and cannot be approached as stable, particularly in the realm of music. Indeed, the director of fine arts, Louis Hautecoeur, although remaining in his position until spring 1944, was subject to conflicting and shifting mandates as the ministers of education changed and the regime moved from a reliance on “experts” (or specialists) to prominent politically engaged figures. Hautecoeur was in a difficult position: as a former museum curator who was artistically retrograde, academic (a professor at the École du Louvre and the École nationale des beaux-​arts), and elitist, he was frequently swimming against the tide.

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For he was indeed obliged to implement the ideals of the successive ministers under whom he worked—​Mireaux (who appointed him), Chevalier, Carcopino, and Bonnard, before being replaced by the pro-​fascist Georges Hilaire in April 1944. Although a faithful pétainist, Hautecoeur even at first had to deal with the implacable hostility of the Ministère des finances, which wielded considerable influence since it oversaw all his expenses, and frequently went beyond its prerogatives with regard to specific decisions. Yet he did succeed in putting into motion not only Vichy’s communitarian ideology—​which led to the development of the artistic corporations—​but also its segregationist, exclusionary measures with regard to the Jews and other groups.81 Hautecoeur resisted all parallel and innovative enterprises in the arts, most notably Schaeffer’s Jeune France, which was under the auspices of the Secrétariat général de la jeunesse and took Vichy’s vague traditionalist vision into an often daring new direction. This shall become evident on close analysis of its creations (particularly the styles and technical means employed) and on examination of its new instantiations of canonic or classic works. Contrary to conceptions of early Vichy’s narrow traditionalism, Jeune France built on precedents of the Popular Front, although its relative liberty of action was short-​lived and it eventually had to proceed under the constraints of intellectual and artistic censorship. But recalling the Popular Front’s artistic efforts, Schaeffer’s association developed a broad conception of culture that embraced the elite and the popular, with the latter (as during the Popular Front) including that of both the workers and peasants. It too sought to unite the different artistic forms and create a new mass spectacle, or one conceived for a large and broad public, thus contributing to popular education and cultural leisure.82 Ironically then, the Vichy-​sponsored Jeune France was conceived within the new “politique associative” developed in the interwar period, which had brought the state more directly into culture. For according to Bergès, until World War I  the bourgeois and liberal state—​aside from granting subsidies—​was largely uninterested in developing the fine arts. In fact, since the 1880s the most innovative programs had been the products of diverse French social associations, including Catholic and Socialist groups that were interested in implementing broad cultural reforms. However, in the interwar period there were multiple factors (including the financial crisis and the rise of municipal socialism) that favored a more direct intervention of the state in culture, now to be continued under Vichy.83 Initially seeking decentralization and a return to the model of traditional French peasant culture, Vichy not only increased the role of the state but also, as a regime of elites, sought to preserve high culture. At first the latter was intended to underscore its patriotism, but as the regime developed it would serve the increasingly important agenda of Franco-​German cultural cooperation.

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A consistent Vichy cultural agenda? Again, figures like Louis Hautecoeur were subject to competing priorities or pressures, and it is important to grasp these in order to interpret his cultural and especially musical policies at specific times and places, as well as the results and perceptions of them. According to Julian Jackson, because Vichy had no consistent nor prescriptive agenda for culture—​reflecting the vague tenets of the Revolution nationale—​it tended to react to both context and place.84 Aside from promoting an undefined or fluidly conceived “French tradition” (which could embrace certain modern elements, as in the visual arts) the closest it came to a cultural project was its initial promotion of folklore, which accorded with Pétain’s attempt to reconstruct an anachronistic, rural, soil-​based model. This also impacted its renewal of traditional French theatrical forms as well as French musical folklore, promoted in both popular and elite realms. In music, figures such as Joseph Canteloube published regular columns (based on his lectures) in journals such as Action française, and composers of classical music who incorporated them (including Canteloube himself, as well as members of Collaboration) now found official favor. In addition Vichy promoted choral ensembles, especially in youth movements and in primary education, here once again stressing performance of works that incorporated the traditional French regional chanson.85 But there were other, conflicting priorities that gained precedence over time as the regime and the central figures within it changed. The National Revolution proposed a return to purported French roots, meaning the rural peasantry and soil, on which it based its legitimacy. But its fear of decadence and search for a path between fascism and communism also prompted a return to elitism as well as to the classical Latin curriculum in French secondary education. It was conservative university professors who, for roughly the first two years, were named ministers of national education; but this would change with the appointment of Abel Bonnard, the pro-​ German essayist and writer, when Laval returned to power.86 It is also important to realize that since Pétain’s national council comprised both traditionalists (or “vieille France” figures) and others such as Bonnard, quarrels between factions became inevitable, and they started almost immediately. The traditionalists promptly opposed statism, rather advocating regionalism and clericalism, but their hopes would soon be disappointed as they lost ground to technicians and administrators under Darlan, and to figures who promoted a more vigorous collaboration.87

Beyond conceptions of a Vichy patriotic “double game” Given the regime’s conflicting tendencies we are now obliged to ask what the leaders and key actors in Vichy’s cultural administration were expected to do, when

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and where. Again, in both zones the regime first sought to project a sense of its nationalism and patriotism, but both were inherently compromised because they were based on the protection of an enemy occupying power, and on exclusion. This, of course, became evident earlier in the occupied zone, where the Germans played a substantial role in French theatrical policy, as well as in overseeing musical culture. But gradually, with the shifts of power as the occupation advanced (and particularly in the last two years), it became clearer in the southern zone, where Vichy’s experimentation or vague promise of new departures gave way to a more restricted vision. These developments, in turn, would make the task of French cultural officials increasingly difficult, for they had not only, at first, to ensure employment and the effective functioning of their fields but also to make credible Vichy’s particular brand of patriotism. Then slowly, by late 1941, they also had to find cultural means to implement its advancing narrative of Franco-​German cultural exchange, past and present. Music, which could help to shape such subtly progressing French national representations in public spaces and buttress the regime’s cultural conceptions, would prove to be especially useful here, particularly with substantial German aid.88

A Vichy musical program? Its evolving aims and the musical field Music was an art of considerable interest to both the German occupant and the Vichy regime. It was at first to play a role in the implementation of several different aspects of the broad program of Pétain’s National Revolution, and then in the advance of French collaboration d’État. Hence, when asking whether Vichy had a coherent musical politics, we pose the question of how its policies evolved along with changes within the regime and in its personnel. We also consider the Germans’ cultural structures, tactics, aims, and exigencies in music as the war advanced and as the occupation spread to the southern zone. But just as important here is the working of the cultural field itself—​its relative degree of autonomy due to the necessity, in some cases, of relying on existing institutional structures and already established figures. This subsequently leads to the question of who became the key figures and when, or exerted influence based not only on expertise but also eventually (as within other professional areas) on political orientation. As Bourdieu has adjured, we must examine the degree of independence of any cultural field at a specific historical moment, analyzing the various forces—​ political, economic, and social—​that were impinging on it, and the degree to

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which it responded. For to a certain extent the established hierarchies or institutions within the field, and the existing play of forces or rivalries, mediate the external pressures converging on the field. Of particular importance here is how specific figures eventually attempted to reverse previous positions of professional dominance by aligning themselves with the current political power.89 Several composers (such as Poulenc and Honegger) by the mid-​1930s had found themselves outside the Republic’s symbolic and institutional order, but now moved into prominence, or positions of influence. While Poulenc in time rejected the regime as well as the blandishments that it offered (consciously embracing a degree of professional marginality), Honegger, for a complex combination of reasons, would continue to accommodate Vichy and profit from it. However, individuals who were already established (such as Marcel Dupré) could retain considerable influence (thus aiding his former pupil Messiaen), even under Darlan’s pragmatic technocrats, who were not inclined to support religious music.90 Sociologists of literature such as Gisèle Sapiro have already examined the practices of the literary field during Vichy, its structure and functioning, and the significance of individual and collective decisions as the conditions of the profession gradually changed. In particular, Sapiro examines how external demands had to be reconciled with internal traditions and forces, as major literary institutions lost some but not all of their professional independence. For as economic and political stakes, as well as the criteria of professional recognition changed, institutions sought survival, while those within them settled former scores. As she also points out with regard to the French literary field during Vichy, in a period of crisis over national identity, when institutions justified their survival by the national role they played, the rules of the game could abruptly change; individuals were thus forced to adapt or to make choices that, in some cases (as with Poulenc), conflicted with their professional interests.91 In music, as in literature, the field became increasingly subject to political stakes, particularly in the last two years under Laval, when politicians replaced Vichy’s “experts”; hence it gradually lost some of its previous relative independence. And as shall become evident with regard to the Opéra by later 1942, specific institutions became prisms for the projection, and the contestation, of a changing vision of France’s cultural past and future. The evidence here lies in the physical inscription of works and in the texts around them, two cases in point being the successive instantiations of Debussy’s Pelléas and the presentation of Arthur Honegger’s Antigone, the latter premiering in early 1943, as Vichy’s collaboration and its repression grew more evident. Again, much has already been advanced concerning Vichy’s musical goals and aesthetic priorities, particularly on the basis of the regime’s traditionalist nationalist arguments, taken at face value. Some have cited the writings and pronouncements of the head of the Beaux-​arts, Louis Hautecoeur, who claimed

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to see the salvation of the nation in its cultural heritage. Certainly, his letter of January 3, 1942, to the French minister of national education, Jérôme Carcopino, expresses French pride, for it proclaims that France has not been conquered in the arts, which continue to draw admiration.92 But what was the actual political context of this particular letter, and how much power did Hautecoeur (or indeed Carcopino), possess under Darlan’s leadership? Indeed it has become clear that Carcopino, like the other ministers in Darlan’s government, had to apply the evolving principles of the National Revolution under the eyes of the occupant, which implied that one essential component of the purported “renovation” was necessarily collaboration. Hence, in accordance with collaboration d’État, Carcopino did not hesitate to manifest good will toward the Germans, even when they made no specific demands, and was impressed by their praise of French culture. Like Pétain himself, he envisioned France’s future place in a regenerated Europe, believing that France represented the continuity of a larger venerable civilization.93 Certainly Hautecoeur and others did militate for a renewal of traditional French values, but here we are forced to ask what specific values, how conceived, and within the structure of which conflicting narrative? Indeed, now influential figures such as the critic and radio broadcaster Gustave Samazeuilh evolved with the regime, proclaiming “ars gallica” in 1941 and then the Franco-​German synthesis or symbiosis by early 1942, in the context of the release of the first full recording of Pelléas et Mélisande.94

The roles of ministers of national education and of  the secrétaire générale in music Throughout the Vichy years music remained under the administration of the Beaux-​arts (in the Ministry of National Education), although it was now accorded a new importance, which led to an increased intervention by the state. For Vichy wished to renew and reinvigorate all French cultural life, including music, and to this end it both employed traditional institutions and created new ones, as well as new professional structures such as the professional committees.95 As in Nazi Germany (which in music served as a model for key figures like Cortot) the regime was concerned with obtaining professional security for musicians, which would help to win over many among them.96 But beyond this, why was music important for Vichy? What were the goals that the regime pursued in music as its politics evolved and as administrations changed? And were the different ministries and bureaucracies aligned or in competition with each other? In the latter case, if so, then what were the results—​what could indeed emerge?

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To answer these questions we first examine the ministers who were successively in charge—​their backgrounds, their general profiles or loyalties, and how these factors influenced their respective priorities. It is significant that Vichy ministers were no longer political figures but more like high-​ranking supervisors (chefs-​de-​service) in their circumscribed departments, free to make professional decisions until Pétain called them to order or fired them. Under the Third Republic ministers had a double role, as political figures and as members of the government, collectively responsible before the nation and in charge of specialized ministerial departments.97 Vichy ministers were placed directly under the head of state (Maréchal Pétain), to whom they were individually and together responsible; the only other collective body was the Conseil des ministres, which consisted of the ministerial department chiefs. For now there was no parliamentary control, or the pressures of unions or representative institutions such as consultative committees; this did give the ministers a larger margin for maneuver, but they had to be constantly in touch with Pétain’s office and remain in the maréchal’s good graces.98 However, when Darlan became the vice-​président du conseil in February 1941 he was in fact the central figure, for it was he who prepared or planned the discussions of the Conseil des ministres. Darlan, who was here assisted by his Secréteriat général de la vice-​président du conseil, henceforth acted as a veritable prime minister, as opposed to Laval in his first term, when he had substantially less political power. During Vichy a new position, below that of minister, formally appeared, although it had been experimented with during the Third Republic—​that of the permanent secrétaire général, who was also a member of Pétain’s Conseil d’État. There were twelve Vichy ministers (also referred to as secrétaires d’État), assisted by twenty-​one secrétaires généraux, who had the responsibility of directing the principal services of the state. The latter (which would include Hautecoeur) were expected to follow the instructions of their respective ministers, to whom they were responsible for the workings of their service, or department.99 Hence to understand the functioning of the musical world it is important to be aware of the role of the minister of national education, and of his relation to the head of the Direction des beaux-​arts, Hautecouer, whose position Carcopino transformed in 1941 into the more prestigious one of sécrétaire général. There were four successive ministers of education, under whom Hautecoeur had to serve and adapt, before he was finally replaced by the extreme collaborationist, Georges Hilaire in April 1944.100 Again, these ministers were Émile Mireaux (who first appointed Hautecoeur), followed by Jacques Chevalier, Jérôme Carcopino, and finally Abel Bonnard. It is critical that, as Yves Bouthillier (Vichy’s minister of finance for the first two years) pointed out, Vichy—​when he served—​represented the primacy of public administration over politics. In

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the top ministerial positions it was thus initially high-​ranking civil servants and “notables” or experts (those of great achievement in their areas, thus often respecting their fields’ relative autonomy) who replaced the former politicians. These experts came to prominence in the fall of 1940 and continued to gain ground under Darlan’s tenure; but their decline began when Pierre Laval returned to power in April 1942, and became more evident the following November, with the total occupation of France.101 Jérôme Carcopino was an exemplary Vichy expert in the field of education—​a leading figure in Roman history (who grew fascinated with Italian fascism while working earlier in Rome), a member of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-​ lettres, and a former rector of the University of Paris. He became the ministre de l’éducation nationale et de la jeunesse in February 1941 (under Darlan), and remained in that position until April 1942, with the return of Pierre Laval.102 Significantly, Carcopino, a fervent supporter of Maréchal Pétain, was determined to implement certain fundaments of the Révolution nationale, including the exclusion of Jews and Freemasons from all French public functions. As Carcopino points out in his memoires, he had admired Pétain since World War I and later came to know him personally, beginning in 1934. According to Corcy-​ Debray, Carcopino was a “maréchaliste” (personally supporting Pétain) since the interwar period, and then during Vichy became “pétainiste” (or an advocate of his Révolution nationale) if only partially, for although antigaullist he was still not convinced of French decadence.103 During his tenure Carcopino would, however, be subject to multiple pressures and hence drew criticism not only from various Vichy clans within Pétain’s cabinet but also from the collaborationists. And despite his own convictions, in the context of collaboration d’État Carcopino had necessarily to negotiate with representatives of the Reich concerning French cultural and scholarly domains, particularly with regard to filling the most sensitive or important positions.104 The government increasingly courted the Germans; indeed by January 1942 it collectively sent its good wishes to Hitler as well as to his people. Already, on February 1941 (following Darlan’s ascension) Carcopino and the other ministers gave their full assurance of loyalty to the German ambassador, Otto Abetz. Moreover, in the domain of culture the Institut allemand, (attached to the embassy and placed under Karl Epting) was the principal structure for the diffusion of German cultural propaganda aimed at French intellectuals. As Corcy-​Debray points out, the French could only attempt to resist certain pressures, for it was in no sense a “double game,” or one of only appearing to give the Germans what they wanted.105 According to Carcopino, Louis Hautecoeur (now in charge of the Administration des beaux-​arts) had long been his friend, having attended the same schools shortly after him, and later serving as curator at the Musée du

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Luxembourg as well as professor at the École du Louvre and the École des Beaux-​ Arts. Although Hautecoeur had been director of artistic services at the 1937 International Exposition—​originally a Popular Front project—​he was already here in disagreement with his predecessors over the inclusion of more modernist artists.106 Hautecoeur has been described as conservative, academic, and elitist, and like Carcopino he assiduously applied Vichy’s exclusionary politics with regard to the Jews and pursued its corporatist project in the arts. But according to Carcopino, although the Administration des beaux-​arts was traditionally attached to the Ministère de l’éducation nationale, it nevertheless maintained its independent spirit and agreed to send only a delegation to Vichy. Moreover Carcopino spent much of his own time on Vichy’s project of educational reform, and particularly the larger problems now being faced by the university in France. However, the minister of national education worked consistently with the Armistice Commission in Wiesbaden to have the ban (imposed by the Reich minister of propaganda, when war was declared) on the performance of French music not yet in the public domain finally lifted. Significantly this did not occur until December 1943 (under Laval and Bonnard), although by now French music could not constitute more than a fourth of the length of any program.107 As pointed out previously, although Hautecoeur was originally only directeur général, in 1941 Carcopino decided to promote him across the fine line of administrative distinction and make him secrétaire général in the Direction des beaux-​ arts, in order to raise both his salary and his status. However, in his memoires Hautecoeur complained of Carcopino’s general lack of interest in questions concerning the fine arts, and he must also have been bitter at the Liberation when the secrétaires générals were called before Purge Committees, while the directeurs générals were not. And despite his promotion Hautecoeur never succeeded in implementing some of the key administrative reforms that he sought, such as dividing his “Direction” into three distinct “services”—​plastic arts, theater and literature, and music. One of the reasons why this plan for more efficient functioning failed was the consistent opposition of the Ministère des finances.108 But Hautecoeur nevertheless spent a great deal of his time on music, noting in his memoires that the Secrétariat général des beaux-​arts oversaw the state theaters, including the Opéra, while maintaining relations with the other theaters by distributing subventions to many among them. Indeed Vichy differed from its predecessors in the attention it gave to music—​as the Germans did in France; hence the amount allotted to music in the budget of the Beaux-​arts increased significantly, while the total budget of the Direction itself decreased. Music was central for Vichy, not only in its relations with the German occupant but also in various aspects of the Révolution nationale, crucially including its youth programs.109 With regard to the Opéra, Hautecoeur later noted that he

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was continually concerned with such questions as the physical difficulty of staging new works due to the lack of materials, although he managed to oversee the centenaries of Massenet at the Opéra and of Chabrier at the Opéra-​Comique, as well as the French premiere of Honegger’s Antigone. The national lyric theaters in Paris were now completely funded by the state, but Hautecoeur lamented that by March 1942 (shortly before the politically significant and costly new production of Pelléas) no lyric theater could fully cover its full expenses. He was also embroiled with the problems now facing the provincial operas, with similarly rising costs and inadequate funding, especially since they were all municipal theaters receiving subventions from their cities, with the state aiding them financially as best it could.110 In addition to overseeing opera, Hautecoeur was responsible for the major Parisian concert societies, and as he later asserted he was determined to employ them to demonstrate to the occupant the lack of foundation for the poor reception of French music in Germany.111 While his own motivation may have been an enduring national pride, it is also important to consider the compensatory role that such nationalism (of the Vichy variety) gradually played in light of the regime’s growing quest for a place in Hitler’s Europe. It was in fact the Administration des beaux-​arts that requested that the Société des concerts du Conservatoire participate in the French celebration of the 150th anniversary of Mozart’s death in December 1941, here under the German conductors Richard Liesche and Hermann Abendroth.112 Although Hautecoeur frequently proclaimed his wish to continue to protect French culture, he was subject to the oversight of Carcopino—​who was more pragmatic—​and then to the overtly pro-​German Bonnard. Hautecoeur’s concerns in the domain of concerts was also partly social, for he insisted that the subventioned concert societies give concerts not only for French youth but also for workers in the factories, in order to demonstrate the difference between “la vraie musique” and the “chansons stupides” of the café-​concerts and on the radio.113 Hautecoeur in addition supervised state commissions for musical works, naming the committee that made the decisions and (especially under Darlan) employing a dual logic of including those who were already important in the field as well those who had political supporters.114 Significantly, Hautecoeur’s Administration of Fine Arts actively argued for the granting of larger sums for commissions in both the visual arts and music; indeed musical commissions were given unprecedented funding in 1941, thus permitting the granting of sixty-​five commissions to sixty-​one French composers between September 1940 and August 1944.115 The Secrétariat général des beaux-​arts also played a role in fostering French recordings when, together with the association that was concerned with promoting the French arts abroad, it helped to produce forty noncommercial

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discs between 1942 and 1944, each devoted to a different French composer.116 Hautecoeur was also central in the corporate organization of the French musical profession, here again appointing the commissions (to shift with the government) that served to vet the plans proposed. Finally, he was responsible for overseeing all formal education in music in France, not only at the Conservatoire national de Paris but also at the forty-​five other Conservatoires, or Écoles nationales de musique (although the latter were in reality municipal establishments.)117 Despite the fact that he was personally convinced of the importance of musical education in “la formation générale,” Hautecoeur relied for guidance here, as in other areas, on his trusted advisors (or “experts”), among whom were Claude Delvincourt and Alfred Cortot, although he disagreed over certain points with both. Indeed the Administration des beaux-​arts as well as the Académie des Beaux-​Arts would find an adversary in Delvincourt when he (previously in charge of the Conservatoire at Versailles) was named director of the Paris Conservatoire in 1941. For he henceforth battled against sclerosis in French musical education, having already promoted the professorship of Messiaen. And Hautecoeur eventually had to work with a minister who, unlike he, was not pétainist—​Abel Bonnard, who became minister of national education under Laval, and aggressively pursued collaboration through culture.118 As opposed to Carcopino, Bonnard was not a so-​called expert in education but rather a well-​known writer who admired the German National-​Socialist model, while still seeking to serve the French state. Again, presenting himself as faithful to Maréchal Pétain, he in fact proved to be devoted to “l’idée européenne,” thus representing a cultural collaboration that eventually bled over into collaborationism. For Bonnard (who was friendly with Honegger) not only promoted the ideological fundaments of the new order in Germany but also admired and emulated German Romantic art and music, especially Wagner. Although he did not dismiss Hautecoeur, Bonnard replaced the others in Carcopino’s former team; then, with Hautecoeur and his new group of colleagues, Bonnard spent considerable time fostering cultural exchanges with Nazi Germany (and with its allies), as in the case of Honegger.119

The role of the Germans and their interest in concerts and in the musical press Laval, under whom Bonnard served, was like Pétain less interested in artistic policies than were the Germans, rather leaving these in the hands of those in his circle whom he trusted. Hence it is not surprising that the Germans now increasingly impinged on specific domains, and especially music, if sometimes through French

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intermediary figures.120 It is important to remember (especially with reference to the Conservatoire and the Opéra) that in the occupied zone the most important intermediary body in the arts, as in other domains, was the Délégation général, which until April 1942 mediated disputes between Vichy and the Germans; Vichy thereafter (under Laval) increasingly ceded to the ultracollaborationists. Significantly the Délégation was led by the journalist Fernand de Brinon, who had founded the Comité France-​Allemagne in the 1920s, originally as a friendship association; it then became overtly pro-​German in the 1930s and was close to collaborationist circles during Vichy.121 The Germans sought immediately to seduce the French through culture in order to ensure cooperation, and hence the German Embassy (under Abetz) and its associated Institut allemande (led by Karl Epting) concentrated on arranging concerts, recognizing the problem of language in spoken theater. It is also important to realize that the Institut allemand (which maintained a branch in Vichy) was also tied to the Deutsche Akademie in Munich, a fact its name subtly concealed. One important marker in the Germans’ program was the arrival of the representative of the German Ministry for Culture and Music at the German Embassy, Dr. Fritz Piersig, who had been the expert on music at the Propaganda Staffel. The embassy and the Institut now sought perfidiously not only to recognize French achievement but also to manifest German superiority in music, and in order to do so it enlisted local institutions and organizations—​including the group Collaboration—​to further Franco-​German exchanges and organize concerts.122 As Sara Iglesias has pointed out, the press was an essential tool in attaching specific meanings to such concerts, and all periodicals in Paris were censored by both Vichy and the Propaganda Staffel. Moreover the Germans furnished propaganda to Parisian journals, and sometimes inserted special pages dedicated to the new conception of the German-​led “vie européenne.” In some cases the Institut allemand discretely assumed control of French publications such as Comoedia; here critics could implicitly announce their political stances by slavishly praising German musical programs (as with regard to the complex case of Honegger).123 Indeed, German cultural politics depended largely on the press, hence the occupant sought well-​known writers to promote the German arts and German musical productions, if under the veil of an unbiased love of culture. Even in the unoccupied zone many journals were directed by those having the confidence of the Propaganda Abteilung and also favored by the German Embassy.124 It is also here significant that Fritz Piersig, who was at the Propaganda Abteilung as of January 1941, was a music critic from Bremen, who actively supported Franco-​German musical cooperation in France. Similarly important in fostering such efforts was the music critic Heinrich Strobel. Formerly associated

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with the avant-​garde musical journal Melos, now he was the Paris correspondent of the Pariser Zeitung and Piersig’s advisor on contemporary music. Together they were able to obtain scores of German contemporary music from Berlin and stress the importance of reporting on such new music to French music critics.125 One goal was to create the image of a venerable and still thriving cultural community among the two nations; indeed music critics were considered to be essential to this endeavor. But to do so they were expected to ensconce specific models of listening or of reception, which would in turn render German cultural conceptions and propaganda acceptable to the French cultural elite.126 Figures like Robert Bernard, the editor of L’information musicale, complied in articles that he published in the more political (collaborationist) Les nouveaux temps, writing on the concerts that were sponsored by the group Collaboration. Here he praised both the liberty and the “esprit de corps” of young German composers, stressing their humanity and universality; like others, he presented German modernism as not only both free and united, popular and traditional but also devoid of foreign influences. Others, like Guy Ferchault, followed suit in the Cahiers franco-​allemands (published by the Institut allemand at the end of 1943, as Corsica was being liberated and opinion was turning even more against Vichy). Here he continued to laud the young German composers whom he still intrepidly presented as full of humanity and at the very heart of “young Europe.”127 The group Collaboration brought together important French intellectuals, artists, and men of letters in the interest of fostering a common Franco-​German culture and the willingness to accept a new German-​dominated Europe. In its musical section the présidents d’honneurs were Florent Schmitt and Alfred Bachelet; the president proper was the director of the Opéra-​Comique, Max d’Ollone. Between 1941 and 1943 the group offered not only a series of concerts but also receptions and gala dinners, which concomitantly served the Germans’ goals. Its most ambitious musical project, in early 1942, was the organization of a series of concerts intended to make the leading young German composers known in France, while (a week later) presenting young French composers in order to illustrate their common features.128 Adolphe Borchard, reviewing the concerts in Le petit parisien (a pro-​Vichy paper), was in fact critical of the young French composers, which included four graduates of the Conservatoire and two winners of the Prix de Rome. While dutifully and patriotically paying tribute to their craft, he nevertheless regretted an absence of the virility and spontaneity that characterized the young German composers who had been presented the previous week.129 The German Embassy was also active in having works by established living German composers performed in Paris, and astutely it often selected those who already had connections in France, such as Werner Egk and Hans Pfitzner. Again,

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one goal here was to impart a sense of continuity in Franco-​German relations and cultural exchanges and to expunge projected French fears of a too marked political and cultural change.130 In addition, to impress the French the Germans sought to bring great German performers to France, and here relied on important intermediary figures such as Jacques Rouché at the Opéra. The latter also diplomatically sought to balance the performance and celebration of great German composers with fêtes for illustrious French contemporaries (often those manifesting Wagnerian influence), such as Lalo and Chabrier. Rouché’s efforts on behalf of the Germans included the centenary of Wagner’s Le vaisseau fantôme (which had originally premiered in France) and the Parisian commemoration of the 150th anniversary of Mozart’s death in July 1941.131 The Nazis, seeking to make Mozart into a German icon, sponsored appropriate ceremonies throughout the European Axis and German-​occupied nations. The largest among these was the so-​called semaine Mozart, held in Paris between July 13 and 20 as part of Goebbels’s plan to manifest the superiority of German culture and further Franco-​German cultural rapprochement. The festivities in Paris were organized by the Institut allemand and the Propaganda Staffel, and featured four concerts with both French and German musicians as well as a lecture by the director of the Mozarteum in Salzburg and a performance of Mozart’s L’enlèvement au serail, conducted by Eugène Bigot. The French would also send a delegation of notable musical personalities to the lavish celebrations in Vienna in late November, and among these would be figures such as Jaques Rouché, Robert Bernard, Guy Ferchault, Gustave Samazeuilh, and Arthur Honegger.132 However, while seeking to manifest superiority, the Germans wisely did not suppress French cultural pride; indeed Karl Epting (at the Institut allemand) believed in the importance of allowing the French to express patriotic or nationalistic feelings, if only in an “inoffensive manner.”133 But as with the presentations of Pelléas, the Germans, who had long been concerned with defining what was German in their own music, now also endeavored to identify it in that of the conquered nations, including Poland and France.134 This is also evident in the German’s tactical use of Berlioz, whom the French similarly marshaled symbolically—​if less so than Debussy, since his romanticism had often been considered too German. The Germans considered Berlioz as part of German and French cultural patrimony, underlining the fact that the first complete Berlioz edition had been done in Germany at the beginning of the century; hence they even treated him as a German Romantic who had only been born in France. The Germans authorized the Paris Opéra to reopen with La damnation de Faust, and the film by Christian-​Jacques (based on Berlioz, played by Jean-​ Louis Barrault) titled La symphonie fantastique was produced by a German firm, although Goebbels considered it as too patriotic.135 To mediate such concerns,

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Alain Laubreaux, writing in Le petit parisien shortly after Laval’s return to power, praised the film and presented Berlioz as an example of France’s “génie national,” but also someone who was understood and loved by foreign romantics such as Richard Wagner.136

German and French broadcasts of classical concerts The Germans also actively promoted the radio broadcasts of concerts, again designed to serve their larger, subtle ideological agenda in France. In September 1940 the Propaganda Abteilung Frankreich immediately created a new radio station Radio-​Paris, which broadcast in French and was financed by Vichy, but was German-​controlled and intended to serve Nazi interests.137 The new station in fact took over the major prewar French public stations, for the Germans sought control of all legal radio in the occupied zone. In addition, Radio-​Paris possessed the most powerful broadcast equipment and was audible not only in the north but throughout both zones. The majority of its programs were cultural, and it carefully omitted reference to the current political situation in France, although it did include a significant amount of propaganda in favor of collaboration with Nazi Germany. In fact the directors of Radio-​Paris had come directly from Radio-​Stuttgart, a station serving Nazi propaganda, which they now adapted to the situation in France.138 Two-​thirds of the station’s broadcasts consisted of music, both popular and classical; although the latter received less air time, its symbolic importance was ostensibly central. For example, on October 15, 1941, a young French conductor, Jean Fournet, led the first concert of the Grand Orchestre de Radio-​Paris, an ensemble that quickly rivaled the other major French orchestras. Moreover, it presented free concerts at the Théâtre des Champs-​Élysées every Sunday morning; these were highly successful, as well as consistently well attended. In addition, the most prestigious German conductors performed with the great German orchestras in concerts broadcast by the station from the Palais de Chaillot, in a hall that had (like the Salle Pleyel and the Théâtre des Champs-​Élysées) been requisitioned by the Germans.139 Meanwhile Vichy radio had found a refuge in Marseille, with Emile Vuillermoz in charge of programming, but its broadcast power was limited. Hence it sought to return to Paris, but by September 1941 it had gained only the right to broadcast musical performances from the capital twice a week. Finally in March 1943 (after the total occupation of France), the French National Radio was allowed to return to Paris. However, the Germans still sporadically intruded on Radio Vichy and commandeered certain artists or orchestras for performance at specific events.140

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Meanwhile, German propaganda agencies remained active and organized major Franco-​German concerts to symbolize the friendship between the two nations, and these of course were broadcast on Radio-​Paris. For example, in May 1944 Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Staatsoper performed (and broadcast) Wagner’s Tristan in Paris, starring the French singer Germaine Lubin; but, significantly, the first of the two performances was reserved for members of the Wehrmacht. Yet some officials at the Propaganda Abteilung Frankreich sought to limit French cultural prestige, and in January 1942 were nettled by French requests for festivals of French music and for tours of French artists abroad. However, other German officials in France intrepidly encouraged continuing cultural collaboration, and stressed the future role of French culture in Nazi Europe, a tactic they believed could help distract the increasingly restive French population.141 One manifestation of this was the great Beethoven Festival at the Palais de Chaillot in June 1943, ostensibly organized by the record company La Voix de son Maître with the participation of the French Radio Orchestra, but which in reality had been organized by the Institut allemand.142

The Germans and the Paris Conservatoire Recent research has revealed the extent of the intervention of German officials in the Paris Conservatoire (including in the case of Messiaen’s appointment), although as a Vichy institution in the occupied zone it was theoretically subject to French government direction. It is particularly important here to be aware of the recent controversy over the facts and interpretation of the events surrounding the German directives with regard to Jewish students and their status at the Conservatoire. Jean Gribenski first questioned and indicted the actions of Jacques Chailley, the secrétaire général of the Conservatoire from 1940 to 1942, concerning the collection of information on Jewish students (leading eventually to their expulsion), seeing these as unduly anticipatory as well as precipitous. His position was subsequently challenged by Michèle Alten as well as others who are associated with Chailley’s former institute at the Sorbonne (Paris IV).143 It is evident that German intervention at the Paris Conservatoire was generally consistent with regard to the question of the status of its Jewish students:  Robert Trebor, president of the Association des directeurs du théâtre (until May 1941)—​whom the Germans considered as having jurisdiction in this domain—​served as their intermediary.144 As Michèle Alten has recounted in detail, Trebor, upon the German proclamation of September 27, 1940 (defining Jews as adhering to the religious faith or as having more than two Jewish grandparents), instructed the Conservatoire director, Henri Rabaud, to be in contact

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with the Germans. Hence Rabaud sent his secrétaire général ( Jacques Chailley) on October 3, 1940, to the Propaganda Staffel, where he was asked to produce the racial declarations of the teaching and administrative personnel as well as a description of the exact functioning of the school. Rabaud subsequently asked the Ministry of Education as well as the delégation général for further instructions; the former instructed him to gather the information, but to send it only to the delégation général. The latter instructed him to send it directly to the Germans, then later told him to send nothing at all. Rabaud thus wrote to the minister of education on October 11, 1940, to ask for clarification of the institutional situation at the Conservatoire with regard to the occupant and jurisdiction. The next day Hautecoeur and Général de La Laurencie, the chef de cabinet at the Delégation du gouvernement dans les territoires occupés, told Rabaud to send the Propaganda Staffel all the information that it had requested.145 Rabaud thus sent the Propaganda Staffel the information on October 18, 1940, noting the presence of two Jewish professors and describing how the institution functioned. One of the two Jewish professors, André Bloch (eventually replaced by Messiaen) was about to retire; the other, the pianist Lazare Lévy, Rabaud had hoped to retain, but he was ultimately unsuccessful in doing so. On October 4 the Germans had asked the sixty professors still present at the school to have their students submit a declaration of their racial origins, with the French authorities agreeing on the definition of a Jew as someone having three Jewish grandparents. On October 18 the wary Rabaud wrote to the German ambassador in the occupied territories to ask for his interpretation of the ruling, reminding him that the Conservatoire was subject to French ministerial decisions. After writing to other French authorities but having no response, Rabaud complained to the minister of education that he was forced to inform specific students, including those with little Jewish blood (sixteen Jews and twelve half-​Jews), that they could only be auditors. As a result, on October 24 Rabaud was summoned by the authorities at the Propaganda Abteilung and accused not only of protecting Jews but of being an enemy of German policies. They also informed him that the Conservatoire was responsible to them alone, for as an artistic structure in the occupied zone it was under the authority of Goebbels—​a ploy that Alten has posited as being, in fact, the result of Trébor’s maneuverings.146 However, the French authorities in various offices disagreed; the inspecteur général Bourgoin, a representative of the minister of national education (and youth) to the Délégation générale, told Rabaud on November 6, 1940, that all intervention of the occupant at the Paris Conservatoire was contrary to legislation, an opinion seconded by the German military administration in Paris. Rabaud waited two months before going to the Délégation generale, where the ultracollaborationist Brinon had since been replaced by La Laurencie. During this

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meeting, on February 13, 1941 (after Darlan had come to power), the Germans expressed their intransigence, insisting that no Jewish or half-​Jewish student could participate in the yearly competitive examinations (which involved a public performance). Hautecoeur himself was surprised when told on April 1, 1941, that the instructions coming from the German Embassy concerning the Jewish students were conclusive.147 In the meantime, the question arose of the new director of the Paris Conservatoire:  Delvincourt (formerly of the French nationalist right) had already been selected by Carcopino’s predecessor, Jacques Chevalier, but the Germans now blocked the nomination. In fact, the Parisian collaborators were rather promoting Marcel Dupré, a professor of organ (Messiaen’s former teacher) at the Paris Conservatoire and organist at the Saint-​Suplice, whose recitals would be broadcast by the German’s Radio-​Paris. Carcopino informed de Brinon that if the Germans opposed Delvincourt’s nomination he would refuse the appointment of Dupré, and then suggest another candidate, preferring that it continue to be a composer. The German interdiction of Delvincourt was finally lifted two months later, and the latter now became the new director of the Conservatoire—​ although Dupré would remain influential within the field, and would be of palpable help in securing Messiaen’s position at the Paris Conservatoire.148 Delvincourt assumed his new position at the Conservatoire in April 1941, and in May he contacted the Sonderführer Fritz Piersig concerning the situation of the Jewish students. Now he was told that they could obtain the authorization to compete only if they could prove that they had no more than two Jewish grandparents (thus being half-​Jews) and were not married to a Jew. Finally, in June, Delvincourt received Vichy’s own authorization to allow those students who were designated as half-​Jews to compete, although half of them soon disappeared from the rosters.149 The next year, on June 2, 1942 (about the time that Delvincourt entered the Resistance), he proposed to the minister of national education (now Bonnard) that Jewish students be allowed to take their annual exams, even without a recompense or diploma; not surprisingly, on August 12 Bonnard abruptly refused this proposition:  the eventual result would be their total expulsion by the Conservatoire.150 The intrepid Delvincourt also contacted Fritz Piersig concerning the return of the scores and instruments that the Germans had initially commandeered from the Conservatoire, but here too he was unsuccessful. Significantly he (who was immediately anti-​German, if not at first anti-​Vichy) had politely declined the invitation of the Germans to participate in the celebration of the Mozart Week in Vienna, an ostensibly propagandistic as well as cultural endeavor. Alten concludes (as opposed to Gribenski), that given the persistent efforts of both Rabaud and Delvincourt, the Conservatoire held out as long as possible with regard to

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the various German exigencies. Indeed, given the radicalization of both German and French legislation by late 1941, the Conservatoire (like other areas within the field, on which politics now more and more impinged) became increasingly powerless to pursue its own professional and academic interests.151 But the musical field felt the political constraints of the Germans more consistently and often than those of Vichy, which intervened only as necessary to pursue its social program and then its escalating state collaboration.

The Germans and intervention in French recordings Vichy’s grand design to renovate and reorganize French musical life was inflected by the Germans not just in concert life and at the Conservatoire but also more indirectly in other domains. In several areas the occupant cleverly employed specific intermediary figures who appeared to serve French national interests while furthering the ideal of Franco-​German entente. One such example is Jean Bérard (who was close to Arthur Honegger) at the record company La Voix de son Maître, now the only producer of recordings in France. Bérard diplomatically balanced the dual political exigencies, for he simultaneously promoted French music and artists while furthering French cultural collaboration with the Germans, himself stating in 1942 that he hoped for a German victory.152 It is important to be aware of those French artists whom he especially promoted and the balance of Vichy and German interests that they came to represent. A case in point is the recording of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande as well as of the works of Berlioz, for by later 1941 (as Vichy was growing more repressive) both artists were being presented as incarnating the exemplary Franco-​German cultural synthesis. This will be particularly clear in the stagings, or physical presentations, and the texts surrounding the works of both composers. Significantly, after the widely publicized first complete recording of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande (released in early 1942) there was a notable lack of recording of great French works as a result of German pressures. This applied especially to those works that the Germans considered to be too brilliant or triumphal in tone for a conquered nation, now essentially a satellite of the Third Reich. The Germans also pursued their own recordings in France: the first record made in France by a German company was Gramophone’s recording of excerpts from Werner Egk’s ballet Joan de Zarissa (under Egk’s direction) at the Paris Opéra on July 21, 1942 (shortly after the notorious Vél’ d’Hiv round-​ups). And not surprisingly between September 15 and 20, 1942, the orchestra of the German-​run Radio-​Paris, under the baton of its conductor Jean Fournet, recorded Berlioz’s La damnation de Faust, presented as a brilliant example of Franco-​German cultural

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collaboration. Moreover, aside from Pelléas et Mélisande, until the end of the occupation none of the now prominent French composers (including Munch, Désormière, and Bigot) participated in any recording of great prestige, and the recordings were largely of symphonic music, in which the Germans traditionally excelled.153 The French musical field, again to invoke Bourdieu, was ineluctably in the process of losing further autonomy as the Occupation advanced.

Vichy’s own constraints and shifting goals in music In the musical domain Vichy found itself in an often delicate, indeed difficult position since it had to maintain a tenuous balance between French national pride or patriotism, the pressures of the field itself, and the interests of collaboration as it unfolded. Music was caught up in this tension, especially since it was of prime interest to the German authorities (whose pride in their own music was a cornerstone of their propaganda) and was a symbol of French cultural strength and identity. The situation was initially less problematic in the unoccupied zone, where Vichy (before total occupation) could seek to propagate its partial fiction of sovereignty as well as its version of a soil-​based, racially exclusive nationalism—​ if not always coherently or successfully. In the occupied zone we may observe a different picture of Vichy in the first two years, for here the gradual advance of French state collaboration was a more prominent determinant of its cultural choices, especially by later 1941. Communication between state institutions in the occupied zone and the French official bureaucracy based in Vichy was very difficult, and hence the relative freedom or prerogatives initially granted to its “experts,” like Jacques Rouché at the Paris Opéra . In the summer of 1940 (when the decision to stage Pelléas was made) the demarcation line between zones was a veritable sealed frontier, with only three hundred letters per day permitted to cross the line. And to complicate matters further for the state administration, even French government officials found their travel between the zones to be seriously impeded.154 In the unoccupied sector, as one may glean when examining a Vichy-​zone newspaper like Le temps, the cultural emphasis in the fall of 1940 was primarily on the pursuit of Pétain’s Révolution nationale. Figures like Gustave Samazeuilh (who followed the regime’s evolution from pétainism to ever greater collaboration) and Joseph Canteloube (in L’action française) published articles on regional musicians. In Samazeuilh’s case it was particularly on the region of the Auvernge, which included Clermont-​Ferrand, where Le temps had initially found refuge before its move—​along with the other great Parisian dailies—​to Lyon.155 As the paper also reveals, Vichy’s primary cultural concern at this point was predominantly with

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French youth and with developing programs for it; hence this was one focal point of its coverage. Only gradually does one find in the press of the unoccupied zone a regular series of reports on the musical events in Paris, and at first these were focused on the two national lyric theaters, the Opéra and the Opéra-​Comique.156

Vichy “experts” in music and the case of Jacques Rouché In several domains, including opera, we find examples of Vichy’s initial stress on “experts,” or those of high professional achievement and prominence in their respective fields. Indeed the regime, particularly at first, relied on figures like Jacques Rouché to make critical decisions concerning the lyric theaters and advise Hautecoeur. In Vichy itself there was another such expert, Alfred Cortot (the pianist), who like the regime itself would glide from pétainism to more extreme collaboration. These are two of the key figures in music, and hence it is important to examine their activities and influence. Jacques Rouché was in many respects a paradigmatic Vichy expert and administrator, illustrative of Yves Bouthillier’s pronouncement on Vichy (in its first two years) as incarnating “the primacy of public administration over politics.”157 Born in 1862 (the same year as Debussy), Rouché was trained at the prestigious École Polytechnique in order to pursue a traditional career as a French high public functionary. But after his success at the head of several artistic journals, in 1910 he became director of the innovative Théâtre des Arts, and in 1914 (at age fifty-​two) he was named director of the Paris Opéra. Having married the wealthy heiress to the fortune of the venerable Parfums Piver (and becoming its administrator in 1896), he henceforth employed his own private funds to help maintain the theater in an appropriate state of splendor, while serving not just as its administrator but also as its artistic director.158 As often noted, in 1939 (under the minister of national education, Jean Zay) the Opéra and the Opéra-​Comique were joined together administratively as the Réunion des théâtres lyriques nationaux (RTLN), now exclusively state funded, and with Rouché as the new structure’s head. This occurred shortly before the war, and there were still unresolved administrative issues that the RTLN would face throughout the Vichy period. However, it was already clear that Rouché alone was now authorized to undertake expenditures and recruit personnel for the theaters. In fact, the two theater’s directors (at first Philippe Gaubert at the Opéra and Henri Busser at the Opéra-​Comique) were essentially the musical directors, with all the substantive decisions being left to Rouché.159 During Vichy’s first two years Rouché’s position and authority were solid, despite the immediate logistical challenges:  in early June 1940 the RTLN had moved to Cahors (115 kilometers north of Toulouse) so that it could continue

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to broadcast its lyric performances. Meanwhile the director of the Opéra’s ballet, Serge Lifar—​of Russian origin and a former dancer with the Ballets russes—​ remained in Paris, in the now empty theater (together with its secretary, Louis Laloy); he thus undertook some of the initial interactions with the Germans, while Rouché became the RTLN’s interlocutor with Vichy. Lifar first met Goebbels’s representative in Paris, and then met Goebbels himself when he visited Paris in early July 1940. He would indeed henceforth use his personal contacts with the German authorities, participating in their cultural projects and traveling frequently to Germany to promote his new European vision of dance.160 In addition Lifar, when he was left in charge in Paris, passed on to Rouché the advice of both Laval and Abetz to reopen the Opéra as soon as possible. Hence in August 1940 Rouché negotiated the reopening of the two theaters with the Germans and was thus authorized to return to Paris to prepare for their reopening, although he was distrusted by some at Vichy for having been tied to important political figures of the Third Republic. But Rouché still maintained the advantage of having spent some 17 million francs of his own on the Paris Opéra , before its funding was completely assumed by the state.161 Moreover, Rouché was frequently caught between the German exigencies and those of Vichy, despite his good rapport with the new French government at its start. Vichy’s first stipulations, based on its nationalism and the practical needs of the field, required him (as part of the law signed by Jacques Chevalier in January 1941) to schedule each year at least two evenings at the Opéra, and three at the Opéra-​Comique, of new productions by French composers and French librettists.162 Rouché sought to oblige, however, his initially good rapport with Vichy would deteriorate when Laval returned to power and Bonnard’s political considerations (in furthering collaboration) took precedence over the priorities of the field.163 In fact, in 1943 Rouché was accused of being a Freemason, and made enemies within the RTLN as well as at Vichy when he refused favors to important French officials. One prominent case of the latter was his rejection of the request, made by Laval’s personal secretary, to engage a specific female singer for a performance at the Opéra.164 Inevitably, given such actions and his poor rapport with Bonnard’s new team, Rouché lost his political support at Vichy in the course of the 1943–​1944 season. Officially his contract was due to expire in July 1943, but despite this he remained in his position until May 1944, probably because of administrative exigencies during the search for his replacement.165 Yet at first Rouché had the trust of both Hautecoeur and Carcopino, being a sedulous administrator, close to major artists, and keen to follow both French legislation and German dictates. Indeed, he scrupulously applied the German ruling of September 27, 1940, concerning the exclusion of Jews, even extending this to the students at the Opéra’s École de danse. The only exception was a Hungarian

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Jewish stage designer, Ernest Klausz, whom Rouché needed and managed to retain until the end of 1943. For Rouché consistently put his administrative interests at the Opéra first: even while seeking to free his personnel who were prisoners of war in Germany, he was careful to state his preferences in terms of their functions in his theaters. Here again we see not only the concern of an expert within the field but also what Robert Paxton has referred to as the Vichy bureaucrats’ fateful “blindness to considerations beyond the efficiency of the state.”166 Given his key position, it is no surprise that Rouché served on many of the committees and commissions that Louis Hautecoeur named to oversee the reform of French culture. This included the commission of experts that examined requests for theatrical subventions, one that drew on the directors of all the national theaters, the representative of the Association des directeurs de théâtre as well as those of the Union des artistes and the Société des auteurs, the director of the Conservatoire, and the members of the musical section of the Académie des Beaux-​Arts. Rouché, aware of his central position and less concerned with the Révolution nationale then with expediency, sometimes made his own complaints directly to Hautecoeur. For example this occurred when the provincial lyric theaters too often requested performances by the stars who were under the control of his theaters, preventing him from organizing his own performances in Paris.167 He also made other requests, which Hautecoeur would generally try to honor, as when Marcel Delannoy’s unfinished opera Ginevra (a prewar state commission) caught Rouché’s ear. The latter then requested and received the necessary funds to facilitate the work’s completion, manuscript preparation, and premiere at the Opéra-​Comique.168 Rouché also became a key figure in Vichy’s effort to organize the artistic (as well as other professions) along a corporatist model. When the ministre du travail asked Hautecoeur to create a Comité d’organisation de spectacles in early 1941, the latter turned to Rouché, whom he considered “au-​dessus de la mêlée,” to preside over the group that he appointed to study proposals. In July 1941 this led to the instauration of the Comité d’organisation des entreprises du spectacle, and Vichy officials (influenced by Hautecoeur) wished to place Rouché in charge. The Germans, however, preferred Gaston Baty, but eventually both sides were able to arrive at a compromise candidate, René Rocher, the director of the Odéon theater.169

Another Vichy “expert”—​Alfred Cortot The other key figure in the French musical world now (in both Vichy and Paris) was Alfred Cortot, who was active in Vichy’s cultural programs for youth as well as in French musical education, Vichy’s corporate professional organization,

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and Parisian concert life. Age sixty-​three in 1940, the now-​famous pianist had been one of the founders in 1919 (together with Auguste Mangeot) of the École Normale de Musique (a private school open to the French and foreigners of all ages to train virtuosi as well as future teachers). Cortot was, in addition, an honorary professor at the Paris Conservatoire, where he would exercise considerable influence (of which Messiaen would seek to take advantage). In June 1940 Cortot immediately went to Vichy and appears to have profited from the administrative confusion that characterized the regime’s first few weeks. At this point seeking his place in the now reconfigured field, Cortot was inclining toward pétainism and immediately manifested his commitment to the ideology of the Révolution nationale (as he understood it) in his initial reports. Not surprisingly the next year he was named to the head of the French state’s Conseil national, and accordingly fulsomely expressed his personal thanks to Maréchal Pétain.170 In June 1940 Albert Rivaud (the first Vichy minister of national education) had made Cortot the haut-​commissaire aux beaux-​arts, but Cortot was soon to be replaced by Louis Hautecoeur, who was appointed by the next minister of national education, Émile Mireaux, on July 21, 1940. However, Cortot remained at Vichy, continuing to write reports for the Administration des beaux-​arts, now concentrating his efforts on French cultural propaganda abroad. At the same time, in music (appealing to Vichy’s now prominent traditionalist nationalism) he also stressed the need to promote and aid young French composers at home.171 By late July 1940 Cortot was able to obtain a new function: Jean Ybarnégaray, minister of youth, the family, and sports, named him directeur artistique des services de la jeunesse. Then in September 1940, when youth matters were placed under the Ministry of Education, Georges Lamirand, secrétaire général à la jeunesse (named under Ripert) made Cortot a chargé de mission for cultural questions, in charge of the Service d’initiative artistique at the Commissariat général à la jeunesse.172 It was in this function that, in December 1940, after having participated in Schaeffer’s Radio Jeunesse, Cortot encouraged the creation of the latter’s association Jeune France, under the rubric of “initiation culturelle générale.”173 For Cortot (ostensibly an opportunist more than an ideologue) had been called on to study the cultural program that the government initially wished to offer French youth. He was aware of the current proposals for Maisons de jeunesse as well as the desire of some to revivify traditional popular music and dance, and to create a new kind of Commedia del’ Arte. The vague charge of Cortot’s division was to develop a general taste in French youth for artistic and intellectual endeavors of all kinds and to contribute to the nation’s future cultural development. As in the case of Jeune France, this charge—​associated with the conservative goals of the early Révolution nationale—​would indeed foster sometimes unexpected innovations in the arts.

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In music Vichy’s primary stress was not only on introducing youth to the art but also on choral singing as well as on the organization of concerts specifically for youth. Hence Cortot would also aid the Jeunesses musicales de France, an organization that had been founded on private initiative by René Nicoly in 1940 and then was made official in 1942.174 In addition, while the Conseiller technique pour la musique at the Ministère de l’éducation nationale in March 1941, Cortot was charged by the Secrétariat général des beaux-​arts with studying questions relating to French musical education, symphony orchestras, and musical societies, and thereafter to make proposals. Cortot’s role here was doubly important, since he brought not only his expertise but also the luster of his artistic prestige to Hautecoeur’s division, and to the ministry as a whole.175 Like Rouché, Cortot thus had the respect and the ear of Hautecoeur, who particularly deplored the lack of any organizational logic in musical instruction in France, and suggested to Carcopino (then the minister of national education) that Cortot be charged with a plan of reform and reorganization. In this function Cortot suggested two ideas that Delvincourt would indeed take up at the Conservatoire—​the coordination of the different regional conservatories and the improvement of their faculties. Clearly Cortot was well respected within the musical field and maintained an important place within it, while deftly positioning himself in important official positions even as the government changed. He was, in fact, later called on to become part of the commission to oversee the reform of the Conservatoire, a project dear to Delvincourt, but which needed the commission’s approval to obtain the necessary funding.176 Cortot was based in Vichy until the spring of 1941, but after leaving for Paris he remained close to the regime and to Pétain; in fact, he was the first to be awarded Pétain’s new medal, the “francisque.” However, he was also now (as opposed to during World War I) an ardent germanophile, championing the National Revolution while gradually becoming an active relay of German propaganda in France. Under Laval he grew close to Bonnard and furthered his program of Franco-​German rapprochement, having also been a Wagnerian in his youth. (Cortot conducted the French premiere of Le crépuscule des dieux in 1902). Indeed in an article published in the Cahiers franco-​allemands in December 1942, he expatiated on the reciprocal influence of French and German music from the Minnesingers up through Wagner.177 However, when he first returned to Paris, Cortot still had to win the good graces of the Germans, who were initially suspicious of him because he had remained so long in Vichy. But in May 1941 he ingratiated himself by participating in the inauguration of the exposition celebrating the centenary of the Vaisseau fantôme, along with Otto Abetz, Winifred Wagner, and Fernand de Brinon. And not only did he conduct Wagner’s Tristan at Vichy on August 23, 1941, but also

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he was the first French musician to go to Germany after the armistice, performing with the Berlin Philharmonic (Schumann’s Piano Concerto) on May 31 and June 1, 1942. Moreover Corot praised the Reich in the Nazi’s Pariser Zeitung, appeared often on Radio-​Paris, and was sent on tours under the auspices of the Reich’s cultural service.178 Cortot had also slowly consolidated his position in Vichy’s musical structure: he was named a member of the Conseil supérieur de l’enseignement at the Conservatoire in July 1941 and presided over the audition jury for the orchestra of the National Radio in October. Moreover, he was consulted with regard to the nomination of the new director of the Opéra-​Comique and was named to the Comité national de folklore on March 30, 1942. In addition, when Carcopino officially instituted a commission to oversee the concert societies it included Cortot along with other important figures in the French musical world. Again, Cortot was made a member of the Conseil national in 1941, and between March 5 and 12, 1942 (after the dissolution of Jeune France), he participated in the meetings of its eighth commission, devoted to the study of questions concerning youth.179 Then, on May 4, 1942 (now under Laval), Cortot, whose status was rising as Rouché’s declined, entered the cabinet of the new minister of national education, Abel Bonnard, not only an enthusiastic Wagnerian but also homosexual, like himself. (Vichy’s measures against homosexuality, like those of the Germans, apparently did not include those well placed, such as Cortot and Bonnard, among others.) Cortot now became a “Conseiller Technique pour l’étude des questions d’ordre professionnel et corporatif susceptible d’assurer le développement du goût musical en France.” Hence when he entered Bonnard’s cabinet, Cortot was predictably made president of the Comité d’organisation professionnel de la musique; although the decree to constitute it had come from Carcopino, it was Bonnard who now asked Cortot to preside over the committee. Despite being a former pétainist, Cortot now worked in close collaboration with Laval’s cabinet, with regard to modifying Carcopino’s decree (of March 24, 1942).180 His efforts, in fact, resulted in the abrogation of the latter and the promulgation of a new law constituting the Comité professionnel de l’art musical et de l’enseignement libre de la musique, founded on October 14, 1943, and purportedly designed to both represent and defend the field’s professional interests, divided into eleven categories. Indeed the members of Carcopino’s committee had manifested a greater professional balance within the field, including both older and younger figures, with none as politically aligned as Cortot himself. Cortot was made president not only of the new committee (by decree of December 30, 1943) but also of the eleven commissions within it. In sum Cortot was by now, in effect, the official representative of the French “musical corporation,” and as such would intervene with both German and Vichy officials on behalf of French musicians.181

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However, in January 1943 Cortot had sent Bonnard a text that he considered to be a potential model for France—​a resumé, in French translation, of the official text concerning the organization of the Reich’s Music Chamber. And not only was Cortot clearly in Pierre Laval’s camp but also he was on personally friendly terms with the pro-​German Bonnard and sometimes now ignored Hautecoeur, going directly to Bonnard concerning specific issues.182 Cortot’s support for Laval’s camp was clear soon after the latter returned to power; in May 1942 Cortot performed (with Wilhelm Kempf and Germaine Lubin) for the festivities surrounding the exposition of the works of Hitler’s favorite sculptor, Arno Brecker (also attended by Hautecoeur). This was followed by an official lunch at the Matignon, to which Cortot was invited by Laval himself, and then a dinner with Abel Bonnard. Cortot’s prestige was at its height, and he now publicly brought the luster of his name to such propagandistic events, for he not only was well known in Germany but also was becoming one of the most recorded artists in France. Moreover, between 1941 and 1944 Corot gave no less than 150 concerts, 60 of which were in Paris, even as he continued to teach at the École Normale.183 Cortot, of course, was abundantly fêted: already on July 8, 1942, the musical section of the group Collaboration, led by Max d’Ollone, gave a reception in the foyer of the Opéra-​Comique (which d’Ollone directed) in honor of Cortot, the German contralto Lore Fischer, and Werner Egk shortly before the premiere of the latter’s ballet, Joan de Zarissa, at the Paris Opéra . In Cortot’s case it was to recognize his triumphal return from Berlin the previous month, where he had performed with the Berlin Philharmonic, surrounded by much publicity. Not surprisingly, in his introductory speech Max d’Ollone lauded Cortot and prominently paid tribute to the “rapprochement Franco-​Allemand.”184 Cortot clearly served just such a goal; but as the titular head of the French musical field—​the autonomy of which one would expect he would attempt to protect—​he now in fact accepted recognition on the basis on Laval’s politics.

Vichy and its goals in recordings There was frequent collaboration between the activities of the Société des concerts du Conservatoire and the record company La Voix de son Maître (the French division of Pathé Marconi), directed by Jean Bérard. The latter was indeed an important figure, for he was also made president of the office specializing in recordings at the Comité d’organisation des industries et commerces de la musique. Clearly willing to further cultural collaboration, Bérard (a friend of Honegger) grew close to collaborationist circles, and in July 1944, together with the collaborationists Déat, Doriot, Bathélemy, and Chateaubriant, signed

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Admiral Platon’s appeal to accentuate repression in France and more aggressively to pursue the battle against Anglo-​American forces in Normandy. Before this Bérard’s desire for closer collaboration slowly became evident in the galas that he helped to organize, which included not only those in honor of Debussy, Fauré, and Ravel but also of Beethoven and Honegger.185 The festival in honor of Debussy (which took place at the German-​requisitioned Palais de Chaillot) included his symphonic work La mer as well as his little-​performed and quasi-​religious musical drama, Le Martyre de Saint-​Sébastien. The first full recording of Pelléas et Mélisande (begun in the spring of 1941, as resistance to Vichy was slowly mounting) was promoted as celebrating the continuing force of French art, as well as the rebirth of the record industry in the new, reborn France.186 However, the texts surrounding the recording by the time of its release in early 1942 furthered the idea of a traditional proximity between French and German culture, and specifically the supposed indelible influence of Wagner on Debussy. The recording was the first large-​scale French production since the rupture with the London parent company, and indeed in the last ten years, with the printing of some two thousand commercial copies. Hence in order to publicize it La Voix de son Maître initiated and financed an exposition devoted to Debussy at the Opéra-​Comique between May 2 and 17, 1942. The company invested a generous twenty thousand francs in the exposition as part of the publicity for the appearance of the first full recording of Pelléas and for the new production of the work at the Opéra-​Comique in May and June 1942, almost exactly forty years after its premiere.187 In some cases recordings also coincided with radio broadcasts that served both French and German interests. For example (as will shortly be discussed) the recording of Berlioz’s La damnation de Faust with the orchestra of Radio-​ Paris (under Jean Fournet) in September 1942 was aired over the German-​run station and presented as a manifestation of Franco-​German cultural collaboration. And the four large concert associations had to alternate live performances for Radio-​Paris and for the French National Radio. Now the National Radio Orchestra, which was fully funded by the French state, also gave free concerts that were broadcast over the French Radio, thus maintaining Vichy’s presence on the airwaves.188 But sometimes the German and French radio stations were placed in what we may interpret (depending on the context) as either a controlled competition or a convenient convergence of national cultural symbols. For example, Jean Fournet and the orchestra of Radio-​Paris performed and broadcast Berlioz’s Requiem at the Église Saint-​Eustache. Munch subsequently performed the work at the Paris Opéra (with the gigantic force of six hundred performers), which Vichy broadcast over the National Radio in late November 1943—​as the regime was becoming more collaborationist. Radio commentators who, with Vichy,

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slowly promoted greater collaboration—​such as Émile Vuillermoz—​gave a series of introductory lectures on music (as had the profascist Dominique Sordet in the later 1930s) that were broadcast on the French National Radio.189 Finally, the Vichy government itself sponsored a collection of recordings of the most noted contemporary French composers. This was, in effect, the result of a collaboration between the Administration des beaux-​arts and the Association française d’action artistique, and intended to be diffused abroad. But the forty records, which were noncommercial (“hors-​commerce”), first appeared in the fall of 1942, just as Vichy’s credibility was suffering in the United States and among its allies. Each devoted to a different French composer, the records included both established and younger rising artists; among the latter were both Messiaen and Jolivet, but they also included members of the group Collaboration such as Marcel Delannoy and Jean Françaix.190

Vichy’s corporate organization of the musical profession Jean Bérard was the president of the office that specialized in recordings at the Comité d’organisation des industries et commerces de la musique. This committee, of course, was part of Vichy’s corporate structuring of the professions, and it indeed many had become aware of the need for greater organization in the musical field. Again, the Comité professionnel de l’art musical was founded on March 24, 1942, to oversee professional conditions for artists; it was then transformed into the Comité professionnel de l’art musical et de l’enseignement libre de la musique on October 14, 1943, and placed under the direction of Alfred Cortot.191 As Hautecoeur pointed out, one of its divisions, the Comité professionnel des artistes dramatiques, compositeurs, et éditeurs de musique, concerned itself specifically with the question of authors’ rights. Hence the existing Société des auteurs, compositeurs, et éditeurs de musique (SACEM), founded in 1850 and previously concerned with this question, was subsumed by the new committee, which undertook discussions of how to maintain fairness and good relations between French and German authors.192 In addition, Cortot’s Comité professionnel had two professional councils, the members of which were named by the ministry and overseen by a commissaire du gouvernement who was also designated by the minister of national education, in consultation with the Ministère de l’économie. Hence despite the self-​ governing corporatist model that Vichy designed to replace the unions and other professional organizations, the state remained firmly at the helm to ensure that its interests, as well as those of the occupant, were indeed respected. And Vichy had instituted the Comité d’organisation des entreprises de spectacles (COES)

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on July 7, 1941, and after prolonged negotiation with the Germans it was placed under René Rocher. Again, its role was to oversee all independent theatrical activity—​including the vetting of plays—​although the Germans maintained the right to change or to alter any policy that it made.193

Vichy and state commissions in music Vichy’s initiatives to organize the musical profession were in many aspects new, including its attempt to institute state control over French authors’ rights. This was one manner in which the regime sought to intervene in the musical field and (while excluding many) to protect musicians, thus ensuring their loyalty and economic stability. However, in other realms Vichy sought not only to abet employment but also to garner symbolic legitimacy and capital (to employ Bourdieu’s terminology) by furthering or augmenting previously developed state cultural programs. Specifically Hautecoeur now expanded the program of state commissions for musical works that had been begun in 1938, under the initiative of Georges Huisman. To this end Hautecoeur called on a friend from his earlier days in Rome, André Gaillard, who was now in charge of artists in the department of unemployment, to work with him in obtaining additional funds for the copying of new scores.194 Not surprisingly, in order to select those who were to receive the new commissions, Hautecouer named a committee of “notables,” or experts and leading artists, one that reflected a balance of professional and political interests. It included the older (and conservative) composers Georges Hüe, Henri Rabaud, Florent Schmitt (a member of Collaboration), Henri Busser, and a younger composer (who would enter the Resistance), Tony Aubin. With the help of this body the Administration des beaux-​arts granted its first commissions for ballets, operas, and symphonic music in the spring of 1941 (while the technocrat Darlan was in power), now with significant financial support including funds for both copying and recording.195 Some have seen the traditional values that Vichy initially espoused in the list of the fifty-​seven composers who were selected for commissions between 1941 and 1944, since most had academic credentials from the Conservatoire or the Schola Cantorum. But certain composers, like conservatoire-​trained Germaine Tailleferre (who was now in the United States), had received their commissions before the war; and others, like Marcel Delannoy and Paul Le Flen, were prominent musical members of Collaboration.196 Here again we may see the commission’s interest, at first, in not only respecting established professional hierarchies but also promoting those who were now politically well placed, such as the members of Collaboration (the group was

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endorsed by Pétain), as well as those with Pétain’s traditionalist sympathies. In addition, the regime’s immediate desire to forge closer ties with the Catholic Church most likely encouraged the commission to select more conservative composers of religious music, such as Maurice Duruflé and Jean Langlais (and significantly not the more audacious Messiaen).197

The case of the Opéra: Rouché’s initial latitude but growing Vichy and German pressures It was in 1939 that the state decided to take total charge of (and financial responsibility for) the Opéra and the Opéra-​Comique, under the Réunion des théâtres lyriques nationaux. During Vichy the two national lyric theaters, as well as the other national theaters (the Comédie-française, the Odéon, and the Théâtre National Populaire), were not placed under the COES, which rather oversaw some fifty independent theaters.198 The new system of the RTLN had obviated recourse to wealthy patrons, who had undertaken the expenses of specific productions—​as Rouché himself had done. But even during Vichy, despite the financial and artistic responsibility of the state (through the Ministère de l’éducation nationale), the RTLN under Rouché was still allowed a certain degree of financial autonomy. Rouché nevertheless had to work with a “contrôleur financier” as well as an accountant, both of whom were named by the Ministère des finances, and who often impinged on his prerogatives. Moreover, he received additional financial help from Vichy specifically in order to court the occupant, for the RTLN was reimbursed by the Secrétariat d’État à l’économie nationale et aux finances for the free and reduced-​rate German tickets. And the loges were now at the disposition of the German authorities free of charge; in fact, they occupied some 20 percent of the seats in the two lyric theaters. Other seats were sold directly to the Germans at a 50 percent reduction, which could be obtained exclusively through a German-​run ticket bureau.199 Again, the German presence was strong, for as Added has pointed out, fewer Germans attended the spoken theater as a result of the language barrier.200 Hence over half the seats in the Opéra were taken by the Germans, and often the occupation authorities would ceremonially attend performances. Already present at the Opéra’s reopening on August 24, 1940 (with La damnation de Faust), was Otto von Stülpnagel, head of the Military Administration and, in effect, the governor representing the Third Reich in France. The marked German presence did affect the repertoire, which now included more ballets, and Lifar used the excuse of the frequentation of the Germans (as well as the necessity of receiving them

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correctly) to put pressure on Vichy for even greater financial support. Hence although Rouché never received the full amount of funds that he requested, the subvention of the RTLN grew almost continually throughout the occupation period.201 In addition, despite the fact that paper had become increasingly rare, the RTLN was not limited in its paper supplies since its programs included résumés of the libretto or plot in German as well as French. And because of the substantial German presence in the audience now, Rouché used this as an argument to request higher salaries for those leading artists who particularly appealed to them, such as Serge Lifar. He could also point out that certain stars in the RTLN, such as Lifar, Germaine Lubin, and Solange Schwartz, had direct and cordial relations with specific high German authorities.202 But despite the fact that Rouché initially maintained good relations with the Germans as well as with Vichy (having the support of Hautecoeur and Carcopino), he could still not control all the decisions that were made with regard to his theaters. For example, although he was not unhappy about it, Henri Busser (the first director of the Opéra-​Comique during Vichy) was forced to resign under German pressures on June 26, 1941. In fact, it was the group Kultur und Schule at the Propaganda Absteilung which tried to remove not only Busser but also Gaubert (at the Opéra), both having been named to their posts in 1939 and not now appearing useful for purposes of propaganda.203 Indeed it was during the gathering storm of that summer (in which Pétain finally made his famous “evil wind” speech) that Max d’Ollone—​president of the musical section of Collaboration, and considered an ally of the Germans—​replaced Henri Busser. On the death of the Opéra’s director, Philippe Gaubert, Rouché suggested to Carcopino that he be replaced by Marcel Samuel-​Rousseau. This pleased Carcopino, who had known the latter since 1906 at the École française de Rome. However, Captain Lucht, a chief of services at the Propaganda Abteilung, did not consider Samuel-​Rousseau as qualified to impart the desired new orientation to a theater of such worldwide reputation as the Paris Opéra, which he predicted would eventually play an important role in Hitler’s new Europe. At this point in the negotiations the Germans alternated between politeness and thinly veiled threats, repeatedly summoning French officials to test their good will as well as their resistance to those at Vichy. Not having much confidence in either Hautecoeur or Rouché, Lucht then consulted Piersig, the chief of musical services at the Propaganda Abteilung, who offered his advice. In the end, although it was clear that the Germans opposed Samuel-​Rousseau (specifically citing his age), they finally accorded their permission but held Rouché fully responsible for the results.204 These were not the only evident impositions on Rouché: toward the end of his tenure in 1944 he was confronted with the demand of the French minister of finance, Pierre Cathala, that the Opéra-​Comique be directed by his

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wife’s singing teacher, Lucien Muratore. The latter was apparently acceptable to the French as well as to the German authorities, and d’Ollone was replaced by Muratore shortly after Rouché left his position.205 In terms of the repertoire the need for overt concessions to Vichy was minimal, for there were few specific demands. (On one occasion Mme. Carcopino requested a revival of the Hillemacher brothers’ Drac, ostensibly because Louis Hillemacher was in fact her father.)206 But Rouché not only imposed autocensorship; he also responded to Vichy’s evolving agenda of furthering Franco-​German cultural collaboration in specific repertoire choices and in some productions. The works now most often performed were those that appealed to the current audience, with its substantial German presence—​Faust at the Opéra and the titillating, brilliant Carmen at the Opéra-​Comique.207 At first the Germans did not permit the French to present any German operas, fearing a nationalist backlash as well as poor performance, but Rouché pointed out to both Hautecoeur and Lucht that this would result in dire financial consequences. As a result it was initially only Wagner’s operas that were not allowed; however, this did not last long, and his works soon reappeared. The work of Wagner now the most frequently presented was Le vaisseau fantôme, which, as the Germans stressed, had been written in France just a century earlier and thus had to be ceremoniously fêted. Other works still popular and often performed included Verdi’s Rigoletto, Lalo’s (Wagner-​inspired) Le roi d’Ys, Beethoven’s Fidelio, and Saint-​Saëns’s beguiling Samson et Dalila.208 Eventually the Germans made specific demands: by the spring of 1941 they sent Rouché scores that Goebbels’s Reich Ministry of Propaganda wished to have performed, and from which he was to select. The result was a performance of Pfitzner’s Palestrina in March 1942, of Werner Egk’s opera Peer Gynt in October 1943, and of Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos in April 1943. Here the Germans astutely included those composers who already had experience and friends in France: Egk had contacts at the Paris Opéra , moreover Rouché had staged his ballet, Joan de Zarissa, in July 1942; and Pfitzner had lived and worked in Strasbourg (when it was German, until 1918). But here the French were apparently under the impression that these efforts would result in similar French productions in Germany, which in fact never occurred.209 Otherwise, because of the financial restrictions, the Opéra and Opéra-​Comique (as in the initial performance of Pelléas) sought as much as possible to perform those works for which the materials and the décor already existed in their stock. And because the German soldiers came largely to see the lavish ballets at the Opéra, 35 percent of the works performed there were ballets, with Rouché (as Grandgambe has opined) thus entering into the “suicidal logic” of attempting to seduce the occupant.210

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Rouché indeed faced many problems, including the unhappiness of the musicians with their pay, which led to incidents involving subterfuge in performance—​ tactics such as spontaneously inserted nuances as well as illogical tempi. Some have construed this as unequivocally and purely musical resistance acts, whereas either motive may well have been involved at specific moments, depending on the temporal context. The Front national de l’Opéra, the principal resistance group in the RTLN (with some twenty members) included stage designers, machinists, three musicians, a singer (probably Irène Joachim), and a conductor (undoubtedly Roger Désormière).211

Vichy’s interest in the Conservatoire and its regional branches Professional and changing political concerns had to be reconciled in state-​ funded institutions like the Opéra and the Paris Conservatoire; and here the regional conservatories were generally no exception. In addition to the Conservatoire National de Paris there were forty-​five other conservatories, or Écoles nationales de musique, in the provinces; although the latter were in fact municipal establishments, they were still subject to regular state inspections. In the case of these municipal establishments the directors were named by the local prefect—​the official representative of the state in the provinces—​after selection by the mayors, who were similarly forced to balance political and pragmatic interests. Again, one cultural goal of the Révolution nationale—​ to spread musical culture to the youth of France while diffusing music more widely and raising its quality—​was a primary consideration during Vichy’s first two years. But supervision of the regional conservatories was often lax: as Hautecoeur observed, two poorly paid inspectors of music oversaw the provincial conservatories, in addition to attending performances of the major concert societies to ensure respect for the Cahier des charges; moreover, they served on state musical commissions.212 Delvincourt’s professional goal of making badly needed reforms could only be implemented if he was granted adequate funds, hence Hautecoeur appointed a committee to examine and discuss his proposals. This commission consisted of those with established professional reputations as well as those now well positioned politically, including not only Cortot but also Marguerite Long, Jacques Thibaud, Georges Hüe, Marcel Samuel-​Rousseau, and Henri Busser. One of the issues to be considered was the desire of the professors—​presumably those in the provinces—​to develop the students’ general culture and make the teaching of music history mandatory, as it already was in Paris.213 And the Paris Conservatoire

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was now increasingly forced to mediate between the concerns of the Germans and those of Vichy and to factor in more purely professional and educational considerations. Henri Rabaud, its initial director during Vichy (who was close to retirement in 1940), was a member of the Institut de France (like Pétain) and like Rouché was concerned with scrupulously following both German and Vichy dictates. As early as August 28, 1940, in a letter to a German official, Rabaud spoke of forthcoming concerts in which the Conservatoire students would perform Bach and Beethoven in order to further the “rapprochement entre les peuples.” And as he explained to the editor of the collaborationist Les nouveaux temps (who had asked him to serve on its editorial board in October 1940) he wanted above all to continue the Conservatoire’s activity, and did not wish always to cede to Vichy’s dictates.214 Again, although the Germans had fought Delvincourt’s nomination as the new director in 1941, Vichy had approved the choice since he was close to the “milieu maurrassien” (of Action française) and seemed amenable to Pétain’s ideas concerning the restoration of both order and hierarchy.215 But according to Jeanne Laurent, the Académie des Beaux-​Arts (which on the whole supported Vichy) gradually lost influence in music due in part to Delvincourt’s advent as the Conservatoire’s new director. Rabaud was a member of the Académie, but Delvincourt now became its adversary, seeking to combat rigidity in French musical education (having already promoted the professorship of Messiaen).216 Again, Hautecoeur (himself a Vichy “expert”) appears to have been amenable to the reforms that Delvincourt sought to impose, for he too was seeking to implement far-​reaching reforms in theater. However, (unlike Hautecoeur) Delvincourt would eventually enter the Resistance, which leads us to the question of subversion from within official French musical institutions, as well as through sites of public musical performance.

Subversion within institutions and performance venues As Robert Paxton initially pointed out, there were members of the French public service who eventually entered the Resistance and henceforth worked secretly for it from within their official posts.217 Julian Jackson has observed that many of these, who at first believed in Vichy (such as Pierre Schaeffer), were alienated by the advance of its collaborationist agenda and the increased repression. Hence it is not surprising that, as Jackson notes, some of the very first resisters (including Roger Désormière at the Opéra-​Comique) came “from within the orbit of the regime.”218 Philip Nord and others (particularly those who refer to

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the “vichysso-​résistants”) have remarked on the number of Vichy administrators who became disillusioned with Pétain’s regime and switched sides during the course of the war.219 Some, like Schaeffer, made a painful and gradual journey, since French public servants (as Paxton observes) sought both to maintain public order and to reform the state. For resistance was not just a personal decision—​it also necessarily involved a possible return to war, and an inevitable social revolution in France.220 Pierre Schaeffer is indeed a case of someone who initially believed that Vichy was more commodious in its goals and vision than in fact was the case. Indeed, as Jackson notes, Schaeffer’s Jeune France is a prime example of the potential that Vichy appeared to incarnate for those who did not always accept its conservative social agenda. For Schaeffer the idea of using folklore was not necessarily reactionary, but rather a means to reinvigorate and experiment within French culture and to connect the elite with the popular realm.221 Schaeffer later acknowledged his initial willing participation in Vichy projects, based on his belief that the regime sought to defend France against the Germans, the fascists, and the French collaborationists. The historian Karine Le Bail has pointed out that Schaeffer’s deliberate movement from the “licit” to the “illicit” occurred as Vichy itself developed, hence for him it was a process of gradual distancing, one possibly delayed by his own personal trauma on the death of his first wife.222 A similar case is that of the eventual founder of Le monde, Hubert Beuve-​Méry, who had ardently served Vichy’s École des Cadres at Uriage (its most progressive leadership training school, which was ultimately closed) before moving over to the Resistance. In addition, figures like Emmanuel Mounier—​who was close to Jeune France as well as to Uriage—​would glide imperceptibly toward resistance (as would be the case with Poulenc, who did so from within Parisian musical institutions).223

The development of the musical resistance and its response both to the Germans and to Vichy In considering those who entered or supported the Resistance while working for or within official French cultural institutions (such as Désormière, Schaeffer, and Poulenc), the specific chronology of resistance movements in both zones is of essential importance. The Communist Party (to which Désormière was close) created its resistance organization, the Front national, on May 15, 1941, and by June (as repression increased) it was emphatically denouncing Vichy. The Communist resistance press was also developing its journal Les lettres françaises, which was born in 1942, as Nazi domination appeared to be reaching its peak. But as we

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shall see reflected among musicians, the positions of artists within the Resistance differed: for some, like Georges Politzer, all legal publication—​or that which was subject to censorship—​was inherently a compromise. Others, such as the poet Louis Aragon (whose work Poulenc would set) disagreed, maintaining that one should use all possible means to make the voices of opposition to Vichy heard, even if indirectly.224 For Poulenc as well as Messiaen—​the latter an exemplar of Catholic spiritual resistance—​there had to be a contending cultural model, one that could foster thought and doubt within individuals as well as groups. The Communists specifically fought to combat “attentisme,” or the choice of some (such as Honegger) to acquiesce, accommodate, or wait until the balance of power became more evident.225 For those working within French official institutions, be they the Opéra, the Conservatoire, or Jeune France, resistance tactics had to be subtle, particularly in the occupied zone, with both Vichy and Nazi censors. Hence résistants who worked in theater were enjoined to employ as many clever or indirect (even barely perceptible) means to thwart the occupant’s or Vichy’s goals. According to Les lettres françaises, these tactics included thousands of ways subtly to subvert the enemy and exalt noble sentiments or aspirations in order to help neutralize prop­ aganda. For example they could comprise the choice of subject or the means of interpretation (as with Désormière)—​even a gesture and an intonation could here serve as subterfuge or sabotage.226 In poetry Louis Aragon was particularly adept at employing hidden commentary, as would be Poulenc: for example, Aragon conceived his poem “Les lilas et les roses” (in his collection Crève-​coeur) as a coded form of resistance, although it was published legally by Gallimard in April 1941.227 But given such subtle resistance tactics we must, as Jackson adjures, make the distinction between the ideological reception of a work and the author’s professed intentions. Indeed as we shall see with Poulenc, although a number of works were intended by their authors as resistance statements, the collaborationist press would then distort and thus appropriate them. In theater Jackson cites the case of Sartre’s play Les mouches: intended and understood by some as enunciating resistance, the collaborationists nevertheless read it differently, and in fact approved it. Was the use of polyvalent meanings or symbols a true resistance act? Was destabilizing Vichy’s symbols in itself resistance, even if not all could grasp this? Here we shall frequently encounter disagreement. Poetry and music became important to the Resistance precisely because of their potential to create ambiguity, particularly for the first two years in the unoccupied zone, where there was often greater latitude.228 The other area of contestation in the Resistance was whether it was acceptable to publish in certain compromised or collaborationist journals (as did Poulenc

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and Honegger). Was mere proximity to collaborationist writers in journals like Comoedia and La nouvelle revue française sufficient to taint an author whose position was either resistant or neutral? As Julian Jackson points out, “context could transform the most anodyne literary efforts, and hence the danger of guilt by association was real.”229 For some Comoedia was, in general, unacceptable not only because of the presence of collaborationist writers in it and its association with the Institut allemand but also because of its regular “page européenne,” which included artistic news from Germany and its allies (such as Italy, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, and Croatia).230 Here we consider the case of the Nouvelle revue française, which was now in the hands of the collaborationist writer Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, although its previous editor, Jean Paulhan—​who was involved in the first resistance group in Paris—​encouraged writers to continue to contribute and make their voices heard. From this point of view (which was shared by Auric and Poulenc, who were in the Resistance and published in the journal), one was responsible only for what one wrote, and not what appeared around it. But the moral ambiguity of involvement with the Nouvelle revue française extended to its publisher, Gaston Gallimard, as well as to the (semi-​)private concert series that he instituted, the Concerts de la Pléiade, in which both Poulenc and Messiaen participated.231 Vichy was pulled between conflicting visions and needs; although there was an initial difference in its goals in the occupied and unoccupied zones, after November 1942 the concern with furthering collaboration d’État became more pressing in both, and gradually overshadowed all other concerns. But during the first two years there was ostensible disagreement as well as confusion, and thus conflicts within and between French and German cultural bureaucracies, and within the musical field itself in both zones. As a result it was not immediately clear what Vichy and its ideology of the Révolution nationale would accommodate—​how open its cultural program would be, particularly in the unoccupied zone, where it was the regime’s early priority. Far more emerged here than we have been able to recognize—​greater innovation and new cultural practices, for the initial ambiguity left open spaces into which it was possible for individuals and groups to project different visions. But expectations would eventually be foreclosed, and the hopes of many were dashed with the growth of Vichy repression, as well as the escalation of collaboration d’État by later 1941. Hence individuals confronted decisions as to the vision of France and of French culture that they supported, the kind of national identity to which they ascribed—​that now promulgated by the Resistance or by the current leadership of the Vichy regime.

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Major figures in music responded differently—​first those involved in performance, or in the physical inscription of classic works, and then those who continued to create in the public eye. Désormière, Schaeffer, Honegger, Poulenc, and Messiaen all faced specific challenges throughout this period, and their individual backgrounds and situations as well as their decisions and creative actions henceforth provide my focus.

2

REINSCRIBING, FRAMING, AND S U B V E R T I N G A N   O P E R AT I C I C O N : DEBUSSY’S PELLÉAS ET MÉLISANDE

Vichy initially attempted to use culture both to promote the values of Pétain’s National Revolution (however vague) and to identify itself with French patriotism—​in its own distinctive interpretation. At the same time Vichy was diplomatically solicitous of the German occupation authorities, seeking not to antagonize them since the regime’s survival depended on their good graces. But given the initial ambiguity of Vichy’s vision of France’s future, it was possible for the French to project a congeries of ideals or possibilities onto the new regime. However, this would begin to change by August 1941, with the growth of the Resistance (which elicited greater repression) and with the advance of collaboration d’État. Against this background, French cultural officials gradually came to employ an iconic operatic work, selected initially by Rouché for pragmatic reasons, and slowly sought to adapt its ideological significance. It would eventually serve (to employ the terminology of Pierre Bourdieu) as a rite of consecration, or of legitimization, as the regime and collaboration slowly hardened. But this occurred after it first appeared felicitously (to invoke a concept of Victor Turner) to function as a rite of passage, or to enunciate of the socially liminal—​a state of flux following detachment from a previously fixed structure and preceding a final reaggregation. The work, Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande would be thus performed forty-​one times at the Opéra-​Comique (in addition to other venues outside Paris) between 1940 and 1944. Of prime importance here are its different inscriptions, or the ways in which it was successively framed and physically inscribed or transmitted, as well as the perceptions and responses that these provoked. For Pelléas was by no means a simple, monolithic emblem of French cultural pride; nor was its message or its physical instantiation immutable or unequivocal. Hence through Pelléas et Mélisande the evolution of the regime and its vision

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and uses of French culture may be traced, particularly in the occupied zone, where specific German pressures and presence were most pronounced. An opera that could at first accommodate multiple French hopes and visions came, by 1942, to reveal how many of these aspirations were in fact illusions. Soon to recognize and to diffuse this realization was the French intellectual Resistance, which launched a concerted battle to reappropriate this emblematic French work. A  key figure within it was Roger Désormière, the conductor of the work at the Paris Opéra-​Comique and an early member of the French musical Resistance, who intrepidly preserved his own interpretation in the face of eventually antithetical discursive framings and productions. He initially occupied a central place in the musical field, while it preserved a larger measure of autonomy, but found himself marginalized as the regime’s political interests increasingly impinged. Indeed the fact that his performance eventually jarred with the evolving Vichy discourse around the work, as well as with its physical inscriptions, was soon seized on and developed by his resist­ ance colleagues. Pelléas thus became an ideological prism and a site of pitched symbolic battle over the question of authentic French culture, values, ideals, and memories—​or over French identity—​in response to a politically evolving Vichy France.1

The double advantage of both Berlioz and Debussy Jacques Rouché was in a difficult position in the mid-​summer of 1940—​ compelled from afar not only to negotiate the Opéra’s reopening but also to decide what to perform. For despite Pétain’s stress on rural imagery, already in August 1940 the maréchal was simultaneously emphasizing the importance of maintaining and enlarging the role of high culture in France, construing it now as inseparable from the idea of the French homeland. The occupant, while initially banning German opera out of concern for French public opinion as well as fear of a poor performance, desired above all to maintain a sense of normalcy and thus keep the French public calm. Eventually its concern would also be with using theater, and above all the Paris Opéra , subtly to diffuse its propaganda.2 Vichy immediately relied on “experts” like Jacques Rouché, who was the interlocutor with Vichy on behalf of the Réunion des théâtres lyriques nationaux (RTLN). Having negotiated the reopening of his lyric theaters while still in the unoccupied zone, he was finally authorized to return to Paris in August 1940 in order to oversee this process. Serge Lifar had meanwhile remained in Paris, making German contacts—​including Goebbels himself, during the previous month.3 But the decision as to what to stage was ostensibly left to Rouché alone, who, while pragmatically concerned with finances, was well aware that he also needed

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German approval, in part because of the potentially large German presence in the lyric theaters. When the Paris Opéra finally reopened (on August 24)  it did so with a widely publicized performance of Berlioz’s La damnation de Faust, a work that was already in the repertoire but now aptly based on the great text of Goethe. Moreover, the work maintained a sense of continuity, since it had been one of the last works performed in June 1940 before the Germans entered the city. And it had already been featured when the French National Orchestra briefly relocated in Rennes during the so-​called phony war that preceded the actual German attack. Together with this work of Berlioz it had also performed his Roméo et Juliette, L’enfance du Christ, and even his rarely staged early opera, Benvenuto Cellini.4 Now under Vichy, La damnation could be presented immediately and without elaborate staging; in the course of the Occupation it, like Berlioz, would be employed first to further French pride, and then increasingly to serve Franco-​ German collaboration. Berlioz’s La damnation de Faust initially appeared to be an ideal choice, because it appealed, for several reasons, to both the French and Germans now in the audience. For its style and the aesthetic experiences that it embraces are among the broadest in all of Berlioz, in part because of its dramatically apt and harmonious inclusion of both classic and romantic traits. In addition, within the current context the metaphor of selling one’s soul to the devil could be construed as a metaphor for not only Vichy or the Nazis but also the republics that both regimes had replaced. For greed and the excesses of intellect had been at the core of French conservative attacks on the Third Republic throughout the century and were now being marshaled by Vichy in order to help explain its collapse. Moreover, Berlioz’s diverse, sometimes ironic use of styles could be read in various ways:  indeed those Germans who were not following the libretto (an adaptation of Goethe) could entirely miss the subtle satire. This is true not only for some of the stunning martial music but also, for example, of the “Song of the Rat,” since both its text and style could be read in diverse manners by different sectors of the Opéra ’s audience. Berlioz here intended humor: in Auerbach’s cellar in Leipzig one drunken carouser sings a ballad about a poisoned rat who dies in an oven, to which the others respond with a parody of an “Amen” fugue. Even if the Germans (and some anti-​Semitic French) insidiously read a reference to the Jews into this ballad, perceptive nationalist Frenchmen could perceive Berlioz’s satire of Germanic style in the pedantic yet hilariously incorrect fugue. But the Opéra-​Comique, which was smaller, required a more intimate work, and when it reopened on August 22—​only two days before the Paris Opéra —​ it did so with just such an opera, one that might appear a strange choice by

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Rouché within this context—​Bizet’s provocative Carmen. It is important here to recall that Pierre Laval, now vice president of Pétain’s council, like some others held the moralist clericalism of the traditionalists at Vichy in evident contempt.5 And Carmen, from the perspective of certain Vichy factions (of which Rouché was clearly aware), as well as of the Germans, could serve several useful functions: while providing entertainment or titillation for the German troops, it still remained an emblem of French pride (indeed a French work praised by Nietzsche), and—​in one possible interpretation—​it suggested an implicitly cautionary moral message. For the figure of Carmen, while embodying a frank and powerful sexuality, represents a woman who is “exotic,” of a lower social class, and thus here is aptly juxtaposed with the dominant social and moral codes. Carmen, in sum, is both outlaw and rebel, one who flouts convention and then ignores the consequences: as a woman who lacks the impunity of the other sex, she must inexorably perish in the end.6 As Paul Landormy opined on November 22, 1940, in L’information musicale, Carmen is no less than a devil—​cruel, she has her victims killed; however, in poignant ironic Romantic contrast, she clearly loves Don José, with a sincere and profound passion.7 Moreover the story includes both violence and betrayal, while framed by hierarchies of race and class, thus making it a potentially moralizing tale; and yet it could also be enjoyed as a brief respite from the dominant Vichy moral codes. In addition Carmen includes a juxtaposition of powerfully contrasting musical idioms, ranging from sections that are inspired by Spanish dances to those in which the orchestra clearly dominates, with a fullness (or force) as well as a musical dramaturgy that subtly recalls that of Wagner. In fact the work had been condemned at its premiere (in 1875) as being influenced by Wagner, during a period of French nationalist reaction to the latter’s music following the Franco-​Prussian War. However, in the course of Vichy the previously derogatory connection made to Wagner would, for the government, become an asset in the campaign to help further Franco-​German cultural collaboration. Nevertheless, as Rouché was well aware, Carmen was initially not the ideal solution: although effective as a stopgap, it lacked the moral dignity of a national cultural monument, and hence it could not alone marshal French pride. The need for a prestigious and nationally unifying opera, and one that was ready with existing sets and costumes, is a context in which to understand Rouché’s choice to stage Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande. The opera was thus presented on September 12, 1940, at the Opéra-​Comique, for the 266th time at this theater since its premiere in late April 1902. Although the production was not new, its interpreters now included Roger Désormière, the theater’s chief conductor since 1937, here with his first Pelléas, leading a largely young (and conveniently not expensive)

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new cast. Indeed the war, as well as Vichy’s exclusions and exigencies, provided the opportunity (as in all French theater) for a rising generation of French artists to make their names, as would here in fact be the case.8 A flutist who had attended the Conservatoire, Désormière in addition studied composition with Charles Koechlin—​as had his friend Francis Poulenc—​ and similarly remained close to his former teacher, whom he (like Poulenc) continued to revere. Désormière became a member of Satie’s “École d’Arcueil” in the 1920s (as did Poulenc’s close friend Henri Sauguet) and then conducted for the Ballets suédois (in 1923)  and the for the Ballets russes (from 1924 to 1927). In the 1930s, together with D.-​E. Inghelbrecht, he had helped to create the Orchestre Nationale de France while continuing to compose (largely music for film). He now grew close to the communists, collaborating in several left-​ wing films (such as Jean Renoir’s La Marseillaise) and, like Koechlin, participated in several Popular Front projects. In Désormière’s case these included the spectacle Le 14 juillet; indeed, he became a conductor at the Opéra-​Comique in 1937 while the Popular Front was in power.9 Not surprisingly it was Désormière who, having written about the “defense of musical culture” against the fascist threat in the 1930s, would help form a network of resistance musicians while recording the Opéra-​Comique’s Pelléas et Mélisande in later 1941. Désormière himself had probably been recruited into the Resistance Front national as a result of his connections in the cinema since, while frequently writing music for film he grew close to filmmakers, several of whom soon entered this left-​wing resistance grouping. In particular, Désormière had formed an abiding friendship with the filmmaker Jean Grémillon, who became an early member of the Front national and undoubtedly helped to draw him into the organization.10 When Hitler attacked the Soviets in late June 1941 the Communist Party shifted its position from neither Pétain nor de Gaulle to one of active resistance.11 Hence Désormière’s entry into the Resistance most likely occurred in the summer of 1941, after the recording of Pelléas et Mélisande had began (in the spring of 1941). But even before this Désormière himself was never an active supporter of the Vichy regime, and thus was a prime example of Henri Rousso’s point concerning Vichy’s inability to control the new talent that it was now forced to tap. Many of those who became involved in Vichy’s cultural projects participated only tentatively, and then employed them for substantially different ideological ends, as becomes evident in several cases. Désormière, like many of the artists on whom Vichy now drew in order to revitalize French culture, soon (as Vichy hardened) grasped the possibility of employing official culture to further different cultural—​ and eventually political—​ends.12 Indeed, his very presence in this position was inauspicious for the regime: while not yet a résistant at its start, Désormière (as

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an avowed antifascist) was already ideologically prepared to confront the harsh realities that emerged by summer 1941, and thus became responsive to early recruitment by the Resistance. But his initial goal was primarily to make his first performance of Pelléas the best one possible, or to activate Debussy’s ineffable symbolist masterpiece, and hence he solicited the advice of those who had personally worked with the composer at the time of its premiere.

Pelléas: Its nature, style, and the initial French reception of the performance in 1940 To fully grasp the effect of his performance, as well as of those that later reinterpreted it during Vichy, the music and its relation both to the text and the mise-​ en-​scène in 1940 must be reexamined. For the work itself is highly enigmatic both in its operatic dramaturgy and in the message that it enunciates, since many ideas or resonances are intermingled within it, as they are in Maurice Maeterlinck’s dramatic text. The Belgian symbolist’s haunting play is, in essence, a reflection on human frailty—​on the inability of individuals to connect, to communicate, or to understand—​in sum on the nature of the human condition and hence the importance of empathy. It also raises the haunting question of how we, or indeed a humanity that is lost, must at particular junctures or moments confront an apparently inscrutable fate. Pelléas thus probes the enigmas of human life, and is ultimately a reflection on the tragic realization that illumination or understanding may occur only at the end of our existence, if indeed such comprehension occurs at all. The play has been construed as Maeterlinck’s conscious inversion of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde—​of its poignant, conscious longing and its ending in a passionate tragic “Liebestod,” or love-​death. Pelléas rather centers on characters who remain either lost or adrift in their existence, not comprehending why they fall in love, or the events that transpire around them: all but Golaud simply cede to circumstance and fate. The latter rather seeks understanding and control; however, both in the end elude him, and it is paradoxically the fragile and listless Mélisande who proclaims, while dying, that she can finally “see.” As Pierre Boulez points out, the drama thus occupies a kind of middle ground, for the characters are both believable and symbolic—​they are atemporal, apparently mystical, and yet they are implicated in an all too recognizable human drama of amorous jealousy.13 Hence although the play appears to lack a consistent mythic dimension, the characters remain elusive and vague (as well as elliptical in their utterances), escaping a precise definition and leaving the observer in a disquieting dramatic space. While the characters in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde possess a deeply

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human credibility, those of Pelléas can barely be apprehended or understood in traditional emotional terms.14 Debussy’s style only intensifies the ambiguity, for it is similarly located “à mi-​ chemin”—​hovering tenuously between models or genres of operatic dramaturgy, hence making it as difficult to grasp stylistically as dramatically. While he was composing the work Debussy was attempting, like other French composers of his generation, both to profit from Wagner’s revolution in operatic dramaturgy and to remain faithful to the French tradition, with its characteristically subdued dramatic values. For Debussy, like his major French contemporaries, admired Wagner’s insistence on dramatic truth—​his refusal of all empty padding and his ideal of dramatic continuity, or the simultaneous flow of the drama and the music across the entire work. Wagner’s symphonic approach to dramaturgy also initially promised to provide Debussy with the means to communicate and to integrate different levels of information or of reality through the use of the leitmotif, although he would subtly alter its nature as well as its musical-​dramatic role. For his goal was to highlight the aura of Maeterlinck’s subtly provocative symbolist text, one Debussy considered to be closer to human reality than any naturalist drama, representing humanity not on the visible surface but rather just below it, as seen from the shadows. To capture this internal, elusive reality he required a continuous dramatic flow, or the avoidance of purely musical exigencies, and instead allowed the music to recede or to efface itself wherever it served his specific dramatic goal. In sum, to achieve his end of maintaining the primacy of the drama as in the French tradition, Debussy chose to imbricate selected elements from the Wagnerian operatic approach with those long associated with traditional French operatic values.15 The latter included his attempt to emulate a more natural declamation of the French language (one he saw exemplified in Rameau), hence an avoidance of traditional Wagnerian conceptions of melody, which he believed to be antilyrical, or powerless to express the mobile quality of human souls and of life.16 As a counterthrust to Wagner, and as part of a larger movement to restore French values to the operatic stage, Debussy embraced still other aspects of the French tradition, especially those that he admired in his idol, Rameau. In particular Debussy emulated Rameau’s clarity in expression and his precision as well as compactness of form, which provoked some contemporaries to see in Pelléas a revival of French classical lucidity and restraint. Others who attended the 1902 premiere grasped not only the affinity of his musical prosody with Rameau’s but also that (as traditionally in French opera) the voice generally has the leading role, or is rarely overwhelmed by the orchestral texture except where appropriate—​as in the love scenes where Debussy allows it do so for specific dramatic reasons.17

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In addition to the quasi-​parlando idiom that Debussy here employs, the work, although premiered at the Opéra-​Comique, was cast in the traditional five-​act structure of classic French theater and opera. Hence several of Debussy’s proponents not only heralded a revival of French clarity and restraint but also stressed that the melody was carefully molded to the text, thus making Debussy an incarnation of “la vieille âme de notre race” (the old soul of our race). Paul Dukas, moreover, considered the opera a true classic work, here underlining the French qualities of proportion and order; and d’Indy at least initially construed it as a return to the early operatic model of the Florentines, or that in which the music is essentially generated by the drama.18 In sum, Debussy’s solution to the problem of how to enrich the French tradition in a manner so as to reflect the drama’s deep human reality was creative and indeed unique—​a world apart from the response of naturalist contemporaries such as Gustave Charpentier. Pelléas is, in short, an innovative work of exquisite subtlety, and this includes the leitmotifs, which are so different from those of Wagner, referring less to characters than to concepts or states of mind, as in the case of Golaud and his continual, implacable poignant struggle against fate. In addition, as Joseph Kerman has remarked, Debussy’s motives differ from Wagner’s in yet other ways, for they lack Wagner’s “repressed harmonic energy,” and absorb their meaning only gradually, through the incremental process of association.19 Not only do the motives slowly accrue meaning instead of serving to make all transparent or immediately visible (as with naturalist contemporaries such as Bruneau and Charpentier) but also they are continually altered, especially that of the impalpable Mélisande. As some scholars have noted, not only does her motive return at least eighty times but also each iteration is slightly different, becoming ever more poignant and dramatically eloquent.20 Debussy’s goal here is ostensibly a psychological as opposed to simple narrative continuity; hence each scene is characterized by a specific set of motives and rhythms, not developed in a Wagnerian symphonic manner but rather by repetition or accumulation, as in Mussorgsky, whom he deeply admired. Debussy thereby creates a mood through his reiteration of motives, harmonies, and timbres, with each scene (which are identical to those in Maeterlinck’s play) unified and reaching its climax through texture, pace, and declamation, together with the rhythms, motives, and tone color. The only prolonged Wagnerian symphonic development of the motives occurs in the interludes, which Debussy was asked to compose when the work was in rehearsal in order to allow more time for the scene changes and to cover the inevitable din that they created. The interludes, in addition, provide an appropriate relief from the otherwise continuous drama, and they summarize as well as prepare for the action, with the motives woven into

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a symphonic web that approaches the warmth of the Wagnerian orchestra, if in a more attenuated or muted manner.21 Even at points within the musical drama itself, in either the reflective moments or those that involve a more overt expression of emotion, the orchestra can become more prominent, as in the initial love scene that occurs in scene 1 of Act III. Here it begins poignantly with an eloquent silence followed by Mélisande’s monophonic chanson, then growing to the full lushness of the Wagnerian orchestra, which weaves the characters together in a rich and complex orchestral web. But Debussy also evokes Richard Wagner and his works in a more conscious manner, for as Carolyn Abbate has pointed out, the “Tristan chord” appears ironically when “triste” (sad) and even “pas heureux” (unhappy) appear in the text, thus referring to and yet consciously creating a personal distance from the composer.22 Debussy, as he avowed, sought to exorcize the influence that had ostensibly beguiled him in his youth—​after he had won the Prix de Rome in 1884 and was in quest of musical alternatives to his largely conventional training at the Conservatoire. His initial exposure to Wagner, while still at the Conservatoire and during his early trip to Vienna, had been followed by two trips to Bayreuth (in 1888 and 1889), after the second of which he consciously and emphatically rejected Wagner. However, even after he began the composition of Pelléas in 1893—​still attempting to extirpate all Wagnerian influence—​Debussy presented five so-​called Wagner sessions at the home of Ernest Chausson. Here it was ostensibly for financial reasons that Debussy played and sang through the operas as best he could, but he was eventually to find as he composed the opera that Wagner’s influence could not be so easily expunged.23 Pelléas thus embodies a subtle dialogue within Debussy’s style as it evolved, being inspired by French classic opera and by those Wagnerian elements that, even transformed, he could not entirely eradicate. As a result, different aspects of this stylistic synthesis can appear more pronounced in contrasting manners of performance or of verbal exegesis. The former includes the nuances of tempo, dynamic levels, accentuation, and the approach of the singers not only to the music but also to their enigmatic characters. As Pierre Boulez points out from a French perspective, the challenge lies in making even the most minute details and fleeting moments evident to the ear. For the changes are both subtle and continuous, the focus being on the instant, on the poetic and dramatic moment; hence the exigency that the unceasing movement from action to reflection be communicated clearly and yet discretely. And the most important dramatic details can suddenly emerge from a larger orchestral context and without a break in continuity, making it essential that the orchestra immediately recede. At other moments, however, it may rather surge forward dramatically, providing another, inchoate layer of the opera’s subtle and polyvalent meaning.24

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Désormière’s “classic” interpretation in a still relatively autonomous musical field The role of the conductor is thus particularly crucial, and Désormière here had the advantage of the guidance of Henri Busser (the theater’s director from 1939 to 1941), whom Debussy had chosen to conduct the work after its original conductor, André Messager.25 Désormière also profited from the presence of his fresh young singers, now assiduously coached by those musicians who had worked with Debussy at the opera’s 1902 premiere. Irène Joachim (in the role of Mélisande) was thus coached by Mary Garden, Debussy’s first Mélisande, but she also received advice from the coach and chorus master for the work’s premiere, Georges Viseur, who had been Joachim’s professor at the Conservatoire. Despite her Conservatoire training one may wonder why Joachim, who indeed had Jewish ancestry, was allowed to perform on the stage in such an important role. Significantly, her mother was Suzanne Chaigneon, one of the three sisters comprising the Trio Chaigneon, who were apparently not Jewish. Suzanne had married one of the sons (Herman) of the famous violinist Joseph Joachim, and thus Irène had only two Jewish grandparents, which apparently was an extenuating element here. Soon Vichy’s law of October 3, 1940, would formally define a Jew as having three Jewish grandparents, but as Paxton has pointed out, its anti-​ Semitic legislation exempted Jewish war veterans and long-​established families, which here included the Joachims. Moreover, it was not until June 6, 1942, that the stage (as well as film and concert halls) was closed to Jews except by special permission.26 Although Irène Joachim was now coached by Mary Garden, her most important model was Garden’s successor in the role, Maggie Teyte, another acclaimed British soprano and reputedly Debussy’s preferred Mélisande. Hence Joachim developed the role differently from Mary Garden, in fact probably in a manner that Debussy would have preferred: as she put it, for Garden “with Pelléas it was love at first sight, passionate love. While to me he was Death—​mine and his own.”27 Joachim’s Mélisande was thus more ethereal, and hence more symbolic—​not a flesh-​and-​blood creature driven by identifiable human needs, but one who perfectly complemented the symbolist atmosphere of the play and Debussy’s quintessential musical expression of it. Désormière’s Pelléas, Jacques Jansen, only age twenty-​seven (and who like Joachim perfectly looked the part) was also coached by Georges Viseur, similarly his former professor while a student at the Paris Conservatoire. Significantly, Debussy wrote the part not for the traditional heroic tenor but rather for the French “baryton Martin,” or a light baritone who can also extend up into the tenor range (as occurs in the second love scene, when he must be heard through a full orchestra). Jansen, in turn, described

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his interpretation of his character, which apparently harmonized perfectly with that of Joachim as Mélisande. For he too did not construe their roles as, for the most part, robust or passionate, but rather intangible, as in Maeterlinck’s text—​a fact born out in the recording made of the production the following year.28 Here it is important to observe that the rapid tempo in the recording was (as contemporaries commented) only marginally faster than that in the theater, where Désormière had to consider the visual and logistic aspects.29 It becomes particularly clear in the recording that perception of the fast and subtle musical and dramatic changes is dependent on both dynamics and tempo. For in Désormière’s rapid, crystalline interpretation the evanescent leitmotifs are far less prominent or dramatically pronounced than they become in a more deliberate, slower tempo. The vocal parts are thus more clearly audible and foregrounded, not only making every word distinct but also serving to highlight the symbols couched so densely in the text, allowing them room to resonate or expand. Significantly, even Golaud’s deep voice here appears lighter and sometimes tremulous, so that the quintessential human frailty of all the characters is communicated musically in a coherent ensemble, one that Désormière so masterfully interprets. Even in the more Wagnerian musical interludes Désormière carefully highlights each separate orchestral line and thus avoids the Wagnerian sweep or wave of sound, preferring that the effect remain evanescent and ethereal. Similarly, in the first love scene (in Act III) Debussy’s affinity with Wagner is ostensibly minimized, which would not be the case in subsequent performances by other French or European conductors throughout the Vichy period. For Désormière’s goal here was to realize the now traditional or classic French interpretation of Pelléas—​ that transmitted by André Messager, who had coordinated all the dimensions of the work’s premiere—​musical and visual—​in 1902. Pelléas, under Désormière’s direction, thus falls clearly into this particular French tradition, an affiliation that he sought to communicate sonically and assiduously through his performance.

The 1940 production and the opera’s enunciation within the context The production of 1940 was similarly “classic,” in the sense that it remained within the tradition established in 1902—​one that was primarily symbolist and closely monitored by Debussy, who concerned himself with all of the details, including the lighting effects. Now in 1940 the theater’s initial director, Henri Busser (who had been close to Debussy when he conducted the work), oversaw every aspect in order to preserve this tradition, as the visual documentation of the impalpable symbolism of its material elements demonstrates.30 This would

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not be the case in the new and expensive production of the opera in the spring of 1942, which commemorated the fortieth anniversary of its premiere. For the latter would seek to reshape the message in a more specific or human sense, making the opera more ostensibly romantic (or Wagnerian), as would the commentaries around it by this point. There were indeed those who had maintained the principles behind Debussy’s conception of the visual elements, such as the director and scenic designer André Boll, who had staged the work in 1926–​1927 and thereafter described them extensively in his La mise-​en-​scène contemporaine in 1944.31 In this book, an ample testimony to his acumen, Boll articulates the aspirations and anxieties of all those who work in theater, or stage or physically realize any performance text. As he so incisively puts it, one is inevitably faced with “imponderables,” or by a multitude of considerations and conflicting pressures that either thwart or abet what, in the end, has to be a quest for the work’s “ideal interpretation.”32 Boll was in fact here espousing a Vichy orthodoxy—​one that several of its productions of Pelléas would belie—​that the interpretation of the classic repertoire, which constitutes the nation’s patrimony and thus helps to cement its unity, cannot be debated: the “metteur en scène” must capture the master’s supposed “authentic voice.”33 Boll believed that he had done so in his widely praised approach to Pelléas, one that released the work’s full potential to suggest the liminal realm between reality and mystery, and thereby to awaken reflection. For in his book Boll asserts that in all opera, especially in Pelléas et Mélisande, the metteur en scène must possess an extensive knowledge of the music, for the staging must be based not on the libretto but rather on the score. Boll here eloquently points out that one must obey not the literal sense of the words but instead, in a “band of movement”—​of contours and forms—​ capture the progression of the notes, the rhythms, the colors, and the dynamic intensities.34 These are the principles that Boll claims to have employed in his own staging of Pelléas et Mélisande (before World War II), and most recently in the Grande Théâtre d’Amsterdam, where he worked with the conductor Pierre Monteux. But again, Boll had staged the work earlier, in 1926–​1927 at the Paris Opéra-​Comique under Messager, and apparently no new material production had supplanted it in succeeding performances in the theater, including in 1940.35 Boll’s presentation of the work was based on his interpretation of both music and text, which he construed as a legend, hence suggesting a visual imagery without specific place, and thus devoid of historical style. In Boll’s approach it is the immortal aspects of the story that one must capture, in an indeterminate distant setting, although it is apparently a “pays nordique,” with somber forests, dark gardens, and fog. However, this imagery, as he points out, is thereafter brilliantly contrasted (in both music and text) in scenes such as that in the park, around the

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“fontaine des aveugles” (the fountain of the blind); here it rather suggests to him the south, and an Italian villa.36 Boll also points out that when planning his production for the small, intimate Opéra-​Comique he had to recognize that much noise is unavoidably created by the scene changes, which can distract from the lush interludes that Debussy wrote in order mask and to lengthen them. Hence in order not to take excessive time or to create too much din, Boll consciously sacrificed some of the details that he would have otherwise preferred, arriving at a simplicity that he accordingly also sought to mirror in the costumes for the opera. For they too were devoid of any obvious period style: both Pelléas and Mélisande, as he points out, should be clothed soberly; but Arkel should be more debonair, as befits a king, although his queen, Geneviève, is to be dressed essentially as a saint, with the doctor all in black, and little Yniold in lighter colors. Golaud in sharp contrast is to be presented as a “rustre” (boorish, a brute), which serves further to set him apart from the ethereal realm of the other characters, thus marking him as poignantly alone in a world that he tries to but cannot control. In short, as Boll perceptively observes, the work is abundant enough in symbols and thus does not need any more, or greater visual detail; one should rather emphasize the music, which so resonantly expresses them in its own irreducible language.37 Indeed most symbolist plays were traditionally staged in a sparse or simple manner in order to suggest the mysterious and vague, as well as to complement the syntactical ambiguity and the consequent polyvalence of the symbols within the text. And like Debussy, Boll was well aware of the importance of lighting in this symbolist opera, perceiving that the atmosphere must be appropriate to each tableau, following the fleeting musical fluctuations in a synchronism of light and sound.38 Concomitantly, the gestures on the stage must be regulated closely, so as to coincide with the music—​a difficult task due to the work’s fluid style, and an approach that was by no means the theatrical norm. Boll’s staging, in sum (as he describes it) resembled the original mise-​en-​scène not only of the opera but also of the play itself, which premiered in Paris in 1893, with Debussy precipitating to see it. The original décor for the opera (by Jusseaume and Ronsin) similarly avoided any reference to a specific time or place, with little or no furniture in the castle scenes, and as the critics observed the stage was aptly colored by a kind of “demi-​ teinte.” The forest, inherently resonant in its symbolic connotations, was appropriately modeled on the frescoes of the symbolist painter Puvis de Chavannes, with an effect that, as the contemporary reviews duly acknowledged, was greeted with warm enthusiasm by the audience. Pierre Lalo, who reviewed the premiere for Le temps, commented on the harmoniousness of the decors, in particular those of the forest and the fountain, with their forms and colors lit exquisitely and with subtle nuance, thus complementing the beauty of Debussy’s ethereal music.39

Debussy, Pelléas et Mélisande, 1902 (reconstruction 1952). Décor by Ronsin. Photo by Erlanger. Bibliothèque nationale de France

Debussy, Pelléas et Mélisande, 1902 (reconstruction 1952). Décor by Jusseaume. Photo by Erlanger. Bibliothèque nationale de France

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Debussy, Pelléas et Mélisande, 1902 (reconstruction 1952). Décor by Ronsin. Photo by Erlanger. Bibliothèque nationale de France

The 1940 production of the opera, according to the published accounts (and to the illustrations in the press) thus resembled that of 1902, the former differing only in subtle details. Arkel’s costume in 1940 becomes more clearly medieval, however, that of Mélisande is still simple, or pseudo-​antique—​suggestive of Puvis de Chavannes. The tower and the castle now also become almost quasi-​ realistic (here medieval), while the fountain and the grotto scenes remain more symbolic. In some cases the 1940 décor also includes vaguely threatening shapes, as in the grotto scene with the sea surrounded by ominous rocks.40 However, in the interim between the premiere and the 1940 revival, the mise-​en-​scène in other theaters had departed from the more symbolist approach in an attempt to lure a dwindling public, and in light of avant-​garde innovations in theater. This is particularly true of the staging at the Théâtre des Champs-​Élysées, the site of the tumultuous premiere of Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps in 1913 and a new production of Pelléas et Mélisande in 1921. Under the guidance of Lugné-​Poé, the stage is here sparse and accented by haunting vertical shapes with an angular, almost geometric abstraction, in jarring counterpoint with Debussy’s mellifluous score.41 Hence when the opera was revived at the Opéra-​Comique in 1926 (the year a more conservative government returned to power) the press recognized the return to tradition that it embodied. Now it chauvinistically proclaimed Pelléas

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to be the highest expression of French genius, on the same level as the Wagnerian music-​dramas, and as lyric in the French language as was Tristan in German.42

Ambiguity, liminality, and the opera’s impact at Vichy’s start The 1940 production of Pelléas returned to the more traditional interpretation, but now in a substantially different political and cultural climate, one of tension, transition, and uncertainty over France’s future as well as its relation to the German occupant. Pelléas here was activated in its most subtly resounding manner, or in all of its liminal potential—​staged so as to accentuate the ineffable, the transitional, and aptly so at a moment of political and cultural change when a number of different visions of France’s future seemed possible. It is within this specific national context that its resonance here emerged, its dramatic tensions and unique communicative codes construed within the framework of a shifting French experience. The emotional, physical, or “drastic” effects of the performance were undeniably powerful, and it was in part because it took place within this historical framework that the experience here was acutely charged, as those present would later attest.43 The performance was further keyed by the fact that—​although the program proudly announced that it was the work’s 266th presentation in France—​the hall was now three-​quarters full of German soldiers at a time when Vichy proclaimed itself a unity founded on the exclusion of “anti-​France,” although, again, those whom it excluded was not yet fully clear. Reviews of the production in 1940 are few, for although it was performed seven times that year, French political events, such as Pétain’s meeting with Hitler at Montoire in late October, clearly took prec­ edence throughout France. But one by Georges Auric did appear on December 1, 1940, in the now collaborationist Nouvelle revue française; like Jean Paulhan, its former editor, Auric evidently believed in maintaining a presence within even this publication. The initial performance had been repeated on September 21, and then several times after until December 15, during the period of the floundering and then reestablishment of collaboration d’État (there was thereafter a total of twelve performances between December 1940 and April 1941).44 Auric comments on how his generation found the work outdated in 1918, full of the “brumes” and “clairs de lune” associated with the prewar period. But he points out that he now perceives and deeply appreciates its profound humanity, and notes the emotion, attention, and enthusiasm of those were present. Although he does not overtly express a sense of French national pride, this may have been a subtext during this period of shifting relations with the German

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occupant. And significantly Auric also praises Désormière’s supple, precise, and authoritative performance as well as his remarkable devotion to the score, in which every measure is of essential importance. Auric’s evident pride in the work and avowal of its deep meaning for him were not isolated: when the troop from the Opéra-​Comique took the production to Bordeaux (in late December), La France spoke of Pelléas as the reflection of the French soul, and La petite gironde stressed the authenticity of the work’s performance.45 This was still the so-​called Golden Age of the Révolution nationale when, even after Montoire (the implications of which were not yet fully evident), it was still possible to project a variety of hopes onto Pétain’s regime. This remained the case during the twelve performances of the work that took place between December 1940 and April 1941, when the regime had not yet fully revealed its exclusive and vindictive side, nor its effort (to increase under Darlan) at furthering Franco-​German rapprochement. But this would perceptibly change by the summer of 1941, with the growth of the Resistance and Pétain’s repressive response, culminating in his “evil wind” speech of late August.

Pelléas at Vichy: Refocusing the opera’s national significance through performance During this period (beginning in August 1941), the German ambassador Abetz, who had at first presented himself as Francophile, was already planning to limit French cultural influence abroad. Hence by the fall the tours sponsored by Vichy’s Action artistique slowed down, and at home the Propaganda Staffel was promoting the performance of German plays in French.46 Nevertheless Vichy still sought to manifest its sense of French cultural pride in music, particularly in the series of festivals of French music that were sponsored by the record company La Voix de son Maître. These began in June 1941 at the Palais de Chaillot, under the direction of Charles Munch, and the composers performed included not only Debussy but also those associated with the Schola Cantorum (which had consistently promoted Wagner), such as Franck, d’Indy, and Roussel. Significantly, also performed were members of the group Collaboration, particularly its two présidents d’honneur Florent Schmitt and Alfred Bachelet. D’Indy, a founder of the Schola and himself an ardent Wagnerian, was honored on the tenth anniversary of his death in December 1941 with a series of performances as well as a special issue of L’information musicale. By late 1941 the Vichy regime was becoming more overt in its attempts to further Franco-​German cultural collaboration, particularly with the French celebration of the 150th anniversary of Mozart’s death held in Paris in early December 1941, with both French and German artists.

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Indeed, the quest for Franco-​German collaboration had already become prominent in other domains, especially with the imposing exposition held in Paris in July 1941 called “La France européenne.”47 A French musical response to this agenda of establishing Franco-​German political and cultural proximity took place in Vichy itself in late August 1941, shortly after Pétain’s famous speech. Pelléas now reappeared with the same cast, but in a substantially different performance, physical inscription, and framing, this time at the Casino-​Théâtre in Vichy under the baton not of Désormière but of D.-​E. Inghelbrecht, and given in tandem with Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, here conducted by the indefatigable Alfred Cortot.48 More specifically Pelléas was presented in the presence of Maréchal Pétain and in honor of the Légion française des combatants, a propagandistic organization supporting him in the unoccupied zone, which specifically comprised ex-​servicemen. Significantly Pétain had been fostering closer relations with this group since early 1941, and especially as French public opinion began to turn against his government. By 1941 the Légion had 1.6 million members; however, with Darlan’s assumption of power early that year it grew more clearly authoritarian. In fact when Pucheu became interior minister that summer, there was an overt attempt to turn it into a monolithic national movement tied to the “new European order.”49 The town of Vichy had been well established as a summer music center since the interwar period; the thermal domain and casino were in fact state property although conceded to a private corporation, the Société du casino. Hence in the summer Vichy was a notable venue for French politicians, thus boasting a regular orchestra and lyric troop as well as dancers and actors for its productions, which were both elite and popular in nature. When the French government moved to Vichy on June 29, 1940, it quickly requisitioned the Grand Casino and assumed control over the society that ran all of its activities.50 And now it initiated a Commission des spectacles to oversee the performances that were given in the spacious Grand Casino, placing it under the direction of the Commissariat général à la lutte contre le chomage. The Casino’s activities had begun promptly: already on September 3, 1940, Le temps reported on a symphonic program there that included the works of Chabrier, Messager, and the French regionalist (close to the Action française) Joseph Canteloube. Vocal performances at Vichy were organized in conjunction with the French Red Cross and the French National Radio, which broadcast these events immediately and as widely as it could. Beginning in January 1941 even more performances were organized (now through the assistance of the Secours national), with three of them arranged by the pianist and administrator Alfred Cortot, still at Vichy and seeking greater influence.51 Between July and September 1941 there were no fewer than twenty-​five lyric performances at the theater of the Grand

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Casino, under the direction of Paul Bastide and André Cluytens. Significantly, this was a period of increased state funding of the arts, ostensibly to combat “le vent mauvais” and to win back consensus as well as gradually to further French cultural collaboration. It is within this context that on August 31, 1941, the now thriving Légion française des combatants was able to celebrate its first anniversary with a gala performance of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande.52 In the midst of more eclectic programs, some including popular artists, this performance of Pelléas at the Casino had to be mounted quickly, and with limited scenic resources. And like all productions here it employed performers of unequal ability since it was dependent on those artists regularly connected with the theater, but the principals were once again Joachim, Jansen, and (the older) Etcheverry, although Désormière was no longer included.53 Despite these changes, this Vichy production of Pelléas et Mélisande was reported in the press as being highly successful, and its run was extended. Here it is again important to recall that its initial performances were preceded (only a week and a half before) by a production of Wagner’s Tristan un Isolde under the baton of Cortot, which of course invited comparisons between the two works. This production of Pelléas, in addition to being presented as part of the encompassing “fêtes légionnaires,” was also surrounded by performances of the traditional songs and dances of the old French provinces.54 The presentation of these works and of Pelléas was not politically neutral, for both were surrounded by printed propaganda and sometimes also accompanied by lectures, so as to further frame them ideologically. Although fewer German works were now presented at Vichy than before the war, there were still highly publicized productions of Wagner’s Die walkure and Lohengrin, in addition to his Tristan. Moreover Cortot—​undoubtedly aware of Vichy’s political shifts under Darlan—​directed a concert titled “Berlioz-​Wagner” on March 16, 1941. Then on August 2, 9, and 28 of that year (as well as on August 1 and 2, 1942) he conducted performances of Berlioz’s La damnation de Faust.55 These performances of the latter now served a purpose similar to that of Pelléas within this context—​that of reconciling German interests in cultural collaboration with French national pride. In fact this performance of La damnation had been preceded by one in Marseille, mounted with the impressive force of some two hundred performers, and lauded as a stunning success. Marseille remained important, for since June 1940 it had become the real cultural capital of the unoccupied zone, and remained so until November 12, 1942, with the total German occupation of France. For the initial invasion of the north had brought a flood of refugees, both foreign and French, among whom were many prominent French intellectuals and artists in all cultural fields. The opera, which had long been the center of musical life in Marseille, now also became the

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seat of the French National Radio, which broadcast its operatic and symphonic performances as widely as its equipment permitted.56 Inghelbrecht, who had been in Marseille as conductor of the French National Radio Orchestra (which he had cofounded with Désormière) was asked to come to Vichy for this performance of Pelléas in late August 1941. It was perhaps his proximity to Vichy in the unoccupied zone that recommended him now to Hautecoeur, but significantly his conception of Debussy and of this opera differed notably from that of Désormière, being more in keeping with the evolving rhetoric that now surrounded the work as the musical field lost greater autonomy. In his well-​known article, “How Not to Perform Pelléas et Mélisande,” published in 1933 in an informal collection of “causeries” or chats, Inghelbrecht (of Swiss-​German extraction) reveals a great deal about his conception of the French master’s work. For here he includes high praise of two subtly Wagnerian-​ influenced French works, Fauré’s Pénélope and Dukas’s Arianne et Barbe-​bleue, as well as of d’Indy’s more overly Wagner-​inspired Fervaal. For Inghelbrecht the Germans were still clearly the measure of operatic achievement, and indeed he praises these French composers as having contributed to the elevation of “French lyric art to the level of German opera.”57 How then did Inghelbrecht approach this specific performance of Pelléas et Mélisande? Both his earlier published statements and contemporary press reports seem to indicate that his interpretation differed notably from Désormière’s. Inghelbrecht’s discussion of performance of this opera stresses the importance of employing both instinct and sensibility over knowledge or sheer musical talent. This impels him to caution the conductor not to be too exacting about the pace of the orchestra, always making sure that it is not too rapid—​ as notably opposed to Désormière’s interpretation.58 One may glean an idea of the effect of Inghelbrecht’s more deliberate tempi by listening to the later recording of Pelléas by the other conductor now active at Vichy, the young Belgian André Cluytens. His performance of the work, in notable contrast to that of Désormière (as heard in the recording), is characterized by a slower tempo and a more sustained approach, which suggests an epic scale despite a general absence of the continuous melodic line that one finds in Wagner. And Cluytens appears to stress the downbeats, again as opposed to Désormière, who preferred a nonaccentual approach, which is indeed closer to the French language and reflects Debussy’s concern both with it and with the importance of the musical “instant.”59 It is also here significant that Inghelbrecht lauded the interpretation of Mélisande by Mary Garden, who conceived of the character as relatively realistic, and indeed he refers to her as “a woman with ruses . . . who knows how to lie.” According to the testimony of Irène Joachim who had worked with Mary

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Garden in preparing her role, the latter favored a more demonstrative approach, which Joachim finally rejected, although this may have been difficult to do under Inghelbrecht.60 Inghelbrecht, to a certain extent, made his own his accommodation with the more collaborationist Vichy; when Munch and the Société des concerts du Conservatoire declined to perform a concert in honor of the Légion des volontaires contre le bolchevisme (Frenchmen who fought on the eastern front with the Germans) on June 22, 1943, Inghelbrecht and his orchestra did so, performing Beethoven, Busser, Saint-​Saëns, and Wagner. However, when he was asked, in addition, to perform the German national anthem, “Deutschland über alles,” the conductor staunchly refused. Laval promptly threatened to fire him, but in fact this never happened. Nevertheless it was because of this performance that the musicians’ resistance journal, Le musicien patriote harshly condemned Inghelbrecht on September 1, 1943.61 Already Inghelbrecht was well received at Vichy, and the press reports of his 1941 performance of Pelléas as well as of its broadcast were highly positive. Gustave Samazeuilh (who followed the regime’s evolution toward a more intense collaboration) reported at length on it in an article revealingly titled “Tristan et Pelléas à Vichy,” published in L’information musicale. In fact Samazeuilh had already published a related article in the journal the previous June, his “Richard Wagner et la France,” in which he stressed Wagner’s “lesson” to the French—​one of grandeur and idealism.62 Now apropos of Pelléas he remarks that this performance, in honor of and sponsored by the Légion des combattants (for the benefit of the Croix rouge française and the Secours national) had to be mounted quickly and with limited resources, yet it was so successful that its run was then extended. And after mentioning the other presentations at Vichy under the baton of André Cluytens (which included Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, Berlioz’s La damnation de Faust, and Ravel’s L’heure espagnole), Samazeuilh opines that the most “essential” evenings were those devoted to Tristan und Isolde and to Pelléas et Mélisande. “Essential,” of course, here may imply their importance within Vichy’s current cultural politics, or its subtly increasing attempt to demonstrate the compatibility of French and German culture. This was also evidenced by the fact that for the first performance Tristan was given in French and featured Germaine Lubin, who was not only a personal friend of Pétain but also close to high German circles in Paris.63 The propinquity of these two highly publicized performances (Tristan on August 23 and Pelléas on August 31) was probably intended to trigger perceptions of parallels or connections between these two masterworks. And it provided the occasion for Samazeuilh to reminisce about his youthful enthusiasm for the works of Wagner (which he shared with Alfred Cortot) and about his trips to the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth. He also seizes this opportunity to emphasize

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the impeccable Wagnerian credentials of Cortot, whom he claims was the first—​ after Charles Lamoureux—​to reveal Wagner on the Parisian stage, now almost forty years ago. In particular he emphasizes the intensity that Cortot achieved with Tristan, advancing that he thus once again has given proof of the nobility as well as of the height of his aspirations. Finally, after noting proudly that the performance of Pelléas was organized by the Légion française des combatants, Samazeuilh launches into an encomium of Inghelbrecht’s distinctive interpretation, pointing out (in implicit distinction to Désormière, who had shared Auric’s tastes in the 1920s) that Inghelbrecht had defended the work for many years and had scrupulously studied all of its details. Further suggesting a comparison between the two performances, Samazeuilh stresses the “deliciously evocative” (or less precise) quality of Inghelbrecht’s interpretation, which, he pointedly remarks, one almost never hears now in the theater. Moreover, and perhaps with reference to the specific context of the performance, he opines that (in spite of the minimal décor at the Casino) the work has here found its true resonance, or its appropriate climate.64 Samazeuilh’s insistence on the depth, interiority, and passion in Pelléas inevitably paves the way for his comparison of it with Tristan as well as an observation that both operas—​“the masterpieces of our youth”—​have retained this admiration, and perfectly complete one another. Finally, to make the political subtext more evident, Samazeuilh concludes by thanking not only Pétain, who was present at the performance of Pelléas, but also the head of his council (or vice-​ premier), Darlan, who (now pursuing collaboration with the German occupant) was present at this performance of Tristan. Even more explicitly Samazeuilh construes their attendance at these performances as manifestations of their common interest in the festivities and of the great value that they place on both masterworks. Indeed as Serge Added has attested, Pétain’s personal appearance at theatrical productions was consciously conceived as a subtle but effective mode of French political propaganda. For as performance theorists have pointed out, this is one means to help key a performance, and thus to render it meaningful within a socially defined or politically situated context. Pelléas, presented here in the presence of Maréchal Pétain, constituted (again in Bourdieu’s terminology) a rite of consecration, or legitimization and institutionalization, of the new, now more defined, French political order.65 In addition, Noël Boyer, the music critic for the journal Action française, revealed yet more details of this event in his article of September 7–​8, 1941, “Écoutant le Pelléas de Debussy.” Boyer too makes a point of noting that the opera was performed for a “soirée” of the Légion as part of its “Fêtes Légionnaires,” which also included the performances of traditional songs and dances of the old French provinces.66 The Action française had long been the champion of both

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traditional (popular) and French classic (elite) art, maintaining like Pétain that both were authentic French national styles. Hence Boyer speaks of the marvelous assemblage of the French classic (in this context including the popular) and the modern, here with reference to the Debussy opera, thus construing these works as linked within the French cultural heritage or patrimony. Of course, in connection with the popular, Boyer draws attention to the work of Joseph Canteloube, who was publishing his lectures on the chanson populaire as articles in Action française.67 It is against the background of this “classic” repertoire that Boyer then turns to the “modern,” or to Debussy, proclaiming how gratifying it is to see the composer honored after so many years of accusation of culturally not being French. Ironically this charge had been made initially and most adamantly in the journal in which Boyer was writing, but now for the critic Debussy is irrefragably the modern composer who is most specifically French—​if construed here in a distinct and shifting manner.68 For Boyer enumerates all the composers (both French and foreign) on whom Debussy drew, including not only Rameau (whom he did admire ardently) and the Russian “Mighty Five” but also Wagner, although he neglects to mention that Debussy later rejected him. Not all who were associated with the league concurred with Boyer’s points, for ideological divisions within it were developing despite the fact that at first it had been united and influential on Pétain and in his circle. In its initial implacable nationalism the Action française had been prominent at Vichy, at least in terms of its thought and its terminology, even if actual members of the league were never numerous there. Understandably, it had reached the height of its influence during the so-​called golden period of the Révolution nationale in 1940 and 1941, when its doctrines concerning social hierarchy and the Jews were closely reflected in Pétain’s policies. But the league had subsequently splintered as the war, occupation, and state collaboration continued, with some members, such as the music critic Dominique Sordet (an enthusiastic Wagnerian), moving closer to collaborationist circles and thus eventually being expelled from the movement.69 However, others came to consider the Vichy government as being far too subservient to the occupation authorities, a perception that would gradually unite them with those politically disparate groupings that together formed the Resistance. According to Eugen Weber, the formal split within the league began to occur after 1941, when its leader, Charles Maurras, rejecting both ideological collaboration and resistance, still remained faithful to Vichy and to Pétain. Given this intransigence, some members chose to join together with the Germans in order to fight against the values they still reviled, while others—​in nearly equal proportions—​moved into the Resistance, and brought with them their classic cultural doctrine.70

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The recording of Pelléas and its increasing dissonance with the new discursive framing While the Action française was beginning to diverge in ideology with regard to French culture, the recording of Pelléas was well underway, having begun in April 1941. This was a period (under Darlan’s government) when the stress remained on “experts,” and both Carcopino and Hautecoeur had to respond to Vichy’s projection of patriotism, the need to expand employment, and the emerging agenda of Franco-​German cultural entente. Intermediary figures such as Jean Bérard, director of La Voix de son Maître in France, also had a role in furthering such cultural reconciliation. For while he deftly promoted French artists, Bérard attempted to balance French and German exigencies, and would soon make it clear (in the course of 1942) that he hoped for a German victory.71 After this project of the first complete recording of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, there was a discernible lack of recordings of great French works as a result of German pressures. Already by September 1941 it was becoming evident that the Germans were particularly concerned with detracting from the cultural splendor of France, to limit French influence abroad, while at the same time pragmatically promoting public tranquility. The latter implied a certain tolerance of French patriotism, but within those limits that they considered to be safe. Again, the Germans were also pursuing their own recordings in France, beginning with Gramophone’s recording of Werner Egk’s ballet Joan de Zarissa (with Egk conducting) at the Paris Opéra on July 21, 1942. It is also important to remember that, aside from Pelléas et Mélisande, until the end of the Occupation, as the field continued to lose autonomy, none of the now prominent French conductors—​including Désormière and Munch—​participated in a recording of great prestige, and recordings now were largely of symphonic music, in which the Germans believed they excelled.72 Bérard was also a major figure in a cultural organization of the Vichy regime, being president of its office specializing in recordings at the Comité d’organisation des industries et commerces de la musique. Hence Vichy officials, while ceding to German pressures, astutely promoted the recording of Pelléas as a celebration of the continuing force of French culture, as well as of the rebirth of the record industry in France.73 Ironically, the project of recording Pelléas was probably, in part, inspired by the example of Nazi Germany, where recordings were considered essential to national propaganda; this led to a proliferation of them, many of which employed the most illustrious German artists. Simultaneously, fascist Italy also began to produce new complete recordings of the great Italian operas, again enlisting the most prestigious performers. In France the situation was at first inauspicious, for before the war 95 percent of French recordings had been made by Pathé Marconi,

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a branch of the larger parent company, Gramophone. In addition, there was now no longer a distribution in France of recordings from other countries, and no circulation of records that had been made by either Jewish or English artists. Hence the catalog of Pathé Marconi was practically empty, a situation that would only change under the initiative of Jean Bérard, as the enterprising director of the company’s French branch. It was in fact at about the time of the recording of Pelléas (in the spring of 1941) that Bérard was named president of the group specializing in recordings at the Comité d’organisation des industries et commerces de la musique, which was led by René Dommange.74 Bérard soon seized the occasion to promote the propagandistic potential of French recordings, declaring in May 1941 that they are the best agent of propaganda and of exportation of French music abroad. Before the increase of German pressures to curtail French splendor that fall, a new beginning still seemed possible, especially since many well-​known performers had left France or were excluded racially, which left room for new young artists. Featuring the young Joachim, Jansen, and Désormière, the recording of Pelléas was thus a landmark event; moreover it was the first major production since the French branch’s rupture with the London parent company, as well as the first complete recording of an operatic monument for the past ten years in France.75 The recording of Debussy’s Pelléas was begun in late April 1941 in the hall of the old Conservatoire, which was renowned for its particularly outstanding acoustics. Organized by Marcel Maget at the Éditions Pathé Marconi, it was again conducted by Roger Désormière, who would intractably maintain his own classic interpretation despite the evolving rhetoric around the work; this may, in part, have led to his exclusion from the performance at Vichy in August. The performers were selected by the “chef de chant” for the project, Georges Visuer, and they included his former students Irène Joachim and Jacques Jansen, as well as the well-​known bass in the Opéra-​Comique production, Henri Etcheverry.76 The eventual dissonance between Désormière’s pristine approach and the argument concerning Franco-​German cultural proximity is evident from the manner in which the recording was presented in print. For the album, which appeared in two boxes of 78 rpm disks, was accompanied by a luxurious book of essays about both Debussy and the opera, and which included ample photographs of both. Moreover, the booklet specifically states that not only were several thousand copies of the recording issued but also one hundred, “hors commerce,” included the booklet printed on a deluxe (now rare) paper and numbered from one to one hundred.77 Evidently these special copies were meant to be objects of considerable symbolic value—​intended for official presentation as gifts and as signs of the importance accorded the project within the current diplomatic context. Indeed the latter was evolving as the production was underway, for although the

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recording itself was finished in the fall of 1941 (not released until early 1942), when Darlan was still in power, it would soon become clear that his major efforts had failed, and he would thus be replaced by Laval. A determined technocrat, Darlan also sought to extend the politics of collaboration d’État, already desiring a German victory in order for France to assume her new continental role as well as retain her empire.78 Significantly, the very first article in the booklet accompanying the recording is by Abel Bonnard, the profascist writer who was to become the minister of national education when Laval returned to power, as a result of German pressures in April 1942. Titled “Le disque et la chambre” the article is a thinly concealed ideological attempt to reconcile the solitary listening experience with communal participation, in a now palpably fascist sense. For Bonnard here stresses the qualities of the antirational and the ineffable within the work, which he then associates with a “spiritual hunger” and a quest for the sublime, the latter an aesthetic value also being lauded by the Nazis. Indeed for Bonnard Pelléas, as opposed to a French art that is largely penetrated by reason, lies at the frontier of the dream, emitting echoes through a kind of verbal expression that is consciously incomplete.79 Bonnard’s fascist romanticism was already here confronting Vichy’s traditionalist and classic aesthetic rhetoric. And his stress on acceptance and on sublimation is evident when he argues that, in a period of physical privations, it is important to awaken another kind of truth or hunger among the French. He then goes on apocalyptically to invoke the decimated values of yesterday’s world and to hold up “those values of the world of tomorrow,” implicitly those values of Hitler’s new Europe. Indeed he here seizes the occasion to stress the positive side of the French defeat and to rail against the materialism of the bourgeoisie, from which France has now fortunately freed herself. Hence in his lofty peroration Bonnard concludes, apropos of Pelléas, that there are still ways to foster the interior world of feeling or of one’s own inner voice, but a conscious effort must be made here on the part of the listener.80 A kind of reverie on the opera and the values that he projects onto its style and text, Bonnard’s article neglects to discuss any aspect of the performance. However, one cannot help but observe the discordance between his florid fascist romantic rhetoric and Désormière’s pellucid classic French interpretation, a disjunction to be seized on by the French intellectual Resistance. Equally oblivious to Désormière’s ethereal and crystalline Pelléas et Mélisande is the article by Gustave Samazeuilh, who had been an ardent follower of Debussy and was now increasingly, like Bonnard, close to collaborationist circles.81 Samazeuilh’s article, “Autour de Pelléas et Mélisande,” is accompanied by photographs of the score and of the 1902 production, as well of the more recent

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1940 staging at the Opéra-​Comique. Employing a deft ideological balance, Samazeuilh proceeds to argue that Debussy liberated French art from a false kind of Wagnerism, or that which followed not the spirit but the letter (or techniques) of Wagner. Here he is probably referring to the ardent French Wagnerians of the 1880s—​those like Franck, d’Indy, Lalo, and Chabrier, who sought to incorporate not only Wagnerian leitmotifs but also Wagner’s orchestral sonorities, as well as legendary subject matter, while mixing these with other influences. Samazeuilh then stresses the close connections between Debussy’s opera and those of Wagner, a theme to reappear in official publications as well as in the press reviews. For he again points out that Debussy had played through Wagner’s works at the piano—​ compositions ranging from Tannhäuser through Parsifal—​at the home of Ernest Chausson and thereafter never fully divested himself of Wagner. Debussy, Samazeuilh continues, even while attempting to distance himself from Wagner’s influence, nevertheless remained enthralled by certain passages that he loved, particularly from Tristan as well as from Parsifal.82 When the album was released with abundant publicity in late January 1942, the press reviews of the recording largely echoed the rhetoric of the recording’s booklet. Predictably, the journal Disques, in its issue of October 1–​December 3, 1942 (when Bonnard had become minister of national education) devoted considerable attention to the recording, consecrating seven pages to it. These included a detailed discussion of the libretto by the journal’s editor in chief Henry Jacques, who stresses its importance in revealing the face of a France that has been “renewed.” Like Bonnard, Jacques emphasizes the subjective or the personal impact of the recording as well as the important role that it can play in the development of the interior, spiritual life. The latter he also describes using the metaphor of spiritual nourishment, again as far more essential than mere material or physical satisfaction in a time of growing scarcity. After stressing the intimate, profound, and passionate nature of the listening experience, Jacques describes how the recording represents a consecration of French cultural patrimony.83 It is clearly not the patrimony of the French classicism—​of Pétain or of the Action française, and such a reconceptualization was now to become increasingly evident. Moreover in his article Jacques stresses not only anti-​individualism, like Bonnard, but also a process of transforming the inner life, which is just as important as the rebuilding of cities, here again underlining the necessary acceptance of hardship. Jacques offers his own interpretation of Debussy’s opera, presenting the characters as submitting to fate, which also resonates with this central theme.84 He then, like Inghelbrecht, interprets the opera’s characters as humans rather than as intangible symbols, presenting Mélisande as a “femme-​enfant,” Golaud as brutal and yet sympathetic, and Arkel as a wise old man who realizes that “useless events do not occur.”85

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These themes, as well as the agenda of Franco-​German reconciliation in both politics and culture, appear in other reviews, one case being that of the pro-​fascist Lucien Rebatet. Although he was associated with the openly fascist journal Je suis partout, Rebatet published a review of the recording in L’information musicale, “L’enregistrement de Pelléas et Mélisande,” on January 23, 1942.86 Here the normally outspoken writer and critic is rather guarded, and begins by thanking Jean Bérard at Pathé Marconi on behalf of all music lovers. Rebatet similarly praises the fine supervising musician Louis Beydts, who oversaw the recording, while failing to mention Désormière’s own essential contribution. However, Rebatet did specifically refer to Désormière’s performance when reviewing the recording for Je suis partout the next day, January 24. Here he is not censorious but only perfidiously observes that “one might have some reservations about his conducting on points of detail,” and that “one has certainly heard more sensitive interpretations.”87 And not surprisingly in such a profascist journal, Rebatet impugns not so much the conductor as this particular French opera. Avowedly a fervent Wagnerian, he opines that the opera is vastly overrated and that if it survives at all it is largely due to Maeterlinck’s profoundly moving text. Here he takes aim not only at the traditionalist Vichy classic aesthetic but at a conception of the superiority of a specific French tradition that was increasingly to be called into question.

Resistance responses to the Franco-​German cultural discourse Désormière’s interpretation, even if not construed by all as resistant, would increasingly jar with the surrounding publications as well as with new physical instantiations. After Pelléas, as the field lost more autonomy he, like Munch (also a resistant), would not be offered any recordings of great prestige in the remaining years of the Vichy regime. Central for Désormière was the quality of personal integrity—​an interior refusal to cede to pressure that, according to Boulez, remained with him throughout his life. As Boulez later pointed out, for those attending Messiaen’s class in 1944 and 1945, Désormière was the figure whom they most admired among all current French conductors, a status that had been sealed by his performance of Pelléas. Boulez revealingly discusses Désormière’s personality, with an evident admiration, stressing his always independent reactions beneath a judicious veil of discretion and cordiality.88 These qualities had apparently served him well during Vichy, permitting him to remain active and in the public eye while refusing to compromise his principles, and as Boulez points out, always exercising personal courage. Even after Vichy,

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according to Boulez, Désormière never sacrificed his political views, even when he joined the French Communist Party, with which he did not always uncritically agree. For beneath his ideological convictions there was a sort of spirituality or humanity, as evidenced in his notes on conducting that Boulez found among his papers after his death in 1966. Boulez himself traced this idealism back to the “generous ideal” or “utopia” of 1936, when Désormière was an enthusiastic supporter of the Popular Front, seeking to combat social injustice as well as fascism.89 During Vichy, Désormière already had steadfast supporters, and most notably the surrealist writer and member of the intellectual resistance, Robert Desnos, who had a regular column in the journal Aujourd’hui. Significantly, Desnos (who adopted the resistance pseudonym Cancale) was known for his satirical portraits of French collaborationist figures, including Parisian journalists.90 Here in his review of the recording of Désormière conducting Pelléas we witness the writer’s early admiration for the conductor and concomitantly glean his manner of construing the opera’s meaning. In this article of January 24, 1942, soon after the recording’s release, Desnos (as opposed to the others) emphasizes the work’s distinctively French characteristics as well as the manner in which Désormière so masterfully brings them out. And here he stresses Debussy’s approach to setting Maeterlinck’s simple but resonant text, observing how this virtually seals an alliance among those who speak the French language.91 This reference, of course, was aimed not only at the Germans, who implicitly could cannot understand Pelléas, but equally at those who were currently arguing for the proximity of French and German culture. Désormière undoubtedly appreciated this viewpoint, for he was soon at the epicenter of a network of resistance musicians at the Opéra, those hostile to Vichy as well as to the German occupant. This network had begun to coalesce during the period that the recording was being finished, and would include several of the artists who performed in it as well as in the Opéra-​Comique production. Already these resistance musicians saw the disjunction between Debussy’s music—​especially in Désormière’s interpretation—​and the politicized articles that would frame the recording. This included Jacques Chailley, of the Paris Conservatoire and now a resistant, who nevertheless published an article on the opera in L’information musicale on April 3, 1942. Focusing here on the symbolism of the themes that Debussy employed in Pelléas et Mélisande, he argues that the composer was consciously rejecting Tristan and that in fact Pelléas is an “anti-​ Tristan.”92 Although someone of Chailley’s high professional prestige could still offer an opposing interpretation even now, it was clearly isolated within the tide of collaborationist cultural publications. Désormière, from within a Vichy institution—​the Opéra-​Comique—​was also well aware of the current rhetoric concerning the proximity, both past and

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present, of French and German culture. Like his friends in the cinema, Jean Grémillon and Louis Daquin (founder of the CGT du Cinéma), he was an early member of the Communist-​led Front national, which had been formed in the fall of 1941, as Vichy’s repression increased.93 Once again, the case of Désormière is an apt illustration of Henry Rousso’s point that participation in, and potential opposition to, Vichy culture could exist side by side within the same institution, or even the same person. Désormière was one of several figures who had at first participated tentatively in Vichy’s cultural enterprises but then ended up in the Resistance, opposing both Vichy and the German occupant. For Vichy’s cultural representations, including its use of Pelléas et Mélisande, by early 1942 had helped trigger awareness of its changing nature and would eventually stimulate rival national representations. This would become even more evident within the course of 1942, as the government escalated its Franco-​German propaganda and now physically as well as rhetorically reinscribed Debussy’s opera. Hence it is essential to examine this production, which took place in June 1942, as well as the writings around it—​both that of Vichy and the increasingly clamorous clandestine publications of French Resistance musicians.

Pelléas and the problem of national memory:  The 1942 commemoration and production in Paris In the course of 1942 it became clear that a splintering of beliefs as well as of representations was creating deep fault lines within French national memory, and now provoking dissension, or a “bataille de mémoire.” This motivated Vichy cultural officials like Hautecoeur to seek out and to mobilize an apt conception of the French past that could be useful within the current context, and once again Pelléas was to play an essential cultural role. However, the regime simultaneously maintained a more nationalistic image of French culture in the visual arts, and, despite Hautecoeur’s conservative attitude, it opened the Musée National d’Art Moderne in August 1942, after Laval (by no means a traditionalist) returned to power.94 Pelléas would thus serve several purposes within the regime’s advancing agenda of stressing the roots of French modernity as well as France’s eventual integration into Hitler’s new Europe. Laval’s new minister of national education, Abel Bonnard, was now shifting the emphasis in his cultural policies specifically toward Franco-​German artistic cooperation. As Bonnard realized, one powerful arm in the battle over French national memory was commemoration, since it had the potential to convince an increasingly skeptical nation that Vichy was still the sole and legitimate power, representing the true soul of France. But because contemporary French patrimony had

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been defined, in part, through France’s combat with Prussia, it became essential to locate other, new dates in the nation’s past that could be commemorated without political risk.95 Within this fraught context, Vichy sought haplessly to redefine a civic calendar, still employing many dates that it had inherited yet investing them with a new significance. But it also attempted to define new dates that could provide a focus for other, more relevant commemorations, as French identity—​its values, memory, and symbols—​continued ineluctably to shift. Commemoration also now entailed a new discursive strategy, for the Republic had construed French history in terms of constant progress toward national unity and sovereignty of the people as well as toward the preponderance of both science and reason. Hence it was immediately clear that certain older commemorative dates were now problematic, and particularly discomfiting was the traditional celebration of the currently reviled French Revolution as representing a leap forward in the nation’s social and moral goals. The Vichy government thus actively sought to expunge the Republican version of the French national past, while introducing a new one more in keeping with its authoritarian and racially exclusionary goals. To this end it had employed polyvalent and widely admired figures such as Joan of Arc, but here stressed not only her military and peasant connotations—​those already embraced by the Third Republic—​but also her religious associations.96 Yet even more useful, because less overtly partisan as well as dangerous for Franco-​German cooperation, was a commemoration of Pelléas et Mélisande, although it was unusual to fete the fortieth anniversary of a great opera’s premiere. Still, in spite of its being ostensibly artificial, it nevertheless became symbolically essential by the spring of 1942, when Laval returned to power and the administration escalated its collaborationist agenda.97 The commemoration of Pelléas was thus prominently marked by a lavish new production at the Opéra-​ Comique in May and June and by a related exposition in the theater’s foyer with illustrations as well as documents pertaining to Debussy and to the work. This exposition, which ran from May 2 to May 17, was inaugurated just two days after that devoted to Hitler’s favorite sculptor, Arno Brecker, had closed. The Debussy exposition comprised forty-​ five pieces (including personal objects, photos, prints, scores, and manuscripts from both public and private collections), and was organized by August Martin, who had already overseen a similar one devoted to Chabrier in the same foyer. But the Debussy exposition was actually instigated as well as financed by La Voix de son Maître (under Jean Bérard), which invested the impressive sum of 20,000 francs in this effort. The exposition thus drew attention not only to the new production at the Opéra-​Comique but also to the 20-​disk recording, which was now publicly available.98

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It was now official dogma that the “voice” of the artist was to be faithfully captured in performance, which in this political context implied that the production as well as the composer had to be appropriately reinscribed. Rouché, in turning to a new production of Pelléas, was also responding to multiple pressures, including the law that had been signed at Vichy in January 1941 by the traditionalist Jacques Chevalier, then Pétain’s minister of national education. Again, in it his explicit directives to the RTLN prominently included the requirement that Rouché schedule two evenings at the Opéra, and three at the Opéra-​Comique, of new productions of works by French composers and librettists. As Leslie Sprout has observed, there were several new performances of French works at the Opéra-​ Comique in the 1941–​1942 season, and in 1942 they included Paul Le Flem’s Le rossignol de Saint-​Malo, which had originally been commissioned in 1938. Premiering on May 5, 1942, shortly before the anniversary of the Pelléas premiere (with the Debussy exposition already in the lobby), it was ostensibly influenced by Pelléas et Mélisande, particularly in terms of its characters and in the balcony scene in Act III.99 As Sprout has also pointed out, the new productions at the Opéra in 1941–​ 1942 were almost exclusively limited to performance of older repertoire that had been the province of the Opéra-​Comique before the two troops merged under the aegis of the RTLN in 1939. In January 1941 these included Lalo’s Wagner-​ influenced Le roi d’Ys (of 1888), and in 1943 Fauré’s Pénélope, a work of 1913 subtly influenced by Wagner in its continuity as well as its use of leitmotifs. The new productions at the Opéra would eventually include new ballets by Poulenc, Claude Delvincourt (director of the Conservatoire), and Maurice Jaubert as well the Honegger-​Cocteau Antigone.100 In several of these choices Rouché was evidently responding to Vichy’s goal of maintaining French cultural pride while, by later 1942, responding to Bonnard’s more collaborationist emphasis. This would also be the case with the new and expensive production of Pelléas et Mélisande at the Opéra-​Comique, now realized by the artist Paul Lavalley—​whose designs are here marked by erotic suggestion—​but performed with the 1940 cast. Although the production took place in Paris, it was heralded in both zones as an event of national significance, eliciting enthusiastic articles by prominent critics and personalities throughout France. As the article of June 6, 1942, by Jean Gendré-​Réty in Marseille’s Le mot d’ordre amply attests, the new production was one of considerable “éclat,” and particularly the décor. As the critic suggests, it was in this manner that Rouché perhaps attempted to lure a larger public to hear a work of 1902, which it would not ordinarily find of interest.101 The many existing photographs of the new production show it to be anything but subtle or symbolist, in terms of both the quasi-​expressionistic sets and the more explicit costumes.102 Striking now are the menacing shapes that result from the play of light

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and darkness across the stage—​the window of the castle, for example, suggested only by a white hole in the somber architectural surroundings. Here especially notable is a large spare throne next to the arch in the castle, with the only spot of brightness provided by a window that opens out to the vast expanse of sea. However, in striking contrast, the bedroom scene with Golaud and Mélisande contains realistic if sparse details, perhaps mirroring the more naturalistic as opposed to symbolic aspects of the play. And in this ominous if intimate setting the spotlight is focused on Mélisande, who is dressed entirely in white, here in arresting comparison with the sinister shapes of the drapery over the bed and the coat of arms over the door. The costumes in this production are especially significant:  indeed Rouché himself was concerned with costume design, pointing out in the Revue des beaux-​ arts (the official journal of the Fine Arts, cosponsored by the minister of foreign affairs) that he personally paid special attention to it, particularly in recent French revivals. However, in this article he diplomatically reserves the most specific detail and praise for the new production of German works—​especially those of Pfitzner and Egk, whom he pronounces masters of their craft.103 But in this production of Pelléas the costumes are indeed a visual focal point, and most striking is that designed for Pelléas, which carries an inescapably erotic charge. This, in effect, brings Pelléas closer in character to Wagner’s amorous Tristan, in marked

Debussy, Pelléas et Mélisande, 1942. Décor by Lavalley. Photo by Seeberger. Bibliothèque nationale de France

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Debussy, Pelléas et Mélisande, 1942. Décor by Lavalley. Photo by Seeberger. Bibliothèque nationale de France

contrast not only with the dramatic depiction but also with Debussy’s restrained musical characterization. For Pelléas here is clothed in tightly fitting tights extending up to the top of his thighs, creating an arresting image especially when placed against the more symbolic décor of the sea. Moreover, although dressed suggestively, Pelléas assumes a more feminine look (hence less powerful than Wagner’s Tristan), with puffy sleeves that are in stark contrast with Mélisande’s sober, close-​fitting costume, filling out only in the long, flowing skirt. The scene that takes place in the grotto is highly reductive and yet seems threatening, with Mélisande again dressed demurely but here poignantly all in white, perhaps suggesting the qualities of impending sacrifice. However, this scene is markedly contrasted by the impassioned love scene in Act III, where Mélisande’s hair cascades down in an erotic sweep against voluptuously shaped trees and clouds that surround the characters. Although reductive, the shapes of the décor are palpably charged with meaning, as in the scene in the castle with Mélisande and Arkel where, against a simple background, details such as the decoration of the columns suggest a fraught emotional commentary. This of course may represent an attempt to bring out a possibility suggested more in the text than in the music (as opposed to Boll’s stress on mirroring the music in his staging) of an illicit desire for Mélisande on the part of King Arkel. Subliminal innuendos also appear in the fountain scene, where Pelléas and Mélisande are both dressed in white, but Pelléas’s lower torso (from his upper

Debussy, Pelléas et Mélisande, 1942. Décor by Lavalley. Photo by Seeberger. Bibliothèque nationale de France

Debussy, Pelléas et Mélisande, 1942. Décor by Lavalley. Photo by Seeberger. Bibliothèque nationale de France

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Debussy, Pelléas et Mélisande, 1942. Décor by Lavalley. Photo by Seeberger. Bibliothèque nationale de France

thighs to waist) is here covered by a tunic with a notable geometric design at the bottom. This inevitably has the effect of once again drawing attention to or suggesting his sexuality, in what is otherwise musically as well as dramatically a highly nuanced scene. In contrast to the implied strong sexuality of Pelléas, Golaud is generally dressed in dark colors (with occasionally brighter tones), and his body is almost entirely covered by a long robe that extends from his neck to the top of his boots. In the opening scene with Mélisande, whom he discovers while lost in the forest, Golaud is already clothed soberly, and presciently surrounding the ill-​ fated couple are large and menacing looking trees. In the scenes with Pelléas and Mélisande the visually suggested eroticism is frequently so intense that it appears to overwhelm all the other scenic content, as well as the subtle music and drama. Again, this is true of the grotto scene in which Pelléas and Mélisande, here haplessly thrown together, appear to be enclosed in a sort of giant womb. Moreover, in the scene by the fountain the latter appears symbolically and erotically to suggest a feminine sexual shape, especially at the very top. The costumes in the ending are, however, more subtly eloquent; but here a tangibly religious association or suggestion emerges through the details. In the final death scene Mélisande is once again dressed all in white, here spotlighted and surrounded by predominantly somber tones. Yet distinctly visible now is a figure on the far left that suggests the Virgin Mary, but in fact is a servant who is already clothed in a kind of mourning veil (here less subtly than in the original

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Debussy, Pelléas et Mélisande, 1942. Décor by Lavalley. Photo by Seeberger. Bibliothèque nationale de France

production). A moral meaning is thus implied, and may be understood within the context of the desire for a more explicit or stronger message, which seems to pervade this whole production. Through all these means, as well as through the surrounding publications, Pelléas is imbued with a greater romantic force, more in keeping with Inghelbrecht’s performance, although Désormière here again conducted, intrepidly pursuing his own interpretation, despite the shifting dynamics within the field.

The discursive framing and context of the 1942 production of Pelléas Just as significant in focusing the opera’s message was the surrounding commentary and, in particular, the criticism that appeared in the collaborationist press, which was influential as well as dominant in Paris. The Parisian collaborators were especially powerful since they, in fact—​together with the Germans—​were in control of the widely read Parisian press. Laval had initially sought to control the Parisian collaborators by according them this kind of power, but as Stanley Hoffmann has aptly put it, this only served to further dilute “Vichy water.”104 Gustave Samazeuilh was also a prominent figure now promoting collaboration, and predictably published an article on the fortieth anniversary of the premiere of Pelléas et Mélisande in L’information musicale.105 However, this article was in fact

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an adaptation of that which Samazeuilh had published in the album that accompanied the recording, thus further disseminating his interpretation of the opera. Samazeuilh had stressed Debussy’s uncanny ability not only to follow the action but also to express the souls and passions of the characters in all of their subtle nuances. He argues that although Debussy had moved beyond his youthful enthusiasm for Wagner he nevertheless remained deeply taken by—​and manifested the influence of—​certain passages from Tristan and Parsifal.106 He also points out how immediately and powerfully he himself had been taken by Debussy’s art, which appeared so and subtle and yet so intense. But Samazeuilh draws attention to the fact that certain musical connoisseurs soon also noticed Debussy’s debt to Wagner, and his highly personal manner of employing the leitmotifs as well as regulating the relationship between the “orchestral commentary” and the voice. Although Debussy did indeed adapt specific Wagnerian procedures, Samazeuilh concludes by misleadingly placing Debussy securely within the canon that begins with Wagner and continues with César Franck. For, he asserts, these are composers who “affirm the immortal genius of our race,” rejecting a dead convention or a second-​hand aesthetic, here implying d’Indy’s vilified “Italo-​Jewish” (or Meyerbeerian, “cosmopolitan” style) in search of the evocative and the penetrating, as in all true French music.107 Such rhetoric was now being echoed by Vichy cultural officials like Louis Hautecoeur, as the funding proposal for the Beaux-​arts that he submitted in 1942 indicates. Like Bonnard and Samazeuilh, he waxes romantic, stressing the concept of art as a communally shared experience, one that concomitantly can help to elevate and guide the masses. He even explicitly proposes that France should emulate Germany by creating her own sort of (nationally unifying) Bayreuth Festival; however, referring back to his own classic training, he adds that such festive productions could rival those of Louis XIV at Versailles. Moreover, in formulating Vichy’s policies for the funding of the fine arts in France, Hautecoeur (like Cortot) studied the example of Nazi Germany as well as of fascist Italy and now German-​administered Holland. This occurred in a period of frequent attacks on Vichy and its policies, including those with regard to culture, in the Parisian collaborationist press. Hautecoeur’s proposal, mediating French and German models, may thus have been a response to such indictments, as would soon be the notable shift in the recorded repertoire to almost all German symphonic works.108 Here it is also telling that already in January 1942 the Vichy-​authorized L’information musicale published a two-​part article by Georges Vetut titled “La pensée d’Hector Berlioz et l’oeuvre d’art de l’avenir” (“The Musical Thought of Hector Berlioz and the Art Work of the Future”—​the latter phrase referring to the title of one of Wagner’s books). In the second half of this article the author presents Berlioz as the precursor and then supporter of Wagner as well as of Liszt

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and thus dear to the heart of all Europeans with his “religious ardor” and “tragic effusions.” Not only was Berlioz, like Debussy, now frequently being related to Richard Wagner, but the journal’s issue of January 30, 1942, was devoted entirely to Berlioz, and notably reprints Berlioz’s famous letter to Robert Schumann.109 It is also important again to observe the proliferation of performances of Berlioz by the large Parisian concert societies in the 1942–​1943 season as well as the release of the German-​sponsored French film La symphonie fantastique. Moreover, Berlioz’s biographer Adolph Boschot (who had been invited to the Mozart celebration in Vienna) gave a lecture titled “Musicien aux trois-​quarts allemand” (drawing the title from an article of Denis Petit), which was published in the Pariser Zeitung on April 1, 1942.110 Debussy, like Berlioz, was commonly compared with Wagner, and their shared artistic qualities stressed in the initially anti-​Wagnerian journal L’Action française. Here, in an article of December 12–​13, 1942, intended to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of Pelléas, Noël Boyer again attempts to redefine the French qualities in Debussy and in the work. Previously Boyer had presented Debussy as a modern French classic, thus pairing him with the traditional “classic” French repertoire of the chanson populaire. Now, after acknowledging the difficult material conditions that all in France have recently encountered, he argues that the French have become more aware of their nation’s accomplishments and prestige in culture. And once more, as opposed to the journal’s denigration of Debussy before World War I, Boyer cites current appreciation of the composer as tangible proof of this phenomenon.111 However, as evidence Boyer cites the recent collection of essays on Debussy published by Comoedia-​Charpentier and also the essays in the album that accompanied the recording of Pelléas, drawing particular attention to those by René Peter, Alfred Cortot, and Gustave Samazeuilh. After misleadingly claiming that at the premiere of Pelléas it was only Vincent d’Indy, Pierre Lalo, and Gaston Carraud who truly understood and admired it, Boyer audaciously criticizes the musical spokesman for Action française at the turn of the century, the redoubtable Camille Bellaigue. Indeed the latter, in the conservative Revue des deux mondes, had argued that Debussy’s opera contained neither rhythm nor melody, and moreover that it was the very incarnation of an insidious “musique de décadence et de mort” (a music of decadence and of death).112 Again, throughout this discursive reappropriation of Pelléas performances of Berlioz’s oeuvre—​now similarly being reinterpreted—​continued, becoming the core of the symphonic associations’ repertoires. It was the in fact La damnation de Faust that appeared with the greatest frequency in both zones, with twenty-​ three performances of the entire work taking place during Vichy.113 For it could undoubtedly impress broad audiences through its orchestral color and its stylistic

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diversity (particularly when massive forces were used), yet it did not require lavish staging and thus great expense, as would have Les troyens. Significantly, on November 17, 1942, despite this being only five days after the total occupation of France, Jean Fournet conducted it, employing the impressive combined forces of the Piérné (formerly Colonne), Lamoureux, and Pasdeloup concert societies. Although undoubtedly planned before, perhaps within this context it seemed to salvage French national pride while still providing justification of the Franco-​ German cultural argument. But Berlioz’s resonance went even further: French fascists in Paris, who promoted “permanent revolution,” found Berlioz increasingly useful and particularly lauded the film aptly titled La symphonie fantastique. So too did the Germans who financed and produced the film, which was directed by Christian Jacques with the dashing young Jean-​Louis Barrault playing Berlioz. But when the film was released in April 1942 (the month Laval returned to power), despite its production by the German Continental Films it displeased Goebbels, who found it too nationalistic.114 Nevertheless the film received the enthusiastic support of prominent French collaborationists, such as the writer Robert Brasillach and the critic Alain Laubreaux. The latter, in his review in Le petit parisien of April 19, 1942, interpreted Berlioz as an example of the French national genius, but one who was close to and thus understood by famous foreign romantics, including Wagner.115 Romanticism had most recently changed its political valence in France in the course of the 1930s. Formerly associated with the left and with individualism, it was then taken up by French fascist writers who rather stressed its lyricism as well as its stress on collective emotion. What could now be more appropriate for elite French fascist writers than the work of Berlioz, especially his Damnation de Faust with its heroic marches, soldiers’ choruses, nature scenes, pseudopopular ballads, and celestial spirits (replete with harp)?

Vichy’s political turn, mounting resistance, and the 1943 Debussy commemoration The rhetorical campaign to associate Debussy, as well as Berlioz, with Wagner fed into the commemorative fervor, which continued to mount and crested with the 1943 commemoration of the twenty-​fifth anniversary of Debussy’s death. This occurred as general public opinion of Vichy waned even further, and the ideological collaborationists now themselves directly attacked Pétain.116 By the spring of 1943 it was thus clear to many that the Germans were losing the war and that French public opinion was growing increasingly resistant to Vichy’s now strident propaganda. In fact, by the fall police reports observed that the public preferred

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the clandestine press to Vichy-​sponsored journals since the former were considered to be of higher quality. Just as dangerous for the Vichy government was the fact that the French public was also beginning to prefer resistance radio (when available), which, the police specified, was due to the perception of the “insignificance” of the state broadcasts.117 By this point the well-​organized and expanding French Resistance was increasingly targeting Vichy (in addition to the German occupant) and pursuing an escalating civil war, which would concomitantly make the Debussy commemoration into a pitched symbolic battle. For the Resistance was now just as aware as Vichy that commemoration could play a central role in representations of the political world—​which, as Bourdieu has stressed, includes the mental, verbal, and the theatrical—​hence it sought to create or to appropriate its own.118 Debussy, already cited by Resistance figures, would thus become a key stake or a conceptual tool through which to articulate a different vision of France. The Resistance therefore attempted to inscribe its political values in this Debussy commemoration, and in doing so to recast its significance or the kind of national memory that it evoked. Several factors may have further fueled the Resistance quest to reappropriate Debussy as well as his Pelléas, and through both to enunciate a substantially different set of French political and cultural values. In the spring of 1943 Inghelbrecht (and significantly not Désormière) conducted Pelléas in Paris, now in tandem with a semistaged, rarely heard complete version of his Le martyr de Saint-​Sébastien. It is important here to recall that the latter, a hybrid theatrical work, manifests Debussy’s later incorporation of selected traditional stylistic elements. These include some Renaissance elements, which the composer associated with purity, although some have also seen the continuing influence of Wagner’s quasi-​religious Parsifal.119 Despite the fact that Debussy himself was not religious in a conventional sense, he had agreed to participate in this theatrical work, commissioned and performed in 1911 by the Russian Jewish dancer Ida Rubenstein, who had conceived it together with the Italian poet Gabriele d’Annunzio. The latter, an ardent nationalist, sought to take over Fiume for Italy in 1919, after which he became a fascist supporter. Perhaps because of this, despite the association of the work with Ida Rubenstein, the work (originally banned by the archbishop of Paris) was now allowed to be performed in Paris. This helped to fuel the Resistance stress on other later works of Debussy, as well as its reappropriation of Pelléas, which notably rejected Vichy’s emphasis on fate. The latter theme appeared once more in the spring of 1943, now developed by Max d’Ollone, director of the Opéra-​Comique and president of the musical section of the group Collaboration. Writing in the movement’s journal, Collaboration, in the issue of May–​June of that year, he not only reflects

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on the role of music in Nazi Germany, but overtly advocates the use of music to encourage the acceptance of duty and concomitantly of destiny, or fate.120 Moreover, musically 1943 was marked by an even greater emphasis on German works, including the appearance on the French stage of several carefully prepared German operas, as a direct result of German pressures. Indeed the only newly produced French opera of the season was Honegger’s Antigone (which had premiered in Brussels in 1927 but had not yet been staged in France), at a time when the composer was being presented as the epitome of a Franco-​German style. The next contemporary opera presented was Werner Egk’s Peer Gynt, performed in October 1943, at German insistence, with lavish staging and accorded considerable press attention.121 In addition this was the period when the profascist writer Abel Bonnard, now minister of national education, was underlining the importance of spoken theater reaching all social classes, ostensibly for the purposes of propaganda. But despite this emphasis on theater and its pedagogic function, it was clear that it was of limited use in helping to unify a now divided nation, one riven by a civil war that had prompted the institution of the brutally repressive Milice.122 It was within this context that once again Debussy and Pelléas were marshaled even more broadly in the authorized press, an initiative that would unclench a discursive battle over conceptions of the composer in now increasingly important clandestine journals. In fact it was here that one of the most significant symbolic battles of the intellectual resistance took place, for it was through this ideological confrontation that the Resistance was to further define and disseminate a coherent conception of the French identity and values that it sought to protect. To a slightly lesser extent this battle would also be pursued through Berlioz, for his association with Romantic values was more difficult to reconcile with the emerging resistance aesthetic, which was, at least in part, classic. Berlioz was now widely praised by the Germans and in Vichy-​authorized publications as well as by scholars recognized by the latter such as Paul Landormy, who was publicly eulogized when he died in 1943. His authoritative book La musique française de la Marseillaise à la mort de Berlioz was published posthumously in 1944, and here the Damnation de Faust receives the most extensive treatment. Significantly, Landormy attempts gracefully to address the earlier nationalist rhetoric that presented France as culturally classic by arguing that classicism and romanticism are but degrees on a scale. Even Méhul (Beethoven’s French contemporary) he argues, mixed specific traits of both, and indeed all great music does so, including that of Berlioz as manifest in La damnation de Faust. Yet Berlioz for Landormy, despite his “mixture of classicism and romanticism (that one also finds in Goethe), speaks above all to the French, who alone understand him fully.123

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Since the total occupation of France, Nazi propaganda had become omnipresent and surrounded performances of even more German works, especially those of Wagner—​in some cases not just in print but also in lectures concerning his impact in France. For example, on May 2, 1943, the pianist and former pupil of d’Indy, Lucien Delforge, presented a lecture “Wagner et la France,” sponsored by the Société d’études germaniques. This lecture, which stressed the “spiritual liberation” that Wagner fostered, was later felicitously followed by a Festival Berlioz-​ Wagner under the direction of Paul Paray in December 1943.124 And within the context of escalating Nazi propaganda in France, it is important to observe that the 1943 commemoration of Debussy was marked by the widely advertised publication of the French translation of the 1940 book on the composer by the German musical journalist and scholar Heinrich Strobel. Even more significant here is the fact that it was framed by a substantial introduction by its French translator, the tendentious collaborationist writer and musical scholar André Coeuroy.125 As the collaborationist journal Panorama claimed apropos of the book’s translation, it was significantly a German scholar who was best able to argue so eloquently for the enduring value of Debussy as a representative of true French culture.126 Strobel in fact was already well known as a connoisseur of French music, and had spent long periods in France (in Provence) during the 1930s, finally leaving Germany for the latter in 1938 since, while not anti-​Nazi, he was married to a half-​Jewish woman whom he wished to protect. When war broke out he was interned in a camp in Milles, but managed to escape in October 1940 and to join the Nazis in Paris, where he became the French correspondent for the Pariser Zeitung, having already been the French correspondent for the Deutzsche Allgemeine Zeitung. Now Strobel, who was particularly adept at adapting Nazi rhetoric in music to suit the situation in France, maintained close personal ties with the German Embassy and with Dr. Fritz Piersig.127 It becomes evident in Strobel’s book that his argument is insidiously based on the presupposition (developed in Franco-​German circles in the thirties) not only that Debussy was profoundly influenced by Wagner but also that French culture is embedded in that of Europe, hence it is neither discrete nor distinct. Strobel’s book thus aptly served the current reconstruction of Debussy as “European,” as did Coeuroy’s preface, which argues that Debussy never denied Wagner but transformed the latter’s innovations in works such as Prélude à l’après-​midi d’un faune, making it in essence a French translation of “le monde sonore wagnérien.”128 In the book itself Strobel reinforces and amplifies this point, arguing for the stylistic proximity of Tristan and Pelléas and adding, with regard to the latter, that Maeterlinck’s drama itself was an echo (as opposed to an inversion) of Wagner’s text for Tristan. In addition Strobel subsequently asserts that Debussy’s ineradicable memory of Tristan fueled the suggestions of Wagner in the work, then

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adding that Debussy’s objections to Wagner were only to his “dramatic system” (implying the Wagnerian leitmotifs), which is not relevant in the particular case of Pelléas. However, it was Debussy’s personal adaptation of the leitmotif and its associated operatic dramaturgy that allowed him to realize certain implications of Wagner—​those that he found most useful, such as the treatment of the orchestra as a sort of cauldron, in which the themes could thus be welded together. Still, for Strobel, although Debussy was seeking a different kind of art, he unquestionably remained under Wagner’s spell, as one may perceive not only in the Prélude à l’après-​midi d’un faune but above all in Pelléas et Mélisande.129 Strobel’s argument was far from unique, and in 1944 a noted French scholar who had worked with Lifar at the Paris Opéra and been close to Debussy reinforced it, for this was the year that Louis Laloy published his long-​awaited book, Debussy. Here he not only argues that Tristan und Isolde was Wagner’s chef-​d’oeuvre but also claims that although Debussy belittled the Ring, Die Meistersinger, and Parsifal he nevertheless always loved and continued to cherish Wagner’s Tristan. Moreover Laloy advances that instead of perceiving Pelléas as a manifestation of Debussy’s conscious resistance to Tristan, it may rather be conceived as “another Tristan,” if one that suggests without explaining—​one that is replete with tenderness and ultimately finds absolution in human pity.130 The only dissident public voice at this point was that of Paul Landormy, whose La musique française après Debussy, appeared shortly after Strobel’s book. Here, as opposed to his interpretation of Berlioz as a French romantic greatly appreciated in Germany, he argues that Debussy cannot, in fact, be construed as a Wagnerian. This remark predictably incurred the wrath of German and collaborationist writers, as well as of Robert Bernard in his review in L’information musicale.131 But Landormy’s perspective, if isolated within the official or authorized press at this point, was by no means so in that of the now increasingly respected French intellectual resistance.

The Resistance appropriation of Debussy and of Pelléas The internal Resistance had been slowly growing, having immediately begun at the Musée de l’Homme in the summer of 1940. The appearance of this network (if one that was eventually denounced and crushed) was soon followed by the development and spread of clandestine publications in both zones. For again, by later 1941 it was clear to some, even in the unoccupied zone, that resistance to the Germans must also necessarily mean resistance to the Vichy regime. By the summer of 1942, as repression and persecution mounted, the organ of the Communist resistance, L’humanité, called for the unity of all true “patriots” in order to construct a coherent underground organization. By now the Resistance,

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joining together within and outside France, was increasingly employing the Republican mystique and rhetoric of 1793 to support its cause.132 In addition, the Resistance astutely grasped not only Vichy’s discursive strategies but also how it translated them into cultural symbols, as in the signal case of Pelléas. For as Peschanski has acutely observed, the French were now at war with one another, and it was a battle not just of arms but of words, ideas, feelings, commemorations, and images.133 Resistance intellectuals realized that it was essential to enter into a shared system of memory in order to be effective as well as understood; but this did not imply the same ideas, narratives, or behaviors. In sum, they sought a means to address the dominant center while subverting its argument, or abrogating its basic values and thereby undermining its symbolic structure.134 Hence they realized that the construction of an alternative representation of French national identity could be pursued through the reappropriation not only of Debussy but also of his now iconic Pelléas et Mélisande. Pelléas was first to play a key role in articulating a different conception of French community, or its underlying ethos, and concomitantly of the national memories and images on which it was henceforth to be based. For as the Resistance realized, it is by becoming part of a collective cultural heritage that one participates in a shared memory and in the nation—​hence the need to reconfigure that memory and its cultural or symbolic markers. This implied that the older nationalistic, classic conception of Pelléas as purely French—​that characteristic of World War I (and now being expunged by Vichy)—​had consciously to be revived. But this strategy also necessitated the definition of a different authorial voice behind the opera and highlighted the need to identify an opposing conception of Debussy’s personal intent and style. Hence the Resistance concomitantly raised the issue of authentic French classicism (as opposed to that of early Vichy traditionalists) and the question of the inherent qualities and moral values that inform it. For as they realized, if both Vichy and the Germans could employ Debussy’s opera in order to redefine the French collective spirit so too could the Resistance, which henceforth would seek discursively to reconstruct and to celebrate the work. It thus enlisted Pelléas to help define an alternative conception of collective French identity and of the relation of the individual (of authentic subjectivity) to it, if by necessity only in print. More specifically it recognized that the opera could enunciate a different “national collective” (in the Gramscian sense), one in which the individual is not subsumed but rather empowered through conscious choice and thereby accorded a true voice.135 The Resistance was well aware of the political goals that were embedded in Vichy’s current collaborationist cultural discourse, and perhaps most consistently in music, especially through its recent reinscriptions and celebrations of Pelléas. Hence it would deploy the opera in order to evoke another conception of the nation—​as Republican and

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enlightened: rather than reinforcing current political aims through the work, it sought to use it to redefine them so that Pelléas could play a conceptually reconstitutive role. The opera, conceived in this sense, served the Resistance as a rich vector of symbolic communication—​as a relay for its emerging conception of the French community, which otherwise might remain partially ineffable.136 The intellectual resistance had been active since 1942, and the first issue that September of Les lettres françaises helped to encourage the development of intellectual groupings within the Communist-​led Front national.137 Resistance literature provided a guide for the development of clandestine groups and publications in other French cultural fields, centrally including music and the visual arts. For it was French resistance writers who initially defined and disseminated their cultural and political principles in several influential journals, establishing themes that were to reappear in clandestine musical publications. For example, Max-​Pol Fouchet published an article in the journal Fontaine in March–​April 1942, under the arresting title (with a powerful resonance for other fields) “De la poésie comme exercice spirituel.” Here he speaks of poetry as perhaps the principal French spiritual force, however, as he then carefully qualifies, in neither the romantic nor the fascist sense. He also stresses the authentic values of true French culture—​those denied by both the occupant and “its Vichy collaborators”—​that must be reaffirmed, first by reclaiming the great French classic authors.138 Within this context resistance writers who were concerned with the visual arts had begun to single out specific artists as incarnations of such a pure, or unadulterated French culture. Perhaps most notably Louis Aragon, writing in L’art français, made the painter Henri Matisse the luminous symbol of an authentically French art.139 Resistance musical journals followed suit, and quickly seized on Claude Debussy; however, in developing their own perspective on the composer and on Pelléas, they already had a template, one provided by Charles Koechlin in his book on Debussy published in 1941. Koechlin, although not a formal member of a resistance grouping—​undoubtedly because of his well-​ advanced age—​had long-​standing left-​wing associations, having been close to the Popular Front and its many cultural organizations and publications in the mid-​ 1930s.140 Fortunately Koechlin’s book appeared in the early years of the Vichy regime, when the argument concerning Debussy’s close relation to Wagner was only in its incipient stage. In the volume Koechlin could thus stress other foreign influences on Debussy with impunity, which included the gypsies whom he had heard in Moscow cabarets as well as the music of Rimsky-​Korsakov, Balakirev, and Borodin.141 Since Russia had become an enemy of Germany, this was already a tenuous point to make, as was Koechlin’s emphasis on the influence of different ethnicities or races, including the gypsies, whom the Nazis were seeking to eradicate, together with the Jews.

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Even more tellingly, Koechlin explicitly argues that Debussy’s exposure to gypsy music undoubtedly accentuated his instinctive taste for a “free” kind of music, or that which was not a slave to the scholastic. This signified both an anti-​ Conservatoire and an anti-​Scholiste stance and served as a metaphor for individual and collective freedom, one that would soon be appropriated with alacrity by intellectual resistance publications. Koechlin does acknowledge the influence of Bach on Debussy, although in a manner distant from conceptions of the religious Bach propagated at the Schola Cantorum and from that of the Germans who construed him nationalistically. But as Koechlin argues, just as important for Debussy were the great musical masters of the sixteenth century, and it is significant that the French secular Renaissance would become a key reference for the French Resistance, conceived as an embodiment of individualism and of humanistic values.142 In discussing Pelléas et Mélisande, Koechlin pursues the theme of Russian influence and argues (as have many scholars) that Mussorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov had a significant impact on specific stylistic elements within the opera. For Mussorgsky’s work revealed to Debussy a different kind of musical communication, one not hindered by conventional “scholastic” rules, but rather one in which the form is always determined by and in service of the thought, or dramatic goal. Here Koechlin also refers to the incipient politicized interpretation of Debussy (becoming manifest by August 1941), observing that, while Wagner may have had a positive impact on the composer, it is a sign of true genius, and particularly of the French, always to employ the contributions of other cultures in a distinctive manner, so as to enlarge one’s own.143 Even more astutely and in telling contrast to the comparisons now emerging between Pelléas and Wagner’s Tristan, Koechlin refers to Pelléas as a great French opera, one always clear and understated, yet profoundly human. He adds, perhaps in reference to his former pupil’s (Roger Désormière’s) recent performance, that in order truly to love this opera one must appreciate those things that are inaccessible to or disdained by the vulgar, implying nuance as well as the musically subtle.144 Finally, further to distance Pelléas from Tristan und Isolde, Koechlin implicitly constructs a French canon or stylistic lineage marked by significant dates, one contrary to the now emerging and soon dominant model. His begins with Gounod’s lyrical Faust (1859), followed by Bizet’s audaciously innovative Carmen (1875), and the Bruneau-​Zola naturalist Le rêve (1891, which also adapts Wagner’s leitmotifs), all leading to Debussy’s Pelléas (1902). Then even more explicitly distinguishing Debussy and his French artistic qualities from those of Wagner, Koechlin contends that Pelléas does not suffer in the shadow of Parsifal but rather, to the contrary its power lies in its distinctive musical discretion and stylistic purity.145

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Debussy as emblematic of authentic French classicism Koechlin’s points were not forgotten and most probably had an impact on his close friends and former pupils, some of whom—​like Francis Poulenc—​would enter a musical resistance network the following year (after Désormière), and exert a palpable influence on its publications. Indeed the major lines of Koechlin’s rhetoric soon appeared in two successive articles in the journal of resistance musicians, Musiciens d’aujourd’hui, which had been distributed among musicians since April 1942 (at the time that Pierre Laval returned to power). The first article, which appeared in the journal’s fourth issue (in October 1942) carried an ideologically charged title within the context, one referring to Debussy’s self-​appellation during World War I, “Debussy—​musicien français.” It begins by deriding the current flood of ink concerning Debussy’s purported fervent love of Wagner’s works, observing with studied incredulity that some even claim the influence of Wagner not only on the early Cinq poèmes de Baudelaire but also on Pelléas et Mélisande.146 The article cedes that Debussy did arrive on the scene at the moment of efflorescence of French Wagnerism; however, it observes that he nevertheless also felt the influence of Massenet, and then of the Russians no less profoundly. But as the author pointedly remarks, this did not prevent him from becoming one of the most specifically French of all our masters, the implication being that Debussy’s work was no “translation of Wagner’s sonorous world into French,” as Coeuroy and others were claiming. Ostensibly targeting official rhetoric, he then trench­ antly observes that one frequently neglects even to mention Debussy’s own love of French music, which became inseparable from his strong, passionate, and enduring love of France. The rhetorical strategy is evidently to resuscitate the argument that had gained currency in French official writings during World War I—​that reasserting the purity or the uniqueness of French culture is tantamount to the defense of the nation.147 The association of Debussy with French classic values is central, for classicism more so than French romanticism—​too tainted by its association with the Germans—​was a valuable cultural matrix through which to assert a sense of national continuity. It was also a symbol through which to reconcile factions of the left and the right within the Resistance, while ensuring a broad comprehension and reclaiming a deep connection both with the nation and with true French patriotism. For as in any case of ritual expression, through the use of common symbols former opponents can together build an interpretive narrative capable of communicating a common past as well as a shared communal future.148 In this specific instance the Resistance, while continuing to stress several themes associated with Charles Maurras’s (or Action française) classicism, could now

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incorporate revolutionary or republican conceptions of the classic—​as associated with moral integrity, universal rights, and human liberty. And it also emphasized the fact that true French patriotism meant the rediscovery of the beauty of authentic French culture, beginning with its language and its classic poetic forms, such as the seventeenth-​century Alexandrine.149 Together with renewed appreciation of French achievement came a stress on the Western classic and humanistic tradition, or on individualism from the Greeks through the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, as differentiated from fascist romanticism. The Resistance thus conceived the classic not only in terms of the nation—​its unity, its modes of thought and expression—​but also as associated with the universal, the individual, and man’s analytic potential. Again, the classic here connoted an authentic subjectivity as opposed to being (as Michael Steinberg as put it) “subsumed in an established totality or cultural system.” The pivotal issue was the relation of the individual to the whole, or the balance eventually to be established between autonomy and integration. By the issue of June 15, 1943, Les lettres françaises was stressing (like the Action française) the preservation of true French thought, yet (as influenced by the left) as also characterized by a hatred of oppression, faith in the dignity of the human person,” and the true patriotic desire not to capitulate but rather to win.150 However, it still needed resonant new symbols of French classicism to reinvest or reappropriate, and here Debussy was pivotal as a rival representation of the French nation, as well as a carrier of new political and ideological conceptions. Debussy as a Resistance icon could thus facilitate the construction not only of a unified and competing representation of the authentic French community and its values but also of the individual’s and the artist’s place within it. Hence, as the article on Debussy cited above continues, it was because he believed French national music to be smothered by Wagnerism that the composer consecrated his life to the tenacious and merciless battle against German pomposity. In addition, the author here lauds Debussy as the protector not only of authentic French patriotism but also of the enduring cultural and political values that sustain it, for these are inextricably linked. This in fact faithfully represents the patriotic rhetoric employed by the composer himself both before and during World War I, when he turned to Rameau as a prime exemplar of an authentic and pure French art. Then even more explicitly linking French patriotism to aesthetic probity and cultural purity, the author stresses that Debussy instinctively sensed the political danger subtending the Wagnerian incursion into France, comprehending what it in essence represented.151 This was a felicitously apt projection from the past to the present political-​ cultural situation, and further to reinforce the point the author cites specific passages from some of Debussy’s writings. In particular he highlights those

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concerning the presumptuousness and pomposity of the so-​called great German conductors, noting incisively within the context that these could have been written only yesterday. Finally the author observes—​with the Resistance theme of cultural as well as territorial integrity evident—​that, at the end of his life when Debussy was direly ill he suffered even more from the French soil being trodden on than from his cancer, having urged his countrymen since 1915 to protect themselves culturally as well as militarily. Debussy had repeatedly enjoined his compatriots to rediscover their own traditionally French taste as well as their authentic national forms, or simply put, “retrouvons nôtre goût.” And again deploying resist­ance rhetoric, particularly the now persuasive argument that French values and thought must be protected, he cites Debussy’s impassioned plea concerning the necessity of preserving “la pensée française.” Debussy, in this interpretation, was becoming a prime exemplar of resistance musical values and hence was to provide the vector through which to diffuse an oppositional French cultural image. Such a picture of Debussy, as well as the rhetoric behind it, was now by no means isolated: the musical resistance press repeated it frequently in its attempt to make him into an icon for their France, once more through an apt inversion of Vichy’s current approach. In June 1943 Musiciens d’aujourd’hui published another article on Debussy and his music, titled “Debussy le libérateur,” again employing a metaphor to invoke his (and their) musical and cultural battle against the Germans and against a falsely constructed French tradition.152 Now as the prospects of liberation were looming, Debussy becomes the cultural liberator from both the Germans and Vichy—​or not only from Wagner but also from an errant conception of French music, one propagated since his own period by d’Indy and the Schola and now by official French rhetoric. Indeed the author refers specifically to “hashed over German masterpieces,” implicitly invoking the scholistes (often lauded in the French official press) who had claimed that Wagner had helped to renew as well as to purify French music by extruding the “Jewish element.” The author then makes his implied connection to Vichy and the present explicit, declaring that this “negative turn of spirit” is one found “among those who profit from the disaster.”153 Even more explicitly and topically, the article proclaims that Debussy’s penetrating intuition revealed to him the mortal perils of the Wagnerian aesthetic and ethic—​one that has been so noxiously appropriated and adapted by Nazi Germany. It also infers that the same aesthetic-​political danger still faces France, for the nation risks the loss not only of its liberties but also just as importantly of its mode of thought and its culture (as Debussy had warned); hence the battle must implacably be continued.154 In his conclusion the author (who may have been Manuel Rosenthal, by now in Paris) revealingly observes that despite the Wagnerian vogue Debussy knew how to prove his awareness of the danger, as

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well as his patriotism, through a work that liberated true French music, his opera Pelléas et Mélisande. The resonance of this parallel is inescapable given the current resistance attempt to reclaim Pelléas from Vichy, and to reinscribe it with alternative national values. This compelling construction of Debussy and of his opera would reappear in Les lettres françaises, which absorbed Musiciens d’aujourd’hui in February 1944, now under the title Le musicien d’aujourd’hui.155 The Resistance also reclaimed Berlioz (if less intensively) as a national icon and thus as quintessentially French, for through him the Comité des musiciens du Front national similarly targeted German and Vichy propaganda promoting Hitler’s ominous “new Europe.” Prominent figures in this combat included Roland-​Manuel, Elsa Barraine, Roger Désormière, Louis Durey, Georges Auric, Francis Poulenc, and Manuel Rosenthal.156 Together they also developed other more tangible tactics, such as advocating the performance as encores (since programs were carefully censored) of those works that they believed enunciated patriotism, the love of liberty, and the hatred of all racism.157 Berlioz, associated with the first two categories, was indeed important here, and in print this group denounced his “annexation,” together with Debussy, by collaborationist circles. Roland-​Manuel was particularly eloquent in denouncing the musical programs of Vichy’s Radio nationale as well as those of the German’s Radio-​Paris, arguing that French musicians must be defended—​especially Berlioz, who had been made a “collaborateur malgré lui.” Others concurred that such insidious propaganda had made Berlioz “three-​quarters German” and Debussy a fervent Wagnerian, despite the latter’s protest to the contrary throughout his mature career. Resistance musicians thus vowed to combat all such insidious German efforts as well as those of Vichy institutions and propaganda, in addition to the ideologically charged writings of collaborationist circles now dominant in Paris.158

Debussy and Pelléas as cultural emblems of liberation In August 1944, as the forces of liberation proceeded implacably toward Paris, Les lettres françaises published an already triumphal article—​one that predictably was a celebration of its values through the symbolism of Debussy and of his work. The article, in fact, bore the same title as that in Musiciens d’aujourd’hui in April 1942, “Debussy, musicien français,” and makes similar points, although here Debussy is both a metaphor for resistance values and iconic of their victory, not just culturally but also politically. For it proudly proclaims that although Debussy was politically chauvinistic, beneath his sometimes excessive rhetoric lay the purest, most dignified, and the most poignant French patriotism.159 The author in particular underlines and celebrates the example of Debussy’s artistic integrity as a model for French artists in the present. For as opposed to many, he rarely

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wrote topical “pièces de circonstance,” rather retreating into himself in order to recapture his authentic subjectivity. Further to substantiate Debussy’s individual sense of agency, the author cites his now resonant advice—​that of March 11, 1915, in which he urges French musicians to retreat or reflect carefully before breaking the final silence—​implicitly enjoining them to speak only the truth.160 Revealingly it is Debussy’s personal qualities that are underlined, including the fact that he refused performance of a new ballet in London during World War I, explaining that he did not want such a work to be staged until the fate of France had been decided. Debussy thus becomes a national hero in his adamant refusal of pursuing French patriotism only from a distance, or from cultural profiteering while safely behind the still dangerous battle lines. The author clearly adulates Debussy both as man and as creator, pointing out that he at first wisely meditated and waited, only gradually experiencing the desire to create for himself and for his country, wishing to do so in the most personally authentic manner.161 But the article also points out that Debussy refused to fall prey to rancor or to the narrowly tendentious: rather he chose to exalt French classic values, and not “sur commande,” or under official political pressures. When Debussy finally spoke musically it was because of the promptings of his inner voice, telling him that he had to surmount reflection on the recent horror and to seek out a true, or personally authentic beauty. For Debussy was well aware of the creative obstacles that had become embedded in French musical culture—​the false and heavy foreign taste that was already insinuated in its manner of thinking, of hearing, and even of feeling.162 In sum, for the author, Debussy understood the danger of the disappearance of the very culture that had nourished him creatively and realized that its eclipse would necessarily be that of his own artistic future as well as of his art. For the potential obliteration of the French mode of life and of the cultural matrix that had rendered it meaningful would have made the continuation of true French art impossible in his own time, as indeed once again in the present. The article was thus ostensibly a challenge to French artists to reclaim French art, as had Debussy—​to be a combatant for French thought and art and to manifest authentic French values. The author observes that Debussy did indeed write a series of French masterpieces, including his En blanc et noir, poignantly prefaced by a quotation from François Villon’s Ballade contre les ennemies de la France.163 It concludes by citing the still resonant words of Debussy—​his call to French artists to move beyond anguish in order once again to achieve a true French beauty: “Contenons notre angoisse, travaillons pour cette beauté dont les peuples ont l’instinctif besoin, plus fort d’avoir souffert.” (Let us contain our anguish, work for that beauty for which the people have an instinctive need, even more strongly having suffered.)164 This may help explain the continuing adulation of Debussy and of his Pelléas in postwar France, for both became representations of the continuity of French

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classicism, as well as of a cultural purge that would precede the subsequent vibrant renewal. Debussy was now an indispensible guide to a new hope and a new national vision: as symbols, both he and his opera helped to bridge the path from the French past to the present and finally to the future. Again, due in part to resistance rhetoric, the French also reclaimed Hector Berlioz, both at the Liberation and in the years that immediately followed the war. Now identified with French as opposed to German Romanticism—​its claims to individualism and to liberty, as well as its association with the Revolution of 1830—​Berlioz’s music was thus unambiguously enshrined as patriotic. Tangible testimony to this interpretation may be found in a book by Adolphe Boschot, the writer, critic, and Berlioz scholar, Le centenaire de la Damnation de Faust, published in 1946. Berlioz here becomes a revolutionary figure promoting freedom in both politics and art as well as a symbol of French resistance following defeat by the Germans in 1870 and again in 1940.165 For some, however, Berlioz’s oeuvre had never lost its identity or its aesthetic appeal, and rather than facilitating moral compromise his prominence contributed to their aesthetic imaginations throughout Vichy and the German occupation. Messiaen, for example, continued to analyze Berlioz, in addition to Debussy, in his Conservatoire and private classes during this period, and in particular La damnation de Faust. Having admired Berlioz’s independence when he helped to form his own Jeune France in the 1930s, Messiaen in wartime clung to this image, perhaps as an essential embodiment of personal and collective French resistance.166 Berlioz, then, like Debussy, was one of the few great French composers employed by Vichy, the ideological collaborationists, and the Germans, who did not now incite the anxiety of political association and influence. For due in part to resistance rhetoric, Berlioz’s music, like that of Debussy, now pointed both backward and forward—​ back to a French tradition of intrepid innovation and forward to a future world of new musical sound.

From propaganda to national healing: Debussy in  the reconstruction of cultural memory Again, as with Berlioz and his La damnation de Faust, the current image of Debussy and of his Pelléas as monolithic national icons during Vichy and the occupation occludes perception of the French political controversies conducted through them. But it is within the latter context that we may understand the particular importance ascribed to Claude Debussy, not only as a means to reconstruct French national memory but also as an exemplar of a consensual French classic model. Indeed the resistance construal of Debussy—​based on that of World War

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I, but now uniting the classic paradigms of left and right—​soon reappeared in the writings of prominent French postwar composers such as Pierre Boulez. In fact there is no better testimony to this continuity than the performance of Pelléas by Pierre Boulez, one that makes reference, if only implicitly, back to Désormière’s pertinaciously “classic” interpretation during Vichy. It is also important to be aware that when the opera was revived in 1952 at the Paris Opéra-​Comique it was with a scrupulous reconstruction of the 1902 décor, which had been a model in 1926 and once again in 1940. For the goal was once again to recreate the opera’s original subtle resonance through the visual aid of an inscription that faithfully captured the master’s authentic intentions and his musical voice as opposed to that later reimagined during Vichy.167 We can again recognize parallels with Berlioz and La damnation de Faust, which similarly became symbols of a proud and unified French cultural memory and of the national values of independence and deep integrity. For during Vichy and the occupation both Debussy and Berlioz had generated a complex of ideological associations that had allowed different groups to represent their national goals, and now they helped to mold these diverse representations back into one. At the Liberation, redefinition of their work thus became a mechanism for French national healing as well as a means to thwart symbolic collapse, giving rise to new visions and a new sense of possibility. Hence performances of Pelléas and La damnation de Faust continued to accompany the official rituals of French identity—​ritual being associated by anthropologists like Victor Turner with liminality and the transformation of states.168 For both works as symbols had eventually allowed the French either to legitimize or to reject collaboration, to confront their own identities, and then to forge a new memory now unified by such examples of their national cultural authenticity. In opera that of Pelléas was perhaps most central both during and following Vichy, for as a representation it had helped to shape the way in which the French understood, constructed, and reconstructed their experience. And Debussy himself, even more so than Berlioz, became a distinctive kind of icon, one in contrast with the Nazi use of Wagner, who was associated with an overt imposition of ideology, hence becoming a sign as opposed to an open, contested symbol. For Debussy was a Vichy emblem that eventually served to obfuscate and then legitimize its political compromise with the Germans, a tactic which the resist­ ance seized on precipitously, and henceforth combated with vigor on a symbolic and discursive plane. Such subtle resistance tactics, in the form of physical inscriptions and within Vichy’s own institutions, will also become evident in the case of Pierre Schaeffer. For he too, with time, realized that French tradition could be made to communicate in a different and more authentic manner, enunciating an alternative vision of France’s past and of her projected future.

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FROM THE LEGAL TO THE ILLEGAL: SCHAEFFER’S JOURNEY T O W A R D   R E S I S TA N C E A N D A R T I S T I C E X P L O R AT I O N

The concept of liminality perhaps best describes the Vichy regime’s initial goals in theater—​the invocation of a transitional state between the recent past and a yet undefined collective future. As Victor Turner explains, the liminal dissolves the normal, or all established structural relationships, as a prelude to an eventual reclassification—​a fundamental redefinition of one’s relation to reality, or to society as well as to culture. In the unoccupied zone, Vichy’s initial concern was with promoting the principles of the Révolution nationale, in particular its vision of the true French community, and concomitantly its authentic or indigenous culture. However, as in the occupied zone the strategies developed gradually as the regime itself evolved and defined which of its sometimes conflicting goals were successively the most essential. Its vague programs at first gave rise to specific cultural experiments, some of which (under the leadership of Darlan, his technocrats, and his ministers) were then peremptorily aborted. For these were gradually construed as lying outside the bounds of the regime’s political and social interests as they advanced, as seen in the case of Pierre Schaeffer’s Jeune France.1 In addition the key figures and institutions were different in the unoccupied zone, as were the priorities of the regime, which sought decentralization as well as a broad diffusion of culture, especially to French youth. Hence it is essential to focus on the cultural association called Jeune France, on Schaeffer’s initial relation to the Vichy regime, and on the goals that he believed they shared. It is of particular importance to observe the way in which his perceptions of Vichy slowly changed as he became aware of the political and cultural limits of its vision of the projected “new France.” While at first idealistically supporting Vichy, he later turned against it from within its own institutions, like

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the so-​called vichysso-​résistants (and some of his fellow Christian democrats). For he had sought to reinscribe the classics as well as traditional folk culture, but in a creative manner that opened up a distinctive vision of the French community, one distant from that which would emerge under Darlan. This may be observed through an analysis of the themes and texts of Schaeffer’s productions, the manner in which he physically transmitted or presented both classic and new theatrical works, and the way in which successive French officials reacted. Schaeffer grew resistant to Vichy’s cultural goals substantially before he entered the Resistance, for a complex of reasons. In fact, after the dissolution of Jeune France he continued to participate in Vichy cultural institutions, returning to the National Radio where he had been employed since the 1930s. But now, while appearing to address the regime’s concern with high-​level artistic broadcasts, he began to explore the pure power of sound and of its transmission in shaping the experience and message of artistic works. Here one may also identify the seeds not only of his later resistance tactics but also of the theoretical insights that would eventually lead him to his far-​reaching creative experiments with sound after the war. For Schaeffer would continue to incite new reflection on what is heard—​on what it means or that which it tells listeners, having begun to do so as while still employed by Vichy and gradually realizing his antipathy to its propagandistic goals.

Vichy’s attempt to remake French youth and Schaeffer’s own personal agenda Vichy sought a revolution—​one that was purportedly national and intended to instill a different set of political and cultural values than those of the Third Republic—​however, the contours of the former remained vague. Clearer were its exclusions and the quest for institutions to effect a new morality, specifically the values of “Travail, Famille, Patrie,” as proclaimed by the venerable Philippe Pétain.2 Accordingly, as Paxton puts it, numerous projects “swarmed” around Vichy by July 1940, and many of these were centered on French youth in order to achieve moral reform and train France’s future workers and elites. These ventures ranged from those being fostered by the “spiritualists,” or Catholic left, to those associated with the traditionalist French right, including Catholic conservatives as well as the Ligue de l’Action française. Here Vichy’s “Janus face,” which looked both to the past and to the future, its ideological pluralism and complex, unstable ends engendered a varied range of youth programs (within both traditional and newer channels), creating a dynamism it eventually could not control.3 For it provided new facilities that could foster experimentation

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and innovative conceptions of community, of the French tradition and its cultural values, but with time, as the regime evolved, it sought abruptly to foreclose these and more rigidly to “type” its youth.4 Originally Pierre Schaeffer, like so many, projected his idealistic youthful vision onto Vichy in its first, politically nebulous stage when all seemed possible in the “new France”—​one that would restore communal values after the venal, morally vacuous Third Republic. In the eyes of the Catholic left from which he came, Vichy’s quest to replace capitalism, parliamentary democracy, individualism, and secularization with a more organic, traditionalist, or elite-​led alternative—​thus ending the class struggle—​seemed to mirror its proclaimed ideals. Long after the war Schaeffer would publish an autobiographical novel, his Prélude, choral et fugue, in which he recounts, through his alter-​ego Simon, how he sought to profit from the spaces for liberty that the new regime at first appeared to offer. As Simon puts it in the novel, since the future seemed closed—​the occupation and war indefinite—​an activist like him found reasons for perseverance in “rusant,” or cleverly manipulating Vichy programs, although he would eventually be trapped. This would occur when the Catholicism of the “first Vichy,” that of the Révolution nationale (which sponsored both Radio-​Jeunesse and Jeune France) gave way to a more intensive pursuit of collaboration with the German occupant, which was evident by later 1941.5 Here Schaeffer may well have been attempting to exculpate himself after the fact. To grasp Schaeffer’s initial position, the recent research of historians of France is essential, for it has focused on his background in the Catholic culture of the 1930s, which was of key importance to his successive projects and evolving goals. Schaeffer was not simply an engineer who later became an artist but rather, as he himself ruefully described, the son of two musicians (a violinist and a singer) and indeed only a “polytechnicien par erreur.” His path had unfolded slowly for his interests were always mixed, especially with his secondary studies which included mathematics and philosophy at the lycée level, as well as music at the Conservatoire de Nancy, where both his parents were professors. His father, as he expatiated, not only taught violin but also played in various municipal orchestras and at the theater, while his mother taught the traditional repertoire of singers; after hearing the lessons that his parents gave at home, Schaeffer avowed that he ended up by hating music.6 But revealingly Schaeffer pointed out that he eventually rediscovered classic or so-​called bourgeois music thanks to the teaching of Nadia Boulanger, for in the early 1930s he attended her class in Paris and there discovered Bach’s true genius, and for him “la musique.” Schaeffer also later avowed that he regretted eventually attending a narrow school of engineering, after having considered the study of both literature and philosophy. But when he finally left his sheltered

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youthful and comfortable world he acutely felt the need to find and to prove himself as well as rebelliously to question everything.7 Perhaps, then, it was not only to escape his stifling family atmosphere but also to differentiate himself from his parents that Schaeffer attended the elite École Polytechnique between 1929 and 1931, and then the École Supérieure d’Électricité et des Télécommunications. He eventually became a telecommunications engineer, and then entered the Radiodiffusion française as an electro-​acoustic engineer—​a relatively new profession in France in 1936, and thus a venue through which to pursue a different path. Schaeffer thereby began a career as a French civil servant, and it is important here to recall Paxton’s point that for the latter the state represented “a positive good and bearer of values larger than the sum of individuals.”8 This may be one of the reasons for Schaeffer’s eventual decision not only to serve Vichy but also to remain in its employ even after his disenchantment, and hence to enter the Resistance relatively late. But while a student he had continued to pursue artistic interests through Catholic scouting groups, eventually becoming part of an elite unit called the “Routiers,” or Rover Scouts, the role of which in the context of his youth he later described in revealing detail. According to Schaeffer his childhood was also framed by the schoolmasters at the Catholic École Saint-​Sigisbert in Nancy, where he found a balanced and coherent world composed not only of physical activities and mathematics but also of moral reflection and metaphysics. Hence by the 1930s, as Schaeffer explained, he felt a part of a happy and confident generation of Catholic youth seeking to integrate their harmonious universe with Christianity, although one that was substantially different from that of the established Catholic Church. For they constructed their own world, while at the same time attempting to renew older Catholic scouting practices, not only going on camping trips but also discovering new horizons in both nature and communal life—​as Schaeffer would later seek to do in Jeune France. The universe that they imagined appeared to them to be “dur et pur,” not that of their parents and the bourgeoisie; but later, in the turbulent thirties, they would discover that this utopian vision could no longer hold. As his coherent world was crumbling, Schaeffer poignantly recorded it in a series of poetic essays that were published in 1934 in the Revue des jeunes, and thereafter in his book about the troop’s inspiring leader, Clotaire Nicole, who died tragically in a climbing accident at just age twenty-​two.9 Here Schaeffer reveals the appeal of Catholic scouting: it not only provided the occasion to meet others but also the support of a closely knit community, one that was in search of personal liberty or adventure and was motivated by a desire to train the young scouts who were eventually placed in their charge.10 Significantly, what Schaeffer so admired in Nicole and would emulate throughout his own life

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was Nicole’s spirit of independence and his search for new potential, as well as his natural sense of leadership. Moreover, although a “polytechnicien” and thus part of an elite group of youth, Nicole nevertheless spoke sympathetically of the communists because of their idealistic and large social goals. For as Schaeffer explained, they all felt constrained by a certain “déformation polytechnicienne,” or too narrowly enclosed in subjects such as math, and it was Nicole who inspired them to seek a “culture plus complète,” a goal that Schaeffer maintained not only throughout but after Vichy.11 Schaeffer’s book Clotaire Nicole was produced through a new publishing house called Le Seuil, the intellectual orientation of which was “nonconformist,” or associated with French youth who were seeking a new spiritual path that abjured the political solutions to the current crises being proffered by the established left and right. More specifically it was opposed not only to the traditionalist French right but also to both the centrist liberals and the classic left, the latter being too closely associated with Marxist tendencies, which they rejected.12 Schaeffer himself explained that, although not at all disinterested at this point, he still held himself apart from politics, musing that perhaps it was because he was more sensitive to questions of universal values than to immediate objectives or precise ideologies.13 Hence this was the period when he discovered and first became associated with the nonconformist journal Esprit, although he had not yet met its founder (and later his advisor and collaborator in Jeune France), the influential Emmanuel Mounier. It was in 1933 that Schaeffer encountered Esprit as well as Mounier’s “personalism,” the belief that the person affirms his own values and that the individual is defined spiritually, being also connected by mutual responsibility to his community as well as the universe.14 For the nonconformist movement stressed not only individual responsibility, or the “human person,” but also man’s place among all beings and hence his connection to humanity throughout the world, regardless of race, nation, politics, or class. Moreover, in opposition to both idealism and nationalism, as well as to the Catholic goal of Christian transcendence, it emphasized a so-​called philosophie du mystère—​one of a permanent revolution, or an incessant search for truth and values, which would similarly remain central to Schaeffer.15 Most immediately, his association with such philosophical-​religious ideals would prove important to his formulation of the association Jeune France during Vichy, which would draw on noncomformist themes and ideals as well as prominent figures within the movement. But Jeune France, like Schaeffer’s preceding project during Vichy, Radio Jeunesse, was also informed by his theatrical experience in the context of scouting circles, and specifically in Léon Chancerel’s Comédiens-​Routiers, a performance group that was begun in 1929. In order to develop an authentic communal spirit Chancerel included intensive choral training, which involved not only singing

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but also recitations pronounced in unison, with an accent on clear articulation and precise and incisive rhythm. In addition, well before his own efforts as a playwright within the context of Jeune France, Schaeffer wrote a Catholic mystery play, his Mystère des rois mages (named after his scouting troop), which was staged in 1934 with a cast of all scouts at Saint-​Étienne du Mont.16 Schaeffer’s Catholicism was evidently never orthodox, Christian sacraments for him being part of his sought-​after “vie expérimentale.” It was from this perspective, as he professed, that religious experience was always more important to him than the objective domain of science. For according to Schaeffer the religious realm is one that posits man as in search of God; but this is a path that cannot be followed without an interior transformation, one that will allow us first to love our fellow man within this terrestrial world. Schaeffer would continue to be guided, both in his life and in his art, by his conviction that this quest must be pursued not through science or psychology, but rather through reflection and subjective agency, as other religions—​particularly those of the orient—​have understood and may teach us.17 After his disillusionment with the Catholic Church during Vichy he would later turn to the syncretic philosophy (or blend of the elements form the world’s great religions) taught by Georges Ivanovitch Gurdjieff.

Radio-​Jeunesse and Vichy’s new sound culture Like other young men, Schaeffer was mobilized in 1939 and sent to Bourgogne, near Belfort, to be part of the 15th Division of the Infantry as an “adjoint au commandant des transmissions.” His wife and young daughter Marie Claire, who was born in 1933, were able to join him in Altkirch from November 1939 to April 1940. He was then sent to Dordogne, and finally was demobilized in Toulouse on June 26, 1940, where he had been a “sapeur-​télégraphiste.”18 After his demobilization Schaeffer, at twenty-​nine, was drawn to Vichy, attracted by the ferment of new ideas concerning cultural renewal and the formation of France’s youth. He was not the only one from the Catholic youth movements of the 1930s who was drawn to Vichy, for many such as he, in the early phase of the new government, perceived an opportunity to put their ideals into action. This would be especially true when Georges Lamirand was named secrétaire général à la jeunesse in September 1940, and Pierre Gaudet the first directeur de la jeunesse (from July 1940 to January 1941). The latter had, along with Lamirand, formed a civic action and reflection group in 1938 in connection with the journal Départ. Vichy at first was marked by the proliferation of youth movements of many different leanings, although they were forbidden in occupied zone.19 As Schaeffer was to put it in his memoires, he was thus lured by the sense of new beginnings and professional opportunities: for an ambitious young engineer

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of his broad background, Vichy’s stress on youth and communications appeared to provide an ideal career opening. Schaeffer also realized that he could offer an expertise that, in effect, was still quite rare in France, since there was not yet a real profession of sound engineer, or even a recognized area of professional specialization in this domain. Moreover Schaeffer had already made himself known to the relevant professional circles with the publication the previous year of his innovative pedagogic handbook Vingt leçons et travaux pratiques destinés aux musiciens mélangeurs de RDF. Sensing, like Messiaen, that he was part of a new French generation, he also believed that France’s youth could find a space for its expression and to pursue its dreams, as well as its battles within the context of a political situation that remained unclear and still in flux. Schaeffer was thus pulled into this exciting world of possibility, as were many in Vichy’s ambiguous, ideologically nebulous stage, when the quest appeared to be for a better future achieved in part through a total reorganization of French society.20 The regime was initially a cauldron of ideas, particularly with regard to youth movements: Schaeffer here inserted himself quickly, devising an ambitious plan and seeking out those other former scouts recruited by Vichy’s Catholic technocrats, who saw youth and technology as a natural pairing. Especially helpful was Lamirand, since he had been previously involved in Catholic scouting and youth movements and was himself an engineer as well as close to Schaeffer in terms of age.21 Both Lamirand and Schaeffer were well aware that Vichy’s project to form a new community of French youth depended largely on the development of innovative means of communication. France’s physical fragmentation demanded a new information culture as well as novel forms of its broad circulation or diffusion. In addition, throughout the occupation the Germans were in possession of a large part of the infrastructure of the radio, which necessitated not only a reorganization of that which now remained but also the development of technological innovations. The Germans suppressed the large radio stations in Paris and installed their own Radio-​Paris. Vichy, in the unoccupied zone, now established the Radiodiffusion nationale, administered by Léon Brouillon and placed under the former secrétaire général of information, Jean Prouvost. Pétain himself now realized that with the absence of all elections he had to establish a personal or direct relation with his scattered French constituents, and it had to be accomplished at least in part through the virtual space provided through the radio. He was thus convinced of the primary importance of developing this medium for information and propaganda; as a result, already in the summer of 1940 Pétain had a substantial studio for radio transmission installed in Vichy.22 Schaeffer was astutely aware of this, but also that new communal networks could be established through innovative technologies, creating an aural France that expressed a dynamic, emergent French youth. This in turn could help to

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combat the purported moral decay attributed by many to the effects of contemporary visual media and particularly to newspapers and the movies. For sound devoid of the visual element could both awaken and communicate more powerfully, the medium of transmission here refracting the new message in crucial ways, hence further shaping perception on the part of French youth. Schaeffer thus sought an experimental sound culture, as well as new modes of presentation, in order to diffuse an ideological message in which he at first believed—​one that promised moral regeneration and a space for bold technological experimentation.23 Well aware of the competition among Vichy projects for youth movements, he now ingeniously devised his own, designed to appeal not only to Vichy’s prominent technocratic faction but also to its social-​Catholic, or Christian Democratic wing.24 A broad and resilient individual, Schaeffer possessed not only the requisite expertise to help him conceive the first of several expansive projects but also the management skills and crucial contacts, in addition to his social and moral engagement and cultural imagination. Schaeffer’s initial project was to be Radio-​ Jeunesse, which he started planning in July 1940, here inserting himself into a significant gap, especially now in light of the sonorous experimentation being undertaken by the Nazi-​run station, Radio-​Paris. Radio-​Jeunesse was then formally launched on August 15, 1940, as a daily fifteen-​minute program broadcast at 1:15, and under the control of the radio section of the propaganda bureau within the Secrétariat à la jeunesse.25 Schaeffer promptly recruited a talented group of collaborators, including those whom he already knew such as Paul Flamand and Claude Roy, in addition to new associates Pierre Barbier, Roger Leenhardt, Albert Ollivier (men of the theater), and the musician Jean-​Yves Daniel-​Lesur. The latter (a composer and organist, formerly in Messiaen’s group Jeune France), when first mobilized had become a “régisseur artistique,” or assistant director, at the national radio service of the 8th Regiment (between February and September 1939). Following his demobilization in July 1940 he returned to radio at Clermont-​Ferrand, now as a musical “mélangeur” to balance sonorities for orchestral broadcasts. Daniel-​Lesur then worked with the Radio Nationale at Lyon, and in October 1940 he left for Vichy, where he would host the broadcast “Le courrier musical des jeunes” for Radio-​Jeunesse.26 Aside from Daniel-​Lesur the majority of Schaeffer’s associates came from Catholic scouting circles and from nonconformist groupings, hence it is not surprising that Radio-​Jeunesse would soon take an artistic turn, after its initially prop­ agandistic stage. Leenhardt, who worked in the cinema, had been drawn to Vichy by Emmanuel Mounier, although the latter (unlike Leenhardt) did not immediately distrust Pétain and, at first believing in Vichy’s potential, sought to reassemble his former collaborators on the nonconformist journal he had founded, Esprit.

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Mounier, like other personalists, was attracted to Vichy in its first, still nebulous phase, for it seemed to respond to his own disillusion with bourgeois individualism and the parliamentary system. Believing like Schaeffer that he could use the new regime to help achieve his spiritualist goals, he resumed the publication of Esprit in the unoccupied zone, where it was allowed, but after pushing Vichy’s limits it would be banned in August 1941.27 Originally it was Mounier who alerted Leenhardt not only that there were common friends at Vichy (such as Henri-​Irénée Marrou) but also that a certain Pierre Schaeffer was starting a radio broadcast and thus in search of a technician and a journalist—​someone with a “sensibilité Front Populaire,” or culturally more to the left. Those whom Schaeffer himself recruited (on the advice of Daniel-​Lesur) included Maurice Martenot, who had been summoned to Vichy by Alfred Cortot, now briefly the high commissioner of beaux-​arts. Cortot, having learned that Martenot was out of work, proposed to employ his “Méthode Martenot” to teach music to the children of refugees who had fled south from the occupied sector. Significantly, Martenot was also inventor of the ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument that had frequently been used by Léon Chancerel’s Comédiens Routiers in the 1930s. In fact Martenot’s school, as well as his manufacturing plant, were located in Neuilly (just outside Paris), where Chancerel’s group was based.28 The goal of the program that this new team broadcast was to impart information and words of hope, as well as inspiration, to the nation’s now widely scattered youth. Even with propaganda Schaeffer’s collaborators were indeed creative, conceiving a series of eight broadcasts called “La Réponse des jeunes au message du Maréchal.” These programs were actually a projected response on the part of French youth to Pétain’s speech that had addressed them on October 11, 1940. Here Pétain’s original message was not read by the voice of the aged maréchal himself, but rather declaimed inspirationally by Alfred Cortot, now a “chargé de mission” (appointed by Lamirand) for cultural questions concerning youth. The purported response by French youth was a poetic paraphrase suggesting personal testimony and delivered in a style devised by Pierre Barbier, Albert Ollivier, and Maurice Jaquemont. Employing the model of scout theatricals, it was recited collectively by scout performers, who were here reinforced by members of Vichy’s youth corps, the Compagnons de France.29 While thus communicating French youth’s collective force, this technique also simultaneously remedied the technical problem of poor levels of transmission, resulting from the lack of adequate power. The seven responses were broadcast between October 14 and 20, 1940, and were embellished by folkloric-​style music by Daniel-​Lesur and Pierre Delay. In addition, for the occasion Schaeffer himself wrote a “Chant de la jeunesse,” which was set to music by Pierre Delay under the title “Sous les cloches de la fête.” Schaeffer’s uplifting text concerned

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the new French generation that had been born of defeat but now possessed the will to rise and thus needed courage as well as hope. In addition to these programs Radio-​Jeunesse included not only excerpts from Pétain’s other speeches but also readings from Péguy, poetic interludes arranged by Claude Roy, choral singing, and information regarding Vichy’s youth programs. And in October and November 1940 Cortot himself inaugurated a series of broadcasts on “chansons folkloriques” (again, a current point of stress for Vichy) on Schaeffer’s new radio program for youth.30 However, in diffusing the required propaganda through such new modes of presentation Schaeffer was already encountering an inherent tension that would only be augmented with time. As he later acerbically put it, soon he was chafing at the distasteful task of imparting a noble tone to the “non-​pensées” of the Maréchal, their platitudinous nature becoming all too evident as he sought effectively to broadcast them to French youth. Indeed Claude Roy pointed out that the group here working with Schaeffer was, in the course of its experience with these broadcasts, growing of wary Pétain, with some within it soon becoming “anti-​ pétainiste.” By November 1940 Schaeffer’s team realized that they were not comfortable diffusing the regime’s political propaganda, and Pétain’s meeting with Hitler at Montoire in late October, as well as Laval’s attempt to control French radio, may help to explain this discomfiture.31 But while those in the circle around him were defining their own oppositional values, Schaeffer (as he later admitted) still held that that Vichy provided a necessary shield against Nazism. Here he resembled that faction of the Resistance who initially maintained ideological or institutional ties to Vichy, believing in Pétain himself, while resolutely opposing the Germans. Moreover the first issue of Témoignage chrétien, in November 1941, stated its ideological objection to National Socialism due to its racism, its refusal of human dignity, its paganism, and its sense of superiority.32 Many Catholics were attracted to Pétain in 1940, impressed by the value that he placed on the Church, but this would change substantially by later 1941. Schaeffer subsequently regretted this period of his own life and career when, in order to advance his own ideals, he blindly participated in pétainist propaganda, attempting to diffuse it in innovative ways.33 For he remained absorbed with the idea that the medium of transmission transforms the content as well as our perception, separating sound from its original sense and imbuing with a potentially different meaning. And as he also realized, if the radio could veil certain messages as it bypasses the information revealed in image and gesture—​transforming political discourse into something more ineffable—​it could open up new significance in other kinds of texts.34 Schaeffer thus explored new modes of diffusion of other sorts of texts, including the artistic, still believing idealistically that his project served the interests

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of French youth, as benevolently furthered by Vichy and its program of French national regeneration. These texts included the writings of the great French Catholic writer Charles Péguy, as well as the poetic readings conceived by Claude Roy as interludes within programs composed primarily of information and prop­ aganda. Yet significantly Péguy, although claimed by Vichy circles, was here construed in a different sense by the spiritualists around Schaeffer—​as associated not with a return to the past or obedience to established power but rather with the fight for social justice and honor—​for true patriotic and Christian as well as human and collective values.35 In addition, Schaeffer’s team employed not only spoken choruses (as in previous Catholic scouting theatricals) but also choral singing, led by the station’s choir director, Olivier Hussenot, a former Comédien Routier in Schaeffer’s scouting theatrical troop. Still Schaeffer sensed the limitations of Vichy Radio, which had to consist primarily of information, hence leaving little room for art. Like his colleagues, he no longer found the former to be compelling and felt the need to distance himself from overt propaganda as well as from Vichy’s increasingly stifling atmosphere. His frustration now prompted him to explore other possible new ventures, which he continued to believe (perhaps with blind idealism) lay within the purview of Vichy’s program of French cultural renewal. Schaeffer thus ceased broadcasting on Radio-​Jeunesse in May 1941, now passing the direction of it on to Jean Thévenot (a creatively innovative and fervent Catholic) in order to devote himself entirely to his new interest.36

Schaeffer’s quest to make tradition dynamic in Jeune France Schaeffer’s artistic impulse was growing stronger as he realized how new technologies could interact not only with emerging information cultures but also with established artistic traditions—​that artistic texts could be infused with new dynamism within contemporary aural and visual cultures. While working at the radio before the war (with some of the team that now helped him develop his new project), Schaeffer had already realized that the artworks he presented at this point were of more interest to him than his technical responsibilities. Now his experience in Catholic scout theater, his new circle of collaborators, and Catholic contacts at Vichy propelled him to conceive an even more innovative and ambitious cultural venture.37 As Schaeffer realized, since a majority of French writers and artists had fled south because of the German occupation they needed to be employed, and thus might now constructively be reassembled and culturally mobilized. But it was not the older generation that appeared to be most active or indeed interesting under these conditions: it was French youth—​young artists in

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all the cultural fields—​who had new vitality to contribute. Hence, according to André Clavé, a major goal of the association was to bring French youth in all the arts together, providing them with work that would include training those young Frenchmen who were grouped in Vichy’s various new youth camps. Encouraged by Alfred Cortot, Schaeffer thus chose the name Jeune France, which he borrowed (with permission only later) from the group of four musicians formed in 1936—​Olivier Messiaen, André Jolivet, Yves Baudrier, and Jean-​Yves Daniel-​ Lesur—​all of whom became active members in his adventurous artistic project.38 Significantly, the original concert society Jeune France also consisted of fellow Catholics who were predominantly of “spiritualist,” or nonconformist intellectual orientation. Daniel-​Lesur had gone on to join Schaeffer in Vichy Radio; Messiaen would be recruited on his release from a German prison camp; the lesser-​known Baudrier would contribute to several projects; and Jolivet would become involved in the association’s Parisian branch.39 The new artistic venture would be centered on creative interaction and community achieved through theater, while stressing decentralization, innovative appropriation of France’s cultural patrimony, and wide presentation of the nation’s newer art. For Schaeffer, as a result of his own recent experience, now fully realized that a work’s meaning is inflected by the way in which one comes to know it—​that the forms that carry discourse, as well as the mode of presentation, help to shape a text’s specific sense. And in seeking both inclusion and broad diffusion Jeune France was conceived within the ideals introduced by the Popular Front, which developed new mass spectacles that would further not only popular education but also cultural leisure.40 Aware of the power of transmitted sound and of the potential that theater or performance offers, Schaeffer sought new communicative possibilities by opening up new meanings in canonic art, and searching for new modes of creative expression. As Schaeffer put it, his goal was not simply to return to France’s cultural past but rather fundamentally to recreate it in order to thus forge a “culture nouvelle,” and hence a new national artistic future.41 Several of Schaeffer’s closest colleagues at Vichy Radio already shared this very aspiration, and indeed some of them would join him in this venture, together with other new creative collaborators. Once more Schaeffer promptly seized full advantage of the novelty and flux of France’s administrative situation, or the unprecedented opportunity for innovation and for change, and of his contacts within Vichy’s youth sector as well as his knowledge of its internal workings. Although it would be subject to censorship and an increasingly close surveillance, Jeune France seemed to provide a space of relative liberty for creativity and the expression of French youth. Julian Jackson has argued that although its reputation would later suffer from its association with Vichy politics, it is an example of the possibilities that the regime appeared

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to offer for those who implacably rejected its conservative agenda.42 As opposed to Vichy’s nostalgia for a supposedly authentic “vieille France,” Schaeffer’s team sought to reinvigorate traditional regional culture—​to experiment with new means to make it living and thus dynamic. Despite Lamirand’s traditionalism, Jeune France was able to reconcile Vichy’s quest for the communitarian, the folkloristic, and the propagandistic with creativity and modernity, hence allowing those of different ideologies and backgrounds to project their cultural conceptions onto the venture.43 Lamirand would again help to support and fund Schaeffer’s cultural project, well aware not only of the latter’s vision but of his gift for organization, in addition to his ability to lead, motivate, and supervise his personnel. For Schaeffer proposed a new “cultural association” that would respond to Vichy’s purported quest for cultural renewal as well as its desire for an artistic decentralization that targeted, in particular, French youth. Hence Jeune France was a private cultural association, subsumed under the extant law of 1901, but founded through the aegis of the secrétaire général à la jeunesse, who was thus responsible for funding it.44 However, Schaeffer knew immediately that his association would nevertheless have to compete for funding and resources with myriad other projects being developed at Vichy for the professional and cultural formation of French youth. He thus elaborated his venture with the aid of Emmanuel Mounier, Roger Leenhardt, Pierre Seghers, and Claude Roy; this group stressed their desire to help young unemployed artists, allowing then to direct activities for other youth who were now idle and disorganized following the nation’s abrupt defeat. Schaeffer had approached Mounier, whom he admired and now finally met in person; the latter called on his own friend Roger Leenhardt, who had been part of the Esprit circle in the 1930s, even though he was a protestant who then became agnostic.45 Together their concern was not just with providing the traditional activities of Catholic youth, such as nights around the campfire, but also to foster the conditions for a fundamental renovation of French artistic creation and of general culture. Here Vichy officials were not able to foresee the range of consequences that would ensue from allowing young men such as Schaeffer to design a bold new project for French youth, and the cultural momentum that it would ineluctably create. For together with his group of collaborators Schaeffer sought to develop a dynamic “culture nouvelle,” as well as to create an “homme complet” who heeds “the call of spirit,” the latter goal dear to Mounier and close to Catholic scouting. His venture, particularly the former aspect, would incite the hostility of Hautecoeur, who did not want an innovative or parallel enterprise, as well as of Jérôme Carcopino, who sought a stricter control over all projects for French youth. However, Cortot supported it and became a member of its comité

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directeur, as did prestigious French contemporary writers and intellectuals like Paul Claudel.46 As Schaeffer was subsequently to put it in the brochure that he wrote in collaboration with Mounier, Jeune France: Principes, directions, esprit, their aim was not to return to the French past but to recreate it in order to forge a different future as well as to help achieve authentic personal and spiritual affirmation. Even in his other tract (palpably designed to reassure Vichy) La voie est libre, Schaeffer stresses liberation from the constraints of “le bon sens”; however, he slowly realized that his vision of a new path would lead him ineluctably from official approbation to consternation and then to censure.47 Again, at first he astutely recognized that like the other cultural projects now proliferating his would have to compete for adequate state subventions, and this necessarily necessitated an appeal to the principles of the Révolution nationale. In the beginning he did believe that many of Vichy’s goals were those he shared—​to remedy moral decay by fostering a new authentically national culture rooted in France’s true traditions, but still allowing for creative adaptation and innovation. He was thus convinced that his quest for artistic quality and for spiritual depth was consonant with Vichy’s program of cultural regeneration as well as renovation. Hence through Jeune France, Schaeffer sought sincerely to accomplish (as he put it) an “oeuvre civique” by training young artists as well as teachers, so that they could finally assume their rightful place within the new emerging French community.

Jeune France’s organization and range of projects To this end, on November 22, 1940, Schaeffer became directeur général of the cultural association Jeune France, with his old friend from Catholic scouting circles, Paul Flamand, in the capacity of his directeur adjoint and in charge of its activities in the occupied zone. In the unoccupied zone he placed Raymond Cognat in charge, while he himself oversaw and coordinated the association’s activities in both zones. During the first two years the unoccupied zone naturally offered greater freedom for maneuver; it also had the advantage of the fact that the large French newspapers, formerly based in Paris, were now located in Lyon. Moreover the latter city had become a center for prominent French Catholic intellectuals such as Emmanuel Mounier and his circle, as well as the Christian existentialist Gabriel Marcel. The presence of the latter figures and of the great French press was indeed fortunate for Schaeffer; in fact Jeune France would come to wide attention when Le Figaro announced its creation in a notice by André Warnod on December 12, 1940. Here the author points out that the new association, supported by the Secrétariat général de la jeunesse, sought to bring together young artists or creators in theater, music, the plastic arts, and literature.48

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The two main branches of Jeune France were those in Lyon and in Paris, and in the latter case—​being in the occupied zone—​it was “tolerated” but not official.49 Yet the fact that the association was not official in the occupied zone actually carried an advantage, since it was here divested of obligations overtly to diffuse French national propaganda, which was prohibited by the German occupant. The latter was concerned with any sign of anti-​German sentiment in culture, and gradually its interest (as that of Vichy) was with furthering Franco-​ German cooperation. Still, at first Jeune France in the occupied zone enjoyed a greater degree of creative liberty since it was free of Vichy’s cultural structures as well as its ideological agenda.50 In both zones Jeune France maintained a “bureau d’études,” which established the programs that it would inaugurate or sponsor; it also selected and monitored those who ran the pedagogical “maîtrises” (or workshops), which prepared youth to teach the different arts and to help shape a future public. André Clavé, who oversaw the maîtrises, was himself involved in theater and had his own theatrical touring company, called La Roulotte. Having worked with Schaeffer and Flamand in Vichy Radio, he ended up detesting Vichy’s stifling atmosphere, and eventually left to join Schaeffer and others in Lyon.51 Also prominent in Lyon was Roger Leenhardt, who eventually was sent to Marseille, where he attempted (unsuccessfully) to found a branch of Jeune France in North Africa. His colleague in this venture, Max-​Pol Fouchet, had also come from the Esprit circle and himself soon became a communist as well as a résistant. Around each major branch of Jeune France, Schaeffer and his colleagues established the so-​called Maisons Jeune France, regional centers (such as that in Toulouse, under the direction of Léon Chancerel) intended to further the association’s cultural reach. In the unoccupied zone there were three such Maisons—​ in Lyon (which was the largest), in Aix-​Marseille (which had sought to extend to North Africa), and in Toulouse. The occupied zone had two Maisons in Paris and Le Mans (west of Paris, located in the Department of the Sarthe.) The latter, in fact, was largely devoted to musical activities, and it also maintained an orchestra that would tour the countryside.52 In addition to this structure Schaeffer established a Comité directeur (or board), under the aegis of which the association was officially to act. Significantly, it consisted of equal numbers of Vichy officials and of those who were prominent in the arts, an arrangement that would inherently carry fateful tensions. The Vichy officials on the board of course included Lamirand as well as Louis Hautecoeur, the secrétaire général des beaux-​arts, who was hostile to the group. It also included Paul Marion, who (in August 1941, under Darlan) was to become secrétaire général à l’information, in charge of propaganda and part of the fascicizing group at Vichy. In addition Marion was close to Georges Pelerson, the head of the Sécrétariat general à la jeunesse (in charge of youth) in the occupied zone,

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and often in conflict with the Catholic traditionalists Lamirand and Garonne.53 Marion himself was the head of the group that would eventually persecute Jeune France, calumniating and sanctioning the organization until its dissolution in the spring of 1942. Among the artists on Schaeffer’s board were Alfred Corot, Jacques Copeau (in theater), and the writers Paul Claudel and Jean Giraudoux. The latter, like Claudel, would slowly grow disillusioned with Pétain and Vichy; in fact Giraudoux became suspect by the regime, which feared him as a potentially dangerous agitator. Although Schaeffer disliked Claudel’s work and thus was not happy having him on the board, they would eventually follow the same path away from Vichy, which they had first embraced as hopeful Catholics.54 But again, the real activities of Jeune France were run by the two Bureaux d’études, which coordinated the seven artistic sections as well as monitoring the directors of the various and widely scattered pedagogical maîtrises. It auditioned young troops who were looking for support and served as a selection committee for texts as well as a musical jury, in addition to overseeing all the productions that bore the name Jeune France. In theater the Bureau consisted of Maurice Jacquemont and Olivier Hussenot as well as Jean Vilar (who founded the postwar Avignon Festival). The literary section, based in the Paris bureau, included Albert Ollivier, Claude Roy, Maurice Blanchot, and Albert-​Marie Schmidt (the latter a Calvinist and historian of sixteenth-​century literature). Among those in the musical section were Jean-​Yves Daniel-​Lesur and Maurice Martenot (in Lyon), as well as Annette Dieudonnet and Jacques Chailley (in Paris). The section devoted to radio and cinema boasted, among others, Claude Roy and Roger Leenhardt (in Lyon); that focusing on plastic art (in Paris) included Jean Bazaine and Edouard Pignon.55 Despite its Vichy sponsorship and its intricate structure, because of the division of France into two zones (as well as the rivalries within the Vichy administration) there was in fact at first little oversight, making Jeune France a realm of relative artistic liberty. This would eventuate in the very kind of dynamism and experimentation that Jean-​Pierre Rioux aptly distinguished as “la culture sous Vichy,” as opposed to the restrictive conceptions of “la culture de Vichy.” For the former was one that could creatively adapt and use the regime’s initially ambiguous and shifting cultural programs, particularly in the unoccupied zone during the first two years.56 In the specific case of Jeune France, this was due in part to Schaeffer’s creative team, which included those figures with whom he had worked in Catholic scouting circles and at Vichy radio. Among these were Pierre Barbier, Paul Flamand, and Maurice Jacquemont—​the latter, like Schaeffer, a form­er Comédien Routier and also a polytechnicien. They also included Daniel-​ Lesur (the composer and collaborator on Vichy radio), Albert Ollivier, Maurice Martenot, and Claude Roy.

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Martenot was among those who found the Vichy ambience stifling and thus agreed to join Schaeffer in the Lyon branch, where (because of his pedagogical background) he was essential in establishing a maîtrise. Roy had come originally from the right-​wing conservative Ligue de l’action française, but in the course of Vichy would move into the Resistance and then into the Communist Party.57 Paul Flamand and Albert Ollivier had been part of the militantly antidemocratic wing of the nonconformist movement—​that which had articulated its ideas in the journal Ordre nouveau. Jacquemont had been a Comédien Routier (like several of the others involved) and then, informed by Catholic scouting values, began his own itinerant theater company. Here it is important to observe that the influential Comédiens Routiers had drawn not only on Catholic sacred models but also on classical tragedy, which its leader, Léon Chancerel, admired. This mélange, as well as the communal ideals and techniques of recitation associated with Catholic scouting groups, would reappear in Schaeffer’s new productions, if in a more experimental artistic context.58 While Schaeffer welcomed those of different political orientations, his initial group was rooted in the nonconformist currents of the 1930s—​those that believed not in conventional political solutions but in individual spiritual regeneration, as well as the importance of the ties that bind all human beings. Again, this also included Roger Leenhardt, the writer and innovator in the field of cinema, who had been close to Mounier and his circle in the 1930s, and hence had been drawn by them into Jeune France. However, despite Schaeffer’s preference for this group, he welcomed participants from across Vichy’s spectrum, including current members of the Ligue de l’Action française such as Jean de Fabrègues (who joined the Lyon branch) and Maurice Blanchot (who became part of the literary section based in Paris).59 But the personalist or spiritualist element remained most prominent, particularly among the musicians recruited by the composer Daniel-​Lesur. The latter had attended the Conservatoire and been a student of Charles Tournemire, then teaching counterpoint at the Schola Cantorum as well as becoming organist at the Benedictine Abby in Paris. Among the musicians he brought in were Olivier Messiaen (also a Conservatoire graduate and admirer of Tournemire), who needed employment following his release from a German prisoner-​of-​war camp and arrived at Vichy on March 10, 1941. Both Daniel-​Lesur and Messiaen were admirers of Maurice Martenot, the pedagogue and inventor of the eponymous electronic instrument (that continued to fascinate Messiaen), and who had entered Schaeffer’s circle through the radio. Although Messiaen joined with an administrative position he enthusiastically participated in the association’s artistic projects, as did the other members of the original group Jeune France, André Jolivet (in Paris) and Yves Baudrier.

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The latter (who composed much film music) had been at Vichy since October 1940, participating in Ciné Jeunesse, a center for young artists, composers, and musicians who wished to work in film. Jolivet, who remained in Paris, was there in contact with Paul Flamand, who was now the director of Jeune France’s activities in the occupied zone. Other musical members and associates included a student of Messiaen, Bernard Delapierre (who collaborated with Roger Leenhardt), Léo Preger (a student of Nadia Boulanger), and Jacques Chailley, the musicologist, composer, and (as of 1941) assistant director of the Paris Conservatoire.60 In the unoccupied zone the association’s musical activities were centered on the teaching maîtrise in Lyon, under the direction of Maurice Martenot, whose pedagogical expertise and experience was a substantial asset. For its goal was to train French youth between the ages of about eighteen and twenty-​five to teach the arts to nonprofessionals, yet always seeking to remain on the most artistically exacting level. Hence Martenot brought together teachers of solfège, drawing, dramatic art, and (as expected by Vichy) traditional French regional dances. The young men and women who were trained here subsequently returned to teach in Vichy’s youth movements, where they sought to impart their newfound artistic knowledge to those from a broad range of classes.61 The maîtrises were organized around “ateliers” (or studios), and one—​for orchestral musicians—​included a symphony orchestra, the Orchestre symphonique de France, which provided employment for professional musicians who had lost their jobs—​including Jews (as long as possible), despite Vichy’s racial laws. The orchestra traveled on several important tours, together with singers, actors, a children’s choir, and costumers, performing works such as the Honegger-​Claudel oratorio Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher some ninety-​four times in the unoccupied zone. In addition to hiring Jews, Jeune France sought other means to help protect them, such as assisting in the dissimulation of identities and hiding some forty-​five Jewish families in the convent that served as the association’s headquarters in Lyon.62

Jeune France and Mounier’s “revolutionary humanism” The humanist component of Jeune France was always strong, and perhaps the most prominent spiritualist and philosopher in Schaeffer’s group was its cultural advisor, Emmanuel Mounier, who brought with him colleagues from his journal Esprit. Mounier had long been interested in movements aimed at the spiritual guidance of youth, and at the start of Vichy he was involved in another such project—​one of the new government-​funded leadership training schools, the École nationale des cadres, in the town of Uriage. Housed in the spacious Chateau d’Uriage, in the Alps near the city of Grenoble, the school was placed under the direction of Pierre Dunoyer de Ségonzac, another former leader in

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Catholic scouting. However, a dominant figure at Uriage was the Catholic intellectual Hubert Beuve-​Méry, who had recently joined the Esprit circle, and after the war would found the newspaper Le monde. The goal of the school was not only to serve the country but also to contribute to the renaissance of the new national community, one imagined as animated by solidarity as well as by truly human and spiritual values. Despite the presence of different political currents within it, the school thus sought to develop a “revolutionary humanism,” one imbued with Christian, and more broadly spiritualist, values. Like Péguy as well as Claudel, Mounier had been influenced by “Ressourcement theology,” or that which promoted a return to the original sources of Christian faith, and thus the search for truth that was verified by personal faith as opposed to dogma (hence as differentiated from neo-​Thomism). This resonated with Mounier’s “personalist” philosophy, which conceived the person as free to affirm his own values, while still being bound to God and to his community through a sense of mutual responsibility.63 Mounier spoke at a workshop that took place at the time of the new school’s founding (as well as that of Jeune France), held at Uriage between November 27 and December 3, 1940. Here he evoked the vision of a community that was unified although not “unitaire” (or totalitarian), and hence stressed the values and responsibilities of each individual within it. However, as in the case of Jeune France, such a personalist or spiritualist vision would eventuate in a distancing from the goals of Vichy over the course of the next year and finally in the school’s dissolution.64 Like Pierre Schaeffer, Segonzac and his team decided at first to maintain their distance from Resistance organizations for moral and political reasons as well as to pursue their work. For they did not yet share Charles de Gaulle’s belief that the Vichy regime had no legitimacy, and thus avoided a premature rupture, as did Beuve-​Méry, who distrusted de Gaulle’s pride and intransigence. Although the group at Uriage, like Schaeffer, did not support collaboration, Segonzac himself remained loyal to Pétain until November 1942, when the school itself became a clandestine resistance body. The École des cadres at Uriage, which had slowly begun to incite suspicion, was thus dissolved in December 1942, as had been Jeune France the preceding March.65 The ties between the two institutions were strong, not only through the dual participation of Mounier but also through physical proximity, since Jeune France maintained a branch at Uriage, which was the seat of Hussenot’s theatrical maîtrise. For Schaeffer had decided to move the Comédiens Routiers (directed by Hussenot and Granier) into the same vicinity, procuring a villa in Saint-​Martin d’Uriage and taking possession on December 5, 1940. This was shortly after the group had presented a spectacle at Vichy before Lamirand himself, who was apparently pleased and thus helped Schaeffer to obtain the funds. The Jeune

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France company at Uriage was thus independent of Segonzac’s school, maintaining its own building, personnel, budget, and specific function. The Comédiens Routiers there constituted the main itinerant group in the southwest, and as of January 1941 it led youth assemblies presided over by Lamirand and performed for the Chantiers de la jeunesse—​a youth service corps placed under Lamirand’s Secrétariat general à la jeunesse some of whose members participated in the maîtrise at Uriage as well as in Jeune France spectacles. But those who were trained in Hussenot’s maîtrise also included members of the École des cadres, who were here availed of lessons in drama, the plastic arts, and choral singing and could also take part in its spectacles.66 Mounier’s guidance remained essential in all such endeavors of Jeune France as well as Uriage: but what was it that he brought to both groups that inspired and ultimately endangered them under Vichy? Perhaps it was quality that the anthropologist Jonathan Lear has termed “radical hope”—​ a vision that is “directed toward a future goodness” that transcends the current ability to glean just what it is. In essence it is a creative response to disaster, one that draws on the shared resources of a community in order to arrive at a new way of life as well as a new understanding of its own greater ideals.67 The goal of defining a new French community and future that would maintain an essential continuity with the past was shared by Jeune France members and Uriage officials as they sought to project a different, spiritual vision of France. Even though Schaeffer and Mounier were not on close personal terms they immediately recognized their common spiritual, social, and cultural aspirations; unfortunately Schaeffer would be forced to expel Mounier under official pressure in later 1941. But their initial collaboration was fruitful, as in the case of the conference that Leenhardt organized in the interest of fostering a popular, broadly shared culture (a theme Vichy stressed in the unoccupied zone), and which drew on Mounier’s and Schaeffer’s circles. The conference took place in September 1941 at the Chateau de Lourmarin, in the village of Lourmarin (in the department of the Vaucluse): titled “Poésie et Chanson,” it brought young poets together with musicians interested in the chanson populaire in order to foster an exchange of ideas and plan future collaborative projects, and was duly reported by the press.68 Present at the conference were Max-​Pol Fouchet, Jean Rivier, and Pierre Seghers, as well as the musicians Claude Arrieu (who was in fact Jewish, and a friend of Schaeffer), Maurice Martenot, Daniel-​Lesur, and Henry Barraud.69 Significantly, also attending the meeting were contributors to such innovative journals as Fontaine and Confluences: the latter, which was at first pro-​Vichy, had been banned for two months in August 1941 for publishing a poem by Louis Aragon, the resistance subtext of which was clear. Fontaine was similarly on the edge of censure, frequently inciting Vichy’s strong disapproval, and indeed those who were behind its publication were soon to become members of the

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Resistance.70 Also a participant was the historian of late antiquity (who had studied with Carcopino at the École normale supérieure in Paris) Henri-​Irénée Marrou, the most prolific music critic for Esprit, here writing under the pseu­ donym of Davenson. Avidly interested in music and being good friends with Laloy (who had been close to Debussy), Marrou praised spiritualist composers such as Arthur Lourié in the journal in the 1930s. Now a professor at Lyon as well as a participant in Jeune France, Marrou (himself of working-​class origin) was in the process of compiling an annotated collection of chansons, which would be published in 1944 as the Livre des chansons. Marrou, like his friend in Jeune France, Jean-​Marie Soutou (to whom he would dedicate this book) was also a résistant, and as a fellow member of Amitiés chrétiennes helped to hide and thus save Jewish families. In sum, prominent at the meeting were those who were, or were soon to be, résistants; in fact the writer Max-​Pol Fouchet recalled hearing the cry “Vive de Gaulle” shouted in the village streets at the end of the day. Schaeffer was apparently well aware of the resistance activities of this group of Jeune France members, which also included Claude Roy (who joined early, in 1941), but he carefully concealed this secret.71 Marrou, as opposed to Vichy and the conceptions of the traditionalist right, did not consider the chanson populaire as tied exclusively to “la terre” but rather, like the left in the mid-​1930s, as part of larger national cultural whole.72 Hence for Marrou the chanson populaire was not to be separated from other aspects of life, or seen as merely an object of scholarship but approached as an integral part of French culture, carrying personal as well as collective significance. As he argues, it belongs to all the people of France since it is not only impregnated with their shared experience but also incarnates the national creativity: to know and to use this repertoire is thus to reassert the ties that bind all to “la patrie.” After linking this popular repertoire to high or elite culture under the rubric of “patrimoine,” Marrou contends that the two levels are inseparable—​one cannot, for example, approach the chanson apart from the works of Rabelais or of Berlioz. Moreover, the chanson populaire reminds us of the close links that bind all of culture to life and to work, a connection that can continue to exist through this dynamic genre, which belongs to both the past and the present. In sum, the chanson for Marrou (as for Schaeffer himself ) was still alive and instinct with pedagogical value for France’s youth, as well as for her poets and musicians.73 Schaeffer, concurring with Marrou’s point, also claimed that thanks to the efforts of Jeune France there was now an artistic quest for affirmation inspired by the chanson populaire and, as he put it, “la poésie du monde tel qu’il est.” Schaeffer’s attraction to folklore, conceived as dynamic, tied to life, and inclusive, stemmed in part from his resistance to the culture of elites, or those who believe superciliously that they have something to teach the common people. He

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rather believed (like the Popular Front) that true popular culture, in its urban as well as its rural varieties, is valuable in itself. For he maintained that the popular masses are able to better the established order, having much that they themselves can teach the upper classes.74 Like Marrou, Schaeffer would continue to argue that art must necessarily engage with life, and hence that only a living French vernacular tradition (as opposed to a simple return to the past) could unite and inspire as well as foster creativity. For Schaeffer and Flamand, then, the goal of popular art was to build a bridge between the people and artists, and to this end they sought to train professionals who were capable of furthering such a “rapprochement.”75 Like his colleagues Schaeffer knew that this position was contrary to that of the Ligue de l’action française, as articulated by Joseph Canteloube in the articles that he was publishing regularly in its journal. For the latter and for the league the chanson populaire of the old French provinces was a mere artifact of the French peasantry, and as such had to be preserved and valorized.76 Schaeffer’s eventual critics at Vichy would recognize this intellectual divergence, and hence construed Marrou’s project as insidiously designed to combat Canteloube’s. But Schaeffer was intransigent in his belief that the popular connected art with life, as well as binding generations and social classes, and sought to disseminate this conviction through the socially and culturally heterogeneous maîtrises. They were intended to prepare France’s future cultural leaders in the domains of theater, music, and plastic arts, and indeed they did so, as exemplified by Jean Vilar. Again, their other major purpose was, through intensive pedagogical instruction, to diffuse both the knowledge and practice of the arts to French youth and other national collectivities.77 In addition Jeune France sought to renovate the established scouting model of evenings together around the campfire, here mixing communal singing and folkloric dances with readings from great French writers such as Paul Claudel and Charles Péguy. As in Radio-​Jeunesse, it was again the manner of presentation of such traditions—​the context, mode of transmission, and framing—​that altered the message to serve more progressive goals.78 Schaeffer here continued to promote and teach art in the service of “the total man,” implying both individual and collective enrichment, hence emphasizing participation, performance, integration, and broad inclusion. The association’s brochure, in fact, pointed out that they sought to organize fêtes that celebrated not only peasants and “la terre” but also workers in projected new factories, which would be both attractive and safe. Employing an argument that again recalls that of the Popular Front, Schaeffer even advances that in factories one may not only find a new public but also promote art as a means to remake both men and their surroundings, thereby combating the so-​called modern barbarity.79

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Jeune France and the creative curation of tradition The key for Jeune France, especially in the unoccupied zone, where large public gatherings were permitted, was thus performance, conceived as a manner of uniting the artist not only with a broader culture but also with isolated individuals, while also opening up new social vistas and furthering a shared artistic heritage. In addition, the association’s emphasis on participation and on spectacle allowed it to take complete advantage of the unprecedented financial resources that the government offered to further artistic decentralization. In Lyon, Jeune France’s leaders, because of their taste as well as obligations, emphasized spectacular presentations, including massive works with both music and dance, classic theater (which frequently toured), and large celebrations of the nation’s mobilizing symbols.80 Some of these celebrations were organized specifically for huge assemblies of youth, through the help of the secrétaire général à la jeunesse, and hence ostensibly had to address Pétain’s favored themes. This was palpably the case with “Le plus beau métier du monde,” a spectacle celebrating the fête des mères (Mother’s Day) in Bordeaux, presented before 3,200 young girls.81 In 1941 the organization also planned national spectacles to mark the now most important celebrations of the year—​Easter, the Spring Festival (that of May 1), The fête de Jeanne d’Arc, and Christmas. In its presentations Jeune France could draw freely on Vichy’s large youth service corps, the Chantiers de la jeunesse; the latter was established in 1941 under Lamirand’s Secrétariat à la jeunesse and run by another former Catholic scout, Général Paul de la Porte de Theil.82 Again, the association chose to concentrate on theater, and in the 17 months of its existence it sponsored 770 performances by the some 20 companies that it supported, including classic works in new productions or adaptations. However, despite his stress on youth participation, Schaeffer continued to seek high artistic quality, proclaiming, “the first responsibility of the artist is to create works that are valuable in themselves.” Later, after having been rebuked by Vichy, he argued strenuously in his own defense that “one can serve the state no better than by creating immortal works.”83 Schaeffer at first had considerable human and financial resources at his disposal, as well as the ability to experiment with new media of presentation and diffusion in order to achieve his ambitious goals. And Jeune France was a perfect context in which to bring the two sides of his personality together—​the idealistic enthusiast for theater and the other arts with the bold experimental engineer. In his distinctive creative vision, by using new media as a means to reinscribe the classic repertoire he could not only open up other interpretations and insights but also help to establish an authentic community within Vichy’s still promising horizons. At this point Schaffer still sincerely believed that his vision was

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consonant with that of Vichy, which he construed as not only instinct with possibilities but as stolidly opposed to the culture of Nazism. He already knew how sound technology could help to release different meanings, as could the material forms employed to recreate texts; his goal was thus an innovative, creative interaction with French artistic traditions. For he had previously learned that a text when apprehended through different media or mechanisms of reproduction is not the same, and that the context or venue of presentation may also play a crucial semantic role. In presenting the classic theatrical repertoire, Schaeffer’s “curation” would thus be creative, as he explored new sonorous and visual worlds through the agency of an emergent technology. For him this was a means not only to engage new communities but also to connect nascent networks of French youth in the service of goals that he still believed coincided with those of the regime. Hence when Jeune France performed classic works its collaborators sought new modes of expression, visual as well as aural, here experimenting with mass movement, declamation, and techniques of sonorous transmission, together with new approaches to both color and décor. The latter included a consciously limited use of color in the theatrical scenery while allowing more in the actors’ costumes, here intended to emphasize the work’s action for a new and largely uninitiated young public.84 In all its presentations Jeune France was innovative, a specific case being the performance it sponsored of Jean Vilar’s bold adaptation of Hesiod—​his Les travaux et les jours. The work was performed outdoors with lavish spectacle for a youth festival in Melun (in the occupied zone, in the Seine-​et-​Marne) in August 1941—​the period when Vichy was growing more defensive and thus repressive. One distinctive aspect of this presentation was that it was framed by an opening presentation in which, according to Vilar, he sought to avoid mere amusement as well as propaganda, rather emphasizing Hesiod’s simple incisive poetry. This innovative preliminary spectacle, meant to engage a large youthful audience, was termed a “suite lyrique” and consisted of mime and singing, with music written by the young Marcel Landowski, here conducted by Charles Munch. Moreover, according to the metteur-​en-​scène, Bernard Lajavrige, the procession was adapted to the locality of its performance, for to illustrate Hesiod’s phrases exalting work in the fields he employed farmers from the region, replete with their cows, plows, and other implements.85 This technique palpably appealed to local youth, drawing an enthusiastic audience of some three thousand, and because of its marked success the German Propaganda Staffel authorized its performance in Paris as well as in the occupied provinces.86 Apparently the Vichy theme of the rural and agricultural here did not concern the occupant, for it both fed into the German rural vision of France and did not appear dangerously nationalistic. Because of the restriction

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on French nationalist expression in the occupied zone, Jeune France here stressed innovation as well as research and reflection on the concept of French popular culture.87 Hence in Paris it promoted those young French painters who rejected academicism and its hackneyed formulae, the most prominent example being the exposition it sponsored at the Braun Gallery in Paris in May 1941, “Vingt peintres de la tradition française.” Organized by Jean Bazaine, the head of Jeune France’s section devoted to the plastic arts in the occupied zone, it included the Jeune France member Edouard Pignon, who was covertly a communist. Frowned on by those defending figurative art and denounced by the collaborationists in Paris, he was already in the Resistance, and it was in the studio he occupied (that of Jacques Lipschitz, who was Jewish and eventually fled France) that Resistance members met to harmonize positions in both zones in July 1941.88 While Philip Nord has argued that the exposition itself was meant to provoke the Germans, he also describes it as, through its title, a “marker of exclusionary rootedness.”89 However, we should also be aware that, belying its title, the exhibition was marked by cubist-​influenced abstraction, which was by no means in keeping with the Vichy aesthetic. For although it exhibited some Catholic spiritualists who favored a primitive simplicity, it also presented those promoting challenging composition, and prominently Pignon himself. In addition to this gesture, Jeune France sponsored a lecture and exposition that featured the work of Picasso—​at a time when his works were banned from public presentation—​and it turned out to be a triumph.90

Musical innovation within Schaeffer’s Jeune France In the occupied zone, where it had a musical section, Jeune France also sponsored several musical premieres, aided by the participation of the Maisons Jeune France that it had established in both Paris and Le Mans. In Paris the collaborators included another former colleague of Schaeffer from his youthful “rover scout” days, Jacques Chailley, who was not only a musicologist and composer but now also assistant director of the Paris Conservatoire. Other composers who also became associates of Jeune France included not only the members of the concert society Jeune France, but also Pierre Capdevielle (who became a résistant) and Jean Françaix, who like Schaeffer had studied with and continued to admire Nadia Boulanger. Françaix was a supporter of Pétain, but also became a member of the musical section of the group Collaboration, which straddled the fine line between collaboration d’État and collaborationism. In 1941 Françaix expressed his ardent support for Pétain (while Schaeffer was gradually reconsidering his) by dedicating his Cantate pour le tricentenaire de Maximilien de Béthune, duc de Sully (a maréchal de France in the early seventeenth century) to the aged maréchal

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who was now head of state. In addition, Françaix’s membership in the group Collaboration would, according to Myriam Chimènes, ostensibly help him in obtaining a state commission in 1943, after the dissolution of Jeune France.91 Perhaps because of Françaix’s profile among the pétainists at Vichy (whose support Jeune France still needed) Flamand made him director of the Maison Jeune France in Le Mans, which gave and organized concerts as well as providing musical instruction. Here with a small group of some twenty musicians Françaix performed concerts in the surrounding small villages; he pointed out with satisfaction that this was often the first time many had heard such music, and some in particular become enamored of Bach.92 Jeune France’s facilities in the occupied zone also allowed it to organize larger concerts, which included the premiere of Jean Françaix’s L’apocalypse selon Saint Jean in early 1942. Significantly, here it was balanced by a presentation of Bach’s Magnificat (which undoubtedly pleased the German occupant), under the direction of Charles Munch conducting the Société des concerts du Conservatoire.93 The preceding year Jeune France was asked to participate in the national festivities honoring Jeanne d’Arc, on May 11 in all French cities, and in the unoccupied zone Vichy imposed a specific program. According to the instructions sent in February (when Darlan assumed power), it would begin with the deposition of a bouquet on the monument to France’s anciens combattants (under the aegis of the Légion des anciens combattants), and this was to be followed by a mass dedicated to French youth. In both zones the time table for the celebration was the same, and the circular sent in February by the Secrétariat général à la jeunesse underlined the difficulties in organizing such “fêtes populaires et nationales.” Moreover, here it recalled the shortcomings of the Christmas festivities of 1940, which were hastily organized by Vichy and Jeune France. Now the recommendation was to find spectacular as well as evocative venues—​historical or national—​in order to impart the festivities with a symbolism that would strike the French public’s imagination. The circular also reminded Jeune France officials that although it was here a question of imparting a lesson, they should attempt to convey it with a minimum of verbiage, while tying it to the ideals of the Révolution nationale and Pétain. More specifically, all the festivities were to close with a grand collective gesture symbolizing the solemn engagement of youth in the French community with the nation’s goals. It was through these means that the government continued to seek legitimization, or to impose its symbols and vision in such a manner as to convince, not compel the governed to submit—​or as Bourdieu has put it, to become complicit in its own symbolic domination.94 Jeune France thus organized three large events, all of which were to involve musical works—​two of its own creation and one that it helped to sponsor. The former included an oratorio in seven parts and involved the commissioning of

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seven authors and seven composers; it was to be broadcast on the Radiodiffusion nationale, and then performed in Paris by Munch conducting the Société des concerts du Conservatoire. The other new work was to be an open-​air spectacle commissioned by the Lyon branch of Jeune France, and composed as well as staged by its members—​the Portique pour une jeune fille de France. The previously existing work that it here presented was Claudel and Honegger’s oratorio Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher (a work of 1935, which had premiered three years later in Basle and then the following year in France, in Orléans). The new, semistaged production of it was to take place at the Opéra de Lyon on July 4, 1941, and then go on tour in the unoccupied zone between July 5 and August 8.95 This presentation also received financial assistance from Vichy and was mounted in collaboration with the Commissariat à la lutte contre le chômage, which also helped provide the participants. For it impressively employed a cast of several thousand, in addition to a full orchestra of about two hundred; hence when it toured it was performed in spectacular and historic outdoor arenas, such as the Roman amphitheaters in Arles and Nîmes.96 But with this work Jeune France’s choice was again both orthodox and transgressive: although its theme was iconic for Vichy—​a young Catholic virgin who gave her life for the nation—​it is important to analyze what the work enunciated through the styles Honegger used here to set Claudel’s text. The latter was indeed distinctive, for not a Catholic in the mold of the conservative classic right, Claudel’s vision of Jeanne d’Arc was rather populist, and like Honegger he had participated in some Popular Font programs, although for more personal than ideological ends. Jeanne d’Arc had always been resonant in periods in of French national crisis, and since she was claimed simultaneously by the left and the right, the nature of her representation is thus of key importance. Claudel wrote the text as a flashback: in it Jeanne has been condemned to death, and before her martyrdom sees her whole life pass before her. Here she appears as the daughter of the people—​one of the traditional interpretations of Jeanne, the others being Jeanne as French patriot denouncing the British, or as a warrior and a hence a combatant. Of course it was the latter version that the Resistance (which sought continued combat) embraced, while Vichy emphasized her faith as well as her stand against the British, whom it considered once again the nation’s enemy.97 Honegger’s original goal was to write a simple but suitable and powerful music that, in keeping with his professed aesthetic position, would not require musical sophistication or background on the part of a general audience. In addition, to bring Claudel’s text alive he attempted to synthesize a diversity of styles and genres, including the traditional chanson populaire, Gregorian chant, simple monody, and polyphony. Much of the popular material here serves to bring Jeanne’s experience as a young girl alive, as she recalls her past and refers

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to specific locations within France.98 These stylistic references had been politically problematic during the militant Popular Front, which saw them as tied too closely to right-​wing conceptions, while others were now tenuous during Vichy. For Honegger characterized the card scene where Jeanne’s eventual fate is decided as a “ballet ironique”; it has also been described as an eighteenth-​century pastiche, recalling the composer’s days with Les Six. Irony is similarly evident in the court scene through the use of what is sometimes referred to as a modern, ridiculously exaggerated fox-​trot style. Hence the message that emerges through this stylistic mélange is indeed complex, as is the textual focus on her personal experience as well as on miscarriage of justice and French collaboration with a foreign occupant. Sprout has cited an angry letter from Claudel claiming that in the Jeune France touring production the English were made to appear odious, thus underlining an anti-​British interpretation.99 But it is important here to realize that in other Jeune France presentations, the English were presented primarily as a foreign occupant, and thus in implicit analogy with the Germans. The other issue here to consider is censorship, for by the summer of 1941 Pétain and Vichy were assuming an increasingly defensive and concomitantly repressive posture. Philip Nord has seen in such productions a theater of mass communion, meant to fuse discrete individuals and transform them into a larger collective whole. But a closer analysis of this and other Jeune France presentations will reveal that, although financed and sponsored by Vichy, the association sought a far more complex kind of experience.100 Apparently the Claudel-​Honegger work, in this production, appealed across the political spectrum, for both the résistants within Jeune France and the authorized press were sanguine. Le temps reviewed the Lyon performance (which was held in the city’s opera house), duly noting that it was sponsored by the association Jeune France. Here the critic hails it as a success, praising in particular the “mise-​en-​scène éclatante,” as well as most of the costumes; but he criticizes those of the children as too picturesque and reminiscent of the Folies Bergère. However, he lauds both the text and music, the latter being appropriately broad, for it includes the learned, the popular, the violent, and also the surprising.101 Although at this point Claudel was increasingly suspicious of Pétain, Honegger was rapidly becoming a Vichy icon. Hence after the war and Liberation, Claudel (who was sympathetic with the composer) and Honegger would add a prologue that was intended retrospectively to make the work appear résistant. The second of the three works that Jeune France prepared for the 1941 festivities honoring Jeanne d’Arc was the seven-​part oratorio Jeanne d’Arc, the product of seven authors and seven composers. It was probably in early 1941 that the several musicians in Jeune France were asked to participate in this collective endeavor that was intended for broadcast over the French national radio. The authors

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selected were varied, and significantly the section on the village of Domrémy was written in part by Maurice Fombeure, the subtly ironic poet whose poems Poulenc would set during the Vichy period. The other musicians involved in the oratorio included several who would soon enter the Resistance—​Tony Aubin, Jacques Chailley, Pierre Capdevielle, and Claude Delvincourt, in addition to Jean de Beer, Georges Dandelot, and André Jolivet. The latter, who remained in Paris and was associated with Jeune France there, coordinated the entire effort, which was broadcast on the Radiodiffusion nationale May 14–​16, 1941, and then performed by the Société des concerts du Conservatoire two weeks later, on May 28.102 Here we more closely examine the other, amply documented, new creation of Jeune France for the Jeanne d’Arc festivities, a theatrical production by Schaeffer and Barbier with music by Jeune France members. The latter, Portique pour une jeune fille de France, may well have helped to inspire the conference that Jeune France sponsored (together with Esprit) at Lourmarin in September to further precisely this kind of collaboration. Within the context of this ambitious celebration Schaeffer’s team continued with temerity to explore not only the articulation of art and life but also the semiotic role played by new visual techniques as well as new sonorous technologies. And here it is also possible to witness the emergence of Schaeffer’s own seminal realization that new genres or aesthetic formations may result from precisely such innovations, which awaken new modes of experience and forge social networks and communities. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this work is not just its mélange of aesthetic models but also its use of emerging technical resources, together with space—​both visual and aural—​in a manner far different from either traditional Catholic or current fascist theater. Again invoking the model of ancient Greece (if here implicitly to expand the work’s message), a so-​called messenger placed on a podium behind a central microphone is flanked on each side by “coryphées,” or choral spokesmen, each group with its own microphones and surrounded by the chorus, massed in a huge semicircle.103 Also found in Honegger’s Antigone, the two groups of coryphées comment on the action, one in a sympathetic manner while the other is notably hostile. The messenger brings the news, but initially he comments topically on the country’s loss of hope, faith, and law as well as of king. He then observes that here, before the seventeen-​year-​old Jeanne, or “la fille de Dieu,” the history of France is going to open its “grand portico.”104 The messenger proceeds to relay the action but with conscious anachronism—​assuming the style of a modern reporter on evening radio, sometimes even improvising in a recognizable manner. One characteristic passage (in the “Te Deum”) begins “Hello! Hello! My dear listeners, I presently find myself before the cathedral that has just been finished and far

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from being grey, as one will later be used to seeing, is perfectly white, I would say sparkling. Dear listeners, as M. Le Corbusier says, we are in the time when the cathedrals are white.”105 The use of such an anachronism was in fact not new: Chancerel himself had employed it in his Mission de Jeanne d’Arc, in which he invokes not Le Corbusier but “Le Président de la République.” According to Schaeffer this technique was intended to bring the spectator closer, so that he does not see a theatrical scene but rather a living reality, realized through a means of expression to which he is accustomed. For his goal, as he later explained it, was to render the work’s symbolism accessible to all, and to provide the youth of Lyon with an instant of fervor, if not of piety. Also, to make the work contemporary and “living,” the messenger’s text suggests parallels with the current situation in France, the occupying forces here implicitly suggesting the German occupant. But similarly to engage the audience, Schaeffer and Barbier scrupulously cite the minutes of Jeanne d’Arc’s trial, where she is quoted exactly, especially in the seventh, eighth, and ninth tableaux.106 In other sections it is ostensibly the spectacle itself that is meant to engage through an intricate mixture of music, individual pantomime, and mass movement. Perhaps most prominent are the scenes in which the extras—​recruited from Vichy youth movements—​mime the English and French forces, and the scene in Reims in which they are used to outline the contours of the new cathedral. Equally striking is the mixture of theatrical styles and genres, as also reflected in the costumes, some being clearly medieval despite the ancient choral model and the new sound technology. In one particularly arresting scene there is a suggestion of French Republican civic theater, as cultivated by Romain Rolland at the turn of the century and more recently by the Popular Front. The composer Gustave Charpentier had mastered this model in his civic fêtes, and incorporated it into opera of 1900, Louise, but here as a carnival-​like reversal of social norms.107 Indeed in the Portique one finds a telling parallel to the latter scene, the “Couronnement de la muse du people,” especially to its “Entrée des petits miséreux,” intended to symbolize the social future, the children referred to ironically by the crowd as “divine beggars” and “young gods.” Schaeffer and Barbier’s text includes an “Entrée des gosses en piteux état,” the children entering in rows and, with irony and pathos, singing “La victoire en chantant”—​the opening words of the first strophe from the revolutionary hymn of 1794 by Étienne Nicolas Méhul and Marie-​Joseph Chénier, Le chant du départ. The latter had also later become the official hymn of the Second Empire, and was employed during World War I to help galvanize the French troops for battle. Significantly, the Chénier text continues with the words [la victoire] “nous ouvre la barrière, La Liberté guide nos pas.” In invoking this implicit resonance it was perhaps the Jeune France authors’ intent not to refer poignantly to French defeat but to evoke

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victory and memories of the Revolutionary period, which for Vichy remained an anathema. This entrée is then followed by a group of little girls who sing the old French chanson that Debussy had employed in the “Rondes du printemps” of his Images for orchestra in 1909 (as well as in other, smaller works), “Nous n’irons plus au bois.” Significantly Debussy here not only puts the well-​known French chanson tortuously through the very academic procedures that he detested but also distorts it both rhythmically and harmonically. Also significant in the fact that the chanson (which carries a double entendre) is included in Marrou’s Le livre des chansons, where he observes that it is probably of recent origin but still lives on in the children’s repertoire, and through several works of Debussy.108 These innuendos were not the only aspects of the Portique that communicated in a sophisticated and subtly subversive manner, despite Vichy’s desire (in the unoccupied zone) for simple French nationalist propaganda. For the third part of Schaeffer and Barbier’s spectacle includes a ballet, referred to as “une sorte de divertissement chorégraphique,” in which the king and his court make their entry, then followed by the ill-​fated Jeanne herself. It was precisely such a stress on “divertissements,” or an engaging entertainment as opposed to propaganda, that Vichy officials (who were growing wary of Jeune France) would soon condemn in their denunciations of Schaeffer. The work indeed glosses Vichy’s themes, self-​consciously varying the language of the texts it cites, or switching between at least two different codes in order to inscribe alterity. Indeed as the postcolonialist theorist Homi Bhabha has argued, though such hybrid genres those who are on the “outside of inside” may impact the dominant narrative and help construct new versions of historic memory.109 As was expected, Portique does include the requisite gestures and symbols indicating fealty to Pétain and the Révolution nationale, such as the seven stars of the maréchal attached to the flag floating high above the podium. For all of the May 11 celebrations were organized under the patronage of the French state, and at the Lyon performance the messenger announced the arrival of the ministre secrétaire d’État aux finances, Yves Bouthillier. This was duly highlighted in Lyon’s Le progrès, which also reported on the enthusiastic applause on the part of the youthful audience upon the minister’s arrival at the official tribune. Moreover at the entr’acte the messenger, again stepping out of his historical role, thanked the minister on behalf of the youth of Lyon, with the latter accordingly crying out “Vive Pétain!” from the bleachers.110 The censored or authorized press was positive, but not all those within Jeune France were satisfied, in spite of the presence of ebullient crowds for the May 11 spectacles. In an article that Jacques Bainville published in Maîtrises Jeune France in January 1942 (at the time that Schaeffer was fired) he refers to the mediocre

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results, due to a lack of technical competence as well as clumsy organization. However, it is important to realize that the performers suffered from the necessary haste of preparation as well as the weather conditions, which included high winds and rain that led to the abrupt cancellation of several tableaux.111 Such difficulties were further compounded by the complexity of the music employed, which required more time for mastery then the few rehearsals that the musicians were allowed. For the music had to be composed in haste, between mid-​March and late April 1941, by the three composers selected—​Yves Baudrier, Olivier Messiaen, and Leo Preger. The latter was a pupil of Nadia Boulanger (as had been Schaeffer in the 1930s), and was not in Vichy with the others in the spring of 1941.112 The forces available to the composers included a chorus of some two hundred members, and an orchestra of about thirty, without strings (except basses), and with woodwinds and brass (but no horns), the emphasis being on ensuring outdoor projection.113 The music for Un portique began with a with an anachronistic (and here polyvalent) performance of the Chant du départ, the opening text of which, reappears in the “Entrée des gosses en piteux état.” The hymn is followed by a vocalized “deploration” of the refugees (again here suggestive) by Leo Preger, who also wrote a small pastoral march (prominently using woodwinds) that accompanied the king’s personal thanking of Jeanne. Preger in addition contributed a “Chant des bâtisseurs” for a capella chorus, which occurs before the ceremony of the “Sacre de Reims,” and is written in a style that Lyon soir referred to vaguely “as néo-​grégorien.” The scene in Reims also includes an old French chanson, the “Chant des travailleurs de pierre” (in the context of the building of Reims Cathedral), the scenario explicitly indicating that the music is closely to follow the textual rhythm. This succeeded by the acclamation of the “compagnons” who are constructing the cathedral, as they hail the arrival in the distance of the cortège that bears the French dauphin.114 Baudrier wrote the subsequent “Marche du cortège du sacre” that precedes Messiaen’s imposing Te Deum together with his Impropères (as Jeanne, a condemned prisoner, interrogates the French people for whom she is sacrificing herself ). But when she mounts the scaffold for her immolation it is again Baudrier’s music that accompanies her, with Bishop Cauchan following her in tears as he implores her pardon. Preger’s music concludes the work with the final chorus, Les sept paroles de Jeanne, which represents her crying out to those present and to God just before her death.115 The article in Lyon soir praises all three musicians involved, an opinion that may be evaluated since the music has recently been found among the archives of Radio France. Preger contributed a mixed chorus with “bouches fermées” in the second tableau; his next chorus, “Nous terminons la cathédrale,” (at the beginning of the fifth tableau) is set syllabically and is largely modal, hence the critic’s

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characterization of it as in a “style néo-​grégorien.” While a large part of the vocal music appears to be replete with liturgical references as well as to styles of the distant past, the instrumental music is ostensibly adapted for performance in a large outdoor arena. Most innovative is the music of Messiaen for even with a largely amateur chorus he explores a responsorial choral style (alternating large and small choruses) to which he would return—​in a more complex manner—​in his Petites liturgies de la présence divine, begun in 1943.116 In addition to such innovations in the music another novel aspect of Portique is its conception as modifiable, or adaptable in its physical mode of inscription according to the venue as well as to the audience. The text, for example, provides notes on the setting when it is presented in Vichy’s youth camps, for here there can be only one performance, with limited stage facilities available. It explains that in such cases all that is required is a square central platform for the speaker, but with the French national flag, pinned with the seven stars of a maréchal de France.117 Despite the possibility of such reductions the work initially employed enormous forces, including 175 professional artists and 15,000  “figurants” (or extras) drawn not only from schools and Vichy youth movements but also from the Ateliers Jeune France. Not only aimed at attracting huge audiences, it was to be performed simultaneously in Lyon (with an audience of 35,000, directed by Claude Gervais), in Marseille (with an audience of 25,000, directed by Olivier Hussenot), and in Toulouse (with an audience of 20,000, directed by Léon Chancerel), thus creating a virtually unified youth community. This was indeed a creative means to establish communal bounds within a disparate and shifting French national space, through a kind of presentation that indeed transcends the reductive label of “pageant.”118 It was rather perhaps closer to celebration, a form also associated with the liminal (in Victor Turner’s definition), or the socially transformative, and is characterized by the surplus of signifiers or a sensory overload created by the profusion of images and intermingling of cultural categories. The semiotics of such “ludic” spectacles are therefore “open, unorthodox, fragmented,” and unique, which enables them subtly to elude social controls and transcend established ideological formations.119 This is precisely what was beginning to occur in Portique pour une fille de France, a work that was meant to serve a socially reflexive function, while exploring a new aesthetic terrain. Here Schaeffer’s team, even if invoking one of Vichy’s iconic figures as well as several of its symbols, was able to maintain an ideological integrity, inflecting or opening the manifest message through aesthetic and technical experimentation. For they were all aware that, as Claude Roy (who joined the Resistance in 1941) aptly put it, in the unoccupied zone the moral “problem” of France’s government would lead inevitably to a “war of movement”—​to one of clever play or harassment through specific cultural signifiers.

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He and his colleagues thus became what Roy terms “guerillas of the pen,” attempting deliberately to calculate their own chances of subversion from within, or in the midst of Vichy-​sponsored cultural programs.120 This game, of course, was ambiguous as well as dangerous for the association, but nevertheless such spectacles remained the primary instrument of their offensive. Through them even those within it who were now growing increasingly disillusioned with Vichy but were not yet ready formally to enter the Resistance—​and thus illegality—​could hold on to their own idealistic vision. Schaeffer and his close colleagues in Jeune France had begun to realize that their ideal of artistically and morally pursuing a new path—​if one rooted in French tradition—​was not congruent with Vichy’s goal of a indoctrination and a cultural return to the past. Their quest did originate within a Vichy cultural program, but it subsequently assumed its own dynamic as a result of the evolving vision of its founders, if of necessity invoking the regime’s central themes. For they now realized that Vichy was seeking youth rituals that would instill conformity; Jeune France, as inspired by Mounier and thus personalism, was rather attempting to pursue enlightenment. Again, although Schaeffer was not a member of the Resistance at this point, several of his close colleagues were, including Jean-​Marie Soutou, who helped hide Jewish families using Jeune France facilities in Lyon, and André Clavé, who was later denounced and deported to Buchenwald. Marrou was a résistant, as was Jean-​Marie Serrau, who (together with Joseph Rovan of the Amitiés chrétiennes, part of the Catholic spiritual re­sistance) helped hide endangered Jewish children, again using their base in Lyon.121 Even if others, including Schaeffer, would join the Resistance only later, he reflected in a postwar interview that by the beginning of 1942 they were all, in effect, résistant—​if not yet politically, for they had no intention of diffusing Vichy’s cultural propaganda. In addition Schaeffer later recounted in his autobiographical Prélude, choral et fugue, that even by the end of fall 1941 he (personified by Simon) had divested himself of his remaining support for Vichy, the spiritualist current of which was being sacrificed to pursue the politics of collaboration. The summer of 1941 was a turning point, for Vichy was becoming more repressive as the Resistance grew, hence Schaeffer’s early relative liberty of action was now disappearing. However, while other nonconformists like Mounier were becoming anti-​Vichy and thus embracing Gaullism, as late as November 1941 Schaeffer still thought it possible to salvage what he could of his idealistic enterprise.122 According to Alfred Manessier (a Jeune France member), during this period—​indeed for nine to ten months before Vichy could recognize it—​the association was actively contesting Nazi culture while still being financed by the increasingly collaborationist French state. But it would not be long before they would be denounced and then pursued by the Légion française des combattants,

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as well as by the minister of the interior (as of July 1941), the highly suspicious Pierre Pucheu.123 After the May festivities Vichy officials realized that the French community that Jeune France imagined in works like the Portique was neither that of the regime nor that of orthodox Catholicism, but rather based on its leaders’ nonconformist ideals. If Jeune France’s goals at its beginning had appeared close to those of Pétain’s—​in Vichy’s early ambiguous stage—​this was not now the case: contrary to the argument of some historians, its conception of theater was no longer consonant with that of the Révolution nationale. By the time of the Portique the model of community that it sought to forge resembled less that of the Catholic mass than that of the Popular Front’s symbolically open spectacles, with their aspirations to release both individual and collective energy, as well as authentically to educate.124

Schaeffer’s movement from the legal to the illegal Indeed officials within the Vichy regime promptly condemned works such as Schaeffer and Barbier’s Portique, complaining that it was not adequately hortatory or didactic but rather merely a “divertissement.”125 Again, the authors were here seeking to engage the ludic or the element of play, thus mixing genres and codes to achieve a breadth of expression as well as semiotic expansiveness. In increasing opposition to Vichy’s ideal of achieving homogeneity or conformity among youth, Schaeffer, as a personalist, was rather seeking to enlarge meanings or interpretations and with them the sense of new possibilities. It was precisely this nonconformist and spiritualist element in Jeune France that Vichy officials now condemned, together with what they indeed grasped as implicit reference to Popular Front spectacles. As Schaeffer himself acknowledged, it was through his experience with such creative projects that he slowly began to realize that he had gradually crossed over from the legal into the illegal realm.126 The Vichy government, in its initial confusion, had given free rein to young idealists like Schaeffer, providing him with funds and facilities and yet, as he now bitterly observed, with no explicit guidelines. The results were becoming all too apparent, and denunciations of both Schaeffer and his collaborators poured in, some being sent by those Vichy loyalists whom Jeune France had been obliged to pursue and make members under the weight of official pressures.127 The latter included Jean de Fabrègues, who had come from the neoroyalist or reactionary French right, but then, like some within the Action française, grew closer to the more fascicizing group in Vichy. Since he had been a leader of the young right in the thirties, and then had been taken prisoner in 1940 (in the Voges), Schaeffer was obliged to invite him to join, and put him in charge of

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Jeune France’s publications. De Fabrègues would also later become active in the Prisoner of War Commissariat, which helped facilitate the employment and reinsertion of former prisoners like himself into society. Significantly, he was in charge of the Centre d’action des prisonniers, which attempted to harness prisoner fraternity for the National Revolution, but was pro-​German as well as pro-​Pétain. It was figures like de Fabrègues, Paul Marion, and Pierre Pucheu who, envisioning their own “spiritual revolution,” came vehemently to oppose Mounier’s Christian Democrats and Jeune France.128 In August 1941 the Vichy government was significantly modified:  Darlan took over Defense and left the Ministry of the Interior to Pierre Pucheu. When Pucheu assumed his new position he brought with him the clan of authoritarian technocrats who were partisans of one unified French youth movement, as well as of collaboration. He also frequently intervened in neighboring ministries such as Education, and Carcopino in turn exerted pressures on the Secrétariat général à la jeunesse. Carcopino became one of the latter’s adversaries, as did the Administration des finances, which regularly exceeded its prerogatives to intervene in specific measures requiring funding. Moreover, Darlan (who assumed power as premiere in February 1941)  had no sympathy with Vichy’s clericalist faction, and Pucheu as well as Marion (Vichy’s minister of propaganda) did not like Lamirand, considering him as well as Garric to be “too Catholic.” Pucheu strengthened the authority of senior civil servants over those who were lower in rank, and now required all to manifest their active support for Vichy. For Pucheu sought to suppress dissent, and significantly by March 1941 was also attacking the “church-​like” spirit of the Secrétariat general à la jeunesse‘s policies before a commission of Pétain’s National Council.129 It was de Fabrègues who initially launched a frontal attack on Jeune France in the tense month of August 1941 (the period of Pétain’s “evil wind” speech of August 12), spurred on and supported by Pucheu as well as those within his cabinet.130 De Fabrègue’s denunciatory letter of August 21, 1941, was written on Jeune France stationary, and addressed to the minister of interior himself, Pierre Pucheu. The letter, targeting both Schaeffer and Mounier, reached the minister through the intermediary of Robert Loustou, who on reading it decided to contact Pucheu about it the same day it was received, August 25. Again, the immediate context for such a defensive attitude on the part of Vichy officials was the current attacks of Gaullist groups, the growth of the Resistance, and growing complaints about the slow pace of the Révolution nationale. From this point on, the travails of Schaeffer and Mounier would only mount and Jeune France would be under police surveillance because of the fear of its “ambiance mouniériste.” Indeed as Vichy was now suspecting, by the summer of 1941 many personalists were becoming increasingly anti-​Vichy as well as pro–​de Gaulle.131

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In his letter de Fabrègues begins with a florid profession of his support for Pétain and for the Révolution nationale, which was now coming under increasing attack. As he points out, for him the latter means no less than complete rectification in the intellectual and moral realms—​not only an assault on individualism but also the quest for a more rigorous authority by a new elite. However, having precipitated to join Jeune France after his release as a French prisoner of war, he found to his consternation that not only was there a pronounced Christian Democratic influence but also the group was attempting not to serve but to maintain a distance from politics.132 This was only one of many irate accusations that Jeune France had no interest in furthering Pétain’s political goals or those of the Révolution nationale, and that through their projects they rather promoted personalist, or left-​wing spiritualist ideals. Indeed, for Jean de Fabrègues Jeune France was a band of Christian Democrats and other “spiritualistes déchaînés,” all of whom (as influenced by Mounier) not only refused to support authority but also promoted individualism among French youth. De Fabrègues hence closes his letter by warning of all the dangers being posed by Mounier, who not only promises to publish texts in Esprit which attack Pétain but also openly proclaims his nonconformism. Moreover, as de Fabrègues claims in his final salvo, Mounier’s “little band” is largely communist, here intended as the most damning accusation.133 This was thus the period when both Mounier and his journal were increasingly criticized, beginning with the Action française in July 1941, which particularly deplored his influence at Uriage. In addition, a collaborationist publication accused him of being both pro-​British and pro-​Jewish, and as a result that summer Mounier was prohibited from lecturing at the leadership school. He was also being now being targeted by the Secrétariat général à l’information et à la propagande, and particularly by Paul Marion, as well as by Pucheu in the Ministry of the Interior. And soon the school at Uriage would find itself denounced because of its lack of proper ideological content in addition to the influence of Mounier. In fact the school, and Mounier, had sought to find a middle ground between an unconditional support for the regime and an opposition to specific principles. The latter included anti-​Semitism, and by the time of Darlan’s ascension in February 1941 Mounier was criticizing Vichy’s policies in this domain and making his position clear in Esprit.134 Again, Vichy thus briefly banned Esprit in August 1941, in addition to other journals led by Christian Democrats such as Stanislas Fumet. For in fact, as Jackson has argued, figures like Fumet and Mounier “had helped to create a space through which it was possible to glide almost imperceptibly from pétainism to Resistance.”135 The Christian resistance would now grow in Lyon, influenced by journals such as the Cahiers du témoignage chrétien, which was founded

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November 1941 by Jesuits who sought to help Jews through Christian organizations such as the Amitiés chrétiennes. The Christian resistance now equated Pétain and Vichy with collaboration and thus with a triumph of Nazi principles, here centrally including racism. In addition there was a rapid evolution of the so-​ called pétainist Resistance, or those who had been anti-​German but pro-​Vichy, and now (like Schaeffer himself ) grew disillusioned with the regime. Many would subsequently oppose Vichy completely, by early 1942 as arrests targeting major resistance groups took place in the unoccupied zone.136 However, in December 1941 Schaeffer attempted once more to arrive at a compromise with Vichy in order to save Jeune France. Already that fall, although the organization had initially helped subsidize Esprit (which continued until late 1941), it was forced through mounting pressures to terminate this assistance and to distance itself from Mounier. In the end Schaeffer eventually had no choice but to sacrifice Mounier himself, and hence the latter was finally obliged to leave the cultural association that fall. And de Fabrègues’s denunciation of Mounier (in addition to those of others) would lead not only to the latter’s expulsion from Jeune France and to the denunciation of his journal but also, briefly, to his imprisonment following his association with the resistance journal Combat.137 Significantly de Fabrègues’s letter, when sent by Loustou to Pucheu himself, was accompanied by a note explaining not only who de Fabrègues is but also that he comes from a “milieu catholique” with which they necessarily have to work. Evidently it was less the traditional Catholic element to which the regime now reacted so vehemently than the left-​wing personalist tendencies associated with both Schaeffer and Mounier. In fact Loustou’s note avers that together they must attack a threatening “bolchevisme chrétien,” then adds irascibly, “merde pour la personne humaine d’Emmanuel Mounier” (s—​—​for the human person of Emmanuel Mounier).138 Jeune France itself would come under such attack from late August to late December of 1941, when Schaeffer was forced to resign as its director; the association continued briefly, but was finally dissolved in March 1942.139 For denunciations had proliferated, many centering on the prominence of Mounier’s circle within the association, some even going so far as to proclaim an “invasion” of Christian Democrats within Jeune France. One letter cites a specific fête organ­ ized by Schaeffer, Mounier, and Leenhardt in Lyon which included not only readings from a text of Péguy (whose ideological implications remained contested) but the performance of a mass composed by a Christian Democratic priest. Mounier in fact was unhappy with Vichy’s instrumental use of Péguy, himself employing Péguy in Esprit to criticize the regime’s anti-​Semitism.140 Schaeffer and his colleagues were also continuing implacably to both reinterpret and frame Vichy’s icons and symbols in manner so as to open up all of their significations.

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This attempt had become a target of another recurring charge within the series of accusations that were leveled against Schaeffer—​that Jeune France refused to disseminate the propaganda of the Révolution nationale. One case cited was that its “chansonnier,” or songbook, was devoid of the desired themes; another was that it refused to participate in the fêtes of the Légion des combattants (the prop­ aganda organization supporting Pétain), as well as to publish its brochure, since this required that it swear fidelity to the maréchal.141 Other recriminations included Schaeffer’s refusal to broadcast texts concerning France’s so-​called new army, and that he purportedly argued in private that he was an antimilitarist. Tied to this charge was the observation that not only did Schaeffer continue to be active in the broadcasts of Radio-​Jeunesse (now under the leadership of his friends, who were also being called into question) but also Jeune France had no “sens politique,” rather seeking self-​enclosure in mere “divertissements.” Such criticism was also linked to the fear that Jeune France’s spectacles were too semiotically open, and that they thereby encouraged ideological tendencies that were inherently hostile to those of Vichy. This concomitantly led to the charge that on the occasion of the national fête of 14 juillet the group freely expressed the prominence of the Christian Democratic philosophy within it.142 Also frequent was the remonstrance that Schaeffer and his group refused membership to those who were indeed highly qualified but whom the association did not consider as in keeping with its own “group spirit.” This included Raoul Girardet (who would become a résistant and later a noted historian of French nationalism, militarism, and colonialism), apparently because he had published in the conservative Revue universelle and was a member of the Action française. After his interview with Schaeffer and Leenhardt they decided to reject his application to join, purportedly because they did not wish to include such traditional French nationalists in their association.143 Another recurring plaint was that, despite the mandatory articles in its statutes, Jeune France included Jews as well as a half-​Jew who was known to be a communist. Not only this, but when Schaeffer left Radio-​Jeunesse he placed one of his friends (Thévenot) in charge—​a communist who was married to another communist and lived on a farm together with German-​Jewish refugees.144 Similarly reproached was that Roger Leenhardt was founding a Jeune France branch in Tunisia and that he, a close councilor of Schaeffer, was not only a Christian Democrat but also a known Gaullist, and thus under police surveillance in Marseille.145 The multitude of mounting charges included the accusation that the organization was rooted in “éléments” (aesthetic and social ideals, as well as figures) who had been associated with the Popular Front, prominently including Louis Aragon. Some also claimed that Jeune France is overtly associated with cubism (which the regime condemned aesthetically), specifically through

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its inclusion of the artist Francis Picabia (a former Dadaist, with close friends in the Resistance).146 Despite these escalating denunciations there were still those within Vichy who clearly sympathized with Schaeffer’s ambitious project. Among the papers of André Chérier (the directeur adjoint in Pucheu’s cabinet) is a revealing transcript of a phone conversation between officials in Paris and in Vichy concerning what was occurring in Jeune France, and what to do. According to one of the interlocutors, Jeune France is indeed one of “les plus belles choses,” but is now evidently under increasing attack and hence is inevitably approaching dissolution.147 In November 1941 Schaeffer was apprised of these charges, warned about the parlous state of his records, and informed of the increasing consternation over his lack of participation in the propaganda of the Révolution nationale. He responded with vigor the following month; in a letter to Pucheu dated December 1, Schaeffer enumerates all of the accomplishments of Jeune France, despite the presence of its entrenched adversaries at Vichy. Here he remarks acerbically on the paradox of the situation in which he now finds himself: the government had endowed him with both funds and authority and yet with no clear directives, leaving him free to pursue a “rénovation nationale,” but of course as he understood it. However, he continues, officials are increasingly taking umbrage at the association’s independence and thus attempting to sabotage it, despite the fact that it had become one of the most effective means to realize Vichy’s cultural goals.148 Schaeffer was either disingenuous or not fully cognizant that he had projected his nonconformist ideals and understanding of Vichy’s ends onto Pétain’s initial charge, for he apparently still thought it possible to defend and thus salvage Jeune France. Claiming loyalty to the government (either perfidiously, or as he understood it) Schaeffer argues that he had already been inspected twice—​ administratively as well as financially. He then continues that the secrétaire d’État à l’éducation nationale et à la jeunesse had, in response, offered both encouragement and constructive criticism, resulting in a modification of the organization’s statutes and reinforcement of its controls. Schaeffer then retorts that he was placed in a situation in which he clearly could not win—​reproached for his “position politique et apolitique,” or in essence for not diffusing the ideological propaganda that Vichy desired. After arguing (again perhaps disingenuously) that he had welcomed those of all political tendencies, including Jean de Fabrègues, Schaeffer points out that he conceived his task not as one of propaganda but rather of culture—​an aspiration, he claims, that transcends any political “plan.” For according to Schaeffer the central goal of Jeune France is to accord French artists their rightful place in the new national community, and hence to innovate as well as to produce works of the very highest artistic quality.149

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Schaeffer’s subjective reassessment and reflection on the “language of things” In his disillusion, Schaeffer was by no means alone. Some who had been resistant to the Germans but were nevertheless seduced by several themes of the Révolution nationale began to disengage from the latter by the end of 1941. Schaeffer, however, did not at this point seek to join a Resistance organization, unlike several of his former colleagues in Jeune France who were, as he fully knew, already active members. His decision simply to withdraw may well have been influenced by other factors—​not only his sense of duty and need for public order as a career civil servant but also the existential crisis that he was experiencing since the death of his first wife on June 19, 1941.150 Shortly before his troubles with the Vichy authorities over-​seeing Jeune France augmented, Schaeffer’s wife, Elizabeth, was in the midst of a dangerous pregnancy. She was thus placed in a religious hospital, but the doctors and the nuns would not consider the only apparent cure—​ abortion, hence leaving her, with prolonged pain and suffering, slowly to die. This severely shook Schaeffer’s faith in both the church and its morality, and he eventually expressed his grief and crisis in his seven Poèmes malheureux, written in Saint-​Véran between January and April 1942. This was also the period when Schaeffer sought out another source of personal guidance, now turning to Georges Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, a spiritual councilor and therapist of Armenian and Greek origin, who founded the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man in Moscow before World War I, and then a center in the Parisian region (near Fontainebleau) in 1922. Gurdjieff ’s religiously syncretic teaching was inspired by his travels in the orient as well as by Christian esotericism, theosophy, and other occult circles that he encountered in Moscow. His goal was the harmonious integration of all the aspects of the person—​intellectual, emotional, and physical, thus breaking the cast of one’s psychological mechanisms and rather bringing out the essential person, or a permanent center of gravity. Clearly Gurdjieff ’s goal was related to personalism in its stress on individual authenticity and faith in human autonomy, as well as on a spiritual connection to others, hence a sense of shared moral obligations. Schaeffer was thus drawn to this teaching and later, after he returned to Paris, attended Gurdjieff ’s weekly Wednesday sessions until 1949, shortly before the latter’s death. Here he participated in exercises designed to foster individual concentration as well as collective dances in order to arrive at a sense of unity among those from all social levels. 151 This conversion not only helped Schaeffer through his personal grief and ideological disillusion but also provided an alternative to the Catholicism to which he could no longer ascribe. Following his removal from Jeune France, which Schaeffer referred to as his “disgrace” by Vichy, he also professed to have experienced a break in both his

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political and artistic “logic.”152 For at this point he clearly saw that the regime and its political-​cultural program were not at all what he had thought, but that if he were to maintain a presence in order to further his own ideals his tactics had to become subtle or surreptitious. Like many at this point he faced the question of whether it was better to go underground with the organized French Resistance, thus risking all—​including his young daughter’s well-​being—​or continue to undermine Vichy from within, as an individual résistant. His decision now was the latter, and he proceeded to take full advantage of his many contacts and all those he had formed through Radio-​Jeunesse as well as, more recently, Jeune France. For his position, like that of Mounier before (when he similarly pushed the regime’s legal limits) was to conceive of courage in an Aristotelian sense—​as consisting of a mean between the extremes of mere rashness and simple cowardice. Such courage demands true lucidity, which includes a recognition of the need for some semblance of cooperation, one that is “wary and vigilant,” thus avoiding a dead end while developing a new moral imagination.153 For Schaeffer still maintained, like Marrou, that art—​especially now—​was an essential aid to one’s subjective survival; hence art and life must articulate with each other, awakening a new awareness of one’s subject position. Upon the breakup of Jeune France its former members dispersed in different ideological directions, some remaining in Vichy’s fold while others soon entered the Resistance. In several cases the latter were propelled by total occupation in November 1942, or later by the draft of French youth for forced labor in Germany in early 1943. Schaeffer rather believed that given the current political situation it was by continuing his cultural activity that he could personally best serve and further the cause of freedom.154 Once more he would succeed in harnessing the potential of another Vichy program centered around communication and technology, now directing it toward new cultural, ideological, and creative ends. For he eventually decided to accept the option of returning to Vichy radio (now in Marseille), with an even more innovative and sophisticated project to realize through it. But this activity was proceeded by a period of withdrawal and sustained reflection while in Marseille, where he remained until fall 1942.155 Schaeffer’s former radio team had left Vichy in May 1941 and established itself in Marseille, which was now teeming with displaced intellectuals and artists. Schaeffer also had the advantage of the proximity of his former colleagues in Jeune France, including Daniel-​Lesur, who began a radio program that reported on musical activity in the unoccupied zone. Each week he also presented a different musical personality, including Olivier Messiaen and Maurice Martenot as well as Francis Poulenc. Daniel-​Lesur was also the host of a program for youth called “L’heure des jeunes,” and here worked together (as a musical collaborator) with Pierre Barbier and Claude Roy.156 Hence while in Marseille, Schaeffer was

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able to reflect profoundly on the  distinctive register of communication that results from the electrical transmission of sound, or how this specific means of reproduction could elicit new kinds of meanings in texts. He thus began to dictate a treatise, his L’esthétique et technique des arts-​relais, to his secretary while in Marseille in later 1942, then continuing it in Paris in 1943, when he returned there with his radio team. This endeavor led him to new reflections on “la perception sonore,” or how the conditions of electro-​acoustics necessarily impose themselves on the sonorous message.157 In his treatise Schaeffer discusses the radio metaphorically, as a kind of “écriture sonore” in which objects or “things” become a language that is capable of expression, almost like words. Just as an image is, in effect, a kind of language for the eyes, “bruitage”—​the consciously planned use of noise—​is concomitantly another sort of language for the ears.158 He then goes on to explain that as soon as one begins the cutting process the most beautiful “ideas” may reveal themselves: a mere detail, at first insignificant (the accent of a voice or a noise recorded by accident) can assume an unexpected importance, and be eloquently thrown into relief. Schaeffer then observes incisively that we all know what it is to “speak,” but we may also be surprised when either an image or a sound may say something “other,” or enunciate in a different manner. For the cinema and the radio not only transmit images or sounds but also render them articulate or suggestive; indeed on the radio the power of the voice over a text is unlimited, for it is the “texte parlé” that communicates the message. Most revealing with regard to his recent experience, Schaeffer explains that man cannot see or hear only what he wishes, and like someone who consults a dictionary he discovers that the meanings he encounters in experience can be different. On the radio when someone hears the slightest rustling or breath, they attempt, quite naturally, to construe what it signifies; but this may elude them and thus lead them further—​such is the weakness and the potential of the language of “things.”159 For Schaeffer both the cinema and the radio posses a unique power over the real, evoking magically or expressing that which cannot be articulated verbally with, as he knew, a potentially political impact. As he then argues, the full exploitation of the expressive possibilities of the radio and the cinema (in comparison with those of language) will become possible only when one progresses from the general—​or concepts—​to the concrete, or the physical. When this is accomplished it is possible to move beyond being subjugated by verbal language, for recreating the real world employing the “arts-​relais” (transmitted sound and image) simultaneously enlarges perception.160 In the midst of Vichy France, and in the wake of his own experience, Schaeffer was reconsidering the idea of authentic art, now conceiving it as a profound reflection on reality, on the human, and on man’s autonomy. For he was now cognizant

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that realities are in part the significations that one imparts to actions, to images, or to sounds: this is how they acquire a personal sense, not through established meanings, which may lie.161 Schaeffer would henceforth explore how an artwork can help to reconfigure our awareness, as he gradually crossed the boundary from Vichy radio into the realm of pure sound. Already a new horizon of creativity was emerging from his deep ruminations on the semantics of sound transmission—​ on the ways in which it affects awareness, imagination, communication, and our relation to collective meanings.162 Schaeffer developed these realizations further, but gradually through a series of stages and within the context of his reflections on all he had learned in Jeune France, in several different aspects. First he began extensive explorations into the semantics and potential significations of sound, as well as into the study of sound-​ systems and their syntax, or the “phonology” of sonorous constructs. Of fundamental concern to Schaeffer was the new range of communicative possibilities that could emerge, which would eventually lead him to a more prolonged consideration of what constitutes a “work” itself, and by extension the creative act.163

Schaeffer’s search for an “invisible theater” and new meanings or realms of perception Always the organizer and the pedagogue, Schaeffer then promptly and intrepidly sought a venue through which to diffuse the insights that he had developed in his treatise, even if it was within the Radiodiffusion nationale. As early as January 1942 he had begun to elaborate a project of monthly lectures intended to train radio technicians and artists to coordinate their efforts, thus improving the quality of artistic broadcasts.164 But Schaeffer first organized a conference on “Esthétique de la radio,” involving such prominent figures as Paul Claudel, Jean Giraudoux, and the great theatrical innovator Jacques Copeau. This was followed by a series of examples, or “lessons,” beginning in June 1942 in Paris with the rehearsal of Berlioz’s La damnation de Faust and a dramatic broadcast, “Vent du sud.” From here Schaeffer conceived the idea of a kind of Conservatoire de la Radio, and by that July he had organized a competition (from July 28 to August 2) for participation in a workshop: from over a thousand candidates he would select twenty actors and singers. The workshop itself took place in Beaune (in Burgundy) in the Hôtel des Ducs de Bourgogne, and ran from September 15 to October 19, 1942. This was the home territory of Jacques Copeau, who was the director of the Comédie-française and became a technical advisor for the project, working with Schaeffer, Hussenot, and Ollivier.165 One impetus for Schaeffer’s endeavor was the concern in France (since the 1920s) with how to perform drama on the radio and approach it as a kind of

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“invisible theater.” Schaeffer now argued that this kind of theater demanded that the audience develop new capacities of perception; hence rather than compensating for the absence of physical elements, those producing such theater had to develop a different kind of reality or “presence.” Others already recognized that the voice when broadcast is different—​or a disembodied expression—​and in 1937 the first International Congress of Radiophonic Art took place in Paris to explore the implications of artistic broadcasts.166 Subsequently during Vichy the radio diffused not just propagandistic but also artistic broadcasts, centrally including new dramas that were written expressly for the medium. However, it was clear that the technical means remained inadequate, which led to the appointment of Pierre Sabatier as director of the Services dramatiques (which included the division of “arts parlés”) in the fall of 1942. From the fall of 1940 to the end of 1943 the Services dramatiques had in fact been seeking authors to write new texts specifically for the radio, and among these were Paul Moran and Philippe Soupault. This endeavor took place under the aegis of the experimental “banc d’essai,” which not only presented new works but also adapted older texts for the radio, here considering them as new creations—​a project and idea that now animated Schaeffer.167 The goal of his workshop in Beaune was primarily research, as well as to train technicians and to help young artists gain experience; here Maurice Martenot aptly assisted in the selection of both promising actors and engineers. And Hussenot and Ollivier, together with Schaeffer, now continued the experiments that they had begun in Jeune France, for they again sought to use both choral groupings and individual voices reading selected classic texts. The group recorded several large productions, including Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum, Stravinsky’s ballet Petrushka, and Péguy’s La présentation de Notre-​Dame de Beaune. The results were presented before the press as well as celebrities on November 7, 1942, shortly before the total occupation of France; and on November 17 Schaeffer then produced a half-​hour broadcast of a fragment from Homer. In this context Schaeffer was exploring the radio as a new mode of artistic expression, analyzing how the strengths and weaknesses of either a work or an interpretation become evident through its radiophonic transmission. Again his concern was with how to reveal new meanings not only through the use of framing (or juxtaposition with other texts) but also through the control of amplification and of the quality of the sound itself. This also necessitated experimentation with a new kind of vocal diction, one denuded of all the artifices of traditional theater, and rather employing the “interior” (or intimate) attitude recommended by Copeau, while still respecting the technical demands of the medium.168 Such efforts already had precedents:  previously the literary programming at the Radiodiffusion nationale had been placed under Paul Gilson, who then

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instituted significant reforms. He canceled the previous stodgy program, “Au serv­ ice des lettres françaises,” and in March 1942 (when Jeune France was dissolved) sought out Claude Roy, who recruited the previous team of Pierre Barbier, Roger Leenhardt, and Albert Ollivier.169 This group began a series of programs about the life and work of France’s famous writers, replete with readings from their texts, each work presented as a “livre ouvert” (open book) and carefully paired with an appropriate well-​known voice. However, these broadcasts perfidiously (and with apparent impunity) included dissident comments and critiques of specific figures—​such as the fascist writer Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, or made pointed reference to those writers currently outside official favor.170 According to Claude Roy they also juxtaposed texts by figures who were ideologically incompatible and even hostile, such as Jean Schlumberger with Drieu La Rochelle. Moreover they presented poets who were increasingly résistant, including Louis Aragon, Jean Giraudoux, and Pierre Seghers. In addition, these broadcasts featured controversies surrounding figures like Thierry Maulnier and Robert Desnos, and even an interview with the résistant poet Paul Éluard (in April 1942, when Laval returned to power). At this point—​by the later spring—​under increasingly repressive political conditions Roy himself quit the program, with the rest of the group leaving thereafter.171

Schaeffer and the Studio d’Essai: From new perceptual fields to resistance Again, that fall in Beaune, Schaeffer and his reestablished team had attempted to elicit new meanings from texts, but now more sagaciously—​through the manipulation of sound. This had included the effects of delivery as well as of amplification, here with apparent French official approbation. For as a result of this success, and given Vichy’s desire for propaganda through culture, in late 1942 Schaffer was charged with establishing a studio in Paris for both workshops and experimental broadcasts. This was the Studio d’Essai, created on November 3, 1942, in a townhouse at 37 rue de l’Université, and then officially inaugurated in January 1943.172 It was intended to address current technical concerns of the radio while recording a series of new broadcasts (not intended for public diffusion), at a time when such exploratory projects were still rare in France. The Radiodiffusion nationale was always concerned with transmitting French national patrimony, but Schaeffer now seized the advantage to engage in (and here justify) such an experimental endeavor. Otherwise, this was a moment when the French National Radio was shrilly attempting to promote not only collaboration d’État but also the Service du travail obligatoire (STO), in addition to Vichy’s exclusions and racial hatred.173

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The Studio’s charge was to continue research in order to formulate a coherent set of guidelines, or a doctrine concerning the diffusion of an “émission artistique radiophonique,” as well as to train professionals. Hence the Studio was a kind of laboratory, not part of the normal radio broadcast production; although the issues that it addressed were not new, Schaeffer here focused more closely on the artistic or aesthetic dimension. Just as in Beaune he experimented with the reading of great or well-​known texts, ranging from classics like Homer to more recent French figures, again including the ideologically contested Péguy. Once more as in Beaune he organized a competition in order to select a team and thus employed a jury of twenty-​four members, but of necessity it included collaborators and others forced on him by the more extreme figures in Vichy. His acquiescence may have been the only means to procure vital support for his project on the part of French as well as German officials; indeed he published two articles on the endeavor in Comoedia in April 1943, based on excerpts from his still unfinished treatise.174 Significantly this was just a month after the Radiodiffusion nationale relocated in Paris, hence Schaeffer was now directly under the eyes of his superiors. Perhaps, in part, apropos of this he later commented in his Prélude, choral et fugue on how difficult it was for the ordinary person to have to practice such a “double morale.”175 Schaeffer’s jury to select the new team was presided over by Jacques Copeau, whom he admired, but also included the collaborationist composer Florent Schmitt as well as the director of the National Radio, André Demaison. In the end the jury chose several new young artists in addition to prestigious figures now close to Vichy, such as Alfred Cortot, Arthur Honegger, and Sacha Guitry, as well as Jean Giraudoux and Jean-​Louis Barrault (the latter a member of the Comédie-française). In his report on the Studio d’Essai of July 12, 1943, Schaeffer explained its goals of not only improving artistic broadcasts but also engaging in radiophonic experiments. The latter included the use of sounds and noises in addition to rhythm, and human voices placed in different ambiances and sonorous architectures, as he would continue to explore after the war. Not surprisingly the Studio d’Essai has been described as an “island of creation,” which enjoyed astonishing liberty of action in the midst of the worst of Vichy propaganda. The latter was now propagated by Philippe Henriot, the regime’s official spokesman on the radio, who in January 1944 would become the secrétaire d’État à la propagande.176 Schaeffer, taking full advantage of his position, was now more than ever aware that, in terms of meaning, one cannot separate a work from the manner in which it is transmitted. As in Jeune France he was interested in how new technologies could interact creatively with artistic traditions, or how canonic texts could be reinvested, eluding propagandistic appropriation and serving a new reflexive

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function. He thus experimented further with placing multiple microphones at various and changing distances, developing his notion of a “plan sonore” and carefully regulating the reverberation of sounds. He and his team were also well aware of the incipient use and great potential of the tape recorder, for journals such as Radio nationale had pointed out that the Germans here were far ahead, possessing the equipment that the French still lacked. Yet even without it Schaeffer realized that one could nevertheless employ the microphone in innovative ways (as he had in Jeune France), adapting it in a manner so as to help fabricate the desired sound.177 Beyond such experimentation the explorations of Schaeffer’s studio led to concrete results: between July 1943 and May 1944 the French National Radio ran a series of artistic broadcasts prepared by his dynamic creative team. These (five hours) consisted of works in several genres as well as in different artistic forms, including a reading from Proust (by Albert Ollivier) and an adaptation of a text by Montherlant, with music by Arthur Honegger. They also included a work written specifically for radio by Claude Roy, with a musical score by Georges Auric (an early member of the French musical Resistance), the irreverent La vie privée d’Adam et Ève. Appropriately here also included was a broadcast on humor in music, featuring the works of Satie, Poulenc (now in the Resistance), and Igor Stravinsky. Karin le Bail has aptly observed that such programming and aesthetics broke strongly with the prevailing approach of Vichy Radio, despite the ideologically diverse nature of the team involved.178 Indeed for such endeavors Schaeffer united younger with established artists, the latter including those close to collaborationist circles (who disliked Vichy traditionalists) such as Émile Vuillermoz, Philippe Henriot, Florent Schmitt, and Alfred Cortot. The younger artists included Claude Arrieu, who, now in hiding as a Jew, secretly wrote the music for Schaeffer’s Coquille à planètes, a radio play over a series of eight hours recorded in 1943. Arrieu was close to Messiaen, having been a fellow student at the Conservatoire in the class of Paul Dukas and having served as maid of honor at Messiaen’s wedding. Schaeffer himself had known Arrieu since 1936, for she had been employed by the French National Radio but was excluded in July 1941 because of Vichy’s second Statut des Juifs. When the situation for her became more dangerous at the time of the Jewish round-​ups, Schaeffer hid her at his home in Bellevue and secretly employed her, at considerable personal risk.179 The effects of Schaeffer’s experiments become clear by examining his broadcasts of this period. Fortunately these have been preserved and reissued on a set of CDs tracing the evolution of his Studio d’Essai.180 A prominent (if slightly later) example include the 1946 recording of Gogol’s Le nez (The Nose), as adapted from a narrative to drama and recorded with sound effects (including a drum, triangle, and water) by Jean-​Jacques Vierne, here read by Maurice Nasil. Among the

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vocal effects employed in this recording are yawning and shivering, which seem to approach music, as does the highly expressive intonations of the voice as it almost merges with the sound effects in a vivid and suggestive continuity. Beyond these subtle and yet striking innovations the Studio d’Essai went on to organize an exploration of the so-​called domaine sonore irrespective of genre or use, thus planting seeds that would fully flower only later, in the postwar period.181 Already Schaeffer was reconsidering the question of the mutability and ownership of an artistic text, together with the relation of the individual to collective or established significations within the process of constructing meaning. He was in fact experimenting with a concept that would later absorb him theoretically—​that of “haute fidélité,” of how the transfer of a sonorous object into a space of reconstitution is accompanied by constraints—​distortions and dynamic changes—​and also by a transformation of the perceptual field.182 Concomitantly it was here that he initially became interested in “simulacres,” or traces of real events and experiences that are torn out of their habitual contexts and then recomposed in a new assemblage for a substantially different end. Yet even more was emerging within Schaeffer the person and the creator as he reflected on the implications of his activities, and where they might lead him in his own later artistic endeavors. For as he explained it was in the course of his experimentation with “things” that the sounds became both animate and transcendent: “they began to speak themselves as if they carried a message from another world.”183 Hence he began to consider further how one might hear sounds in a different sense if forced to search for new personal referents, once they are removed from their established cultural contexts. Like the résistant Surrealist poets whom he would soon be recording, Schaeffer was concerned not just with the ways in which people think about reality but also with how to trigger constructive mental activity despite the obstacles imposed by language.184 The Studio d’Essai was thus a rare site of creativity as well as relative liberty, and soon became a gathering point for résistants within the French National Radio. It was probably Schaeffer’s close contact with this group in his own studio that now led him to realize that, to use Paxton’s words, “there came a time when to save the nation’s deepest values one had to disobey the state.”185 Schaeffer had followed a slow trajectory—​a gradual distancing and not a brusque break, long knowing that those within his employ had already become members of the Resistance. As he puts it, it was an “open secret” that Albert Ollivier was associated with the resistance journal Combat, and that his own personal secretary, Renée Diabri, was among the early résistants. Schaeffer was also close to one of the first résistants in the French National Radio, François Devèze, whom he had known since 1936 and who had been hiding equipment since the summer of 1940. Aware of the importance of guarding the secrecy of his close

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colleagues since not all in the Studio d’Essai were résistants, Schaeffer sought out his own resistance network, and succeeded in doing so through Jean Guignebert. The latter, whom Schaeffer was finally able to approach in the summer of 1943, was a brilliant journalist and in charge of the Comité de la libération de la radio. Schaeffer henceforth became part of the so-​called Chaîne Duvernois, which brought together technicians as well as former leaders in the radio who chose to be résistants. On August 5, 1943, he officially became a part of Guignebert’s Comité de libération de la radio, and by September had assumed the resistance name “Tobie.”186 By the late summer Schaeffer was thus lending his facilities, as well as his own professional efforts, to the recording of readings from works by resistance poets such as Louis Aragon, Paul Éluard, and Jean Tardieu.187 For one goal of resistance radio was to prepare for what by now promised to be an imminent liberation by recording programs designed to garner the courage and conviction that all would shortly need. Moreover such programs were intended to communicate a sense of the values and goals for which not only France but also the individuals fighting to preserve them, continued resolutely to stand.188 At the beginning of 1944 Schaeffer began the “Émissions de minuit,” or the radio equivalent of the clandestine writers’ Éditions de minuit. Here he brought performers and technicians together to record not only the works of resistance artists but also of those who figures had been unjustly banned by the Nazis. Hence the programs now being prepared centered on the work of resistance poets and writers such as Aragon, Éluard, Tardieu, and Desnos, but also Jewish composers including Arnold Schoenberg, Darius Milhaud, and Paul Dukas (conducted by Roger Désormière). Significantly, Schaeffer included the work of his friend and colleague Claude Arrieu, her Sept poèmes d’amour en guerre to the poetry of Éluard. Also participating in these broadcasts were Irène Joachim (with whom Désormière had recorded Pelléas), as well as the young Henri Dutilleux and members of the orchestra of the Opéra-​Comique. Arriving at the studio for these emissions every day by 6 a.m. (in order to record the interdicted scores) was the composer René Leibowitz, who had been hiding in Saint-​Tropez while working on his soon to be prominent postwar book, Schoenberg et son école. Here it is important to be aware that the poets now recorded (including those who were surrealists as well as résistants) espoused an aesthetic that would play a crucial role for Schaeffer in his transition to his postwar endeavors. For from them he learned not only how to explore the construction of new perceptual frames but also to elicit new meanings through structural dislocations, or semantic incompatibilities and ambiguities.189 Not surprisingly on May 20, 1944, under the new secrétaire d’État à la propagande Philippe Henriot (appointed in January), Schaeffer was once again fired,

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this time from his own Studio d’Essai. The resistance Chaîne Duvernois had been “decapitated” in a series of arrests by the Gestapo that month, and hence surveillance in the radio now increased. Once more Schaeffer had been watched and warned by the relevant Vichy authorities, and threatened with either an unpaid leave or with being sent out into the provinces. Now the pretext was that he had broadcast a program on Napoleon that was judged to be odiously Anglophile: in fact, it had been the surreptitious work of Albert Ollivier. In the end, when fired Schaeffer had to accept a position simply overseeing the quality of broadcasts, but he continued his clandestine work, with the tacit support of the Studio’s new director, François Agostini.190 On June 1, 1944, as the Liberation of Paris became increasingly imminent, Schaeffer knew that his Vichy past would be an issue, despite his entry into the Resistance. Hence he penned a letter to Jean Guignebert in order preemptively to prepare his defense, one in which he attempts to explain why he initially became engaged with the Vichy regime. According to Schaeffer he followed the government of the maréchal in good faith, and he goes on to explain that this had then led him to the foundation of Jeune France. As he elaborates, he could now in retrospect regret his youthful political inexperience, and the fact that he had consequently not followed Général de Gaulle (to England). But Schaeffer continues that, having remained in France and in his position, he chose not inaction but rather (he believed) a political action oriented toward the defense of the country against both collaborationist and fascist forces.191 Schaeffer, in sum, had believed that Pétain was an antifascist, and it was perhaps his realization of the regime’s evolution in the course of 1943 (with profascists entering the government) that pushed him into an active resistance. The month after he wrote this letter Schaeffer (on July 23) organized a general rehearsal of what was to be French Liberation radio, with music of Chabrier and Debussy. The call to insurgency soon arrived—​on August 18, 1944—​and Schaeffer helped to coordinate the ensemble of Resistance radio, as second in command to Guignebert, who was promoted by de Gaulle’s supporters. But inevitably Schaeffer was called before the Commission d’épuration de la Radio-​ diffusion française because of his past with Radio Jeunesse and with Jeune France. Schaeffer was not prosecuted but lost considerable power; he remained at the National Radio, unhappily having to take directions from his former colleagues in the Resistance, who now were made his superiors. Neither a Gaullist nor a communist, he thus had little clout, and yet he still nettled those in power by planning a major organization, despite his lack of authority to do so. Hence in a letter of October 4, 1944, Guignebert terminated Schaeffer’s position both as a director at the National Radio and as head of the Studio d’Essai. When Schaeffer continued obstinately to plan changes, he was called in by Guignebert and Pierre-​Henri

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Teitgen (de Gaulle’s minister of information) and presented with the choice of being sent to either Brazzaville (in Africa) or to New York City.192 The Studio d’Essai was thus closed on May 5, 1945, and when it reopened in 1946 it was placed under the direction of a prominent resistance poet, Paul Tardieu. It now notably changed direction, rather focusing on cultural de-​ Nazification, and as part of this agenda its emphasis shifted to the dissemination of jazz. Schaeffer in the meantime had chosen New York, and left at the beginning of 1945 with the title of Conseiller technique en matière d’études et de recherches concernant les programmes de radiodiffusion et de télévision. In this capacity he oversaw a series of studies of radio networks in the United States, and gave lectures within the context of the Franco-​American Cultural Exchange—​a society founded as the result of an agreement between the Americans and the French Radio.193 Together with this group he edited the recordings that he had made in secret while at the Studio d’Essai, and then presented this inspiring anthology in numerous American cities. In this “Chronique de Paris libéré,” made during the insurrections in Paris between August 19 and 25, 1944, his audiences could hear resistance poems and texts read by the authors themselves, including Aragon, Éluard, Camus, and Claudel. The seeds of later techniques took root gradually in the work of Schaeffer: developed from his concerns and realizations in Vichy France, they thereafter followed their own trajectory, within his postwar experience and context. For beginning with his work in Vichy Radio he learned how the medium of transmission transforms both content and meaning as well as our perception as it separates the sound from its original source. In Jeune France he had searched creatively for other new communicative possibilities, both by opening up new meanings in canonic texts and creating new polyvalent artworks that could deepen awareness and forge communal networks. His goal consistently was to explore the articulation of art with life, and also aesthetically to engage new groups, while at the same time forming a more “total,” insightful, and socially responsible person. For Schaeffer, communication was not to restrict but rather to foster new spiritual awareness, and he had learned throughout Vichy that art was thus indispensible to man’s interior or subjective survival. In addition, Schaeffer’s exploration of the “domaine sonore,” through the transfer of sonorous objects into new spaces of restitution, was motivated by his desire to discover those perceptual fields not accessible through a conventional language and thereby to awaken new levels of our humanity. In conclusion, it would be a musicological oversight to ignore the presence of all these aesthetic seeds in Vichy France; and it would also be a historiographic error not to recognize this line of cultural innovation, development, and continuity. For figures like Schaeffer deftly harnessed the momentum that had been

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established by early Vichy, and then gradually diverted it to their own personal as well as slowly changing political ends.194 The fruit of this dynamic, of course, fully ripened only after the war: Roger Leenhardt went on to explore the very grammar of filmmaking—​like Schaeffer seeking to make art part of life in a “living realism,” which in cinema became associated with the “new wave.” In theater the innovations and experimentation of former Jeune France members also continued to bear fruit, and particularly in the case of leading figures like Jean Vilar, who in 1947 founded the still flourishing avant-​garde Avignon Festival.195 In the end, all this leads us back to Schaeffer, through whom the best case for pursuing a cultural history of the period may be made, one that crosses fields and recognizes the coherence of a life, creativity, and experience—​or of understanding, meaning, and communication. His career and work cannot be divided into segments and into disciplines, nor divorced from the Vichy context; and it is only through perceiving this that one may grasp the full significance of Schaeffer’s still vibrant art.

4

THE SOFT OR HARD BORDERS OF FRENCH I D E N T I T Y: H O N E G G E R’S I C O N I C R O L E A N D S U B J E C T I V I T Y D U R I N G V I C H Y

While employed by Vichy, Pierre Schaeffer ostensibly grew more deeply or subjectively aware of its ideological limits and of its repression. He thus slowly assumed his distance from the regime and eventually joined the Resistance, seeking simultaneously to subvert its political and cultural goals. For he had come to realize that his initial support for the new regime—​which he perceived as anti-​German—​ was misplaced; as he discovered its evolving nature he first drew inward, and then finally (if belatedly) sought out and entered a resist­ ance network. In the case of Arthur Honegger we encounter another figure who was used by the regime (if also by the German occupant) but who, even after the reality of collaboration d’État became clear (as Vichy developed) refused to assume an unequivocal resistance stance. While Schaeffer gradually grew resistant and then formally entered the Resistance, Honegger (in Paris), who had been recruited through his friends, was expelled from his resistance network for his inability to refuse ideological compromise or to thwart his use as a Vichy icon. The reasons for Honegger’s decision to accommodate his political use by Vichy, as it evolved, are indeed complex: first, he had chosen Swiss nationality (having Germanic-​Swiss parents), but was born and continued to reside in France. Hence despite his citizenship, by later 1941 Honegger found himself employed as a Vichy cultural emblem in its now escalating pursuit of Franco-​German cultural collaboration. This brought him great celebrity and success within the field, which he apparently did not refuse; for he had always sought to fit into a larger national and cultural whole that could accommodate the two sides of his mixed Swiss-​German and French heritage. Now he finally found the place that he had coveted in the French musical field, as it was developing within the context—​one in which professional accomplishments and utility, both political and ideological, slowly became of prime importance. Ostensibly, his previous as well

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as new compositions served Vichy’s goal of furthering Franco-​German collaboration in the course of 1942 (and particularly in the occupied zone), while also helping to obscure the fine line with the previous, more moderate form of collaboration d’État. For the musical field lost further autonomy as political priorities impinged, or (in Bourdieu’s conception) as its relation to power shifted thus transforming its internal structure, legitimacy increasingly being conferred as a result of political motivations or strategies. Honegger’s choice was thus “attentisme,” or the decision to accommodate the regime that was in power; hence he did not resist the use of his prestige in the service of Vichy’s agenda, even as it developed after 1942. Conveniently for the Vichy regime, his ambiguous cultural identity, one intermingling French and German traits, was already evident in works such as his Antigone, which was now reinscribed at the Opéra in order to serve both French and German interests. This work shall thus here provide a focus, but so too will Honegger’s own conflicted identity, or desire to appeal to both national cultures, which is evident not only in his creative work but also in his journalism and other activities. We shall also see that as a result of his inner conflict, or perhaps opportunism, Honegger (again as opposed to Pierre Schaeffer) even with time was unable to muster either a resolute ideological rejection or profound personal resistance. Indeed ever since the psychological insights of Erik Erikson we have grown more sensitive to the instability or the evolution within identity—​the fluidity of the borders that define it as it responds to the particularities of the situation the self confronts. For we accommodate more than one identity, stressing different strands at specific moments of experience, and such “diffuse identity” permits us to adjust to new realities that remain still unconstructed, ineffable, formless, or incoherent. This adjustment occurs both subjectively in individuals and, as theorists of identity and of transnationalism now advance, within communities, or on the level of the nation as it confronts the “other” in both political and cultural terms. The boundaries of such identity are far from uniform, for they comprise the “hard” and “soft”: there are those we cannot violate without a loss of group identity, while others are far more porous and permit transgression with less anxiety, depending on the historical or social context.1 In the case of Vichy France these observations are especially apt, for the regime had to negotiate not just its prerogatives but also its national borders, politically as well as well as culturally, and the latter not exclusively with the German occupant but with its citizens and among its own contentious factions. What was “French” grew problematic now in light of Vichy’s armistice, which required it to collaborate on every level with the Germans and to contend with the latter’s notion of French identity, which they sought insidiously to impose on French culture.2 Within this context iconic figures became “soft borders” or a nexus for

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exchange, not just over constructions of France’s past (as in the case of Debussy) but for conceptions of her future—​of French modernity, and hence barometers of the cultural adjustments that French identity could here sustain. It is from this perspective that we reexamine the so-​called triumph of Arthur Honegger as the living composer most performed in both the zones of wartime France. Given recent evidence we can no longer accept the explanation that as a Germanic Swiss who lived in France he was exempt from the political pressures of either nation. Discursive constructions of Honegger throughout this period reveal the contrary; although a foreign national who was born and lived in France, for Vichy he eventually became a paradigm of a modified French cultural identity, and for the Germans of French culture within a projected Hitler-​dominated “new Europe.”

Honegger omnipresent By 1942 it seemed to many that Arthur Honegger’s music was omnipresent: his works, now being well recorded and commissioned, appeared in every major venue, prompting critics soon to marvel that a living composer was a “star” not just in Paris but throughout France. Not only were two festivals held in Paris to celebrate the composer’s fiftieth birthday that year but also the Vichy-​authorized journal L’information musicale devoted an entire issue to Honegger and his musical oeuvre. So too did the now collaborationist journal of the arts Comoedia, under control of the German Embassy and its associated German Institute, for which Honegger served as a music critic.3 The festivals culminated a series of performances of Honegger’s compositions the previous year, which included his Partita for Two Pianos (of 1940), presented in Paris on March 26, 1941, and his Danse des morts (of 1940, with Claudel), performed by Charles Munch and the Société des concerts du Conservatoire on January 29 as well February 2, 1941, and also recorded that winter. Later, on July 14, Lucien Rebatet reviewed the recording for Je suis partout, noting that it was produced only five months after the premiere, and although hesitant about it and the performance, he found Honegger a musician who knows how to build on the foundations of a powerful “chorale germanique.”4 In addition, presentations of Honegger’s oratorio with Paul Claudel, Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher (finished in 1935), began in the unoccupied zone in the tense summer of 1941, with the support of the Commissariat pour la lutte contre le chômage and Jeune France.5 Despite the audacities that we have seen in this work, when it was performed in the unoccupied zone it at least appeared to resonate with Vichy’s nationalist rhetoric, and in spite of German fears of such expression in their zone, the authorities eventually approved it for performance. Moreover, the oratorio was allowed to be performed in German-​occupied Belgium, where it

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was made possible through a subvention of 15,000 francs from the Ministère de l’instruction publique et des beaux-​arts, which allotted the funds in its budget of 1940 to the Action artistique à l’étranger.6 In 1941 Honegger was commissioned to write music for a presentation of Aeschylus’s Suppliants, as staged by Jean-​Louis Barrault and sponsored (once again) by the cultural association Jeune France, its director Pierre Schaeffer now frequently calling on the composer. This work, like so many others that were sponsored by Jeune France, was designed on a massive scale and presented out of doors (here between gymnastics demonstrations) at the Roland Garros Stadium in Paris on July 5, 1941. The spectacle was enthusiastically reviewed in L’information musicale by Henri Petit, under the title “Théâtre, musique sport.”7 Petit points out that the two performances of it were presented under the auspices of the Comité national des sports, then comments on the novelty of the production—​presented in a stadium, with original music by Arthur Honegger. As he observes here with approbation, Honegger adeptly made use of the brass and paid special attention to the clarity of declamation in the somber unison chorus, to which the orchestra then responds. In addition Honegger wrote music for another presentation at Roland Garros, André Obey’s 800 mètres, also presented in the summer of 1941, sponsored and amply funded by the Secrétariat aux sports.8 This work, staged by Jean-​ Louis Barrault and termed a “tragedy,” was inspired by the 1924 Olympics in Colombes (outside of Paris), when a blond Swiss runner, Paul Martin—​played by Jean Marais—​came in second (Marais also portraying the winner). In order to make the moral message clear, Comoedia published not only several statements by Jean Giraudoux but also an article by Obey and Barrault titled “Nécessité de l’effort.”9 This “tragic spectacle” consisted of several actors running slowly around the stadium’s track, stopping periodically as Fernand Ledoux read passages from the text over the public address system. Henri Petit also reviewed this work in his article, complimenting Honegger and noting that because of the predominance of the dialogue the music had to be reduced to a kind of “sonorisation” of the spectacle. But building on the rugged, virile, and youthful image that Honegger had established in the 1920s with works like his Rugby, Petit also notes that the composer himself loved sport.10 The culmination of Honegger’s performances was in 1942, when the two festivals were held in his honor, organized by the Vichy supporter André Delange together with the director of La Voix de son Maître, Jean Bérard, with German permission. Beginning in the fall of 1941, La Voix de son Maître and the Société des concerts du Conservatoire had organized several festivals devoted to French composers, which Honegger discussed in detail in his regular column in Comoedia.

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Honegger had begun to write for the journal on June 21, 1941, when it reappeared as a weekly, having ceased publication in 1936. He was invited to become a music critic by its new editor, René Delange, the dedicatee of his symphonic movement Rugby with whom he remained close (they would both be delegates to the Mozart celebration in Vienna in late November that year).11 The first of the two Honegger festivals was held in Paris in the winter of 1942 at the Palais de Chaillot, and included a performance of his Danse des morts (on February 2) and his early oratorio Le roi David (on March 8).12 The second, more extensive festival was organized as part of the so-​called Semaine Honegger, which took place with extensive publicity between June 25 and July 3, 1942. The latter was in fact the fourth of the Voix de son Maître’s festivals devoted to French music—​Honegger being ostensibly treated as French—​and included the Parisian premiere of his Second Symphony as well as a performance of Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher. Various Parisian musical associations also presented his works, both large and small, with performances including his First Sonata for Violin and Piano, his Sonata for Cello and Piano, and his Sept pièces brèves for piano. Reviewing the performances of the “Honegger week” in L’information musicale in August, Georges Dandelot commented with both approbation and awe, “C’est la force de la nature, mise au service de la musique.” (It is the force of nature, placed in the service of music.)13 Still other performances of Honegger that year, independent of the two festivals and the Semaine Honegger, included the premieres of his scenic music for Machiavelli’s Mondragon, for Synge’s L’ombre de la ravine, and for d’Annunzio’s Phaedre. And even as concerts became fewer in Paris by the beginning of 1943, performances of Honegger continued at both larger and smaller concert societies and at the Paris Opéra , which presented his Antigone early that year. As late as December 20, 1943, his music for Claudel’s Soulier de satin (which had premiered at the Comédie-​française on November 27) was performed at the Théâtre du Châtelet. Moreover throughout the occupation and Vichy, Honegger continued to write music for film, prominently including Abel Gance’s Capitaine Fracasse and Louis Cuny’s Mermoz (both of 1943).14 Recordings of Honegger’s music now also proliferated: his Danse des morts was soon recorded with Charles Munch, and other recordings included his Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher under Louis Vocht and his Second Symphony, under Munch.15 Honegger was among the forty composers selected for a series of recordings sponsored by the Association d’action artistique and designed to promote French music. Significantly the director of the project (accomplished between October 1942 and December 1943) was Francis Casadesus, a member of the musical section of the group Collaboration. Honegger was thus not only one of the most frequently performed living composers in France, but also the country’s most recorded living contemporary composer.16

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Honegger’s modernism and the modernist strain condoned by both Vichy and the Germans In order to understand the reasons why Arthur Honegger was so adulated by various factions within Vichy as well as by the occupant, we must understand the precise nature of his modernism and the ideological sources of his support. We thus have to face the vexed issue of modernism—​of all it embraces, the ways it has been used, and its relation to the concept of modernity as well as to postmodernism. For of central importance here is the kind of modernism in the works of Honegger (as well as others) that was now permitted; hence we are obliged to consider whether this relates to a specific modernist strain. As the historian Robert Wohl has pointed out in his perceptive review-​ essay, “Heart of Darkness: Modernism and Its Historians,” some—​now from a distance—​construe modernism as not one style but rather as a set of related “epochal styles.” Art historians such as Christopher Butler and philosophers like Jean-​François Lyotard indeed posit a diversity of modernist movements, which for Lyotard includes the postmodern, perceived as a recurring strain within the modern. We are therefore faced with the question of the continuities that unite them all, as well as the specific features that distinguish each particular strain.17 One continuity that Wohl and others have identified is the fear of the loss of the coherence of the self, or awareness of its instability and thus the disruption of clear identity in the bewildering modern world. Some modernists in America and England, such as Eliot and Pound, paradoxically expressed antimodern values through modernist literary forms in an attempt to “give shape to an otherwise chaotic modernity that threatened the integrity of the self.” This initially implied a rejection of the past as a compromised means of constructing a pure new order, one that could restore a coherent form or shape to our experience within the present. However, a different attitude emerged from the trauma of World War I: modern movements such as Dada and Surrealism (which in fact did not call themselves “modernist”) rejected this utopia, no longer resisted the past, and were prepared to accept anomalies and ambiguities. As Wohl points out, some scholars thus trace a clear line from these movements to the embrace of the hybrid or fragmented, as well as the conscious reintegration of the past, that is characteristic of postmodern art.18 Carl Schorske has incisively articulated this distinction: modernism defined itself unequivocally “against the past,” or as “detached from it in a new, autonomous cultural space.” Postmodernism rather finds uses for selected elements of the past, “but even as it consigns modernism to the past, it affirms its own rupture from history as a continuous process, as the platform of its own intellectual history.”19

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In addition, Matei Calinescu has observed that “perspectivism” was similarly a point of continuity as well as change, being predominantly psychological in the modernist phase and then narrative in the postmodern. Moreover both movements oppose authority, but for the latter this opposition extends to the modernists’ ideal of a utopian reason, which contributed to the disaster of two world wars. As Calinescu thus puts it, there are in fact two conflicting but interdependent modernisms:  the second, a side that emerged with World War I, is in its basic attitude “antimodern.” That strain, which eventually developed into postmodernism, rejected the early modernists’ more optimistic tone, deunifying their image of the past and reopening a dialogue with it. For Lyotard modernism characteristically contains both a “fear and desire for an absent sublime”; hence the postmodern strain, its menacing twin, “recognizes the unpresentable silenced by modernism.” Postmodernism similarly questions the concept of unity, or the valuation of the past only via the whole, in effect subverting a sense of authorship and consciously leaving inner tensions unresolved. One modernism, then, is socially progressive, rationalistic, and technological, while the other is “culturally critical and self-​critical, bent on demystifying the basic values of the first.”20 Honegger, although drawn to the first kind of modernism, with his love of fast trains, technology, and cinema, still found himself seeking comfort in the past; however, as we shall see in Antigone, his use of the past was discontinuous and fragmented, ostensibly creating a disquieting if engrossing effect. This would prove highly resonant for his audience in occupied and Vichy France, but was admissible to both authorities because of the presence—​if sometimes incongruously—​of specific traditional elements. As Calinescu has pointed out, the term “postmodern” first appeared immediately after the war, in 1946, applied by Randall Jarrel to the new poetry of Robert Lowell.21 But already for French wartime audiences apparently such disjunction and stylistic fragmentation (characteristic of some of Honegger’s works) was both resonant and multivalent in meaning, given the conditions of insecurity, disorientation, and the moral ambiguity that many now confronted.

Honegger’s supporters and their ideological trajectories In addition to the resonance of Honegger’s modernism within the context, support for the composer stemmed from his previous associations with both groupings as well as individuals who were now powerful in the new Vichy government. This included those who had embraced a specific strain of the nonconformist movement of the 1930s—​that which promoted technology as well as a new kind of planning. Among them was Hubert Lagardelle, like Laval a former member of the left, who had grown hostile to parliamentary socialism; in fact, Lagardelle

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became minister of labor in April 1942, when Laval returned to power. Honegger was already known within this circle, having participated in the early 1930s in Philippe Lamour’s journal Plans, a publication that, like Lamour himself, had grown supportive of Italian fascism. Lagardelle and Lamour in the 1930s were both part of a group of antiliberal technocrats—​those who rejected not only parliament but also political parties and individualism, rather promoting an elite of public servants under the leadership of a “chief,” who himself transcended politics.22 Honegger’s links to nonconformism (like Schaeffer’s) were complex, but would have significant repercussions because of his ties to specific former associates, who were now important figures within the Vichy government. Also central would be the fact that Honegger, unlike several of his colleagues in Les Six, had not enthusiastically supported the Popular Front, which was now being maligned by Vichy. Honegger, like Poulenc, was sincerely attracted to “the popular” as a concept but not in the partisan sense as conceived by this left-​coalition in the mid-​1930s. For the latter the goal of art had been to project a contemporary democratic and enlightened mass culture, as opposed to the archaic, hierarchic, and often Romantic models of the German fascists. In fact, Honegger’s own tastes were distant from the Popular Front aesthetic of a modern but accessible music that avoided complicated architecture and overly sophisticated techniques.23 Yet like so many artists throughout the 1930s Honegger took an interest in ideological questions, being now confronted by mass politics and parties as well as by the social and political trauma of the decade. His search was for the right of relation between his own aesthetic proclivities, which were traditionalist mixed with the modern, and the projected broad audience that he wished to attract through his art. His quest would lead him to other movements that sought a different social and aesthetic future—​those that, as Honegger discovered, were not within the Republican tradition, thus differentiating him from most of his former colleagues in Les Six. At the beginning of the 1930s Honegger (like Schaeffer) had turned to a literary and philosophical circle associated with a new generation of French youth seeking a spiritualist solution to the political impasse. Within this “nonconformist” movement were groupings that would attract several young French composers, however with a slight delay—​just as the Popular Front crested in the public esteem and then declined. But Honegger was immediately drawn to specific aspects and themes of the movement, and particularly to one of its journals, its cultural concerns apparently mirroring his own. For he was unequivocally an intellectual, an avid reader aware of the implications of contemporary movements of thought, most of which during this period were responding to the political, social, and ideological crisis. Honegger may well have been introduced to

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nonconformist ideas by one of his literary collaborators of the period, a fellow Swiss, Denis de Rougemont (the author of the libretto of Honegger’s Nicolas de Flue), who moved to Paris in 1930 and became involved with the nonconformist journals L’ordre nouveau and Esprit, while also collaborating on the Nouvelle revue française.24 Again, nonconformism crossed a broad spectrum and thus ranged from groupings that were closer to the left or to the right, which could ultimately lead to complicity with fascism or to its unequivocal refusal. Indeed the nonconformist rejection of liberal, individualist values embraced such movements as Communism and Christian Democracy, but it also included French fascism, already becoming a potent intellectual, if not a political, current. For the nonconformists, like Honegger in this period, rejected the approach to man as an “atom” (as purportedly in liberal democracy) but also as simply a mere unit within a totalitarian series. Emphatically antimaterialist, they envisioned man as a responsible and spiritual being, tied to others in a communitarian vocation, free of political, national, or social boundaries. In sum, all of these tendencies were united by a broad rejection not only of certain liberal values but also of the institutions of the Third Republic as well as a pronounced anxiety concerning the nation’s future.25 Although not a French citizen, Honegger’s adopted nation was clearly of deep personal concern, and hence he here made a decision to be associated with movements that addressed its current problems. However, the broad political valence of nonconformism would also soon accommodate Honegger’s own opportunism, as it did that of Le Corbusier, who was born in (French-​speaking) Switzerland but became a French citizen in 1930 (at the age of forty-​three). Honegger himself in 1937 composed music for a short film, Visages de la France—​a gift from the French Communist Party to the Soviet Union, in honor of the twentieth anniversary of the October Revolution. But perhaps more profoundly, nonconformism’s transnational as well as egalitarian emphasis appealed to Honegger, who was still restlessly in quest of his place between national cultures.26 Hence for all these reasons Honegger found a place within the journal Plans, which was informed by a spirit of both modernity and reform as well as by a myth of the technologically advanced ideal state of the future. The journal also emphasized both geographic and cultural regionalism, meaning the relation of man to the soil, to his race, to his community, and to its cultural tradition.27 Honegger, who was born and resided in France, could thus readily identify with a journal that privileged loyalty to place and to racial community, as well as to a shared transnational culture. Honegger was attracted not only to the journal’s emphasis on race and culture, as opposed to nationality but also to its attempt to provide a synthesis of the scientific, economic, political, and aesthetic advances of the period. Like

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other nonconformist journals, one of its fundamental themes was the necessity of youth projecting and creating a new world—​one that would be progressive as well as spiritual. Hence the editorial committee included those who were drawn not only from a variety of sympathetic social perspectives but also from different disciplines or cultural fields. On it, for example, were Honegger and his friend Le Corbusier, the writer René Clair, and the artist Fernand Léger. In fact the first issue of the journal contained an article by Le Corbusier, in which he presents his theory of a new kind of architecture and social order, “La ville radieuse.” But it also included an article by Honegger that, like Le Corbusier’s, advocated a marshaling of the latest techniques of his art in the service of a new social vision.28 Both articles accorded aptly with the journal’s opening editorial, which articulated its ideal of “the blossoming of a more human civilization, where man, dominating the tyranny of the machine . . . would retrieve his place in the universe.” Appropriately, Honegger’s subject was music for film, which had interested him since his early collaborations with Abel Gance on the silent films La roue (1923) and Napoléon (1927). And now, with the depression (and later during wartime), Honegger was increasingly being drawn to film; here his concern was with its appropriate “sonorization,” and with balancing musical continuity (as opposed to pastiche) with the narrative demands of the action.29 His article, titled “Du cinéma sonore à la musique réelle,” begins by addressing the technical problem of reconciling cinematic exigencies with the demands of musical form. But it ends with a telling metaphor that reveals a great deal about Honegger’s vision of the aesthetic and social goal of his art, and its ties to a certain trajectory within nonconformist thought: “Music can . . . become herself, enter into reality, be like the cinema, and with a genuine, collective force, no longer subject to the anarchic revisions of individualities, but applying itself to a transported throng.”30 Honegger’s stress (if here metaphorically) on the collective, on the force and reality of the emotions that unite it, and on the use of technology toward an antimaterialist end was by no means an isolated discourse. Rather it was tied in with the journal’s adaptation of Sorelian rhetoric, or that characteristic of the syndicalist leader Georges Sorel during the period before World War I when he allied himself with the French nationalist right. These ideals were later elaborated (in the 1920s) by Sorel’s follower Georges Valois, who for several years became an avowed French fascist. Both thinkers emphasized the importance of the spiritual, or resacralizing an atomized, materialistic society so that the classes would ultimately work together, fused through the force of a galvanizing myth. Tapping intuition as opposed to reason was thus paramount in realizing these values, as was altruism and sacrifice, which similarly demanded a myth that would both impress and unite. Here the artist (and figures such as Honegger) were central:  indeed already for Sorel the aesthetic dimension of

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myth was essential in both inspiring and effecting subsequent political action. For aesthetic force could “manifest” the new order as well as the new sensibility sustaining it, thereby not only transforming consciousness but also uniting and inspiring consequent acts. As a result artistic myths had specific criteria in order to achieve this end: first, they had to be attuned to the sensibility of the masses, which required dynamism, precision, and speed. Immediately evident here is the connection to the futurist strain within Italian fascism, which is no coincidence, since Mussolini (as Valois emphasized) similarly traced his roots to the Sorelian circle. For Valois such imagery was also tied to violence, which he considered a necessary ethical and regenerative force, for it was spiritually and politically as well as physically a revolt against decadence and thus a source of creativity.31 This in turn fostered the image of rebirth, based on a return to a past that was “pure” or more glorious—​to healthy eras in national history as sources of authentic regeneration. Again we here encounter another parallel with Italian fascism and specifically its cult of “Romanness,” or its reactionary nostalgia that could coexist with certain vital futurist elements. For Italian and French fascists in the 1920s and 1930s (both of which seized on Honegger’s image) cultural traditions were to form the basis of a new civilization that united the conservative and the revolutionary, addressing the past and the future at once. Hence fascist aesthetics in Italy as well as France (and in some cases in Germany) covered the gamut from abstract or “advanced” artistic trends through various historicist or traditionalist styles.32 Honegger himself was attracted to this synthesis, which appeared to reconcile his own personal quest to unite the past and future as well as the spiritual with modern technology. The machine for Honegger, as for this group, and especially Valois, was thus a resonant symbol, with Valois believing that rational technological planning could be imbued with a creative or intuitive spirit. Technological modernism and vitalism, or the cult of the unreflective “life-​force”—​as invoked in Honegger’s article—​were one, becoming part of the fascist mystique in both Italy and France. In Italian futurism the machine hence became a paradigm of true social integration, or of unified social and political organization, and the functional harmonization of man with nature. It is, then, little surprise that Valois’s “Faisceau,” the first fascist party in France (founded in 1924), was quick to appropriate the urban ideals and models of Le Corbusier. In search of an organic order that was superior to modern democracy, they adapted his concepts to their own Sorelian, antimaterialist and corporatist social programs. The architect was thus received with enthusiasm within the French fascist part, having been attracted to the circle in 1927, and giving a slide presentation to a fascist rally.33 Le Corbusier later also

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precipitated to find a place at Vichy, arriving there in January 1941; however, he was not appointed to National Committee on Urbanism, as he had originally hoped. The purported reason was that he had not been a naturalized French citizen long enough, but in fact he had enemies among those conservative factions at Vichy who opposed the technocrats.34 Honegger’s trajectory was slightly different: his proximity to groups supportive of fascism would be manifest only in the 1930s, although he was previously well aware of their ideas. Already friends with Le Corbusier (later working with him in Plans and on subsequent projects), in the 1920s he had also made contact with Gabriele d’Annunzio, who has been seen as a precursor of Italian fascism and dictatorship. However, this was the decade when Honegger collaborated with a number of highly engaged artists across the political spectrum, which undoubtedly raised his ideological awareness, even if he already found it difficult to commit. These included not only Abel Gance but also Romain Rolland, with whom he had worked on the trenchant and controversial antiwar play Liluli. The composer’s collaboration with d’Annunzio was on Phaedre, written by the latter in 1923, with incidental music by Honegger added three years later, after the composer had met the poet through the Russian dancer and entrepreneur Ida Rubinstein. The first performance of the work in Rome led to violent protests and a near riot because of the anger of d’Annunzio’s young supporters over his absence due to his arrest. Honegger, well aware of the poet-​politician’s nationalist takeover of the disputed town of Fiume between 1919 and 1920, was apparently not phased, and later even paid him a visit on his Italian estate. Honegger was well aware of contemporary politicized aesthetics, including that of French fascism with its stress on both the past and the future, which it shared with Italian fascism, having similar ideological roots. His creative proximity to this common aesthetic is evident in several of his early works, but perhaps most patently in his first “movement symphonique,” titled (after a train) Pacific 231 and written in 1923. Despite the later initial aesthetic antipathy of the Nazis in occupied Paris, they permitted its performance after Honegger attended the propagandistic Mozart celebration in Vienna in late 1941.35 In the work he suggests the impression of speed or acceleration through mathematical rhythmic means, gradually increasing the rhythmic subdivisions while also decreasing the tempo. But the modern machinelike imagery masks the traditional form subtending the work: cast as a kind of chorale prelude, the theme is stated grandiosely as a cantus firmus in the end. Honegger’s own tensions between the past and the future, and between the French and the German, and his tendency to combine them in stylistically ingenious ways would, as we shall see, reappear in his Second Symphony—​again with political implications within the context.

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The evolution of the French fascist aesthetic and Honegger’s complex relation to it To understand further why Honegger found support among French fascists in the early 1930s, and less unanimously during the occupation, it is important to recall the nature of French fascism, which was always more an intellectual model than a discernible political force. As several scholars have discussed, much disagreement remains over whether we can properly label a sympathy or mood, as opposed to a coherent political organization or regime, as fascist. Equally at issue is whether fascism as a movement was inherently French (as Zeev Sternhell argues) or merely a foreign importation that lay outside the main French political traditions.36 However, there is a general consensus among scholars concerning the distinctive character of the fascist climate as it developed in France and crested in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Most historians agree that fascist influence in France was spread by a small coterie of intellectuals, journalists, and men of letters, but one that wielded considerable ideological influence. Hence fascism in France, despite the existence of small fascist parties such as Doriot’s, was more an intellectual and cultural than a significant political movement. The ideology that French fascists espoused in the 1930s and 1940s shared certain traits with other European fascisms—​a revolt against liberal democracy and bourgeois society as well as a systematic refusal of materialism. They too believed that the state represented all the classes of society, and thus it was incumbent on the nation to realize a harmonious and organic collectivity. But the fascism of French intellectuals was far less “volkish” in emphasis than the German variety, less inclined to glorify a mystical “Volk soul” or the masses as its embodiment. And it similarly emphasized an ethic—​that of a “virile, pessimistic and puritanical new world,” or one that was founded on an abiding sense of duty and selfless sacrifice.37 Because of this emphasis on duty and vision, French fascists continued to promote the sacred and the subjective, articulating their goals in ethical and aesthetic terms, recalling the early Romantic movement. For fascist intellectuals like Pierre Drieu La Rochelle and Robert Brasillach, French fascism was synonymous with a new “mystique,” or a new kind of social imagination. Although modernist in projecting an industrial utopia, they were nevertheless regressive in spirit, emphasizing the theme of a necessary return to an imagined purity of origins. French fascists were thus less concerned with political doctrine or a utilitarian aesthetic (as opposed to German fascists) than with lyricism and affective themes, exalting emotional and moral values. French fascism thus addressed itself primarily to the imagination and feelings, its proponents seeking above all to affect the sensibility of their audience directly. In quest of a new style of collective life and

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a poeticization of the political world, they strove to confront a desacralized society with new moral and aesthetic conceptions.38 If the rhetoric of French fascism made consistent use of music it was because through it (like d’Annunzio before) they could enunciate spiritual as well as nebulous social values with both cogency and coherence. Hence far from being neglected, the imagery of music provided French fascist rhetoric with a powerful conceit—​not only a language but also legitimization through association with a lofty high art. In music as in literature the cardinal values of elite French fascist thinkers were thus emotion and lyricism, with a stress on the group, as opposed to the individual, and on the pure realm of spirit. Previously d’Indy and the Schola Cantorum (now often cited) had associated these ideals with symphonic music, especially the German classics, as well as with Germanic forms or techniques and styles carrying religious associations. These were indeed the models promoted in those fascist journals that were so influential throughout the occupation, such as Gringoire, Candide, and Je suis partout. They all employed prominent music critics—​those who now accorded with their aesthetic—​including figures who had attacked such values several decades before. The climate they had established in the late thirties now palpably influenced the warm reception of Honegger, even if some aspects of his modernism had been and would continue to be met with reserve. Among those compositions now enthusiastically praised was the Honegger-​Claudel Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher, although some lamented the original role of the Russian Jewish dancer Ida Rubenstein. Aside from such qualms, Honegger’s stature on the French far right, as well as with French fascist supporters, was well established by the end of the 1930s and contributed to the panegyric of his Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher when it premiered on May 8, 1939, in Orléans.39 Already the oratorio here appeared not only to reflect current French anxieties but also to sustain national hope, as it would throughout Vichy and the occupation period. Critics immediately praised Honegger’s use of traditional chansons, Gregorian chant, and Renaissance-​like religious polyphony, preferring to ignore his trenchant stylistic parodies. Perhaps most fulsome of all when the work premiered was André Coeuroy (who remained a supporter throughout Vichy); writing here in the conservative Mercure de France, he focused on the way in which the work responded to contemporary French emotional needs. For Coeuroy Jeanne d’Arc was truly great—​meaningful, profound, human, and replete with “poésie populaire,” in addition to invoking those “shared memories and traditions that nourish us.” The theme of the soil is also prominent in his article, as it would soon be in the book on the chanson populaire that Coeuroy later published during Vichy, when so many turned to this now politically central repertoire. In his review Coeuroy also stresses “la terre”—​or a sense of locality as well as French territory—​in connection with the

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chansons that Honegger here employs, already associating them with the healthy, the authentic, and the naïve.40

Gaston Bergery and his support for Honegger In addition to the support of powerful critics like Coeuroy from the late 1930s throughout Vichy and the occupation, Honegger was promoted by a now prominent politician who would eventually become part of the regime’s fascicizing faction. This was Gaston Bergery, who like many appeared faithfully to support Pétain, first serving as his ambassador to the Soviet Union, and then to Turkey (in September 1943). For Bergery was close to Pétain in 1940; indeed he drafted Pétain’s address of October 12, 1940, which concerned social policy, and in which Pétain roundly denounced capitalism and its excesses.41 Honegger was already in Bergery’s circle by 1938, when the latter (originally a Radical-​Socialist deputy) had conclusively turned against the Popular Front. For Bergery and his followers had gradually grown critical of the rapidly failing left coalition, and thus began to impugn the prime minister, Léon Blum, as well as all the established political parties. Bergery then broke with the principal league of the left, the Ligue des droits de l’homme, and increasingly assumed an antiwar stance despite the fascist threats in Germany, Italy, and Spain.42 Although he had remained discreet, avoiding all overt statements with regard to current fascist movements in Europe, it was already clear that Bergery valued certain aspects of the fascist regimes—​their antiliberalism, their economic “dirigisme,” and the state’s organization of social life. In addition he was anti-​Semitic, although as Philippe Burrin has put it, “artfully so,” blaming the Jews themselves for anti-​Semitism by stressing their comportment as opposed to race.43 The movement that Bergery founded, “frontisme,” was politically ambiguous in 1938 and 1939, since it called for the reform and not abolition of the Republican state. During this period he was actively courting both intellectual and artistic circles, particularly through the group that supported his journal, Les amis de La fleche. Among its Comité d’honneur were not only Arthur Honegger but also André Gide (now disillusioned with Communism), as well as the choreographer Serge Lifar, who would grow close to German and French fascist circles during Vichy. Among other supporters of Bergery’s journal were members of the right-​wing leagues, in addition to those who had supported the left but were now seeking out other directions.44 By 1938, when Honegger publicly lent his name in support of La flèche, Bergery’s “frontisme” was veering more to the right, just ahead of the general defeat of Republican values that many have seen manifest in the Munich

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Accords.45 “Frontisme,” with which Honegger became associated because of his actions, has been identified with the process of “fascicization,” since by 1938, even if subtly, it shared significant values with the major fascist movements. These included the desire for a homogeneous national body achieved through exclusion and belief in the necessity of forcibly taking charge and hence in the integral role of the political leader. Having begun as a movement to combat and present an alternative to fascism (in the mid-​1930s, when Germaine Tailleferre, also of Les Six, supported it), frontisme ended up by emulating certain fascist ideals. Significantly, this was the moment when Honegger—​again perhaps more opportunistically than ideologically—​lent his name, and thus implicitly his support, to Bergery’s journal and, by extension, his political cause.46 Certainly Honegger had profited from his public association with Bergery’s La flèche, which attracted an elite readership and consistently supported his music in series of enthusiastic reviews. Moreover, the journal also promoted Honegger’s music through performance, for like Action française before, it sponsored concerts in order to obtain contributions as well as for their symbolic capital. In print, like other journals of the right and far right, La flèche in particular emphasized Honegger’s traditionalism, seeking to dissociate him from the now maligned aesthetic of Les Six in the 1920s. Here it is important to recall that although Cocteau had originally attempted to link Les Six to the postwar classical “retour à l’ordre,” their classicism was of a highly critical nature. Although they did not reject classic values such as line, simplicity, and clarity, nor certain traditional forms or techniques, they used them with a new attitude, one that was open to the popular and overtly (or ironically) anti-​Romantic. They thus did return to both tradition and French values, as Cocteau proclaimed rhetorically, but imbued them with a new content and meaning that assaulted the conventional associations as well as practices of “high art.”47 They also shared a taste for the new, more experimental culture outside of the dominant French artistic institutions and not yet officially recognized as legitimate. For they had been awakened by the “explosion” of Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps and also found a resonant model in Satie’s disquieting and provocative use of styles in his Parade (of 1917). The latter’s strategic play with established serious meanings and styles, or his modernist “critical” classicism that evaded wartime controls and strictures, held an immense appeal for almost of all them—​ the exception being Honegger. Their mocking of convention sprang from their wartime rejection of official pieties and a desire to enter into, or challenge, its dominant practices and meanings. Incorporating popular elements within the classic for them became a means of both cultural inclusion and trenchant social critique, but in a subtle manner that sometimes escaped Cocteau himself.48

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Not surprisingly then, were the conservative attacks against them in the 1920s, the most notorious being Louis Vuillemin’s article “Concerts métèques,” which implicitly associated them and their music with half-​breeds, foreigners, and Jews. Indeed the same terms would be deployed against them (again, with the exception of Honegger) in the later 1930s, when their work was once more associated with international bad taste. Even Cocteau, who had sought simply to legitimize the modern as classic in wartime and postwar France, and had grown increasing conservative politically, could not now escape critique. It was none other than Alfred Cortot, writing in La revue musicale in 1938, who denounced Cocteau’s “esprit frondeur” and the way in which he purportedly built a series of “jokes” into an aesthetic system.49 But Honegger was consistently held apart, despite his embrace of modernity and his goal of “actuality”—​to engage with the modern world—​if still within the context of established forms. His love of the Germanic tradition and the canon of “serious” music, cast in large and lofty forms, elicited the praise of conservatives like Coeuroy, who strove to extricate him from his previous interwar artistic associations. The latter, in the profascist Gringoire, even went so far as to assert that Honegger would go down in history as the leading musician of his period in France.50

From state collaboration to collaborationism: The fine line and Honegger’s symbolism In addition to the continuing support of critics like André Coeuroy, Honegger profited from his political association with Bergery, who gradually grew close to fascist groupings. Indeed Honegger’s aesthetic and stylistic tendencies seemed to obfuscate the fine line that both figures were soon to cross between state collaboration, or cooperation, with the Germans, and ideological collaborationism. Even the French government would cross this line by later 1942, when advocates of a more vigorous collaboration (like Laval and Bonnard) moved into central positions. Before this the Germans already monitored Vichy’s cultural policies in both zones, in order to prevent France from seeking to resume the war, and to prepare for German postwar hegemony. Hence the tight control of the press and the radio, as well as of education and all French cultural life, in order to shape public opinion and preclude the dissemination of anything that might be considered anti-​German.51 German pressures gradually became more evident in Vichy’s decisions regarding cultural life and, particularly in music, of great symbolic importance for the occupant. Again, by early 1942 Vichy’s rhetoric with regard to French music was slowly shifting away from the classic model of the Action française and toward

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that which stressed Franco-​German interaction, both past and present. This helps in part explain the increasing adulation of the legacy of d’Indy’s Schola Cantorum, particularly in the press, which now invoked it frequently and praised d’Indy himself. For his aesthetic related closely to the ideals of the group that had formed around Georges Sorel in the period following World War I, when the far left and right had joined together in what they called a “national-​socialist” movement. The group, which was associated with the Cercle Proudhon, still had its admirers at Vichy, who were undoubtedly aware that d’Indy had been a member, participating in its organization and publications. Sharing its emphasis on both spirit and emotions, its anti-​Semitism, and its condemnation of democracy and capitalism, d’Indy had been active on the editorial board of its journal, L’indépendance, as well as contributing articles on musical subjects.52 Here and elsewhere he had argued that great music, most notably that of Wagner, is inspired by a spiritual truth, and such “classicism,” as he called it, could be realized within the culture of different nations. For example, the Germans had saved pure classic culture when the French abandoned it, and later Wagner (for him a classic) and then César Franck and the French Wagnerians had again rescued this lofty tradition. As d’Indy thus reasoned, both great French and German composers, while still national, were nevertheless part of the transcendent classic tradition, which had since been sullied by cosmopolitan and specifically Jewish elements. This conception eventually provided an apt rhetorical compromise in the Vichy-​authorized press, and on close examination we may see that some French composers who frequently appeared on concert programs were those considered classic (within the Viennese tradition) or stylistically linked to Wagner. Again, this compromise also helped to mask Vichy’s cultural exclusions, which were based primarily on the criteria of race or (in the case of works with text) on the political implications of the subject, although not on specific stylistic inclinations.53 The repertoire at the Paris Opéra reflected these priorities, particularly given the strong German presence, and Resistance journals were quick to denounce such tactics vociferously in their press. The Institut allemand (which was tied to the German Embassy) organized concerts throughout France to illustrate the proximity of French and German music. For beyond its seat in Paris it had eleven other branches throughout the French provinces, and worked together with French institutions to disseminate the propaganda of Franco-​German alliance. Both the German and French radio became active in the propagation of this conception, as did the collaborationist press in Paris, and perhaps most prominently the journal Comoedia. For under the control of the German Embassy, it regularly featured a section devoted to the theme of the emerging new Europe, including a page insidiously headed “Connaître l’Europe.”

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Significantly it was on this page, on January 17, 1942, that Serge Moreaux published an article titled “Regards sur la jeune musique européenne.” Here he raises the problem of how to pick up the thread of French music after the impact of both Debussy and Ravel, discussing the solutions of young French composers and then turning to a comparison with their German cognates. For Moreaux the best French hope at the moment is the twenty-​eight-​year-​old master Jean Françaix, who was a student of Nadia Boulanger and a member of the musical section of Collaboration. For his music is defined by both clarity and melodic refinement, as well as by a breadth of style that can range from tenderness to pointed irony. After placing him in the line of development that runs from Rameau through Ravel, Moreaux goes on to discuss Pierre Capdevielle, perceiving in him a lyricism that issues from the tradition of Berlioz through Gabriel Fauré. It was perhaps important for Moreaux that Capdevielle (who would later join the French musical resistance) had studied privately with d’Indy after attending the Conservatoire, where he became a professor of chamber music in 1942. Moreaux also here discusses Messiaen, whom he describes as tormented by the “absolute”—​or that which lies beyond the sonorous material itself—​and by a form of mystical anguish. After summarizing the diverse tendencies of youthful French composers, Moreaux examines their young German counterparts, finding in them the predominant qualities of purity and vitality. Not surprisingly he specifically cites Werner Egk, before discussing young Swiss composers, focusing on Conrad Beck and Frank Martin, although not mentioning Honegger (even as a precursor) within this national context.54 The month after Moreaux’s article appeared in Comoedia, Georges Dandelot published a related review, this time in L’information musicale, titled “Musique contemporaine française et  allemande.” In it he discusses the work of young German composers performed in the concert series of the same name, concentrating primarily on Caesar Bergen, Robert Ernst, and Karl Hessenberg. In discussing Bergen’s Concert pour 2 pianos, Dandelot perceives not only stylistic ties to Vivaldi but also clarity and clearly defined tonalities, as well as an aura of good humor and (once more) a healthy vitality. Turning to Robert Ernst’s setting of twelve poems of Joseph Weinberger, titled Kalendrium, he expresses particular approbation for Ernst’s conventional approach, not only to style but also to harmony. Finally, when considering Karl Hessenberg’s Quatuor à cordes #2, Dandelot revealingly perceives not just the influence of Franck, Debussy, and Bartok but also an “écriture solide et aérienne,” in addition to a “puissance expressive.” In sum, in both young French and German composers, performed together in concert series such as this, the common stylistic traits most widely praised were the solid, vigorous, lyric, and expressive—​associated with Germany—​and the formally balanced, logical, and clear, considered more traditionally French.55

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Music and the goal of the group Collaboration The rationale and rhetoric behind such concerts associating young French and German composers become clear when we learn that many of them were organized by the group Collaboration (or “Groupe collaboration”), which was recognized by Pétain but espoused those ideals associated with French collaborationist circles. A  continuation of the Comité France-​Allemagne that Abetz (now ambassador) had helped to initiate in the 1930s, along with Alphonse de Chateaubriant, it was placed under the auspices of the French ambassador, who represented France in the occupied zone.56 Not limited to Paris, the group had sections all over the country and worked closely with Abetz’s German Institutes, even if the German role here was carefully concealed. The group (which embraced all the professions) articulated its goals through several venues, including a series of pamphlets that reported regularly on its progress and on its various activities. One, Une année d’activité du Groupe collaboration, Sept. 1940–​Sept. 1941, highlights the lectures that it fostered, designed to explain what the “new order” can give to France, if she manages to integrate herself in time. And as it points out, the group hopes to demonstrate that French grandeur and intelligence still persists, but that it is now a question of the defense and organization of Europe, to which France belongs both geographically and culturally.57 The pamphlet also specifies that on the radio every week the group regularly interviews French elites, with the ultimate goal of favoring “spiritual contacts” of all kinds between the two nations. It concludes by citing Pétain on the collaboration as a long-​term project, one that will outlive the war and occupation, allowing France a favored place in a unified and peaceful continent. As it thus proudly asserts, the group seeks to counteract lies about the Germans as well as to get to know them better and thus to aid France’s “redressement moral” and her spiritual entente with Germany.58 Other pamphlets addressed similar themes:  one in particular reproduced a lecture that the group sponsored on December 27, 1940, “Pourquoi nous croyons en la collaboration” (Why we believe in the collaboration). The lecture concerns the future path of Europe, and the new community that Germany thus seeks to rebuild on a new and more equitable basis, but it also lauds Pétain for so courageously abetting this task.59 Another pamphlet, Jeunesses d’Europe, unissez-​vous, was the printed version of a lecture delivered by Marc Augier in May 1941 to explain their goals to youth. As the author argues, the youth already in their group are seeking a terrain of entente between the two nations, and one such terrain was clearly the art of music. In fact the pamphlet, Une année d’activité du Groupe collaboration, explicitly points out that the musical section of the group seeks to marshal the spiritual power of music toward the sought-​after “rapprochement spirituelle et morale.” One prominent example that it cites is the foundation of

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the Comité Mozart français, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Mozart’s death, which organized numerous musical celebrations of the great composer.60 Members of Collaboration’s musical section included important figures such as Jean Fournet (conductor of Radio-​Paris) and Francis Casadesus, as well as the composers Florent Schmitt, Max d’Ollone, Eugène Bigot, Marcel Delannoy, and Gustave Samazeuilh. In response, the French musical resistance journal Musiciens d’aujourd’hui, proclaimed that to participate in the activities of the group was not to preserve the human character of art but to assist in the German domestication of French art. This may have been prompted by the concerts the group sponsored (together with the Institut Allemand), including the series of six presented in 1941–​1942, called “Jeunes musiciens français et allemands.” Other concerts included a “Concert de musique française,” again organized in conjunction with the Institut allemand, which in fact featured the work of one of its members, Jean Françaix.61 And it was Francis Casadesus, a member of the musical section of Collaboration, who directed the forty disks of contemporary French music made between October 1942 and December 1943. Other musical activities of Collaboration included receptions, such as that at the Opéra Comique on July 8, 1942, in honor of the German contralto Lore Fischer, the composer Werner Egk, and the omnipresent French pianist Alfred Cortot.62

Honegger and the musical synthesis promoted by later 1941 Through all these means, groups like Collaboration sought actively to prepare for a mentality that would eventually accept a Franco-​German cultural synthesis—​ one that Honegger represented better in music than any other potential living icon. His support was thus based not only on his own previous political or ideological involvements but also on the gradual perception that he incarnated a larger unity that would characterize the nation’s cultural future. Testimony to the belief in the necessity of this synthesis, as well as attempts to legitimize it intellectually, appeared not only in collaborationist writings but also, in the case of Pelléas, in Vichy-​authorized publications by later 1941. One such publication was L’information musicale, a journal that by November 1941 was permitted distribution not only in the occupied zone but also in the unoccupied zone as well as to former subscribers to the preceding Revue musicale in Switzerland, Portugal, and the Americas. Now a weekly, its stated aim was to focus less on purely musical questions than on larger musical tendencies, thus serving as a necessary intermediary between artists and the general public. Hence as the editorial of November 28, 1941, explicitly states, it would concentrate not only on commentaries and

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analysis of both old and new works but also on current issues with regard to the larger orientation of French musical life.63 This “orientation,” was one that now envisaged a future European culture under Hitler, although the authorities here sagaciously left room for carefully controlled controversy as well as the active involvement of readers. A prominent example of such carefully monitored controversy is the provocative article that Armand Machabey published in the journal on October 3, 1941, incisively titled “Arthur Honegger et la musique française.”64 Machabey here observes the current anxiety over the aesthetic direction of modern French music and compares the situation to that of previous periods, seeking then to consider France’s new artistic future. Realizing that the present disquiet had to do with the infiltration of foreign traits into French music (as collaborationist rhetoric was already promoting in the occupied zone), Machabey examines historic instances of such exchanges. He begins with the case of Lully, presenting him as a “foreign genius” who helped to revivify French music in the seventeenth century, then perceiving a similar instance in the eighteenth century through the example of Gluck. The latter, he argues, although foreign-​born, knew the French language well and, by implementing a fundamental dramatic reform that he then brought to Paris, contributed greatly to French art. As Machabey then contends, not only Lully and Gluck but also other “foreign geniuses” later helped to redefine the course of French music, prominent among whom was the now adulated César Franck. For, Machabey asserts, although of Belgian origin, Franck was trained in France and thus helped to found a French school (implicitly through d’Indy) of “musique pure,” or orchestral music, one that remains influential today. Machabey concludes that in all these instances a gifted foreign figure interacted with French art and in doing so led it toward new summits, then asks whether such is indeed again the case with Honegger. This was evidently a rhetorical question, for Machabey argues that Honegger, himself of Swiss origin, is musically an equal of both Lully and Gluck and thus can serve as a guide for young French musicians. Moreover, according to Machabey, Honegger is the only real hope as such a leader, given recent musical culture in France; in fact if his work does not now become the paradigm, French music will long be condemned to a mere monotonous mediocrity.65 Machabey’s assertion that Honegger could fulfill the role of “savior” of French music triggered an irate response by the writer and critic Bernard Champigneulle, in his article “Défense de la musique française,” published in L’information musicale in November 1941. Champigneulle here points out that Lully as a youth came to France, where he was essentially trained, and that Honegger, although a Swiss citizen, was in fact born in France (in Normandy) in the city of Le Havre. He then claims vigorously that foreign musicians do not “save” French music—​ France rather adopts them, a clever tactic for protecting an ever more fragile

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French national pride. Champigneulle then takes issue with Machabey’s argument that French music is losing breadth, or in need of a miraculous lesson, as well as with his questioning of the abilities of French composers and of the state of French musical culture as characterized by too many war horses and festivals. In addition he challenges Machabey’s claim that in such periods of crisis France requires a foreign genius to revive its musical art and eventually lead it to new and higher summits.66 Champigneulle also targets Machabey’s claim that since Honegger is Swiss in origin he is the equivalent of Lully; he finds this theory tenuous, although concurring that one cannot contest the importance of Honegger in contemporary French music. He here aptly clarifies that Lully came to the court of Louis XIV as a boy, and it was there that he received his musical education, contributing integrally to the establishment of a true French style. Having pointed out that Honegger was born in Le Havre, the critic advances that it is an honor for France to be able to welcome musicians like him who have chosen to make France their “pays adoptive,” here finding an atmosphere in which their genius can flourish. Finally Champigneulle asserts that some foreign musicians have done considerable harm to French music, citing (the German-​Jewish) Meyerbeer and his Italian-​influenced style, although allowing that other foreigners have done much good.67 Soon other contributors such as André Jolivet would also emphasize that Honegger both lived and worked in Paris, where he found success, even if he manifested Swiss traits, such as a propensity for collective efforts or for “grandes fêtes populaires.”68 All parties in this carefully controlled debate agreed that French cultural borders, both past and present, were now increasingly obscured:  the delicate question was how to handle this intellectually—​how to save face, or salvage French honor and pride. Honegger thus found himself placed at the center of contemporary French musical culture and its concerns, as critics negotiated an argument that could straddle the contradictions in Vichy’s rhetoric of “Frenchness” despite its collaboration d’État. But how did the composer respond or seek to position himself professionally as well as artistically? And was this tied to an aesthetic and ideological evolution, or to his own fragile sense of identity within the evolving political situation in France? To respond, it is essential to examine Honegger’s developing sense of self and of identity, first as reflected in his interwar works and above all in his opera Antigone, premiered in France in 1943—​sixteen years after its initial performance in Brussels.

The composer’s dual cultures and his style in Antigone Born of German-​Swiss parents in Le Havre, Honegger was raised there except for two years in Zurich, where he attended the conservatory before enrolling in

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the Paris Conservatoire. Consciously opting for Swiss citizenship as the clouds of World War I approached, he remained in Paris following his mandatory military service in Switzerland in 1914–​1915. After returning to Paris, Honegger studied with (among others) Vincent d’Indy, who was temporarily teaching at the Conservatoire while its faculty was nearly depleted due to France’s wartime conscription.69 As Honegger put it, in 1911 (after his previous two years in Switzerland) he arrived in Paris enamored of the music of Max Reger and Richard Strauss, but was soon seized by the work of Fauré, Debussy, d’Indy, and Albéric Magnard. Stylistic tensions between French and German influence are evident in all of Honegger’s works, as is the pull between tradition and innovation, perhaps more so than in other members of Les Six. Honegger, in fact, never rejected the conservative teachings of Vincent d’Indy—​so widely lauded during Vichy—​and in particular his stress on the models of Bach, Beethoven, Wagner, and Franck. Nor did Honegger initially repudiate the music of Debussy and Ravel, as opposed to most of the members of Les Six and their mentor, Jean Cocteau.70 Moreover, in his music Honegger was generally less concerned than his colleagues with ironic commentary or with disruption and provocation, although he too resisted outdated cultural restrictions and embraced the modern world. For his personal point of orientation in his search for self was tradition, both French and German, if enriched discreetly by contemporary techniques. His real gift, as he evidently realized, was his ability to convey “the modern” in an unthreatening manner, thus making it accessible to the broad public that he sought. Like many in the general audience he targeted, Honegger felt a sincere need to connect with history or with a grand tradition that comforted as well as united and in which he still found beauty. Nothing could have been further from Cocteau’s confrontational declarations in Le coq et l’arlequin (of 1918), and the tensions between the two men only increased in the course of the 1920s. This became abundantly clear in the case of the oratorio, Le roi David, perceived as “treasonous” by Cocteau and Milhaud but warmly greeted by the postwar audience as well as later during Vichy. Ostensibly influenced by Honegger’s assiduous study of Bach and Handel, the oratorio had premiered as a “psaume dramatique” to a text of René Morax for the traditional Swiss Fêtes du Jorat in June 1921. Originally written for performance by amateurs with an orchestra of only fifteen players, it was then recast as an oratorio for performance in Paris through the financial assistance of a wealthy banker. The work was indeed apt for the milieu of its patron—​the conservative bourgeoisie, during a period of postwar spirituality and concern with reconstruction in the world that was now emerging from the war. Here his blend of traditional styles, inspired by fellow protestants Bach and Goudimel, with a contemporary idiom (including bi-​and atonality) powerfully and incisively expresses the text.

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The style of the work—​which had a palpable influence on Stravinsky’s Oedipus rex (of 1926, with Cocteau)—​is thus immediately accessible, in part through its simple melodic structure and the use of repetition, despite the often bold harmonic language. Critics promptly praised the work; however, Cocteau was not pleased by Honegger’s endeavor to invoke tradition as well as to appeal to the avant-​garde elite, whom he himself had courted since his wartime ballet Parade.71 Honegger, thereafter, was commissioned by Charles Dullin to write the incidental music for Cocteau’s play Antigone, which premiered at Dullin’s Théâtre de l’Atelier on December 20, 1922.72 In tune with postwar classicism, which had been promoted by propaganda as inherently French or Latin (as the French had proclaimed themselves to be), Cocteau sought not just to imitate but also to update classicism—​to create like Satie and Les Six a modern or neoclassicism. Cocteau himself explained in 1922 that he had decided to write a play that put “a new dress on the old Greek tragedy, adapting it to the rhythm of our own language.” Currently moving away from his “Dadaist” phase (as manifest in Les mariés de la Tour Eiffel of 1921), he was already denouncing the soon-​to-​become surrealist André Breton and his colleagues as a “dictatorial establishment.”73 The choice of Antigone was specifically triggered by Cocteau’s experience of the Sophocles drama at the Comédie-française with incidental music by Camille Saint-​Saëns, which he proclaimed to be “incredibly boring.” In making his compressed, updated version Cocteau followed Sophocles closely, probably even consulting the original Greek text although abridging it astutely to provide a synoptic, modern perspective on the story. In Cocteau’s own words, it was “a pen drawing after a painting by an old master,” or as he alternatively put it “an aerial photograph of the Acropolis,” and indeed it stresses the work’s contours, revealing the play in a new, modern light.74 The interpretation or appropriation that emerges in Cocteau’s version is here a central issue and must be seen within the context of the rebellion of French youth against the conservative climate and appeals to patriotism following World War I. Cocteau’s abridgement intensifies the impact of the moral conundrums posed by Sophocles’ play, although the synopsis—​purportedly by him—​is misleading, and perhaps cunningly so. As it succinctly summarizes: Creon, King of Thebes, commands that the body of the traitor, Polynice, should not be buried in a grave, but left in the open for the animals to devour. Antigone, sister of Polynice, is determined to disobey his orders. She takes the body and buries it. For having disobeyed she must die. But the Soothsayer Tirésias tells Créon that terrible things will befall him if he doesn’t free Antigone. Under this impression, Créon decides to take heed of the warnings. But too late! Antigone is dead. Furious, Hémon, son of

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Créon and Antigone’s fiancée, turns his sword against his father. He fails and himself dies over the remains of Antigone. When Queen Euridice hears of these new tragedies, she dies too. Créon, finally deprived of them all and denied support, falls too.75 This précis, like all abstracts, captures neither the complexity nor the provocative dilemmas inherent in the story and obscures the contemporary resonance of Cocteau’s subtle variations and savvy compression of the original text. In Sophocles’s multivoiced masterpiece Créon faces the problem of healing the body politic, torn between conflicting loyalties and systems of value—​the primacy of the personal and the family, or the larger unit of the political community. This makes justice ambiguous for Créon, who is forced to confront collective social conflicts while existentially he faces the primal facts of man’s experience, including love and death. As Froma Zeitlin had incisively put it, “Living, as he thinks, in the all-​absorbing political moment, he takes a stand which paradoxically suggests that mortal life has no finitude.” For Antigone, who sees herself heroically, death to the contrary is “the timeless eternity, the absolute principle to which she gives her undivided allegiance” and thus she “privileges it over mortal life.”76 What, then, is the goal of the drama? Créon, as the tragic hero, is the “architect of his own downfall,” the bearer of those contradictions that are revealed in the work, who thus learns from his own suffering. Yet the audience consequently identifies not only with Créon and his inexorable plight but also with the omnipresent social consciousness, which in Greek drama is represented by the chorus. For tragedy concerns “persons acting under constraints, conditioned by character and fate”; moreover, although it “abjures moral teaching,” it reveals that man’s freedom is limited, thus furthering understanding as well as compassion.77 Cocteau aimed at preserving this function, or at preventing a facile appropriation of the drama as being about the priority of both authority and patriotism in the nationalist, conservative postwar climate. To reinforce the drama’s depth and power Cocteau condensed the text to its essentials, emphasizing the juxtaposition of familiarity with violence—​to become particularly resonant during the Occupation—​and introducing archaic words like “anarchiste” without traducing the sense of the original Greek. Like Sophocles he employs colloquialisms where appropriate, and particularly to capture the quick temper of Créon as well as the lower social strata of both the messenger and the guard. Above all he intensifies the manner in which Sophocles (indeed ancient drama in general) probes profound moral issues by avoiding a fixed point of view, rather representing all the possible perspectives. As in Sophocles, the characters express their conception of the truth while the chorus represents a collective public voice, thus providing a check on the escape into individuality that results from identification with any one figure.78

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Having experienced French monologic wartime propaganda, Cocteau, like Satie in his Socrate of 1918, turned to an ancient Greek model, in part because it not only poses moral questions but also presents different viewpoints dialogically. Cocteau, however, exacerbates the perspectivism of ancient drama through his excisions, and nowhere with more poignant effect than in Antigone’s farewell scene before her death and those scenes that both precede and follow it. In scene 7 (Act 2)  for example, the coryphée (or spokesman for the chorus) describes Créon’s anger and loss of control following the febrile exchange with his son Hémon, who has accused him of both terror and injustice. After Créon describes Antigone’s punishment the coryphée enigmatically speaks about love (a truncation of Sophocles’s long reflective ode on eros) and then expresses sadness, followed by Antigone’s moving statement that death instead will be her husband. But the coryphée, after reflecting on Antigone’s sad fate as a divinity, then abruptly shifts perspective and comments harshly on her willful disobedience. Here the rapid exchanges and choral commentary, the condensation of which obscures the dramatic context, result in an almost kaleidoscopic effect, which leads to a destabilizing sense of fragmentation. Moreover, the original structural and dramatic distinction between episodes and more metrically complex odes is thus lost, and Cocteau suppresses the protracted reflection on wisdom that provides a sense of resolution at the end. In the original production the modernist element in Cocteau’s play, or the emphasis on the instability of self, experience, and viewpoint, was complemented by Picasso’s scenery, which created distance and thus thwarted identification. His designs were appropriately concise, as in ancient drama, consisting of a violet-​ blue background in the center of which was an opening, around which he clustered painted masks of the chorus (comprising, anachronistically, not only men but also women and children). On the other hand the costumes, by Coco Chanel, were intended to be historically accurate, although Cocteau specified that he wanted them made of heavy Scotch woolens, perhaps to create the effect of a frieze. Antigone was played by a young Greek dancer who enunciated the text with both difficulty and care: she wore a white plaster mask suggesting those of antiquity, which here imparted the feeling that she had returned from the tomb.79 The play itself was successful, winning the praise of prominent modernists such as Ezra Pound, despite the disruptive shouts of André Breton from the audience and the attack of disgruntled traditionalists.80 Cocteau’s triumph was undoubtedly one factor in Honegger’s decision to set the text, with which he had grown familiar while writing the spare incidental music recalling that used in ancient drama. He was also well aware of the current vogue for antique subjects and was a great admirer of the innovative setting of Aeschylus’s Oresteia by his friend Milhaud as well as revering Richard Strauss’s

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Elektra. And after the censure of his colleagues in Les Six following the public success of Le roi David, Honegger most acutely felt the tension between innovation and tradition, now uncharacteristically proclaiming iconoclastic goals. As he confrontationally put it, he wished to break free of the constraining conditions of lyric theater that, in his opinion, were the result of the libretti, generally based on “the standard anecdote of love.” He was similarly drawn to the compression of Cocteau’s text and to the startling juxtapositions that resulted, or as he put it to the dialogue that passes quickly from familiarity to violence. Moreover, the text provided him with the challenge of following the fast pace of the play while making the diction clear, including the colloquialisms that were meant to relate the story to the present day. Indeed, according to Cocteau, “The extreme speed of the play does not allow the characters to express much and to retrace anything. Naturally, no living characters are hinted at within.”81 Here, of course, Honegger could not concur, being partially rooted in the German Romantic tradition, which impelled him not only to follow the action but also to bring the characters, with their shifting perspectives, back to life, if in a fragmented manner. Fragmentation, however, was not his goal but rather the ineluctable result of his truth to the text and stylistic attempt to respect Cocteau’s desire that he be “modern,” or turn from Bach and Wagner to Stravinsky and the other members of Les Six. Yet Honegger could not help but make reference to tradition even in explaining his aims, defining them against both a Wagnerian symphonic articulation of the action and the defunct system of operatic arias and ensembles. As he points out in his preface to the score, his intention was to “envelope the drama with a tight symphonic construction without slowing the movement or seeming heavy.”82 Yet the Wagnerian point of departure is clear, as is his debt to traditional operatic choral writing, for despite his purported iconoclasm, Honegger’s love of Wagner, Richard Strauss, and the French Wagnerians is unmistakable. Although admiring Debussy’s Pelléas and considering the style appropriate to Maeterlinck’s text, Honegger maintained that Cocteau’s, with its speed and brutal action, called for a different kind of delivery. In Antigone the vocal line is largely syllabic and centered in the middle range, except for points of emphasis on which the accent falls and where the inflection rises in a more Germanic manner.83 Honegger avowedly sought clarity not only in declamation but also in the formal approach, hence previous analyses of the opera have assumed that his stated intent was indeed realized. Geoffrey Spratt undertakes a motivic analysis, stressing construction in the Wagnerian manner, and pointing out how the orchestra not only anticipates the action but also provides the background to the story. As a result of this Spratt and others fail fully to recognize the opera’s emphatic and frequent shifts in style, which, uncharacteristically for Honegger, are jarring and

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reflective of his cultural and stylistic conflicts. While this makes aural perception of the careful motivic structure and formal architecture of the whole extremely difficult, it does work effectively—​if sometimes inadvertently—​with the shifting perspectives within Cocteau’s condensed dramatic text. Finally, Honegger undercuts Cocteau’s modernism by imbuing the characters with true humanity, thus allowing the audience to identify with them while still depriving the individuals of consistent character and motivation. But of all the characters, Créon, in spite of his shifts of style and perspective, invites our empathy as we witness his transformation from a conceited tyrant to a tragically broken man. This is due in part to the otherwise puzzling choice of vocal ranges for the major characters: Créon is a high baritone (baryton élévé, like Pelléas)—​almost a tenor, while his son Hémon is a low baritone, practically a bass. And Antigone is no sympathetic Greek maiden or young girl, as she is referred to by Créon, but rather a “mezzo grave,” or a contralto. Créon’s wife (Eurydice) is a mezzo; it is rather Antigone’s sister, Osmène, who is the soprano in the work. Of course the vocally heroic treatment of Créon, cast against the defiant, indeed almost possessed Antigone, would later militate in the opera’s favor in wartime Paris, as would the absence of an unequivocal moral message. So too would the more traditional choruses which, at least stylistically and tonally, appear to anchor the structure, if not the drama or the perspectives that are articulated within it. The complexity of these perspectives is exacerbated even further by the division of the traditional spokesmen for the chorus into four different voices—​soprano, alto, tenor, and bass. This not only introduces the issue of gender within the different points of view but also highlights the diversity of perspectives within “the people,” as represented by the voice of the chorus. Honegger’s attempt to humanize Cocteau’s text, with its frequent abrupt shifts of perspective, is perhaps most effective in Antigone’s farewell and the scenes we examined that surround it in Act II. Scene 7 begins with a freely atonal section in which Créon pronounces his sentence in emphatic speechlike declamation; the contralto coryphée then melodically sings of love (suggesting either family or fiancée). Against the background of a plaintive saxophone, the tenor coryphée pathetically laments Antigone’s impending death. In the eighth scene, against a polytonal background replete with jazz timbres (recalling Les Six), Antigone passionately bids farewell to the citizens of her country. Indeed in the Vichy context (of 1943) this could be understood as sacrifice in the name of, or to spite, the Republican values now being promoted so vociferously by the Resistance. But the soprano coryphée soon enters in, hectoring her about disobedience, morality, and common sense in “Sprechstimme” (however, with a tonal orientation), which offsets Antigone’s lyricism—​a vocal contrast later employed by Schoenberg in his Moses und Aaron. 84

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Honegger, Antigone. Paris: Éditions Maurice Senart, 1927. Act II, scene 8.

Créon then enters, and both characters reach the height of frenzy, with Antigone fully consumed in her soaring lyricism, oblivious to Créon’s declamatory tirade; this is followed by more commentary on the part of the four coryphées. Here evoking a traditional operatic ensemble they sing polyphonically (but atonally) of the similarity of the situation to that of the sexually desirable

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Danaë, also buried alive but impregnated by the golden semen of Jupiter. In the Sophocles this fourth choral ode is extensive, and consists of four relevant stories from myth that illustrate the power of fate. Cocteau, in his reduction to only this one may have intended to suggest a possible sexual jealousy on the part of Créon. Such an interpretation may well have been a factor in Honegger’s otherwise curious choice of a voluptuous vocal range for Antigone, and concomitantly that of the heroic, or of the “leading man,” for Créon. This brief example thus reveals not only the elusive elements of the Sophocles-​Cocteau play, but also how the opera seems to heighten its enigmas through both Cocteau’s textual compression and Honegger’s stylistic choices.85

The original material inscription, enunciation, and reception of the opera Before examining the selection, inscription, and reception of Antigone in 1943 in occupied Paris, consider its presentation and impact at its 1927 Brussels premiere. For during the Occupation it would become a different kind of statement, imbued with a substantially altered resonance in light of its new staging and its rhetorical framing by both regimes. Over the past several decades we have become increasingly aware that “the work” is not a given, but rather something that is continually re-created through various modes of presentation and reception. In opera, as in all theater, different historical or material instantiations of the text, together with the performative context, help determine the boundaries of possible or plausible interpretations.86 Moreover, in a polysemic genre such as opera, consisting not only of visual components and text but also of music, we are forced to reconsider the question of what, in a larger sense, we construe as “the text.” Often in studies of opera we make reference to the libretto as constituting the text, the assumption being that it is synonymous with the meaning of the work, and that the composer simply sought to translate it. However, when closely examining the enunciative mechanisms of works like Antigone, particularly in different contexts and productions, it is clear that meaning emerged in a complex or interactive and unpredictable manner. Just as in ancient Greek drama, the “author” (which in opera is an equally ambiguous concept) was, as Oddone Longo has put it, “but one of the mechanisms of the dramatic production.”87 The production in Brussels, like the play, sought a modernist effect of estrangement, for it aimed at thwarting an emotional identification with the characters, which was Cocteau’s original goal. The sets, again, were reductive, consisting largely of simple blocks, while the characters, in historically inspired costumes,

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struck poses intended to resemble those on Greek vases. But the music worked against this very goal, creating an utterance that hermeneutically was incoherent, and ostensibly perplexed the audience in Brussels, where the opera was not well received.88 Critics, seeking either a thorough-​going modernism or a deeply human drama with which to identify—​as well as clear reference to tradition or emphatic rejection of it—​found it impossible to agree on an assessment. Some praised the work’s innovations, perceiving its originality as lying in its new uses of the past, although because of the staging a coherent statement did not appear to emerge from the whole.89 This would not be case when the work was later performed in Nazi-​occupied Paris, where the kind of modernism inadvertently emerging in the music not only was reinforced by the staging but also found a particularly resonant experiential context.

The context for the selection of Antigone at  the Paris Opéra When Antigone was finally presented in Paris at the beginning of the third year of the Occupation, Cocteau (who had grown close to collaborationist circles) again personally took charge of the staging. In fact he probably played a decisive role in Rouché’s decision now to stage the opera (together with the Vichy injunction to present new French works), seizing the occasion of the festivities in Paris surrounding Honegger’s fiftieth birthday in 1942.90 Again, not only were two festivals held in his honor but also the Vichy-​authorized journal L’information musicale devoted the entire issue of June 26, 1942, to Honegger and his musical oeuvre. It was here that Cocteau opportunistically expressed his desire that Honegger’s opera, which he proclaimed to be unequivocally his “chef d’œuvre,” be granted a long-​awaited performance in Paris. Significantly Cocteau at the time was making numerous gestures in support of Franco-​German collaboration in culture, including a highly positive review of the 1942 exposition by Hitler’s favorite sculptor, Arno Brecker, in the collaborationist journal Comoedia. All this placed pressure on Rouché, and apparently neither regime objected to his decision to stage the work; in fact, under Carcopino (until April 1942) Vichy was continuing to stress the importance of teaching the classics in French secondary education.91 Despite his initial latitude, Rouché was subject to strict financial oversight, and by 1942 he increasingly had to respond to shifting Vichy exigencies as well as to German pressures. In the latter case he thus would include the presentation not only of Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos in April 1943 but also of Werner Egk’s Peer Gynt in October of that year. Indeed, as early as June 1941 he was faced

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with a specific request from the Germans (communicated through the Secrétaire général des beaux-​arts), who desired a revival of Edmond Rostand’s L’aiglon, with music by Arthur Honegger and Jacques Ibert. For not only did French collaborationist circles consider Napoleon to be the model European and authoritarian figure but also Hitler desired performances of appropriate works when the ashes of the Duc de Reichstadt (Napoleon’s son with Marie-​Louise, raised in Austria) were returned to Paris, believing that patriotic feelings could thus be expressed in an inoffensive manner.92 Vichy’s priorities, in turn, were becoming increasing clear in the course of 1942; by April, with the advent of Laval (and his minister of education, Bonnard) it was seeking greater cultural collaboration in all domains. Once more, for Bonnard, who was actively fostering a more aggressive collaboration, the culture promoted was to be increasingly Franco-​German, and Honegger’s work would prove to be an apt exemplar.

Antigone’s physical and ideological reinscription at  the Paris Opéra in early 1943 All these factors favored a performance of Antigone, as did the more realistic décor, costumes, and staging that Cocteau now devised, possibly in an attempt to pass the German censors (who, unlike Vichy, scrutinized all staging), as well as to win French official approbation.93 For here the effect was not one of purity or of estrangement, which was aesthetically antithetical to Nazism; rather it was one of horror and terror, the stress thus falling on the human component, or on emotional identification with the characters despite the text’s shifting perspectives. This worked most effectively with Honegger’s music and its attempt to bring the characters to life, in part through its intriguing dialogue with past styles, which concomitantly made the past more immediate and complex. For the scenery Cocteau designed a series of closely interlocking blocks with menacing black holes as windows (suggesting buildings in a city); but he employed a vertiginous, incoherent perspective recalling late medieval or German expressionist practice. However, to invoke the familiar, thus juxtaposing it with violence as in the text, he included a piece of laundry hanging in the courtyard to the side, with a decorative and yet eerie effect.94 Moreover he perched the four coryphées on the roof looking down, but the characters themselves sometimes appear on the roof (most dramatically, Antigone between two guards) or starkly outlined by black windows and doors. As photographs of the production attest, the gestures were large and emphatically tragic, which not only suggested those of antiquity but also complemented Honegger’s return to French tragic declamation in order to make the text more fully audible.

Honegger, Antigone, 1943. Décor by Cocteau. Photo by Seeberger. Bibliothèque nationale de France

Honegger, Antigone, 1943. Décor by Cocteau. Photo by Seeberger. Bibliothèque nationale de France

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The chorus, in uniform and stylized drapery—​the folds of which capture the light in a sculptural but lurid manner—​appeared as a block or divided symmetrically on each side, sometimes facing the audience directly, once again in the antique manner.95 For the leading characters Cocteau devised expressive costumes with evident contrasts of light and dark colors; Antigone, for example, is clothed in darker tones but with a long thin white scarf, which here ineluctably suggests a rope. Créon is dressed in all dark colors, and yet with one odd detail: neither a foreigner, a barbarian, nor a freed slave, he is wearing a Phrygian bonnet. There is a revealing precedent for this apparent anomaly—​in the 1828 premiere of Auber and Scribe’s opera La muette de Portici, the ambiguous leader of the first popular revolt in Naples sports precisely such a cap. This cap became associated with the French Revolution, having been donned by revolutionaries and placed on the female effigy of the Republic, Marianne. In Auber and Scribe’s opera it remains unclear whether the rebel, Masaniello, is a tragically crushed leader or a crazed revolutionary; hence the cap aptly left the meaning of the revolution’s outcome unresolved.96 Here, in Antigone, audiences could similarly read Créon’s character and the implications different ways, which undoubtedly reassured the authorities just as it had in the late Bourbon Restoration. Indeed Vichy, which abhorred the Revolution, still kept the “Marseillaise” as its official anthem, even allowing some

Honegger, Antigone, 1943. Décor by Cocteau. Photo by Seeberger. Bibliothèque nationale de France

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busts of Marianne to remain in city halls. And by this point it similarly wished to appear more responsive to the public in order to encourage loyalty and at the same time avoid disquiet and foreclose overt protest.97 But significantly, in this production the most menacing costumes are those of the guards, their helmets carrying a long trail of pointed spiked plumes (in the only bright colors), suggesting knives as they cast threatening shadows. Most harrowing of all is the scene in which Antigone, defiant to the end, is literally pushed and pulled by the guards (one above and one below) into her tomb, represented by a trapdoor placed squarely in center stage.

The multivalent potential of the opera’s text and style How, then, can we characterize the whole? Was it modernist, traditionalist, or something in between? Why did both authorities support it, and why did Parisian audiences flock to its ten performances? Moreover, was enthusiasm for the opera based on the perception that it reinforced authority; that it in some manner expressed a now mounting resistance; or that it obscured a too explicit moral message? Indeed the effect produced was apparently resonant for wartime audiences (as well as admissible to French and German censors) not only because of its ambiguity but also because of its jarring juxtapositions of past and present. The experience of such disjunction, and of the work’s frequent shifts in perspective, may well have engaged with current feelings of insecurity and also with the moral conundrums that many Frenchmen now felt. This could have again been the case when Jean Anouilh’s play Antigone, premiered early the next year and with the authorization of both officials, if in a private as opposed to a state theater. Anouilh himself was known to be close to collaborationist publications and circles in Paris, and was undoubtedly aware of the way in which Sophocles’s drama could articulate with current political anxieties and tensions. Not only had the Sophocles play been performed in 1938 at the Comédie-​française but also during the war by the association Jeune France before the group was forcibly dissolved.98 Anouilh, like Cocteau, updated the story, imbuing it with a sort of postmodern feel, but here also playing self-​consciously with the idea of artistic representation. Blurring the boundaries between the actors performing the play and the work itself, Anouilh thus stresses the artificial nature of drama, treating the characters as both real and unreal. Moreover, to invoke the current situation, his Créon is someone who, like so many in these years, just tries to get by or simply do the “dirty work” that is required of all authority. But for some, both during and after the war, Anouilh’s willful little Antigone was a heroine, even if she eventually realizes the absurdity of her act and indeed of life itself. In choosing death

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over life Antigone thinks she controls her own destiny; her freedom, however, is illusory—​it lies simply in interpreting the world or the meaning of one’s exist­ ence. Hence, as in Honegger’s opera there are no apparent heroes or villains, only fate and interpretations of it: Antigone’s role is to defy Créon to the end, and he must attempt, if with futility, to cope.99 But as Anouilh, Honegger, and others must have sensed, for Vichy Antigone (in the Sophocles original) appeared to defend “raison d’État, or the good of the community against individualism and, by extension, anarchy. Indeed this reading of the Anouilh version led to the approval of French officials who appreciated the final “victory” of Créon, while the Resistance press perceived only defeatist moral relativism, and denounced Anouilh for collaboration.100 Yet for some of the public Antigone, in both Anouilh’s play and in Honegger’s opera, was a story of neither the authority of the law nor of relativism (and thus surrender), but rather of individual agency amid ambient social and moral fragmentation. Both works could thus be perceived as not just reinforcing current hegemonic power or authority but also, because of their inherent deep polyvalence, as rather carrying an antihegemonic morale. Moreover, to cite the words of Gramsci, “Consciousness of being part of a particular hegemonic force . . . is the first stage towards a further progressive self-​consciousness.” But for some collaborationists such as Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, the abandonment of a center, or of a clear voice or perspective, furthered a profascist message by effecting the liquidation of the self into the nonreflective realm. Such a position emerges not only in the literary criticism of Drieu La Rochelle (now editor of La Nouvelle revue française) and his colleagues but also implicitly in several discussions of Honegger’s opera, which was covered by all the major French journals.101

The critical and public reception of Antigone at  the Paris Opéra in 1943 When Antigone was at last staged in Paris, sixteen years after its Brussels premiere—​having been slighted by the Opéra as too “advanced” for its public—​ its impact shattered all expectations. Clearly it could be read or construed in different manners, given the polysemic enunciation of the whole, which accommodated a wide range of agendas (both personal and political) as well as projections or interpretations. Major critics now proclaimed a “chef-​d’oeuvre,” lauding the director’s courage in finally mounting this uncompromising work, marked by bracing innovations in French operatic declamation as well as by a strident bi-​and atonal language. Audiences, equally enthralled by Honegger and Cocteau’s still audacious, boldly modernist opera pressed to its performances and

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even irrepressibly interspersed connected sections with applause.102 Again, striking though Antigone’s French triumph may be, the date of its premiere is here significant—​January 26, 1943, only several months after the incursion of German forces into previously unoccupied parts of France. This was also the period of the gradual defeat of Hitler’s forces at Stalingrad, which would lead several days later (on January 31) to General Paulus’s surrender. Not only were domestic conditions growing worse, but by February 1943 young Frenchmen were now being drafted for forced work in German factories. And together with increased repression, fear, and the continuing growth of the Resistance, Vichy was further losing its former large base of acceptance in France.103 Once more, significant in light of this historical conjuncture is that public panegyric of the music and text appeared across a spectrum of journals ranging from the Comoedia to L’information musicale, the former implicitly promoting French cultural collaboration as the only possible future route. As Émile Vuillermoz (who followed Vichy’s ideological evolution) pointed out in Comoedia, “For sixteen years Honegger has occupied a place in the history of contemporary French music that our state theaters had the duty to consecrate in a more worthy manner than by the borrowing of L’Aiglon.”104 Such a reception, together with the approval by Vichy and Nazi censors, also crumbles remaining stereotypes of the ideological controls and antimodernism of both regimes in music. In fact recent scholarship has increasingly recognized that Vichy countenanced a temperate modernism (sometimes as opposed to collaborationists, who often idealized Germanic romanticism), as did the Nazis, who were promoting their modernist Werner Egk in France.105 Evaluations of the Honegger opera, as we might expect in a heavily censored press, not only reflect the reviewer’s own insights and opinions but also echo the voices of the groups for whom the journal spoke. Such journals and their critics indeed exercised broad influence: although far more people attended the cinema, the question of the future of French art was central to both national pride and identity, and hence many read the press reports of France’s renowned lyric theaters. While most articles on Antigone avoid an interpretation of the story, one exception is that by Arthur Hoérée, who had originally reviewed the opera in Brussels and now expatiated on it in L’information musicale. Although guarded in 1927, when he carefully qualified his strictly limited approbation, Hoérée is here sanguine in tone and laments the long delay in the work’s Parisian premiere. Now in particular he lauds Cocteau’s text, and as one might expect in his discussion he treats Créon, and not the rebellious Antigone, as the figure deserving of empathy, although by no means a hero. The force of the opera, for Hoérée, derives from its intensity, which pulls the audience along at a vertiginous speed and with an organic power that he compares to the work of Vincent Van Gogh. Hoérée

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also accentuates the novelty of Honegger’s treatment of the chorus, particularly in the choral numbers that praise Bacchus and in which he suggests a “Dionysian frenzy” not by the traditional “tumult” but rather through a learned triple cannon. Although Honegger was here attempting to set the ode (cast as a classical prayer) in an appropriately (if anachronistic) Bach-​like manner, this was not what impressed Hoérée: it was rather the presence of the academic (largely Germanic) techniques.106 If Hoérée spoke from a Vichy-​approved perspective, then André Coeuroy, writing in Je suis partout—​a journal emphatically pro-​Nazi since the 1930s—​was here a spokesman for certain collaborationist circles. Long a supporter of both Honegger and German music, Coeuroy was predictably on the whole enthusiastic, and immediately bewailed the length of time it took the Paris Opéra to present the work. He then opines that Antigone brought a “reforming innovation” to all musical theater and that, within this context, one can indeed compare him with either Lully or Gluck. This of course recalls the Machabey-​Champigneulle debate over Honegger and how to construe his music nationally, given the opera’s mixed style as well as the author’s hybrid Franco-​Germanic origins. Like Machabey, Coeuroy here perceived a “foreign genius” imbuing French tradition with a vital new life, as opposed to Champigneulle, who considered Honegger as rather “adopted by France.” Referring to Honegger as Swiss in origin (despite his birth in France), Coeuroy points out that the composer’s approach to declamation is different from that of Debussy or Ravel, although stylistically he is still of the very purest French tradition. This tradition, however, for Coeuroy is inherently mixed or European, for it may be traced to the originally Florentine Lully and then to the largely Germanic Gluck.107 However, Coeuroy admits that the work is unsettling to listeners, noting in particular its “polytonal aggressiveness” as opposed the present penchant (or that of conservative groupings) for a calmer, more spiritual kind of expression. Hence, he continues, in its reversion to the taste of an earlier epoch (that of interwar modernism), Antigone appears to be out of date, and yet in its aesthetic goal—​if not in its language—​it is ahead of its time. Indeed it was because of Honegger’s modernism that much of the collaborationist press was reserved, for as opposed to Vichy under Laval—​which was trying to appear both modern and European—​ many French fascists (such as Lucien Rebatet) remained more traditionalist and romantic. But apparently for both the Germans and Vichy, because of the dramatic and total theatrical effect, an opera incorporating avant-​garde elements from the twenties was not a problem, and this included its atonality and jazz-​like timbres. Indeed Coeuroy himself concludes that the opera, despite his own reservations (again, as a French fascist) will become one of the dozen masterpieces considered to be behind the renewal of lyric drama.108

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The spokesman for the Nazis’ perspective, Werner Egk, whose opera they requested Rouché produce the next October, compliantly and enthusiastically lauded Antigone in Comoedia, for which Honegger wrote as a critic and in which he would soon praise Egk’s own work. The latter, an opera of 1938 based on Ibsen’s Peer Gynt (rooted in Scandinavian legend) was, like Honegger’s, stylistically eclectic, and similarly for specific dramatic reasons employed polytonal and atonal sections, as well as Stravinskian influences in the rhythm. Moreover Egk’s opera, which premiered in the Berlin State Theater, incorporates still other styles, including not only pastiches of polkas, cancans, and Strauss waltzes but also of the tango as well as jazz and thus provoked a mixed reaction among German critics. However, the mitigating factor here was that such styles were employed in the interest of implicitly political parodies, although the latter conveniently could be (and were) interpreted in a diversity of ways. Through such means Egk could provide the public with the kind of music that it continued to like—​styles no long­er officially condoned—​within the context of a moralizing drama and in which they represented the qualities of modern moral decline.109 Egk, like Honegger, thus included strident dissonance, which served an expressive purpose, but both composers framed this with tonality and long lyric lines, while employing an orchestration that at times recalls Wagner, thereby sounding modern and yet still rooted in tradition.110 Egk, part of a small, protected, and modernizing trend within the Nazi musical establishment (which even permitted “Aryan serialism”) was again like Honegger an admirer of Stravinsky, whose influence he openly acknowledged. In this he was backed by the more artistically open Joseph Goebbels, who liked his melody and made sure that Egk won a musical competition for the 1936 Berlin Olympics.111 Egk moreover, despite his postwar claims, was no résistant, as is evident in his cooperation with the Nazis (from which he profited in both Germany and France), and his sympathies become clear in his review of Antigone. Egk begins by pronouncing the opera one of the most characteristic works of contemporary musical theater; yet, he declares, more than any other it projects the movements of the human soul. Like Hoérée, undoubtedly aware that the Nazis (like Vichy) did not approve of modernist Brechtian “alienation,” Egk rather chooses to emphasize the humanity of the opera’s elusive characters. He also praises the opera’s constructive or architectural elements, which he finds stronger than in Honegger’s other works, noting that it is built with erudition on several short motives and yet never appears to be cerebral. Even if other stylistic elements appealed to Egk (and to Nazi officials), here he felt obliged—​as Alfred Lorenz had with Wagner—​to pay tribute to the Germanic tradition of craft.112 When discussing Cocteau’s text Egk stresses that it has the merit of imposing the elemental nature of passion on the listener, thus breaking the bourgeois

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mold of a domesticated or a misconstrued antiquity. One experiences the inherent menace that traverses the tragedy, for Cocteau does not mollify the feeling of horror caused by the events here evoked: he overwhelms the audience in order to arrive at catharsis. The text neither masks nor distorts the antique, and the precision of languages is almost cruel; Cocteau, moreover, audaciously makes it more forceful—​the feelings of the characters more transparent—​by incorporating colloquial diction. Egk similarly lauds Cocteau’s staging, including the décor, costumes, and lighting effects, which almost imprison the audience in its universe, one in which the dark threat of tragedy is omnipresent. Like his Nazi patrons for whom he undoubtedly spoke, Egk considered such catharsis as appropriate—​a means to comfort or to console the audience, thereby reconciling them to their current fate.113

The performative impact of Antigone in 1943 Paris Did the audience in fact experience catharsis, in light of the choices and the horrors of this trying time? Did they prefer such realistic confrontation—​and some resignation—​to reassurance or a clear moral message? And were these the only potential reactions, or could the opera activate different kinds of responses, for instance instigating reflection on identity as well as on individual moral agency? Serge Added has suggested that theatrical audiences during this period felt a profound need to appropriate the real world through art, and therefore often filled the French theaters to full capacity. And again Rioux trenchantly observes that the role of culture was changing in a psychological sense under such conditions of material scarcity, instability, and isolation—​when “l’art pour l’art” no longer seemed feasible. Moreover, although the operatic public was still predominantly middle class, it was not only collaborators or supporters of Vichy who attended but also those who quested for understanding or transcendence of their material and political bonds.114 For acquired beliefs and cultural practices interacted with changing experience—​for example in a hall that banned all Jews—​which triggered new modes of appropriating theater as well as openness to experiment and innovation in the use of artistic language. Certainly, for some who remained loyal to Pétain and his politics of collaboration Honegger’s opera could appear to affirm their values; but for others (particularly intellectuals), aware of growing repression, civil strife, and recent German defeats, it could further their growing disengagement from Vichy. Indeed the attempt of both the Nazis and Vichy at a “dethroning of the self ” or of subjectivity, could be both furthered and thwarted by the distinctive kind of modernism that emerged in this production of the work. In sum, conveniently polyvalent at a time of waning power over an increasingly wary public, Honegger’s Antigone

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could serve a key goal of ancient drama—​to enact contradictions in order to heighten the public conscience. Like the Sophocles drama, that of Honegger and Cocteau, in this context, contained the potential to become (as James Redfield has put it with regard to ancient theater) “a kind of mirror in which the audience could read its shifting position.”115 In his new work, as we shall see, Honegger would more consciously engage with both ambiguities and contradictions, for not only was his own identity increasingly strained—​definitive moral and political choices concomitantly now eluded him.

Honegger’s search for identity in Vichy and occupied France As we saw, Honegger was unequivocally an icon; hence, we are forced to raise the question of how he responded to his ideological use not only by successive Vichy factions but also eventually by the German occupant. Honegger’s activities and involvements throughout this period, as before, ineluctably played a role in forging perceptions of his ideological utility; indeed his first goal was to reverse now injurious previous constructions of him. For the Germans were immediately wary because of his associations with specific figures in the 1930s, and he was forced to confront these in 1940 in order to return with his family from the Southwest to Paris. As Marcel Delannoy later commented, returning to Paris after fleeing to the south following French defeat in 1940 was by no means easy; moreover, one had to find a new means to support one’s family within the new context.116 Honegger was lured to Paris, in part, by the rapidly reviving musical culture in the capital, where those who had remained helped Robert Bernard develop the Association de musique contemporaine. However, Honegger soon found that among the pieces now being banned were in fact his own—​in his case not for political content or style, but because of racial suspicions due to his previous collaboration with the Russian and Jewish Ida Rubenstein. Confronted with this censure, he promptly sought to locate those papers that had been issued to him by the Berlin Film Guild in 1935, when he was asked by a German firm to write music for a Swiss documentary about the Himalayas. But in order to obtain them from the Nazis he was obliged to prove that he was completely Aryan and (as Delannoy puts it) in this quest he was moved to discover that he issued from a long line of bourgeois merchants in Zurich, dating back as early as 1500. Yet now he also had to avail himself of valuable personal contacts; however, the efforts on his behalf by Mme. Robert Bernard, at the Préfecture de la Seine, were in vain until a music-​loving German bureaucrat who admired his work agreed to close his eyes to past artistic collaborations.

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It was under these circumstances that Honegger succeeded in having two songs performed at the second session of the Association de musique contemporaine, at the beginning of the first winter of occupation. In fact the songs in question, “Madame” and “Danseuse” (to texts of Cocteau), recall his period in Les Six, but perhaps because they were here orchestrated by Arthur Hoérée, and were not performed in the conservative Vichy zone, they did not prove problematic. And Honegger was rapidly adapting his image: having chosen to remain in his country of residence, he now donned an alpine berêt as well as cycling pants—​a style shared by the Swiss and the French. By the fall of 1941 he had apparently reconciled himself to the situation in France, and soon took full advantage of the opportunities now being offered to him by both the Germans and Vichy.117 Most prominent among these was a trip to Vienna in late November, in the company of important figures in the French musical world, including Jacques Rouché and several composers who were members of the group Collaboration. Once again, this festival—​the ideological message of which was astutely indirect—​took place between November 27 and December 6, having been organ­ized and financed by Joseph Goebbels and his Reich Ministry of Propaganda. It was indeed this trip, together with a number of the articles that Honegger published in Comoedia, that eventually precipitated his expulsion from the Resistance network he had joined in 1942, having probably entered on the urging of close friends.118 For the trip included several compromising events, among which were—​on the last evening in Vienna (after a series of concerts subtly serving propaganda)—​a dinner at the Hofburg given by the Reichstatthalter of Vienna (and notorious Nazi), Baldur von Sirach. The latter, who had previously been placed in charge of the Hitler Youth, was known to have notoriously proclaimed, “When I hear the word culture I reach for my revolver.” However, in a letter to Paul Sacher, Honegger spoke enthusiastically of his week in Vienna, being especially pleased by the presence of all the other distinguished foreigners there. And later in Comoedia he would praise not only the Viennese festivities but also the German cultural achievements that they (for him) so impressively represented. Moreover, as Leslie Sprout has revealed, it was shortly after this significant trip that Honegger began receiving exit visas from the German authorities for his concert tours.119 In addition, by February 1942 the first festivities for Honegger’s fiftieth birthday celebration were underway, and the composer attended a reception at the Ritz (on February 3) which the Propaganda Abteilung held for prominent French composers. Also present at this reception was the director of La Voix de son Maître, Jean Bérard (who helped organize the Honegger Festival that year) and the Sonderfűhrer, Fritz Piersig, an officer in the Wehrmacht who was responsible for musical questions at the German Propaganda Ministry.120 This compromising

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event was followed by Honegger’s participation in another reception (in the company of other former delegates to Vienna)—​one in honor of Heinz Drewer, the chief of Goebbels’s musical section in Berlin, and held at the German Embassy. The highlight of the year, of course, was the weeklong festival celebrating Honegger’s fiftieth birthday in June and July, the only such event accorded a living composer, and necessarily approved by the German authorities.121 Again, as a result of these events (and certain articles in Comoedia that we shall examine) Honegger was asked in 1943 to withdraw from the Resistance Front national des musiciens. Was he disturbed? It is difficult to tell: by this point his career was flourishing, and in late October he left for an extended concert tour in Spain and Portugal, writing back enthusiastically to family and friends of his experience (and all the good food he was eating). Such propagandistic cultural tours to Axis nations (or friendly countries), of course, were increasingly important to both Vichy and the Germans as the Wehrmacht underwent defeat at Stalingrad, and the armed resistance in the mountains (the Maquis) began their attacks.122

Honegger’s contradictions as critic One of the factors in Honegger’s expulsion from the Resistance were certain articles he had published in Comoedia—​those written after his initial tributes to French music, which had prompted Resistance members to recruit him. As Sara Iglesias has pointed out, throughout this period if a critic associated his name with a journal of clear ideological orientation, and also praised certain German musical performances, he was assumed to support its politics. Moreover, the Institut allemand, which was deeply invested in such subtle modes of propaganda, invited critics from the major journals to specific Franco-​German performances and provided them with the Berliner Konzert-​fűhrer—​a guide to concerts in Berlin, meant to showcase German musical life. But the critics whom the Institut allemand targeted were not only collaborators; it also sought to convince or win over those who appeared to be more reticent. It was thus a select group of critics who were sent to the Mozart week in Vienna, and they included not only the collaborator Lucien Rebatet but also Robert Bernard and Guy Ferchault, who were all expected to write laudatory reviews. Again, the Institut allemand attached much importance to music critics as conduits to promote the cultural politics of collaboration, particularly by implanting specific modes of reception throughout the French public.123 Even if Honegger did not consciously endorse French collaborationist or Nazi ideals, in several of his articles he ostensibly acted as a kind of intermediary between the German occupant and the current Vichy regime. For Honegger’s

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articles in Comoedia notably waver between an acute perception of the inconsist­ ency of Vichy’s nationalist rhetoric and a blatant pandering to it as well as to the propaganda of the German occupant.124 An example of the former is his report on the “Festival Wagner,” held at the Grand Palais in the fall of 1914 in conjunction with the exposition “La France européenne,” in which Honegger was perceptive as well as scathing. As he here trenchantly points out, his own understanding was that the goal of the exposition had been to demonstrate what France could become in the new Europe from the standpoint of her agriculture, her commerce, and her industry. Therefore what surprised him as a “Swiss musician” (speaking purportedly from a neutral viewpoint) was to see that, in fact, the existence of a French musical production appears here to have been completely forgotten. As he puts it, in 1941 “La France musicale” is, in effect, represented by the works of Richard Wagner, at least from the perspective of the organizers of the concerts, whom he thus implicitly impugns. Although averring his own admiration for Wagner, Honegger then bluntly proceeds to point out that it is no longer necessary to make a case for Wagner’s genius—​that the cause has long since been won, and indeed this is true throughout the world.125 Just as chauvinistically, in an earlier article (of September 27, 1941) concerning French symphonic associations and their programs, Honegger paid tribute to the choices made for the three festivals of French music held at the Palais de Chaillot, organized by the record company La Voix de son Maître. (The very next year a subsequent festival would feature Honegger’s own compositions; and in fact here he emphatically points out all those composers who were omitted but should also have been represented.) After remarking sanguinely that two of the sessions were devoted to the great French musicians Debussy and Ravel—​and with stunning success—​Honegger proceeds with disarming frankness to comment acerbically on Vichy’s political posture. For as he puts it, if at present France is humbly declaring “mea culpa” with regard to her past errors, French art has remained great and cannot be blamed. And as he then proudly points out, here palpably assuming a personal identification with France, the great names of French music can still radiate broadly, and indeed they continue to do so. Honegger implacably goes on to contend that this is why French composers should be accorded a greater place on current concert programs and that there is in fact a rich and varied school of symphonic composers in France. For him it comprises figures as diverse as Bizet, Widor, d’Indy, Magnard, Roussel, Koechlin, Tournemire, and Gédalge, among many others.126 His advice was soon to be followed (or perhaps he was merely here preparing the publicity), for he then reported on another “Festival de musique française” held in October 1941, which presented works of Berlioz, Lalo, Debussy, and Fauré. And the following month Honegger reported with approbation on a concert of

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the Société des concerts du Conservatoire (under Charles Munch), organized in homage of the French composer, conductor, and director of the Opéra (under Rouché), Philippe Gaubert, who had died recently (in July 1941).127 Honegger continued to militate for and draw attention to French music in a broad series of articles in which he supported not only the established but also the now rising generation of young French composers.128 Honegger also discussed concerts that performed the work of the original Jeune France, which he admired, and he consistently supported Messiaen, including his more recent and particularly challenging compositions. The latter included Messiaen’s complex Visions de l’Amen for two pianos, which was premiered at the Pléiade Concerts in early May 1943, and to which Honegger devoted an enthusiastic review.129 Honegger immediately points out that he finds the work of Messiaen to be remarkable—​not only of great musical richness but also informed by a true grandeur in its conception. He goes on in particular to praise the ineffable poetic power of the Visions de l’Amen, its continually elevated musical style, and the lofty quality of its invention. Here perceiving his own aesthetic ideal of elevation or of the spiritual, Honegger pronounces the work to be noble without, however, being arid or too cerebral.130 Despite Honegger’s intrepid praise of French composers, not only classic but also modern, in other reviews of his we may perceive a more a more pragmatic response to German, Vichy, or collaborationist pressures. We see this in his review of Pfitzner’s opera Palestrina, which the Germans requested be presented at the Paris Opéra in the spring of 1942 (as Laval returned to power), and where he is largely—​if not entirely—​favorable.131 Here he observes that in Germany Pfitzner is lauded, fêted, even compared with Richard Strauss, and although the recipient of numerous important prizes he is just becoming known in France. Honegger goes on to remark that Pfitzner, a staunch defender of tradition, wrote his opera Palestrina (premiered in 1917)  with an authority that still today commands respect. But Honegger does include one small caveat—​that it is composed for an often massive orchestra, and with a dense polyphony that sometimes appears to be merely laborious. Significantly, even this passing reservation was absent in Serge Moreaux’s review (also published in Comoedia) under the transparently eulogistic title “Un grand musicien allemand contemporain:  Hans Pfitzner.”132 Moreover, the review in Le petit parisien (of March 28–​29, 1942)  underlines the importance that the director of the Opéra, Samuel-​Rousseau, placed on this event. It also indirectly indicates how the press had been prepared to receive this work by citing the talk of Franz Joseph Moser at the Press Club (along with that of Samuel-​Rousseau), noting all the important German and French figures in journalism and the arts who attended.133 Honegger himself would unreservedly praise Werner Egk’s ballet of 1940, Joan de Zarissa, when it premiered (also on German request) at the Paris Opéra

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in the tense July of 1942. In his review of Egk’s ballet Honegger hastens to observe that in spite of Egk’s youth (at forty-​one) he nevertheless occupies an important position within the Reich’s Musikkammer. Referring to Egk as a prominent representative of the younger school of German composers, Honegger then draws attention to the stature that he has already acquired as a result of his previously successful lyric tragedy, Der Zaubergeige (of 1935). As he then opines, this earlier, well-​received opera was surpassed only by the composer’s Peer Gynt, premiered in 1938 at the Berlin State Theater. Honegger here adds that Egk’s Christophe Colomb was recently produced in Frankfurt and that Joan de Zarrisa has already toured all the major German theaters, thus establishing Egk’s reputation throughout the country.134 Not surprisingly Honegger concludes that Egk is the perfect ambassador of young German composers, having enjoyed what he here fulsomely refers to as an unquestionable spontaneous success in Germany. Then offering his own opinion, Honegger proclaims the music of Egk to be robust, highly colored, and nourished on the century’s fresh new sources: he is not content to revert to “neoclassic formulae” (here implying the traditional), which have so often disappointed. In short, for Honegger, Egk’s musical language is direct—​even sometimes “rude” (rough)—​but full of a charm that directly affects the listener and (as now desired) facilitates an immediate comprehension. Finally, pointing out that the principal figure of Egk’s ballet is a personification of the legendary Don Juan, Honegger lauds the innovative choreography of Serge Lifar, who had grown close to German circles in Paris.135 This was, in fact, not the first time that Honegger had unreservedly praised contemporary German musical culture, for he had already drawn attention to Germany’s musical politics in the context of the 1941 Mozart celebrations in Vienna. In December of that year (upon his return) he had promptly written an article in which he mentioned his own participation in this prominent Viennese Mozart commemoration. Here he begins by marveling at the importance that the German state has accorded the celebration, as manifest by the presence of distinguished delegates who were invited from several nations. Speaking as one of those included, he points out that he was able to hear the major corpus of Mozart’s oeuvre performed by the most illustrious artists and under uniformly excellent conditions.136 Clearly the Germans’ propaganda through culture was here bearing fruit and indeed eliciting high praise; Honegger would continue to lavish such encomium in his column when he felt that it was artistically deserved. But articles such as this, which concealed the horrors that made such artistic conditions possible, disappointed his closest friends and aroused the ire of the French musical resistance, as did his fulsome praise of Werner Egk’s Peer Gynt, which premiered in Paris on October 4, 1943.

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Honegger had scrupulously prepared the way for a favorable reception of this work not only in his article concerning Joan de Zarrisa, but in his subsequent “Werner Egk à Paris,” which appeared in Comoedia on May 22, 1943.137 Again, Egk (a partisan of National Socialism) was strongly supported by Goebbels; in fact Egk had been the head of the composer’s section in the Reichsmusikkammer since 1934.138 For the French and German press he incarnated the stereotype of the German Romantic composer—​deep, tortured, and close to the people, while remaining both young and independent in spirit. He thus embodied contemporary Germanic creativity as well as the attempt to move gradually beyond the Wagnerian tradition in order to continue to renovate the nation’s lyric theater. In order to further the promotion of Egk’s work as desired by the Propaganda Staffel and the Institut allemand (who were both behind its production), a concerted press campaign had already been launched, of which Honegger was here ostensibly a part.139 Although the Nazis now considered Peer Gynt to be an appropriate opera for performance in France, the work had in fact received a mixed reception when it premiered in Hitler’s Germany in 1938. This had been related to its eclectic mix of styles as well as to its themes of moral decadence, criminality, and prostitution—​vices the hero encounters while on the course of his journey. Again, among the styles that Egk thus employs are a cancan and even a tango, in addition to some clearly polytonal sections, and even some atonal passages. Yet despite the presence of these elements the Germans did not hesitate now to produce Peer Gynt in France, hoping to demonstrate the originality and liberalism of contemporary German music (and perhaps also encourage French decadence). And in the French press their goal was to promote an image of Hitler’s Germany as associated with humanity, hence the stress was on the human and universal character of Egk’s musical modernism, one coupled with a traditional respect for form.140 These were indeed the traits cited by André Coeuroy in his review of Peer Gynt in the monthly collaborationist journal La chronique de Paris. And Egk himself had prepared his own reputation during his visit to Paris in May 1943, when Honegger wrote an article that discussed his aesthetic in terms that resonated with both French and German ideals. For again, his stress was not only on Egk’s distance from an arid neoclassicism as well as from romantic formulae, but on the healthy vitality and the breadth of his music, completely devoid of all of preciosity.141 In his article Honegger (naively or diplomatically not mentioning that the Germans had requested the performance) asserts that after the success of Egk’s ballet, the director of the Paris Opéra had decided to mount the opera, which had achieved renown both within and outside Germany. After reiterating that Egk is now a prominent figure, Honegger observes that his focus has been on

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the reconstruction of musical theater, or the replacement of all superannuated models, including the neoclassic and the romantic. For in his search for a virile and healthy art Egk is the enemy of all overrefinement, and moreover is imbued with a lucid intelligence that he can marshal in the service of his carefully determined will. Honegger hence concludes by observing how comforting it is to see a man of such value occupying an important and prominent place in contemporary German musical life.142 His subsequent review of Egk’s opera is equally fulsome, and once again informed by Honegger’s still profound appreciation of Germany’s many artistic achievements, now as manifest through her currently thriving musical culture. For Honegger here openly expresses his admiration for a country in which public interest in opera has become so well developed—​as opposed to France, a nation that has apparently abandoned this cultural battle. Moreover, as he continues, in Germany musicians have formulated new operatic models, as in the case of Egk in Peer Gynt, a work that demands exceptional efforts in staging—​ a challenge to which Rouché has admirably risen.143 Honegger would eventually (and again perhaps opportunistically) renounce this kind of rhetoric and revert to his demand that contemporary French works be performed, particularly as the Allied victory became increasingly imminent. For example, in his article “Musique française,” published in Comoedia on August 5, 1944, he draws attention to the programs of French music begun by the French National Radio in June 1944.144 Here he pointedly observes that after four years of Beethoven cycles and Chopin recitals, the great names in French music of the past are finally and fortunately once more accorded prominence. However, as he continues, there have already been festivals devoted to most of these figures, including Berlioz, Lalo, Chabrier, Debussy, and Ravel, to the exclusion of more recent French composers. Evidently here identifying with the latter and thus perceiving his own interests at stake, Honegger concludes by asking rhetorically why there are not more performances of other established and living figures, as well as of the younger French composers.

The Second Symphony and Honegger’s subjective conundrum Honegger’s critical writings were rent by contradictions, and it was indeed the compromises in his most obsequious articles that not only prompted his condemnation by the Resistance but also engendered the pity of his closest friends. His art similarly reflected his wavering, or his inability firmly to position himself, and this is true above all of his new Second Symphony, begun in the fall of 1941 and completed by the time his fame was cresting in early 1942. Here

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Honegger thus responds to his now incipient iconic status, one that as we saw was based on the dualities of his stylistic and cultural profile—​modern as well as well as traditional, and French as well as German. Acutely invoking the nature of his own subjective plight and his shifting identity in this new work, Honegger confronts his inability to be decisive, or to assume an unequivocal authorial voice. While Pierre Schaeffer had begun in Vichy’s fold, his own experience and his perceptions had slowly led him away, and eventually toward the Resistance; Honegger’s path was instead toward tentative resistance, followed by a compromise impelled by his need to belong to a larger cultural whole as well as to achieve professional fame. Honegger began his Second Symphony (for strings) as a commission from Paul Sacher at a crucial moment—​while he was still in transition, a potential star anxiously in search of his new professional place. Begun in October 1941, it was a belated response to Paul Sacher’s request of 1938 that he write a symphony for one of the two orchestras that he conducted, the Kammerorchester of Basle and the Zurich Collegium Musicum. As Honegger himself pointed out, he had been pleased by none of his initial attempts, and it was only in the sad as well as personally uncertain period of the Occupation that he at last found inspiration. His inspiration was also in part the result of his decision now to plunge into the quartets of Beethoven, which propelled him to begin, and as was his usual practice, he started with the slow or second movement.145 When the work was completed in December (dedicated to Paul Sacher), Honegger then had to send it through the intermediary of another Swiss conductor to whom both he and Sacher were close, Ernest Ansermet. The symphony premiered in Zurich on January 23, 1942, followed by a premiere in Basle on May 18 of the same year. The Paris premiere took place belatedly—​in the politically tense summer of 1942, in conjunction with the second festival in honor of Honegger’s fiftieth birthday.146 Again, the work is deeply ambiguous in terms of a discernible authorial voice, for both its stylistic models and desired enunciation appear, at specific moments, to shift. Combining influences ranging from Stravinsky (in the first movement), to Beethoven (in the second), and Franck as well as Bach (in the third), it nevertheless derives a certain power from the very contradictions it thus engages. For it is a deeply “dialogic” composition, one that—​to employ the apt concept of Mikhail Bakhtin—​undermines “the authoritarian discourse of monologic consciousness.”147 Considered by some to be Honegger’s masterpiece, it is significantly a kind of “message symphony” in the tradition of Franck and d’Indy, or one approached as “musique pure” but in which we may discern a projected or implicit message. Franck originally developed the concept on the basis of his readings of Beethoven’s symphonic works, and particularly the Fifth Symphony in its movement from minor to major, or from “darkness to light.”148 However,

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in the case of Honegger’s symphony the significance of this remains profoundly ambiguous, and particularly in light of the final stylistic reference to D major at the work’s very end, here less resembling Beethoven than Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony. As in all of Honegger’s large compositions, the architectural structure is firm and in the Germanic tradition, yet the conscious stylistic clashes and shifts imbue it with a particularly provocative force. The first movement, marked by a dense and dissonant harmonic language, has been described as a kind of asymmetrical rondo form, with the fourth appearance of the rondo refrain becoming a brief concluding coda. Some of the four themes have a strongly marked rhythm that ineluctably recalls Stravinsky, as does the “deformation” of intervals through the introduction of foreign tones, although the tonal poles remain tonic and dominant. The frequent dissonance also results from the fact that Honegger follows melodic (or motivic) as opposed to harmonic exigencies as his themes enter into symphonic development, or the traditional dialogue and “combat.”149 The first movement is prefaced by a somber slow introduction that exposes a simple motivic idea, repeated in dark orchestral colors—​a kind of litany, before becoming lyrical and expressive of torment and an interior interrogation. Then, as the tempo quickens, the first three obstinately repeated notes announce the refrain, and lyricism again appears in the form of what Delannoy refers to as a sort of romantic “idée fixe.”150 The initial brisk unrelentingly repeated figure (Stravinsky-​like in terms of rhythm) is then embedded within a dissonant, highly contrapuntal texture, and repeated in a markedly slower rhythm before the full lyricism is allowed to enter. The latter assumes the form of a slow lyrical line in the violins over the ostinato of the recurring rhythmic figure, the lyricism gradually rising in range as the texture surrounding it grows more dense. At this point the tempo becomes unstable: after arresting the movement Honegger picks it up and then slows it down with a kind of lurching movement that, together with the varying texture, suggests indecision, as does the final rapid coda preceding the quiet ending. The second movement, an Adagio mesto, was the first to be composed—​in the fall of 1941—​with Honegger himself describing it as despondent, or “somber and rather hopeless.” Later scholars have since characterized the movement as a “déploration” or a slow cortège, marked by an impassioned crescendo and cast in a simple, poignant ABA form. Here the chromaticism introduced in the first movement (to which it is connected almost seamlessly) is developed systematically, in the manner of César Franck, creating an anguished atmosphere that recalls the section marked “Beklemmt” in the Cavatina of Beethoven’s Opus 130 String Quartet. The movement similarly appears to be expressive

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Honegger, Symphonie pour orchestre à cordes. End of second movement. Paris: Salabert, 1942.

of an internal interrogation, particularly through its repeated halting figure, over which the long tortuous melody wanders, gaining in intensity and building contrapuntally—​as if encountering a closed, restricted space. Finally, as in the preceding movement, the texture gradually thins out, and although the

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repeating rhythmic figure returns it now grows quiet and appears quiescently to fade, or simply die away in the end.151 Most enigmatic of all is the final movement—​the conclusion to Honegger’s implicit symphonic drama; marked “Vivace ma non troppo,” it similarly begins with a somber tone and is alternately tumultuous and expressive, with a gradually intensifying lyricism that also appears to press against a firmly closed door.152 The opening is marked by a rapid and repeating figure in the violins that imparts the sense of an impetuous drive forward, after which it is layered and treated contrapuntally, then concluding in a unison dissonance. This is followed by a lyrical theme (high in the violins) over the rapid rhythmic figure, with the texture gradually building and a hint of movement toward the major mode. However, the ostinato returns, now in the lower strings, which—​ together with the increasing tempo, irregular accents, and dissonance—​imparts a vertiginous and breathless feel. Like the opening movement this one also contains sonata and rondo elements, here an exposition, development, re-​exposition, and final coda. The latter is central to the cycle’s meaning, and the seeds of it appear already within the development section. Throughout this movement the melodic and harmonic treatment inevitably evokes association with the Germanic tradition; of course within the wartime context the significance remained provocatively ambiguous. This is particularly true of the coda, which has been described as a kind of Bach-​ like chorale, articulated by a luminous trumpet solo that appears to allow the “light” (in D major) here to penetrate. However, the conundrum one ineluctably faces is what this light represents for the composer: is it, as some have argued, a manifestation of Honegger’s Protestantism, of an optimistic hope for French freedom, or a reference to the eventual triumph of Germanic culture in the “new Europe”?153 Any reference to Bach was now highly ambiguous or multivalent, with Vichy promoting frequent performances of his works since they carried spiritual as well as “Europeanist” associations. Honegger specified that for the ending he sought a “brilliant element” in order to contrast with the other sections, and that to support the chorale he also indicated a trumpet “ad libitum.”154 In fact the effect of the chorale varies greatly depending on whether one employs a trumpet to articulate it triumphantly or allows the theme to emerge more subtly from within the strings. For some the ambiguous message of the ending remained an intractable problem; in fact, when Munch (now in the Resistance) recorded the work in October 1942 he included only the first two movements. It was not until March 1, 1944—​three months before the liberation of Paris, when the ending could be interpreted more plausibly in terms of liberty—​that Munch decided to record the final movement.155

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Honegger, Symphonie pour orchestre à cordes. End of third movement. Paris: Salabert, 1942.

Monologic or Dialogic? The critical reception of  the Second Symphony But within the context of the work’s premiere—​on June 25, 1942 (several weeks before the Vél’ d’Hiv’ round-​up of Jews) most critics ignored the double-​voicing,

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perceiving rather a monologic statement of aspiration for France’s future. But for some, at this point, the future they envisioned was in fact a France that was thriving within Hitler’s triumphant new Europe, to which a German victory would bring both peace and hope. Almost all critics reported Honegger’s “triumph” when the symphony was performed in Paris, and then in several provinces—​in the former case it was conducted by Charles Munch at the Palais de Chaillot during the “Semaine Honegger.”156 Typical of the critical reception was José Bruyr’s article in L’information musicale, in which he reported on the work’s premiere at the start of the festive week (again, the fourth festival of French music, sponsored by La Voix de son Maître). Bruyr, projecting his own perception, proclaimed the work “one hundred percent” pure Honegger—​marked by force, joy, energy, and lyricism (although containing a somber Adagio)—​a music that ostensibly “unifies.” The critic evidently approached the work in terms of a mixture of different national styles, perceiving the Swiss element in its pastoral accent as well as gravity, and the French in its sometimes cocky, ironic attitude. But these traits, he continues, are combined with deep emotion and an exquisite truculence of language (implicitly Germanic features), thus in essence implying a perfect European stylistic synthesis.157 Just as important, the critic admires Honegger’s manifestly intrepid will, in addition to his solidly architectural approach, here perhaps suggesting an analogy with the symphonic ideals of d’Indy. And for Bruyr the ending unequivocally represents not only light but also peace (although, again, for whom is unclear), recalling Beethoven’s own triumphal “Ode to Joy.”158 Bruyr’s perception and praise of Honegger, a propos of his festival and the works performed in it, was echoed (anonymously) in Le temps on August 7, 1942. Here the critic abruptly proclaims that Honegger is, in short, both assuredly and by far the most richly gifted musician of his entire generation (implicitly in Europe). As he (or she) pointedly continues, Honegger’s knowledge of the Germanic tradition (including Richard Strauss), and of the work of d’Indy, Franck, Debussy, and Ravel, is evident and most impressive.159 But not surprisingly the collaborationist writer and critic Lucien Rebatet was clearly more guarded; for like some of the ideological collaborationists he harbored reservations about Honegger’s modernist past and associations. Writing about the “Festival Honegger” in Je suis partout on July 3, 1942, he acknowledges the endless acclamations by the public, allowing that is due recompense for Honegger’s talent, but reminding his readers of the reproaches that can still be made against him based on his past tendencies. He probably had in mind not only Honegger’s collaboration with Ida Rubenstein, but also apparently works like Pacific 231, for he decries those works that border on the nonspecific (or “pure”) and yet suggest the descriptive.

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Rebatet  also makes reference to the current debates concerning Honegger’s national cultural associations, pointing out that, although of Swiss origin, he was born in Le Havre (France). For the critic he thus now embodies a union between the solidarity and breadth of the German musical tradition and the picturesque elements of the French. Although Rebatet here implies that a European synthesis is manifest in Honegger, he then contends that it is the influence of French culture, and of the French spirit, that is indeed predominant. But in discussing the symphony Rebatet stresses the more solid (Germanic) aspects of Honegger’s style, as well as his striking color, energy, and the tumultuous, strongly rhythmic development that he employs. He then points out that the work’s last movement is crowned by a dazzling chorale, which is articulated by a sonorous trumpet mixed together powerfully with the full strings. For him the symphony is unequivocally a success and thus deserves to be performed; however, it poses problems in the first two movements, which are rather more dramatic and tragic.160 Ostensibly Rebatet considers the final triumphal movement to incarnate the work’s greatest strength, the implications of which here are clear given his emphasis on the Franco-​German stylistic synthesis. Émile Vuillermoz, the musical spokesman for the Vichy French National Radio, similarly lauded the symphony in a collection of essays in honor of Honegger, which were published by Comoedia-​Charpentier that year.161 Like Rebatet he draws a contrast between the work’s often highly charged contrapuntal texture, which sometimes abruptly shifts to unison, and the final triumphal chorale that suddenly rises like the sun over a distant horizon. For Vuillermoz (who followed Vichy’s evolution), the latter, with the trumpet solo magnificently radiating over the full strings, is proof of Honegger’s talent and personality, which is marked by honesty, loyalty, and personal sincerity—​qualities from which all musicians can learn.162 It was, however, not just the authorized press that immediately lauded Honegger’s new symphony:  the composer’s close colleagues were deeply impressed, including Poulenc, who nevertheless disapproved of the more compromising articles he wrote for Comoedia. After the Parisian premiere Poulenc (soon to join the Resistance) wrote to Milhaud—​who had escaped to the United States—​describing the symphony for strings as simply “épatant” (amazing).163 In addition, Roland-​Manuel, who like Poulenc and Munch would soon join the Resistance, was similarly impressed, and not only by Honegger’s craft but also by what he perceived as his implicit honesty. He later explicitly referred to the intense battle that he discerned within the work, and (perhaps in a postwar retrospective attempt at exoneration) to the unexpected triumphal trumpet at the very end.164

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Honegger the resistant? His postwar sanctions Honegger had been recruited into the Resistance on the basis of specific articles that he had published in Comoedia, and according to some it was on the basis of others that he was eventually excluded from it. Historians also contend that his expulsion from the Front national des musiciens (by early 1944) was due to his compromising actions and the pressure of communists such as Louis Aragon and Claude Morgan.165 But as they have also pointed out, figures like Maurice Brillant (in L’aube) nevertheless hailed him as a hero of the French Resistance based on the dating of his Chant de libération. The short work for baritone solo, unison chorus, and orchestra, to a text by Bernard Zimmer, in fact has a complex history, which helps us better understand Honegger’s tenuous position.166 As Leslie Sprout has revealed, although Honegger dated the work April 1942 (the year Laval came to power, and named Bonnard minister), this is belied by the piano-​vocal score that she found in the collection of Zimmer’s works. April 1942 is actually the date when Zimmer and Honegger openly wrote a two-​minute song for a film about Jeanne d’Arc, who as we saw was claimed by both Vichy and the Resistance.167 It was later, in April 1944, as the Liberation seemed inevitably to be approaching, that they together prudently decided to convert the song into a covert French Resistance composition. Zimmer himself became a member of the Resistance Comité de libération du cinéma français that spring, but conversely Honegger had been expelled from his resistance grouping only several weeks before the adaptation. The new work was premiered on October 22, 1944, by the Société des concerts du Conservatoire (under Charles Munch) in the first concert of their 1944–​1945 season, and was so well received that it even had to be repeated. But it would also be the last work of Honegger to be performed before the informal ban (on both performance and publication) of six months—​imposed on him by the Front national des musiciens—​went into effect.168 For despite this belated effort, at the Liberation, Honegger (who had decided to remain in Paris) found himself facing accusations, and eventually sanctions, although narratives of this vary among the different sources. According to Tchamkerten, Honegger was targeted for an informal professional punishment, and as evidence he cites Honegger’s letter to Paul Claudel of December 29, 1944. Here Honegger explains that he was not going to be called before a formal purge committee since there was nothing concrete for which to reproach him, but that some well-​meaning colleagues still thought it was not in his best interests to be performed at this time.169 Honegger here also points out that he was touched by Claudel’s sympathy with his plight, and observes the irony that it was because of his articles in Comoedia that he was initially approached

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to join the Front national (he claims) in 1941. Claudel himself was at first pro-​Pétain, but then went on to become part of the Resistance, publishing his Domaine français—​a sort of Pléiade of wartime Resistance literature—​in August 1942.170 Some scholars propose that it was because Honegger was a Swiss citizen that he did not formally go before a purge committee—​the fate of those who were selected by their respective professional associations. (In music this was to be the Société des auteurs, compositeurs, et éditeurs de musique and the Société des auteurs et compositeurs dramatiques.) Such composers faced an official purge and then a series of national sanctions to be decided on and administered through the Ministère de l’éducation nationale. As Sprout has pointed out, it was the Front national des musiciens that prepared the purge in August 1944, and the official committee charged with the cases was formed later, in spring 1945. The members of the Front national des musiciens subsequently met to discuss the issue with the newly appointed minister of national education, René Capitant, the director of fine arts, Jacques Joujard, and the director of theater and music, Edouard Bourdet. They compiled a preliminary list of the fourteen most clearly compromised musicians—​from which Honegger’s name was absent—​which was published three days later in Les lettres françaises. Apparently his offenses were not found to be among the most egregious ones, which included performance with German musicians who had toured France, traveling to Germany and to nations annexed by it, participating in the programs of Radio Paris, joining the group Collaboration, and contributing to collaborationist newspapers.171 Although never overtly displaying ideological sympathy with the Nazis, Honegger had taken advantage of all the opportunities that were offered to him, even those including German propaganda efforts, especially his trip to Vienna. The latter (again, in late 1941 with prestigious figures) was all expenses paid and included concerts that were at the same time in fact political rallies. The group heard Goebbels himself speak at the rally held at the Staatsoper, and at the festival’s opening they heard the Reich Governor of Vienna, Baldur von Sirach, speak of Mozart’s significance for the Third Reich’s visions and goals. German propaganda officials ostensibly took full advantage of all these events, emphasizing the prestige of having so many famous foreign visitors, who would undoubtedly pass on their admiration when returning home. Robert Bernard indeed wrote of the festival as a “moral victory” for the Germans in L’information musicale, and Guy Ferchault spoke of the vision of new Europe here manifest in the Cahiers franco-​ allemands. Honegger himself, in Comoedia, wrote (less specifically) that it was a comfort to observe, in such a difficult period, the worship that was here being accorded such “a gift from the gods to humanity.”172

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Honegger’s case was indeed complex, for although not an ideological supporter of Nazism, he did allow both the Nazis and Vichy to use him in order to promote their gradually emerging collaborationist agenda. The reasons he acquiesced are not simple: while some have argued that he just wanted to be allowed to work, we need once again to consider the question of his identity and his psychological motivations.173 Honegger’s colleagues were well aware of these issues, as we saw in the case of several important figures, and this may well have been why the sanctions imposed on him were not greater. Claudel was certainly among them—​on September 28, 1944, he had informed Honegger that Bourdet (after meeting with the members of the Front national des musiciens concerning the case) told him Honegger should come to see him. This was ostensibly with reference to both his articles in Comoedia and his trip to Vienna; Bourdet thus also suggested that Honegger ask Désormière (a prominent resistant) for a certificate of civic duty. Honegger did go to see Bourdet, but apparently the meeting was inconclusive. Then on December 22, 1944, Henry Barraud, now the director of music at the French National Radio, also summoned Honegger, who described the meeting in a letter Claudel on December 29. Barraud had told Honegger that since there were no concrete charges the group did not want to put him before a purge committee; however, a few among them thought it would be best not to perform his music at the present time. (Poulenc in a letter to Milhaud of March 27, 1945, observed there was emphatic opposition to Honegger’s music among those at the new national radio.) However, his music was reappearing by July 1946, with Honegger, according to Poulenc, now being presented as a Swiss composer. But Poulenc observed that Honegger was still continuing to isolate himself, referring to this self-​imposed quarantine as caused by his “not serious imprudence.”174 Yet despite Poulenc’s understanding (perhaps because of his own personal, gradual journey) the intellectual resistance had defined its criteria for judgment by late 1943, as made clear in La nouvelle république, one of several journals published under the auspices of the Conseil national de la résistance. In its issue of December 5, 1943, in an article titled “Théâtres,” it observes that the question of collaboration is individual, spanning a subtly nuanced scale from passive removal to servile complaisance.175 Honegger was undoubtedly aware of this fact, or of his position within the range of compromise, and had foreseen the future since early 1944, when he already composed two works for Switzerland. One was his Battements du monde to a poem by William Aguet, written for Radio Lausanne and premiered under Ernest Ansermet on May 18, 1944. The other was his fourth (and last) work for the Théâtre du Jorat, composed for a drama in four acts by René Morax and consisting of eight choruses and several instrumental interludes for brass and percussion, which premiered there (at Mézières) on May 17, 1944.176

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Honegger’s rehabilitation was slow, but was still abetted by both the Chant de libération and by the subsequent Chant de la délivrance. The latter was a resistance song for solo voice and piano to a text by José Bruyr, completed on May 27, 1945. By the spring of 1945 Honegger (his Second Symphony) was already again being performed, but here on an all-​Swiss program conducted appropriately by Ernest Ansermet. It was not until two years later (on June 14, 1947) that his Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher was performed, now with a new prologue with exculpatory ramifications, which Claudel had proposed on August 16, 1944.177 Honegger, of course, is a complex case: not an active Vichy supporter, collaborationist or a legal citizen of France, he still allowed himself to be used as a symbol by Vichy as well as by the Germans.178 Was he guilty and thus deserving of sanctions? Was his case analogous to Cortot’s, Lifar’s or Rouché’s, since all claimed to be working in the service of great art, and therefore accepted Vichy’s evolving cultural politics? When considering their political acquiescence here we might well summon the famous phrase of Stephen Spender—​that the politics of the artist is the politics of the “apolitical,” decided on for the sake of art and life and not of politics, resulting in their punishment.179 Most often construed as essentially an idealist reassertion of aesthetic autonomy, it evokes the artist as a benign opportunist using politics pragmatically for a transcendent, noble end. More centrally, perhaps, it absolves him of political responsibility for his ideological choices, which appear to be dictated primarily by artistic concerns—​the results of which are in fact negligible politically.180 Honegger’s “politics of the apolitical” led to the efflorescence of his career during Vichy, but also to its ignominious decline in its wake, as he indicates so bitterly in his Incantation aux fossiles (1948). What conclusions, then, might we draw? Was Honegger the misunderstood, stoic hero as depicted by Spratt and Tchamkerten, or Michel’s Faure’s ignoble bourgeois, who helped prepare for and further the collaborationist mentality?181 Nuance, perhaps, is the key to identifying the shades of gray between simple black and white, or guilt and innocence—​ an awareness that a composer may be impelled by beliefs or by “pure,” aesthetic intentions, but that his compromised acts may affect the construal of his message. Opportunism or political naiveté in the service of great art is not insignificant: the “politics of the apolitical” may lend force to those symbols that can carry noxious, even eventually deadly effects. For symbols can convince and legitimize—​they are part of the myriad vectors or conduits of ideology that historians have recently stressed in the history of twentieth-​century France.182 Although Honegger’s motivation was in part professional, or artistic and opportunistic, it was also related to his continuing quest for identity—​for a sense of belonging to a larger encompassing cultural whole. He came slowly to realize that his search for identity was simultaneously individual and social: as

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Helen Lynd has pointed out, the answer to the question “Who am I?” depends on the cognate question “What is the society and this world in which I live?”183 Honegger may well have believed that the new European society that was to emerge from Vichy and the Occupation was one in which he could find his place, or one that would finally reconcile the two conflicted cultures within his own identity. However, while helping to further this new world through his actions and through certain writings, in his symphony he palpably confronted his ambiguity, or inability to assume a decisive stance. Perhaps it was this that resonated so profoundly in his Second Symphony, as well as in his earlier opera, Antigone—​the unresolved self-​interrogations that may well have engaged with the experiences and anxieties of many. But Honegger finally came to learn that, to cite the penetrating postwar insight of Jean-​Paul Sartre, a writer (or artist) is necessarily situated in his own period and his particular context, one in which every word and silence carries its implicit reverberations.184

5

P O U L E N C ’ S M E TA M O R P H O S I S :   H I S J O U R N E Y T O WA R D   R E S I S TA N C E A N D A STYLISTIC COUNTERDISCOURSE

Francis Poulenc, like Honegger, worked principally in the occupied zone throughout this period, but he presents a revealing contrast with his friend, for his path led away from accommodation with Vichy. As he became aware of its increasing collaboration with the Germans, he gradually distanced himself from the regime, joined a resistance network, and sought hermeneutically, or through style, to express his new position. While like Honegger initially placing himself advantageously within the shifting French musical field (having been marginalized during the Popular Front), he ultimately decided to abandon this quest, rather seeking approval from a group whom he admired—​ musicians close to him who were already in the Resistance. Poulenc’s evolution away from the regime, with which he at first shared certain values, was incremental, if occurring earlier for several intersecting reasons that we shall here examine. This gradual distancing will become evident in the context of his evolving awareness during the completion of Les animaux modèles—​his new ballet for the Paris Opéra —​ through which he came realize his own implicit compromise.

From one nationalism to another As in the signal cases of Roger Désormière, Pierre Schaeffer, and Arthur Honegger, musical artists throughout Vichy maintained the power culturally to sustain the French regime or subtly to undermine it (along with the occupant) as the harsh realities surfaced. Hence for them, as for Soviet composers like Shostakovich, Gramsci’s piercing insight into the intellectual’s dual capacity not only to threaten but alternatively to legitimize an official, hegemonic power would have come as no surprise. In fact all artists, as intellectuals in either authoritarian or totalitarian states, can successively feel the pull of either

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option, especially in times of flux in political and concomitantly cultural policy, and thus might renegotiate their positions between the poles. Scholars still embroiled in the controversy over whether Shostakovich was acquiescent or a dissident may reconsider such dichotomies after examining contexts such as Vichy and those who glided between compliance and resistance during this period.1 In the case of Honegger, the quest for recognition by others was intimately related to his own self-​identity; subjective identity for Poulenc was now also to become profoundly problematic. For at first he believed that his values were those of the new French regime, and hence he sought its rewards and accolades; only gradually did his awareness and subjective stance evolve, leading to embarrassment from its blandishments and subsequently his search for a new reference group.2 Like so many, he initially thought that resistance to the Germans did not concomitantly entail a resistance to Vichy, and thus attempted to align his career and projects with the field’s new professional priorities in Paris.3 Yet Poulenc’s route between the poles from acceptance of the official toward contestation of it, and his stylistic enunciation of this journey, are unintelligible unless they are considered with the musical styles that were being promoted and the political agenda that subtly subtended them. Examination of clandestine publications reveals an acute awareness of the artistic results of the regime’s growing cultural and political collaboration and how they thus targeted its perceived musical “pseudonationalism.” Poulenc, too, would come to grasp this, and thus define himself firmly against it; but to recognize how he articulated his rejection musically it is essential to jettison certain established models of stylistic contestation. For here it would not be through emotional effusion, harmonic innovations (recalling Adorno), or only subtle irony: rather it would finally be enunciated by his turn to alternative models of French nationalism and the values that they embodied—​those described incisively in French Resistance journals.4 Once more, their injunction to French artists was to thwart not just a Franco-​German cultural synthesis but also the perceptions and conciliations that were being furthered in the clever propaganda as well as programs that were insidiously meant to promote it. It was within this context that the Resistance then defined a competing musical paradigm based on its own French political symbols, historical references, and cultural values. Only through an understanding of these conflicting models of French cultural nationalism may we discern Poulenc’s now tortuous trajectory and his inimitable achievement by Vichy’s end.

Poulenc at Vichy’s dawn Like so many of his compatriots, Poulenc, as he avowed, experienced a complex web of deep emotions, often shifting and contradictory, in the course of the

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tumultuous and then, for him, auspicious political events of 1940. He had been mobilized in June 1940, and soon thereafter sent to Bordeaux; his unit subsequently moved south, and in early July they were near Cahors, now waiting to be demobilized.5 While in the regions of Périgord and Limousin he came to admire the peasants whom he encountered, writing to Marie-​Blanche de Polignac of their intelligence (as opposed to the Parisians, or “parigots”). Significantly he here opined—​in a conscious echo of Pétain’s own recent rural references —​that it would undoubtedly be “la terre” (and its people) that would ultimately save them. Indeed shortly before his demobilization in July, Poulenc wrote to Pierre Bernac that it was thanks to “cher Maréchal” that he and his unit had not been taken prisoner. Like many other French Catholics, Poulenc at first supported Pétain, believing that Catholicism would now finally regain its rightful place after the fall of the so-​called godless Third Republic.6 Poulenc also at the time believed that Vichy was anti-​German and antifascist; in fact he had opposed the fascist threat since August 1934, when he went to Salzburg and decried the “politesses hitlériennes” of the festival.7 Strongly distrusting the Germans, he was now worried about the state of his home at Noizay (in Touraine); but unlike nearby Tours it was spared, although he would find that the German soldiers drank all the wine in his cellar and left their trash all about. But first, on July 22—​before he could return home—​he went to Brive-​la-​ Gailliarde (in the department of Corrèze, and the region of Limousin) to see his cousins and uncle. At his point Poulenc was apparently either unaware or uninterested that one of the first Catholic resistants, Edmond Michelet, was already here distributing resistance patriotic tracts.8 While in Brive, Poulenc wrote his long piano piece Mélancolie, and then—​with much difficulty—​crossed into the occupied zone, having briefly considered soliciting the help here of the famous German pianist he knew, Walter Gieseking, or that of Alfred Cortot. Poulenc was finally able to arrive in Paris on September 9, and went to see his friend Georges Auric before returning to Noizay in October.9 Poulenc was now sad but optimistic: the traumatic fall of France, which was followed by an armistice, a division of the country into two zones, and the instauration of a new political and moral order, swept in with a mix of fear or tense confusion, and yet of hope. The limited sovereignty that the French government had negotiated, while ignominious, seemed to many to offer an opportunity for a transformation that had not been possible since the German defeat of France in 1870—​and even perhaps since the French Revolution. Frustration with the “feckless and divisive” Third Republic, held responsible for French defeat, was indeed widespread, although initially so too was a sense of instability and anxiety over the eventual fate of France.10 Everything now seemed malleable, a perception soon articulated by Poulenc in a new ballet, for again, it was far from evident

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“what kind of government would create what kind of new institutions”: the only certitude was that, fortunately, the recent past had vanished. The new French constitution (never promulgated) responded aptly to the “apparent massive urge for instant change,” since the so-​called French state was no longer a republic but based on the personal authority of its leader, Maréchal Pétain.11 Pétain’s conservative order at this point ostensibly appealed to Poulenc, who hailed from the provincial bourgeoisie—​from a wealthy family of pharmaceutical manufacturers, who possessed homes in both the country and in Paris. Although he had asserted his independence from this milieu when he entered Cocteau’s circle in the 1920s (while also coming to terms with his homosexuality), his identity remained conflicted; and it would grow more so with time, exerting a palpable influence on his slowly evolving stylistic choices. This conflict crested in the 1930s, when, upon the loss of a close friend and other personal crises, he visited the famous shrine at Rocamadour in southwest France (as frequently had his father) and now ardently reembraced the Catholic faith of his paternal family.12 The advent of the Popular Front also helped him to realize that, unlike most of his colleagues in Les Six, his own political proclivities were not generally to the left but more conservative, and indeed closer to the traditionalist French right. This was the period of his moving choral work for female voices, the Litanies à la Vierge noire (1936) and his turn to religious music, which was accompanied by a pronounced stylistic change, or an expansion of his previous stylistic language. Significantly, many of the stylistic elements that he now embraced lay not only outside the aesthetic advocated by the Popular Front but also outside the republican tradition. For they comprised those traditional and religious techniques long associated with the Schola Cantorum and its symbolic resistance to the Third Republic.13 Poulenc’s conservative tendencies in the 1930s were shared by many Catholics—​those who resented not only the political challenge of the left but also its cultural proclivities and particularly its emphasis on the popular (here in an urban sense), as opposed to traditional elite art.14 Poulenc himself openly admitted that his conception of “the popular” was substantially different from that of the Popular Front, especially its definition of authentic folklore as embracing not only traditional peasant but also urban workers’ culture. Like Honegger, by 1936 Poulenc was thus turning not to the popular culture of the lower urban classes stressed by the left (and by Les Six in the 1920s) but to that of the French peasantry, now promoted by conservative Republican factions and the traditionalist right. Now ignored by both official institutions and the Parisian press, Poulenc, thus marginalized in the field, had cultivated the private patronage of those who shared his artistic tastes and conservative beliefs—​in particular the wealthy aristocracy and the French bourgeoisie. Thus in 1940, like many who

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patronized him, Poulenc placed his hopes in Pétain, the nation’s greatest living war hero and a Catholic of peasant background (yet a member of the French academy), who appeared to be a father-​figure sent to chasten the errant French. Moreover he promised a stronger and more unified French nation—​one that was corporatist, homogeneous, and authoritarian, as well as a “National Revolution” that would realize a social order that could restore personal wholeness to a fractured modern life. For again, Pétain’s plan was to revive the preindustrial world and create a political system that would end class agitation in the interest of collective harmony—​hence his emphasis on a return to the Catholicism of France’s monarchist years of glory. The Catholic order that Vichy thus first implied was one that promised not only to help resolve social conflicts through Christian charity but also to maintain collective credence in the traditional social hierarchy as well in official institutions and state authority.15 All of this was attractive to the now mature Poulenc, who soon expressed it in a new artistic project; but it beguiled many other Catholics in the fall of 1940, and particularly those such as he who had rejected the Popular Front and reasserted a fervent expression of their faith. Hence (like Alfred Cortot) Poulenc could not understand why his good friend Jacques Ibert, a reserve officer in the navy and a political conservative like himself, left for North Africa on the Masilla on June 2, 1940, to continue fighting after the French armistice. He was also surprised to learn of Milhaud’s harrowing trip with his family to escape German and French anti-​Semitism—​first through southern France to Spain, then to Lisbon, Portugal, and finally to the United States.16 In Paris and bursting with creative projects, Poulenc wrote to several friends of his new hope for France’s future and of his burgeoning artistic plans, which included a ballet for the Paris Opéra (in collaboration with the choreographer Serge Lifar). He also planned tours as a performer to earn money and, apparently not worried about mobility, wondered whether Switzerland was politically stable enough for him to be able to travel there. Indeed by now Poulenc appeared to be optimistic and in relatively good spirits and was able to write two motets between December 1940 and May 1941.17 Poulenc remained productive and retained cordial as well as useful relations with Alfred Cortot, who would publish an article castigating Les Six (in April 1942) while carefully exempting Poulenc. In his initial letters to Milhaud, Poulenc ebulliently—​if with atypical insensitivity—​described the new intensity of musical life in Paris and his own increasingly prominent place within it.18 Indeed performances of his works, like those of Honegger, would soon proliferate, and in Poulenc’s case particularly those that incarnated his love of the French cultural tradition. The later included some of Poulenc’s compositions of the 1920s, and even those that subtly embodied a partially ironic posture. For example, in 1941 Charles Munch and the Société des concerts du Conservatoire performed

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his Concert champêtre for harpsichord and orchestra, as well as his Concerto pour orgue. Poulenc was making money from his concerts (and pointed this out to his friends); certainly, they now provided a more stable source of income than through commercial publication.19 But Poulenc was eventually to grasp the harsh realities that now subtended Vichy’s vaunted nationalistic revival of French tradition, above all at the Paris Opéra —​still controlled by the Vichy government but also responsible to the German authorities in the capital.

Vichy traditionalism in Les animaux modèles? Poulenc had initially considered a ballet for the Paris Opéra in 1937, telling Paul Collaer that he was beginning one based on the fables of La Fontaine, for Massine. But the taste and ambience of the Popular Front had not been conducive to such a project, and so he put it off until August 1940 (at Brive), now beginning to sketch the numbers and to think about the orchestration. By early September he wrote to Milhaud and described his progress on the new work, projecting the date of the ballet’s completion (with full orchestra) as January 1941. And as he related, he hoped not only to have the ballet mounted by Serge Lifar but also to propose it to Balanchine and Nijinska for a North American tour in 1941–​1942. However, his progress was slow: Poulenc completed a sketch in December 1940 at Noizay, but by July 1941 had only produced a piano reduction. Although he wrote on the score that it was completed in September 1941, the orchestration was in fact not finished until June of 1942.20 Did Poulenc’s conception itself evolve between 1937 and the start of Vichy? And despite his interest in the French peasantry in the 1930s, did he later alter his idea of it, and of the La Fontaine fables that he selected? Hervé Lacombe (as opposed to several previous scholars) has plausibly argued that the ballet, and particularly the way in which Poulenc frames it in the opening and final scene, suggests a “lecture maréchaliste,” or a view now supportive of Philippe Pétain. (In general, “maréchaliste,” as opposed to “pétainiste,” implies not necessarily an ideological endorsement of the Révolution nationale, but rather a more personalized support for the maréchal.)21 Here Poulenc ostensibly invokes not only Pétain’s rural values—​construed as natural, pure, and sincere—​but also a return to the peasants who work in the fields. Moreover the final scene, in which the peasants slowly pray and then eat while solemnly facing the audience, suggests a connection to Pétain’s moral ideals, as do the specific fables that Poulenc, in the end, selected. For some scholars, however, the ballet enunciates a message of reconciliation between the French past and present, or the permanence of a specific conception of France, and hence they identify a resistance spirit.22 But here we must realize that although when he began the work Poulenc was anti-​German,

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he projected this posture onto Vichy, which he supported. Yet neither Vichy nor Pétain was resistant although they rhetorically underlined French continuity, and this was even clearer by the time the orchestration was finished in June 1942. Already by spring 1941, despite his participation on two Vichy professional committees, Poulenc’s experience of the Occupation, and of Vichy, was slowly changing. For not only was he now refused entry into the unoccupied zone to visit Georges Auric but also his personal partner, Raymond Destouches, was briefly imprisoned (by Vichy) on the charge of activities in the black market.23 The ballet, in sum, is deeply embedded in Poulenc’s changing attitude toward Vichy, which would finally prompt his mixed feelings about it by the time of the work’s premiere. It is also significant to note that, despite the ballet’s cultural—​and here implicitly political—​trope, it ineluctably suggests hybridity or disjunction, a world of shifting boundaries and, by extension, social and moral norms. Poulenc began the scenario in the fall of 1940, having decided to base it on selected fables of La Fontaine (the classic writer, close to the court of Louis XIV), who had consist­ ently been one of his favorite authors since his childhood and early school days. Conservative Vichy factions were sure to be pleased by a work that was rooted in France’s illustrious past; moreover Poulenc carefully selected fables with now resonant conservative morals, even manipulating them so as to suppress their rich potential polyvalence. Yet while making them less permeable to broader interpretations and thus sometimes more hortatory, Poulenc stressed the theme of flux or transformation—​the simultaneous fear and fascination with boundaries being crossed and, hence, of “oneness” left behind.24 In several of the dances the animals assume characteristics that are palpably human, while the humans cavort about like animals, particularly in the opening amusing entry “L’ours et les deux compagnons.” In his remarks on the mise-​en-​scène included in the printed score, Poulenc points out that since the animals are meant to be symbolic the costumes should be those of humans only, and in the noble style of the court ballet under Louis XIV. However, in his personal letters Poulenc is far less specific and describes the work, with his characteristic light raillery, as a kind of “ballet de Cour” for cocks and hens, despite the occasional human presence. In either case, as Poulenc sensed, the theme of transformation—​the alteration of appearance or modes of being—​enjoys wide popularity in periods of rapid change and social dislocation, as indeed occurred during Vichy. More specifically the experience of flux and of paradox, of an uncontrollable movement, can prompt artists as well as audiences to appreciate the related transformational images of hybridity and metamorphosis. New contacts and intellectual materials bring awareness that change in social roles is possible or inescapable, which helps to explain the popularity of stories of “an entity being replaced by something else.”

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During periods of anxiety of self versus the other, or that which lies “outside” (as during Vichy and the Occupation), one may find both fear and fascination with such images of mixture and specifically of hybridity. For as Caroline Bynum so aptly puts it, the image of the hybrid visually captures the frozen midpoint of the more impalpable and temporal process of metamorphosis or transformation.25 But despite Poulenc’s acuity in here suggesting transformation, or an animal-​ human metamorphosis, his more doctrinaire adherence to Vichy moralism and rural myth becomes clear when we compare his brief scenario with the fables that he selected and subtly manipulated. It was probably his hortatory adaptation that prompted Paul Éluard (Poulenc’s friend and soon to enter the intellectual Resistance) to criticize La Fontaine’s fables as “un prison” when Poulenc requested his help in assigning the ballet a title.26 In the summer of 1941 (as Vichy was turning more repressive under Resistance attacks) Éluard suggested the morally neutral and pallid title Les animaux modèles, which subtly de-​emphasizes the very moralizing element that Poulenc had been at pains to bring out. The latter goal becomes clear when we examine more specifically how Poulenc framed the six fables that he had selected, by means of both the setting and the pantomime that he specified. Indeed both the beginning and the ending of the work contrast notably with the ambiguity that ineluctably emerges in several of the ballet’s successive entrées. In addition, Poulenc consciously imbued the project with a personally meaningful dimension, for he adapted the fables to make them geographically specific—​setting them on an affluent rural farm in Morvan, the mountainous area of Burgundy for which he now felt nostalgic.27 The action of Poulenc’s ballet, as he specifies, takes place between dawn and noon, beginning with the entry of the peasants who leave Arnolphe’s large farmhouse, collect their tools, and then depart for the fields, here an apt maréchaliste image. Just as appropriate to Pétain’s rhetoric is that which follows in the opening scene: a bell rings and an old woman crosses the stage with a “livre de messe” under her arm; when she is menaced by prowling children Arnolphe brusquely sends them off to the field. However, in the entries that ensue a sense of transformation in the social world and experience ineluctably emerges, in part because of the ambiguity between animal and human traits, despite Poulenc’s own specific verbal disclaimers. The dramatic conclusion of the ballet is the final entry, “Les deux coqs,” drawn from the seventh book La Fontaine’s fables, which were written for the current (falsely prudish) mistress of Louis XIV, Madame de Montespan. Since the cock was traditionally the symbol of France, this entry now carried a particularly poignant resonance, although the implications of the ending are here vague. In Poulenc’s version, which partially adheres to that of La Fontaine, after the battle the victorious cock jumps onto the roof of the henhouse,

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singing loudly and triumphantly, only to be promptly carried away by a vulture. The hens then approach the mortally wounded cock, dancing grandiosely, and as Poulenc specifies—​perhaps, inspired by La Fontaine’s dedication to Mme. de Montespan—​almost indecently around it. This is followed (recalling baroque theater) by the apotheosis of the dead cock, perhaps for some representing both the great traditional and now new France as opposed to the previous Third Republic. Meanwhile the group of hens retreat obediently to the henhouse, while the weary peasants slowly return from their exhausting morning’s labor. As Sprout has noted, in La Fontaine’s fables the defeated rooster is simply ashamed that he has lost; Poulenc has the rooster die and brought back to life, with a subtle invocation of the final bars of Debussy’s La mer (which aptly suggests noon). The entrée could thus be read not only as a reference to recent French wartime defeat but also to the strife and fall of the Third Republic with the final victory of the more virtuous France. In addition, La Fontaine’s version—​and not Poulenc’s—​ends with the resonant phrase “Adieu les amours et la gloire,” warning the reader (now with particular resonance) to be cautious after the apparent profits of battle. If included in the scenario, it could have been read as a subtle resistance message referring not only to the Germans but also to Vichy; however, Poulenc was evidently not yet ready to make such a statement.28 And how much temerity did Poulenc, at this point, display in his anti-​ German posture? Often cited is the fact that he included passing reference to the old chanson, well known since 1870, “Non-​non, vous n’aurez pas l’Alsace et la Lorraine, et nos cœurs resteront français.” But Nigel Simeone has argued that the song Poulenc cites (in the trumpet part) is rather Frédéric Ben-​Tayroux’s late nineteenth-​century nationalist “Alsace et Lorraine.” In fact the latter, which was recorded by the great tenor Georges Thill (in 1939), is incorporated subtly not in “Les deux coqs” but (less confrontationally) in “Le lion amoureux.”29 Despite the claim that such a reference slipped past the benighted Germans to warm the hearts of loyal Frenchmen, most of the orchestra apparently did not recognize its presence. Not only were many of the German military officers sent to Paris highly knowledgeable about French culture, but they also could, when necessary, draw on the judgment of French collaborators, as occurred in theatrical censorship.30 Furthermore, not only was the choreographer, Serge Lifar, close to collaborationist circles, but also the ballet was revived twice during Vichy (performed no fewer than twenty-​nine times), with enthusiastic press reviews. Moreover, for those Germans who did understand the purported reference, the laugh could well have been on the French, since in fact they had once again recently lost the contested provinces of Alsace and Lorraine.

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Finally, Poulenc’s sympathies for Vichy at its start are clearly evident at the work’s end, when the peasants—​weary from the heat—​return from their labor, lay down their tools, and bring out a long table on which to eat. Poignantly the whole group now gathers around it, directly and gravely facing the audience; after saying their blessings they solemnly start to eat as the curtain falls. This is not the ribald, light-​hearted, and sagacious peasantry of Poulenc’s earlier works; and although closer to that of his pious Litanies à la Vierge noire, they are here represented (following Vichy’s image) as docile, almost a part of the earth that they so assiduously toil. Not surprisingly Rouché immediately approved the ballet’s scenario, and Poulenc then launched into the score with relish—​as he put it with his new “gourmandise créatrice.”31 His style at this point had similarly been waxing more conservative, and now he seemed naturally to absorb the current romantic (or Wagnerian) interpretation of his French idol, Chabrier. The change had begun to occur in his piano Nocturnes (written between 1929 and 1938), but is also evident in his Mélancolie for piano (1940), ostensibly inspired and influenced by Chabrier’s piano piece of the same name. The Poulenc work is characterized not only by lyricism but also by a more extensive development and thus a greater length than was typical of many of his previous piano compositions. Also from this period are Poulenc’s Banalités, six “mélodies” to the poems of Guillaume Apollinaire, which range in style from that of the chanson populaire to the long and metrically complex, as in the case of “Sanglots.”32 Again, although Poulenc had long rejected Wagner, he was nevertheless being influenced by the gradually more Wagnerian, or conservative, appropriation of Debussy. The latter is one that stressed Debussy’s earlier style (of the later 1880s), briefly marked by a stronger (if subtle) harmonic drive, a denser texture, and a heavier orchestration. The beginning of Poulenc’s new ballet, like the ending, seems to recall Debussy; however, in the former case it is not La mer but the earlier Debussy, still indebted to Wagner’s Parsifal, and particularly his La damoiselle élue.33 Yet never in the work does Poulenc suggest the later Renaissance-​inspired compositions of Debussy, or his wartime classicizing works, both of which were soon to be appropriated by French resistance musicians. As in Poulenc’s earlier ballet, Les biches, this one is cast in the form of a suite, but here with the individual numbers often shifting their stylistic references in response to the dramatic “argument,” or scenario. His models thus include not only the current more conservative appropriations of Debussy, Ravel, and Chabrier, but also, where appropriate, Poulenc’s own earlier style of the 1920s (not inimical to the more lenient German standards in France), with references to Couperin (in the scene with the roosters), Scarlatti, and Stravinsky.34 In fact in the course of 1941 Poulenc was actively defending interwar music in France, including that of Stravinsky, who was being performed but over whom

Poulenc, Les animaux modèles. Paris: Éditions Max Eschig, 1942.

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contestation now surfaced. For at the beginning of the occupation the French hesitated to perform his works or even to speak of him because of his Russian origin, despite his naturalization as a French citizen in 1934. However, Stravinsky’s Oiseau de feu was presented by the Société des concerts du Conservatoire on December 1, 1940, and on January 3, 1941, Poulenc published an article about him in L’information musicale.35 He observes that reservations toward Stravinsky among the French have not yet disappeared, and laments that so few of his works currently appear on concert programs. Poulenc also opines that one cannot but laugh when reading that (as some critics now claim) interwar (or neoclassic) music in France is nonexistent, or without consequence, and particularly that of Stravinsky after his ballet Les noces. Again, the French profascist press, including journals such as La gerbe and Je suis partout, continued vigorously to denounce French interwar cultural decadence, including that embodied in neoclassic music.36 Poulenc’s good friend Henri Sauguet also took up the cause of French interwar music, publishing an article on “Musique d’entre deux guerres,” in the Nouvelle revue française on February 1, 1941.37 He observes the current tendency to denigrate or censure interwar French music, in effect all that was written between 1918 and 1940. Sauguet finds it scandalous that critics so frequently castigate French music after Debussy and early Ravel, arguing that it remains an admirable expression of French national genius. He claims that, contrary to the opinion now so often expressed, the music of Les Six did play an essential role within the larger evolution of French music.38 Again, writing in this journal, directed in these years by Pierre Drieu La Rochelle (a collaborationist), was not necessarily later considered a politically compromising act. Auric had published a review of Pelléas in it in December 1940, and Poulenc himself would contribute an article on the Chabrier centenary on July 1, 1941. Poulenc not only lauds Chabrier (as well as Rouché, who helped to arrange the celebration) but also seizes the occasion to castigate d’Indy, now praised by French conservatives. According to Poulenc, d’Indy’s music in the long run will not endure; moreover his influence will be minimal, since his work is heavy as well as unimaginative and academic.39 Poulenc’s own style in his ballet is eclectic, and its interpretation would be influenced by the visual element, including the décor and costumes, which themselves underwent a slow and troubled evolution. André Derain (who had made the trip to Vienna with the contingent of noted French artists in later 1941) was initially engaged, in December 1941, to provide the work’s décor. However, by January 1942 Derain had decided to withdraw from the project, writing to Poulenc that this was for “various reasons,” and that he was prepared to accept the cost of modifying both the publicity and the programs.40 One can only speculate on the reason for Derain’s attitude, since Poulenc was not yet in the

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French musical resistance, although the conductor engaged for the work, Roger Désormière, discretely was. It may also have been Poulenc’s inner circle, in the Resistance or inclined toward a resistance position—​Auric, Durey, and André Schaeffner—​that now so disquieted Derain. The Resistance organization of French musicians, the Front National des musiciens, had in fact been founded in September 1941 by Désormière and Durey, together with Elsa Barraine. Eventually (in the course of the following year) its members would include not only Poulenc but also Henry Barraud, Roland-​Manuel, Charles Munch, Manuel Rosenthal, and Claude Delvincourt.41 Moreover, Poulenc was close to André Dubois, who had been relieved of his position as prefect of police by the Vichy government and had subsequently become a member of the French Resistance. After the withdrawal of Derain, Jacques Rouché selected his replacement—​the artist Maurice Brianchon, who was already known for his decors at the Opéra and with whom Poulenc was happy. Derain (as opposed to Brianchon) may also have been nettled by the fact that Poulenc had clear ideas of what he wanted, even specifying the last tableau as “in the manner of Le Nain.” In addition he requested that the work be set in Burgundy (evoking the farms of Morvan) under Louis XIV, which for Poulenc was also the great century of Pascal—​the Jansenist philosopher and master of the classic French language—​hence (he believed) the most specifically French historic epoch.42

From the search for personal authenticity to a new political awareness In the months preceding the work’s premiere (in August 1942) Poulenc’s political views appeared to be shifting, which undoubtedly had partly to do with the continuing influence of his close circle of friends. Moreover, at about the time that Laval returned to power (that April) Poulenc made a trip to Morocco, where he may well have been introduced to the resistance circle there.43 His public statements concerning French music were now becoming more direct and bold, as is evident in his article for the catalogue of the Debussy Exposition in May 1942. In it he unequivocally states that the lesson of Debussy—​which all French musicians should remember, now more than ever—​is “Écrire de la musique purement de chez nous.”44 What else was causing this increasingly confrontational attitude, first culturally and then politically, on the part of Poulenc and his close friends? Certainly they could have not helped but notice that as of May 28, 1942, all Jews in France were required to wear a yellow star in public (as throughout Hitler’s Europe). In addition this was the period of the first systematic deportation of Jews from the occupied zone, and by that summer the BBC broadcasts began to evoke the massacre of 700,000 Jews in Poland as well the existence of gas chambers.45

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Again, Poulenc, a traditionalist Catholic, had not participated in the first wave of French religious resistance, although he refused the imposition of Nazism and believed that the Vichy government would do the same. For many Catholics such as he it would have been too painful a rupture to reject the Church’s urging to support the current legal regime in France, which had long been the established practice. But to Poulenc, as to many, the move into resistance was finally born of a sense of having encountered that which was emphatically unacceptable as well as the result of a long and painful subjective process. In the summer of 1942 numerous French Catholics considered the massive roundup of Jews—​particularly evident and cruel in Paris—​to be the final straw.46 And more personally for Poulenc, Vichy’s increasing repression of homosexuals may well have been another eye-​ opening experience—​a further revelation of the regime’s exclusive nature. Indeed on August 6, 1942, Pétain signed a law that established separate ages of sexual majority for homosexuals and heterosexuals. For the latter it remained thirteen, but for French homosexuals it was now raised to age twenty-​one (with Vichy stressing the association of homosexuality with cosmopolitanism as well as moral decadence). Yet, despite such repressive laws, a number of Vichy activists were in fact homosexuals, including Abel Bonnard, the collaborator Robert Brasillach, and the bisexual (married) Jérôme Carcopino.47 But at first Poulenc was apparently not aware of the contradiction between his shifting attitude toward Vichy and his involvement with the Vichy-​funded Paris Opéra . For as late as June 1942 he wrote to Rouché asking that, although his ballet had not been a commission, it be treated as one and thus accordingly remunerated.48 Poulenc’s composure, however, soon shattered: by the time of the premiere, on August 8, it had become a deep embarrassment, despite its public success—​even in the immediate wake of Egk’s Joan de Zarissa. In fact Poulenc’s picture appeared on the cover of L’information musicale on August 28, when Lifar published a prominent article, “Au lendemain de Joan de Zarissa à l’Opéra.” Moreover despite the fact that the ballet’s orchestra was now reduced because of the absence of both prisoners and Jews, Les animaux modèles received an enthusiastic ovation and no less than six curtain calls.49 When examining the press reviews it is important to recall Julian Jackson’s caveat that we must draw a distinction between the author’s apparent aspirations and the critical reception of a work in this period.50 For despite Poulenc’s gradual evolution, together with that of the ballet as a whole, the press reviews of its premiere were—​to his professed chagrin—​largely enthusiastic. André Schaeffner, an ethnomusicologist and early scholar of jazz who was by now a resistant, had been asked by the ideologically compromised Robert Bernard (who had made the notorious trip to Vienna) to write an article on it for L’information musicale. Schaeffner rejected this request, and in his subsequent letter to Poulenc referred to the

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journal as “une vague feuille de chou”—​a derogatory expression to indicate its poor level.51 However, F.  Reynal did subsequently comply with Bernard’s request, and reported enthusiastically on the ballet in L’information musicale on August 26, 1942. After noting that Poulenc also wrote the scenario, he sanguinely refers to the ballet’s score as clear in plan and devoid of stylization, which accords with the broad and grand spirit of the “fabuliste” [La Fontaine]. He then advances that Poulenc’s originality remains in the best of taste and that the sonority is never too emphatic; moreover, the peasantry is that of the “grand siècle.” Apparently Reynal did not find the entrée of the “Deux coqs” to be at all subversive, rather singling it out as both charming and amusing.52 Honegger, in Comoedia, similarly lauded the work and noted the characteristics of the more “mature” Poulenc; for despite the presence of some of his previous stylistic traits, Poulenc’s harmonic sense is now more developed and “savory,” as clearly influenced by Debussy and Chabrier.53 Later, perhaps to distance himself from the work’s original Vichy context, Poulenc described the style as rather “nogentais” and claimed that the harmonies were indebted to Stravinsky and Ravel (the latter lauded in Poulenc’s article in the Nouvelle revue française in January 1941).54 But earlier, in an interview published in Le Figaro on August 14, 1942, Poulenc stressed the seriousness of the ballet and his attempt to respect the deeper sense of La Fontaine’s fables. He points out that not only it is a “ballet grave” but also two episodes of “grande gravité” frame it and link the separate episodes together. Moreover he notes that it is placed in the century of Louis XIV in Bourgogne, which for him—​perhaps more than any other—​is a “province terrienne.” Again, after specifying that for him no other epoch is more specifically French, he underlines that it is not meant to amuse, hence it is “le contraire d’un divertissement.”55 Here Poulenc was perhaps being defensive, for the many German soldiers who now flocked to the ballets were often there for amusement as well as relaxation, and may thus have considered the ballet to be merely diverting and “light.” To Poulenc’s deep consternation, this was indeed the interpretation of the ballet’s tone by the redoubtable Colette in the article that she published on it the Comoedia of August 22, 1942. Not only did she criticize Brianchon’s costumes and décor as well as the mise-​en-​scène but also she pointedly castigated what she considered to be the excessive humor in the ballet. In fact, Poulenc’s closest friends had also remarked specifically on the work’s apparent humor: Étienne de Beaumont, who had seen a rehearsal, found the ballet to be charming and diverting, as well as “reposant.”56 Poulenc was ostensibly upset by such reactions, particularly by Colette’s review, responding the very same day from Noizay in a letter that was published in Comoedia on August 29. Here he points out that it was he who had instructed Brianchon to model the ballet’s décor on the farms of Morvan, and who specified

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court costumes of the seventeenth century for the animals in order clearly to suggest the human parallels.57 But despite his attempt to clarify his intentions so that the work did not appear in any way to be compromised, Poulenc found it difficult to confront the harsh fact that he had partially relinquished his own artistic voice. At first naively proud and anxious to win the approbation of his former teacher, Charles Koechlin (whom he revered), Poulenc had sent him an invitation as well as tickets to the premiere, and two days after it Koechlin replied to thank him politely for the gesture.58 His assessment, however, was frank and even brutal, for he observed (as opposed to Honegger) that in effect the ballet did not have the “character” of his other works—​or it was not authentically Poulenc—​ and he rather preferred his earlier Les biches. Moreover Koechlin saw clearly that it was not only the more traditionalist (and now compromised) construction of Debussy that he had emulated in the ballet but also the more Wagnerian interpretation of his great idol Chabrier. Hence he urged his former pupil to turn rather to the “opéra-​bouffe” model of Chabrier, the stylistic opposite of his currently performed and lauded serious opera Gwendoline. (Poulenc, of course, did soon take his advice, returning to his plans for his own light-​hearted Les mamelles de Tirésias, based on the play of Guillaume Apollinaire, which he had begun to plan in 1938.)59 Perhaps to soften the blow, Koechlin added that he did like the songs that Poulenc had sent him—​presumably the early sketches for his Chansons villageoises, which were more characteristic of Poulenc and genuinely inspired by the popular—​both urban and rural. Poulenc responded honestly to Koechlin’s letter, and graciously avowed that he did see his mentor’s point about the ballet, but that it had nevertheless indeed made him sad.60 Poulenc was not only affected by Koechlin’s reserve but also embarrassed by the enthusiastic press reviews, confiding his discomfiture in a letter to André Schaeffner. Here he confesses that his new success has in fact brought him little pleasure, and he speaks frankly about his complex emotional state since all the accolades for this work have cruelly “clarified attitudes.”61 A composer who took pride in his previous work, and who acknowledged Koechlin’s points about Les animaux modèles, he was thus compelled to remark that after having lacked public esteem for more than twenty-​five years it had finally arrived—​but with this ballet. In addition Poulenc was apparently so destabilized that that he also confided to Geneviève Sienkiemwicz that he was now unable to compose, or as he succinctly put it, “La musique me boude.”62 Aware of his personal compromise and former blindness, Poulenc was evidently in the process here of confronting his own shame while also discovering a new path toward authenticity in French musical resistance circles. It may have been his subjective revelation of a loss of the latter, both in his project and in his musical style, that had helped finally to compel him to recognize the situation or, like Pierre Schaeffer, to open his eyes

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and ears. Poulenc was now well aware of his recent ballet’s deep polyvalence or ambiguity and may well have been chagrined when resistants like Claude Roy later (in April 1944, and then André Schaeffner, after the war) expressed an admiration for and appropriated the work.63 Poulenc, like Pierre Schaeffer and the so-​called vichysso-​résistants, had initially shared some common ground with the regime, and he had (perhaps opportunistically) participated in its cultural politics; but by now he could objectively acknowledge what had since transpired. In a letter to Brianchon of September 26, 1942, he refers to the previous summer—​that of his triumph and of the notorious Vél’ d’Hiv roundup—​as both “odious and detestable.”64 And the next month, on October 21, Poulenc received a letter from André Schaeffner that expressed their shared reserve concerning the new head of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Bernard Faÿ, who was close to collaborationist circles.65 By December Poulenc, now in Paris, wrote to Ernest Ansermet (in Corrèze) and expressed his admiration of the now solitary Picasso (no longer allowed to exhibit), who nevertheless continued to paint superbly. In addition Poulenc here noted with pride his own provocative “coquetterie” (despite both the German and Vichy racial bias) of having his early Rapsodie nègre performed at a projected Pléiade concert.66 At this point Poulenc was probably in the Resistance and attempting to distance himself from previously compromised acts, while at the same time embracing both the stylistic models and themes promoted within Resistance artistic circles.

Resistance nationalism and its artistic goals Poulenc’s entry into the Resistance may, in part, have been the result of the active if discreet recruitment efforts on the part of the intellectual and artistic resist­ ance by summer 1942, when it was now well organized and widely spread. At first the Resistance was small and in general comprised those of socially marginal status, but public opinion had begun slowly to turn in its favor by the repressive summer of 1941.67 By the end of the year, with the perception of Vichy’s growing concessions to the ever-​demanding German occupant, disillusion further set in and culminated with the Jewish roundups in the summer of 1942. This was exacerbated in August with the shooting of French hostages, and in the following year with the implementation of the Service du travail obligatoire as well as the formation of the brutal armed Milice. More and more Frenchmen now saw Pétain’s Révolution nationale as ultimately serving only the Germans’ interests, and thus further recognized the inconsistencies in Vichy’s nationalism as well as its flawed political judgment.68 The Resistance had been stimulated in part by the Soviet rupture with the Germans in June 1941, which then led to the formation of the

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Communist-​sponsored Front national—​a clandestine organization that embraced all the professions. This included musicians, and the Front national des musiciens was then founded in September 1941 by Elsa Barraine and Roger Désormière in Paris, and Louis Durey (still in Saint-​Tropez).69 Again, its executive committee would (in addition) comprise Georges Auric, Henry Barraud, Francis Poulenc, Roland-​ Manuel, Charles Munch, Manuel Rosenthal, and Claude Delvincourt. It was a small (having only thirty-​two members by March of 1944) but clearly powerful group because these prominent figures imbued it with both legitimacy and symbolic importance. The “parent” Front national de la lutte pour la liberté et l’indépendance de la France was but one movement within the Conseil national de la résistance, which included a broad political spectrum.70 Because the Resistance ranged from de Gaulle’s more politically conservative movement (based in London) to the communists’ Front national (which welcomed all), its ideology as well as policy remained contested and was thus subject to protracted negotiations. Concomitantly the very concept of resistance, or of what specifically to resist and how—​particularly in the cultural and intellectual domain—​at first was vague, with consensus emerging only arduously as well as gradually. This included morality, which would be collectively defined within the specific developing context, and nowhere is this more palpable than in the intellectual resistance, which the Front national most intensively fostered. Indeed one theme of many postwar French novels (in distinction to de Gaulle’s unifying postwar myth) is the reality of the moral confusion, and thus the internal division within the Resistance.71 Yet one of the distinguishing features of the resistance in France, as opposed to that in Germany (which was smaller, having less space to develop), was that it included intellectuals, who were able immediately to become highly organized and active. For not only could they move within the administrative interstices of Vichy and the German occupant, but their themes were largely in place, having been developed in the mid-​1930s by the Communist-​led antifascist movement of French writers and intellectuals. Again, the first resistance organization in French literature was the Front national des écrivains, one of the many groupings within the Front national, which embraced those of broadly varying political tendencies.72 The latter’s major organ became the clandestine literary journal Les lettres françaises, begun in September 1942, with is first issue including the Front national writers’ proclamation. It was an appeal to return to an authentic French patriot­ ism, and was written by the résistant Jacques Decour, who had been captured and then shot by the Germans on May 26, 1942. Significantly, it was in the course of the following tense summer that the communists first began to employ French Republican rhetoric, or the political language of the French Revolution. At first, because the conception of a cultural resistance was not unanimous, a wide range

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of positions was possible between the poles of rejection and selective adhesion to Vichy’s traditionalist version of French culture. Yet Decour, in his proclamation, had declared the journal an instrument of intellectual and cultural combat, the ultimate goal of which was to defend the values that have constituted the “glory of our civilization.”73 While all could agree on this ideal, much dissent remained over what these values in fact truly were, and over the group’s ideology (beyond opposition to Vichy and the Germans), as well as over the most effective cultural strategies. Some members, for example, were not anticlerical, while others (like Paul Éluard) were adamantly so; and some within the literary (as well as larger Resistance) still viewed the communists with a wariness or suspicion.74 But other points of dissension also surfaced, including whether to participate in cultural life in Paris under German surveillance, and hence whether or not to publish under Nazi censorship and regulation. This dilemma soon faced musicians: some, like the composers Georges Auric and Louis Durey (of Les Six) chose, as part of their resistance posture, not to compose (for the most part) in these years. For writers and musicians (like Poulenc) it was also far from clear whether it was morally justifiable to publish in La nouvelle revue française, now (on Abetz’s insistence) placed under the collaborationist Pierre Drieu La Rochelle. Equally in question was whether or not to participate in official French cultural organizations, especially in later 1942, when sentiment turned against Vichy as its concessions to the German occupant ostensibly increased. Some, like the writers François Mauriac and Georges Duhamel, chose to position themselves both outside and inside the official system, remaining in the illustrious Académie française while working covertly within the Resistance.75 The turning point for defining intellectual resistance was the creation of the clandestine publishing house the Éditions de Minuit in 1942 by Pierre de Lescure and Jean Vecors in response to increasingly rigid censorship. By 1943 clandestine literature was burgeoning, stimulated by the success of Vercors’s Le silence de la mer, which was published by the Éditions de Minuit and circulated secretly in August 1942. The success of the novel helped to convince other writers in France that clandestine publication could be much more than propaganda and could in fact embrace great literature. Although the number of readers was initially small, some believed that clandestine literature manifested not only a refusal to submit to the censors but also a spirit of resistance that, they maintained, could help to stimulate internal change. In addition, resistance literature was smuggled out and diffused far beyond France, hence for some it was a means to maintain a certain conception of the French nation and of its authentic values in the wider world of thought and letters.76 But at first conceptions of dissident literature, art and music remained palpably contested or vague: although they all involved a condemnation of collaboration,

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resistance members only gradually agreed on how “spiritually” or ideologically to defend true French values. Again, some artists and musicians, like certain writers, withdrew from public view in order to manifest their refusal; others believed that clandestine art or publication could combat the German “politics of seduction” as well as its pseudosupport for French culture. However, despite the continuing disagreement among those who remained in view, a consensus gradually emerged concerning goals, or what literature and the arts could accomplish in light of Vichy and Nazi rhetoric and their dual attempt to traduce the French. All members of the intellectual resistance acknowledged that in order to awaken perceptions, fill the moral vacuum left by the church, and counteract psychological submission (or the imposition of official representations that limited free thought) they had to regain control of key meanings and symbols. Culture was thus a field of struggle for the control of collective meanings, and since the grounds of battle were those sites where social meaning is defined, this integrally included the arts. For there was a general agreement that art could awaken new political perceptions, in addition to inserting itself into the current ethical void.77 The Resistance was aware of how culture could help to shape visions of France as well as of the dual efforts of Vichy and the Nazis here; it thus considered art to be by no means peripheral but rather central to its ideological goal. And given the Nazis’ attempt to present themselves as civilized—​in opposition to communist “barbarity”—​resistance artists were implicitly charged with exposing this fallacious dichotomy. But in addition the French cultural resistance had to combat the Vichy government’s so-​called realism, or in essence its opportunistic compromise; and it targeted all obfuscating religious metaphors such as “salvation” and the rhetoric of a new national soul, one that was predicated on French defeat.78 However, in order to expose distortions of public realities, and then encourage new cognition as well as perceptions, they had to develop new artistic techniques for producing meaning. This necessitated a dual quest for comprehensibility and simultaneously transgression, or for a language that could communicate while still attempting to enunciate something “other.” The Resistance thus returned to Revolutionary or Jacobin nationalism—​that founded on classicism and the belief not only in moral integrity but also in the need to protect the universal right to human dignity as well as liberty. Moreover, like Vichy the Resistance emphasized traditional French attachment to the soil, but not in terms of regionalist conceptions of “la terre”; rather it centered on what France had lost, thus the importance of territorial integrity. Moreover, by 1943 the Maquis, or the armed resistance fighters in the mountains, were helping the Resistance to reclaim those rural values that the Vichy government had sought immediately to appropriate.79 In addition, for the Resistance patriotism implied a rediscovery of the true beauty of authentic French culture, beginning with its unadulterated language;

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for some this meant a return to French classic poetic traditions, such as the “Alexandrine.” Again, it also meant a renewed appreciation of the Western humanistic tradition—​of the value of the individual and of reason from the Greeks through the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, as opposed to fascist romanticism. The Resistance, moreover, indignantly claimed that the Germans never understood the humanistic tradition, despite their continuing attempt to identify with ancient culture and with the classics. Finally, the Resistance insisted on man’s intellectual and analytical potential, as distinct from the fascists’ denunciation of reason and stress on a quasi-​religious, numinous mystique.80 Yet if intellectuals and artists were effectively to counteract official conceptions, they had to develop (to use an apt concept of Julia Kristeva) a particular mode of “negativity” toward the dominant culture that they contested. For such a counterhegemonic initiative (in Gramscian terminology) could only destabilize the dominant rhetoric if they succeeded in developing an alternative argument that was impermeable to the slogans of the so-​called National Revolution. Often the people best able to define effective counterrepresentations are those figures who have previously participated in the dominant culture that they subsequently seek to undermine, being well aware its functioning or its inner coherence.81 This would be true of Poulenc, like Pierre Schaeffer, who also grasped the cognitive power of symbols or of cultural images, knowing that they could work not just as inhibitors but also as enablers—​especially when dislodged from their original political context and meanings. Historians like Louis Pinto have observed the importance of those who sought to break with the now dominant symbolic order, realizing that mere participation in a system of meaning did not imply identical values (as in the case of the omnipresent Jeanne d’Arc).82 As Poulenc and Pierre Schaeffer realized, even established symbols could open up new realms of possibility or of vision:  art could thus serve as a means of inquiry, carrying political resonance and a philosophical force. Already through the symbolism of the arts, the Resistance sought to raise consciousness about authentic French nationalism as opposed to “Europeanism,” and to awaken awareness about the current ignominious deportations.83 All resistance artists realized that if they were to integrate the rational with the passions, or philosophy with revelation, they had to identify the right kind of symbols and languages. Included here were those symbols already well rooted in the authentic French cultural past, which could now be renewed and made provocative within the current context. Again, resistance intellectuals were aware that the symbolism of the French Renaissance and the Enlightenment could serve as a counterthrust to Vichy’s rhetoric, embodying a different national meaning as well as languages that French artists could creatively reinhabit. But beyond these

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models several resistance poets, in search of new ways of producing meaning and evading the control of thought, either turned or returned to surrealism and the surrealist image. For surrealism had already marked an adversative political stance with regard to the dominant construction of reality: when the surrealists initially allied themselves with the communists in the 1920s, they conceived of their revolution in language as synonymous with a social revolution. Art was therefore a means to change the world, beginning with cognition, or the very manner in which we conceive of or think about reality.84 For surrealists between the two world wars, the experience of inward vision, of subconscious desires through art, and the subsequent development of a prophetic or revolutionary voice was the basis of a program through which to modify society. Poulenc, in the midst of his crisis of both spiritual and sexual identity in the 1930s, had already been attracted to surrealism because of its proclivity for the mystical and the spiritual—​its stress on liberation, the erotic, and the esoteric.85 During the Occupation, Poulenc discovered that the surrealist approach was now appropriate to the Resistance, particularly the technique of stimulating cognitive activity by breaking the frames of older or established genres. For in such a manner he could simultaneously both suggest and challenge the work’s formal paradigm through the specific semantic (or stylistic) dislocations that he employed. In addition, the resistance poets to whom he was now drawn sought, as formerly had the surrealists, to liberate the imagination through a derangement of the senses as well as of reason. This had led surrealists to the old alchemical conceit of transformation or metamorphosis, a concept to which Poulenc was already attracted in his recent ballet. For originally the surrealist object was meant to contain transformative properties, or to embody metamorphosis through its ability to be one thing and another simultaneously.86 Other resistance artists now sought to blend at least two established approaches into something new in order to subvert the “center,” thus abrogating its intellectual categories, aesthetic values, and syntactic rules. Poulenc would now adeptly employ this tactic in several of his subsequent compositions, as he began the search for a more authentic voice. For through all of these means French artists in the Resistance attempted to recapture intellectual independence and an authentic subjectivity—​to break free from the cultural homogenization being sought by both Vichy and the Nazis. Again, true subjectivity, as Michael P. Steinberg has put it, “resides at the borders of autonomy and integration”: it relies on but is never fully determined by the surrounding culture. Within this context the Resistance rejected Vichy’s tainted paradigm of the national and rather conceived of its own, one that was synonymous with the popular, the consensual, and the balance of the collective with inner freedom.87 But the quest for such subjectivity also necessitated paradigms of a secret as well as a communicable

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language, and one response was to innovate within those period styles they now associated with an authentic French patrimony. This raised the issue of “authorship” in both writing and creation—​of how, while remaining sincere or authentic, to preserve a sense of objectivity, which the Resistance associated with French universality as opposed to the romanticism promoted by certain Vichy and German factions. Hence in France (as differentiated from resistance to Stalinist tyranny in the Soviet Union) excessive personal expressions of pain were considered inappropriate, for both enemies were now associated with maudlin and subjective lyric effusions.88 French writers led the way in astutely developing such resistance tactics, but eventually all of their techniques would be explored, appropriated, or adapted by resistance musicians. There were several intermediaries who served as conduits of such tactics between French literature and music. Among these were writers whom resistance musicians already knew or had set (who in some cases had recruited them) or those who now served as artistic models. Such writers with close ties to Poulenc (and whose poetry he had begun to set in the 1930s) included Paul Éluard and Louis Aragon, although unlike Poulenc they had come from the left, and almost immediately distanced themselves from Vichy. Paul Éluard (the pseudonym for Eugène Grindel) had been influenced by the dream imagery of surrealism as well as by its provocative juxtapositions, although his language had eventually grown more simple and direct in order to address a wider audience. Like some of the surrealists, he had grown close to the left during the interwar period, and although he had communist sympathies (particularly during the Spanish Civil War and the Occupation) he did not yet formally join the party.89 He did join it after the war, but during the Occupation he was at first a somewhat isolated figure among the various resistance groupings as they slowly took shape in the course of 1941. He then became associated with the surrealist resistance journal La main à plume, and it was this journal, in October 1942, that published Éluard’s collection of poems Poésie et vérité, which included Liberté—​the poem Poulenc would shortly set.90 Éluard was then approached by the clandestine publishing house Les Éditions de Minuit, and thereafter by Les lettres françaises, in which members of the communist Comité des écrivains were already publishing regularly. However, Éluard insisted on emphasizing literary quality as opposed to the propagandistic or more militant content of the journal, and because of his prestige he did succeed in imposing his own terms. He thereafter played a key role in the activities of the Comité des écrivains and the Éditions de Minuit, becoming the directeur littéraire of the latter after Jean Paulhan. Drawing on the Gallimard–​Nouvelle revue française network in which he was already a central figure, Éluard became active in the recruitment of intellectuals, and this may well have included Poulenc.91

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Louis Aragon, a communist, and also close to Poulenc (who would set his Deux poèmes de Louis Aragon in fall 1943), played an equally central role in assembling resistance writers in the unoccupied zone, attempting here to form a community parallel to that in the occupied zone.92 When Aragon received the directive from the Communist Party to organize in the unoccupied zone, he went to Paris (where he may have met with Poulenc) to coordinate the activities of writers and artists working in the two zones. Significantly, after the total occupation of France in early November 1942, Poulenc soon traveled south to give concerts in Cannes, Marseille, and Lyon, and might have met with the resistance circles there. During this entire period Aragon continued to write great poetry (which would ostensibly impress Poulenc), now innovating within older forms and employing traditional metrics in the interest of communication, while still integrating a new vocabulary as well as new poetic techniques.93 Of particular importance here is Aragon’s essay “La leçon de Ribérac” (the city in southwestern France), published June 1941, in which he subtly discusses the resistance implications of specific stylistic techniques in Medieval poetry. This included the so-​called secret art of the French troubadours (musician-​poets) in which they could sing to the ladies they loved while still in the presence of the latter’s lords. In addition, Aragon (and Poulenc as well as others) knew well that now it was a battle not just of words but also, through the ineffable realm of art, of feelings and of resonant images.94

Theories and models of the French musical resistance Poulenc took all this to heart, as well as much else that was expounded in the intellectual clandestine press, for he was now participating in constant and fruitful interchanges between writers and musicians within resistance networks. Several figures here served as liaisons, and among them was also Henri Hell, who would grow close to Poulenc (later writing his biography). Hell was now the director of the resistance literary journal Fontaine in Algiers, having previously participated in Schaeffer’s Jeune France. Another was Claude Roy, who was also in Jeune France; although initially coming from the circle of Action française, he eventually rejected Pétain and then moved to communism soon after the war. Such figures were important in facilitating the transfer of the resistance concepts being developed in both visual art and literature to the realm of music. In this context it is important to note that by June 15, 1943, Les Lettres françaises was underlining the importance of preserving French thought, here seen as characterized by a hatred of oppression, a faith in the dignity of the “human person,” and the desire not to capitulate but rather to win.95 This conviction would also soon appear in French musical resistance journals, which had also provided key concepts and images for the literary resistance press. By August 1944 in the article “Debussy,

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musicien français,” Les lettres françaises was echoing the encomium of Debussy in Musiciens d’aujourd’hui. In fact in February 1944 Les lettres françaises absorbed Musiciens d’aujourd’hui (of which Auric was chief editor by late 1943); henceforth the latter appeared under the altered title of Le musicien d’aujourd’hui.96 Again, in its article on Debussy Les lettres françaises (like Musiciens d’aujourd’hui previously) emphasized not only his individualism but also the way in which (during World War I) he had—​in purely musical terms—​exalted the true values of French civilization, emphatically rejecting German cultural infiltrations. A major target of Musiciens d’aujourd’hui was the insidious tactic employed by the Nazis, and eventually by Vichy, of promoting French music as a cover for a cultural alliance between the nations. In particular it denounced any kind of participation in the German-​controlled station Radio-​Paris, which employed French artists and featured French music in order to win over the French. In the article “Comment Radio-​Paris ‘sert’ la cause de la musique française,” it specifically denounces the Nazi attempt to “deviate” French thought in this manner as well as Vichy’s role in making this baleful agenda possible. The same article also condemns the German argument concerning Debussy and his stylistic debt to Wagner as well as that with regard to Berlioz and his similarly purported stylistic proximity to the latter.97 But most repugnant of all for Musiciens d’aujourd’hui was the perception of the station’s current stress on the German repertoire, accompanied by a half-​hearted presentation of French works in a calculated poor comparison. By October 1942 it was already denouncing the repertoire of Radio-​ Paris as increasingly Germanic and decrying its neglect of the great French composers, including both Debussy and Ravel.98 However, resistance musical journals were by no means devoted exclusively to attacks on the Vichy and Nazi uses of music; they also posited their own political models of new French musical and aesthetic directions. Above all they proclaimed the necessity of preserving French “civilization,” a concept that since the Enlightenment had been implicitly or explicitly contrasted with the German conception of “Kultur.” Once more, the article “Debussy—​musicien français” (in Musiciens d’aujourd’hui) aptly argues that despite some Russian influence, Debussy remained the most French of artists, noting that as he matured he embraced the music of Rameau and of the sixteenth-​century French masters.99 In addition, since Debussy’s own writings on music had grown increasingly nationalistic as World War I  approached, he became central to resistance arguments concerning the need to continue to protect French music from all noxious foreign infiltrations. For Poulenc and his colleagues in the Resistance, this Debussy was thus the model of a patriotic composer, but there were other such musical paradigms, and the musical resistance press encouraged musicians both to identify and to perform them.100

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Now, similarly, a recurring theme was the importance of engaging in disruptive acts, and in September 1943 Le musicien patriote (another resistance musical journal) enjoined French musicians to practice such aggression not only against the Germans but also against Vichy, whenever possible. This included strikes (although they were outlawed), as well as other public disruptions, and the incitement of patriotic feelings by (at the last moment) interpolating now censored programs with works evoking the French tradition of liberty and grandeur. The major question, of course, was how to identify such composers and works, and here Charles Munch led the way, having (as an Alsatian) witnessed such Franco-​ German battles over repertoire during World War I. Now as conductor of the prestigious Société des concerts du Conservatoire, he deftly programmed those pieces that implicitly elicited associations with the resistance conception of the authentic French tradition. This centrally included Albéric Magnard’s still rousing orchestral work, the Hymne à la justice, inspired by the triumph of Republican principles in the fin-​de-​siècle Dreyfus Affair. Now the work was doubly resonant since Magnard (although associated with d’Indy’s Schola Cantorum) was not only a defender of the Jewish Captain Dreyfus, but had been killed by the Germans while bravely defending his home against them during World War I.101 Another concern of the musical resistance press—​one tangibly to influence Poulenc—​was how music, either independently or in connection with words, could contribute to the intellectual resistance goal of representing the nation’s authentic moral and spiritual forces.102 Here the problem, as it soon emerged in their journals, became precisely how to define those styles and techniques that could either foster or incarnate this goal, reaching both subjective and collective levels. Omnipresent as a subtext was the question of how to register an adversarial position stylistically, while still revealing new ideals and realms of possibility through music’s distinctive aesthetic means. Deeply concerned with this issue (and one of the founders of Musiciens d’aujourd’hui) was Roger Désormière, who had played a central role in the antifascist movement of French intellectuals in the 1930s. Désormière now helped to recruit French musicians, working with Roland-​Manuel, Elsa Barraine, and other colleagues; together they finally succeeded in expanding the initially tiny musical resistance network. The members of Désormière’s grouping also eventually included his Mélisande, Irène Joachim, Manuel Rosenthal, Charles Munch, and Georges Auric. Among the new additions in the course of 1942 were Francis Poulenc (probably already prepared by his friends in literature), and the young Henri Dutilleux; Louis Durey would later join this network when he was able to come to Paris in 1943 from Saint-​Tropez.103 Among those conductors who joined the French musical resistance—​and acted publicly with the most overt temerity—​was Maurice Hewitt, who not only engaged in clandestine activities but also defied the law against hiring Jewish

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musicians:  he was eventually denounced and then arrested. Hewitt, who had been a member of the Quatuor Capet, later developed his career as a conductor, and during the Occupation he decided to record a composer associated closely with the French Enlightenment—​Jean-​Philippe Rameau (his Les Indes galantes). Although Hewitt did perform on Radio-​Paris, he simultaneously joined the Resistance (in the Buchmeister network); arrested in November 1943 and promptly deported to Buchenwald, he nevertheless survived, returning to France upon the end of the war.104 Georges Auric could also—​ more successfully—​ mask his resistance efforts:  again, he had written for the Nouvelle revue française (however, like Poulenc without compromising his content). Auric may well have been recruited by Jean Paulhan, who also was long associated with the journal and became a central figure in organizing resistance writers using his Gallimard contacts. Already prone to recruitment having been associated with the Popular Front, Auric, once a resistant, refused premiers of his works until 1943, when he was persuaded to participate in the Pléiade concert series, which included several résistants.105 Another leading résistant was Elsa Barraine, a composer and choral conductor trained at the Conservatoire (and who had worked at the National Radio with Pierre Schaeffer); like Poulenc she remained active in the French musical world while in the Front national des musiciens. She originally served as its director, but with total occupation in November 1942 decided that the only authentic gesture was one of total refusal, and thus left France.106 At this point she turned the direction of this grouping over to Louis Durey, who moved to Paris in early 1943, when it became possible to do so, and he now assumed the group’s leadership in the northern zone. Although he wrote very little and refused to have his works premiered, he remained active by editing works of composers from those periods that the Resistance glorified—​the French Renaissance and the Enlightenment.107 Some composers who were involved in or close to the Resistance had, like Poulenc, initially participated in or cooperated with Vichy institutions, and served on its professional committees; however, as the regime’s compromises escalated in 1942–​1943, they slowly sought to distance themselves.108 These included such prominent figures as Henri Dutilleux, Charles Koechlin, Tony Aubin, and Jean-​Jacques Grunewald. But other figures (including André Jolivet) sought performances in Vichy’s institutions as late as April 1944. Several composers, like Poulenc, moved gradually between the poles: Claude Delvincourt, the director of the Paris Conservatoire, was also not immediately a résistant, having been politically to the far right in the 1930s. When he was named Conservatoire director (on April 15, 1941), Delvincourt at first sought compromise with regard to the exclusion of its Jewish students. But by later 1942 his patriotism and humanity drove him into the Resistance, and he was also able to help his students—​through

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the orchestra he formed, Les cadets du Conservatoire—​evade forced labor in Germany.109 Beyond engaging in subtly subversive actions, all musical résistants sought to aid their Jewish colleagues, but for many the primary means of resisting was by setting the poems of their resistance confrères.110 Musiciens d’aujourd’hui often repeated its call for French composers to collaborate musically with “patriotic poets” (meaning those in the Resistance), and continued to do so until at least February 1944. Some composers responded immediately, but they faced the daunting question of how to set such poetic texts in a manner that was accessible and yet artistically uncompromised, while still remaining authentic or sincere. By the summer of 1942 composers using pseudonyms (or their assumed resistance monikers) were publishing songs as well as choruses in clandestine journals to the poems of Aragon, Éluard, or other resistance fellows. The depth of such poetry now compelled them to go beyond the simple martial settings of typical resist­ ance chansons—​such as “Nous les clandestins”—​with their self-​congratulatory texts based on themes of vengeance, family, and the fight for liberty and for future happiness.111 Among those composers who now turned to great “patriotic” poetry were Louis Durey, Henri Dutilleux, and Georges Auric, all of whom (between 1941 and 1943) were searching for an appropriate musical voice. But no French composer, perhaps, now sought to “purify” his language as radically as Poulenc, possibly because the others had not begun from a hegemonic or an implicitly compromised position. Auric, for example, incorporated references to Wagner in his film music for Cocteau’s L’éternel retour (1943), although in a knowing and ironic manner. For the story, based on the Tristan myth (one attractive to both the French and the Germans), provided Auric with an occasion to give the dominant culture apparently what it wanted. This included not only his prominent stylistic references to Wagner but also to the by now pervasive Wagnerian interpretation of Debussy. But in the former case Auric was able knowingly to “bracket” his clear references to Wagner (indeed like Debussy himself ) by either punning with the text or through notably pronounced overemphasis. Moreover, in his Six poèmes de Paul Éluard (published only after the war) Auric does not reject the influence of Schubert or of Schumann, which here serves his expressive purpose; rather he juxtaposes them with a range of other influences from Scriabin to the later Debussy and to Stravinsky.112

Poulenc’s search for his own resistance style Poulenc would eventually also set resistance texts, and with exquisite subtlety; having already employed historical styles to say new things, he believed (like

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Shostakovich) that even a conservative musical language could make a complex, meaningful modern utterance. Specifically, he had attempted to deploy languages of the past in order to express his own conflicted, multidimensional personality, searching for pathways from the past to the present so as to create an authentic personal statement. Poulenc always sought an individual voice in his deployment of past musical styles, attempting with sincerity to locate himself within them, not only in a public but also in a private sense, invoking shared associations as well as hermetic, intimate references.113 Fiercely independent like Debussy, Poulenc even as a résistant remained true to his fundamentally traditionalist values, assuming like the writer François Mauriac the role of a conservative yet self-​ critical intellectual. (Significantly, Poulenc had probably known Mauriac since his trip to Salzburg in 1934; and after the war—​in 1946—​still admiring him, asked Mauriac to be the authority to present him with the Légion d’honneur.)114 Always an individualist, Poulenc consistently defined his own personal path, and this was the case now more than ever as he attempted to position himself along the finely graded resistance scale while remaining true to his aesthetic and ideological beliefs. The repositioning was a slow, painful process: in search of his location and a true compositional voice, Poulenc experimented with various alternatives to arrive at a stylistic approach that would authentically reflect his stance. His quest was for a voice that would be sincere, expressing both collective and subjective values as well as his own position within the perameters of French identity, or his distinctive, individual place. For as a résistant Poulenc initially gravitated toward the movement’s conservative factions, here attempting subtly to subvert traditionalist Vichy cultural paradigms. He knew well that a utopian or radical modernism was not his authentic language; moreover it would not communicate with the general public or pass the strictures of either national bureaucracy. Hence he rather attempted an active engagement with the French musical past, but one free of historicist sentimentality, nostalgia, or any ironic posturing. For as a conservative, both politically and culturally, he could not simply negate the French past, but sought to establish a sincere connection with it—​to forge a stylistic link to an authentic French tradition, as had Debussy before. Poulenc began his Chansons villageoises, six songs for baritone and orchestra, in September 1940 and would continue to work on and to alter them until December 1942. Hence they reflect not only the enthusiasm for folklore that he shared with Vichy but also, by the time they were finally finished, an acute subversion of Vichy’s model.115 For in their final version Poulenc speaks from within the established conception, but here insidiously employing it to express other values that lay outside it. As opposed to his preceding unreflective attempt to engage positively with Vichy’s vision, in the finished songs Poulenc invokes

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and undermines both its morality and its cultural references. For again, he had at first been sympathetic with Vichy’s appropriation of “la musique populaire” and hence its attempt to ensconce it now as a sort of “musique officielle.” One of the reasons for the latter had been the regime’s desire to assert a break with the prewar avant-​garde and with urban popular culture—​an attempt that Poulenc here cleverly subverts. For in the songs he ostensibly references Vichy’s archaic conceptions of the French peasants and of their culture; but while purporting to speak through their traditional collective voice, he critically inflects it, yet without betraying his own love of peasant culture.116 The popular culture that Poulenc had embraced in 1920s had notably included the urban or the Parisian, particularly when his intent was to project gaiety. In addition he had included peasant references (if ironically) in Les biches and other works, and then more seriously in the later 1930s. Now in keeping with Vichy’s initial imagery it is the voice of the French peasantry that he seeks to inhabit, but as he at this point interpreted it—​conceived in terms of its cunning side, here even merging it with urban popular culture, as had the Front Populaire before. This for Poulenc became the true essence of “the popular,” as opposed to Vichy’s model of an acquiescent peasantry—​one to which he had automatically ceded in his previous ballet with Serge Lifar. But Poulenc’s attitude toward his subject in the work remains one of admiration or appreciation, for he attempts to capture its sincere, appealing spirit and thereby make a trenchant point. Indeed as Paul Collaer aptly put it, he here elevates so-​called popular buffoonery to a frenzied state, thus making it electrifying or even at points “ferocious.” In this recalcitrant attempt to bring French urban and peasant culture together Poulenc was not alone, even among those who remained more consistently within Vichy’s fold. This prominently included the composer and early ethnomusicologist (whom Poulenc had known since the late 1920s) Georges-​Henri Rivière. Rivière, who had studied at the Conservatoire and then served as organist at the Église Saint-​ Louis-​en-​L’Île, became the head of the Musée des arts et traditions populaires in 1937 (under the Popular Front), as well as the unofficial cultural spokesman for the Socialist Party.117 Rivière had thus engaged with the issue of who has the right to represent the “essential France,” for again the left now proclaimed that it should include urban workers as well as peasants. He even went to far as to argue for the elimination of boundaries between popular and high culture, as opposed to Maurras’s (and later Vichy’s) argument for a return to the rural “pays réel.”118 While Rivière would then seek to accommodate Vichy, he nevertheless strove to stress more contemporary practices as they had evolved in the French countryside, refusing to conceive the peasants as timeless. He thus managed to tread a fine line by emphasizing the scholarly documentation and recording of folklore, and was even received by

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Pétain on September 8, 1942, when he presented his ethnographic work. Hence in December 1944, Rivière was called before an official purge committee, which suspended him from his functions, although he was soon allowed to return to them, on March 17, 1945.119 Poulenc, however, had distanced himself from Vichy by the time he had completed his Chansons, finally employing the resistance (and later postcolonial) technique of switching between two codes in order subtly to inscribe his alterity. For he perceived the potential (in some of the songs) of using two intersecting languages or idioms, evoking both the peasantry and a popular style of performance associated with contemporary urban culture.120 The chansons range from the humorous yet stylistically sophisticated to the more serious, but always with a careful declamation and at times in a manner that invokes the modern music hall. As also opposed to the “archaeological” historicism of certain compromised composers like Florent Schmitt (who more literally followed the traditionalism of the Schola), Poulenc does not pedantically seek to preserve a reactionary image of the of French tradition, but rather here frequently employs humor—​although he scrupulously avoids both parody and pastiche. Like his Chansons gaillardes (of 1927), this new set plays with the occasional obscenity of the text (sometimes through a “double-​entendre”), although the later collection is marked by a greater degree of stylistic refinement.121 Significantly, in an interview published in Comoedia on June 14, 1943, shortly before the work’s premiere, Poulenc replied as tersely as possible, but did draw comparisons between the two works. Here he invokes their similarities but also notes the fact that the Chansons villageoises are in fact “mélodies,” since they are characterized by greater freedom in the treatment of the text, and thus are not strictly folkloric.122 For this collection Poulenc had here selected six poems of the contemporary poet Maurice Fombeure, to which he had been drawn because of their ability, through voice or tone, to evoke the chanson populaire. He may well have given them the title Chansons villageoises once again to make reference to his beloved Chabrier, and specifically to his spirited Danses villageoises. Fombeure had participated in the collective Jeune France–​sponsored oratorio Jeanne d’Arc, which was begun in early 1941. Although he had not originally been one of the poets selected, in the end he contributed to the section on Domrémy (together with the other young writer, Louis Beydts), the music being composed by Jean de Baer and Georges Dandelot.123 For Poulenc the poems’ authenticity lay in the writer’s deft suggestion of the “sagesse paysanne” that he himself had long admired; moreover they do so without pastiche, being rather characterized by simplicity, grace, and charm.124 Poulenc was thus drawn to the sophisticated subtle art that lay beneath Fombeure’s poems, which now inspired him to depart from the musical conventions of the chanson and rather turn to the tradition of the French art song, or

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“mélodie.” Hence he here ignores the conventional simple forms of the chanson genre—​especially strophic with refrain; and instead of limiting himself to predictable and natural rhythms he treats the text freely, often repeating and dividing words for greater clarity, which he admitted to having learned from Maurice Chevalier.125 This was an apt and telling gesture toward the contemporary urban chanson, and might be construed as his attempt to stress the inclusiveness of popular culture as well as the dynamic development of the chanson populaire. While some of the chansons are fast and syllabic, others employ a lyric line against a more romantic piano accompaniment, for the spirit of the set ranges (as the poetry demands) from the ironic to the objective and the pathetic. Since the songs were finished after the completion of his ballet, it is not surprising that there are similarities between the works, which Poulenc himself noted, especially the orchestration and certain elements of the harmonic style. But Poulenc also pointed out the influence of Stravinsky—​again, probably with reference to the reappearance of those stylistic and orchestral traits that had characterized his work of the 1920s—​and the influence of Mussorgsky (in “Le mendiant”).126 Although Poulenc claimed that both the ballet and the chansons were inspired by his love of Morvan (where he had spent happy childhood summers), here he is evoking his new and personal image of the French peasantry, and in doing so seeking a more authentic voice. The first two of the songs in the Chansons villageoises not only are highly tuneful but also make indirect reference to the French secular Renaissance both through their orchestration and their suggestion of birds—​in the manner of composers such as Jannequin. The second song, “Les gars qui vont à la fête” (dedicated to Jean de Polignac), Poulenc sets in a fast and syllabic manner, the tempo expressively and explicitly marked “follement animé et gai.” Here he makes reference to contemporary French popular entertainment, as does Fombeure in his subtly erotic text, which employs an “argot” that plays cleverly on double meanings, in the manner of current singers such as Charles Trenet. Poulenc’s decision to bring this out was not characteristic of him in 1940, when the songs were begun, and thus may have emerged as he gradually evolved and reworked them over the next two years. The chansons are dedicated to André Dubois, who had been fired as préfet de police by Vichy and was henceforth in the Resistance.127 Poulenc’s songs premiered on June 28, 1943, the year after their completion, in the second of two public Pléiade concerts presented at the Salle Gaveau for the benefit of French writers and musicians who were prisoners of war. This was also a justification to sell tickets for the otherwise private concert series: as Denise Tual, the series organizer put it, this was concomitantly means to make their enterprise “official,” or legitimate.128 Since the press was allowed to attend, this necessarily included collaborationist journals such as L’illustration, which reported on

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both public Pléiade concerts the next fall, in October 1943. Unaware of the resist­ ance members who were involved in planning the series, the critic of the latter remarked that the two public concerts were given in an “altruistic spirit.” In addition he observed that they were presented by the Éditions de la Nouvelle revue française—​again, the journal now being collaborationist, although the Gallimard house itself included resistance members. Indeed its owner Gaston Gallimard was playing a double game:  while he allowed the editorship of its prestigious journal to be taken over by Drieu La Rochelle, its previous editor, Jean Paulhan, a member of the Resistance, still remained in the background.129 Indeed as Myriam Chimènes has revealed, the Concerts de la Pléiade were themselves not entirely the resistant enterprise that some have claimed, and they were not organized because of a supposed interdiction of new work by French composers—​one that in fact was nonexistent. Denise Tual (the producer of cinema with her husband, Roland, both of whom worked with Gallimard) explained that she developed the idea to organize the concerts in later 1942 since it was no longer possible for Gallimard to hold regular meetings with his authors due to restrictions of group gatherings. The concerts, in effect, were thus born of a desire to find a new and acceptable mode of sociability among his writers, especially because the editorial meetings of his editions were now suppressed.130 The Pléiade concerts (named after Gallimard’s prestigious series) took place in the spacious Galerie Charpentier, owned since 1941 by Raymond Nasenta, who had obtained the necessary funds to buy it when he organized an exposition of some one hundred paintings, almost all of which were bought by Goering. The gallery continued to attract German buyers, and high officials—​both German and French—​now frequented it; among the latter was Abel Bonnard, who personally inaugurated the Van Dongen exhibit at the end of 1942. In planning the new concert series Tual (the cousin of Irène Joachim) called on André Schaeffner, director of the department of ethnomusicology at the Musée de l’Homme, and one of the intrepid résistants there. Poulenc, a good friend of Schaeffner, also played an important role in the series, advising and assisting in the organization of the concerts, which included underperformed older as well as new French works. Although aside from the public benefit concerts the series was by invitation only, the concerts were not only announced but also reviewed in the French press.131 Those invited were among a privileged group, and the concerts apparently spared no expense, with the programs printed on rare luxurious paper and the refreshments being equally lavish. The notably elite audience included the Gallimard family, prominent journalists, artists, and writers as well as museum curators, art dealers, gallery directors, and members of Parisian high society. Among the group who attended

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were also important collaborationist figures, in addition to those art dealers who sold to the now abundant German art buyers. Those present included high-​ ranking German and Vichy figures such as René Bouffant (now the prefect of police), Louis Hautecœur, Rudolf Rahn (director of information at the German Embassy), and of course Otto Abetz. Despite the presence of certain compromising figures, in the end the mixed character of the Pléiade concert series would serve in Gallimard’s defense when he was brought before the Court of Justice in October 1946, during the postwar purge.132 For the premiere of Poulenc’s Chansons, the collaborationist press was most certainly present and, itself scornful of certain Vichy circles’ moral codes, responded with enthusiasm and stressed the work’s implicit connection to Chabrier. Probably because of the series’ connection to the now collaborationist Nouvelle revue française, La gerbe lauded the work as well as Stravinksy’s Apollon musagète, which was performed on the same program as the Poulenc songs.133 It was on the basis of Poulenc’s stylistic transgressions that the work also won the praise of Tony Aubin, a composer and critic who, like Poulenc, was now in the Resistance and who here wrote in the journal Comoedia. Clearly the Chansons were polyvalent enough to accommodate a dual interpretation, thus eliciting the praise of both those collaborationists and résistants who scorned Vichy’s cultural archaism and moral homilies.134 Aubin’s own stylistic tendencies were largely conservative (particularly with regard to form), and he was also palpably influenced by Maurice Ravel. Having studied composition at the Conservatoire with Paul Dukas, he went on to win the Prix de Rome in 1930. During the Occupation Aubin would sometimes write for Comedia, ostensibly believing in the need to maintain a voice, although (as opposed to Honegger) he never compromised his content in an ideological sense. Here he undoubtedly grasped Poulenc’s clever and often humorous stylistic manipulations, and thus avowed that in this case he was no less than charmed by the Chansons villageoises.135

Exploring the tactic of stylistic disruption: Poulenc’s Sonata for Violin and Piano This had not been the case with Poulenc’s new Sonata for Violin and Piano, which was premiered at the first of the two public Pléiade concerts on June 21, 1943. The work, which had been requested by the violinist Ginette Neveu, had been begun in 1940, resumed in the late summer and fall of 1942, and completed by Easter 1943. It would then be published by Eschig in early 1944, but Poulenc later withdrew this version believing the work a failure, and finally revised the finale in 1949.136 Perhaps to Poulenc’s chagrin, the work could be construed in

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substantially different manners by various sectors of the public as well as by the critics. Even within Resistance circles assessments varied widely, some considering its very inclusion of a tainted language—​whatever the intent—​now to be unacceptable. For others, however, Poulenc’s deft manner of pretending to appeal to Vichy’s conservative stylistic norms, and then abruptly disrupting them, was a viable as well as an incisive resistance tactic. But the latter were in the minority, and it was through though this “failed” sonata that Poulenc would come to realize that such an approach was not effective—​that the work could still be appropriated by the current normative culture, to the consternation of resistance colleagues. For just as in the French literary resistance, in music there was still and intense and sustained debate over resistance goals and tactics as well as a period of stylistic experimentation. The sonata, like the Chansons, represents Poulenc’s attempt to arrive at stylistic independence and an incisive critical statement through a knowing manipulation of several styles. But here these would include specific styles of which not only the collaborationists but also both Vichy and the Nazis approved, and the manipulations themselves were apparently not adequately evident. For in the sonata Poulenc is not attempting to reinvest Vichy’s version of the authentic French peasantry with a new subversive twist but rather to expose and destabilize its model of high culture by disrupting its syntactic and formal elements. Significantly, in a letter to André Schaeffner of October 1942, Poulenc reports that he had completed and revised his rough draft, then describes most of the music now being written as “worthless drivel”—​its composers content to base their works on compositions that predated World War I.137 Hence in this sonata Poulenc (like Debussy in his wartime sonatas, and originally the Société nationale de musique française) “takes on” the large-​scale, predominantly German, sonata cycle in an attempt to reclaim it for France, and thus to make a new statement through it. For like Debussy he now sought to redefine traditional sonata form from within, or to reappropriate it for the French as had “Claude de France” (as Debussy was called) before.138 But in his desire to break free of current models, including that based on the narrative of Franco-​German cultural interaction, Poulenc not only attempted (like Debussy) to fill this traditional form with true French content but also had another, more personal aim. This was the quest to free himself creatively from now dominant stylistic expectations, hence he here resorts stylistically to “frame-​ breaking”—​like the surrealists invoking and then thwarting the expectations implied by genre. Again, several resistance poets in Poulenc’s circle were in search of new techniques of producing meaning and evading the control of thought as well as helping to stimulate new cognition. Thus they now turned (or in several cases returned) to the arsenal of techniques that the surrealists had developed

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in the 1920s to achieve these very goals. Surrealism already had defined itself as politically adversative, for when the surrealists initially aligned themselves with the communists they conceived of their revolution in language—​or defiance of the dominant culture and its construction of reality—​as synonymous with a true social revolution.139 Dada as well as surrealism had sought to explore the role of art in transforming man’s perception of the world or (in opposition to cultural mythology or propaganda) to stimulate the individual’s own personal cognitive apprehension of reality. Already in the aftermath of World War I, as existing cultural traditions clashed ineluctably with new experience no longer being adequate to express it, the surrealists had sought out fundamentally new instruments or techniques for producing meaning.140 Proceeding from the initial Dadaist goal of breaking free of rationality, surrealists subsequently began to search for a more profound kind of logic as well as for the basic truths of human nature in the subconscious realm, and concomitantly in the world of dreams. Surrealism, then, like the other modernist movements, abjured both convention and established cultural pieties in search of a new perception of reality, one to be revealed through an inward vision, here approached psychoanalytically. The movement also challenged current social and political norms by attempting to conceive a substantially different world—​one no longer founded on established conceptions of the transcendent, or according to existing models of religion, as in the past. For surrealists between the two world wars the expression of subconscious desires and needs through the realm of art, and the concomitant development of a prophetic or a revolutionary voice, was the basis from which to modify society.141 During the Occupation it became clearer than ever that a transformation of the current political reality and of human consciousness were interlocked—​that art could here cut through the obfuscations of both Vichy and Nazi propaganda. It could also fill the philosophical and moral lacunae left by the compromises of the Catholic Church; hence artists were called on to resume the role assigned them by the romantic movement, or that of moral and social leader as well as seer or prophet. Poulenc, who was already in the midst of a spiritual and personal crisis in the mid-​1930s, had been attracted to surrealism because of its proclivity for the mystical and for the spiritual—​its stress on inward vision, the esoteric, and the erotic. Now to the composer it ostensibly represented (to use Bourdieu’s terminology) a cognitive rupture—​an even more thoroughgoing break with official representations and language, or from the linguistic and symbolic domination he had experienced.142 Surrealism for him thus now became the modernist movement through which he could most effectively express his refusal of Vichy’s false conception of French tradition; for through its techniques such tradition could be evoked and then

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disconcertingly undermined by either juxtaposition or frame-​breaking. His goal was henceforth to suggest and then challenge not only current banal representations but also the genre in which the work was inscribed, thereby maintaining the audience in a constant state of cognitive tension. Poulenc only gradually arrived at the technique of surrealist frame-​breaking in the sonata, for he began it in 1940, while under the illusion of the potential of Vichy culture, but then returned to and began to revise the work during his political wakening in later 1942. As implicit testimony to his movement toward the opposite political pole, he dedicated the completed work to the memory of Garcia Lorca (a poet whom Poulenc proclaimed he admired as much as Apollinaire and Éluard). For Lorca had been killed in 1936 by the political followers of Franco, whom Poulenc in fact had preferred to the Spanish Republicans in the mid-​ 1930s. And significantly, Poulenc intrepidly stressed the dedication as well as his admiration for Lorca in the article he was asked to contribute to Comoedia following the work’s premiere.143 The French Resistance press, in publications such as the literary Cahiers du sud, was now celebrating Lorca’s memory and pointing out that the poet had been a victim of previous totalitarian violence.144 Poulenc’s attempt to transform his style, or to break free of the expectations to which he had previously ceded, becomes evident in his sonata, but since he had not yet forged a new model he was here forced to do so through disruption—​ both formal and stylistic. The disruption of musical logic, or the violation of established procedures and recognized forms had served as a social metaphor since the Renaissance, and thus promised to be resonant within the current context.145 In the sonata Poulenc employs disconcertingly varied voices or styles as well as postures, far more so than in any of his previous works. In fact here they do not just occur successively within different sections of the composition but sometimes even within a single short phrase. Moreover, just as in his earlier sonatas after World War I, he resorts to additive structures as opposed to classical motivic development (which he had not yet fully mastered), while still attempting to expand the sonata’s length. And Poulenc specifically makes an effort here to reject the Franckiste-​d’Indyste model that he had embraced in portions of his recent ballet, but unable to do so fully he employs a juxtaposition of influences from composers now praised and banned—​the latter including Prokofiev, and particularly in the first movement. However, the influence of both Franck and Brahms nevertheless remains in the work, for although he had now rejected them intellectually they continued to hold a palpable aesthetic allure that he was still at pains to expunge. Poulenc had already begun to feel the influence of Brahms in his Nocturnes for piano, which, again, were written within the span between 1929 and 1938. It is also significant that being of a so-​called haute bourgeois background, he was at ease in the salon

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context, and here greatly enjoyed hearing Mozart and Chopin. Clearly Poulenc found it difficult to disengage himself completely from this tradition and from the refinement with which it was associated—​a fact that some of his resistance colleagues immediately noted and deplored at the premiere. Indeed in the opening movement Poulenc is manifestly drawn to the Franckiste model, with its long lyric or soaring lines as well as its proclivity for cyclic form, which had similarly seduced the young Claude Debussy (most notably in his early String Quartet). But Poulenc also invokes the other side of Debussy—​the one resistance musicians now praised in their journals—​that which experimented boldly with established forms or styles while introducing new content and harmonic approaches. Poulenc was already influenced by Debussy’s sonorities in his Nocturnes for piano, but he also had begun to apply a more Wagnerian—​or expanded but still goal-​oriented—​harmonic approach, which he had previously rejected in the 1920s. Perhaps this is why Poulenc made a careful point of noting in his letters that in the sonata he was clearly departing from the “nonending” (or Franckian-​ Wagnerian) melody of the nineteenth-​century French violin sonata. However, he here also honestly avers that he nevertheless still likes the sonatas of Brahms, then (as if to compensate) again praises the work of Debussy.146 Poulenc’s implicit repudiation of Franck may well have been stimulated by the fact that Franck (a fervent advocate of Wagner) was now widely performed and praised in the official press. Indeed Poulenc’s sonata does recall Franck’s Sonata for Violin and Piano (of 1886), particularly in its expansive melodic lines, its often turgid, orchestral piano accompaniment, and its occasional Franckian harmonic sonorities. Perhaps to escape this influence, in the opening movement Poulenc employs a series of different “voices” or distinctly foreign personae, which also allows him to evade his aesthetic inclinations, some of which were associated with now tainted styles. Significantly among the evident personae are not only Tchaikovsky but also (the now Soviet) Prokofiev, who had already influenced Poulenc in the 1920s (while in Paris), particularly in works like Aubade. But to maintain an authentic subject-​position within these different voices, Poulenc also refers to two other composers whom he loved—​Chabrier and Debussy, however, here in their non-​Wagnerian aspects. The tumultuous first movement, marked Allegro con Fuoco, is (in the romantic manner) characterized by a proliferation of themes of equal weight as well as by frequent changes in meter and dynamics, although cast in an ABA form. And as in Debussy’s late sonatas it carries unusually explicit as well as expressive, and sometimes personally meaningful, performance indications such as “violent” and “éclatant.”147 The second movement, which is loosely structured and songlike, almost ineluctably recalls the rhapsodic movement of the now lauded Franck Violin Sonata, but also (as if to compensate) Debussy’s Sonata for Cello and Piano. The latter, similarly

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a wartime work, in its second movement seems studiously to ignore the cello’s inherent lyricism in order implicitly to suggest a guitar. In his own sonata Poulenc is explicit in his invocation of Lorca, Spain, and the guitar, for he prefaces the movement with a revealing quote from Lorca, one that makes reference to the guitar in a dreamlike or surrealist image. The movement begins “très lent et très calme,” with the piano part specifically marked “très doux et mélancolique,” then followed by the indication “très mélancolique et lointain,” perhaps here evoking Lorca’s hovering spirit. The violin similarly suggests such a spiritual presence, and particularly in the quiet section, with frequent and fluid meter changes, specified “sur la touche” on the fingerboard as well as “très lointain.” The ending in contrast revealingly includes a series of vertical sonorities that are unmistakably reminiscent of Debussy’s exquisite Hommage à Rameau in the first book of his piano Images (1905). The sonata’s third movement rather carries the marking “Presto tragico,” and is cast in a relatively free formal scheme in which Poulenc alternates and develops several contrasting themes, often in a forced manner that is largely atypical of his work (and may have impelled him to revise it later). This movement begins fortissimo and carries the explicit and dramatic indication “très violent,” although one section—​ incongruously juxtaposed in the middle—​is specifically marked “joyeux.” Again, this may have been related to Debussy’s wartime works (which were now being praised in the resistance press) such as En blanc et noir, where brief sections of irrepressible gaiety resonated with a theme prominent in World War I myth—​the indomitable French spirit in time of war.148 But here the juxtaposition of ideas seems particularly incongruous or disconcerting, and although some of the themes are not characteristic of Poulenc, at certain moments those reminiscent of his beloved music-​hall tunes reappear—​ostensibly an invocation of another, authentic self. Just as arresting in this movement is that it includes an orientalizing “vocalize,” perhaps intended to recall the now reviled Moorish aspect of Spain, or the exotic side of Debussy, which Vichy proponents now studiously ignored.149 But despite his earnest effort, Poulenc did not succeed in attaining his goal of creative independence: moreover the work’s implicit dialogue, or confrontation between stylistic expectations, perturbed critics within intellectual resistance circles. In marked contrast with his initial pride in his wartime ballet, Poulenc himself had no illusion as to the sonata’s artistic quality, not only at the time of its conception but also long after, and was unremittingly harsh in his self-​ assessment.150 The sonata premiered at the first public Pléiade concert, on June 21, 1943, appropriately along with Debussy’s Renaissance-​inspired Trois chansons de Charles d’Orléans (and his Promenoir des deux amants), as well as Ravel’s Trois chansons de Mallarmé.151 The reviews of the sonata indicate that Poulenc’s tactic

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Poulenc, Sonate pour violon et piano. End of third movement. Paris: Éditions Max Eschig, 1944.

of employing multiple languages to free himself from appropriation by those who represented the dominant aesthetic appears, in the end, to have failed. For the collaborationist press was laudatory (as it would soon be with his Chansons): already L’illustration found the sonata written in an “agreeable” language that was

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deliberately romantic but, its critic added—​perhaps ironically—​with a taste of honey, including numerous sugars.152 This was apparently how he construed the juxtaposition of different languages that is so prominent in the sonata: Poulenc’s struggle for subjective independence was, for him, an assortment of varied but largely pleasant styles. Compounding Poulenc’s discomfiture, another collaborationist journal, the Nouvelles continentales, also reviewed the Pléiade’s two public concerts and was equally enthusiastic about Poulenc’s “effusive” quasi-​romantic sonata. Proclaiming the work a veritable triumph for the author, the critic paradoxically finds it to be fully in accordance with the current tendency, or superbly colored, lively, and bathed in a sensibility that won over the hall.153 Again, Poulenc’s severest critic was, in fact, a fellow résistant, Tony Aubin, who wrote in a collaborationist journal but also managed to maintain his ideological independence in terms of content. Aubin wrote not only in Comoedia but also in the Vichy-​approved L’information musicale (again, eventually authorized in both zones), while remaining a key member of a French musical resistance network. Here in Comoedia Aubin begins by accentuating the positive in order, in principle, to support his colleague, speaking of Poulenc’s “new ambition,” which includes an often dramatic accent, a search for a harsher harmonic language, and a tendency to interrupt his melodic flow. However, despite Poulenc’s ardent attempt to distance himself from the melodic languages that he loved but that were now sullied, Aubin stresses their presence, undoubtedly aware of how the current culture might nevertheless co-​opt even such a confrontational work. Implicitly espousing a different resistance tactic, one of purity or rejection of any tainted language in serious as well as comic works—​even though the alternative was not yet evident—​Aubin’s final assessment is far from kind. Like other critics, perceiving the composer’s inability to reject a certain “taste” and melodic elegance, despite the occasional harshness and juxtapositions, Aubin pronounces Poulenc a slave to his well-​bred affability and love of lyric melody.154 Aubin apparently grasped Poulenc’s inability at this point not only conclusively to reject the stylistic paradigms he continued to love but also to define an alternative stylistic language. Yet not all resistance critics concurred with Aubin’s verdict: Auric was furious, although he expressed this only in private, writing to Denise Tual to castigate what he irately labeled “the trashcan Comoedia.”155 Other friends of Poulenc, such as the faithful Marie-​Blanche de Polignac, provided important psychological support and wrote to Poulenc to laud the work. Poulenc responded graciously in a letter of July 1943, assuring her that her opinion counted more for him than that of either Aubin or Samazeuilh.156 Knowing that he had supporters as well as critics, but still aware of his own failure to accomplish his goal—​to achieve independence from the now lauded musical language—​ Poulenc responded to Comoedia

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diplomatically in an open letter. Here he is apologetic in tone, acknowledging that his models were both Brahms and Debussy; yet he wisely resists revelation of his stylistic motivations, stating simply that these were the only composers since the classics who had successfully solved the problem of violin-​piano equilibrium.157

Poulenc’s turn to the literary resistance’s stylistic paradigms For Poulenc it was evident that the only answer now was to purge his more romantic inclinations, and to redefine his style in accordance with literary as well as musical resistance models. This implied not only the emulation of its construction of the later, classic Debussy, but also the invocation of its alternative Renaissance paradigm. Perhaps by design, given the stress on French Renaissance culture in the clandestine press, the second public Pléiade concert presented not only Poulenc’s sonata but also Debussy’s choral gem, the a capella Trois chansons de Charles d’Orléans. The inclusion of this composition was the result of the series’ attempt to program not only new French works but also older ones now being neglected. As the programs show, the focus in the latter case was on those compositions from periods now historically emblematic for the Resistance, above all the French Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Debussy’s three choral pieces, written between 1898 and 1908 in a style that is rooted in the French secular Renaissance, are not archaic but rather subtly innovative, ingeniously illustrating the continuity of the French spirit across the succeeding centuries. They do so principally through their explorations (like Rameau’s) of the vertical dimensions of music—​including harmonic language and sonority—​while retaining unmistakably Renaissance-​like syntax and textures, which Debussy had assiduously studied. Again, as the intellectual and musical resistance press now observed, Debussy had explored an authentic French identity by abjuring Germanic elements, instead rooting himself in the nation’s true cultural past. In this choral work Debussy was palpably engaged with the past, without waxing sentimental or historicist; he rather attempted to derive a new language from, for him, this resonant and appealing model, hence through it enunciating something both old and new.158 Poulenc had already turned to Renaissance models under the influence of Nadia Boulanger in the 1930s, when her interest in resuscitating Renaissance and Baroque masters was largely contrary to the official mainstream. In 1935 Poulenc had composed his Suite française, which was based on the work of the later sixteenth-​century French composer Claude Gervaise—​specifically on his Livres de Danceries (1550–​1557). Now, for Poulenc, Debussy’s example suggested a perfect means through which to avert the misreading that had occurred

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with both his sonata and Chansons, or a baleful appropriation by the now author­ ized culture. As he realized, a modern style that was based specifically on those French historical models that the literary resistance had endorsed would challenge Vichy’s argument of Franco-​German interaction with another, one dialogically carrying a subversive charge. Yet Poulenc was drawn not only to the resistance construction of Debussy and of the Renaissance but also to another enabling image that its literature now promoted—​that of metamorphosis or transformation. So central had the concept of metamorphosis become to clandestine literature that it served as the title for a series that the intrepid Jean Paulhan now cleverly edited (with double meaning) at Gallimard. Close to Paulhan’s circle, Poulenc again turned to this image, but with new significance in Métamorphoses, a set of songs to the poetry of Louise de Vilmorin, written between August and October 1943, shortly after the completion of his cantata.159 Also during this period, when Musiciens d’aujourd’hui was urging French composers to set resistance poets, Poulenc again sought out the poetry of the surrealist (and resistance) writer Louis Aragon. The latter, long a close friend of Poulenc and now a leader among resistance poets, published his collection Les yeux d’Elsa in the Cahiers du Rhône in 1943. These included the nostalgic poem “C” (implicitly carrying several layers of meaning) as well as “Fêtes galantes,” which Poulenc set in his Deux poèmes de Louis Aragon, written in 1943 and premiered with great success December 8 (performed by Poulenc and Pierre Bernac) at the Salle Gaveau.160 Since the mid-​1930s and his turn to the surrealist-​inspired texts of Paul Éluard, Poulenc had been aware of his ability through them to express his deeper self, if then in a more romantic style. Now he was searching for a less subjective expression, having also realized during the previous decade that he found his most authentic voice in his religiously inspired choral compositions. Hence Poulenc now returned to the medium that, together with Éluard’s poetry, drew him into a spiritual, or transcendent, but simultaneously communal and human realm. It was similarly in the mid-​1930s—​stimulated in part by the performances of Nadia Boulanger’s vocal ensemble—​that Poulenc rediscovered the French Renaissance as well as the early baroque and their “pure,” direct expressive means. At the time this exposure had also prompted him to realize that choral composition could provide an ideal space for a spiritually lofty statement, one he mastered is his Litanies à la Vierge noire, with its medieval and early Renaissance-​inspired textures. As Poulenc revealingly put it, in turning to religious choral composition in the 1930s “I was seeking to drop roots into the very depths of my being,” or to attempt reconnect with his authentic subjectivity. He also later observed that he had put “the best and most genuine part of myself ” into his choral compositions: in the

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case of his new cantata to the texts of Paul Éluard this perception indisputably rings true. Poulenc had already returned to composition for chorus in May 1941, writing two more exquisite motets, his Exultate Deo and Salve Regina. But in light of the pervasive resistance attitude toward the church, as well as a growing disillusion among French Catholics by this point, it is hardly surprising that he turned to a secular choral work although, as he put it, in a “semi-​religious mood.”161 Poulenc was deeply aware that choral composition could still elicit his most authentic voice, and that it could also help him to locate a new one, distant from the studied manipulations of the Violin Sonata. He also knew that it would have to be enunciated through a musical style not susceptible to any misappropriation, rather one that could counteract such distortions while expressing the ideals of intellectual resistance circles. Like his resistance colleagues Poulenc believed in the importance of maintaining a sense of the sacred or the spiritual, but, like many, having lost faith in the current church leadership he sought a moral authority independent of all orthodox religions.162 Most important, Poulenc now realized that an effective counterdiscourse within this context was one that could express French humanistic or Enlightenment values, and thus the collective “we” that resistance writers sought, through an anonymous, shared, and yet authentic style. Poulenc had already attempted to locate a personal voice through historical styles, first in order to express his contrasting social and sexual selves. However, now in the cantata he was able to enunciate both sincerity and emotion, free of all romanticism and in large-​scale, highly nuanced structure. For his goal here was to communicate a new sense of belonging—​one born not of insecurity or a desire simply to succeed, and to express his conscious decision to join together with other “patriots,” as his resistance colleagues now enjoined. In his cantata Poulenc thus attempts to impart a sense of human dignity and reserve, and resonantly to express a realization of past weakness while representing an interior metamorphosis as did Éluard’s surrealist-​inspired texts. His challenge was to communicate this process through a language that avoided any romantic effusions while igniting Éluard’s rich metaphors, or musically reinforcing the cognitive expansion that they provoked. Poulenc, like Éluard and Aragon, was here able to balance the comprehensible with the transgressive by employing traditional forms, but using a new vocabulary as well as new techniques. Their example compelled Poulenc here to articulate the ideals of humanity and of universality, which resistance intellectuals associated closely with the Renaissance and eighteenth century. By this point the composer was already well ensconced in resistance circles; in fact in later 1943, in his Studio d’Essai, Schaeffer (now in the Resistance) recorded Poulenc’s works (with Stravinsky’s and Satie’s) for a broadcast on humor in French music.163

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Metamorphosis and its meaning in Poulenc’s Figure humaine The timing of Poulenc’s cantata is significant: in the summer of 1943, as during previous periods of insecurity or of crisis in his life, he returned to his father’s native department of the Aveyron. It was there (in the region of the Midi-​Pyrénées, which he so loved) in July and August 1943, under the Louis XIII gables that always seemed to serve as inspiration, that he wrote the cantata fluently, in only six short weeks. Perhaps he was also now impelled by his taut emotions and deep anxiety throughout this period, for Poulenc, together with his network of associates and close friends, was attempting to have another friend—​the Jewish singer, Marya Freund—​released from prison in Drancy. When Freund was imprisoned Poulenc immediately marshaled influential contacts, including the compromised singer Germaine Lubin and the pianist Alfred Cortot. Together they were able to arrange for Freund’s transfer to the Hôpital Rothschild, where there was less security and from which she was able to escape to the French provinces, now with a false identity.164 In a letter to Marie-​Blanche de Polignac of July 1943, while he was composing his new work, Poulenc explained that not only was he optimistic about the course of the war but also his cantata was a commission from Belgium—​a version that he repeated several times before revising it in Ce soir at the war’s conclusion. Here in 1944 he recounted that it was following a Pléiade concert in March 1943, in which his Sept chansons for mixed chorus (to Éluard texts) was performed, that the director of the Companie des discophiles français approached him for a commission to set another Éluard text.165 Poulenc clarified that this was the already famous poem “Liberté,” which had been diffused widely by the Resistance: the plan was to record his composition to be based on it following the now anticipated Liberation. Later Poulenc again revised this into a more compelling version, according to which he secretly received Éluard’s resistance poems in the mail, following a recent visit to the pilgrimage site at Rocamadour.166 But the history of the work’s commission by the Discophiles français is the most likely one, for the musical resistance leader Roger Désormière was closely involved with the record company and had conducted performances of iconic resistance figures (like Rameau) for it already. According to this account Poulenc, while in Lyon, found a Swiss edition of Éluard’s collection Poésie et verité; already familiar with the poems, he reread them (including “Liberté), but now construed them in a substantially different light. He hence decided to write a full cantata, and it was only after this that a chorus in Anvers (Belgium) heard about the project and asked to perform the work after what seemed a now imminent liberation.

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Moreover, as Poulenc recounted, his editor Rouart et Lerolle decided to publish the score secretly—​before the Liberation, to hide it in France and then send it through clandestine channels into Belgium so that it could be rehearsed. The cantata was in fact published in May 1944, but here significantly marked as an “épreuve de travail,” or as just a proof in order to escape the current wartime censors, should it be found.167 It is dedicated to Picasso, an avowed antifascist (“dont j’admire l’œuvre et la vie”): Picasso, although not permitted to exhibit, did not flee the country, but remained in France, where he had a small group of friends in the Resistance. Picasso was harsh in judgment concerning painters who had compromised themselves with the Vichy government or with the Germans, and notably André Derain, even proclaiming in a postwar interview that he hoped Derain would be condemned and even shot as a result. Poulenc, already in a letter (written in Beaulieu-​sur-​Dordogne) on August 20, 1943, asked Picasso, with admiration, to accept the dedication of his cantata to the texts of Éluard.168 Poulenc often repeated proudly that Éluard’s texts had elicited the best within him, for the latter’s poems had propelled him to realize the most often repeated injunction to musicians by resistance circles. This was to employ music not only to cultivate a future liberty, but to galvanize emotions as well as to glorify fraternity among all Frenchmen (as originally in the Revolution, when music was meant similarly to serve such goals). Appropriately, Poulenc cast the work on an ambitious large scale—​for double mixed chorus a capella—​in order to express initial division and opposition, both individual and collective, and that it might finally be overcome. He thus arranged Éluard’s poems to reflect his idea of incremental metamorphosis, or gradual movement from division (or hybridity) to dialogue, and finally to transformation and new awareness.169 His challenge was to communicate this process through a language that avoided the romantic or the effusive, while igniting Éluard’s cryptic yet pregnant metaphors through new as well as older stylistic means. Like Debussy as well as resistance poets such as Aragon and Éluard, Poulenc balanced the comprehensible with the transgressive, employing more traditional forms and meters but with a new vocabulary, or an incisive harmonic language. But given the semireligious mood in which he avowedly composed the work, Poulenc naturally made stylistic reference to his previous religious choral music, especially in his use of seventh chords, as well as in the early Renaissance-​like textures.170 Moreover Poulenc’s goal to evoke the French Renaissance sense of grandeur—​ one that was on a human scale—​compelled him also to break through to larger forms, or a large-​scale coherence in the classical manner, which had eluded him in both his neoclassic and romantic phases. However, Poulenc’s music, with its supple transitions and wide variety of textures ranging from simple melody to polyphony (and even an orchestral

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complexity), obscures the solid structure while capturing the mounting intensity of each successive poem. Poulenc planned the cantata to build slowly to both an emotional and musical climax, not only through the ordering of the poems he selected—​perhaps one that articulated his own experience—​but through the texture, range, and gradual progression of keys.171 He finally reaches a climax in the final number, “Liberté,” yet without overemphasis or traditional emotional rhetoric: it is rather marked by a dignity and reserve that is reminiscent of French Renaissance polyphony. Recalling the resistance reading of Debussy’s Trois chansons de Charles d’Orléans, Poulenc here strives to underline the style’s humanist associations, while still locating himself individually within it. For again, he aspires to grandeur, yet in still human proportions, in keeping with the ideals of both the Renaissance and the Resistance, thus evoking their shared conception of humanity, which he subtly animates with his own creative voice.172 The opening piece, “De tous les printemps du monde,” is cast in a slow and gentle tempo, but prominently includes frequent key as well as meter changes. The two choruses are here in dialogue, joining together only for two brief cadences and then once again, with moving effect, at the movements’ end. In addition Poulenc in this movement, once more recalling Debussy’s style (which remained a model), frequently employs 7th as well as 9th chords, in order to add harmonic color.173 But the stylistic references and techniques in the work as a whole are multiple: for example, in the sixth number (for second chorus alone), Poulenc incorporates contrapuntal procedures, which help make a transition to the complex texture of the following movement. This, the seventh movement—​ the one just preceding the final triumphal “Liberté”—​perhaps most fully manifests Poulenc’s new ability to enunciate a transformation or metamorphosis to a higher state of awareness. While the second number is the most Renaissance-​like in style—​quick and light, with much imitation and an idiomatic setting of the repeated “la la”—​the seventh involves the most dialogue and fugal writing, which is gradually transformed or overcome, suggesting a final transcendence of an interior division. This movement, “La menace sous le ciel rouge,” begins with a bracing fugal exposition—​four entries on a chromatic subject, following which the two choruses gradually enter into a freer dialogue. In the course of the movement a repetitive section slowly builds in intensity, growing more menacing when setting the searing sordid words, “La pourriture avait du cœur” (and putrefaction grew bold).174 Here the tempo abruptly diminishes by half for the next seven measures, after which the initial tempo returns with both choruses tutti in a subtly mounting crescendo that continues unremittingly until the end. The movement is long and varied, consisting of several sections and often complex textures, but with carefully planned returns to a homophonic setting, perhaps most powerfully on

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the resonant phrase, “à des hommes frères des hommes.” It finally closes with a more lyrical intonation of the inspiring words “à des hommes indestructibles,” which prepares psychologically for the uplifting finale, the litany-​like hymn “Liberté.” Following a powerful silence, the concluding eighth number begins calmly, and it only gradually becomes evident that it is cast not just as a litany but also as a dialogue, clearly one composed in Poulenc’s “semi-​religious mood,” culminating in a resounding consensual unison on the word “Liberté.”175 Poulenc was well aware that here he had found his authentic voice and continued to attest to his pride and firm belief that the cantata not only was his greatest work to this point but also was ample testimony to his transformation and thus to his own personal redemption. By October 1943 he was writing to Marie-​Blanche de Polignac that it was unequivocally his very best work, in fact an “œuvre capitale” for himself, and he added proudly, “if not for French music.” The following year Poulenc wrote to her once more, avowing that although he is worried about all the violence around him, “there is a work, perhaps the only one, which proves to me that I  made the right choice in writing music.”176 Already in December 1943 Poulenc had proudly played the cantata at the piano (singing the parts himself as best he could) at the home of Marie-​Laure de Noailles, and then again for Paul Éluard as well as for its dedicatee, Pablo Picasso. Finally, so confident was the composer of the work’s inherent quality that, as he explained in a letter of June 1944, unlike many of his other compositions he felt no need to revise it in any aspect.177 Poulenc in fact openly acknowledged that the work represented a compensation for his feeling of guilt for having suffered so little, and specified remorsefully in a letter to Claude Delvincourt (sent through resistance networks) that even his home in Noizay remained intact. As some have suggested, despite his Resistance credentials Poulenc indeed experienced remorse, or a sense of culpability long after the war for having occupied such an enviable professional position throughout these dark years.178 Poulenc in fact had immediately sought a more tangible means of absolution: the day that American troops arrived in his region he triumphantly placed the cantata on his desk in the front window of his house, under both French and American flags. Although the work did not premiere in France but in London—​ on the BBC and in English translation on March 25, 1945—​Poulenc was confident that he had redeemed himself in the eyes of his French compatriots.179 His path had not been straight and his movement had been deliberate, or slow and cautious, for Poulenc only gradually came to recognize the reality, and then inched between the poles of Vichy dominance and resistance to it. As he well knew, it was not a simple question of his belief in or rejection of Vichy’s political and cultural program but, once more like Shostakovich, of a personal, ideological and stylistic journey—​sometime tortuous—​between the poles. Poulenc’s

Poulenc, Figure humaine. End of seventh movement. Paris: Rouart, Lerolle, et Cie., 1945.

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friends faithfully concealed this, stressing his Resistance associations in addition to his prominence during Vichy; indeed in April 1945, before a recital at the Salle Gaveau, André Schaeffner presented him (together with Éluard and Aragon) as artists who were both “public” and “clandestine.” And the following year Schaeffner would publish an article in the new postwar journal Contrepoints with the title (consciously invoking Debussy), “Francis Poulenc, un musicien français.” This helped to establish Poulenc’s postwar reputation, as did the articles that he continued to publish in Les lettres françaises after the war, on the invitation of Georges Auric.180

The importance of trajectories and of symbolic meanings within their context Unfortunately the attempt of historians since World War II to ignore Poulenc’s initial compliance with Vichy (which he construed as anti-​German) in order to cast him categorically as an immediate résistant does him, in fact, a real injustice. For it obscures his later heroism, as again that of Shostakovich, or the capacity of both—​if sometimes only gradually—​to realize the truth and then move beyond conciliation, while seeking a stylistic means to reflect this change.181 It was the context that determined the political significations of Poulenc’s evolving style; for his choices were not just personal but also part of a shared system of stylistic and cultural meanings, which carried resonance for those within this world. Poulenc’s real achievement—​one that eluded Honegger—​was finally to renounce all ambiguity and rather integrate resistance symbols, or those historical references defined in clandestine networks, within a coherent and still personal stylistic counterrepresentation. This was a task in which the composer, perhaps above all others, succeeded, and it may have been his own previous acquiescence to Vichy’s expectations that allowed him not only to perceive them but also to purge his former style in so uncompromising a manner. Although his final “resistance style” may appear today to be traditional—​hence for some not contestatory—​it was indeed refractory within the context, embodying a subversive cultural energy while enunciating his transformation to a new personal as well as collective French identity.

6

M E S S I A E N I N   A C AT H O L I C C H U R C H D I V I D E D :   S P I R I T U A L A U T H O R I T Y, S U B J E C T I V E A G E N C Y, A N D A R T I S T I C BREAKTHROUGH

Unlike Pierre Schaeffer and Francis Poulenc, Olivier Messiaen had no need slowly to distance himself from Vichy, for he had—​according to several postwar interviews—​rejected the regime from its beginning. Like many of his fellows in a German prisoner-​of-​war camp, as well as some Catholics (largely in the occupied zone), he rather chose to support the opposition of another devout Catholic and patriot, Charles de Gaulle. Other Catholic nonconformists of the 1930s, including Emmanuel Mounier and his circle around Esprit, only gradually came to recognize Vichy’s compromise as well as the concomitant complicity of the French Catholic Church. But they did eventually fully grasp the implications of following their dictum of subjective spiritual authenticity, which is obtained not through obeisance to church doctrine but by the soul’s immediate contact with scripture, and thereby with God. Messiaen rather asserted this immediately: although never formally a member of the Resistance, its musical and intellectual groupings grasped his implicit opposition, and thus praised his new compositions. For them, his music constituted political subversion in a performative sense; in Bourdieu’s conception, it became an enunciation that contributed practically to “the reality it announced,” rendering it conceivable and thus believable.1 Yet Messiaen had necessarily to navigate the shifting French musical field in order both to maintain a presence and thus support his family, participating in Pierre Schaeffer’s Jeune France, and then securing the chair in harmony at the wartime Paris Conservatoire. Indeed, his network of professional support was strong, and this included the now important Marcel Dupré—​his own former professor at the institution, who remained well placed in French musical circles. Messiaen, however, did not become emblematic of the contemporary young

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French composer during Vichy, for his new compositions, even though religious, lay outside the currently dominant taste. Moreover he never encouraged the regime’s attempts to appropriate his earlier, now lauded compositions, rather seeking to strike out on an innovative, independent course, both as a teacher and as a composer. To perceive the latter it is essential to examine not only his evolving musical style within the context but also his choice of religious texts, and particularly their signification given the current injunctions of the French Catholic Church. It is no coincidence that French youth now flocked around him, as they did others who were breaking through to new realms of creative expression in order to capture their current subjective experience, prominently including Jean-​Paul Sartre. Hence the comparison of Messiaen with Sartre can be illuminating, and may provide an apt focus when tracing the composer’s evolution throughout these lugubrious years. For despite the fact that Messiaen continued to cite the Bible as well as other religious texts, it is the significance of these within the context that is important, for they implicitly relate to the precepts of contemporary Christian Existentialists such as Gabriel Marcel, who frequented the same circles as he in Lyon. Moreover, the texts that Messiaen now chose invoke the questions of personal authenticity, individual liberty, and subjective moral agency—​for him from the perspective of a Catholic facing the dictums of the current Catholic Church hierarchy. In addition Messiaen and Sartre, like Poulenc, shared the same literary and intellectual network at Gallimard, since Messiaen was also eventually commissioned and supported by its seminal cultural entrepreneurs. This is an important perspective from which to approach not only the commissioning but also the reception of Messiaen’s groundbreaking Visions de l’Amen, as well as his equally resonant Trois petites liturgies de la présence divine. Placing Messiaen within the context of the moral and political disputes among the clergy—​a reality confronting all French Catholics during Vichy—​jolts our image of the composer as addressing a purely transcendent realm. However, in light of the Vichy government’s complex relation both to the Nazis and to the church, it is essential to question the presumption of his obliviousness to the compromises of leading prelates, and hence to the traumatic choices French Catholics faced. Recognition of these realities may open new lines of inquiry into Messiaen’s emerging moral stance, not just religious but also ideological, as expressed in his changing circles, his choice of texts, and his enunciations through new communicative or stylistic means. Facts and contexts slighted here become important in order to penetrate Messiaen’s evolving experience, his developing understanding, and his subsequent responses throughout both Vichy and the German Occupation.

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To trace Messiaen’s progression, including his subjective and artistic growth, it is necessary to start with Vichy’s initial conservative program and its attempt to use the church as justification and to preach repentance for France’s purported sins—​or expiation as an antecedent to final redemption.2 Once more, the church at first (on the whole) supported Vichy, perceiving its own interests and conserv­ ative social values aptly reflected in Pétain’s rhetoric; hence it encouraged all French Catholics to follow the church tradition of accepting the established legal or temporal power. Yet Messiaen was predisposed to reject this mandate, in part as because of his proximity to the “personalist” Catholicism of the 1930s, but more immediately by his exposure in a German prison to inmates who distrusted Vichy and supported Charles de Gaulle.

Messiaen’s refusal and his nonconformist background Looking back on his months as a prisoner in a German camp, Sartre—​with his characteristic self-​penetration—​acutely grasped how his experience had engendered not only new awareness but also creativity, or a renewed sense of his greater artistic purpose. As he observed, immediately after the defeat and armistice of 1940 many Frenchmen simply abandoned themselves to discouragement or to regret, a mood exacerbated the following year by Vichy and German efforts to promote repentance, hence acquiescence and the acceptance of France’s fate. Sartre’s immediate reaction was refusal, as would be Messiaen’s, despite (in the latter case) the church’s reinforcement of such abjection. For the philosopher, Vichy’s mandate triggered reflection on human liberty to construct the future, while the composer was stimulated to ponder the higher imperatives of religious truth. Only three years Messiaen’s senior, when he was mobilized Jean-​Paul Sartre was also professionally on the rise. Like Messiaen he had succeeded within official French education: a graduate of the École normale, he taught philosophy at a lycée in Le Havre. Influenced philosophically by the phenomenology of Husserl, Sartre had established his distinctive intellectual profile in a series of successive works, including L’imagination and La transcendance de l’égo in 1936, and La nausée in 1938.3 The experience of mobilization and then of capture would prove transformative, and surprisingly a creative stimulus for Sartre as for Messiaen; when Sartre was taken prisoner in June (placed in a transit camp in Trèves), he launched immediately into new and probing philosophical explorations. For Sartre was now discovering a different identity—​not as a prisoner but as a “social being” whose fate was linked to others, which in the previously isolated intellectual prompted new recognition of the inherent political dimension of his existence.4 Messiaen’s realization of this dimension bore striking parallels: surrounded by a

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group of prisoners who rejected Pétain for de Gaulle’s insurgency, he found himself in solidarity with their convictions, as opposed to the vast majority of those within the French Catholic Church. But Messiaen was inclined to independence: the son of a poet, Cécile Sauvage, who was not religious, and a Catholic intellectual and professor of English at the Lycée Charlemagne (and then at the Institut catholique de Paris), he had intrepidly defined his own personal and pious religious path. While still a student at the Paris Conservatoire in the 1920s Messiaen became a particularly fervent Catholic, although one who was already outside the mainstream in his embrace of the marginal, individualistic mystic current traditionally viewed with suspicion among the hierarchy. He soon read the contemporary writings of the neo-​ Thomist theologian and philosopher Jacques Maritain, a Catholic convert who was now promoting modern religious art as well as music.5 However, Maritain then rejected what he referred to as “mechanical” or impersonal directions, now (recalling “sacramentalism”) in search of visible signs pointing beyond themselves to the creator. After this change of direction (following the pope’s condemnation of the Action française) Maritain grew close to Emmanuel Mounier, and in 1932 helped him to found the seminal nonconformist journal Esprit.6 Messiaen, familiar with Esprit by 1933, was ostensibly drawn to its vision of the artist as the revealer of the most profound secrets of the unique person—​one who is irreducible in his individual conscience and soul.7 Another early influence that Messiaen avowed was that of a Benedictine monk, Dom Columbia Marmion, the author of Le Christ dans ses mystères, published in 1919 and given to him in 1931, soon after he became organist at La Trinité. Marmion promoted the importance of symbols and ritual, so that we may appropriate religious truth within the scriptures more profoundly and subjectively, or “assimilate the spir­ itual fruit of each mystery in the greatest possible measure.”8 This was also the period when Messiaen’s brother Alain, a writer and poet, introduced him to the writings of Ernest Hello, a mystically inclined later nineteenth-​century writer who stressed the multivalent meaning of scripture and thus the importance of individual, authentic interpretation.9 Messiaen referred to all these influences, as well as others, in the articles that he wrote in the 1930s, including that in Carrefour in the issue of June–​July 1939, titled “De la musique sacrée.” Here he quotes not only from Hello but also from Claudel and Reverdy, stressing, “Man is neither angel nor beast, far less machine. He is man:  flesh and conscience, body and spirit.”10 The mention of Pierre Reverdy—​a favorite poet of Messiaen—​is significant, for he, like Messiaen, emphasized the borders between the sacred and secular, influenced by the surrealist ideal of unlocking the hidden or the inner world.11 Reverdy, who had lost his faith at the young age of twenty, later considered this to be the start of his quest

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for another kind of spirituality, or for the absolute. The latter he now found in different strata of reality, for although Reverdy remained outside the surrealist group, he shared their metaphysical ideals and believed reality to be inseparable from mysticism, or revelation.12 Messiaen later, in his conversations with Claude Samuel, would continue to echo these views: “The arts, especially music but also literature and painting allow us to penetrate domains that are not unreal, but beyond reality. For the Surrealists, it was the hallucinatory domain, for the Christians, it is the domain of faith. I think music, even more than literature and painting is capable of expressing the dreamlike, fairy-​tale aspects of the beyond, this ‘surreal’ aspect of the truth of faith.”13 This tendency to transcend the boundaries of the sacred and the secular through the act of profound personal reflection on truth would be central to Messiaen’s quest, and would help to sustain him throughout the wartime Vichy years. Like Sartre and the personalists, he would reject the authority now being imposed by the French church hierarchy and the Vichy government, rather affirming the primacy of an individual authenticity.14 Despite his boldness—​not only spiritually but also musically—​as a brilliant recent student of Marcel Dupré, in 1931 (at only age twenty-​three) Messiaen had been named organist at La Trinité, an important church in central Paris. He had also come to prominence as a composer with his striking orchestral work, Les offrandes oubliées (1930); and soon to follow—​attracting yet more recognition—​ was his organ cycle, La nativité du Seigneur (1935) as well as his Poèmes pour Mi (1936). Also notable was Messiaen’s Ascension (1932–​1933), like Les offrandes oubliées a symphonic meditation with a theologically progressive, or spiritually and culturally universalist message, communicated through new stylistic means.15 And in 1936 Messiaen, together with Yves Baudrier, André Jolivet, and Daniel-​ Lesur, formed a new concert society to promote their common spiritualist goals, many of which they shared with the contemporary nonconformist movement. Again, the ideals that he now defined, as well as the intellectual influences he here encountered, would remain important for Messiaen and help him to confront his new experience when he was mobilized three years later, and thereafter taken prisoner in a German camp. The nonconformist publication that was oriented toward the Social-​ Democratic Left and most attractive to younger artists, writers, and composers, was the progressive catholic journal Esprit, founded by Mounier in 1932 (and soon read by Messiaen). Indeed the spiritual goals of the new concert society that Messiaen and his colleagues formed were strongly impregnated with the ideals, the rhetoric, and the values of this journal and of the nonconformist movement.16 For Jeune France similarly neither practiced nor negated politics, but like Mounier’s and other nonconformist groupings rather, through culture,

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asserted an implicit opposition to the established ideologies and political stances. Defining itself against the narrow aesthetic ideals of the Popular Front, which were based on partisan politics, the group concomitantly opposed those of both the traditional right (including the Action française, condemned by the pope in 1926) and of the menacing new fascist movements. Their quest, however, was not for “l’art pour l’art,” but instead it was for a new kind of salutary cultural force—​ one that was above all spiritual and universal, like that which had been promoted by the nonconformists and specifically in Esprit. It was thus not an ideal of spirit­ uality or of aesthetic transcendence that masked an exclusionary, racially purist vision, as characteristic of French as well as of German fascism. Rather their goal was all-​inclusive, transcending race as well as parties and borders—​an aspiration that would henceforth remain central to all of Messiaen’s endeavors. Although espousing a different “politics of spirit,” Jeune France similarly confronted desacralization, here advocating spirituality, nobility, and romantic expressivity while imbuing all these terms with new meaning. They also reinvested the vaunted “unity,” or political joining together called for by the Popular Front, for Jeune France extended its significance to a universal dimension, or to those human qualities that inherently unite all peoples.17 It was in the midst of this contemporary clash of aesthetic models and ideologies that Jeune France now called for a new spiritual art—​progressive yet rooted in tradition—​and premiered (replete with manifesto) just three days before the Popular Front assumed power. Defining itself provocatively against the political-​cultural extremes, it invoked and addressed their respective discourses explicitly in its printed declarations as well as (implicitly) in its aesthetic and musical choices.18 The rhetoric of nonconformism ostensibly impregnated all of the group’s public statements, including, perhaps most prominently, its motto: “Retour au lyrisme, à l’humain.” A close reading of Jeune France’s manifesto of June 3, 1936 (the date of their first public concert), is highly revealing of their intellectual sources as well as their ideological goals. Significantly, it was drafted by one of its members, Yves Baudrier (who was highly articulate), as opposed to being written by a promoter—​as in the case of Jean Cocteau, who became the self-​appointed spokesman of Les Six in the 1920s. Recalling the many manifestos that were printed in earlier nonconformist journals, that of Jeune France employs an argument that stresses both “the human” and an “aggressive spirituality.” It was similarly a call to combat—​to confront the “crisis of civilization” and the dehumanizing forces of modernity, as well as to posit the spiritual as a progressive force.19 Moreover man for Messiaen and Jeune France, as for the nonconformists, was not part of a political or confessional collectivity, but rather of the larger universe and thus shared basic human values with all men and women throughout the world. Hence music for them (as for the romantics, whom they admired) was to be a transcendent, an authentically

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cosmic or universal art in which the human soul, while retaining its autonomy or subjectivity, could find its authentic “lyrical” expression.20 These were the ideals that would soon sustain and help guide Messiaen when he was mobilized during the so-​called phoney war, and then serve to focus his political choices as well as his religious and creative goals when he was taken to a German prisoner-​of-​war camp, thereafter continuing to influence him throughout the war.

Mobilization, capture, and creativity In September 1939, during the “drôle de guerre” (when French soldiers awaited a German attack that did not occur) Messiaen was a recruit—​a “soldat pionnier d’infanterie,” stationed at Metz, in eastern France. Then, from the beginning of February to mid-​April 1940 he was an “infirmier,” or medical aid; he subsequently requested some kind of duty involving music—​most likely at the radio, where his own former colleagues were employed. To this end he tapped his connections at the Paris Conservatoire, writing first to Claude Arrieu (who was in Rennes), importuning her to see another former colleague, Tony Aubin (to become a résistant), who was now in a position to be of help. In addition to this, Messiaen’s former teacher at the Conservatoire, Marcel Dupré, made the first of many interventions on his behalf, attempting to persuade those officers in the French army who appreciated music to take an immediate interest in his protégé’s case.21 Messiaen finally succeeded in obtaining a transfer, although not to the National Radio; between April and early May (when the troops began to move) he was a musician at the Centre musical et théâtrale de la 2e armée (or CMTA), based in Verdun. It was here, at the CMTA, that he met the cellist Étienne Pasquier and the clarinetist Henri Akoka, who would premiere his Quatuor pour la fin du temps, written (in large part) while they were all prisoners of war in a German camp.22 It may well have been through the help of the ever-​influential Marcel Dupré that Messiaen was assigned to the CMTA, and thus to activities that he found personally more rewarding. His functions here were largely or purely musical; contrary to his postwar recollections he was on guard duty only after the troop movement began on May 10, and the center was thus disbanded. While at the center he helped create spectacles, such as the evening of “divertissements” that included the Molière-​Lully comédie-​ballet Le mariage forcé, and a selection of “chants traditionnels et classiques,” adapted from the old repertoire of the Théâtre Arlequin. Here Messiaen was surrounded by accomplished colleagues, for although the center’s founders—​Charles Huntziger, Henri Massis, and Xavier de Courville—​were close to the Action française, they recruited the best artists, musicians, and actors they could find, regardless of political sympathies.

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Huntziger would go on to sign the armistice at Wiesbaden, and become minister of war during Vichy; but preceding this it was as an amateur violinist and lover of music that he sought to provide artistic diversion for both officers and soldiers through the CMTA. Not surprisingly the kind of art he here promoted was embedded in his conception of French tradition—​one that followed the conservative interpretation of it by the Action française. But significantly, when the musicians whom he had chosen (including Messiaen) were captured near Toul and Nancy and then sent to a stalag, he would be central in obtaining the release of several, and most notably Messiaen.23 Like Sartre, Messiaen’s impulse—​even before he entered the center—​was to continue to write despite the physical hardship, as he explained in a letter to the journal L’orgue, published in the issue of December 1939–​March 1940. Here he pointed out that for him the harsh deprivations were initially compensated by his being able to play two organs in the local church, an older Cavallié-​Coll and a newer instrument. Messiaen performed there not only on certain Sundays but also on Christmas day and New Years, improvising boldly, or as he put it “in an avant-​garde style . . . that would have frightened Schoenberg himself.” He also made a point of noting that “unlike the pious Parisian ladies, the soldiers were not shocked by these surprising sonorities,” perhaps sensing how his innovative language helped all to confront or give shape to their new experience.24 Messiaen’s creativity continued unabated as he too confronted his new world and, at first, the physical hardships of his purported long cold marches (as well as a few assigned watches at night). As he put it, he soon found himself “singing certain melodies, certain favorite rhythms, and going over in my head the most important parts of my latest organ work, interrupted by the war.”25 When Verdun fell on June 15, 1940, Messiaen, together with many thousands of French servicemen, was taken prisoner and transported to a camp in Toul (in Lorraine) to await transfer to a German prisoner-​of-​war camp. Messiaen was thus taken into captivity along with his colleagues at the CMTA; these included the cellist Étienne Pasquier and the clarinetist Henri Akoka, the latter of whom was allowed to keep his instrument. This soon prompted Messiaen, still creatively inspired, to write a solo piece for him, which would become the third movement of his Quatuor pour la fin du temps. Messiaen’s creativity had thus immediately flourished, just like Sartre’s, and in both cases reports abound concerning the dynamism of these two artists—​their immediate productivity and sense of having now ascended to a higher plane.26 Messiaen’s reactions while in Lorraine were later recorded by a young composer who would later enter his circle of students, Guy Bernard (or Guy Bernard-​Delapierre). The latter published his recollections of Messiaen during this period at the end of the war, in an art periodical that was based in Lorraine, the journal Formes et couleurs. Apparently Messiaen’s air of

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transcendence was striking—​perhaps a legacy of his personalist influences in the 1930s. As Bernard-​Delapierre put it: “In his pale, thoughtful face, his gaze was utterly calm as the sky above . . .. Despite his hunger, despite his thirst, he seemed far away, appeared to be thinking of something else—​of something very pure and brilliant.”27 Moreover, according to Bernard-​Delapierre, his subjects of conversation included “rainbows, stained glass, perfume, the dances of planets and atoms—​he spoke of all that, suggesting to me an unknown music full of rhythms and new colors and sounds. He would also read me poems of Reverdy and talk about Éluard—​they were his favorite poets.”28 Already Messiaen was reflecting on the inadequacies of the current musical language, or its expressive limitations, undoubtedly in light of its inability now to capture his still ineffable new experience. As Berard-​Delapierre put it, “It was then that Messiaen confided to me his views on the music of the future, the form of the works he wanted to create, the inspiration that he felt was to be his.”29 These reflections ineluctably turned to the necessity of expanding the current means of communication in Western music, and particularly its rhythmic dimension, which Messiaen found to be impoverished.30 However, when Messiaen was transferred to a German prison, he was forced immediately to face harsh realities, which prompted him to respond first politically, thereafter spiritually, and eventually creatively in his consciously provocative Quatuor pour la fin du temps. Interned in Stalag 8A in Görlitz, Silesia, Messiaen was one of 1.58 million French soldiers who had been captured in 1940 and henceforth served as hostages for German negotiations, or pressures, on the Vichy government. Again, Vichy acceded to power with the pledge to cooperate with the occupant and to defend the French, as well as French interests; in the end, despite its promise to its countrymen, Vichy was able to negotiate the release of only a little over 222,841 prisoners.31 Vichy, whose rationale was primarily political revenge and power, was unable not only to procure the release of most French prisoners but also to protect the Jews on its soil and to prevent the forced labor of its own youth.32 But Pétain’s conservative social program had initially won the confidence of the majority of French Catholics, and in its first two years, aside from some specific reservations, Vichy received their enthusiastic support. The Catholic clergy now seized the opportunity for revenge against the “Godless Third Republic,” pleased that the new regime so actively cultivated churchmen. In addition the clergy construed its own teachings concerning family, moral decadence, and spiritual values as felicitously reflected in Vichy’s doctrine. Again, traditional church doctrine demanded acquiescence to a justly established power, although this would become increasingly difficult for some church leaders as the regime evolved. But at their assembly of January 15, 1941, French cardinals and archbishops stressed

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the country’s “redressement moral et social,” enjoining priests not only to remain loyal to the legal government but also to lead the faithful to do the same.33 And since at Vichy’s start the majority of French prelates considered it to be the legal government, they did not support de Gaulle, who based his claims to represent France on the concept of legitimacy as opposed to legality. Yet a small minority of Catholics, which would soon include Messiaen as well as apparently some priests in his camp, maintained that if there was any possible good in Vichy it was annulled by its submission to the German enemy.34 Hence, shortly after the defeat, when a resistance movement first began to form, French Catholics were involved, and their number was far from negligible. Moreover those Christians opposed to the new government immediately sought to counter official Vichy propaganda by circulating mimeographed or printed tracts, and placing them secretly them in mailboxes. But it was still difficult for many Catholics to engage in acts of disobedience as resistants—​not only against the legal government but also against the Catholic church hierarchy and the explicit injunction of the bishops.35 Yet by July 1940 some Parisian Catholics stoutly refused to resign themselves to the German victory, and thus resolved to shun both the church’s and Vichy’s dictates. Claudel had first written “Ode to Pétain,” but by November 1940, in an article, professed his shock at Cardinal Baudrillard’s “monstrous” call for collaboration. Although originally a “pétainiste.” Claudel was growing disaffected and in the course of 1941 became increasingly hostile to Pétain. In addition the clandestine catholic journal Valmy was begun in 1941, and in response to the appeals of the BBC its supporters participated in an illegal demonstration at the Place des Pyramides—​before the statue of Jeanne d’Arc—​on May 15, 1941.36 Some Catholic theologians, particularly Jesuits, participated in the Resistance movement, supporting the resistance Cahiers du témoignage chrétien and believing (like Messiaen) in the importance of proclaiming truth at any cost—​here targeting not only the Nazis but also Vichy’s complicity with them. And by the beginning of 1941 many Catholic nonconformists were vocally denouncing Vichy; now following the activities of the Gaullists, they heeded the latters’ calls from London to commemorate former French national ceremonies. However, among Christian Democrats the nature of resistance itself would vary, with some actively becoming involved while others rather opted for a spiritual or cultural resistance.37 Even more generally the presence of growing dissension and thus tensions among French Catholics became manifest, and by 1941 the church’s official daily journal, La croix, was reproached by Vichy for a tincture of “gaullisme.” However, other Catholic organs participated in attacks against those Christians who refused to accept the Vichy regime and its politics, aggressively targeting all Catholic résistants.38

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Even many Catholics who were taken prisoner continued to support Pétain, including the writer Jean de Fabrègues, who was close to the Action française and when released rallied support for the marshal in the weekly he founded when repatriated, Demain. Again, just previous to this de Fabrègues, when freed, had joined Schaeffer’s Jeune France but soon denounced it to the Vichy authorities as being a hotbed of resistant Christian Democrats. Support for Vichy among French prisoners was undoubtedly due in part to the regime’s considerable prop­ aganda in the camps, aimed both at them and at their compatriots as well as their families at home. Indeed, so prominent were the French prisoners of war in Vichy’s unrelenting propaganda that those interned felt an increasing sense of shame, even before their complete repatriation following the liberation of France.39

Internment, internal liberty, and Messiaen’s Quatuor One focus of Vichy’s propaganda was not only its continuing (if largely unsuccessful) efforts to secure the release of French prisoners but also its amelioration of their living conditions, particularly through opportunities in culture and sport. French prisoners of war in fact were not interned in concentration camps proper: protected by the Geneva Convention and visited regularly by the Red Cross, they were offered a range of activities—​not only athletic and cultural but also educational. In Messiaen’s camp in Görlitz, Silesia, prisoners not only had access to a sports ground but to a theater (which Messiaen helped to establish), a library, and a kind of “university” where, in some of the camps, they could study mathematics, languages, and even in others music history. In Messiaen’s camp, by early 1941, a Flemish conductor who was interned there had assembled an orchestra of fifteen musicians, including Messiaen himself, to perform a series of programs ranging from Mozart and Ravel to operatic overtures and opéra-​ comiques. In addition, Messiaen’s camp, which housed several of those formerly in the CMTA, was also known for its jazz performances, its dance band, and its drama troupe, all of which regularly performed in the barracks where his own new Quatuor would premiere.40 Other camps had symphonic orchestras that were substantially larger: Stalag 9A in Ziegenheim, for example, boasted an ensemble of some forty musicians. In fact the latter performed the works of the four Conservatoire-​trained composers who were interned there, with Vichy capitalizing on this and the camp authorities collecting donations from Switzerland and Denmark to provide both the music and instruments.41 The authorities in Stalag 8A sought to take advantage of Messiaen’s presence, and thus offered him special treatment, beginning with permission to keep his miniature scores (which included Bach’s Brandenburg

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Concerti, Berg’s Lyric Suite, Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-​midi d’un faune, Honegger’s Horace victorieux, Ravel’s Ma mère l’Oye, and Stravinsky’s Petrushka). Messiaen was eventually accorded a corner of a hut (which also served as a church) so that he could compose, and was provided with the necessary manuscript paper, pencils, and erasers. In addition, Messiaen and his fellow musician-​prisoners in the camp were aided by an unarmed guard—​the half-​Belgian, half-​German music-​ lover Karl-​Albert Brull, who was conveniently fluent in French.42 But despite these advantages and blandishments, Messiaen and others remained wary not only of the propagandistic intentions of his German captors but equally those of the Vichy government. For the newspaper that was distributed to all the camps and reported on the prisoner’s cultural and other activities, the French language Le trait d’union (the goal of which was clear from the title), was published weekly from Berlin and ardently promoted Franco-​German collaboration. Aside from the reports on camp activities, most of the articles were in fact translations of those that had appeared in German newspapers (obtained through Vichy’s Service d’information) or reprinted from collaborationist journals such as the Cahiers franco-​allemands.43 Again, perhaps it was Messiaen’s personalist inclinations and independence that now prompted him to distrust such propaganda and, like some fellow prisoners who were similarly not mainstream Catholics, to remain suspicious of Vichy’s intentions. Still, the majority of the French clergy did not choose to recognize that the regime was increasingly acquiescent to the occupant and thus continued to adhere to Pétain, if nevertheless revolted by the idea of collaborationism.44 Messiaen’s later recollections indicate that here he differed with the church: not only was he politically aware but also he did not consider the fact that he was patriotic as implying support for Pétain or for the new regime. As Messiaen himself so fervently put it, “In our despair, a single name rose up, a name to which everyone clung, and it was that of Général de Gaulle.” He also pointed out that in spite of the precautions that were taken by the Germans (and undoubtedly reinforced by the French authorities) “the prisoners very quickly found out about him [de Gaulle], and put their hope in him. This was a flame which welled up in the darkness.”45 Despite Vichy’s condemnation of de Gaulle, Messiaen claimed to have immediately embraced him and remained thereafter politically steadfast in his support of the general.46 Although some have questioned Messiaen’s later recollections of his initial support for de Gaulle, it is important here to consider the extent to which other prisoners—​who ostensibly influenced him—​were aware of and championed the general. The hopes expressed by his fellow prisoners may well have been lit by de Gaulle’s battle with Vichy forces at Dakar in September 1940 (even if unsuccessful), and then his successful battle in Gabon between September and

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November 1940. (Already most of Equatorial or Central Africa had gone over to the Gaullists in a bloodless coup, between August 24 and 28, 1940.) Although the majority of France’s former colonies had remained loyal to the Vichy government, de Gaulle did succeed here in bringing the French Empire back into the war. In fact, the most automatic “Gaullistes” included French officials as well as soldiers in Equatorial Africa, in addition to what Paxton has called the “outcasts” of the new regime. The Gaullists, moreover, were slowly growing in number: although they comprised only seven thousand in July 1940, by the end of the year they amounted to about thirty-​five thousand.47 In addition, some prominent Catholics on the left immediately became spokesmen for de Gaulle, most prominently the journalist Maurice Schumann, who soon began broadcasts on the BBC. As early as July 1940 a team of broadcasters for the Free French, began a series of programs, “Honneur et Patrie,” which transmitted de Gaulle’s speeches as well as information using BBC facilities.48 Again, the major difference between Vichy patriotism and that of de Gaulle was that for de Gaulle the French state was based on legitimacy, or on political principal, as opposed to Vichy, which maintained the state’s inherent connection to the soil—​even if two-​thirds of it was occupied by an enemy power. French prisoners may well have been apprised of the progress of de Gaulle’s colonial forces, perhaps by the left-​wing Catholics (including priests) among them, as well as by the BBC broadcasts, which some may have succeeded in accessing.49 However, for the majority of Frenchmen, including Catholics, in 1940 and 1941 de Gaulle’s flame did not yet flicker, and indeed enthusiasm for Pétain was at its strongest. Once more, de Gaulle initially had little French support since it still remained unclear to many whether anti-​Germanism meant opposing Vichy or “rejoicing in its simulacrum of independence.” In addition, no organized or politically oriented internal resistance group supported de Gaulle at first, for he was considered by many as too right-​wing or too traditionalist in his beliefs.50 But Messiaen could not accept the legal or temporal power, in distinction to church authorities who retained a good rapport with Pétain—​pleased that he had returned the church’s property from the state. They only began to question Pétain’s leadership in the course of 1942, particularly following the horrific Vél’ d’Hiv round-​up that July. Again, even Mounier at first was convinced that a progressive Catholic presence at Vichy was possible, and thus sought to influence the regime through his journal Esprit, which would finally be banned and he himself briefly imprisoned.51 Messiaen’s conviction (like Sartre’s) not to accept remorse or to acknowledge French defeat but rather to imagine a different future, maintaining an internal liberty, is reflected in his later statement to Antoine Goléa concerning his Quatuor pour la fin du temps: “I composed this quartet in order to escape from the snow, the war, captivity, and myself. The greatest benefit I gained

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from it was that, in the midst of three thousand prisoners, I was probably the only one who was free.” Sartre in turn, on the basis of his own experiences as well as convictions, would soon write a “hymn” to human conscience and internal liberty, his philosophic, existentialist breakthrough work to be titled L’être et le néant.52 Messiaen’s manifestation of human conscience and of internal liberty would emerge in his Quatuor pour la fin du temps, a composition in which he challenged his compatriots to answer only to higher truths—​to final judgment—​on the basis of a transcendent moral law. His work, like Jean-​Paul Sartre’s, would be interpreted by some as a rejection of Vichy’s “moral order”—​a morality based on exigency and political interests—​and indeed it would prove impenetrable to the slogans of Pétain’s Révolution nationale.53 Although Vichy and those who were sympathetic to it (such as Jean Françaix) tried to marshal the idea of expiation and redemption, and by extension of the Apocalypse, the latter also carried a different range of political significations within the context. For Revelation was simultaneously being invoked by the Cahiers du témoignage chrétien (an organ of the spiritual resistance), which underlined its theme of transcendence, as opposed to national or ideological interests. Here the journal sought specifically to forge a doctrinal tool that could combat the ideology currently being diffused by the Nazis and by the Vichy regime.54 Recent scholars have helped to explain this, noting that Revelation is rife with moral ambiguities that “emerge from its identity as a subversive vision,” and moreover that the text itself manifests symptoms of resistance. In fact for Luther the Book of Revelation proved to be useful as a weapon in his attack on the papacy and its claim to social dominance, which had appeared to rest on divine sanction.55 Indeed the realm of the visionary or of a utopia has periodically been employed by those who seek to define themselves against an oppressive power, for it appears to provide a means to resist it. Revelation first targeted the dominant culture of its period (the Roman Empire); however, when John wrote the book the alternative identity that he here suggests was not yet clearly evident.56 Especially relevant to Vichy is the fact that although John calls for resistance to the surrounding culture, his opponents within the Christian Church were rather advocating an accommodationist posture. Moreover John is here reacting less to Roman persecution than to Roman seduction, which suggests an apt parallel with Vichy’s seduction of the church. Hence John resists intimidation by invoking revelation, or the idea that his enemies—​internal and external—​are facing Christ’s final judgment.57 John also employs a hybrid discourse, or one that represents a blend of others into something new (like Messiaen stylistically) in order effectively to address the center. For his language and references had to be close enough to that of the centrist idiom for it to be understood; but he had also

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to coin an idiom that was subtly deviant to represent the subaltern voice. He thus engages lofty subjects such as emperor and empire, but through an imagery that was considered bizarre, so as to reinscribe that which he resists.58 Some have even seen the power of John’s Apocalypse as lying in its potent ability to appropriate and transform the symbols of the Roman imperial world into another realm. The Apocalypse (like Messiaen’s Quartet) is accordingly written in a hybrid genre, combining conventions of other genres so as to create the potential for its audience to select the elements to foreground. This helps to explain the polyvalence of the book’s powerful imagery during Vichy, and thus its potential for multiple use, interpretations, or appropriations. Messiaen was able to grasp its capability to transform the public by suggesting the experience of another reality, thereby inviting reflection on how to survive in a world of domination or of oppression.59 Ironically, Messiaen’s work was made possible through the help of Vichy officials and his German captors, through the intermediary Karl-​Albert Brull, who worked with the camp commander to provide the instruments as well as extra heat and rations for the rehearsals.60 Several movements of the work were written previously, but of special significance are their dates as well as that which they now enunciated, not only for Messiaen but for his audience when performed in the camp, and later in Paris. The two lyrical moving “Louanges” (movements 5 and 8, for cello and piano and violin and piano respectively) date back to the 1930s—​to Messiaen’s period of religious and intellectual awakening, following his mystic and nonconformist influences. Scholars have traced the seeds of the final “Louange” to Messiaen’s Diptyque for organ of 1930, while the “Louange” of movement 5 is rather derived from his 1937 contribution to the Fête des belles eaux, commissioned to celebrate the Popular Front’s International Exposition.61 The two earlier “Louanges” are thus more compositionally conservative than the other movements, characterized not only by harmonic progressions that may be construed as basically tonal, but also by a rhythmic regularity that Messiaen was now abandoning in search of the more fluid and complex.62 But in addition to these two movements derived from his own work of the previous decade, Messiaen incorporated the composition for solo clarinet that he had composed in the camp in Toul, and in which he was beginning to integrate the birdsong that henceforth would fascinate and inspire him. This long and meditative movement titled “Abîme des oiseaux,” appears to evoke not only eternity but also human conscience, and is aptly the third number of the Quartet, thus serving in a sense as the work’s musical and dramatic fulcrum. The first new movement that Messiaen now wrote was the following brief and impassioned Intermède; here all the instruments play in a breathless unison, generating motives that the composer employs in the other newly composed pieces, and most prominently

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in the similarly fast (and unison) sixth number, “Danse de la fureur, pour les sept trompettes.”63 When it became certain that a piano would be available, Messiaen was able to finalize his plans and continue to work on the new first movement, “Liturgie de cristal.” Although this one employs the whole ensemble, it has the effect of a solo for clarinet with piano set off by the more distant strings. The second movement, “Vocalise pour l’ange qui annonce la fin du temps,” is a sort of trio for piano, violin, and cello; after an initial effect of announcement, or the enunciation of an imperative, it returns to the more meditative aspect of the preceding movement. Here, against the lyricism of the violin and cello, Messiaen writes an accompaniment that he mystically describes as “blue-​orange chords,” thus for the first time in his scores identifying specific color coordinates. But just as challenging as Messiaen’s introduction of mystical color references is his conscious annulment of the traditional Western sense of musical time in the Quatuor. Messiaen achieves this in part through the use of three Hindu rhythms (suggesting the universalist imperatives of the earlier nonconformists), as he does through cycles of both harmonies and rhythms, in addition to an omission of bar lines. And here the cycles of harmonies and rhythms, in effect, initiate a process that if worked through logically would require at least two full hours to complete in real, human time. Indeed through such procedures Messiaen is offering a point of entry into infinity, or the world of timeless truths, reinforced through the use of birdsong, a Christian symbol that he now begins to reinvest.64

Levels of utterance in Messiaen’s Quatuor Messiaen’s new stylistic synthesis spoke on yet another level through the text that he wrote in the camp to frame and interact with it, one inspired by a passage from the Book of Revelation—​that which describes the Angel of the Apocalypse who announces the end of the world, and thus of time. In the text—​originally a lecture before the work’s premiere and then printed as a preface to the score—​he cites this passage and then describes each of the movements. Messiaen had attached programmatic titles and epigraphs or commentary in several of his works of the 1930s, with the intent of then expatiating on them through his distinctly new musical means.65 The passage from the Apocalypse of Saint John (­chapter 5) on which Messiaen comments in his Quartet is centered on the image of the angel, and it is thus essential here to consider its significance. The “mighty angel” appears at crucial moments to present a challenge or to deliver a judgment: he descends from heaven, as Messiaen puts it, wrapped in a cloud with a rainbow over his head. This angel combines the traits of God and Christ, for he is like the sun shining

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(recalling Christ) and also crowned with a rainbow (invoking that which surrounds God’s throne).66 His role is to bring guidance to the Christian community as it treads arduously through the desert in order to arrive at the new promised land. Significantly, the narrative contained in Revelation is about the search for someone who is worthy to put God’s redemptive plan into motion. Implicit for Messiaen’s contemporaries thus might have been the question of whether it was Pétain who was worthy to redeem the French nation, as the church leaders now earnestly claimed. Moreover, the angels in Revelation, who also serve to mediate God’s judgment on earth, here announce a series of plagues, like that now metaphorically being experienced by France. Finally, the passage that Messiaen cites concerns the trumpet of the seventh angel, who represents a mystical Catholicism—​or direct access to God’s word—​ and who finally reveals the true mystery.67 Traditionally, mystic contemplation was associated with rejection of ecclesiastically sanctioned practices, and hence considered an illegitimate unsupervised pursuit of the divine. Within the context of the Catholic Church during Vichy, and particularly during the first two years, the implications of Messiaen’s message was thus powerful, even if here only implicit.68 In his preface, Messiaen explains not only that the work was written during his captivity but also that it was directly inspired by this citation from the Apocalypse. And, perhaps to justify his own mystical Catholicism, he is also careful to point out that his musical language here is “essentially immaterial, spiritual, Catholic.” He explains that the modes he employs, melodically as well as harmonically, realize a sort of “tonal ubiquity” that brings the listener closer to “eternity in infinite space,” and that his rhythms, outside of measures, help to move away from the temporal. Here he again appears to imply, through references to both infinity and to timelessness, that he is invoking a higher truth, one independent of national or of temporal power. Messiaen also specifies why the Quartet is composed of precisely eight movements:  seven symbolizes the Sabbath after the six days of creation, and the eighth stands for the “indestructible light of indefectible [unfailing] peace.” A description of each of the eight movements follows, written in a style that provocatively mingles a mystic religious language with the surrealist poetic influences that Messiaen had long avowed. Here he also notes the references from scripture that he is invoking, as well as the motivic connections between the movements, and at points describes the melodic style and rhythmic techniques as well as the timbres and color references. Perhaps most arresting is the passage from his description of the seventh movement in which he refers to the mighty angel who announces the end of time. For in it he speaks of his own dreams and of the passage from established melodies and colors into the realm of the unreal, referring poetically to “a whirling with ecstasy, a gyrating penetration

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of superhuman sounds and colors.”69 The text thus invokes the challenge not only of the mystic element but also of individual direct access to the divine as well as hope and the profound belief in a final super-​human and atemporal judgment. But its references as well as its language would henceforth unfailingly confound the public, who often found it far more perturbing than the musical innovations within the work.

Reactions to the Quatuor and to its textual framing The first performance of the Quatuor, on January 15, 1941, took place in the frigid hut that Messiaen had helped make into a theater, with some 400 to 500 prisoners present. According to the cellist, Étienne Pasquier, “Everyone wanted to come and hear us, including the camp commanders. They sat in the front row.” Perhaps knowledge of this fact in advance also helped incite Messiaen to make his preconcert speech on the Apocalypse which, as he proudly stated, was met with approbation, including by “the priests among the prisoners, who approved of what I had to say.”70 However, despite this assertion, the majority of the audience was either nettled or perplexed by the speech, although apparently all listened to it attentively. As Pasquier later put it, they listened with rapt attention and with “their thoughts turned inward,” which is precisely what both the text and the music were intended to do—​to incite a reflective subjectivity.71 We know the precise details of the performance from an article that appeared in April 1941 in the camp’s own French language paper, Lumignon: Bimensuel du stalag VIII; it was a sort of review of the Quatuor under the lapidary title “Première au camp.” The article, signed only with the initials V.  M., emphasized the transcendent power and effect of the Quartet, despite the startling innovations that were either juxtaposed or integrated with more traditional elements. As the author put it, “Between movements you reflect on what has been heard: the music honors everyone. This is true grandeur, which draws us to it.”72 Another report on the camp premiere, this one by a fellow prisoner, Marcel Haedrich, appeared a year later (substantially after the Paris premiere) in the Vichy-​authorized newspaper Le Figaro, on January 28, 1942. Haedrich provides a paraphrase of Messiaen’s text, along with his own close description of the work; here he stresses the significance of the birds, the color imagery, and the musical interconnections between the movements, as well the rise in register that symbolizes the ascent of man toward God. But he also points out that at the camp premiere Messiaen made the following statement in order to draw attention to the biblical reference and the ideal that inspired his work: “It was under the influence of this passage from Revelation and in homage to the angel who announces the end of time that I wrote my quartet.”73

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After giving the text itself, Haedrich eloquently describes Messiaen’s demeanor, which apparently captivated the public, more so than either through his biblical exegesis or his technical explanations: “Olivier Messiaen speaks in a voice that is very clear, but weak. Silence immediately reigns in the barracks . . .. How far away he seems, suddenly, the comrade of every day. He is so different from himself, at ease in a world where it would be difficult to follow him.”74 Messiaen knew well how audacious he was here, not only musically and as a Frenchman under Pétain, but as a Catholic—​one whose message was substantially different from that of church leaders. As Haedrich continued in his article, “The subject, he says, called out for . . . a new language; impossible to express such an act of faith in a conventional way.” Knowing that a new subjective awareness here demanded different and more innovative means, Messiaen felt compelled to explain his techniques in his verbal text, which was later printed.75 Yet Messiaen’s explanations as well as his music still baffled or alienated part of his public; however, another sector—​as the subsequent performance in Paris clearly revealed—​were ineluctably drawn to the work. This may have had to do with the fact that it palpably addressed a situation that transcended the composer’s own imprisonment, evoking moral issues or choices that confronted all those who remained in France. In fact when Messiaen belatedly agreed to discuss his captivity on the radio in 1958 (the year de Gaulle returned to power), he unequivocally pointed out that the composition had nothing to do with his experience as a prisoner in the German camp. The Quartet was rather a bold spirit­ual injunction to consider God’s final judgment as opposed to any worldly, pragmatic, or political ends. And significantly, after Messiaen’s release (which Vichy widely touted) it was not used propagandistically in concerts of music by French prisoners of war.76 Even in the substantially different context of the Paris premiere, the reactions were strikingly similar to those in the German prisoner-​of-​war camp. This is evident in the reviews of the first Parisian performance, at the Théâtre des Mathurins on June 24, 1941. By this point Messiaen had succeeded in his quest to obtain release from the camp and, having been named to a position at the Paris Conservatoire, was able to attend the performance. It also included several of Messiaen’s earlier works (over which there was now little controversy), hence it was the new and more audacious Quartet that dominated most reviews of the concert. Indeed throughout the war Messiaen’s works of the 1930s increasingly gained in popularity, with performances proliferating, while the new ones continued to challenge and incite debate, supported only by a small and specific group.77 Significantly all the reviews of the Quartet, whether laudatory or critical, alternately ignored or attacked the text (which Messiaen insisted still frame his music) because it apparently confused, challenged or discomfited, and even

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provoked. This is evident already in the article by Serge Moreaux, which appeared in L’information musicale (again, the wartime replacement for the Revue musicale), eventually authorized to circulate in both zones of France. As a supporter of Messiaen, Moreaux had sensed that the text helped enunciate the composer’s moral challenge or imperative, one that ostensibly penetrated deeply, given the current Parisian political context. Hence Moreaux here rather focused on the music, or the manner in which its heterogeneous yet coherent style exerted a palpable force on its listeners; he even proclaims the work “the most striking piece of chamber music to be heard in Paris since Schoenberg’s latest quartet.”78 Moreaux thus specifically stresses the Quartet’s novelty, noting Messiaen’s melodic and harmonic originality and observing that although he had already been influenced by ancient Greek meters and Hindu modes, this time he went even further into his own musical world. As Moreaux explicitly puts it, “Olivier Messiaen has once again, yet a little further this time, invited us to visit the enchanted garden that he carries within himself, where he delights us with the joy of pure music.” This deflected attention from Messiaen’s purported content as described in the text, and hence implicitly his refusal, like Sartre’s, of acquiescence to temporal power and the moral compromise that it embodied. Moreaux stresses the music’s impact and specifically its “hierartic intensity” as well as its uncanny ability to seduce as well as to “stupefy” the public.79 Messiaen’s insistence on reading his textual commentary before the concert both disquieted his supporters and enraged his antagonists, among whom (not surprisingly) was the composer and critic Marcel Delannoy, who wrote for the collaborationist journal Les nouveaux temps. Delannoy, himself a member of the group Collaboration, was ostensibly threatened by the defiance and implicit challenge—​including to political authority—​in Messiaen’s accompanying text. The political position that Delannoy sought to promulgate through Collaboration was one of collective faith in the spiritual whole of the so-​called new Europe, which henceforth was not to be called into question. The subjectivity that Messiaen evoked in his work, his resolute personal interrogations and appeal to an immortal truth, thus elicited Delannoy’s ire, and he proceeded to mock the composer’s pretense as well as the aspirations implicit in his commentary. Delannoy specifically objected to Messiaen’s “forced subjectivism and a quasi-​Luciferian pride in seeking to describe the light,” as well as his attempt through music to create “the power of a personal miracle.”80 Paradoxically, Messiaen’s most ardent defender was none other than Delannoy’s former mentor, Arthur Honegger, who despite his contributions to Comœdia was not a professed ideological collaborationist. But Honegger, while seeking accommodation and profiting from both Vichy and German support, similarly chose not to discuss the text, proclaiming the work to be of great beauty

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and the composer’s aspirations “lofty.”81 Even if Honegger himself could not achieve such loftiness or defiant probity in the face of pressures to promote state collaboration, he palpably admired Messiaen’s courage.

Release and recruitment into Schaeffer’s “Band of Christian Democrats” Despite such support Messiaen’s Quartet was barely used for propagandistic purposes, although the regime milked the publicity of his release to substantiate its claim of progress in negotiations.82 But in fact his release, like Jean-​Paul Sartre’s at about the same time (in March 1941), was due not only to their dual eminence as artists but also to official intervention or, in Sartre’s case, a falsified medical certificate. According to Pasquier, Messiaen’s early repatriation, like his own, was arranged on the false pretext that they were both “soldats musiciens,” or drafted only to serve as musicians in the French armed forces.83 In addition, it was through the help of the guard, Hauptman Karl-​Albert Brull, that Pasquier—​to further ensure their release—​was able to forge papers testifying that they were medical orderlies, another group that was unarmed, and hence qualified for early repatriation. Messiaen had indeed briefly served in this role, but his release was also due in part to the unflagging efforts of Marcel Dupré, who persistently wrote and visited both German and Vichy officials who could be of help in this case.84 Again, recent research has also revealed the importance of Messiaen’s former service in the CTMA; in fact five of the six composers in it who were in Stalags VIIIA and IXA were liberated in under a year (by February 1941), with the excuse of their being ill. But their release was most probably due to the intervention of General Huntziger—​the organizer of the CMTA—​who became minister of war, and was here aided by his entourage.85 Upon his release and after his quarantine, Messiaen went first to Neussargues-​ Moissac (in the department of Cantal), where Messiaen’s wife’s family owned a home; here he rejoined her and their young son to recuperate physically before seeking employment (now scarce) in the unoccupied zone. But in his search for a position he was able to profit from the fact that Daniel-​Lesur and Yves Baudrier, his colleagues in the concert society Jeune France (as well as Maurice Martenot), had become part of Pierre Schaeffer’s cultural association, which had indeed borrowed their name.86 Arriving at Vichy in early March, Messiaen here found a well-​ paid and comfortable employment, while still being able to maneuver to procure a position as professor at the Paris Conservatoire. Although his position in Jeune France was largely administrative, it nevertheless provided him with both personal inspiration and creative opportunities, and the possibility of forging now professionally useful contacts.

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Little did Messiaen realize at first how significant the intellectual and artistic networks here would prove to be when he was able to return to Paris, having successfully been appointed professor of harmony at the Paris Conservatoire. His brief experience in Jeune France, moreover, would reinforce his independence as well as his former ties to personalist circles, while also exposing him to new technical means, goals, and approaches to artistic communication. Indeed he was happy within this circle, and even considered remaining in it; Messiaen only began to reconsider when he learned that his former friends, who were now in the radio there, were being transferred to Marseille in May 1941. Perhaps a further attraction of Jeune France for Messiaen was the presence of Mounier and his circle not only at Vichy but also nearby in both Uriage and Lyon. Lyon had become an important center for Catholic thought, and the circle of Catholic intellectuals there included not only Mounier but also the Christian existentialist (whom Sartre himself would soon admire) Gabriel Marcel. And again, also present at Uriage was the Catholic intellectual Hubert Beuve-​Méry as well as young supporters not only of Mounier but also of Charles de Gaulle.87 Significantly, Mounier himself explicitly praised Schaeffer’s Jeune France in Esprit in February 1941, an issue that Messiaen had seen upon his release from prison.88 Mounier, like Sartre, was stressing individual liberty, although he believed that “the person,” by participating in the all-​encompassing liberty of God, thus learned or realized his own liberty. Again, such Catholic personalism was opposed to those Neo-​Thomist theologians who rather believed in the importance of following established church doctrinal authority. And personalists, firmly abjuring liberal individualism, rather stressed the importance of the quest, on the part of the individual, to become a part of the larger “communauté d’amour.”89 The original concert society, Jeune France, established in 1936, was in essence one of Catholics with a predominantly “spiritualist,” nonconformist orientation. Daniel-​Lesur had then gone on to join Schaeffer in Vichy Radio, and Baudrier was also soon active with him at Vichy. Not only was Messiaen recruited upon his release but also Jolivet quickly became a member of the association’s Paris branch. While Messiaen was a member, in the spring of 1941, the priority of Jeune France in the unoccupied zone, where large public gatherings were permitted, was performance—​intended to unify individuals and artists with the broader culture. Their goal was to open up new vistas while furthering a shared artistic heritage, an ideal that Messiaen would now embrace, and continue to do so in his wartime work. Even if Messiaen did not harbor Schaeffer’s illusion, he did have a lifelong interest in theater: his father had translated the complete works of Shakespeare, and Messiaen as a child had mounted and performed Shakespeare’s plays with his

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younger brother.90 This interest had already been revived when Messiaen participated in the CMTA, and thereafter had helped to found the prison camp theater in Silesia: now such an opportunity would again be present. For once more, in the unoccupied zone where the Catholic and national figure of Jeanne d’Arc could still be celebrated, Jeune France immediately did so through theater, and Messiaen would soon contribute creatively.91

Messiaen’s artistic explorations in Portique pour une fille de France Jeune France presented not only the Honegger-​Claudel Oratorio Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher, as well as a new cantata for radio, but also an innovative theatrical work by Schaeffer and Barbier, in which Messiaen and Baudrier participated. Again, the latter, the Portique pour une fille de France, was initiated as a result of Vichy’s promotion of the festival of the saint (in early May) in the unoccupied zone and on an impressively lavish scale. This work marked the emergence of Schaeffer’s own seminal realization (and eventually Messiaen’s) of how new artistic genres or aesthetic formations may result from technological innovations, awakening individual perceptions while forging new communal networks. It may also have been the experience of writing his sections in Portique pour une fille de France, which included the sophisticated use of two choruses, that influenced Messiaen in his Trois petites liturgies de la présence divine, begun in 1943. Recent studies have examined the music by Messiaen’s colleague, Léo Preger, which has now been found, together with that of Messiaen. Preger’s contribution (like Schaeffer’s text) had included an anachronistic quotation from Méhul’s revolutionary period Chant du départ as well as a chorus with “bouches fermées.” Otherwise his music was more conventional, as in his pastoral march with woodwinds and his a cappella chorus, which critics described as in the “style grégorien.” Baudrier’s music has not yet been found, but contemporaries admired his “Marche du cortège du sacre” as well as the power of his closing contribution, when Jeanne mounts the scaffold with the Bishop Cauchon crying out and imploring her pardon.92 Messiaen contributed both the Te Deum and the Impropères; whether he requested or was assigned them is not known, but here we confront important questions. For the Improperia, or Reproaches, chanted at the Good Friday Liturgy to accompany the veneration of the Cross, has been construed as anti-​ Semitic in its overtones. In fact it comprises a series of oppositions between God’s own good actions and the supposed infidelities of the Jews at the time of Christ’s condemnation.93 Thus of central importance is precisely how Messiaen set them,

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which may have been influenced by his personal attitude; he had good Jewish friends, including Claude Arrieu (soon to be hidden by Pierre Schaeffer).94 Messiaen’s setting of the Impropères is responsorial, for he alternates the spoken reproaches addressed by Jeanne to those delivering her to the enemy with musical sections, thus accentuating the parallel between her passion and that of Christ.95 But perhaps most significant is Messiaen’s frequent use of the dissonant interval of the major second in the recitation of the tenors in the smaller chorus, which one critic referred to as “très moderne.” Was this a reflection of Messiaen’s attitude to the verses and to their anti-​Semitic associations? One can only speculate, based on what we do know of both his ideas and personal actions. Messiaen also wrote the Te Deum in a responsorial style, here using both larger and smaller chorus, a technique he would employ in his Petites liturgies, with its “couplets” and “refrains.” In the Te Deum both choruses are three-​part—​soprano, tenor, and bass—​with the latter giving the Gregorian intonation before a melismatic version for the three voices. Messiaen then regroups the verses two by two, with the larger chorus psalmodizing in chant-​like unison while the smaller chorus responds polyphonically. This sometimes includes melismatic sections (as would again be the case in the Petites liturgies), here in order to emphasize specific words such as “sanctus” and “laudat.”96 The Portique was less a pageant than a celebration—​a genre associated with the liminal, or the socially transformative, and characterized by a surplus of signifiers—​a sensory overload created by a profusion of images and the intermingling of categories.97 The Portique pour une fille de France was a work thus meant to serve a socially reflective function, and to illustrate—​as Messiaen himself would continue to do—​that tradition does not have to be inert, that through it one may explore new meanings as well as new aesthetic directions. Although Schaeffer was not yet an active résistant, others involved in the organization already were, including Jean-​Marie Soutou (who helped to hide Jewish families using Jeune France facilities in Lyon) and André Clavé, who was eventually denounced and thereafter sent to Buchenwald.98 Vichy was eventually to perceive Jeune France’s divergence from Pétain’s stated aims, condemning works like the Portique as nothing more than mere “divertissements.” And in increasing opposition to Vichy’s ideal of achieving homogeneity or conformity through culture, Schaeffer (like Messiaen), influenced by his own personalist background, sought not to foreclose but to enlarge meaning, as well as personal conceptions of identity. Again as Schaeffer acknowledged, it was through his experience in Jeune France and with such creative projects that he realized, by following their dynamic, he had crossed from the legal into illegal realms. Although Messiaen himself had already moved in this direction through his professed support for de Gaulle, the experience of Jeune France may have

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reinforced his inclinations and helped to radicalize his own aesthetic tendencies. Significantly Messiaen would remain in contact with this circle (as would his student Guy Bernard-​Delapierre), later working with its former members on various artistic projects, particularly in connection with both the radio and theater.99 Even though Schaeffer’s organization was eventually to be dissolved, Messiaen was fortunate to be a part of it at the apex of its activity, and despite his administrative duties was vibrantly involved as performer as well as composer. As he wrote to his wife, Claire, on March 12, 1941 (shortly after his arrival in Vichy), “The work involves the organization of concerts, lectures, tours, stage performance, folklore. etc.: this will be my work to ‘organize’ (letters, visits, telephone calls, diplomacy).” He then adds that he was scheduled to go on tour as a pianist, and this would include the performance of some of his own earlier works.100 Messiaen also points out here that, in addition, he was to assist Daniel-​Lesur, who was now director of Radio-​Jeunesse in Vichy, “for a salary of 3,000 francs per month, as well as composing incidental music for payment, for orchestra, recording . . . . There will be frequent travel, all expenses paid.” Finally, he adds that another advantage of his position—​in addition to the generous salary and opportunity to perform his own works—​was that “In making my arrangements with Lesur, I  can substitute for him in the mornings and afternoon, practice piano and compose in the evenings.” Messiaen’s creative activity at Vichy was also, in part, made possible by the unusually comfortable living conditions (for the period) that were provided for Jeune France members.101 Messiaen appeared content within this circle, although located in the heart of Vichy; perhaps this was because it comprised a Catholic grouping that at first believed (like Mounier) it could use the regime to achieve its own goals.

The politics of Messiaen’s appointment to  the Paris Conservatoire Despite all these advantages and the presence of several friends, by the end of March Messiaen was considering a return to Paris, again in part because some of his close colleagues were due shortly to leave for Marseille. But even just after his arrival in Vichy, Messiaen already had his sights on Paris, being aware (as he explained to his wife, Claire) of the important opportunities for performance in venues such as the Association de musique contemporaine. This association, which focused on chamber music, united several established concert societies, including Triton, Sérénade, (his) Jeune France, and the former Société nationale, presenting concerts every eight days. After pointing out to Claire that while his position as church organist at La Trinité was unpaid, he still could return to his

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position at the École Normale de Musique, which was, as he put it, his “by rights,” and that Cortot, its director, could arrange this.102 But Messiaen, in quest of more time to compose, had his heart set on an open position as professor of harmony at the Paris Conservatoire. André Bloch, who had previously held the post, had been fired on December 18, 1940 (at age sixty-​seven, close to retirement), due to Vichy’s anti-​Semitic laws, along with the pianist Lazare Lévy, whom Rabaud had sought to retain. Bloch had long taught at the Conservatoire, becoming professor of harmony in 1927; when he was fired the interim position was filled by Alice Pelliot, a professor of solfège and his former assistant.103 Messiaen was aware that there would be competition for this position, explaining to Claire, “Duruflé and Revel are on their way up, but I should have more chances here, with my Leçons d’harmonie published by Leduc.”104 Moreover, Messiaen rightly sensed that his current proximity to important officials at Vichy was a marked advantage; hence he cultivated them, in addition to using his existing contacts in Paris. As he wrote to his wife in late March, “I have moved heaven and earth for the harmony job, and I think it is going to happen . . .. I have seen Mme Albert Roussel about it, and have alerted Dommange.”105 It undoubtedly helped that the latter, who was the managing director of his publisher Durand, was an ardent supporter of Vichy and of cooperation with the Germans, becoming (in 1942)  the president of the Comité d’organisation des industries de la musique. Messiaen thus did not wait passively: ever since his arrival at Vichy in March 1941 he deployed his network of contacts and lobbied many of the now influential figures in the French musical field, to achieve his own ends.106 He was well aware of his sources of support, opining, “Parisian musicians are on my side,” and pointing out once again that he planned to meet with Cortot, who was undoubtedly aware of the situation. Indeed Cortot was already making his presence felt at the Conservatoire, and in July 1941 he would be named a member of its Conseil supérieur d’enseignement. Later, when Cortot presided over the Comité d’organisation de la musique (created on October 14, 1943), the members included not only Marcel Dupré but also Olivier Messiaen, Tony Aubin, and Francis Poulenc. Although Cortot owed this position to the political influence of Bonnard and others, the members of the committee again in part reflected the internal hierarchy as well as exigencies of the professional field.107 But to Messiaen it was not only Cortot who appeared useful:  through the intermediary of Maurice Martenot he sought to tap other officials at Vichy, or as he put it, “some people who are even higher up.” And sagaciously in his letter of application for the position Messiaen explained that his submission was late because he had only recently returned from captivity; and he also stressed the historical aspects of his forthcoming Leçons d’harmonie, thus appealing to the conservatives at Vichy: “I have written these exercises in the style of masters

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from Monteverdi to Ravel (via Mozart, Schumann, Fauré, etc.).” Messiaen then astutely points out the importance of understanding different musical languages through a study of the masterpieces themselves, but as he qualifies, “to develop one’s personal language and full potential.”108 Still, as with any government or teaching post during Vichy, he was forced to adhere to the explicit directives of its deplorable Statut des juifs, which had been promulgated on October 3, 1940. This meant that Messiaen was forced to declare not only that his father was French and that he had never belonged to any secret society, but in addition that there were no Jews in his immediate family.109 Such a distasteful necessity, in conjunction with his experience in Schaeffer’s Jeune France, where Jews were illegally assisted and hidden, may have reinforced Messiaen’s inherent tendency to follow his own personal path. But his conscience here may have been divided (as in the case of Poulenc), for in order to obtain an influential position in the field he was forced to maneuver and at times to compromise. This may well have been a reason for Messiaen’s later attempt to distance himself from the political context of Vichy in his postwar interviews with Claude Samuel, where he proclaimed his horror at all political engagement. But during Vichy he indeed had influential professional as well as political help; in fact his former teacher Marcel Dupré went to see the German commander in charge of music at the Ministry of Propaganda, Dr. Fritz Piersig, specifically on his behalf.110 Piersig was an important figure to contact, since the Germans oversaw all branches of the French administration, including not only education but also every aspect of French cultural affairs. One group (V.4) specifically monitored French educational institutions, through the interlocution of the Secrétaire d’état à l’éducation nationale et à la jeunesse. It specifically sought to ban anything anti-​German within the occupied zone and rigorously oversaw the nomination of all potential teachers or professors.111 In considering Messiaen’s nomination Piersig avowed to Dupré that he recognized the name and then averred that he would help to bring him back to work in Paris. Dupré was currently being promoted by both the Germans and collaborationist circles as the potential new director of the Paris Conservatoire. Again, this may have been due in part to his willingness to have his organ recitals at the église Saint-​Sulpice broadcast by the German-​run Radio-​Paris. But despite such support, when the governing board of the Conservatoire convened to vote on a list of candidates the election was difficult; in fact there had to be four series of votes before a consensus could be reached.112 Dupré later described in a letter what had transpired on this occasion, but significantly he now recounted a different version, rather stressing the approbation for Messiaen. As he put it, “There was a list typed in black with fifty candidates on it but all eyes were drawn to the name Messiaen written in purple on the margin. He had rushed to apply the day

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before, explaining that he had only just come back from a prison camp . . .. My two neighbors and I exchanged winks with dear Samuel-​Rousseau sitting some way away, and in the very first round things went our way. Messiaen was appointed.” Although Claude Delvincourt would not officially become the Conservatoire’s new director until April 15, 1941, his influence was also important, and some have attributed Messiaen’s election to his support.113

Performance of and support for Messiaen’s previous compositions Finally successful in his quest, Messiaen was able to return to Paris to begin his classes at the Conservatoire in early May, although his wife and son had not yet received permission to cross into the occupied zone to join him. However, Messiaen’s return to Paris was marked with much publicity and by even more performances of his previous work. His Quatuor pour la fin du temps was presented on July 24, 1941 (the tense summer of rumblings concerning Vichy), but it was not given again in public, aside from a performance of the fifth movement (for cello and piano) a month after the work’s Parisian premiere.114 Messiaen’s challenging Quartet was not included in those propagandistic concerts comprising the works of both former and current French prisoners of war. It was rather his earlier works that were now presented in concerts, such as that of January 11, 1942, by the Orchestre de la Société des concerts du Conservatoire, under the baton of Charles Munch. For this occasion Munch selected Messiaen’s composition for orchestra (of 1930), Les offrandes oubliées, the text and lofty spirituality of which would not likely be construed as a challenge within the context.115 Among Messiaen’s earlier works Les offrandes oubliées and L’ascension were now the most frequently presented, as performances of his inspiring and uplifting prewar compositions proliferated in Paris.116 The venues included highly prominent musical organizations and concert societies, in addition to special celebrations in honor of specific events or groups. Among them in 1941 were performances at the Association de musique contemporaine of compositions of the original Jeune France (on July 18), and of Messiaen’s organ works at the Palais de Chaillot (on December 28). More performances followed throughout 1942, including one by the Société des concerts du Conservatoire on January 11; another concert of works by the original Jeune France (together with those of Honegger) by the Orchestre symphonique de France on March 4; and one by the concert society Triptych on December 23. Presentations of Messiaen’s compositions also continued over the next two years, and most prominently the premiere of his new Visions de l’Amen at a private concert of the Pléiade series on May 10,

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1943, which we shall shortly examine. This was followed by a performance of the same work at the Pléiade’s public concert in the Salle Gaveau on June 23, and then by a performance of his other works by the Triptych Concert Society on October 27, 1943.117 Although reactions to his new works would be mixed, Messiaen still found himself with loyal supporters, including the now eminent Honegger, whom Messiaen admired and who had championed his previous compositions. Honegger perhaps best summed up the allure of Messiaen’s music within the emotionally and politically fraught climate of the period in his article, “Olivier Messiaen,” published in Comœdia on July 12, 1941. For the older composer Messiaen not only displayed a high artistic conscience and aspiration as well as conviction but also challenged his audience, or provoked new listening strategies while at the same time subtly drawing them in.118 Such opinions were echoed by other prominent figures, including Norbert Dufourq in L’information musicale on January 23, 1942. Here Dufourq emphasizes Messiaen’s youth, his faith, his freedom from “systems,” and the presence of a “flame” or spark within him, then noting how powerfully, if ineffably, his music is thus able to communicate. Speaking from the perspective of a fellow organist, he also considers Messiaen as, in effect, a direct disciple (at least in spiritual terms) of Tournemire as well as of his teacher, Dupré. Clearly the mixture of traditional with more innovative elements in Messiaen’s earlier works appealed to Dufourq, who here stresses the monumental aspects of his form as well as his new directions, noting his use of “modes anciens et orientaux.”119 So prominent now was Messiaen that Serge Moreaux highlighted him in Comœdia in his article “Regards sur la jeune musique européenne,” published on January 17, 1942. Again, here he discusses Messiaen together with Tony Aubin and Jean Françaix, noting Messiaen’s inspiration, “tormented by the absolute beyond the sonorous material,” as well as by a sort of religious “mystic anguish.” But the culmination of recognition for Messiaen was the article on his work by Armand Machabey in L’information musicale, published on May 22, 1942, the first of his twenty-​six “portraits” of younger French composers. Machabey here similarly acknowledges the challenge that Messiaen’s work presents to his audience, but then assures his readers that it is well worth their full attention.120 In addition, Messiaen’s prewar work was recorded: for example, in October 1942 it was included in the forty-​record government-​sponsored anthology of music by over fifty French composers, intended to accentuate France’s recent cultural achievement. Again, the anthology was a collaborative project of the Administration of Fine Arts and that of Foreign Affairs, with the help of the Association française d’action artistique. Although its goal was to spread and thus celebrate French culture throughout the world, the Nazis did not here object, considering Paris “an international showcase for the Third Reich”—​and perhaps also hoping to

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encourage further French cooperation through culture. The project engaged the most illustrious French performers, and it was no other than Roger Désormière, with the orchestra of the Concerts Gabriel Pierné, who conducted Messiaen’s Les offrandes oubliées for this important collection.121 However, despite the fact that other composers of religious music, as well as important Parisian organists, received (or completed) state commissions during Vichy—​Maurice Duruflé and Jean Langlais among them—​Messiaen was not included; nor was he one of the repatriated prisoners now commissioned.122 Works such as Duruflé’s Requiem, commissioned in 1938, rather promised to embody the now desired image of a French tradition built on the work of great turn-​of-​the century predecessors (when Wagnerian influence, for some, was strong). Moreover, those on the committees that decided who would receive commissions preferred not only Conservatoire-​trained musicians but also Catholics more traditional than Messiaen. Although Duruflé (among the latter) now continued to receive funding for his prewar commission (not originally a Requiem), he wisely delayed completion of the work until 1948, and then included a notably triumphal tone.123

Messiaen’s new circles and private commissions Although his new music was apparently considered too bold, hence inappropriate for a state commission, Messiaen was approached for a private one, providing him with an apt occasion to pursue his ideals and innovations. This came about through the suggestion of the singer (and résistant) Irène Joachim, whose cousin, Denise Tual, was now commissioning works for the private Pléiade concert series. Messiaen had first met Irène Joachim when she was called on to replace Marcelle Bunlet, who was unable to perform his songs in early May 1942, at the home of one of his supporters and private students, Virginie Bianchini.124 His admiration for Joachim was reciprocal, and she urged her cousin to seek him out for a commission, since Tual was in search of new works for the Pléiade concerts. Among those commissioned was Francis Poulenc, now in the French musical resistance and who advised Tual, as did another résistant and good friend of Poulenc, André Schaeffner. Equally helpful was the early résistant Roger Désormière, to whom Messiaen would grow close; although Désormière’s other responsibilities precluded active involvement, he similarly advised Tual, as did Paul Rivet and Michel Leiris, who had also organized a resistance network.125 Gallimard was still the publisher of the most noted surrealist authors, including such résistants as Aragon and Éluard, the latter remaining one of Messiaen’s artistic idols. Also in this circle was Jean-​Paul Sartre, whose pathbreaking reflections

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on human liberty, his L’être et le néant, would be published by Gallimard in 1943.126 The paths of Sartre and Messiaen would thus once again cross, this time not only tangibly but also intellectually, for Messiaen’s new commission allowed him similarly to engage in reflexion on human freedom and on man’s right to define his own future. Tual herself, like her husband, Roland (the film producer who was also in surrealist circles), and her cousin Irène Joachim, was inclined toward the resistance as well as to the avant-​garde. In addition, both Tual and her husband grew close to the writer André Malraux, who was in the Resistance and whose films they produced despite Vichy’s apparent displeasure. Not surprisingly, Malraux now grew familiar with Messiaen’s work and would commission a piece commemorative of the world wars from the composer when he became minister of fine art under the presidency of Charles de Gaulle.127 Not only did the Tuals produce films that displeased Vichy officials but also they sought to protect the financial interests and lives of their many Jewish friends, being well aware of the Jewish round-​ups in Paris. As Denise Tual points out in her memoirs, since 1941 (possibly through the BBC) they knew of the camps for political prisoners and of the Jewish arrests in the quartier du Temple (the 3rd and 4th arrondissements) in May of that year. By the time of the next massive arrests of Jews by the Vichy police in Paris in the summer of 1942, she learned that she and her husband (although not Jewish) were politically suspect and placed on Vichy’s “liste noire.”128 It was in the fall of 1942 that Tual sought out Messiaen, despite the consternation of Schaeffner and Désormière, who did not like his music and feared that his religiosity (which they did not share) would make the concerts appear ridiculous. But Tual’s cousin Irène Joachim, whom she trusted fully, had described Messiaen as not only religious and a “curieux bonhomme” (a strange fellow) but also a composer whose explorations included striking new sonorities, such as African percussion and bird songs.129 Tual, now intrigued and thus in quest of an appointment with Messiaen, went first to the église de la Trinité and on entering heard him improvising, soon finding herself, as she put it, no less than “bouleversée” (overwhelmed). She also recounts that immediately she was seized by the feeling of having entered a new artistic world, or being in the presence of a musical modernity that was totally different from anything she had yet heard. Tual wondered how such a bourgeois parish—​in fact that of Nadia Boulanger—​could harbor musical explorations that she describe as “aussi insolite” (so unusual).130 When she later met Messiaen she was even more surprised by his appearance, which she describes as not only young but also “plutôt zazous.” The latter was a term associated with the consciously bizarre and effete style of dress (often highly colored) donned by the rebellious middle-​class French youth of the period. Significantly, through their appearance they sought to flout Vichy’s conservative social norms and gender roles, even

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developing their own slang (which included affected English words); they also defiantly listened to both jazz and swing.131 Messiaen was indeed interested in the commission, and after receiving a letter that Tual had immediately written arranged to meet her at La Trinité to discuss it further. Following this encounter Tual received a letter (dated October 26, 1942) in which Messiaen confirmed the details of the commission and the sum they had agreed on—​10,000 francs—​for a work, not yet titled, to be written for two pianos.132

Vichy’s political direction, division within the church, and Messiaen’s creative choices The new composition, which was to become his Visions de l’Amen, was in fact well under way before the commission was officially finalized that October. Some have even posited, on the basis of his treatise Technique de mon langage musical (finished in October 1942 and published two years later), that the new work was already largely completed. Hence it was written during the emotionally trying period of Messiaen’s life when his first wife, Claire, was declining both physically and mentally.133 Moreover, as he was planning the work Messiaen (in addition to many others) was undoubtedly aware of the regime’s escalating collaboration with Nazis, and thus the dire plight of Parisian Jews. He was also surely apprised of the fact that Mounier, in whose circle he had worked while part of Schaeffer’s association, had been imprisoned for seditious activity in May 1942. And in April the proponent of more intensive collaboration Pierre Laval had been forcibly returned to power by the German occupant, to whom Vichy was now increasingly forced to cede. When this occurred at least six prelates again stressed the duty of all good Catholics to obey the legal government, even though Pétain and the traditionalists, whom they had previously supported, were losing power. The church’s submission would again become evident during the roundup and deportations in the summer of 1942, with only belated and dim protests by high church officials, to the bewilderment of the lower French clergy.134 However, not all Catholic leaders concurred:  in fact the theme of the text delivered by Monseigneur de Solange in fall 1943 would be that the sovereignty of the state (or established power) must be limited by the transcendent moral law. Catholic dissent was growing, and now figures such as Messeigneurs Saliège (of Toulouse) and Théas (of Montauban) expressed their opposition, thus further dividing the French Catholic Church. Indeed none could remain neutral after the horrific spectacle of the Vél’ d’Hiv roundups on July 16–​17, 1942, just as Messiaen was preparing for his vacation with his family in Neussargues-​Moissac.135 On

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these dates some 13,152 Jews of foreign origin (including over 4,000 children)—​ many having become naturalized French citizens—​were arrested by 9,000 French policemen and trainees. The request to include children as well as women in fact came directly from Laval, who pragmatically foresaw all the arrangements that would have to be made if the children were left and not cared for. Those who had no children were sent immediately to the camp in Drancy, while the families were transported to the Vélodrome d’Hiver, a huge Parisian cycling arena.136 Since the notice sent to the police had been issued three days before the roundup, news of the impending arrests leaked out, becoming widely known and compelling some courageous Parisians to hide the Jews who were in danger. As a result, although the plan was to arrest 27,361 Jews in Paris, about half those who had been targeted evaded capture through the complicity of friends, colleagues, concierges, and various social groupings. Those interned faced abominable conditions—​surrounded by constant floodlights, loudspeakers bombarding them with continual instructions, and with no beds and hardly any food or water. They had to endure this for several days. Then they were sent to the transit camp in Drancy; in August the mothers were separated from their children and were the first to be deported, the children then following two weeks later. From Drancy they were put on trains and sent to either Birkenau or Auschwitz, where most of them were sent immediately to die in the camps’ gas chambers. Of the 4,115 children who were arrested and then subsequently deported, almost none of them were to return to France alive.137 Although Messiaen did not discuss this in later interviews or in his letters, it could not have escaped his awareness, nor indeed the cognizance of most Parisians.138 And his return to Paris in the fall was met with another rude reality (which affected his wife’s family’s region, in the previously unoccupied zone)—​ that of total occupation in early November, which also brought increased repression. In addition he undoubtedly noticed that even more Jewish students were being expelled from the Conservatoire—​not on German insistence but rather due to the increasing pressures of Laval’s minister of education, Abel Bonnard. This would affect Messiaen directly, for one of those excluded that fall was his student, Odette Gartenlaub, an accomplished pianist as well as composer. Already, by June 21, 1941, Jewish students could constitute only 3 percent of the total population in institutions of higher education; but in the Conservatoire they had been reduced to auditor status by October 1940, and were banned entirely from careers in the performing arts by June 6, 1942.139 In May 1942, Claude Delvincourt, as director of the Paris Conservatoire, was himself confronted with another distasteful pressure coming from the Laval’s new government. This occurred in the context of the annual French national fête of Jeanne d’Arc:  although it could no longer be celebrated publicly, Abel

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Bonnard instructed him to have all the professors read one of the two texts that he enclosed, depending on the age of the students. Not only did he specify that he preferred this take place on May 9 (the official saint’s day), but that he wished personally to be informed that his instructions had been followed punctually. The principal text enclosed consisted of one and a half pages of maudlin prose referring to “le peuple” and to Jeanne d’Arc; it also invoked a “new spring” for France, which now has an “evident leader” whom none can doubt—​the Maréchal Pétain. If requested to read this or a similar text, one can imagine Messiaen’s probable response as a purported defender of Pétain’s enemy, Charles de Gaulle. In addition, over the two months that followed the initial request to Delvincourt (when Messiaen was present in Paris) it was also decided that, despite the director’s reserve, Conservatoire students could be used for political events such as the gala organized by the Rassemblement national populaire at the salle Pleyel on July 11, 1942.140 While Messiaen was growing cognizant of these realities, and of the escalating internal tension within the church, he was composing his new work for two pianos and considering the texts that might serve not only to guide but also to inspire him as he wrote the music and its textual commentary. Meanwhile Sartre was similarly engaged in a creative project that would also respond to the current events and conditions—​above all to the increasing loss of liberty. This would similarly lead him to a heightened sense of the necessity of internal resistance, while at the same time of indefatigably maintaining and projecting human hope.

Sartre, Messiaen, Hello, and subjective choice Sartre’s project would be his play Les mouches, to be directed by Charles Dullin (director of the Théâtre de la Cité), who was part of the circle around Gallimard and who not only supported Sartre during this period of creative breakthrough but also would attend Messiaen’s next premiere. However, Dullin also enjoyed official favor, receiving state subsidies for his productions in Paris and, along with Gaston Baty and Pierre Renoir, serving as an intermediary between the Parisian theaters and the occupation authorities.141 Sartre had joined the Front national des écrivains at the beginning of 1943, and Les mouches premiered in Paris early that summer (on June 3, 1943). One of the themes of Les mouches (a version of the Orestes/​Agamemnon story) is the necessity of making challenging personal choices as a result of one’s consciousness of what is right—​even if those who will ultimately benefit withhold their support out of fear. In this same year Sartre was also responding philosophically to the experiences that so many were facing, and articulated them as well as his conclusions in his L’être et le néant, published immediately by Gallimard. As Sartre puts it

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here, under the circumstance of captivity or the current austerities of life it is hard to escape the difficult, primitive facts of our experience, and thus to consider man as a transcendent, autonomous creature. However, he then posits that we are never independent of our experience and of the choices that necessarily result—​a theme he would continue to reiterate and develop in several postwar writings, particularly in L’existentialisme est un humanisme. In the latter he makes explicit reference to the commonly held belief, so resonant for the Vichy period, of the importance of not questioning established power or combating force, then pointing out the disquieting necessity of making one’s own subjective moral choices. For man is what he does or consciously decides—​a basic premise of existentialism, be it atheist or Christian in orientation—​and in the latter case he cites Gabriel Marcel, the prominent French theologian who had been close to Jeune France’s Lyon circle.142 Gabriel Marcel’s direction within Catholicism helps to illuminate that of Messiaen, whose Visions de l’Amen, written under circumstances that resemble Sartre’s, raises questions that we might construe as existential. Messiaen was, of course, writing from the perspective of his religious faith, but still within the framework of individual interpretation of scripture and thus of one’s subjective appropriation. Marcel had proposed that man, even a Christian, must define meaning for himself, as Messiaen now sought to do with specific reference to holy scripture. Moreover Messiaen ostensibly believed, like Marcel, that man must construct his own relation not only with God—​or with transcendent values—​ but equally with nature and with society.143 For both (as well as for Mounier), man was thus synonymous with a freedom that is realized through acts of interpretation, as well as of personal choice, the former a theme that Messiaen now also extracted from the writings of the nineteenth-​century French theologian Ernest Hello. The connection between Sartre, Messiaen, Marcel, and Mounier is indeed striking, for Marcel’s Christian existentialism has been described as a kind of personalist theism. Messiaen’s own orientation was toward personalism, both in the 1930s and then later in Schaeffer’s circle. According to Marcel, God exists in all our personal acts, for we must be morally responsible or engage in self-​ interrogation on every level of our existence. As believers we are thus continually in search of those truths or meanings that are embedded in the specific life situations that we must all, in some manner, confront. Like Messiaen a lover of Paul Claudel’s work, Marcel posited the self as “holy temple” of the spirit—​one built by God’s own hand, an inner universe with its own laws as well as its distinctive equilibrium.144 For Marcel, then, as for Sartre and for Messiaen (through the prism of Hello’s work), man is not only what he does or decides—​a subjectivity that projects itself freely into the future—​but, in sum (to cite Marcel), “a project

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who lives subjectively.” Hello, to whom Messiaen was introduced intellectually by his brother around 1933 (at the time that he discovered Esprit), sought, like some later nineteenth-​century Catholics, an alternative to the inflexible authority of church dogma. And as Sartre would later add, we are inescapably responsible for our own acts, and concomitantly for what we are: hence the quality of human subjectivity, and thus of choice as well as of reflection, is no less than essential, for it defines humanity.145 Sartre had cast these ideas creatively in his play Les mouches (1943), where, as he explained in the preface, he treated a tragedy of human liberty in explicit opposition to fatality, the latter a theme pervading Vichy and Nazi propaganda. As Sartre also later pointed out, this was the terrifying period when French hostages were being randomly selected to be shot by the Wehrmacht in reprisal for specific French acts of resistance. Messiaen’s brother remained a hostage, and therefore was still in danger, perhaps compelling the composer to reflect even further on human liberty as well as the need to reject, not accept, fatality.146 In Les mouches Sartre, employing the armature of classic tragedy, sought to enunciate his belief that man, while free in conscience can only become truly free in the act of realizing his own deep personal convictions. Again as he explains, he thus strove to counteract the call by the regime (as well as by the church) for acquiescence in the wake of French defeat, and rather to stress the future and man’s own freedom to define and construct it.147 Messiaen would similarly turn to human choice, or to subjective interpretation—​in this case of holy scripture—​and thus to the future in all its glory in here highlighting the writings of Ernest Hello. An opponent of the rationalist Taine, Hello had inspired other converts to Catholicism, or those who embraced it through personal choice, such as the close friend of Pierre Schaeffer, the scout master Clotaire Nicole.148 Some scholars have posited that it was Messiaen’s brother Alain (a writer and a poet) who had introduced him to Hello’s Paroles de Dieu: Réflexions sur quelques textes sacrés, first published in 1877. Messiaen was now again drawn to this work, and in particular to Part IV, titled “Les larmes dans l’écriture,” which includes the final poignant section on the word “Amen.”149 As Hello here so eloquently points out, among its meanings this protean word can signify are not only the beginning and the middle but also the end, or the “consommation des choses.” The grandeur of its function for Hello inheres primarily in the superfluity of choice among all the meanings that it contains, beginning with the substantive sense, as used in the Apocalypse. But then he points out that it may also function as an adverb, implying “I tell you truly, veritably, or infallibly,” as well as serving as a verb, or an injunction—​as in “Amen that it be done.”150 Amen, a word not only of power but also of supplication and the ability to say yes to God, is concomitantly a statement of man’s acceptance of God’s inherent

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goodness. Amen thus represents the choice of man’s adhesion to the truth, hence it is also a cry of triumph, of glory, the affirmation of God’s resplendent being, compelling us to become living affirmations of this truth. As Hello concludes (once again presaging Sartre), such choice is man’s very “raison d’être,” beyond which there is nothingness; concomitantly such a human affirmation is inherently the appanage of the divine.151 Messiaen, like Sartre, was increasingly drawn to the theme of will—​of human choice and subjectivity—​but also the moral obligation of man to live the higher truth that he has affirmed through the spirit. For man not only embraces the future through an act of will or of conscious choice, he is obliged to realize the implications of this decision in his actions—​or as Sartre puts it, in his relationship with all humanity. Messiaen made his own intentions clear in the text that he prepared, and which was printed in the program of the premiere at the Pléiade concert of May 10, 1943, at the Galerie Charpentier in Paris. Revealingly he prefaced it with an inscription from Hello concerning the word’s meaning as initiation, mediation, and consummation, and then provided a commentary for each of the seven movements, all concluding with a quotation from a different book of the Bible.152

New content and approaches to form in the Visions de l’Amen Messiaen ostensibly shaped his work as a kind of journey through all the different meanings of Amen—​from the initial act of God’s will (the creation) to its sense as consummation, or to man’s potential state of beatitude.153 In between he follows man’s trajectory, first as personified by the agony of Jesus and his submission to God’s will, and then by man’s conscious desire for love and thus for God’s reign. This is followed by the song of purity, or the natural goodness of birds and saints, and in the end by the final judgment, when man will be held accountable for his earthly choices. As Messiaen later explained, it was when pondering all the ideas that emanated from the divine Amen, or man as flesh and conscience, as body and spirit, that he arrived at a “new kind of music.”154 For he sought here to explore a different sense of time and space, and in doing so arrived at new techniques, which he describes in detail in his treatise (on which he was simultaneously working). Significantly, Messiaen was writing the latter while on the verge of shifting his previously tense posture between tradition and innovation toward a more thoroughgoing stylistic as well as formal renewal. In this treatise, his Technique de mon langage musical, he not only describes the traditional forms (referring in some cases to d’Indy’s Cours de composition musicale), but also discusses how they can be adapted freely, here revealingly speaking of the

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“charm of impossibilities.” Indeed in the Visions he was compelled to define new procedures, since his goal in the work was to develop the four basic meanings of Amen within seven progressive “visions” or optics. This led Messiaen toward a different approach to both language and to musical form, one that he now sought to articulate theoretically in his new treatise. As Yves Balmer has observed, in Messiaen’s discussion of how to innovate within the sonata one finds implicit reference to his new direction in the sketches for the Visions de l’Amen. In fact in the latter work a new kind of logic is ineluctably emerging—​that of the juxtaposition and succession (as opposed to traditional development) of separate elements, or ideas.155 Perhaps as a means of representing the essence of Hello’s text (the different meanings of Amen, leading to understanding, or the imperative to embrace the truth) Messiaen exposes and treats his musical components according to a singular yet systematic rationale. In several movements musical ideas are presented as one would expect in more conventional models, but then quickly followed by others and never conventionally interwoven or contextualized. This leads Messiaen toward a new kind of progression that consists not of the conventional alteration or joining of ideas but rather (as in Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps) of succession, rearrangement, and accumulation. Messiaen’s sketches for the Visions de l’Amen also reflect his new approach to the question of form, for many of his notes concerning the individual pieces as well as the shape of the whole invoke the overarching issue of structure. In his sketches the different sections within each piece appear to be interchangeable, just like the meanings of Amen itself: there is thus no traditional logic in their connection, but the effect of a prism emitting rays of light.156 An apt example of Messiaen’s procedure here is the “Amen de la Création,” in which the so-​called carillon sound is an essential element—​the exclusive material of the first piano part, then superimposed over the theme of Creation. The sketches for this movement reveal the composer’s technique of juxtaposing discrete successive sections; Messiaen’s terms here revealingly include “ensuite” and “puis,” with no other evident connection indicated.157 Nevertheless a logic does inform the final version, and imparts it with a subjective as well as textual ration­ ale: as Messiaen puts it in his “Notes de l’auteur,” the whole piece is a crescendo, beginning from pianissimo. A resounding sense of gradual illumination, as well as of a final affirmation, thus appears to be the larger enunciation. Hence again recalling Sartre, it suggests the conscious embrace of a future that man is ultimately free to choose for himself.158 The idea of the creation that Messiaen here enunciates is resplendently luminous as well as oriented toward the future; he achieves this through a process that stresses not the point of departure but rather a progression, and thus implicitly hope. Moreover, as Peter Hill and Nigel Simeone have pointed out, both in this

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Messiaen, Visions de l’Amen. Paris: Durand et Companie, 1950. Ending of “Amen de la Création.”

piece and within the cycle as a whole the movements progress through a subtle process of accumulation, building slowly in effect until the final “Amen de la consommation.”159 In a period when, as Sartre later recalled, the emphasis was on despair and repentance, it was incumbent on those who resisted resignation

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rather to underline hope, as well as choice or human agency. Messiaen here succeeds in suggesting just such an affirmation through his bold technical exploration of all the ways in which to communicate the different meanings and ultimate implications of Amen. But despite his novel approach to form, Messiaen still grounds his thematic language, in addition to some of his harmonic procedures, in the past, or in history—​an essential component of all identity. Messiaen himself describes the theme of the Creation as a majestic theme of plainchant, although the resemblance to chant is superficial and his melody cannot be construed within the church modes. And later, in his Traité de rhythme, de couleur, et d’ornithologie (begun in 1949 and finished in 1992), Messiaen cites numerous examples in the Visions of his musical references—​either formal, melodic, rhythmic, or harmonic—​to the work of his predecessors or his contemporaries. For example, apropos of the “Amen de l’agonie de Jésus,” he points out sonorities that recall Stravinsky’s Les noces, as well as dissonances that bring to mind Honegger’s opera Antigone (again, performed in early 1943). Similar references that Messiaen here cites (implying that they were either remembered or subconscious) include the works of other revered predecessors or contemporaries, including Massenet, Debussy, Ravel, Bartok, and Schoenberg.160 But this is not the only kind of musical reference to the past within the work: we may also identify formal procedures as well as themes that are suggestive or illustrative in a more traditional sense, some even recalling his prewar work. The “Amen du désir,” for example, consists of an exposition in two sections—​slow then fast—​and in the latter Messiaen includes a virtuoso solo for piano 2, thereafter repeated with additional interjections by piano 1, symbolizing the union of the creator with his creation. Similarly in a traditional rhetorical fashion the “Amen de la consommation” includes a bravura passage in piano 1, representing the “storming of the heavens,” which transforms material from the opening movement. Moreover, the creation theme reappears in piano 2, gradually moving higher in register (or toward the divine) while a series of dissonant chords are transformed into bells, in rhythmic canon, enunciating the glorious end that culminates the initial process of creation.161 These techniques would help the audience as well as critics develop a means of construing this challenging and novel work, as will become evident in the press reviews.

Responses to the challenge of Messiaen’s Visions de l’Amen Within the wartime context Messiaen’s refusal of simple pessimism, like Sartre’s in his play Les mouches, would be construed by some as resistance to the appeal for

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resignation not only by Vichy and the Germans, but also by the French Catholic Church. In fact for certain members of the Resistance, Messiaen’s work appeared to be as impermeable as Sartre’s to the slogans of the Révolution nationale—​a perception that was ostensibly shared by many French youth. The audience for the work’s premiere, at the Pléiade concert of May 10, 1943 (at the Galerie Charpentier), was composed largely of the circle around Gaston Gallimard, the same group that supported the work of Sartre.162 Messiaen had been specific about those whom he wished to be invited to this concert (devoted entirely to his new work); and several present had already attended the dress rehearsal at the home of Mme. Nelly Sivade, the godmother of Messiaen’s student Yvonne Loriod, who performed the piece with him. In attendance at the rehearsal were not only Denise Tual, André Schaeffner, and Gaston Gallimard but also the composers Poulenc, Jolivet, Honegger, and Samazeuilh, all of whom by the end appreciated the work. According to Denise Tual, although Poulenc and Schaeffner, as well as Gallimard, had been hesitant to commission Messiaen, distrusting his “musique liturgique,” they were all nevertheless won over and enthusiastic after the dress rehearsal. The audience for the premiere, which Tual described as well informed and interested, was primarily literary, and apparently understood the way in which Messiaen’s text was intended to work in conjunction with the music.163 Notably present at the concert were Paul Valéry and François Mauriac (who had been a sponsor of Jeune France and grew close to the Catholic left), as well as Jean Cocteau and Jean Paulhan (the former editor of the Nouvelle revue française). Again, also attending was Charles Dullin, who was now intrepidly staging Sartre’s play Les mouches to half empty houses at the Théâtre de la Ville (formerly the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt). In addition, among the audience were the musicians Roland-​Manuel, Francis Poulenc, and the young Pierre Boulez, who was one of the small group of students whom Messiaen insisted that Tual invite.164 The sheer force of Messiaen’s music, aided by the exegesis of the text—​which undoubtedly provided direction for the listening experience—​by all accounts appeared to overwhelm those present and to speak their experience. Denise Tual pronounced the performance a “triumph,” and then pointed out that the Pléiade concerts, for many such as she, were sites of light as well as hope in these particularly somber times. Although the concert was private, Arthur Honegger (who knew the work in advance) wrote of it enthusiastically and supportively in his regular column in Comœdia. In his article (of May 15, 1943) he proclaimed the composition “remarkable,” with his encomium centering on its musical richness as well as its true grandeur of conception.165 Although acknowledging the difficulty of following the “melody” and thus listening in a more traditional mode, Honegger stresses the work’s “poetic power,” the “constantly exalted level of

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musical discourse,” and the inherent quality of its “musical invention.” He also emphasizes the work’s “noble style” as well as its expressive intensity, particularly in the “Amen de l’agonie de Jésus” as well as in the long, centrally placed “Amen du désir.”166 Honegger astutely grasped how Messiaen was challenging the public to develop new modes of perception and thus of awareness, a goal he here palpably admires but could not himself realize in his wartime work. Indeed, so enthusiastic was Honegger that he boldly expressed his desire that the work, together with Messiaen’s commentaries, be performed at a future concert of the Jeunesses musicales de France. The latter was an educational effort founded in June 1942 and intended to present great works, along with a scholarly commentary about them, to large groups of French youth.167 Honegger’s proposition was audacious, given the associations’ largely conservative program: indeed as he bluntly put it, Messiaen’s work “would be infinitely more interesting and useful than the parade of works which is usually served up there.” Moreover Honegger opined that this piece, even if it proved controversial, would provide French youth with an example to both admire and discuss, hence imparting “life in the world of music.”168 Was Honegger here transcending his apparently accommodationist political attitude, or simply professionally seeking to improve one of Vichy’s cultural endeavors for French youth? Whatever the response, the work appeared to impress and to speak to many regardless of ideological position, perhaps by addressing the larger moral issues that all currently were forced to confront. The Visions found a generally positive response not only among the small and elite public of this concert, but in addition several weeks later at one of the Pléiade’s few public concerts, held at the Salle Gaveau on June 21. Once more, the public concerts (for charity) were in fact an attempt, as Tual put it, to “officialize” or regularize their enterprise.169 The resistance aspect of the concerts is thus equivocal—​as in the case of the Éditions Gallimard—​and the public venue of the concert meant that the Parisian collaborationist press could attend in force. On the occasion of this public benefit concert the organizers astutely also programmed one of Messiaen’s earlier, more accessible works of the mid-​1930s, his Poèmes pour Mi. The Visions de l’Amen occupied the first half, and Guy Bernard-​ Delapierre, this concert’s organizer, read Messiaen’s written text, which here ostensibly aided the listening experience.170 Among those in attendance were important critics who published articles about Messiaen’s premiere in both the musical and general press, drawing attention not only to the novelty but also to the resonance of Messiaen’s new musical language. Not surprisingly the traditionalist press was more guarded in its assessment, while still acknowledging Messiaen’s innovations in language and perceiving his frequent references to older forms and techniques. For example, Armand

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Machabey published a review of the concert the following September in L’information musicale, and although he was critical of the written text—​finding it useless and confusing in language—​he was able both to construe and to appreciate the music, grasping a certain traditional element within it. As he points out, each piece is based on a brief principal motive announced in one of the two pianos: Messiaen then elaborates on this motive within a recognizable and simple form. Here he cites the “Amen de la Création,” built on a chord presented in piano 2, while piano 1 proceeds to go its own way in a sort of extreme and varied pedal point. Although he criticizes Messiaen’s combination of chords (which he finds “completely crazy”) he still appreciates his innovations, if remaining uncertain as to the composer’s musicality.171

Messiaen’s turn to resistance themes and models Despite the mixed public responses, Messiaen continued intrepidly to develop not only musically but also personally and intellectually, palpably feeling the new impact of the Gallimard circle, as becomes evident in his next work for the series. Denise Tual contacted Messiaen the following fall—​in September 1943—​ about a new commission for the 1944 Pléiade concerts, so enthusiastic had the responses to the Visions been within this group. Messiaen’s original plan was to write either another composition for two pianos (in a similar style), or another quartet. However, by October 4, when Messiaen stopped by Tual’s office and in her absence left a note, his plans had changed, for he feared simply repeating the Visions, and perhaps less well. Now he was planning a work with a “reciter” (recalling his experience in Schaeffer’s Jeune France), and it was to include not only ondes Martenot but three flutes, three trombones, a piano, strings, and a substantial percussion section. Significantly, Messiaen immediately suggested that Roger Désormière be asked to conduct it, and wanted the text—​on which he was already working—​to be recited by Jean-​Louis Barrault, who had also been active in Schaeffer’s Jeune France.172 In fact this was one of several projects that was probably influenced by his earlier short yet important theatrical experience in Pierre Schaeffer’s association. For example, by June 8, 1942, Messiaen was at work on incidental music for a theatrical production of Oedipe; moreover the brief music was written for ondes Martenot, an instrument Messiaen favored and that the association (which included Martenot) often used in theater. Messiaen had also been involved in a project with Marcel Herrand, the codirector (with Jean Marchat) of the innovative theater troupe Le rideau de Paris—​the kind that Schaeffer and his group had sponsored. The play in question, by Jean Fabre, opened in July 1942—​the tense period of the Vél’ d’Hiv roundups—​under the resonant title Dieu est innocent. Although the music that Messiaen wrote for this

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play has not yet been found, according to Yvonne Loriod some of the themes he here used were subsequently incorporated into his Visions de l’Amen.173 Messiaen remained in contact with Schaeffer’s circle, and its influence again appears in the project he began in early 1944, with the poet and bureaucrat (at the Préfecture de Police) Maurice Toesca (defended by Resistance members during the postwar purge). Here he was asked to write music for a radio presentation of Toesca’s poems about the nativity, originally twelve short pieces for piano meant to complement a reading of the poet’s work. However, the composition would evolve quite differently; going beyond his initial charge, Messiaen (by the end of the summer) had rather completed twenty pieces—​to be his Vingt regards sur l’enfant Jésus. The work, which took the form of a large-​scale rondo “anchored around the theme of God,” was in fact the composer’s last large-​scale religious work until the 1960s.174 But by 1943 Messiaen’s imagination was already again being fired by Schaeffer’s circle, as well as, apparently, by his more recent contact with the resistance group around Gallimard—​by their artistic models and ideological directions. Resistance to Vichy was currently expanding, particularly in early 1943 with the instigation of the STO, which compelled French youth to go work in German factories. This also led to increased dissension within the church: immediately the père Dillard and others denounced Vichy’s pretended clericalism as well as its increasing concessions to the German enemy.175 One of the first resistance networks formed had been at the ethnographic Musée de l’Homme, which emphasized early or distant cultures: it was here that the initial arrests of resistance groupings had been made, in March 1941.176 André Schaeffner, who had helped to plan the Pléiade concerts, worked at the museum, but also associated with its inner circle was Guy Bernard-​Delapierre, the pupil and friend of Messiaen. It was the latter who would bring the rare recordings of Balinese music in the museum’s collection to Messiaen’s home to play for him and his friends in March 1944. Messiaen subsequently brought the recordings, which he himself borrowed from the museum that year, to play for his students (who now included the young Boulez, as the latter recounted in a personal interview).177 Other friends of Messiaen who were now in resistance circles greatly admired him; although he never formally joined a resistance grouping, he ostensibly embraced spiritual resistance. Among these friends was André Dubois, for whom (in addition to Delapierre) Messiaen played his new work (now for chorus) on May 16, 1944. Dubois, who had advised several French governments in the 1930s, became prefect of police in 1940 but was soon removed by Vichy, which did not approve of his political posture.178 Dubois, a great lover of music, was personally close to Poulenc, who had entered the Resistance by early 1943 and dedicated his Chansons villageoises (premiered at the Pléiade concert of June 18 that year) to his friend. In

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sum, within Messiaen’s current close circle of contacts almost all, by now, were in the Resistance; this prominently included Louis Durey, a former member of Les Six, who had returned to Paris from Saint-​Tropez to replace Elsa Barraine (a friend of Messiaen) as head of the Front national des musiciens. Messiaen went to visit Durey on March 23, 1943, just as he was completing his previous commission for the Pléiade concert series, the Visions de l’Amen. And the notes that Messiaen wrote for the premiere of his new commission attest to the fact that he continued to admire Paul Éluard, himself an icon and leading figure in the intellectual resistance. For in these notes Messiaen specifically points out that his primary influences when he was writing the text included not only the Gospels and the Apocalypse but also the writings of Saint Paul and Saint Thomas and the work of Paul Éluard.179 In sum, the writers among resistance grouping within the Éditions Gallimard—​as well as those in the resistance literary journal Les lettres françaises—​were to influence not only André Schaeffner (who helped to plan the Pléiade concerts) but also Poulenc and Messiaen. Perhaps by design, given the intellectual resistance emphasis, the Pléiade concert of February 8, 1943, had included Debussy’s choral gem, the a capella Trois chansons de Charles d’Orléans, along with Renaissance chansons by Guillaume Costeley and Clément Janequin.180 Again, the inclusion of a work of Debussy, as well as those of French Renaissance composers, was the result of the series’ attempt to program not only new French compositions but those French works or composers of the past now being neglected in public concerts. As the programs thus reveal, they focused in particular (not surprisingly, given the resistants who were involved) on compositions associated with the periods that were historically emblematic for the Resistance—​the French Renaissance and the Enlightenment.181 Again, Debussy’s three choral pieces (written in a style that was rooted in the French secular Renaissance) were not archaic but rather subtly innovative, ingeniously illustrating the continuity of French spirit across the centuries, as both Poulenc and Messiaen would now attempt. Here Debussy (like the other two later composers) does so principally through his explorations of the music’s vertical dimensions (including harmonic language and sonority)—​thus emulating Rameau (whom the series also featured), while retaining Renaissance-​like syntax and textures.182 And Poulenc, like Messiaen (whose work he appreciated, especially the Visions de l’Amen), aspired not only to invoke Debussy, in his own conception, but also to achieve grandeur on a human scale, in keeping with the artistic ideals of the Renaissance and the Resistance.183 The Renaissance model, which now inspired both composers, is in fact discussed explicitly in the program notes written by André Schaeffner for the first of the Pléiade concerts. As he here so aptly points out, composers of the more

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recent French past such as Duparc, Fauré, and Debussy, worked together with the greatest poets of their own day, thus reconnecting with a far older French tradition. For the illustrious Renaissance poets who were associated with the original Pléiade—​such as Ronsard, du Bellay, and Baïf—​inspired French composers to set their works, as later did Baudelaire, Verlaine, Mallarmé, and Éluard.184 But as Schaeffner also points out, another French trait manifest in the musicians of the French Renaissance, as well as in the clavecinistes and the composers of the more recent French past, is the tendency toward the descriptive or the imitative, often unfortunately referred to as “impressionist.” Here Schaeffner makes reference to several of the works that were being performed, including Clément Janequin’s Le chant des oiseaux (palpably resonant for Messiaen), Claude Le Jeune’s La belle aronde (The Beautiful Swallow), Pierre Passereau’s Il est bel et bon, commère, mon mary (My Husband Is Handsome and Good, My Friend), and Debussy’s Trois chansons de Charles d’Orléans.185 Messiaen’s new choral work would implicitly realign itself with this specific French tradition, especially through the structure of the text, which was inspired by the French Renaissance as well as by the work of Éluard. He had written it between November 15, 1943, and March 15, 1944, with the premiere (delayed by the Liberation) finally taking place at the Pléiade concert of April 21, 1945, along with pieces by Janequin, Le Jeune, and Josquin des Prés, in addition to those of André Caplet, Darius Milhaud, and Francis Poulenc. Messiaen’s composition, as he wished, was conducted by Roger Désormière, with the Chorale Yvonne Gouverné performing, together with Irène Joachim and Ginette Martenot (on the ondes Martenot).186

Man and God in the Trois petites liturgies de la présence divine The text of the work, which it is important to interpret, begins with the “Antienne de la conversation intérieure (Dieu présent en nous par la grâce de la Sainte Communion)” (Antiphon of the Inner Conversation; God Present in us by the grace of the Holy Communion). It is followed by the “Séquence du verbe, cantique divin (Dieu présent en lui-​même et se chantant à lui-​même sa gloire, par son fils ou verbe)” (Sequence of the Word, Divine Hymn; God present in himself and singing his glory to himself through his son or word). The text concludes with the “Psalmody de l’ubiquité par amour (Dieu présent en toutes choses par son ubiquité ou son immensité)” (Psalmody of the Ubiquity of Love; God present in all things by his ubiquity or his immensity). Although the central movement focuses on God in his full resplendent power, significantly the two framing movements

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are devoted to the rapprochement of man with God. Like Sartre, who now realized the importance of man’s achieving an authentic subjectivity in order to develop a positive relation to humanity, Messiaen enunciates this on a spiritual plane, underlining (like Marcel and Mounier) the interpenetration of the human conscience with the more inclusive world of the universal and the divine.187 For each of the pieces Messiaen not only appends a biblical quotation but also explains the musical material that he has used; in the first, “Antienne de la conversation intérieure,” he notes the distant song of birds in the piano part, and that in the middle he introduces a contrapuntal section that is both polyrhythmic and polymodal. And in each of the movements he indicates the color spectrum that he intends to invoke, thereafter adding his almost surrealist poetic commentary suggesting God’s love for man. The first commentary consists of “D’un baiser, votre main dépasse le tableau—​Paysage divin renverse toi dans l’eau” (From a kiss, your hand goes beyond the picture—​Divine landscape reverse yourself in the water). Messiaen explicates the second number, “Séquence du verbe, cantique divin,” as a sequence or as a chanson with an air that is both popular and triumphal, resembling the songs of the early Christians. Mounier had already stressed the fact that the early Christians felt a strong sense of community through such celebrations, and thus he held them up as exemplars. Messiaen goes on to note that the chorus constantly repeats the same refrain, “Il est parti, le Bien-​Aimé—​ C’est pour nous!” (He has left, the beloved—​It is for us!). Yet he carefully clarifies that each time that this phrase is repeated it is never in precisely the same manner, but rather with numerous harmonic as well as rhythmic and orchestral (or coloristic) variations. This movement, as Messiaen also explains, not only is essentially melodic but also is in fact the culminating point of the work—​signifying God made human both through the word and through his son. Even though the texts themselves seek to enunciate the theoretical truths of scripture (if through a surrealist inflection), the message is palpably more humanistic or earthly than in Messiaen’s previous religious works. But as part of his quest for a religious or sacred renewal the composer strives to make a connection to Gregorian chant, as evidenced in the melodies as well as the frequent unisons. This concomitantly facilitates comprehension on the part audience, as does his use of a strongly identifiable musical theme in each of the three parts.188 Perhaps Messiaen is also seeking to communicate a sense of the sacred as communally shared and simple, thus idealizing like Mounier the purity and communal nature inherent in the early Christian church. The final number “Psalmodie de l’ubiquité par amour,” or God present in all things, invokes man’s relation to his planet and to the beauty of the beings that lie within it. As Messiaen explains, the chorus (which is essentially psalmodic)

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and then the orchestra accumulate diverse material, culminating in a veritable “avalanche” of sound. In addition he explicitly points out that the words “Le successif vous est simultané (For you the successive is simultaneous), here prompted his compositional attempt again to escape conventional time with its barriers and divisions. The middle section is tender, as opposed to that which came before it, and is followed by a varied reprise of the beginning; the movement concludes on a note of ecstasy and rapture to the words “Vous qui parlez en nous . . .” (You who speak within us).189 Messiaen similarly elucidated his intentions in the program notes for the premiere; in them he emphasizes the unique and personal character of his musical language, as well as the many influences that helped to shape it. For, as he put it, he was continually searching to enlarge his own horizons, and (recalling Mounier’s stress on love) always with an increasing tenderness or affection.190 More technically, he points out that while the three pieces are all centered in F major, he nevertheless employs a wide variety of polymodal and polyrhythmic procedures. But again within the context of his focus on growth and on the expansion of one’s personal horizons, Messiaen specifically notes the recurrence of the word amour (love) within the poem. Here, in considering Messiaen’s discussion of the poem (or text) and the many creative influences on it, it is important to recall the Renaissance humanist themes of the Resistance circles that he had recently frequented. For, he points out, he conceived the poem and the music simultaneously and the text (recalling the French Renaissance) is both rhymed and rhythmic, which has direct implications for the musical setting. In addition he stresses his wide (or universal) range of reading from sources that deal with all aspects of man’s existence—​not only scripture but also Éluard (whom he had praised during his wartime imprisonment) as well as books on medicine, botany, geology, and astronomy.191 Messiaen also comments on the instrumentation, specifying that it is as original as the rest of the work (not to mention universalist), for in the final version it incorporates celesta, vibraphone, maracas, gong, tam-​tam, ondes Martenot, and a string orchestra, with the unison chorus of nine women’s voices. He here points out that not only do the chorus, piano, celesta, vibraphone, and ondes play major roles but also each violin and cello in the orchestra is, in effect, treated as a soloist. Just as significant is Messiaen’s concomitant observation that he does not employ his instruments in “classical” groupings—​as in a chamber or large orchestra—​but rather in a manner that recalls Hindu or Balinese instrumentation. Messiaen’s quest for the human and communal, as well as for the religious or spiritual in its most inclusive or universal sense, thus takes him even further from the conventional Catholicism he now increasingly distrusted.

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Again, in considering Messiaen’s use of the Balinese model one should recall that he had gone to Guy Bernard-​Delapierre’s home in March 1944 (while he was composing his Trois petites liturgies) to listen to recordings of Balinese music borrowed from the Musée de l’Homme—​an important Resistance center. Hence while his colleague André Jolivet was moving away from his previous experiments with non-​Western music, Messiaen, more than ever in quest of the universal—​or that which unites all peoples—​was now following precisely the opposite path.192 For once more, Messiaen was here in search of a style that incarnated not only spiritual and humanist values but also, as the Resistance urged, universality, objectivity, and authentic subjectivity as well as human agency. All of this becomes evident in his movement away from the cerebral and austere (as in the Visions de l’Amen) toward a concern with more direct communication, and with the more sensual element that he had recognized in non-​Western religions. In the Trois petites liturgies he employs not only a female chorus but also the ondes Martenot, which at times seems to emit an almost human wail. In addition, the second piece is ostensibly modeled on a French Renaissance structure with its series of systematic alternations between “couplets” and “refrains.” In fact while writing the work Messiaen had been studying the work of Claude Le Jeune with his students; this exposure is also evident in the speech-​like declamation, which contributes to the clarity and directness of communication within the work.193 Particularly striking is Messiaen’s use of the ondes Martenot in the Trois petites liturgies, either blended into the orchestra to arrive at a specific nuance of color, or detached and employed in dialogue as a solo voice. This technique once more recalls Messiaen’s treatment of the smaller chorus in the Te Deum for Schaeffer’s Portique, where it responds to the larger unison chorus either polyphonically or in melismatic sections. As Jacques Tchamkerton has explained, when Messiaen wishes to produce a vocal quality through the ondes Martenot in the Petites liturgies he employs the technique known as “jeu au ruban.” The latter involves the placing of a large metallic ribbon along the keyboard and then moving it through the use of a ring that is attached to the performer’s right index finger. This allows him or her to create continuous glissandi that can cover the instrument’s entire range, and also to evoke a vocal sound by moving rapidly from one note to the next while employing the intensity key.194 An apt example of Messiaen’s use of the instrument is the first piece, “L’antienne de la conversation intérieure,” cast roughly in ABA form, and in the first part of which the ondes Martenot blends subtly into the larger texture. The B section then contains a lengthy violin solo where the violinist, employing spicatto, enters into dialogue with the legato, ethereal, godlike

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Messiaen, Trois petites liturgies de la présence divine. Paris: Durand et Cie., 1952. Second movement.

ondes—​here not with the humanizing “jeu au ruban” but rather with a nasal timbre. The second number, “Séquence du verbe, Cantique divin,” in which God speaks through his son, is the most humanist or Renaissance-​like in structure, with its alternation between “couplets” and “refrains.” In order to evoke

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the glory of God Messiaen once again specifies the “jeu au ruban,” at first in emphatic contrast to the more human popular and triumphal chanson. Then as God speaks to man in the fifth refrain, he employs the same technique, which now imparts the ondes with an expressive voice as it doubles the choir (thus joining God and man), after which it gradually detaches itself from the voices. The ondes then rejoins the voices and melodic line in the sixth refrain, as it slowly and triumphantly mounts in volume, concluding the movement with an ecstatic tone.195 In the last piece, “Psalmodie de l’ubiquité par amour,” Messiaen returns to an ABA form, opening with a long parlando or psalm-​like section in the chorus, with the ondes employing the “jeu au ruban” and doubling the vocal line. In the B section the chorus has a slow, expressive melody, and the accompaniment is then amplified by the celesta and vibraphone as well as by the ondes Martenot. In his notes Messiaen points out not only the gradual accumulation of diverse material throughout the movement (thus creating an “avalanche” of sound) but also the suspension of our normal sense of time at the words “Le successif est simultané.” Moreover in the middle section the ondes Martenot has a long and meandering line (employing the “jeu au ruban”), which further amplifies the sensation of a transcendence of human time. This feeling is here reinforced by the use of a so-​ called spatial timbre, which is created by resonant diffusers (or loudspeakers), again recalling Schaeffer’s experiments in the context of his Jeune France. Here, through these means, when a gong begins to vibrate Messiaen is able to achieve the effect of a sort of aural halo, after which the intensity declines and the ondes reappears in a slower tempo. When it does so the composer specifically indicates that the ondes Martenot is meant to sound “far away, very pianissimo,” and if coming from beneath the clouds.196 In the final, now varied A  section Messiaen employs the ondes in ever-​ expanding trills (again with the vocal-​like “jeu au ruban”), the orchestra emitting a “wail” through glissandi and returning to a motive from the first movement at the words “nous face à face à l’amour” (us face to face with love). This is followed by a brief return to the middle section, which is then connected to the final recurrence of the refrain “posez-​vous comme un sceau sur mon cœur” (place yourself like a seal on my heart). Messiaen specifies that here he wishes to suggest “une note d’extase et de ravissement intérieur” (a note of ecstasy and of inner ravishing), which he achieves through the use of the ondes softly doubling the choral melody at a higher pitch. And at this point he once again returns to the use of resonance, or the “spatial timbre,” then slowly and expressively dissolving into silence at the work’s very end.197 The composer thus here arrives at a suggestion of a final interior or spiritual peace, in which the self is not lost in the transcendent but is authentically one with both God and humanity.

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The Resistance embrace of Messiaen and of his work Even before the Trois petites liturgies premiered, on May 21, 1945, Messiaen’s search for true human subjectivity had, like Sartre’s, attracted Resistance circles. During the war some had referred to Sartre’s play Les mouches, along with Vermorel’s Jeanne avec nous, as résistant since they both appeared to propagate a message hostile to the Germans and to Vichy, rather embodying Resistance ideals.198 Many in the Resistance had abjured religion, but despite the religious element in Messiaen’s work some may have sensed the way in which it filled the moral vacuum, and concomitantly counteracted psychological submission. Indeed Musiciens d’aujourd’hui was not only actively celebrating “l’esprit français” as both patriotic and universal but also citing the unique French excellence in the works of composers like Tony Aubin and Olivier Messiaen. Messiaen (although not a member) was growing increasingly close to Resistance circles, and on several occasions expressed his admiration for one of their key musical figures, Roger Désormière.199 In addition, Messiaen’s good friend Guy Bernard-​Delapierre (who would collaborate with a filmmaker from Schaeffer’s group, Roger Leenhardt) also wrote for a Resistance group’s literary journal Confluences. In fact it was in the latter, in October 1945, that Bernard-​Delapierre ardently defended Messiaen’s Trois petites liturgies when it was attacked  by Catholic conservatives, following its postwar premiere in the context of the press battle dubbed “le cas Messiaen.”200 Not only was Bernard-​Delapierre’s home the venue of the work’s unofficial premiere, but (again) it was here that Messiaen originally met his private class, which may have impelled him to dedicate his treatise on composition to Bernard-​Delapierre. But Messiaen retained other connections to this resistance circle that he admired, including those now at the French national radio, some of whom had been in Schaeffer’s group. Among the latter were Henri Dutilleux as well as Pierre Capdevielle, both of whom had entered the intellectual Resistance and now remained at the new French radio.201 In fact it was they who helped plan the broadcast of Messiaen’s Vingt regards sur l’enfant Jésus at the Studio d’Essai, which Schaeffer had established purportedly to improve the quality of artistic transmissions. Just as significant with regard to Messiaen’s postwar Resistance associations, is that the Vingt regards eventually premiered in a concert that was reserved exclusively for the Allied forces at the Théâtre de la Bruyère.202 Messiaen, for many, had opened up a new realm in which “the modern” could merge with elements from music history and from non-​Western music in a bracing new synthesis, more adequately to express individual subjectivity in addition to new experience. His quest had been for new perceptions and modes of understanding, not only of God but also of man’s responsibility to him in the midst of attempts by both Vichy and the Catholic Church to control or to quell such

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aspirations. Messiaen like Sartre under Vichy, while still in the public eye arrived at a language through which to communicate a new self-​awareness or a personal autonomy, attracting not just French youth but also many others who lived through these harrowing years. Messiaen’s new reflexivity or subjectivity, like that which Sartre would further explore within the context of existentialism, was born of their shared experiences, moral quandaries, and quest for affirmation—​ for humanity, choice, and hope—​in the somber climate of Vichy and German-​ occupied France.

CONCLUSION

Vichy’s shifting cultural goals and tactics: The results, the responses, and how to perceive them

When considering the Vichy government’s conflicting political factions—​and accordingly its ineluctable shifts in power as well as policy—​it is imperative to recast our questions concerning its cultural programs and artistic goals. Again, it is not simply an issue of how Vichy professedly sought to promote French culture and its traditions but also of how it initially conceived these, and what happened when the conservatives around Pétain were gradually extruded and lost their influence. At first the regime did not seek complete domination, but rather fostered the liminal or transitional (in Victor Turner’s anthropological sense) as it effected a deliberate movement from past to future social visions. Moreover, early Vichy maintained its own particular version of French nationalism—​as based on the soil—​but in order to implement it culturally it had to rely on imaginative young intermediaries, some of whom believed it to be anti-​German and thus to provide a shield against the enemy. As a result, from the summer of 1940 and until the late summer of 1941 creativity and cultural experimentation could coexist with more traditional uses of old French popular forms, particularly in Vichy’s innovative youth programs. For some, like Pierre Schaeffer, it seemed possible to project idealistic goals onto Vichy—​in his case a culturally progressive left-​Catholic vision that drew on France’s past in order to construct a new communitarian, egalitarian, and tolerant future. This was also the period when specific French musical masterpieces, such as Debussy’s opera Pelléas et Mélisande, promised to serve as emblems to unify and express the nation’s cultural pride.

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However, the situation would ineluctably change as the Germans stressed Franco-​German cultural interaction, and Vichy sought to do so as well in order to regain German favor following the first Resistance attacks. This becomes clear by the time of the presentation of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande at Vichy in late August of 1941, and would henceforth increasingly become the case. Again, it is misleading simply to observe that Vichy continued patriotically to promote French music: the conception of it, of that which it embodied, must become the historical point of focus. The regime also promoted new French works, but its choices are indeed significant, for increasingly it favored those by members of groups like Collaboration, or by figures like Honegger, who embodied its vision of French culture within Hitler’s so-​called new Europe. Such symbolic domination and the increasing loss of autonomy of the French musical field, in addition to Vichy’s escalating surveillance and repression, would characterize the regime’s next phase; this one was marked politically by Pierre Laval and culturally by his minister of national education, the German admirer Abel Bonnard. In fact, by April 1942 the Resistance was decrying the regime’s pseudonationalism as reflected in its culture and particularly in the realm of music, where Germanic influence was increasingly emphasized in French works of the past as well as present. And attempts to use culture instrumentally could fail, for transgressive innovations—​or the search to awaken new awareness through creation or performance—​continued, even within French official institutions. Again Pierre Schaeffer and of Roger Désormière continued implacably through performance to promote a contradictory conception of French cultural masterpieces (one too subtle to elicit explicit remonstrance), and for Désormière this centrally included Pelléas et Mélisande. Both Désormière and Schaeffer thus explored new ways to destabilize intended political meanings in culture, or to open up the message of iconic works, thereby disrupting Vichy’s increasingly compromised national representations. However, to perceive this it is necessary to examine the material and the performative dimensions, for these were central components of the manner in which meaning was produced, particularly in the midst of politicized attempts to control it. Once more, the case of Pelléas reveals that resolutely classical manners of performance such as Désormière’s, together with the nationalist rhetoric appearing in Resistance journals could, by 1942, counter the impositions of staging or of surrounding texts, thus recasting or undermining the intended ideological message. For the Resistance, music magnified the regime’s evolving goals and cultural tactics—​its eventual quest to court the Germans by promoting compromise, or collaboration on every level. In addition, according to Resistance intellectuals, music could contribute not only to a growing awareness of current

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French political realities but also to the development of new cultural tactics within its ever-​growing repertoire of contestation. Vichy, then, demonstrates that when power is dependent on culture to transmit its message the same cultural vehicles may provide the means through which political resistance can define itself, as well as its particular tactics. By late 1941 the cultural institutions that the regime established could elude its control as a result of their own artistic dynamic, and through the clever techniques of disillusioned artists within them. Schaeffer’s Jeune France, for example, sought new modes of cultural diffusion as Vichy adjured, but while doing so also opened up perceptions through innovative approaches to framing and to the inscription of both classic and newer texts. Vichy’s cultural tactics were increasingly met with others developed within its institutions, by those becoming aware of and resistant to the regime’s intent, now consciously seeking through performance or material inscriptions to thwart its ideological investment of iconic works. Schaeffer developed new cultural practices and approaches to communication first through modes of presentation and thereafter through sonic explorations, thus fostering critical perceptions and awareness of Vichy’s developing cultural-​political quest. Concomitantly, the intellectual Resistance (which several major musicians eventually joined) relentlessly exposed Vichy’s agenda and compromised nationalism in its journals, elucidating the regime’s cultural goals as well as proposing a contrasting vision of France’s values and political ideals. In clandestine dialogue with Vichy the Resistance projected not only a different French past and future but also an alternative range of styles that, because of their cultural associations, it construed as being authentically national. These included styles associated with those periods it considered to be truly French, or the embodiment of essential French values—​in particular the individualism of the Renaissance and the critical intelligence of the French Enlightenment. It is here that we may observe not only a competing strand of French national as well as cultural identity but also a nexus in which authentic subjectivity, as well as critical awareness, could be fostered through challenging as well as enabling artistic paradigms. Composers now faced increasingly difficult choices, particularly those who either worked within or were employed by French official institutions. For the hopes of some for a different French future were dispelled as the regime progressed; their choices—​if they abjured acquiescence—​appeared to be either an active or passive creative and intellectual resistance. But there were those who rather sought accommodation, or aggressively to position themselves within the shifting French musical field—​one gradually marked by members of the group Collaboration and by others who promoted Vichy’s evolving cultural goals. Within this context not only professional but also stylistic choices assumed

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political meaning; once more, this becomes evident when examining Resistance texts and particularly the cultural and historical models that they promoted. The development of greater political awareness, as well as new perceptions and then modes of communication, gradually appeared among several prominent French musicians. These included those who were involved with the regime’s own cultural institutions as well as those who were being promoted by high-​ranking French and German officials. Aptly, Richard Terdiman has observed that in periods of rapid change—​as was here the case—​the subjective internalization of the dominant discourse is necessarily less complete than in periods of relative stability. And aptly to cite Gramsci’s eloquent words, they would starkly face the question “is it better to take part in a conception of the world mechanically imposed by the external environment” or “is it better to work out consciously and critically one’s own conception of the world?”1 This was the daunting issue confronted by Pierre Schaeffer, Francis Poulenc, and Olivier Messiaen, who began under Vichy’s protection but did not cede to the emerging agenda of promoting Franco-​German cultural relations. They rather questioned this direction, and with time either implicitly (through style) or more overtly (through clandestine publications) contested or resolutely combated it. Responses to the available political choices and their stylistic implications now divided French musicians:  perceiving this may not only render the period more artistically coherent but also help explain the gradually escalating dissension within the field. Moreover, contestation in French political culture activated artistic productivity throughout the period, and in some cases fostered a wide range of innovations, or provided seeds that were eventually to bloom in France’s postwar years. The rates of awareness of developing political realities on the part of French composers inevitably differed, as did as did their responses—​political and professional as well as stylistic. Already by 1942 some confronted the harsh truths, made choices concerning the kind of national and personal identity that they sought, and willingly accepted the consequences. Modes of stylistic contestation depended on perceptions of official stylistic preferences; individuals who rejected the latter thus began a personal search for alternatives. Some, in addition, rejected the mandates of French authorities in other realms, as in the case of Messiaen and the Catholic Church, which helped propel him toward bold creative explorations. Moreover, highly innovative art such as Messiaen’s fostered the evolution of modes of reception: his works responded to and also acted back on the social, cultural, and political worlds around it. This may be why audiences ostensibly grew receptive to such stylistic innovations, for the latter eloquently enunciated their shared experiences, concerns, and understandings. Again, as Jean-​Pierre Rioux has observed, the world in which such works now communicated was one

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of silence as well as fear; yet within it art, even that which was traditionally based, could say new things and invoke meanings that audiences could grasp within this context.2 It is thus within such a framework that it becomes possible fully to recognize not only the subjective reflection informing these works but also the complex kinds of statements they made—​their full range of meaning, or more ineffable symbolic utterance. Although composers subtly encrypted their responses, it was by no means a question of complicity or of business as usual, as some have claimed: moreover, the fact of continuing to create or perform did not automatically imply an unambiguous moral or ideological compromise.3 Subjective agency could remain, if in new forms and enunciated through stylistic means that ranged from Poulenc’s historical references to Messiaen’s intrepid explorations in stylistic language. An adversative stance could be communicated through a broad realm of stylistic tendencies throughout this period; but these may be discerned only by examining the dialogic context, or the languages and the stylistic direction being subtly promoted by or associated with power. Here the full complexity of the question of the relation of music to ideological meaning emerges, for composers who entered into dialogue with the dominant rhetoric or codes found several different stylistic solutions, or means through which to articulate their own alterity. These included not only the reinvestment of older models that now assumed new sense—​as well as conscious contestation within dominant symbols—​but also the exploration of alternative modes of artistic communication. In all these cases approaches to language or to significations were being transformed, if on a level that only a close contextual analysis can fully reveal. In addition, it is not a case of simply identifying heroes or villains—​of compliance as opposed to an implacable resistance. For several composers it is rather a question of how to trace their movement across a finely graded spectrum of choice. Schaeffer, Honegger, Poulenc, and Messiaen figures all gradually grew cognizant of the regime’s increasing brutality—​of its political realities and eventual compromises, including those in the realm of culture, as trenchantly exposed by the intellectual Resistance. All thus confronted hard choices with regard to their identities, both individual and collective, and therefore faced daunting decisions concerning their basic values as well as those of the nation. Moreover, like certain writers including Sartre, they faced the morass of what was moral within the context; eventually some, such as he, emitted “discordant resonances” through their works, even those presented within authorized or official institutions.4 In light of their ideals and experience, professional as well as personal, they eventually made difficult choices, which ranged from a troubled complicity (as with Honegger) to an uncompromised moral certainty expressed in some cases through formal entry into the Resistance. Poulenc, not content to be assigned a

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French identity or treated as a “subject,” rather now identified his own personal sense of subjectivity—​one located at “the borders of autonomy and integration.”5 Audiences responded to the contemporary resonances within such composers’ compositions, and developed modes of appropriating or understanding them, even if each artist whom we examined appealed to different sectors—​Messiaen, for example, now electrifying French youth. For as they may have sensed, his art resisted or subtly undermined hegemony and the monologic consciousness that it demands, rather helping to open up new self-​awareness or a sense of future possibilities and of potential. Again, in other cases even more traditional art could serve this function, abetted by new practices in performance and by new manners of physically inscribing works. Moreover, such innovative artists would continue to be affected by their revelations throughout these years, not only personally and professionally but also stylistically, particularly in the case of Messiaen. And once more, it is important to realize that the works of Messiaen and of Pierre Schaeffer, as well as of others throughout this period, planted the seeds of postwar directions in French music—​those ranging from new uses of the past, to sonic explorations and to experimentation with new musical languages. Indeed, scholars have already identified far-​reaching innovations in French theater and literature during Vichy, and demonstrated that the period was by no means a parenthesis in innovation but rather a creative link. This may be discerned in all French cultural domains, and it integrally includes art music, which, if sometimes less apparently, was in dialogue with (or in its own manner paralleled) the innovations and preoccupations in adjacent fields. The Vichy period was thus no hiatus in musical creativity in France; rather, despite the horrors, and the compromises of many, it was also a terrain of exploration—​of new approaches to communication and to representation. In sum, the arts, including music, were not merely acquiescent or stultified throughout this period: there were not only kernels of postwar artistic languages—​from the subtly innovative to the more audacious—​but also new modes of reception on the part of an evolving, more decentralized French public. For the older artistic idioms brought to the Vichy or French wartime experience had proved to be inadequate either to express or to fully confront it. Among some artists this provoked a transformation of stylistic means, and eventually of the public’s comprehension. The “new music” of the postwar period was not born like the mythological phoenix from the ashes of the war, Vichy, and the Occupation, but rather emerged from within it, if here in its infancy, preparing to unfurl its wings. An awareness of this may reveal new lines of inquiry into the realities and subtleties of twentieth-​century French culture, including music during and after Vichy—​research into conflicting cultural goals, into how innovation could occur despite controls, and into where it would eventually lead. Further studies might

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also continue to explore the question of how the reconfiguration of collective or national identity impacts individual identities, awakening political awareness as well as ideological and creative responses. Finally, this study has sought to demonstrate how all art, and here specifically music, may help to combat domination, both brutal and direct as well as symbolic and subtle, questioning established understandings and opening up new realms of signification or meaning. In this manner alternative political visions may arise and begin to develop, even under the surveillance of current authorized or official institutions. For protest and resistance can still emerge through cultural or artistic venues—​if not always apparently—​and may be realized through multiple artistic forms and means. In sum, art can retain its agency by subtly or surreptitiously questioning current orthodoxies and imagining a different future, as Vichy and the Occupation so richly reveal.

NOTES

Introduction 1. See Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France:  Old Guard and New Order 1940–​1944 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), esp. xi–​xvi. 2. See the introduction by Stefan Martens and Andreas Nielen to La France et la Belgique sous l’occupation allemande 1940–​1944:  Les fonds allemands conservés au Centre historique des Archives Nationales. Inventaire de la sous-​ série AJ40 (Paris: Centre Historique des Archives Nationales, 2002), pp. 11–​12. As the authors point out, Queen Wilhelmine of the Netherlands went to England with her government, thus bringing the resources of the nation’s colonies and fleet to the Allies and forcing the Germans to substitute for the former administration. In Belgium, King Leopold III stayed with his people but was politically inactive; the government itself left for London, leaving behind only administrators to keep essential services functioning. 3. Ibid., pp. 11–​16, 29. Also see Stanley Hoffmann, “Collaborationism and Resistance in France during World War II,” Journal of Modern History 40, no. 3 (September 1968): 377–​378. 4. Paxton, Vichy France, pp. 58–​60, and Hoffmann, “Collaborationism and Resistance,” pp. 394–​395. 5. See Hoffmann, “Collaborationism and Resistance,” p. 381. 6. See Paxton, Vichy France, pp. 259–​268. 7. See Henry Rousso, “Vichy: Politique, idéologie et culture,” in La vie culturelle sous Vichy, ed. Jean-​Pierre Rioux (Brussels: Éditions Complexe, 1990), pp. 28–​34. 8. See, for example, Alan Riding, And the Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-​Occupied Paris (New  York:  Knopf, 2010), and Frederick Spotts, The Shameful Peace:  How French Artists and Intellectuals Survived the Nazi Occupation (New Haven:  Yale University Press, 2008).

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9. See David Carroll, French Literary Fascism:  Nationalism, Anti-​Semitism, and the Ideology of Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995); Ingrid Galster, Sartre, Vichy et les intellectuels (Paris:  L’Harmattan, 2001); and Susan Suleiman, “Choisir son passé:  Sartre mémorialiste de la France occupée,” in La naissance du “Phénomène Sartre,” ed. Ingrid Galster (Paris:  Éditions du Seuil, 1997), pp. 213–​237. Also see Gisèle Sapiro, La guerre des écrivains (Paris: Fayard, 1999). And see the review article by Edward Rothstein, “Between Collaboration and Resistance:  French Literary Life under the Nazis,” New  York Times, April 25, 2010. 10. See Laurence Bertrand Dorléac, L’art de la défaite, 1940–​1944 (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1993), as well as her chapter, “La question artistique et le régime de Vichy,” in Rioux, La vie culturelle sous Vichy, pp. 138–​160. 11. Robert Paxton discusses France’s quest for collaboration in Vichy France, pp. 51–​ 63. On Vichy’s propaganda, its methods and its phases, see Claude Lévy and Dominique Veillon, “Propagande et modelage des esprits,” in Azéma and Bédarida, Vichy et les Français, eds. Jean-​Pierre Azéma and François Bédarida (Paris: Fayard, 1992), pp. 184–​202. The concept of “imagining a community” was introduced by Benedict Anderson in his Imagined Communities:  Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London and New  York:  Verso, 2006). And see Pierre Bourdieu, Les règles de l’art: Genèse et structure du champ littéraire (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1992). 12. On the complexities of the negotiations between Vichy and the Germans, see Robert Gildea, Marianne in Chains: Daily Life in the Heart of France during the German Occupation (New York: Henry Holt, 2002), esp. pp. 14–​15. For an example of the German strictures imposed on French culture, see Serge Added, Le théâtre des années Vichy, 1940–​1944 (Paris: Éditions Ramsay, 1992), p. 45. On the reconfiguration of French historical and cultural memory, see Avner Ben-​Amos, “La commémoration sous le régime de Vichy: Les limites de la maîtrise du passé,” in La France démocratique (combats, mentalités, symboles):  Mélanges offerts à Maurice Agulhon, ed. Christophe Charle, Jacqueline Lalouette, Michel Pigenet, and Anne-​Marie Sohn (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1998), pp. 397–​4 08. 13. See Margaret Atack, Literature and the French Resistance:  Cultural Politics and Narrative Forms, 1940–​1950 (New  York:  St. Martin’s Press, 1998). The relevant resistance journals—​those which exposed Vichy’s tactics—​are contained in the BnF-​Réserve. 14. See Henry Rousso’s “Préface” to La musique à Paris sous l’Occupation, ed. Myriam Chimènes and Yannick Simon (Paris: Fayard, 2013). 15. See Leslie Sprout’s pioneering study, “Music for a New Era: Composers and National Identity in France, 1936–​ 1946,” (PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2000). Many of her insights into individual composers here have since been developed and refined further in her subsequent valuable book, which looks

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back on these years from the perspective of the postwar period, The Musical Legacy of Wartime France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013). 16. The German use of music as a marker of national identity is discussed throughout the volume edited by Celia Applegate and Pamela Potter, Music and German National Identity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). 17. Myriam Chimènes, ed., La vie musicale sous Vichy (Brussels: Éditions Complexe, 2001). 18. Myriam Chimènes and Yannick Simon, eds., La musique à Paris sous l’Occupation (Paris: Fayard, 2013). 19. For a more documentary approach, see the book that Nigel Simeone wrote with Peter Hill on Messiaen, which discusses the composer during the Occupation period, Messiaen (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005). Also see Simeone’s article “Making Music in Occupied Paris,” Musical Times 147 (Spring 2006): 23–​50, although some of his information has since been challenged or countered with other evidence. 20. See Simon, Composer sous Vichy (Lyon:  Symétrie, 2009), pp. 5–​6. Simon asserts that there was no dominance of a “d’Indysme réactionnaire,” even during the first two years, but here he fails to acknowledge the frequent official praise and stress on the composer, which belies his claim that d’Indy’s promoters were largely collaborators. He also points out that the Occupation did not freeze those debates that had enlivened French musical life since World War I, but rather gave them a particular coloring. However, it is the nature of this coloring as the political situation evolved that is at issue here. Sara Iglesias, in her significant contribution, Musicologie et Occupation: Science, musique, politique dans la France des années noires (Paris: Maison des Sciences de l’homme, 2014), does not, here systematically consider the shifting weight of the different Vichy factions as the Occupation and the regime developed, and how this impacted both music criticism and scholarly studies of music. The most recent addition to the literature in the form of a scholarly monograph is Karine Le Bail’s impressive La musique au pas:  Être musician sous l’Occupation (Paris:  CNRS Editions, 2016). Unfortunately this important study appeared just as this book was going to press, so I  did not have the occasion to incorporate the full fund of information and insights it provides. But fortunately much of her material on Pierre Schaeffer has appeared in a different form in the book she edited with Martin Kaltenecker, Pierre Schaeffer: Les constructions impatients (Paris: CNRS Editions, 2012), which I have cited extensively in this study. Her new book promises to provide a greater understanding of the Germans’ musical politics during this period, and especially their use (and Vichy’s use) of the radio. In addition, Le Bail, a historian, does emphasize, as do I, the important turning point of the summer of 1941, when Vichy started to grow more overtly repressive and anti-​Semitic. She also aptly documents Vichy’s ceremonial use of music; my study rather stresses Vichy’s ritualistic use of music as well as of theater as the regime developed, and its more subtle hegemony, particularly in the domain of the

3 5 2   • 

Notes to pages 7–12

presentation, or the physical inscriptions, and framing of works. Le Bail’s study makes another important contribution in analyzing and documenting the central role of Elsa Barraine in the Front national des musiciens, and provides important new information on the postwar purge. 21. See Antonio Gramsci, “Culture and Ideological Hegemony,” in Culture and Society:  Contemporary Debates, ed. Jeffrey C. Alexander and Steven Seidman (New  York:  Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 51–​53. For other relevant selections of his writings, see Antonio Gramsci, Further Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Derek Boothman (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1995). For Bourdieu’s perspective, see Pierre Bourdieu, Ce que parler veut dire: L’économie des échanges linquistiques (Paris:  Fayard, 1982), esp. p.  14 ff. Bourdieu’s concepts concerning power and the subtle hegemony it exercises through culture are developed in several other books, including La distinction: Critique sociale du jugement (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1979). 22. See Yannick Simon, “Claude de France, nôtre Wagner. Le culte de Debussy sous l’Occupation,” Cahiers Debussy, no. 30 (2006): 5–​26. 23. See Roger Chartier, On the Edge of the Cliff:  History, Language, Practices, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), pp. 90–​103. Also see Victor Turner, “Liminality and Community,” in Alexander and Seidman, Culture and Society, p. 147. 24. Charles Tilly, “Introduction:  Citizenship, Identity, and Social History,” in Citizenship, Identity, and Social History, ed. Charles Tilly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 7. 25. See Craig Calhoun, Social Theory and the Politics of Identity (Oxford:  Blackwell, 1994), p. 12. 26. Marc H. Ross, introduction to Culture and Belonging in Divided Societies: Contestation and Symbolic Landscapes (Philadelphia:  University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), p. 6. 27. See Jane F. Fulcher, “Symbolic Domination and Contestation in French Music: Shifting the Paradigm from Adorno to Bourdieu,” in Opera and Society in Italy and France from Monteverdi to Bourdieu, ed. Victoria Johnson, Jane F. Fulcher, and Thomas Ertman (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 28. See Julian Jackson, France: The Dark Years 1940–​1944 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 429. On the use of cultural representations by the resistance, also see Laurent Douzou, ed., Faire l’histoire de la Résistance (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2012). 29. See the introduction to Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffeths, and Helen Tiffan, eds., The Empire Writes Back:  Theory and Practice in Post-​Colonial Literatures (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 7ff. 30. See Greg Carey, “Symptoms of Resistance in the Book of Revelation,” in David L. Barr, ed., The Reality of the Apocalypse: Rhetoric and Politics in the Book of Revelation (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006), pp. 176–​179.

Notes to pages 12–17  • 

353

31. Yannick Simon, in “Claude de France, nôtre Wagner,” p. 10, stresses the importance of Debussy’s anti-​German nationalism for the Vichy regime, but without noting the evolution of the regime and of its propaganda concerning Debussy. 32. For the concept of symbolic resistance that I am discussing here, see the introduction to Ashcroft, Griffeths, and Tiffen, eds., The Empire Writes Back, p. 11. Chapter 1 1. See Philip Nord, France’s New Deal: From the Thirties to the Postwar Era (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 2010), p.  88. Also see Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), pp. 6, 139, 190, and 228. The complexity and plurality of Vichy is also discussed by Yves Durand in the “Table ronde” in Vichy et les Français, ed. Jean-​Pierre Azéma and François Bédarida (Paris: Fayard, 1992), p. 55, and by Julian Jackson in France: The Dark Years 1940–​1944 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 348. On Vichy’s fluid principles, see Marc-​Olivier Baruch, Servir l’État français: L’administration en France de 1940 à 1944 (Paris: Fayard, 1997), p. 485. 2. See the comments of Denis Peschanski concerning the unity as well as diversity at Vichy in the “Table ronde” in Azéma and Bédarida, Vichy et les Français, p. 259. 3. Robert Paxton, Vichy France, p. 145, on Vichy’s response to fears of decadence. 4. Baruch, Servir l’État français, p. 485; Paxton, Vichy France, p. 174. 5. Paxton, Vichy France, p. 299. And see Jackson, France: The Dark Years, p. 149, on Vichy’s persecution and repression based on its antidemocratic ideas. 6. Paxton, Vichy France, pp. 141–​142. 7. See Michel Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier: Les non-​conformistes face aux années 40 (Paris: Economica, 1997), p. 366. 8. Jackson, France: The Dark Years, p. 148. 9. Ibid., p. 150. 10. Paxton, Vichy France, pp.  143, 145, 230, and 258. He considers the National Revolution to be closer to the conservatives than to the fascists. And see Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier, p. 366. 11. Peschanski in the “Table ronde” in Azéma and Bédarida, Vichy et les Français, p. 259. And see Paxton, Vichy France, pp. 160–​166. 12. See Baruch, Servir l’État français, p. 49; Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier, p. 366; and Jackson, France: The Dark Years, p. 159. 13. See Yves Durand in the “Table ronde” in Azéma and Bédarida, Vichy et les Français, p. 255. 14. Ibid., on Pétain’s errors concerning the length of the war. And see Denis Peschanski, “A Leader, a Myth,” in Collaboration and Resistance in Vichy France 1940–​1944, ed. Denis Peschanski et  al., trans. Lory Frankel (New  York:  Harry Abrahams, 2000), p. 4. 15. Paxton, Vichy France, p. 49.

3 5 4   • 

Notes to pages 17–21

16. Peschanski, “A Leader, a Myth,” p. 10. 17. Paxton, Vichy France, pp. 55, 63, 72–​75; and Jackson, France: The Dark Years, p. 173. On Pétain’s rivalry with Laval, and then Darlan, over control of negotiations with the Germans, see Peschanski, “A Leader, a Myth,” p. 10. 18. Paxton, Vichy France, pp. 92–​93,100, 106, 110, 134. 19. Ibid., pp. 118, 125–​126. 20. Ibid., pp. 234, 291, 303, 381. 21. Ibid., p. 267. 22. See Stanley Hoffmann in the “Table ronde” in Azéma and Bédarida, Vichy et les Français, pp. 251–​252. 23. Paxton, Vichy France, p. 362. 24. See Baruch, Servir l’État français, p.  367, and Stéphanie Corcy-​Debray, Jérôme Carcopino, un historien à Vichy (Paris:  L’Harmattan, 2001), pp. 121–​122, on Carcopino’s role in Pétain’s collaboration d’État and his negotiations with the representatives of the Reich. 25. Denis Peschanski, “Values,” in Peschanski et  al., Collaboration and Resistance in Vichy France, p.  29. Also see Henry Rousso in the “Table ronde” in Azéma and Bédarida, Vichy et les Français, p. 262. 26. Paxton, Vichy France, p.  381. And see Jean-​Paul Cointet in the “Table ronde” in Azéma and Bédarida, Vichy et les Français, p. 245. 27. See Peschanksi in the “Table ronde” in Azéma and Bédarida, Vichy et les Français, p.  259; and see Paxton, Vichy France, pp.  139–​140, on the multiple interests and groups at Vichy in 1940. 28. Paxton, Vichy France, pp. 140–​141. 29. Ibid., p. 63; and see Peschanski in the “Table ronde” in Azéma and Bédarida, Vichy et les Français, p. 260. 30. See Jackson, France:  The Dark Years p.  158, on Paul Marion and fascist-​style propaganda. 31. Ibid., p. 398. 32. Paxton, Vichy France, pp. 272, 230. 33. Ibid., pp. 148–​153. 34. Jackson, France: The Dark Years, pp. 149–​150, and Peschanski, “Values,” p. 29. 35. Peschanski, “Values,” p. 29. And on the initial influence of the followers of Charles Maurras, see Peschanski, “A Leader, a Myth,” p. 9. Also see Paxton, Vichy France, p. 198. 36. Nord, France’s New Deal, p. 92. As he observes, p. 259, Vichy wanted an “exclusionary and corporatist path but it followed a statist bias.” Also see Paxton, Vichy France, p. 213. 37. Peschanski, “A Leader, a Myth,” pp. 9–​10. 38. Paxton, in the “Table ronde” in Azéma and Bédarida, Vichy et les Français, pp. 258–​ 259; Paxton, Vichy France, p. 215.

Notes to pages 21–27  • 

355

39. Paxton, Vichy France, pp. 28, 109, and 180. As he points out, as of June 27, 1940, Laval had been vice-​président du conseil, or deputy prime minister, and Pétain was initially premier and head of state. Also see Jackson, France:  The Dark Years pp. 172, 175. 4 0. Paxton, Vichy France, p. 128. Also see Marc Ferro in the “Table ronde” in Azéma and Bédarida, Vichy et les Français, p.  257, and Jackson, France:  The Dark Years pp. 178, 184. And see Nord, France’s New Deal, p. 88, who points out that Vichy policy was determined by a mixture of “ruralist authoritarianism and technocratic pragmatism.” 41. Paxton, Vichy France, pp. 92, 312–​313. Also see Baruch, Servir l’État français, p. 60. 42. Baruch, Servir l’État français, p. 324 and Paxton, Vichy France, p. 265. 43. Peschanski, “A Leader, a Myth,” pp. 9–​10. And see Nord, France’s New Deal, p. 100. 4 4. Paxton, Vichy France, pp. 255, 449; and Baruch, Servir l’État français, p. 267; as well as Pascal Ory, “Culture(s),” in Peschanski et al., Collaboration and Resistance, p. 137. 45. Ory, “Culture(s),” in Peschanski et al., Collaboration and Resistance, pp. 137–​138. And see Antonio Gramsci, “Culture Ideological Hegemony,” in Culture and Society:  Contemporary Debates, ed. Jeffrey C. Alexander and Steven Seidman (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 51–​53. 4 6. Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier, p. 114, and Paxton, Vichy France, p. 223, 226. 47. Paxton, Vichy France, pp. 237–​238. And see Peschanksi, “Molding a New Society,” in Peschanski et al., Collaboration and Resistance, p. 48, as well as Jackson, France: The Dark Years, p. 159. 48. Paxton, Vichy France, pp. 143, 223–​224. 49. Ibid., p. 143. 50. Ibid., pp. 180–​182, and Peschanski, “Molding a New Society,” p. 47. 51. Paxton, Vichy France, pp. 240–​241, 280–​281. 52. Paxton, Vichy France, p. 292, and Jackson, France: The Dark Years, pp. 398, 439. 53. Jackson, France: The Dark Years, pp. 398, 404, 406, and 411; and see Paxton, Vichy France, p. 44. 54. Denis Peschanski, Vichy 1940–​1944:  Contrôle et exclusion (Brussels:  Éditions Complexe, 1997), pp. 182, 186. 55. Paxton, Vichy France, pp. 292–​293, and Jackson, France: The Dark Years, p. 507. 56. Paxton, Vichy France, pp. 243, 290, 295, 297, 323. 57. Ibid., pp.  17, 20, 38. And see Victor Turner, “Liminality and Community,” in Alexander and Seidman, Culture and Society, p. 147. 58. See the introduction to Michelle Facos and Sharon L. Hirsch, eds., Art, Culture, and National Identity in Fin-​de-​Siècle Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p.  4. Here they cite Renan’s Sorbonne lecture of 1882, “Qu’est-​ce qu’une nation?” 59. See Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 1, 16. He addresses their different ways of

3 5 6   • 

Notes to pages 27–31

talking about nationhood and the cultural idioms that express them. And see Craig Calhoun, “Nationalism and Society,” in his Social Theory and the Politics of Identity (Oxford:  Blackwell, 1994), pp. 326–​327. Also see Rita Thalmann, La mise au pas: Idéologie et stratégie dans la France occupée (Paris: Fayard, 1991), p. 202. 60. See, for example, Leslie Sprout, “Music for a New Era: Composers and National Identity in France, 1936–​ 1946” (PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2000). Her interpretation is far more nuanced in her recent book, The Musical Legacy of Wartime France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013). 61. See John R.  Gillis’s introduction to the book he edited, Commemorations:  The Politics of National Identity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 4. Also see the introduction to Stuart Hall and Peter Gay, eds., Questions of Cultural Identity (London: Sage Publications, 1996), pp. 1–​2. 62. See Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question:  Theory, Knowledge, and History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), pp. 62–​63, 76. Also see the introduction to Marc H. Ross, ed., Culture and Belonging in Divided Societies: Contestation and Symbolic Landscapes (Philadelphia:  University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), p. 6. 63. Craig Calhoun, “Social Theory,” in his Social Theory and the Politics of Identity, pp. 14, 20. And on identity as the “evanescent process of competing discourses,” see Cooper, Colonialism in Question, p. 65. 6 4. On competing values, memories, and traditions in France, see Pierre Nora, ed., Les lieux de mémoire, 7 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1984–​1992). 65. Baruch, Servir l’État français, p. 645. 66. See Herman Lebovics, “Creating the Authentic France:  Struggles over French Identity in the First Half of the Twentieth Century,” in Commemoration:  The Politics of National Identity, ed. John R. Gillis (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 245, 247. 67. On Vichy’s condemnation of the Third Republic as cosmopolitan, see Ory, “Culture(s),” in Collaboration and Resistance, p. 135. 68. See Manuela Schwartz, “La musique, outil majeur de la propagande culturelle des Nazis,” in La vie musicale sous Vichy, ed. Myriam Chimènes (Brussels:  Éditions Complexe, 2001), p. 104. 69. Thalmann, La mise au pas, pp. 203, 205. 70. Jackson, France:  The Dark Years, p.  171; and see Schwartz, “La musique, outil majeur,” p. 91, on the rivalry within German institutions and their desire to demonstrate German sophistication in culture. This even extended to the ballets that the Germans had performed at the Paris Opera. 71. Jackson, France: The Dark Years, pp. 307–​310. 72. For a theoretical discussion concerning conflicts over the control of public representations, see Ross, Culture and Belonging in Divided Societies, pp. 1–​3. On cultural identity in the case of France, see Facos and Hirsch, Art, Culture, and National

Notes to pages 31–36  • 

357

Identity, p.  11. And on the need to “stage” national identity and to convey ideas about it, see Cooper, Colonialism in Question, p. 69. 73. See Leslie Sprout, “Les commandes de Vichy, aube d’une ère nouvelle,” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy, p. 165. 74. See Cooper, Colonialism in Question, pp.  71–​72, 74, for a theoretical discussion of these issues; on the specific case of France here, see Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier, p. 27. 75. Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier, pp. 27–​28. 76. Baruch, Servir l’État français, p. 367. 77. Ibid., p. 417. 78. On the theoretical concepts involved, see Cooper, Colonialism in Question, p. 62. Here he discusses how “political entrepreneurs” seek to persuade people to identify their interests and predicaments in a certain way. 79. On French self-​understanding and the nation-​state, see David A. Bell, The Cult of the Nation in France: Inventing Nationalism 1680–​1800 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001). And on French assimilationist self-​understanding, see Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany, p. 1. 80. See Nord, France’s New Deal, p. 309. 81. Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier, p. 28. 82. Ibid., pp. 104, 290–​291. 83. Ibid., pp. 288, 290. 84. Jackson, France: The Dark Years, pp. 307–​308. 85. Ibid., p. 307; and see Christian Faure, Le projet culturel de Vichy: Folklore et revolution nationale, 1940–​1944 (Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 1989), pp. 144–​ 146, 148, 154. 86. Paxton, Vichy France, pp. 143, 156. 87. Ibid., pp. 190, 198, 202, 231. And see Jackson, France: The Dark Years, pp. 303–​304, on the pro-​German members of the Académie française, in addition to its Pétainiste members; he points out that Mauriac was the only member of the Académie to participate in the Resistance. 88. Jackson, France: The Dark Years, pp. 158–​159. On shaping representations in public spaces, see Ross, Culture and Belonging in Divided Societies, pp. 1–​2. 89. See Louis Pinto, Gisèle Sapiro, and Patrick Champagne, eds., Pierre Bourdieu, sociologue (Paris: Fayard, 2004), p. 266. And as an example of these theories applied, see Pierre Bourdieu, Manet: Une révolution symbolique (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2013). Also see Pierre Bourdieu, Les règles de l’art: Genèse et structure du champ littéraire (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1992). p. 298. 90. On the dynamics of the artistic field so relevant here, see Bourdieu, Manet, pp. 170–​171. 91. Gisèle Sapiro, La guerre des écrivains (Paris: Fayard, 1999), pp. 9, 12.

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Notes to pages 37–40

92. Sprout, “Les commandes de Vichy,” p. 150. I would contend that, on p. 167, she attributes too much to Hautecoeur’s rhetoric and considers him as having, in short, a deep sense of the French artistic heritage. But the question is just how he construed this, and when. 93. See Baruch, Servir l’État français, p.  368, and Stéphanie Corcy-​Debray, Jérôme Carcopino, pp. 121–​124. 94. For an example of Samazeuilh’s initial rhetoric, see his article, “Musiciens d’Auvergne,” Le temps, September 3, 1940: 3. Samazeuilh, a former pupil of d’Indy at the Schola Cantorum, remained a fervent Wagnerian, but was also influenced by Debussy. See Sara Iglesias, Musicologie et Occupation: Science, musique et politique dans la France des années noires (Paris: Éditions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 2014), p. 430. 95. See Myriam Chimènes, “Alfred Cortot et la politique musicale du gouvernement de Vichy,” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy, pp. 35, 44. And see Yannick Simon, “Claude de France, notre Wagner: Le culte de Debussy sous l’Occupation,” Cahiers Debussy, no. 30 (2006): 5. 96. See Celia Applegate and Pamela Potter, “Germans as the People of Music: Geneology of an Idea,” in Music and German National Identity, ed. Celia Applegate and Pamela Potter (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), pp. 24–​25. 97. Baruch, Servir l’État français, pp. 60. 177. 98. Ibid. 99. Ibid., p. 177–​178. 100. Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier, pp. 27–​28. 101. Paxton, Vichy France, pp. 17, 193–​194, 242, 266–​267. Also see Richard D. Burton, Francis Poulenc (Bath, UK: Absolute Press, 2002); on p. 83 he points out that key ministers in both phases, Carcopino and Bonnard, were gay, although Carcopino, who was married, did his best to conceal it. 102. Baruch, Servir l’État français, p. 485. And as he notes, p. 368, when Carcopino left his ministerial post he retuned to his position at the École normale supérieure. 103. See Baruch, Servir l’État français, p. 485; and see Jérôme Carcopino, Souvenirs de sept ans (1937–​1944) (Paris: Flammarion, 1953), pp. 151, 175. 104. See Corcy-​Debray, Jérôme Carcopino, pp. 121–​122. 105. Ibid., 135–​138, and Thalmann, La mise au pas, p. 202. 106. Carcopino, Souvenirs de sept ans, p. 292. Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier, p. 28, notes that Hautecoeur had also attended the École normale supérieure. 107. Carcopino, Souvenirs de sept ans, p. 202. On p. 558 he points out all the difficulties that faced him, and that he wanted to resign by the end of 1941, as well as the fact that Pierre Laval later replaced him. 108. Baruch, Servir l’État français, p.  180; Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier, p.  27. Hautecoeur was directeur général des beaux-​arts from July 1940 and secrétaire général from 1941 to April 1944.

Notes to pages 40–44  • 

359

109. Louis Hautecoeur, Les beaux-​arts en France: Passé et l’avenir (Paris: Picard, 1948), pp. 233–​236. 110. Ibid., p. 236. 111. Ibid., p. 245. 112. Alexandra Laederich, “Les associations symphoniques,” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy, p. 226. Abendroth again conducted the orchestra in June 1943 for the gala devoted to Beethoven, organized by the record company La Voix de son Maître. And see Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier, p. 104. 113. Hautecoeur, Les beaux-​arts en France, p. 255. 114. Ibid., p. 248. 115. See Sprout, “Les commandes de Vichy,” pp. 157–​158. 116. See Philippe Morin, “Une nouvelle politique discographique pour la France,” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy, p. 261. 117. Nord, France’s New Deal, p. 259; Hautecoeur, Les beaux-​arts en France, pp. 250–​251. 118. See Jeanne Laurent, Arts et pouvoirs en France de 1793 à 1981 (Saint-​Étienne: Centre interdisciplinaire d’études et de recherches sur l’expression contemporaine), p. 148. She notes that Delvincourt had won a Prix de Rome but had also been trained in law, which may have helped him in his administrative conflicts. And see Baruch, Servir l’État français, p. 417. 119. Baruch, Servir l’État français, pp. 417–​420. 120. Bertrand Dorléac, l’art de la défaite, p. 151. 121. See Michel Alten, “Le Conservatoire de musique et d’art dramatique: Une institution culturelle publique dans la guerre (1940–​1942),” L’éducation musicale, February 2012, http://​www.l’éducation-​musicale.com (accessed May 15, 2013). Also see Paxton, Vichy France, p. 380, who notes that Brinon’s wife was Jewish; hence she was protected. And see Philip Nord, “Review of Karin Fiss, Grand Illusion: The Third Reich and the Cultural Seduction of France,” Journal of Modern History 83, no. 3 (September 2011): 631–​633. Here he points out that Abetz had played a key role when the Comité France-​Allemande became pro-​German, as had the head of the Comité, Alphonse de Chateaubriant. 122. Jackson, France:  The Dark Years, p.  312, notes that concerts were particularly prevalent between May 1942 and July 1943. Also see Schwartz, “La musique, outil majeur,” pp. 91, 93. 123. See Iglesias, Musicologie et Occupation, p. 79. 124. Ibid., p. 55. 125. Ibid., pp.  430–​431, on Heinrich Strobel. And see Yannick Simon, “Claude de France, notre Wagner.” 126. See Sara Iglesias, “L’âme, le coeur et toute l’aspiration d’un peuple:  La critique musicale française, relais de la politique de collaboration?,” in La musique à Paris sous l’Occupation, ed. Myriam Chimènes and Yannick Simon (Paris: Fayard, 2013), pp. 218–​220.

3 6 0   • 

Notes to pages 44–48

127. On Robert Bernard and Guy Ferchault, see Iglesias, Musicologie et Occupation, pp. 419, 422. The latter was secrétaire de rédaction for L’information musicale. 128. See Sara Iglésias, “Les concerts franco-​allemands du groupe Collaboration,” in Chimènes and Simon, La musique à Paris sous l’Occupation, pp. 65–​69. 129. See Adolphe Borchard, “Un concert des plus jeunes musiciens français,” Le petit parisien, January 29, 1942: 2. The French composers included Jean Françaix, Tony Aubin, Jean Hubeau, and Victor Servent. 130. Schwartz, La musique, outil majeur, pp. 100, 104. Those with existing connections in France included Heinrich Strobel and Fritz Piersig. 131. Thalmann, La mise au pas, pp. 205–​206. And see Lucien Rebatet, “Mozart à Paris,” Je suis partout, July 21, 1941: 9. Rebatet, a collaborationist writer, emphasizes the deep political sense of these concerts as symbols of reconciliation, and draws attention to the performance of the Berlin State Opera as well as the collaboration of artists from Paris and Berlin on the programs. 132. See Jean Gribenski, “Mozart, ‘musicien européen’ ou créateur d’une musique d’essence germanique?,” in Chimènes and Simon, La musique à Paris sous l’Occupation, p. 99. 133. Thalmann, La mise au pas, p. 202. 134. See Pamela Potter, Most German of the Arts: Musicology and Society in Germany from the Weimar Republic to the End of Hitler’s Reich (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), pp. 78–​79. 135. See Simon, “Claude de France, nôtre Wagner,” pp. 9–​10. He notes the recordings of Berlioz’s La damnation de Faust and Requiem by Radio-​Paris. 136. Alain Laubreaux, “Berlioz, tel qu’en lui-​même le cinéma le change,” Le petit parisien, April 19, 1942: 3. 137. See Cécile Méadel, “Pauses musicales ou les éclatants silences de Radio-​Paris,” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy, pp. 236–​238. 138. Ibid., pp. 341–​342, on the German propaganda broadcasts. 139. Ibid., p.  247, on the Beethoven cycle at the Théâtre des Champs-​Élysées, under Willem Mengelberg. 140. Ibid., p. 236, on Vichy’s Radiodiffusion nationale. 141. See Schwartz, “La musique, outil majeur,” pp. 104–​105. 142. See Laederich, “Les associations symphoniques,” p. 226. 143. Agnès Callu, “Le Conservatoire de Paris: Les réformes structurelles (1937–​1947),” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy,” p. 134. 144. Alten, “Le Conservatoire,” p.  3. Also see Jean Gribenski, “L’exclusion des juifs du Conservatoire (1940–​1942),” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy, pp. 143–​156. Also see Esteban Buch and Karine Le Bail, “Amphitéâtre au nom de Jacques Chailley?,” in Chimènes and Simon, La musique à Paris sous l’Occupation, pp. 227–​240. 145. Alten, “Le Conservatoire,” p.  4. And see Gribenski for a contrasting view, “L’exclusion des juifs,” p. 146.

Notes to pages 48–54  • 

361

146. Alten, “Le Conservatoire,” pp. 4, 5, 7, 9. And see Gribenski’s viewpoint, “L’exclusion des juifs,” pp. 147–​148. 147. Alten, “Le Conservatoire,” p. 6. As she points out, the French commissariat aux questions juives was created shortly before, on March 29, 1941. Also see Gribenski’s point of view, “L’exclusion des juifs,” p. 149. 148. See Corcy-​Debray, Jérôme Carcopino, p. 132. 149. Alten, “Le Conservatoire,” p. 8. 150. Ibid. As Alten notes, those considered Jewish could be auditors only within the 3 percent of Jewish students allowed in higher education. She also observes that by now the Commissariat général aux questions juives was increasingly the relay of Nazi anti-​Semitism. And see Gribenski’s position, “L’exclusion des juifs,” p. 151. 151. Alten, “Le Conservatoire,” p. 9. Also see Gribenski’s view, “L’exclusion des juifs,” p. 152. 152. Simon, “Claude de France, nôtre Wagner,” p. 7. 153. Philippe Morin, “Une nouvelle politique discographique pour la France,” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy, pp. 259–​260. 154. Paxton, Vichy France, p. 53. 155. Samazeuilh, “Musiciens d’Auvergne,” p. 3 156. By January 1941, reports on Parisian musical and operatic life are more extensive, a case in point being the coverage in Le temps of the performance of Chabrier’s L’étoile at the Opéra-​Comique in conjunction with the composer’s centenary in March of that year. 157. On Vichy “experts,” see Paxton, Vichy France, p.  240; and on Bouthillier, see p. 193. Sandrine Grandgambe sees Rouché, as do I, as not very different from the Vichy “hauts fonctionnaires” that Marc-​Olivier Baruch has studied. Sandrine Grandgambe, “La réunion des théâtres lyriques nationaux,” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy, p. 117. 158. Grandgambe, “La réunion des théâtres,” p. 109. 159. Ibid. 160. Ibid., p. 112. 161. Ibid., p, 113. 162. Ibid., pp. 114, 116. 163. Ibid., p. 122. 164. Ibid. 165. Ibid., pp. 122–​123. 166. Paxton, Vichy France, p. 382; and Grandgambe, “La réunion des théâtres,” pp. 117–​ 118. As Grandgambe points out, some artists found Rouché untrustworthy, and the exclusions at the Opéra affected about thirty people, not counting those at the École de danse. Also see Hervé Lacombe, Francis Poulenc (Paris:  Fayard, 2013), p. 507; here he notes that Poulenc always defended Rouché. This may have had to do with Poulenc’s experience during the staging of his ballet Les animaux modèles.

3 6 2   • 

Notes to pages 54–60

167. Hautecoeur, Les beaux-​arts en France, pp. 235, 240. 168. Sprout, “Les commandes de Vichy,” p. 167. 169. Hautecour, Les beaux-​arts en France, p.  242. And see Nord, France’s New Deal, pp. 259–​260. Nord points out that when Hautecoeur formed a group in early 1941 to vet projects for the theaters, he placed Rouché in charge. 170. Chimènes, “Alfred Cortot,” pp. 35–​36, 42–​43, 51. 171. Ibid., pp. 36–​37, 42–​43. 172. Ibid., p.  37. On the new placement of youth matters, see Paxton, Vichy France, p. 162, and Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier, p. 29. 173. Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier, pp. 30, 43. As Chimènes points out, “Alfred Cortot,” p. 37, in the fall of 1940 Cortot participated in the series of broadcasts on “chansons folkloriques” for Schaeffer’s Radio Jeunesse; he also participated in the programs purporting to be the response of French youth to Pétain’s speech addressing them. 174. See Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier, p. 29. He also notes that Cortot defended the place of choral singing in general education. On the Jeunesses musicales, also see Yannick Simon, “Les jeunesses musicales de France,” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy, pp. 203–​216. 175. Chimènes, “Alfred Cortot,” p. 38, and Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier, pp. 29–​30. 176. Hautecoeur, Les beaux-​arts en France, p.  256, and Callu, “Le Conservatoire de Paris,” p. 134. 177. Chimènes, “Alfred Cortot,” p. 39. 178. Ibid., pp. 39–​4 0, 45–​4 6. 179. See Laederich, “Les associations symphoniques parisiennes,” p.  232. Also see Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier, p. 29, and Chimènes, “Alfred Cortot,” p. 39. 180. Chimènes, “Alfred Cortot,” pp. 40–​41. 181. Ibid., pp. 40, 46, and Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier, p. 28. 182. Chimènes, p. 50. 183. Ibid., p. 45; and see Morin, “Une nouvelle politique discographique,” p. 255. 184. Chimènes, “Alfred Cortot,” p. 46. 185. Morin, “Une nouvelle politique discographique,” pp.  254, 258; and Laederich, “Les associations symphoniques parisiennes,” pp. 226–​227. 186. Morin, “Une nouvelle politique discographique,” p. 255. 187. Ibid., and Simon, “Claude de France, nôtre Wagner,” pp. 9, 12. 188. Morin, “Une nouvelle politique discographique,” p. 232. 189. Ibid., p. 262; and Simon, “Claude de France, nôtre Wagner,” p. 9. Also see Simon, “Les jeunesses musicales de France,”, p. 207. 190. Morin, “Une nouvelle politique discographique,” p. 261. 191. See Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier, p. 28, on the artistic corporations and the communitarian ideals of the National Revolution. As we noted, although Carcopino constituted the committee, it was Bonnard who asked Cortot to preside over it. See Chimènes, “Alfred Cortot,” p. 40.

Notes to pages 60–66  • 

363

192. Hautecoeur, Les beaux-​arts en France, pp. 248–​249. And see Yannick Simon, “La SACEM et l’étatisation du droit d’auteur,” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy, pp. 53–​54. He notes the audacity of the idea of state control over authors’ rights. 193. Simon, “La SACEM et l’étatisation,” p.  60. Also see Nord, France’s New Deal, p. 260. 194. Sprout, “Les commandes de Vichy,” p. 167. Also see Hautecouer, Les beaux-​arts en France, p. 248. On symbolic legitimacy and authorized cultural conceptions, see Pierre Bourdieu, Ce que parler veut dire: L’économie des échanges linquistiques (Paris: Fayard, 1982), p. 193. 195. Hautecoeur, Les beaux-​arts en France, p.  248, and Sprout, “Les commandes de Vichy,” p. 157. 196. See Sprout, “Les commandes de Vichy,” pp. 154–​159, and her “Music for a New Era,” pp. 180–​181. 197. Sprout, “Les commandes de Vichy,” pp. 159, 164. 198. See Serge Added, “L’euphorie théâtrale dans Paris occupé,” in La vie culturelle sous Vichy 1940–​1944, ed. Jean-​Pierre Rioux (Brussels:  Éditions Complexe, 1990), p. 334. Also see Grandgambe, “La réunion des théâtres,” p. 109. 199. Grandgambe, “La réunion des théâtres,” p. 114. 200. Added, “L’euphorie théâtrale,” p. 336. 201. Grandgambe, “La réunion des théâtres,” p. 114. However she does note that there was a sharp drop in 1942, but the funding did rise from 39,390 francs in 1941 to 555,000 in 1944. 202. Ibid., pp. 114, 116. 203. Ibid., pp. 116, 123. 204. Ibid., p. 123. 205. Ibid. 206. Ibid., p. 118. 207. Ibid. 208. Ibid., p. 119. 209. See Schwartz, “La musique, outil majeur, pp. 91–​96. 210. Grandgambe, “La réunion des théâtres,” pp. 119–​120. 211. Ibid., p. 122. 212. See Callu, “Le Conservatoire de Paris,” p. 134. Also see Hautecoeur, Les beaux-​arts en France, p. 251. One inspector he had named, who would now lose his position due to Vichy’s anti-​Semitic laws, was André Bloch. As Hautecoeur points out, Les beaux-​arts en France, p. 246, he was able to obtain the position of inspecteur général de la musique, which was eventually given to Alexandre Cellier. 213. Hautecoeur, Les beaux-​arts en France, p.  256, and Callu, “Le Conservatoire de Paris,” p. 134. 214. Alten, “Le Conservatoire,” pp. 2–​3. 215. Callu, “Le Conservatoire de Paris,” p. 134.

3 6 4   • 

Notes to pages 66–72

216. Laurent, Arts et pouvoirs en France, p. 14. 217. Paxton, Vichy France, p. 28. 218. Jackson, France: The Dark Years, pp. 167, 398. 219. Nord, France’s New Deal, p. 89. On the “vichysso-​résistants” see Johanna Barasz, “De Vichy à la résistance: Les Vichysso-​résistants, 1940–​1944” (thèse de doctorat d’histoire, Institut d’études politiques de Paris, 2010). 220. Paxton, Vichy France, p.  286. As he notes, p.  287, by 1942–​1943 the Resistance movement was clearly assuming “the dimensions of domestic social values.” He also points out, p. 294, “Almost every Frenchman wanted to be out from under Germany, but not at the price of revolution.” 221. Jackson, France: The Dark Years, p. 346. 222. See Martin Kaltenecker and Karine Le Bail, “Jalons,” in Pierre Schaeffer:  Les constructions impatientes, ed. by Martin Kaltenecker and Karine Le Bail (Paris:  CNRS Editions, 2012), p.  24; also see Karine Le Bail, “Émissions de minuit,” in the same volume, p.  122. She points out, p.  118, that entry into the Resistance could also be the result of having encountered the unacceptable, as well as of a process of gradual distancing. 223. Paxton, Vichy France, p. 351. 224. See the introduction to François Eychart and Georges Ailland, eds., Les lettres françaises et Les Étoiles dans la clandestinité (Paris: Le Cherche Midi, 2008), pp. 9–​10; also see Jackson, France: The Dark Years, p. 422. 225. Jackson, France: The Dark Years, p.  511. On the tensions within the contending cultural discourses that locate persons, see Calhoun, Social Theory, p. 27. 226. See the anonymous article “Échec à la propagande culturelle,” Les lettres françaises, no. 14 (March 1944): 5. 227. Jackson, France: The Dark Years, p. 305. He notes that this collection was reprinted in London in 1942. 228. Ibid., p. 303. 229. Ibid., p. 315. 230. Ibid. Jackson notes that among the contributors to Comoedia were Cocteau, Colette, and Jean-​Louis Barrault. 231. Ibid., pp. 314, 316. Chapter 2 1. On the number of performances of Pelléas during the Occupation, see Yannick Simon, “Répertoire des représentations de Pelléas et Mélisande données à l’Opéra-​ Comique sous l’occupation,” Cahiers Debussy, no. 37–​38 (2014): 105–​111. And on French cultural policy initially, see Serge Added, Le théâtre dans les années Vichy, 1940–​1944 (Paris: Éditions Ramsay, 1992), p. 113. Also see Pierre Bourdieu, Ce que parler veut dire: L’écomomie des échanges linguistiques (Paris: Fayard, 1982),

Notes to pages 72–75  • 

365

pp. 121–​122. On the cultural field, see Pierre Bourdieu, Les règles de l’art: Genèse et structure du champ littéraire (Paris:  Éditions du Seuil, 1992), p.  302. And see Victor Turner, “Liminality and Community,” in Culture and Society: Contemporary Debates, ed. Jeffrey C. Alexander and Steven Seidman (New  York:  Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 147–​149. 2. As Added points out, Le théâtre dans les années Vichy, pp.  97–​98, the Germans did not want to Nazify France: they sought calm, plunder, and a sense of return to normal life as opposed to politically militant theater. And see Henry Rousso, “Vichy:  Politique, idéologie et culture,” in La vie culturelle sous Vichy, ed. Jean-​ Pierre Rioux (Brussels: Éditions Complexe, 1990), p. 28. Here he points out that German cultural politics with regard to French theater were often liberal, in the interest of encouraging France artistically (within limits) in order to maintain calm and gain confidence. 3. Sandrine Grandgambe, “La Réunion des théâters lyriques nationaux,” in La vie musicale sous Vichy, ed. Myriam Chimènes (Brussels: Éditions Complexe, 2001), p. 113. Also see Leslie Sprout, The Musical Legacy of Wartime France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), p. 9. 4. François Porcile, Les conflits de la musique française, 1940–​1965 (Paris:  Fayard, 2001), p. 39. And see Marie-​Claire Mussat, “Rennes, capitale musicale de la France pendant la Drôle de Guerre,” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy, p. 361. The orchestra was in Rennes from September 29, 1939, to June 16, 1940. 5. On the reopening of the Opéra-​Comique on August 22 with Carmen, see Porcile, Les conflits de la musique française, p.  29. On September 1 the Opéra-​Comique presented André Messager’s La basoche. And see Robert Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940–​1944 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), p. 65, on Laval and Abetz, who shared a contempt for Vichy’s clericalism and traditionalist clichés. 6. For the most complete treatment of this aspect of Carmen’s character, see Susan McClary, Georges Bizet, Carmen (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 7. Paul Landormy, “Carmen,” L’information musicale, no. 1 (November 22, 1940): 20–​21. 8. See Rousso, “Vichy: Politique, idéologie, culture,” p. 31, on Vichy’s ideology favoring youth and dynamism, although it ineluctably lost control. 9. On Désormière, see Jane F. Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual: Music and Ideology in France, 1914–​1940 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 219–​220. 10. See BnF-​Opéra, dossiers d’artistes, Roger Désormière. Among other documents it contains relevant articles on the composer from Télérama March 2, 1999, and Le Figaro August 24, 1998. 11. Paxton, Vichy France, pp. 223–​224. 12. See Rousso, “Vichy: Politique, idéologie, culture,” p. 32. On p. 20 he points out that Vichy’s attempt to meet its complex and ever changing propaganda needs could

3 6 6   • 

Notes to pages 75–80

result in resistance and refusal; he also notes how patent or potential opposition could exist within official culture. 13. Pierre Boulez, Points de repère, ed. Jean-​Jacques Nattiez (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1985), p. 435. 14. Ibid. 15. See Maurice Emmanuel, Pelléas et Mélisande de Debussy (Paris: Éditions Mellotté, 1950), pp. 35–​36. For a valuable assemblage and scholarly consideration of the relevant documents relating to the work, see Jean-​Christophe Branger, Sylvie Douche, and Denis Herlin, Pelléas et Mélisande cent ans après: Études et documents (Lyon: Symétrie, 2012). There is no significant choral role in the work, since it may have suggested external or social authority. 16. See Claude Debussy, “Rameau,” in Monsieur Croche the Dilettante Hater, trans. Peter L. Davies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), pp. 33–​38. 17. See Jane F. Fulcher, French Cultural Politics and Music from the Dreyfus Affair to the First World War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 170–​179. 18. Ibid., pp. 177–​184. 19. Ibid., pp. 77–​93. And see Robert Orledge, Debussy and the Theater (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 231–​234. Also see Joseph Kerman, Opera as Drama (New York: Random House, 1956), pp. 183–​894. 20. On Mélisande’s motive, see Orledge, Debussy and the Theater, pp.  251–​252. On the treatment of the motives, particularly that of Golaud, see David Grayson, The Genesis of Debussy’s “Pelléas et Mélisande” (Ann Arbor:  University of Michigan Research Press, 1986), pp. 240–​246. 21. On the Interludes and the use of leitmotifs, see Robin Holloway, Debussy and Wagner (London: E. Eulenburg, 1979), pp. 76–​95. 22. Grayson, The Genesis of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, p.  144. And see Carolyn Abbate, “Tristan in the Composition of Pelléas,” 19th-​Century Music 5, no. 2 (Autumn 1981): 117–​141. Also see Glenn Watkins, Soundings: Music in the Twentieth Century (New York: Schirmer, 1988) p. 76. Here he comments on the use of the Tristan chord in Act IV scene 4, at the words “mais je suis triste,” the scene that Debussy composed first. He also stresses its parallels with the action of Act II in Tristan. 23. On Debussy’s initial acquaintance with Wagner’s works, see Grayson, The Genesis of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, p. 225; here he also discusses the Wagner sessions. As Watkins observes in Soundings, p. 76, when writing Pelléas Debussy stated that he still feared the “ghost of old Klingsor.” Also see François Lesur, Claude Debussy (Paris: Fayard, 2003), pp. 135–​136. 24. Boulez, Points de repère, p. 439. 25. See Brigitte Massin, Les Joachim:  Une famille de musiciens (Paris:  Fayard, 1996), pp. 252–​254. Also see Jean Gourret, Histoire de l’Opéra-​Comique (Paris:  Édition Albatros, 1984), p. 220. Busser had become conductor at the Opéra-​Comique in 1902 and took over the performances of Pelléas from Messager.

Notes to pages 80–82  • 

367

26. See Richard Osborne’s notes to the EMI Classics CD recording, a reissue of the original 1941 recording. Also see Massin, Les Joachim, pp. 144–​146. 27. Osborne, notes to the EMI Classics CD. One can hear the difference in their voices and styles in the Teyte-​Cortot recording of Debussy’s songs at the end of the same CD; it is then followed by a performance of Debussy songs by Garden and Debussy. Garden’s voice is perceptibly richer and heavier, and she is more deliberate in the accentuation (in jarring contrast with Debussy’s ethereal pianistic style). Teyte’s approach is rather light and unaccented. 28. Massin, Les Joachim, p. 262. And see David Grayson, “Debussy’s Ideal Pelléas and the Limits of Authorial Intent,” in Rethinking Debussy, eds. Elliott Antokoletz and Marianne Wheldon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 91–​96. André Messager observed that the part of Pelléas is too high for a baritone and too low for a tenor, As Janson himself pointed out, the first three acts are for a light baritone, or the French traditional French “baryton Martin,” which can extend up into the tenor range. The fourth act rather calls for a stronger tenor, one that can be heard through the orchestral accompaniment, especially in the love scene: here Pelléas becomes the more conventional young hero-​lover. 29. Again, see Osborne’s notes to the EMI Classics CD, which quote Désormière as saying, “The listener hears differently when he sees at the same time.” The original recording was made between April 24 and May 26, 1941, in the hall of the old Conservatoire. See Massin, Les Joachim, p. 262. 30. Massin, Les Joachim, p. 255, cites the review in La petite gironde of December 19, 1940, which comments on the production when it was brought to Bordeaux. 31. See André Boll, La mise en scène contemporaine: Son evolution (Paris: Éditions de la Nouvelle Revue Critique, 1944). On p. 122 he stresses his ample experience in numerous theaters, including the Paris Opera. 32. Ibid., p. 9. 33. Added, Le théâtre dans les années Vichy, pp. 243–​247. For Vichy the role of the mise en scène was to reveal the only possible interpretation; its cultural officials saw the increasing liberty in staging as a sign of the decadence of Republican France. See p. 282 on the prevalent belief that the authentic message came from the author. 34. Boll, La mise en scène contemporaine, p. 95. And see p. 41 on how Charles Dullin (who had worked with Rouché at the Théâtre des Arts, and was active throughout Vichy) always found the “climat visuel” that corresponded to the work. 35. Ibid., p. 97, for the illustration. For an illustration of the production at the Opéra-​ Comique, see BnF-​Opéra pièce 683, Pelléas et Mélisande: Drame lyrique en 5 actes et 13 tableaux de Maurice Maeterlinck, Mise en scène. Also see BnF-​Opéra Fonds André Boll #45, Pelléas et Mélisande, which indicates that he prepared the production at the Opéra-​Comique. And see the article enclosed in this dossier from Paris-​ Midi October 18, 1928. Here there is a picture of a simple symbolist setting, which appears to be a grotto; under it is written “Décor du 2e tableau du 3e acte, exécuté

3 6 8   • 

Notes to pages 82–88

par André Boll pour les représentations que donnera la troupe française dirigée par Pierre Monteux au Théâtre Royal de Copenhague. C’est la première fois qu’un théâtre national étranger fait exécuter ses décors à Paris.” It also cites an article in the Revue musicale referring to the new somber and nuanced decors of André Boll. Massin, in Les Joachim, p.  269n, cites the review by Jean Gendrey-​Réty in Le mot d’ordre of June 6, 1943, “Quarantaine de Pelléas et Mélisande,” where he speaks of the major dates of production of the work at the Opéra-​Comique—​1902, 1926 (under the baton of André Messager), and 1942. All the evidence indicates that the 1940 production was not new, but essentially that of 1926. Significantly, there is no separate dossier for a 1940 production at the Bibliothèque de l’Opéra. 36. Boll, La mise en scène contemporaine, p. 96. 37. Ibid. Here he explains how important the staging is in amplifying the ambiguous meanings of the music and text; hence the critical role of acting, space, and all the visual elements in transmitting the message. 38. Ibid., p. 97. 39. See Pierre Lalo’s review in Le temps of May 20, 1902, which is preserved in BnF-​ Opéra, dossiers d’oeuvres, Pelléas et Mélisande. This dossier also includes the review by Henri Fouquier in La France, May 18, 1903. 4 0. Again, see the Lalo review, as well as Added, Le théâtre dans les années Vichy, p. 260, on Dullin’s stress on the importance of relating the staging to the work’s dramatic message. 41. On the loss of popularity of Debussy’s music after World War I, see Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual, pp. 92–​93. Also see BnF-​Opéra, dossiers d’oeuvres, Pelléas et Mélisande. 42. BnF-​Opéra, dossiers d’oeuvres, Pelléas et Mélisande. On the government in 1926 (the Union nationale) and its cultural policies, see Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual, pp. 129–​130. 43. See Carolyn Abbate, “Music—​Drastic or Gnostic?,” Critical Inquiry 30, no. 3 (Spring 2004): 505–​536. 4 4. On the “keying” of performance, see Jane F. Fulcher, “The Concert as Political Propaganda in France and the Control of Performative Context,” Musical Quarterly 82, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 41–​67. And see Massin, Les Joachim, p. 255. 45. See Georges Auric, “Reprise de Pelléas et Mélisande,” La nouvelle revue française, no. 322 (December 1940): 102–​105. And see Massin, Les Joachim, p. 255. 4 6. Added, Le théâtre dans les années Vichy, p. 105. And see p. 114 on the gradual integration of German works into the repertoire of the French stage. 47. On the festivals at the Palais de Chaillot, see Leslie Sprout, “Music for a New Era” pp. 240–​242. 48. Inghlebrecht conducted Pelléas on August 31, 1941. See Massin, Les Joachim, p. 258. 49. See Wilfred D. Halls, Politics, Society, and Christianity in Vichy France (Oxford: Berg, 1995), p.  70. The Légion française des combatants, which functioned in the

Notes to pages 88–90  • 

369

unoccupied zone, was created in August 1940. Eventually the amalgamation of former unions of ex-​servicemen from both world wars, it was seen by Pétain as a surrogate for parties, now discredited. It grew rapidly, and by 1941 had 1.6 million members, including some bishops. From the beginning, Catholics had a prominent role in it, but with Darlan’s assumption of power in January 1941 the Légion assumed a more authoritarian stance, which increased during the summer after Pucheu became interior minister. Backed by his henchman Paul Marion, Pucheu favored turning it into a monolithic national movement, tied to the new “European order”: this the Church could not accept. On the performance of Pelléas here, see Porcile, Les conflits de la musique française, p. 27, and Massin, Les Joachim, pp. 257–​ 258. On the role of the Légion in the organization of propaganda in the unoccupied zone, see Claude Lévy and Dominique Veillon, “Propagande et modelage des esprits,” in Vichy et les français, ed. Jean-​Pierre Azéma and François Bédarida (Paris: Fayard, 1992), p. 186. 50. Josette Alviset, “La programmation musicale à Vichy: Les apparences de la continuité,” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy, pp. 399–​4 00. 51. Ibid. On Cortot’s position now, see Bernard Gavoty, Alfred Cortot (Paris: Bouchet/​ Chastel, 1977; orig. ed. 1956), pp. 157–​159. On Cortot in this period, also see Myriam Chimènes, “Alfred Cortot et la politique musicale du gouvernement de Vichy,” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy, pp. 35–​52. 52. On the increased state funding, see Sprout, “Music for a New Era,” p. 132. 53. Alviset, “La programmation musicale à Vichy,” p. 400. And see Gustave Samazeuilh, “Tristan et Pelléas à Vichy,” L’information musicale, no. 37 (September 12, 1941): 16–​ 17. Unfortunately there are apparently no photographs of this limited production. 54. See Noël Boyer, “Écoutant le Pelléas et Mélisande de Debussy,” Action française, September 7–​8, 1941: 3. As he puts it in the article, this specific performance of the opera was “offered” to the Légion. Also see AN-​F1A 3986, Ministère de l’Intérieur, Administration Générale: Objets Généraux; Papiers André Chérier 1-​6 #3, Jeune France. Pierre Schaeffer’s cultural organization, Jeune France, refused to participate in the Légion’s fête since it meant that its members would have had to swear allegiance to Pétain. 55. Alviset, “La programmation musicale à Vichy,” pp. 404–​4 04. And on Cortot’s performance, see Gavoty, Alfred Cortot, p. 160. He points out here that Cortot wrote an article on Berlioz for a collection edited by Sacha Guitry, De Jeanne d’Arc à Philippe Pétain (1249–​1942). 56. And here not only French but also foreign Jewish musicians could still perform through the help of patrons, particularly of wealthy aristocrats such as the Comtesse Pastré, who organized private concerts. Under the surveillance of officials, prominent Jewish artists such as Reynaldo Hahn and Manuel Rosenthal were thus allowed to appear (as opposed to in Vichy itself ), although Jews were still formally excluded from the French National Radio Orchestra. See Jean-​Marie Jacono, “Marseille en

3 7 0   • 

Notes to pages 90–92

liberté surveillée? Les ambiguïtés de la vie musicale,” in La Vie musicale sous Vichy, pp. 386, 390–​394. 57. Massin, Les Joachim, p.  257. And see Désiré-​Émile Inghelbrecht, “How Not to Perform Pelléas et Mélisande,” in Debussy in Performance, trans. and ed. James Briscoe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), pp. 157–​175. 58. Inghelbrecht, “How Not to Perform Pelléas,” p. 157. Briscoe here points out that Inghelbrecht was close to Debussy from 1910 on, and that Debussy discussed performance aspects of his scores with him. Inghelbrecht conducted the premiere of Le Martyre de saint Sébastien, and in addition to performing a concert version of Pelléas with the National Orchestra he made numerous recordings of Debussy’s music. Also see Inghelbrecht’s own words, “How Not to Perform Pelléas,” pp. 160–​163. 59. Here consult the recording conducted by André Cluytens, with Jacques Jansen as Pelléas. In it Cluytens conducts the Orchestre National de la Radiodiffusion française. Testament Recordings (England), SBT 3051, 1995; originally recorded 1958. 60. See the notes by Robert Orledge to the EMI edition, pp.  12–​14. It was another British soprano, Maggie Teyte, who had been Debussy’s favorite Mélisande, one who captured the ethereal quality of her character. 61. See Karine Le Bail, “Travailler à Paris sous l’Occupation: L’exemple de la radio,” in La musique à Paris sous l’Occupation, ed. Myriam Chimènes and Yannick Simon (Paris:  Fayard, 2013), pp. 36–​37. Here she discusses controversial concert of the Orchestre national that Inghelbrecht conducted for the Légion des volontaires français contre le bolchevisme on June 22, 1943, in honor of those légionnaires in German uniforms who had died in the east. But after the war Irène Joachim defended Inghelbrecht, despite this and the fact that he had conducted the orchestra of Radio-​Paris three times. 62. Gustave Samazeuilh, “Tristan et Pelléas à Vichy,” L’information musicale 37 (September 12, 1941): 16–​17. Also see Gustave Samazeuilh, “Richard Wagner et la France,” L’information musicale, no. 30 ( June 13, 1941): 639–​6 40. Samazeuilh had been a student of d’Indy at the Schola but was also influenced by Debussy. See Sara Iglesias, Musicologie et occupation:  Science, musique et politique dans la France des années noires (Paris: Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, 2014), p. 430. 63. On Germaine Lubin, see Sandrine Grandgambe, “La Réunion des théâtres lyriques nationaux,” pp. 113–​126. 6 4. Samazeuilh, “Tristan et Pelléas,” pp. 16–​17. 65. Added, Le théâtre dans les années Vichy, pp. 506–​507. He notes that the surrounding texts also imbued the performances with an official aura. On the “keying of performance,” see Richard Bauman, Verbal Art as Performance (Rowley, MA: Newbury House Publishers, 1977), pp. 42, 92. And see Bourdieu, Ce que parler veut dire, p. 121.

Notes to pages 92–95  • 

371

66. Boyer, “Écoutant le Pelléas de Debussy,” p.  3. On the complex relation between Debussy and the Action française, see Fulcher, French Cultural Politics and Music, pp. 189–​190. 67. On the Action française and classicism, see Fulcher, French Cultural Politics and Music, pp. 5–​6. On traditional popular art now, see, for example, Joseph Canteloube, “Le chants populaires de France,” Action française, October 4, 1940: 2. 68. Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual, p. 37. As Added points out, Le théâtre dans les années Vichy, p. 303, by January 1942 Pétain was stressing the importance of spreading the classical theatrical repertoire in venues such as factories and youth camps. 69. Eugen Weber, Action française: Royalism and Reaction in Twentieth-​Century France (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1962), pp. 433, 452. Dominique Sordet, who turned to collaboration, was an enthusiastic supporter not only of Wagner but also of d’Indy. See Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual, pp. 249–​250. 70. Weber, Action française, pp. 450–​454. On the growing divisions within the league, see Claude Roy, Moi je (Paris:  Gallimard, 1969). p.  364. As he points out, the Maurrasians were divided, with some believing that even under Hitler a strong and centralized French state could do well while others remained patriotic and hoped for an eventual liberation. 71. Yannick Simon, “Claude de France, nôtre Wagner:  Le culte de Debussy sous l’Occupation,” Cahiers Debussy, no. 30 (2006): 7. 72. Philippe Morin, “Une nouvelle politique discographique pour la France,” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy, pp. 259–​260. 73. Ibid., p. 255. 74. Ibid., pp. 253–​254. And see Leslie Sprout, “Music for a New Era,” p. 267. She points out that the war had cut off the Paris branches of Pathé and La Voix de son Maître from the parent company, Gramophone. We should note that although German propaganda also drew attention to the recording, it did try to limit the luster of French theatrical performances in Paris. 75. Morin, “Une nouvelle politique discographique,” pp.  254–​ 255, 257–​ 258. He observes that Maurice Hewitt’s orchestra recorded for the new label Les discophiles français; among the composers he selected for recording were—​significantly, given the fact that he was a résistant—​Mozart, but a Masonic work, as well as Rameau and Couperin, both of whom were hailed by the Resistance as purely French composers, and emblems of Enlightenment values. Pathé-​Marconi organized festivals for Ravel and Beethoven as well as for Honegger, and as Morin stresses, not all great French works were recorded. As he also points out, “Une nouvelle politique discographique,” pp. 260–​262, beginning on October 15, 1942, there was a systematic politics of recording contemporary French music; it may have been considered less threatening as cultural capital within the context. Morin observes that in 1943–​1944 there was hardly any recording of symphonic music that was not German.

3 7 2   • 

Notes to pages 95–97

76. Morin, “Une nouvelle politique discographique,” p.  261; and see Massin, Les Joachim, p. 262. Sprout, in “Music for a New Era,” p. 267, points out the shortage of wax required for the master discs, as well as the unreliable supply of electricity, although when necessary Désormière was still able to redo the most important scenes, such as that on the balcony in Act III. 77. Sprout, “Music for a New Era,” p. 265. For photographs of the recording sessions, see BnF-​Opéra pièce 99; it depicts the artists wearing coats and heavy woolens, indicating how cold it was in the unheated hall, even in early spring. 78. Julian Jackson, France:  The Dark Years 1940–​1944 (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 178. 79. Stanley Hoffmann, “Collaborationism in France during World War II,” Journal of Modern History 40, no. 3 (September 1968): 382. He points out that collaborationist journalists were put in control of the Paris press by Abetz. And see p. 383 on the fascist intellectuals in Je suis partout, who included Chateaubriant, Drieu La Rochelle, Céline, Rebatet, and Abel Bonnard. As he observes, pp. 384–​385, Rebatet and Bonnard rejoiced in the defeat of France and the fascists hated the tepid conservatives at Vichy. Here it is important to make the distinction between ideological types of writing on music, which Sara Iglesias sometimes (but not always) conflates in her book, Musicologie et occupation. She points out (p. 59) the relative degree of liberty in musicological publications, and as she indicates, p. 66, some themes did remain the same. While disagreements and disputes remained, they lay within carefully circumscribed boundaries. For musical journalism was a heavily censored field, where political shifts within the regime did have a discernible impact. Hence while some, like Robert Bernard (as she astutely observes, p. 82) maintained a certain distance from German pressures in journals like L’information musicale, he also wrote in the collaborationist Le cri du peuple and was severely criticized at Liberation for the good relations that he maintained with the occupant. For the quote cited in the text, see Abel Bonnard, “Le disque et la chambre,” in the booklet accompanying the recording, contained in BnF-​Opéra pièce 99. 80. Bonnard, “Le disque et la chambre”; And see Hoffmann, “Collaborationism in France,” p. 383, on the elitism and sentimental Romanticism of French fascism in this period, and on its strenuous opposition to bourgeois society and its values. 81. See Porcile, Les conflits de la musique française, p. 45. As he points out, Samazeuilh went to Vienna in late November 1941 for the celebration of the 150th anniversary of Mozart’s death, the other musicians including Jacques Rouché, Florent Schmitt, Marcel Delannoy, Alfred Bachelet, and Arthur Honegger. 82. On the French Wagnerians, see Jane F. Fulcher, French Cultural Politics and Music, particularly pp. 22–​24, 40–​4 4. Also see Steven Huebner, French Opera at the Fin-​ de-​Siècle: Wagnerism, Nationalism, and Style (New York: Oxford University Press. 2006). And see Gustave Samazeuilh, “Autour de Pelléas et Mélisande,” which is also in the booklet that accompanied the recording, cited in note 80. Like some others in France in this period, Samazeuilh stresses d’Indy’s initial praise of Pelléas in

Notes to pages 97–101  • 

373

L’occident but neglects to mention d’Indy’s ’s later change of heart and subsequent condemnation of the opera. 83. See Massin, Les Joachim, pp.  264–​265, on the release of the recording. Jacques’s article also includes photographs of the recording sessions and the performers. See Henry Jacques, “Une réalization phonographique—​Pelléas et Mélisande de Debussy,” Disques, no. 7 (October 1–​December 3, 1942): 11. 84. Jacques, “Une réalisation phonographique.” 85. Ibid. 86. Lucien Rebatet, “L’enregistrement de Pelléas et Mélisande,” L’information musicale, no. 54 ( January 23, 1942). [Page numbers not legible on microfilm] 87. See Massin, Les Joachim, p. 275, who cites Lucien Rebatet, “Les disques—​Pelléas et Mélisande,” Je suis partout, January 24, 1942. 88. Boulez, Points de repère, pp. 504–​506. 89. Ibid., pp. 510–​511. 90. Gisèle Sapiro, La guerre des écrivains (Paris: Fayard, 1999), p. 436. 91. As cited in Massin, Les Joachim, pp. 266–​267. 92. Jacques Chailley, “Le symbolisme des thèmes dans Pelléas et Mélisande,” L’information musicale, no. 64 (April 3, 1942): 40. 93. See Porcile, Les conflits de la musique française, p. 30, on the network of resistance musicians that was slowly being formed in the fall of 1941, several months after the recording was made. Also see Massin, Les Joachim, p. 283, on the early musical members of the Front national, which included Irène Joachim and the composer and choral conductor Elsa Barraine. The latter was initially the group’s leader but was eventually replaced by Louis Durey when she left France following total occupation in November 1942, and when he was able to return to Paris. 94. See Laurence Bertrand Dorléac, “La question artistique et le régime de Vichy,” in Rioux, La vie culturelle sous Vichy, pp. 138–​160. For further background, see her subsequent book, L’art de la défaite, 1940–​1944 (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1993). 95. On French battles over memory, see Jean-​ François Sirinelli and Éric Vigne, “Introduction:  Les cultures politiques,” in Histoire des droites en France, vol. 2, Cultures, ed. by Jean-​François Sirinelli (Paris:  Gallimard, 1992), p.  10. Also see Avner Ben Amos, “La commémoration” (in the same volume), esp. pp. 402–​4 06. And as he observes, p. 397, commemoration plays an important role in the political world; however there are inevitable problems when a regime attempts to maintain a date of commemoration but changes the significance of the event. 96. Ben Amos, “La commémoration,” p. 405. 97. Massin, Les Joachim, p. 269. The work’s premiere had taken place on April 30, 1902, at the Opéra-​Comique. As Porcile points out, Les conflits de la musique française, p. 55, the German demands soon included the promulgation of the law instituting the Service du travail obligatoire (on September 4, 1942), requiring French youth to go to Germany to work in factories.

3 7 4   • 

Notes to pages 101–109

98. Simon, “Claude de France,” p. 7. 99. Sprout, “Music for a New Era,” pp. 141, 257, 269–​270. Also see Yannick Simon, Composer sous Vichy (Lyon: Symétrie, 2009), p. 6. He refers to Le Flem’s Le rossignol de Saint-​Malo and to Delannoy’s Ginevra as “ce genre français par excellence” that incarnated “La France nouvelle,” as promoted by Vichy. However, This “genre français” and the “new France” was by now being negotiated with the German authorities, as they sought to define the “New Europe.” 100. Sprout, “Music for a New Era,” pp.  142, 267. Pénélope had premiered at the Opéra-​Comique. 101. Massin, Les Joachim, p.  272. She points out that, given Rouché’s considerable efforts in a period of sparse state funding, most of the new decors and costumes elicited critical praise in the French press. 102. BnF-​Opéra Sc./​Ph, Pelléas et Mélisande, Opéra-​Comique 1942, Décors—​Paul Lavalley. 103. Sprout, “Music for a New Era,” p. 257. 104. See Stanley Hoffmann, “Collaborationism in France during World War II,” Journal of Modern History 40, no. 3 (September 1968): 393. He stresses how Vichy thus delivered essential sectors of the French state to the ideological collaboration. And see Added, Le théâtre dans les années Vichy, p. 286. He points out that the Parisian press was largely controlled by German authorities and the collaborators. 105. Gustave Samazeuilh, “La quarantaine de Pelléas et Mélisande,” L’information musicale, no. 70 (May 15, 1942):  937–​938. And see Sara Iglesias, Musicologie et occupation, p.  81. She points out that Samazeuilh also wrote in the pro-​Pétain L’illustration, but it was following the shift of the regime toward greater collaboration, particularly under Pierre Laval. 106. Samazeuilh, “La quarantaine de Pelléas et Mélisande.” Samazeuilh also emphasized that it was in the home of his own first teacher, Ernest Chausson, that Debussy (who badly needed the money) gave performances at the piano of Wagner’s music dramas. 107. Ibid. 108. Sprout, “Music for a New Era,” p. 136. Also see Morin, “Une nouvelle politique discographique pour la France,” p. 262. He states that in 1943 and 1944 there were hardly any recordings of symphonic music that was not German. 109. Georges Vertut, “La pensée musicale d’Hector Berlioz et l’oeuvre d’art de l’avenir,” L’information musicale, no. 55 ( January 30, 1942): 663. 110. See Yannick Simon, “Hector Berlioz, compositeur français ‘aux trios-​quarts allemande,’” in Chimènes and Simon, La musique à Paris sous l’Occupation, pp. 86, 91. He points out, p. 81, that La damnation de Faust was performed twenty-​five times between 1940 and 1944. 111. Noël Boyer, “Debussy intime et inédit,” Action française, December 12–​13, 1942: 3.

Notes to pages 109–113  • 

375

112. Ibid. Boyer also condemns Eugène d’Harcourt, who originally referred to the work as “musique fastidieuse et malsaine” in Le Figaro. Again, on Camille Bellaigue and the Action française, see Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual, p. 37. 113. See Alexandra Laederich, “Les associations symphoniques,” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy, pp. 217–​220. 114. Simon, “Hector Berlioz,” p.  89. The film La symphonie fantastique came out in April 1942, with Jean-​Louis Barrault, Renée Saint-​Cyr, and Bernard Blier. It depicts Berlioz at the end of his life, appreciated by the French, which was contrary to the German assertion that they had lauded him when the French did not and later saved his memory. The film was produced by a German company, Continental Film; the Germans had wanted a propaganda film, but the French director, Christian-​Jacques, turned it against the German objective. The director of Continental Film was thus remonstrated by Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda. 115. Alain Laubreaux, “Berlioz, tel qu’en lui-​même le cinéma le change,” Le petit parisien, April 19, 1942, 2. 116. Debussy died on March 25, 1918. Concerning attacks on Pétain, see Claude Lévy and Domique Veillon, “Propagande et modelage des esprits,” in Azéma and Bédarida, Vichy et les Français, p. 197. As they point out, French public opinion was no longer as easily seduced to support Vichy’s cause, especially in 1943, as revealed in numerous reports to the préfets. 117. Ibid. 118. Ben Amos, “La commémoration,” p. 377. 119. Massin, Les Joachim, p.  293. On the style of Le Martyre de saint Sébastien, see Fulcher, French Cultural Politics and Music, pp. 189–​190. 120. Sprout, “Music for a New Era,” p. 210. 121. Ibid., p. 257. On p. 254 she also notes that in December 1943, due to the efforts of the French Ministry of Education and the German Armistice Commission in Wiesbaden, the ban on French music in Germany was finally lifted. This was a small consolation given the current pressure to produce German works, and lavishly, in France. 122. Ibid., p. 258. Also see Added, Le théâtre dans les années Vichy, who points out on p. 237 that the Milice was instituted in April 1943. 123. Grandgambe, “La Réunion des théâters lyriques nationaux,” p. 144. Over half the seats at the Opéra were occupied by the Germans, hence the added importance of rhetoric such as Landormy’s. She also stresses the popularity of the Faust legend now, and that tickets for Gounod’s Faust immediately sold out when it was performed, leading to a black market. Also see Paul Landormy, La musique française de la Marseillaise à la mort de Berlioz (Paris: Gallimard, 1944). 124. See Jean-​Marie Jacono, “Marseille en liberté surveillée? Les ambiguïtés de la vie musicale,” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy, p. 395.

3 7 6   • 

Notes to pages 113–116

125. Simon, “Claude de France,” p. 21. The book was originally published in Zurich and dedicated to Paul and Maja Sacher; the French translation appeared on September 5, 1943, with all Jewish names removed. André Coeuroy, the translator, had been the founder of the Revue musicale, which he edited from 1927 to 1937 as well as writing in other journals. 126. See Sprout, “Music for a New Era,” p. 265. On Strobel, see Manuela Schwartz, “La musique, outil majeur de la propagande culturelle des nazis,” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy, pp. 94, 96–​97. Also see Iglesias, Musicologie et occupation, p. 81. She points out that Strobel also contributed to collaborationist journals such as Deutschland-​Frankreich Vierteljahrschrift des Deutschen Institutes/​Paris, which also contained contributions by André Coeuroy. The latter, in addition, contributed to Je suis partout. 127. Simon, “Claude de France,” p. 21. 128. See Heinrich Strobel, Claude Debussy, preface and trans. by André Coeuroy (Paris: Éditions Balzac, 1943), especially p. 2 of the preface. Also see the review of it by Arthur Hoérée, under the revealing rubric “Bibliothèque européenne,” Comoedia, no. 127 (December 4, 1943): 5. 129. Strobel, Claude Debussy, pp. 99, 257–​258. In the epilogue, Strobel is still trying to explain Debussy’s “lutte acharnée” against Wagner and not only compares Debussy with Wagner but also argues that the unity (or interconnection) and rhythmic structure of Debussy’s motives recall the arias of Bach. 130. Louis Laloy, Debussy (Paris: Aux Armes de France, 1944), p. 39. On Laloy’s earlier views concerning Debussy’s style, see Fulcher, French Cultural Politics and Music, pp. 66–​73. 131. Simon, “Claude de France,” p. 22. He cites the article “À propos d’un concert et d’un livre,” L’information musicale, no. 123 ( July 2, 1943). 132. Jackson, France: The Dark Years, pp. 43, 422, 425. 133. See Denis Peschanski et al., eds., Collaboration and Resistance: Images of Life in Vichy France, 1940–​1944 (New York: Harry Abrahams, 2000), pp. 211–​215. 134. On these theoretical concepts, see David L. Barr, ed., The Reality of Apocalypse:  Rhetoric and Politics in the Book of Revelation (Atlanta:  Society of Biblical Literature, 2006), pp. 176–​177. 135. On authentic subjectivity, see Michael P. Steinberg, Listening to Reason: Culture, Subjectivity, and Nineteenth-​Century Music (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 5–​6, 182–​184. 136. See my remarks in “Introduction to Part I,” Opera and Society in Italy and France from Monteverdi to Bourdieu, ed. Victoria Johnson, Jane Fulcher, and Thomas Ertman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 29–​33. On the earlier reactions of the left to profascist appropriations of Debussy, especially that of Dominque Sordet, in the later 1930s, see Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual, p. 257.

Notes to pages 116–119  • 

377

137. Massin, Les Joachim, pp. 282, 288. 138. Olivier Corpet, “La revue,” in Sirinelli, Histoire des droites en France, vol. 2, Cultures, pp. 191–​192. 139. Bertrand Dorléac, l’art de la défaite, p. 274. Matisse was thus enshrined in 1941. Resistance journals in the visual arts also included La main à plume, the journal of the Front national des arts. 140. On Koechlin in this period, see Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual, pp. 215–​219. As Sprout points out, “Music for a New Era,” p. 60, Koechlin, a former student of Fauré, had been selected for a state commission in 1938. 141. Charles Koechlin, Debussy (Paris: Librairie Renouard, 1941), p. 5. 142. Ibid. Here he also makes a point of noting that Debussy did not regularly attend Franck’s organ class and thus cannot be considered a student of Franck, despite the claims of so many. Significantly, Franck was an unswerving devotee of Wagner, and was deeply admired at the Schola Cantorum. 143. Ibid., pp. 13, 15. 144. Ibid., pp. 21, 26. 145. On the Bruneau and Zola operas, see Fulcher, French Cultural Politics and Music, esp. pp. 19–​20. Koechlin also sees the influence of Chabrier because of the absence of the “scholastic,” or academic, element. And see Koechlin, Debussy, p. 26. 146. See the anonymous article “Debussy—​musicien français,” Musiciens d’aujourd’hui, no. 4 (October 1942): 3. Also see Leslie Sprout, The Musical Legacy of Wartime France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), p. 23. In February 1944 Musiciens d’aujourd’hui was absorbed into Les lettres françaises and became Le musicien d’aujourd’hui. Active in its publication were Auric, Poulenc, Barraine, Durey, Roland-​Manuel, and Manuel Rosenthal. 147. “Debussy—​musicien français.” This article may well have been by Poulenc, who continued to admire his former teacher, Koechlin. 148. See the introduction to Marc H. Ross, ed., Culture and Belonging in Divided Societies:  Contestation and Symbolic Landscapes (Philadelphia:  University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), p. 3. 149. “Debussy—​musicien français.” And see François Bédarida, “Vichy et la crise de la conscience française,” in Azéma and Bédarida, Vichy et les Français, pp. 84–​85, 90–​91. On the values held by Resistance writers, see Sapiro, La guerre des écrivains, pp. 499–​505. 150. Margaret Atack, Literature and the French Resistance:  Cultural Politics and Narrative Forms, 1940–​1950 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989), p. 84. Also see the review of Jean Vercors’s Le silence de la mer in Les lettres françaises, June 15, 1943: 3. 151. See “Debussy—​musicien français.” My position is thus opposed to that of Simon, in “Claude de France,” p. 11, where he considers Debussy’s later writings as compatible with the ideals of the National Revolution. His claim occludes the evolution

3 7 8   • 

Notes to pages 119–124

of Vichy’s discourse on Debussy by August 1941, and thus leads him to confound two divergent arguments. 152. “Debussy—​musicien français.” 153. [Anonymous] “Debussy le libérateur,” Musiciens d’aujourd’hui, no. 6 ( June 1943):  4. The author refers implicitly to the romanticism of the epigones of Wagner in later nineteenth-​century France, such as d’Indy. 154. Ibid. 155. As Sprout points out in The Musical Legacy of Wartime France, p.  38, Manuel Rosenthal was taken prisoner by the German army in June 1940 and interned for eight months in Stalag XIA, where he was allowed to direct a prisoners’ orchestra. He was released in April 1941 and first went to Marseille but returned to Paris in the late summer of 1942 (presumably in secret), when he began working for the Front national des musiciens, writing articles for its clandestine newsletter and aiding in its distribution. 156. See Guy Krivopissko and Daniel Virieux, “Musiciens:  Une profession en résistance?,” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy, pp. 333–​334, 337. Also see Hervé Lacombe, Francis Poulenc (Paris:  Fayard, 2013), p.  516. Founded on the initiative of Elsa Barraine, Louis Durey, and Roger Désormière, the Front national for musicians included Georges Auric, Claude Delvincourt, Henri Dutilleux, Irène Joachim, Roland-​Manuel, Manuel Rosenthal, and Arthur Honegger, who was eventually excluded. 157. Krivopissko and Virieux, “Musiciens: Une profession en résistance?,” pp. 338. 341. 158. Ibid., pp. 341–​342, 347–​349. Also see Porcile, Les conflits de la musique française, p. 33, for the full quote by Roland-​Manuel à propos of the performance of Berlioz’s Requiem on November 26, 1943. 159. [Anonymous] “Debussy, musicien français,” Les lettres françaises, August 1944: 3–​5. 160. Ibid. 161. Ibid. This article refers to one by Debussy of March 11, 1915, published in L’Intransigeant under the title “Enfin seul!” 162. Ibid. The author refers to the article by Debussy, of October 9, 1914. 163. Ibid. 164. Ibid. Here the author refers to Debussy’s words of July 22, 1915. 165. Adolphe Boschot, Le centenaire de “La damnation de Faust” (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1946), pp. 7, 16. 166. On Messiaen in the 1930s, see Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual, p. 294. Also see Jean Boivin, La classe de Messiaen (Paris: C. Bourgeois, 1995), on the works that Messiaen studied with his students, compositions that included those of Berlioz and Debussy. 167. See Pierre Boulez, Notes of an Apprenticeship, trans. Herbert Weinstock (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), pp. 334–​357. Relevant to Boulez’s manner of performing Pelléas are his comments to me in a conversation after his public

Notes to pages 124–126  • 

379

interview, moderated by Glenn Watkins, at the University of Michigan on January 28, 2010. In them he mentioned that he had met Désormière during the war, admired him greatly, and stayed in close touch with him until the latter’s death. For the staging of the 1952 revival of Pelléas, see Bnf-​Opéra Sc./​Ph., Pelléas et Mélisande, Décors de Jusseaume, 1902, 1952. 168. On the ways in which symbols can give rise to thought, see the introduction to Caroline Bynum, Steven Harrell, and Paula Rickman, eds., Gender and Religion: On the Complexity of Symbols (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986), p. 9. Here the reference is to the insights of Paul Ricoeur. On ritual and transformation, see Victor Turner, The Anthropology of Performance (New  York:  PAJ Publications, 1986), pp. 74–​75. Chapter 3 1. On Victor Turner’s concept of the liminal, see his “Liminality and Community,” in Culture and Society: Contemporary Debates, ed. Jeffrey C. Alexander and Steven Seidman (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 147–​149, 153. Pascal Ory, Les collaborateurs (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1976), p. 137. 2. See Jean-​Marie Guillon, “La philosophie de la Révolution nationale,” in Vichy et les Français, ed. Jean-​Pierre Azéma and François Bédarida (Paris: Fayard, 1992), p. 172. Here he points out that the period 1940–​1941 was still nebulous in terms of positive new measures, and was rather characterized by a proliferation of exclusions. And see Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order 1940–​ 1944 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), p. 20, on the attempt to carry out a domestic revolution in institutions and values. On the early ambiguities of Vichy, see Gisèle Sapiro, La guerre des écrivains, 1940–​1953 (Paris: Fayard, 1999), pp. 22ff. 3. Paxton, Vichy France, p. 29. And on Vichy youth movements and their relation to those of the 1930s, see Jacques Duquesne, Les Catholiques français sous l’occupation (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1996; orig. ed., 1966), p. 39. Also see Wilfred D. Halls, Les jeunes et la politique de Vichy, trans. Jean Sénémaud (Paris: Syros/​Alternatives, 1988), esp. ­chapter 9. On the political instability in the first months of the regime, the ideological divergences, and the personal as well as bureaucratic rivalries, see Hélène Eck, La guerre des ondes: Histoire des radios de langue françaises pendant la deuxième guerre mondiale (Paris: Armand Colin, 1985), pp. 43–​4 4. On Vichy’s plans for education outside of schools and youth movements, as well as the lack of unity here, see Paxton, Vichy France, pp. 160–​161. And on Vichy’s dynamism and innovations which, in the case of some figures who participated eventually resulted in a spirit of resistance and refusal, see Henry Rousso, “Vichy: Politique, idéologie et culture,” in La vie culturelle sous Vichy, ed. Jean-​Pierre Rioux (Brussels: Éditions Complexe, 1990), p. 20.

3 8 0   • 

Notes to pages 127–129

4. See the introduction by Maurice Stein and Arthur Vidich to Identity and Anxiety: Survival of the Person in Mass Society, ed. Maurice Stein, Arthur J. Vidich, and David M. White (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1960), pp. 14, 19. Here they cite Erik Erikson on democracies broadening the range of permissible identities but failing to provide facilities that favor experimentation, versus the quest of totalitarian societies to type their youth and foreclose identities. On Vichy and youth, particularly on the failure of Vichy’s youth movements as well as its ideological failures, see Bernard Comte, “Les organisations de la jeunesse,” in Azéma and Bédarida, Vichy et les Français, pp. 179–​202. 5. See Philip Nord, “Pierre Schaeffer and Jeune France: Cultural Politics in the Vichy Years,” French Historical Studies 21, no. 3 (Fall 2007):  687–​694, and Paxton, Vichy France, p. 272. And see Duquesnes, Les Catholiques français sous l’occupation, p. 143, on the kind of revolution that Mounier and the Catholic left wanted, and how they hoped to use Vichy to this end. On the various attitudes toward Vichy at first, see Claude Roy, Moi je (Paris: Gallimard, 1969), p. 364. As he points out, at Clermont-​Ferrand and Lyon, where most of the Parisian journals had taken refuge, some socialists believed that the Révolution nationale could be inflected toward the left, while the royalists and followers of Maurras were divided, with some believing that even under Hitler a French state could do well, while others remained patriotic and hoped for liberation. Also see Karine Le Bail, “Émissions de minuit,” in Pierre Schaeffer: Les constructions impatientes, ed. Martin Kaltenecker and Karine Le Bail (Paris: CNRS Editions, 2012), pp. 117–​118. Prélude, chorale et fugue was published by Flammarion in 1983. 6. See the pamphlet (the larger of the two listed under this call number) in BnF-​ Musique 8 Vm. Pièce 1646, Titres et travaux de Pierre Schaeffer (1973), p. 9. Schaeffer later reflected philosophically that part of our brain is scientific—​that which is associated with the baccalaureat, the Sorbonne, and the École Polytechnique, and that which is associated with the solitary element of technocracy; the other side, to the contrary, is that associated with the heart and with music. See Pierre Schaeffer, L’avenir à reculons (Paris: Casterman, 1970), pp. 17, 30, and 66. He points out that for him the engineer and the creator, the artist and the technician, are always one; however, he realized this only gradually, for during a long period he worked hard in technology before rediscovering the music of his parents. 7. Schaeffer, L’avenir à reculons, 68–​70. 8. Ibid. And see Paxton, Vichy France, p. 280. 9. Schaeffer, L’avenir à reculons, p. 74. And see Philip Nord, France’s New Deal: From the Thirties to the Postwar Era (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), p. 262. 10. Pierre Schaeffer, Clotaire Nicole, 1910–​1932 (Paris: Éditions de la Revue des Jeunes, 1938), p. 5. 11. Ibid., p. 76. As he points out, p. 170, Nicole was a late convert to Catholicism and (like the other late convert, Olivier Messiaen) Nicole was attracted to the writings of Ernest Hello and to those of Léon Bloy.

Notes to pages 129–131  • 

381

12. Roger Leenhardt, Les yeux ouverts: Entretiens avec Jean Lacouture (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1979), p. 93. 13. Schaeffer, L’avenir à reculons, p. 30. 14. Julian Jackson, France:  The Dark Years, 1940–​1944 (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 344. Also see Martin Kaltenecker and Karine Le Bail, “Jalons,” in Pierre Schaeffer: Les constructions impatientes, p. 37, and Michel Winock, Histoire politique de la revue Esprit, 1930–​1950 (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1975), p. 29. 15. On nonconformism and its impact on musicians, see Jane F. Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual:  Music and Ideology in France 1914–​1940 (New  York:  Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 285–​287. As Leenhardt points out in Les yeux ouverts, pp. 93–​95, “personalism” could also be non-​Christian; the important element was the stress on fraternity. 16. Nord, “Pierre Schaeffer and Jeune France,” p.  688. Also see Véronique Chabrol, “Jeune France:  Une expérience de recherche et de décentralisation culturelle, novembre 1940–​mars 1942)” (thèse de 3e cycle, Université de Paris III, 1974), p. 258. 17. Schaeffer, L’avenir à reculons, p. 49. 18. Michel Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier:  Les non-​conformistes face aux années 40 (Paris:  Economica, 1997), p.  48, and Martin Kaltenecker and Karine Le Bail, “Jalons,” p. 22. 19. Martin Kaltenecher and Karine Le Bail, “Jalons,” p. 22. The first minister of youth, the family, and sport was Jean Ybarnégarey. Georges Lamirand became the general secretary in charge of youth affairs from September 1940 to February 1943. See Paxton, Vichy France, pp. 160–​161. 20. Pierre Schaeffer, Les antennes de Jéricho (Paris: Stock, 1978), pp. 281–​282. And see Jean Laurendeau, Maurice Martenot, luthier de l’électronique (Montreal:  Dervy, 1990), p.  7. Laurendeau also notes that Schaeffer was an “ingénieur de la Radiodiffusion” since 1936. And see Gisèle Sapiro, La guerre des écrivains, p. 99, on Vichy’s early ambiguity and its wide support. 21. Nord, “Pierre Schaeffer and Jeune France,” pp. 689–​690. On all Schaeffer’s friends who were also former “scouts routiers” and were already at Vichy, see Véronique Chabrol, “L’ambition de Jeune France,” in Rioux, La vie culturelle sous Vichy, p. 163. 22. Philip Nord, France’s New Deal: From the Thirties to the Postwar Era (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), pp. 296–​299. And as he points out, p. 301, six private stations survived in the unoccupied zone, including that owned by Laval, but Vichy pressured them to broadcast up to sixty hours per week of programming that it dictated. And see Karine Le Bail, “Travailler à Paris sous l’Occupation: L’exemple de la radio,” in La musique à Paris sous l’Occupation, pp. 27–​37, ed. Myriam Chimènes and Yannick Simon (Paris: Fayard, 2013), p. 32. As she points out, Vichy radio could be heard throughout France, but its hours and broadcasts were monitored by the Germans. She also specifies, p. 29, that the Radio

3 8 2   • 

Notes to pages 131–134

Nationale sent its artistic services to Marseille in the fall of 1940. Also see Stéphanie Corcy, La vie culturelle sous l’Occupation (Paris: Perrin, 2005); on p. 62 she explains that the Radio Nationale was poorly transmitted in Paris and thus difficult to hear. 23. Comte, “Les organisations de jeunesse,” p. 414. 24. See Leenhardt, Les yeux ouverts, p. 120, on the group associated with the Secrétariat à la jeunesse, which included many former associates of nonconformist journals such as Esprit and L’ordre nouveau, as well as of La flèche. As he points out, Vichy was a crossroads for all political tendencies in the fall of 1940, and many of them were neither right nor left; for them the significant division was rather one of generation. 25. As Nord points out in France’s New Deal, p. 304, the planning for Radio Jeunesse began in July 1940. The first broadcast was in August, and it became a daily program in September. And see Kaltenecker and Le Bail “Jalons,” pp. 22–​24. 26. See Cécile Méadel, “Pauses musicales ou les éclatants silences de Radio-​Paris,” in La vie musicale sous Vichy, ed. Myriam Chimènes (Brussels:  Éditions Complexe, 2001), pp. 244–​245. Also see Nord, “Pierre Schaeffer and Jeune France,” p. 688, on Schaeffer and his collaborators. On Radio Jeunesse, see Hélène Eck, “À la recherche d’un art radiophonique,” in Rioux, La vie culturelle sous Vichy, p. 284. And on Daniel-​Lesur, see Cécile Auzolle, ed., Regards sur Daniel-​Lesur:  Compositeur et humaniste, 1908–​2002 (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-​Sorbonne, 2009), as well as Lucie Kayas and Christopher B. Murray, “Portique pour une fille de France,” in Pierre Schaeffer: Les constructions impatientes, p. 100. 27. Étienne Fouilloux, Les chrétiens français entre crise et libération, 1937–​ 1947 (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1997), p. 100. 28. Leenhardt, Les yeux ouverts, pp.  95, 119–​120. He points out that one attractive aspect of the offer was that one could obtain a passport in order to circulate more freely within France, as well as ample pay. And see Laurendeau, Maurice Martenot, p. 116, as well as Bernard Gavoty, Alfred Cortot (Paris: Bouchet-​Chastel, 1977; orig. ed., 1956), pp. 157–​159; the latter discusses Cortot’s various positions within the administration, from (briefly) haut commissaire des beaux-​arts to directeur artistique des services de la jeunesse, and (in 1942)  conseiller technique des services pour la musique under the Ministère de l’Éducation Nationale. Also see Kayas and Murray, “Portique pour une fille de France,” p. 102. 29. Kaltenecker and Le Bail, “Jalons,” p. 24. And Laurendeau, Maurice Martenot, p. 116, as well as Nord, “Pierre Schaeffer and Jeune France,” p. 688. 30. On the problem of radio transmission, see Eck, La guerre des ondes, p.  39. Also see Nord, France’s New Deal, p. 304, Kaltenecker and Le Bail, “Jalons,” p. 24, and Myriam Chimènes, “Alfred Cortot et la politique musicale du gouvernement de Vichy,” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy, p. 37. 31. Bernard Comte, Une utopie combattante:  L’école des cadres d’Uriage, 1940–​1942 (Paris: Fayard, 1991), p. 91, and Kaltenecker and Le Bail, “Jalons,” p. 25. Also see

Notes to pages 134–137  • 

383

Schaeffer, Les antennes de Jéricho, pp.  281–​283, as well as Claude Roy, Moi je, pp. 366–​369. 32. David Bidussa and Denis Peschanski, eds., La france de Vichy:  Archives inédites d’Angelo Tasca (Milan: Fondazione Giancomo Feltrinelli, 1996), p. 5. 33. See Kaltenecker and Le Bail, “Jalons,” p. 24, and Renée Bédarida, Les Catholiques dans la guerre, 1939–​1945 (Paris: Hachette, 1998), p. 83. On the Catholics initially at Vichy, see Paxton, Vichy France, p. 272, and on Catholic resistance publications, see François and Renée Bédarida, La Résistance spirituelle, 1941–​1945: Les cahiers clandestins du Témoignage chrétien (Paris: Albin Michel, 2001), pp. 9–​10. 34. On the distinction between political discourse and the material forms that carry it, see Roger Chartier, On the Edge of the Cliff: History, Language, and Practices, trans. Lydia Cochrane (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), p. 75. 35. Nord, “Pierre Schaeffer and Jeune France,” p. 688. Also see Bernard Comte, “L’esprit d’Uriage: Pédagogie civique et humanisme révolutionnaire,” in Rioux, La vie culturelle sous Vichy, p. 193. And see François Porcile, Les conflits de la musique française, 1940–​1965 (Paris: Fayard, 2001), p. 45. Here he observes that Pétain claimed Péguy, but so too did those in the Resistance-​sponsored Éditions de Minuit; in 1944 it published selected works of Péguy in order to establish his intransigent patriotism. Also see Gisèle Sapiro, La guerre des écrivains, p. 68, and Michel Winock, Le siècle des intellectuels (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1997), p. 347. 36. Nord, “Pierre Schaeffer and Jeune France,” p. 688, and Leenhardt, Les yeux ouverts, p. 122. Leenhardt also reveals that by winter the “false capital” of Vichy was beginning to appear sinister to him, as it would to Maurice Martenot. On how Schaeffer saw the role of Radio Jeunesse in his evolution, see his Les antennes de Jéricho, p. 284. Also see Nord, France’s New Deal, p. 305. 37. See Schaeffer, L’avenir à reculons, p. 29, on how he now attempted to regroup all those with ideas in the domain of artistic experimentation. Also see Nord, “Pierre Schaeffer and Jeune France,” pp. 688ff., on the role of those whom he had encountered at Vichy radio, including André Clavé, the founder of the touring theater company La Roulotte. 38. Francine Gaillard-​Risler, André Clavé: Théâtre et résistances; Utopies et realités, 1916–​ 1981 (Paris: Association des Amis d’André Clavé, 1998), p. 58. Also see Schaeffer, Les antennes de Jéricho, p. 275, on his requesting permission to use the name Jeune France only later. 39. On the original concert society, see Jane F. Fulcher, “The Politics of Transcendence: Ideology in the Music of Messiaen in the 1930s,” Musical Quarterly 86, no. 3 (Fall 2002):  449–​471. And on Schaeffer’s recruitment of spiritualists, including members of this group, see Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier, p. 52. 4 0. Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier, p. 290. 41. See the brochure “Jeune France: Principes, directions, esprit,” in AN-​F1a 3686. 42. Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier, p. 292, and Jackson, France: The Dark Years, p. 346.

3 8 4   • 

Notes to pages 137–140

43. Paxton, Vichy France, p. 221 and Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier, pp. 61, 104. 4 4. Schaeffer was made chef de service in the division Propagande par spectacle et radio in the SGJ, with Paul Flamand as chef adjoint, and in charge of the occupied zone. See Bernard Comte, Une utopie combattante, p. 91. 45. Nord, “Pierre Schaeffer and Jeune France,” p. 690. Véronique Chabrol, “L’ambition de Jeune France,” in Rioux, La vie culturelle sous Vichy, p. 161, discusses the source of the subventions, including those from Lamirand. On Vichy’s youth associations, see Halls, Les jeunes et la politique de Vichy, pp. 241–​274. Also see Serge Added, Le théâtre dans les années Vichy, 1940–​1944 (Paris: Éditions Ramsay, 1992), pp. 268–​ 269. And see Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier, p. 48. 4 6. Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier, p.  104. Chabrol, in “L’ambition de Jeune France,” pp.  164–​165, reproduces Jeune France’s statutes, dated November 22, 1940. She also points out that Schaeffer, in forming the association, called on his colleague in cinema, Roger Leenhardt (who was a friend of Mounier) as well as Paul Flamand, who as an editor had published Schaeffer’s first book, Clotaire Nicole, at the Éditions du Seuil. Also see Eck, “À la recherché d’un art radiophonique,” p. 284. 47. Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier, p. 52. They wrote the booklet in July 1941, when they first met at Uriage, and as Bergès points out, they sought a cultural revolution that was both traditional and innovative at once. And see the letter of Pierre Schaeffer to the Ministre de l’Intérieur, Pierre Pucheu, dated December 1, 1941, in AN-​F1a 3686 (Papiers André Chérier). 48. Jackson, France: The Dark Years, p. 306. See Le Figaro December 12, 1940, p. 2, for the announcement of the new association. 49. Gaillard-​Risler, André Clavé, pp. 38, 58. Jeune France officially existed (in the unoccupied zone) from November 1940 to March 1942. See Chabrol, “L’ambition de Jeune France,” p.  161. On its organization, also see Leenhardt, Les yeux ouverts, pp. 122–​123 and Nord, “Pierre Schaeffer,” p. 695. 50. Gaillard-​Risler, André Clavé, p. 58. 51. Ibid., pp. 57–​58. As she points out, Jeune France still maintained an office at Vichy. On the Maîtrises, see Chabrol, “L’ambition de Jeune France,” p. 172. 52. Nord, “Pierre Schaeffer,” p.  693. Jean Lagénie, a man of the theater, from the Gironde, became the head of the Maison in Mans in August 1941, mounting classics such as Molière and Caldéron and organizing courses in drama and choral singing, as well as art exhibitions. See Chabrol, “L’ambition de Jeune France,” p. 171. 53. See Nord, “Pierre Schaeffer,” p. 693, on the board. As he argues, the fascist element within Vichy grew stronger with the total occupation of France in November 1942. Also see Jackson, France: The Dark Years, p. 160–​161. 54. Nord, “Pierre Schaeffer,” p. 693. Also see Claude Roy, Moi je, p. 389, and Schaeffer, L’avenir à reculons, p. 94. 55. Chabrol, “L’ambition de Jeune France,” p.  167. Edouard Pignon (1905–​1993), a painter whose style was close to abstraction, eventually became a communist.

Notes to pages 140–143  • 

385

56. On the results of this in theater, see Added, Le théâtre dans les années Vichy, pp. 268–​269. 57. Laurendeau, Maurice Martenot, p.  17. On Claude Roy and Schaeffer’s circle, see Porcile, Les conflits dans la musique française, p. 25. Roy had formerly been editor of the nonconformist journal Combat. 58. Nord, “Pierre Schaeffer,” pp. 690–​691, 700. He explains that Schaeffer’s Catholic connections also brought in Hussenot and Clavé, both associated with the theater. 59. On nonconformist ideology and the arts, see Jane F.  Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual, pp. 285–​287. On the members of Jeune France and their ideological origins, see Nord, “Pierre Schaeffer,” p. 692. 60. On Messiaen’s entry into the group, see Peter Hill and Nigel Simeone, Messiaen (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press), pp. 104–​110. And see Kayas and Murray, “Portique pour une fille de France,” p. 100. 61. Laurendeau, Maurice Martenot, p. 118. 62. At least 120 passengers thus traveled on the train. See Jacques Tchamkerten, Arthur Honegger ou l’inquiétude de l’éspèrance (Geneva: Éditions Papillon, 2005), pp. 179–​ 180, on the presentation of Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher from July 4–​August 7, 1941, with the collaboration of Jeune France and the Commissariat à la lutte contre le chômage. It was conducted by Hubert d’Auriol with the Jeune France orchestra, called the Orchestre symphonique français. They performed in twenty-​seven cities and towns in the unoccupied zone, including Lyon, Marseilles, and Nice, all in a semistaged production. On Jeune France’s efforts on behalf of the Jews, see Nord, “Pierre Schaeffer,” p. 686, and Gaillard-​Risler, André Clavé, pp. 86–​87. 63. On Mounier’s position in the group, see Nord, “Pierre Schaeffer,” p. 685; and on Mounier and his journal, see Michel Winock, Histoire politique de la revue Esprit (Paris:  Éditions du Seuil, 1975). On the creation of the school at Uriage, see Bernard Comte, “L’esprit d’Uriage:  Pédagogie civique et humanisme révolutionnaire,” in Rioux, La vie culturelle sous Vichy, p. 179. It was closed in December 1942 by Laval’s government. On the school, also see Bernard Comte, Une utopie combattante: L’école des Cadres d’Uriage, 1940–​1942 (Paris: Fayard, 1991). And see Jackson, France: The Dark Years, p. 341. 6 4. Comte, Une utopie combattante, p. 107. And see Comte, “L’esprit d’Uriage,” pp. 180–​ 184. Comte demonstrates that by the beginning of 1941 the school was growing away from Vichy and becoming more personalist (nonconformist) in orientation. Ségonzac was not the only former scout to (at first) believe in and then turn away from Vichy; so too would Schaeffer and others. In fact by 1944 the militantly resist­ ant and antipétainist Maquis included many former scouts as well as youth who had been associated with the Chantiers de jeunesse. See Duquesne, Les Catholiques français sous l’occupation, p. 76. 65. But Beuve-​Méry had already grown more reserved. See Jackson, France:  The Dark Years, p. 243. As Paxton observes, Vichy France, p. 165, the school went underground as

3 8 6   • 

Notes to pages 143–145

a resistance body in November 1942. Also see Comte, Une utopie combattante, pp. 397–​ 399. On the distinctive nature of Uriage, see Halls, Les jeunes et la politique de Vichy, p. 317. As he explains, by March 1941 there were some sixty schools to train leaders. On Mounier and his attempt to transform French youth, see John Hellmann, Emmanuel Mounier and the New Catholic Left 1932–​50 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981). Mounier’s journal was banned in late 1941, and Mounier briefly imprisoned; see Nord, “Pierre Schaeffer,” p. 686. On p. 701 he points out that Mounier had links to a variety of youth organizations and became a natural target as Vichy leadership grew more hardline, especially with the appointment of Pierre Pucheu as minister of interior in the summer of 1941. On the role of Mounier at Uriage, see John Hellmann, The Knight-​Monks of Vichy France:  Uriage 1940–​1945 (Montreal:  McGill-​Queens University Press, 1993); here he emphasizes the militant Catholic spirit at Uriage. 66. Halls, Les jeunes et la politique de Vichy, p. 237. And see Duquesne, pp. 143–​144, on the kind of revolution that Mounier wanted and how he hoped to use Vichy to this end. Also see Maurice Agulhon, La République, vol 2., 1932 à nos jours (Paris:  Hachette, 1990), pp. 383–​389, on the group at Uriage and its complex, changing relation to Vichy. And see Comte, Une utopie combattante, p. 92. On the Chantiers de jeunesse, see Nord, France’s New Deal, p. 270. It had been established in 1940 by another former scout, General Paul de la Porte de Theil. Jeune France employed the group more than once, and used some of its members for Hussenot’s month-​long theatrical Maîtrise at Uriage. 67. See Charles Taylor’s review of Jonathan Lear, Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Despair, New York Review of Books, April 26, 2007: 6, 8. 68. See Nord, “Pierre Schaeffer,” p. 686, on Mounier being pushed out and later imprisoned. On the conference, see Armand Guilbert, “Trois jours à Lourmarin, dans un monde de poètes et de musiciens,” Le Figaro, September 27, 1941: 3. 69. Leendhardt, Les yeux ouverts, p.  123. And see Chabrol, “L’ambition de Jeune France,” pp. 176–​177, where she points out that the Rencontres de Lourmarin were organized by Roger Leenhardt and Emmanuel Mounier. According to Mounier later, almost all the important young poets of the postwar period were there, and the musicians in the original Jeune France participated. 70. Jackson, France: The Dark Years, p. 345. 71. On Davenson in the 1930s, see Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual, p. 289. On him in the 1940s, see Nord, “Pierre Schaeffer,” p. 696; and see Davenson [Henri-​Irénée Marrou], Le livre des chansons (Paris:  Éditions du Seuil, 1944). Marrou points out that the book was written between 1941 and 1943. Also see Karine Le Bail, “Émissions de minuit,” p. 122, and Georges Aillaud and François Eychart, eds., Les lettres françaises et Les Étoiles dans la clandestinité (Paris: Le Cherche Midi, 2008), p. 123. And see Nord, France’s New Deal, p. 269. 72. On the question of popular culture during the Popular Front, see Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual, pp. 207–​209.

Notes to pages 145–149  • 

387

73. Davenson [Marrou], Le livre des chansons, pp. 12–​13, 23. 74. See the brochure, “Jeune France:  Principes, directions, esprit,” in AN-​F1a 3686. Schaeffer consistently construed folklore as still alive and communal, a patrimony on which to build. See Schaeffer, L’avenir à reculons, pp. 59–​60. 75. Gaillard-​Risler, André Clavé, p. 60. 76. See, for example, Joseph Canteloube, “Les chants populaires de France,” Action française, October 4, 1940: 2. 77. Chabrol, “L’ambition de Jeune France,” pp. 162, 172. On the evening classes offered through the Maîtrises, see the letter from Schaeffer dated December 1, 1941 in AN-​ F1a 3686. On the classes offered also see Gaillard-​Risler, André Clavé, p. 61. 78. It is important to recognize that the Resistance also aptly transposed and reinvested scouting models, including chansonniers and practices of collective singing, in order to help build resolve, or to sustain members when they were taken prisoner. 79. See the brochure “Jeune France: Principes, directions, esprit,” in AN-​F1a 3686. 80. See Nord, “Pierre Schaeffer,” p. 694, concerning the stress on the individual artist not being isolated from the wider culture. On the themes they employed, including Jeanne d’Arc, see Chabrol, “L’ambition de Jeune France,” pp. 168–​169. And as she puts it, in the unoccupied zone they stressed decentralization as well as the interdisciplinary, the important thing being to tour and “donner à voir.” 81. Chabrol, “L’ambition de Jeune France,” p. 174. 82. Nord, “Pierre Schaeffer,” p. 697. And see Duquesne, Les Catholiques français sous l’occupation, p. 75. The Chantiers de la jeunesse carried out public works of general interest and, in effect, constituted a form of civic service. 83. Schaeffer, letter of December 1, 1941, in AN-​F1a 3686. 84. See Chabrol, “Jeune France: Une expérience de recherche et de décentralisation culturelle,” p. 167. 85. Gaillard-​Risler, André Clavé, pp. 69–​70. 86. Ibid. And as she specifies, p. 74, the farmers were nude from the torso up. Jeune France also gave Aeschylus’s Les suppliantes at the Roland Garros stadium in Paris. See Chabrol, “L’ambition de Jeune France,” p. 176. 87. Chabrol, “L’ambition de Jeune France,” p. 168. 88. Ibid. 89. Nord, France’s New Deal, p. 267. 90. Chabrol, “L’ambition de Jeune France,” p. 174, and Nord, “Pierre Schaeffer,” p. 694. And see Michèle Cone in French Modernism:  Perspectives on Art before, during, and after Vichy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). She stresses the conservative modernism here as implicitly in opposition to the interwar “École de Paris,” which included foreign and Jewish members. Cone also put forth this view in her Artists under Vichy:  A Case of Prejudice and Persecution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992). This is as opposed to the more nuanced position of Laurence Bertrand Dorléac in L’art de la défaite, 1940–​1944 (Paris: Éditions

3 8 8   • 

Notes to pages 149–152

du Seuil, 1993), pp. 261–​262, who stresses their ideal of challenging composition and rigorous spirituality. 91. On the composers who became members of Jeune France, see Gaillard-​Risler, André Clavé, p. 62. And on Jean Françaix, see Myriam Chimènes, “Les concerts de la Pléïade: La musique au secours de la sociabilité,” in Chimènes and Simon, La musique à Paris sous l’Occupation, p. 46. 92. Gaillard-​Risler, André Clavé, p.  74. As Jean Françaix also describes, they were always well received, and at the end of their tour they performed before an audience of about 2,500 in Le Mans. 93. Chabrol, “L’ambition de Jeune France,” p. 173. Also see Leslie Sprout, “Music for a New Era: Composers and National Identity in France, 1936–​1946,” (PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2000), p. 264. 94. Kayas and Murray, “Portique pour une fille de France,” p.  102. And see Yves Durand, “Les notables,” in Azéma and Bédarida, Vichy et les Français, p. 256. And see Pierre Bourdieu, Ce que parler veut dire: L’économie des échanges linguistiques (Paris: Fayard, 1982), p. 36. 95. Kayas and Murray, “Portique pour une fille de France,” p. 99. 96. Nord, France’s New Deal, p.  272. And see Leslie Sprout, The Musical Legacy of Wartime France (Berkeley:  University of California Press, 2013); she specifies, p. 48, that nearly two hundred musicians were part of the tour, and that the production was semistaged. Also see Chabrol, “L’ambition de Jeune France,” pp. 175–​ 176. Contrary to the publicity, the work had already premiered in France, having been performed in Orléans on May 8, 1939, after its premiere in Basle in 1938. On this, see Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual, p. 312. Nord, in “Pierre Schaeffer,” p. 699, points out that it was also presented in Uriage. The yearly festival of the saint had become a national holiday in 1922, and now remained a national celebration in the unoccupied zone. On Vichy’s appropriation of it, see Added, Le théâtre dans les années Vichy, p. 263. 97. Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual, p. 270. Also see Kayas and Murray, “Portique pour une fille de France,” p. 99, and Azéma and Bédarida, Vichy et les français, p. 211. 98. Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual, p. 271. 99. Sprout, The Musical Legacy of Wartime France, p. 48. 100. Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual, p.  272. See Nord in “Pierre Schaeffer,” pp. 699–​700, where he argues that the spectacle was less focused on Jeanne’s life than on her martyrdom and that it aspired in scale and presentation to a theater of mass communion—​one that would have pleased Vichy. Here it is also important to realize that, as opposed to the fervent Catholic Claudel, Honegger was a Protestant. On the complex and polyvalent work, “Portique pour une fille de France” and its scale, see Chabrol, “L’ambition de Jeune France,” pp. 175–​177. 101. See J. C., “À l’Opéra de Lyon: Jeanne au bûcher par Claudel et Honegger,” Le temps, July 8, 1941:  3. Also see Étienne Fouilloux, Les Chrétiens français entre crise et

Notes to pages 152–157  • 

389

liberation 1937–​1947 (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1997), p. 101, on the concentration of resistant Christians in Lyon. 102. Kayas and Murray, “Portique pour une fille de France,” pp. 99–​100. They note that in February 1941 Jolivet informed Daniel-​Lesur about Schaeffer’s project. 103. On Vichy’s conception of appropriate theater versus that of the Popular Front, see Added, Le théâtre dans les années Vichy, p. 232. And see Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Barbier, Portique pour une fille de France (Paris: Étienne Chiron, 1941), on microfilm at the BnF. 104. Kayas and Murray, “Portique pour une fille de France,” p. 106 105. It begins, “Allo! Allo! chers auditeurs, je me trouve à présent devant le cathédrale qu’on vient d’achever et qui est loin d’être grise comme plus tard on aura l’habitude de la voir, mais parfaitement blanche, je dirais même étincelante. Chers auditeurs, comme dit M. Le Corbusier, nous sommes au temps où les cathedrales sont blanches.” See Kayas and Murray, “Portique pour une fille de France,” p. 106. 106. Kayas and Murray, “Portique pour une fille de France,” pp. 106–​107. 107. Ibid., p. 106. And see Schaeffer and Barbier, Portique pour une fille de France. On Charpentier’s spectacle, see Jane F. Fulcher, French Cultural Politics and Music from the Dreyfus Affair to the First World War (New  York:  Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 90–​91. 108. Fulcher, French Cultural Politics and Music, pp. 92, 187–​188. Also see Davenson [Marrou], Le livre des chansons, p. 356, and Kayas and Murray, “Portique pour une fille de France,” p. 108. 109. See Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffeths, and Helen Tiffan, eds., The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-​Colonial Literatures (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 55, 71. Also see Stuart Hall and Paul de Gay, eds., Questions of Cultural Identity (London: Sage Publications, 1996), p. 58. 110. Kayas and Murray, “Portique pour une fille de France,” p. 107. They cite Le progrès de Lyon, May 12 1941: 2. 111. Kayas and Murray, “Portique pour une fille de France,” p. 107. Here they also cite Jacques Bainville, “Célébration de la fête de Jeanne d’Arc,” Maîtrises Jeune France, no. 2 ( January 1942): 7. 112. Kayas and Murray, “Portique pour une fille de France,” p. 107. 113. As pointed out in Lyon soir, May 14, 1941: 3. 114. Kayas and Murray, “Portique pour une fille de France,” p. 108. Also see Peter Hill and Nigel Simeone, Messiaen (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 2005), p. 109. 115. Kayas and Murray, “Portique pour une fille de France,” pp. 107–​108. 116. Ibid., pp. 108, 110. 117. Nord, “Pierre Schaeffer,” p. 688; and see Schaeffer and Barbier, Portique pour une fille de France.

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Notes to pages 157–160

118. Chabrol, “L’ambition de Jeune France,” p. 175. Nord, in “Pierre Schaeffer,” p. 698, sees this as France’s first experience in “stadium theater.” He uses the term “pageant” to refer to the work, as do Hill and Simeone in Messiaen, p. 109. On the number of spectators for its different presentations, see Nord, France’s New Deal, p.  271. On the Compagnons de France (a voluntary organization for boys 15–​ 20 years old) and the kind of works in which they were engaged, see Paxton, Vichy France, pp. 160–​162. He also describes the Chantiers de la jeunesse, which became a form of national service in January 1941; it required all young men to spend eight months of their twenty-​first year in a “chantier,” where they also received moral education and indoctrination. 119. Frank Manning, “Spectacle,” in Folklore, Cultural Performance, and Popular Entertainments, ed. Richard Bauman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 27–​28. 120. Claude Roy, Moi je, pp.  409–​410. And see Aillaud and Eychart Les lettres françaises, p. 11. 121. On the resistants in Jeune France, see Nord, p. 686, and Chabrol, “L’ambition de Jeune France,” p. 162. Nord cites the claim of Max Pol Fouchet to have heard pro de Gaulle shouts there. And see Gaillard-​Risler, André Clavé, pp.  86–​87. Jean-​ Marie Serreau was the director of the Maison Jeune France devoted to theater in the unoccupied zone. Also see Fouilloux, Les chrétiens français, p. 112. 122. Le Bail, “Émissions de minuit,” p. 118, and Le Bail and Kaltenecker, “Jalons,” p. 26. Also see Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier, p. 292. 123. Gaillard-​Risler, André Clavé, pp.  35, 86–​87; Azéma and Bédarida, Vichy et les Français, p. 256. 124. Nord, in “Pierre Schaeffer,” here sees an ideal of communion analogous to that in the mass. Also see Nord, France’s New Deal, p. 270 on Jeune France theater as being consonant with the values of the National Revolution. But again, a different perspective emerges if the cultural product in all its dimensions is examined. 125. See AN-​F1a 3686 Papers of André Chérier, Jeune France, “Fête du 14 juillet.” [no year] 126. Schaeffer, Les antennes de Jéricho, p. 279. 127. Schaeffer’s letter of December 1, 1941, in AN-​F1a 3686. 128. See Paul Mazgaj, Imagining Fascism:  The Cultural Politics of the Young French Right, 1930–​1945 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2007). On p. 205 he points out that de Fabrègues was originally a reactionary Catholic; and on p. 223 he elaborates that in 1941 de Fabrègues joined a small but active “fascicizing” element in the Vichy hierarchy in order to combat Mounier’s Christian democrats. In the 1930s, like so many nonconformists, he had envisioned a spiritual revolution in order to renew the French nation, but it was one that grew distant from that of Mounier. Duquesne, Les Catholiques français sous l’occupation, p.  86, points out that after de Fabrègues was repatriated from a prison camp in Germany he directed

Notes to pages 160–163  • 

391

a new weekly in the unoccupied zone, Demain, his goal being to reunite Catholics in fidelity to Pétain. Also see the letter in AN-​F1a 3686 that Jean de Fabrègues sent to Pierre Pucheu, dated August 21, 1941; Pucheu had recently become minister of interior. On Pucheu, see Chabrol, “L’ambition de Jeune France,” p. 177. And on de Fabrègues, also see Sapiro, La guerre des écrivains, pp. 192–​194, as well as Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier, p. 106, and Jackson, France: The Dark Years, p. 509. 129. Stéphanie Corcy-​Debray, Jérôme Carcopino:  Un historien à Vichy (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001), p. 101. Pierre Pucheu was secrétaire d’État à l’intérieur from July 1941 to April 1942. Also see Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier, p. 99; Paxton, Vichy France, p. 195; and Jackson, France: The Dark Years, p. 160. 130. Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier, p. 95. 131. Ibid., pp. 111, 114, 120, and 292. As he explains, p. 106, André Chérier (in whose papers the letter may be found) was chef adjoint, responsible for questions concerning youth in Pucheu’s cabinet. 132. Letter from Jean de Fabrègues to Pierre Pucheu, August 21, 1941, in AN-​F1a, Papers of André Chérier. 133. Ibid. 134. Kaltenecker and Le Bail, “Jalons,” p.  26, and Jackson, France:  The Dark Years, pp. 343–​344. 135. Jackson, France: The Dark Years, p. 418. 136. Ibid., and Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier, p. 292. Also see Bidussa and Peschanski, La France de Vichy, p. 5. 137. Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier, p. 292; Paxton, Vichy France, p. 272; and Jackson, France: The Dark Years, p. 345. Also see Nord, “Pierre Schaeffer,” p. 701. Mounier was banned from Uriage in July 1941 and driven out of Jeune France in the fall of the same year. This was shortly after the profascist Paul Marion was placed in charge of Information and Propaganda (in August). 138. See AN-​F1a, Papers of André Chérier, in which one may find the letter from Robert Loustou to Pierre Pucheu of August 25, 1941. Loustou closes by recommending those with whom de Fabrègues should be put in touch so that his complaints are directed to the appropriate Vichy channels. 139. Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier, p. 111; Kaltenecker and Le Bail, “Jalons,” p. 26. 140. See the reports in AN-​F1a, Papers of André Chérier, Jeune France, classed by subject, including “Le Cas de Monsieur Mounier” and “Cas de Monsieur Roger Leenhardt—​et télégramme.” Also see Jackson, France: The Dark Years, p. 344. 141. AN-​F1a, Papers of André Chérier, “Refus d’un chansonnier pour la propagande de la Vice-​Présidence du Conseil,” “Refus de faire participer Jeune France à la propaganda de la Révolution nationale,” and “Refus d’éditer une brochure pour la Légion des Combattants.” On the Légion, see Willfred D. Halls, Politics, Society, and Christianity in Vichy France (Oxford, England: Berg, 1995) p. 70. 142. AN-​F1a 3686, Papers of André Chérier, “Fête du 14 juillet,” Jeune France.

3 9 2   • 

Notes to pages 163–167

143. Ibid., “Affaire Raoul Girardet.” 144. Ibid., “De quelques Juifs à Jeune France,” and “Affaire Thévenot.” 145. Ibid., “Jeune France en Tunisie.” 146. Ibid., “Affaire Aragon.” 147. AN-​F1a 3686, Papers of André Chérier, transcription of a phone conversation on November 20, 1941, from M. Garonne in Vichy to M. Decigne in Paris, who said “Je suis inquiet, cette association est une des plus belles choses réalisées et je la vois tellement attaquée, allant vers sa fin.” 148. AN-​F1a 3686, Schaeffer’s letter of December 1, 1941. Also see Kaltenecker and Le Bail, “Jalons,” p. 26. On Schaeffer’s reprimands and eventual dismissal, see Nord, “Pierre Schaeffer,” p. 701. 149. Nord, “Pierre Schaeffer,” p. 701. 150. Ory, Les collaborateurs, p. 179. And see Paxton, Vichy France, p. 268, on the decisive reason holding such men to the Vichy solution—​an instinctual commitment to public order as the highest goal. And on p. 291 he explains that the Resistance was associated with brigandage and anarchy, and comprised only about 2 percent of the population. 151. Kaltenecker and Le Bail, “Jalons,” pp. 26, 32, 36. 152. Nord, “Pierre Schaeffer,” p. 701; Schaeffer, Les antennes de Jéricho, p. 279. 153. Taylor, review of Jonathan Lear, Radical Hope, p. 8. 154. Nord, “Pierre Schaeffer,” pp. 703–​704. He sees Schaeffer’s switch as later, in the latter half of 1943. Claude Roy moved into communism in the winter of 1942, having been in the Action française. 155. Kaltenecker and Le Bail, “Jalons,” p. 26. 156. Cécile Auzolle, ed., Regards sur Daniel-​Lesur: Compositeur et humaniste (1908–​ 2002) (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-​Sorbonne, 2009), pp. 232, 355. 157. See Schaeffer, Les antennes de Jéricho, p. 280, on the impact of Jeune France and his experience in Vichy radio in his later work. 158. See the excerpts from and reflections on this treatise in Pierre Schaeffer, Dix ans d’essais radiophoniques du Studio au Club d’Essai, 1942–​1952 (Paris:  Phonurgia Nova, 1962), p. 75. 159. Pierre Schaeffer, Essai sur le radio et le cinéma:  Esthétique et techniques des arts-​ relais, 1941–​1942, edited by Sophie Brunet and Carlos Palombini (Paris: Éditions Allia, 2010), pp. 47, 51. 160. Pierre Schaeffer, Dix ans d’essais radiophoniques, pp. 76–​77. He then points out that this new mode of perception is one that embodies a progression from the abstract, as in literature, to the concrete. Of course, theoretical reflections on many of these issues involving art and sound reproduction had already begun in the 1930s; see, for example, perhaps the best known, that of Walter Benjamin, “Reflections on Radio,” in The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproductivity and Other Writings on Media, ed. Michael W. Jennings, Brigit Doherty, and Thomas Y. Levin

Notes to pages 167–170  • 

393

(Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2008), pp. 391–​392. For more recent reflections on related issues, see Hans Gumbrecht and K. Ludwig Pfeiffer, eds., Materialities of Communication, trans. William Whobrey (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994). 161. See Schaeffer, Dix ans d’essais radiophoniques, p. 76, and Pierre Schaeffer, “Traité des objets musicaux [1966],” in “Choix de textes de Pierre Schaeffer,” Revue musicale 303–​305 (October 1977). Triple numéro, ed. with an introduction by Sophie Brunet, pp.  2–​4. Also see the pamphlet “Titres et travaux de Pierre Schaeffer” [1973] in BnF-​Musique 8 Vm. Pièce 1646. According to Schaeffer the treatise that he wrote during Vichy is a reflection on “la perception sonore” as well as on the characteristics of the musical object and on what characterizes expressive articulation. 162. Schaeffer himself later acknowledged the close connection between his wartime treatise and his own later experimentation, publishing an abstract of the former in his De la musique concrete à la musique même (Paris: Mémoire du Livre, 2002), pp. 72–​77. 163. On how he began to foresee the direction that his later experiments would take, see Schaeffer, Les antennes de Jéricho, p. 157. 164. Kaltenecker and Le Bail, “Jalons,” p. 28. 165. Ibid. And see Nord, France’s New Deal, pp. 306–​307. 166. Nord, “Pierre Schaeffer,” p.  703. Copeau here acted as a technical advisor. Also see Hélène Eck, “À la recherche d’un art radiophonique,” in Rioux, La vie culturelle sous Vichy, pp. 273–​277. She also cites the book of 1936 by Carlos Larronde, Théâtre invisible. On p. 284 she specifies that none of those previously involved in such endeavors were radio professionals. 167. Eck, “À la recherche d’un art radiophonique,” pp.  280–​281. The search for new texts was under the aegis of the Banc d’essai, which broadcast the Swiss writer William Raquet’s Christophe Colomb, with music by Arthur Honegger, in 1942. Eck points out, p. 285, that the radio also helped those in the unoccupied zone maintain contact with theatrical performances in Paris. 168. Laurendeau, Maurice Martenot, p. 120. Also see Eck, “À la recherche d’un art radiophonique,” p. 287. In the spring of 1942 Schaeffer and Jean Antoine had organ­ized a competition for actors to participate in the project. On the Studio d’Essai, see the pamphlet, “Titres et travaux de Pierre Schaeffer,” p.  9. Also see Kaltenecker and Le Bail, “Jalons,” p. 29. On the workshop in Beaune and Schaeffer’s work with Copeau, see Schaeffer, Les antennes de Jéricho, pp. 184–​185, and Sophie Brunet, Pierre Schaeffer (Paris: Éditions Richard-​Messe, 1969), p. 27. 169. Nord, France’s New Deal, p. 302, and Nord, “Pierre Schaeffer,” p. 703. 170. See Eck, “À la recherche d’un art radiophonique,” pp.  282–​284. The authors selected included Diderot and Claudel. As she notes, the radio was seen as a potential agent to combat propaganda. On Claudel’s participation, see Paul Claudel,

3 9 4   • 

Notes to pages 170–173

Une visite à Brangues: Conversation entre Paul Claudel, Jacques Madaule, et Pierre Schaeffer. Brangues, dimanche 27 février 1944 (Paris: Gallimard, 2005). 171. See Stéphanie Corcy, La vie culturelle sous l’Occupation (Paris: Perrin, 2005), p. 62. Also see Nord, “Pierre Schaeffer,” p. 702, who adds that Roy moved to communism the next winter. And see Roy, Moi je, pp. 408–​4 08, who points out that subversive tactics became impossible one Laval returned, hence his resignation. And see Eck, “À la recherche d’un art radiophonique,” p. 284. 172. Eck, “À la recherche d’un art radiophonique,” p. 271. On the Studio d’Essai, see the pamphlet, “Titres et traveaux de Pierre Schaeffer,” p. 9. Also see Kaltenecker and Le Bail, “Jalons,” p. 29. 173. Laurendeau, Maurice Martenot, p. 13. And see Eck, “À la recherche d’un art radiophonique,” p.  271. Porcile, Les conflits de la musique française, p.  102. Also see Kaltenecker and Le Bail, “Jalons,” p. 30, Corcy, La vie culturelle sous l’Occupation, p.  62, and Karine Le Bail, “Travailler à Paris sous l’Occupation:  l’exemple de la radio,” in Chimènes and Simon, La musique à Paris sous l’Occupation, p. 34,. 174. Eck, “À la recherche d’un art radiophonique,” p. 271, and Kaltenecker and Le Bail, “Jalons,” p. 29. In his articles in Comoedia, Schaeffer argues that the radio and the cinema are arts in themselves since they modify our relation to things and affect relations between people. 175. Sprout, The Musical Legacy of Wartime France, p. 14, and Le Bail, “Émissions de minuit,” p. 122. As Schaeffer points out in L’avenir à reculons, p. 29, in effect from 1942 they were all resistants. 176. Kaltenecker and Le Bail, “Jalons,” p.  30, and Le Bail, “Émissions de Minuit,” pp. 118–​120. On Henriot, see Paxton, Vichy France, p. 249. 177. Eck, “À la recherche d’un art radiophonique,” p. 287. 178. Le Bail, “Émissions de minuit,” p. 120. The Montherlant work was Pasiphoé, with a “décor sonore” by Arthur Honegger, who was commissioned to provide it. 179. Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, p. 40, and Kaltenecker and Le Bail, “Jalons,” p. 30, as well as p. 29, where there is a photo of Schaeffer and Arrieu at Port Clos on September 6, 1942. 180. For the recording, see Pierre Schaeffer, Dix ans d’essai radiophoniques, cited in note 158. 181. See Eck, “À la recherche d’un art radiophonique,” pp.  288–​289, who sees this search as helping lead to musique concrète in 1948. 182. On the lack of research on sound fidelity, see Laurendeau, Maurice Martenot, p. 120. Also see “Titres et travaux de Pierre Schaeffer,” p. 9. As he points out, he was aware of how the new conditions of electro-​acoustics impose themselves on the sonorous message as early as 1936. 183. Brunet, Pierre Schaeffer, p. 72. 184. See Inez Hedges, Languages of Revolt: Dada and Surrealist Literature and Film (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 84, 91.

Notes to pages 173–179  • 

395

185. Le Bail, “Émissions de minuit,” p. 118; Paxton, Vichy France, p. 383. 186. Le Bail, “Émissions de minuit,” p. 122. And see Nord, France’s New Deal, p. 307, on Schaeffer’s move to the Resistance and on the fact that not all in the Studio d’Essai were résistants. 187. Nord, “Pierre Schaeffer,” p. 704. All these writers contributed to the clandestine Éditions de minuit. Also see Laurendeau, Maurice Martenot, p. 121, who points out that they also installed transmitting stations in the Parisian suburbs, which were to be employed at an opportune moment, as the Liberation began. 188. Laurendeau, Maurice Martenot, p. 121. And see Nord, “Pierre Schaeffer,” p. 704, on the artistic probity and quality they sought. 189. See Guy Krivopissko and Daniel Virieux, “Musiciens:  Une profession en résistance?,” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy, p.  350, on Schaeffer. Also see Henri Dutilleux, “Au service de tous,” in Roger Désormière et son temps, ed. Denise Mayer and Pierre Souvtchinsky (Monaco: Éditions du Rocher, 1966), p. 120. And see Brigitte Massin, Les Joachim: Une famille de musiciens (Paris: Fayard, 1996), p. 297, on the national radio just before the Liberation as well as on the clandestine Émissions de minuit and the Studio d’Essai in 1944. She points out that Schaeffer was recording the work of resistance poets and musicians in the spring of 1944. And see Le Bail, “Émissions de minuit,” p. 122. 190. Le Bail, “Émissions de minuit,” p. 125. 191. Kaltenecker and Le Bail, “Jalons,” p. 24. 192. Ibid., p. 31, and Le Bail, “Émissions de minuit, pp. 124–​126. 193. Kaltenecker and Le Bail, “Jalons,” p. 31. 194. See Henry Rousso, “Vichy: Politique, idéologie, culture,” pp. 30–​32, on Vichy losing control of its own dynamic. 195. Nord, “Pierre Schaeffer,” pp.  704–​709. Nord points out that the other pole of attraction for former Jeune France members was Pierre-​Aimé Touchard’s Maison des lettres (founded in 1941 with left and spiritualist origins), and its related organ­ ization Travail et culture (begun in 1944). Others involved with this movement in film included Jean Resnais and Louis Malle. On the cases of former Jeune France members after the war, also see Chabrol, “L’ambition de Jeune France,” p. 162, and Schaeffer, L’avenir à reculons. Chapter 4 1. Pierre Bourdieu, Les règles de l’art:  Genèse et structure du champ littéraire (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1992), p. 298. And see the introduction by Maurice R. Stein and Arthur J. Vidich to Identity and Anxiety: Survival of the Person in Mass Society, ed. Maurice R. Stein, Arthur J. Vidich, and David M. While (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1960), pp. 18–​19. On the hard and soft boundaries of national identity, see Celia Applegate, “Mendelssohn on the Road: Music, Travel, and the

3 9 6   • 

Notes to pages 179–180

Anglo-​German Symbiosis,” in The Oxford Handbook of the New Cultural History of Music, ed. Jane F. Fulcher (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 232–​233. Also see Erik Erikson, Identity: Youth and Crisis (New York: W. W. Norton, 1969), p. 22, on how identity formation “employs a process of simultaneous reflection and observation by which the individual judges himself in the light of what he perceives to be the way in which others judge him in comparison with themselves.” And see John R. Gillis, ed., Commemorations:  The Politics of National Identity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), who points out on p. 3 that it was Erikson who first popularized the conception of identity as an individual sense of self. 2. On Vichy’s choice of an armistice and all that it entailed politically and culturally, see the introduction by Stefan Martens and Andreas Nielson to La France et la Belgique sous l’occupation allemande, 1940–​1944: Les fonds allemands conservés au Centre historique des Archives Nationales. Inventaire de la sous-​série AJ 40 (Paris: Centre historique des Archives Nationales, 2002), pp. 11–​39. 3. Pierre Boulez himself referred to the omnipresence of Honegger’s work in France throughout the Occupation in his public interview, moderated by Glenn Watkins, at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, on January 28, 2010. On Honegger’s status as a star, see Marcel Delannoy, Honegger (Geneva: Slatkine, 1986), p. 196. As he puts it, “Arthur Honegger, docile à son destin, regardait tranquillement son étoile grandir.” On the many performances of Honegger’s works throughout Vichy see Guy Krivopissko and Daniel Virieux, “Musiciens: Une profession en résistance?,” in La vie musicale sous Vichy, ed. Myriam Chimènes (Brussels: Éditions Complexe, 2001), p. 261. Also see Josette Alviset, “La programmation musicale à Vichy: Les apparences de la continuité,” in Chimènes, La Vie musicale sous Vichy, p. 40, and Yannick Simon, “Les jeunesses musicales de France,” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy, p. 210. 4. See Lucien Rebatet, “Les disques,” Je suis partout on July 14, 1941, p. 9. Here he points out that in this oratorio Honegger evokes a “danse macabre”—​a subject that has been cultivated ever since Romanticism, and which Honegger and Claudel here sought to renew. In the recording Jean-​Louis Barrault served as the “récitant,” but a bit too theatrically for Rebatet’s taste. While criticizing the naiveté and “uncertain taste” of both Barrault and Honegger, he nevertheless finds that the latter is a musician who knows how to build on the foundations of a “chorale germanique.” On the recording of the work, see Philippe Morin, “Une nouvelle politique discographique pour la France,” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy, p. 256. Although ideological collaborationists like Rebatet had reservations about Honegger and disliked Claudel, Louis Hautecoeur appreciated Claudel’s style, which he considered “noble.” 5. See José Bruyr, Honegger et son oeuvre (Paris: Buchet-​Chastel, 1947), pp. 198–​202. Also see Porcile, Les conflits de la musique française, 1940–​1965 (Paris: Fayard, 2001), p. 39, who notes the participation of the Chantiers de jeunesses, an organization that provided work for youth. In this case it was staged and directed by Pierre Bertin. Also see Véronique Chabrol, “L’ambition de Jeune France,” in Rioux, La vie culturelle sous

Notes to pages 180–182  • 

397

Vichy, ed. Jean-​Pierre Rioux (Brussels:  Éditions Complexe, 1990), pp. 175–​177. Performances included those on July 8 and 9, 1941. Also see Alviset, “La programmation musicale à Vichy,” p. 404. And see Jacques Tchamkerten, Arthur Honegger ou l’inquiétude de l’espérance (Geneva: Éditions Papillon, 2005), pp. 179–​180, on the presentations of the work from July 2 to August 7, 1941. Again, here the Orchestre symphonique de France was conducted by Hubert d’Auriol. They performed it in twenty-​seven towns and cities in the unoccupied zone, including Vichy, Lyon, Marseille, and Nice, in a semistaged production. 6. See Jacques Tchamkerten, “Les itinéraires de la gloire:  La réception des oeuvres d’Arthur Honegger à Paris entre 1930 and et 1955,” in La musique à Paris sous l’Occupation, ed. Myriam Chimènes and Yannick Simon (Paris:  Fayard, 2013), p. 110. Here he points out that Honegger was already highly successful in the late 1930s, especially with the French premiere of Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher at Orléans on May 6, 1939. On its reception in Lyon in early July 1941, see J. C. [initials only given], “À l’Opéra de Lyon: Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher par Claudel et Honegger,” Le temps, July 8, 1941. p. 3. 7. See Henri Petit, “Théâtre, musique, sport,” L’information musicale, no. 36 ( July 25, 1941), p. 807. 8. See Chabrol, “L’ambition de Jeune France,” p.  176, and Porcile, Les conflits de la musique française, pp.  38–​39. Here Honegger employed nine brass instruments and ondes Martenot, as well as a melodic recitative in the style of his early opera, Antigone. Schaeffer undoubtedly saw how appropriate his music was for such theatrical productions. As Porcile points out, the 800 mètres was in collaboration with Jean-​Louis Barrault, Alain Cuny, and Jean Marais, with Charles Munch conducting the orchestra of the Société des concerts du Conservatoire. 9. Jean-​Louis Barrault and André Obey, “Necessité de l’effort,” Comoedia, June 21, 1921. 10. Henri Petit, “Théâtre, musique, sport,” L’information musicale, no. 36 ( July 25, 1941), p. 807. 11. See Gerhard Hirschfeld and Patrick Marsh, eds., Collaboration in France: Politics and Culture during the Nazi Occupation (New  York and Munich:  Berg, 1989), p. 155. Also see Julian Jackson, France: The Dark Years, 1940–​1944 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 316–​317. As Jackson points out, when revived, Comoedia included information on the arts and theater in both Germany and German-​ occupied countries on its page “Connaître l’Europe.” The latter thus covered not only Germany but also Italy, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, and Croatia. Those figures who published in Comoedia included Cocteau, Colette, Valéry, Claudel, Jean-​ Louis Barrault, Sartre, Henry de Montherlant, and Honegger. 12. On these festivals, see Marcel Delannoy, Honegger, p.  197. Also see Alexandra Laederich, “Les associations symphoniques,” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy, p. 288. On the other festivals devoted to French music, see Honegger, “Que

3 9 8   • 

Notes to pages 182–185

cesse la loi du moindre effort dans les associations symphoniques,” Comoedia, no. 15 (September 27, 1941): 1. 13. Laederich, in “Les associations symphoniques,” p. 288, stresses how strongly represented Honegger’s work was now in the symphonic associations. And see Georges Dandelot, “Semaine Honegger: À propos du concert de l’A. M. C.,” L’information musicale, no. 79 (August 26, 1942): 5. With regard to Honegger’s Trois psaumes, also now performed, it is important to realize that, as Paxton points out, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940–​1944 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), p. 171, Protestants were no longer targets for conservatives. 14. See Porcile, Les conflits de la musique française, p. 47. As he points out, p. 38, the performances of Honegger’s music to Mondragon and to L’ombre de la ravine took place in early 1942 at the Théâtre Monceau, and his music for Phèdre was performed on April 20 at the Concerts Colonne. On his continuing performances, see Bruyr, Honegger, pp.  212–​214, Delannoy, Honegger, p.  197, and Tchamkerten, Arthur Honegger, p. 193. 15. See Phillipe Morin, “Une nouvelle politique discographique pour la France,” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy, pp. 256–​261. Munch also recorded the Second Symphony, and Louis de Vocht recorded Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher with the Chorale d’Anvers and the Orchestre National de Belgique. 16. On the recordings of Honegger’s music, also see Morin, “Une nouvelle politique discographique pour la France,” p. 261, Bruyr, Honegger, p. 200, Porcile, Les conflits de la musique française, p. 41, and Tchamkerten, Arthur Honegger, p. 176. On the goal of a spiritual entente with Germany in this period, as promoted by the group Collaboration (with the support of the Vichy regime), see AN-​AJ 40 15944 #292, “Les conferences du groupe Collaboration,” especially that given by Marc Augier in Paris in May 1941, “Jeunesses d’Europe, unissez-​vous!,” pp. 5–​6. 17. See Robert Wohl, “Heart of Darkness: Modernism and Its Historians,” Journal of Modern History 74, no. 4 (September 2002): 544, 581–​582, 586, 594. 18. Ibid. On Lyotard’s conceptualization of the postmodern and its relation to the modern, see Margaret Grey, Postmodern Proust (Philadelphia:  University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), pp. 3–​4. 19. Wohl, “Heart of Darkness, pp.  589–​590, and Carl E. Schorske, Thinking with History:  Explorations on the Passage to Modernism (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 1998), pp. 3–​4. 20. Matei Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity:  Modernism, Avant-​ Garde, Kitsch, Postmodernism (Durham, NC:  Duke University Press, 1987), pp. 265, 276–​277, 301, 312. Also see Grey, Postmodern Proust, p. 5. 21. Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity, p. 267. As he observes, pp. 267–​268, in the postwar context modernity was demonized, or proclaimed to be dead. 22. Paxton, Vichy France, pp. 273–​75. And see Jean-​Louis Loubet del Bayle, Les non-​ conformistes des années 30 (Paris:  Éditions du Seuil, 1969), pp. 92–​96. Also see

Notes to pages 185–188  • 

399

Philip Nord, France’s New Deal: From the Thirties to the Postwar Era (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), p. 108. 23. Jane F. Fulcher, “Romanticism, Technology, and the Masses:  Honegger and the Aesthetic Allure of French Fascism,” in Western Music and Race, ed. Julie Brown (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 202–​ 205, and Jane F. Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual:  Music and Ideology in France, 1914–​1940 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 184–​188. 24. Nicolas de Flue, a “dramatic legend” for chorus and orchestra, was based on the story of one of Switzerland’s national heroes. See Pascal Balmand, “Rougemont, Denis de,” in Dictionnaire des intellectuels français:  Les personnes, les lieux, les moments, ed. Jacques Julliard and Michel Winock (Paris:  Éditions du Seuil, 1996), pp. 1006–​1007. 25. See Robert Wohl, “French Fascism, Both Right and Left:  Reflections on the Sternhell Controversy,” Journal Modern History 74, no. 3 (September 2002): 91–​ 98. Also see Harry Halbereich, Arthur Honegger, trans. Roger Nichols (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1999), p. 146. 26. Loubet del Bayle, Les non-​conformistes des années 30, pp. 92–​96. 27. Plans was considered “moderniste” and “réformateur,” as was L’ordre nouveau, which was edited by Robert Aron and Armand Dandrieu. See Olivier Corpet, “La revue,” in Histoire des droites en France, vol. 2, Cultures, ed. Jean-​François Sirinelli (Paris:  Gallimard, 1992), p.  178. On the “planisme” of Plans and on Philippe Lamour’s myth of the ideal plan for “l’État technicien” (which included Le Corbusier’s urban models), see Romy Golan, Modernity and Nostalgia: Art and Politics in France between the Wars (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), pp. 76 ff. Also see Georges Lefranc, “Le courant planiste de 1933 à 1936,” Le mouvement social 54 ( January–​March 1996): 69–​89. 28. Loubet del Bayle, Les non-​conformistes des années 30, pp.  94–​96. And see Le Corbusier, “Invite à l’action,” Plans, January 1931: 5, as well as Golan, Modernity and Nostalgia, p. 76. 29. Golan, Modernity and Nostalgia, p.  76. Also see Harry Halbereich, Arthur Honegger: Un musicien dans la cité des hommes (Paris: Fayard, 1992), p. 377; and on La Roue and on Honegger’s article in Plans, see pp. 534–​537. 30. See Honegger, “Du cinéma sonore à la musique réelle,” Plans, January 1931: 74–​78. 31. See Mark Antliff, “La cité française:  Georges Valois, Le Corbusier, and Fascist Theories of Urbanism,” in Fascist Visions: Art and Ideology in France and Italy, ed. Matthew Affron and Mark Antliff (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 1997), p. 152. Also see the editors’ introduction to this volume, p. 15. The French were well aware of Italian fascism, since Italian fascists were implanted in over twenty French towns, and included agents and provocateurs. 32. Sorel himself had idealized the medieval guild as well as monastic communities, associating both with the art of the people, as had Ruskin and the English

4 0 0   • 

Notes to pages 188–191

pre-​Raphaelites. In this spirit Sorel had enshrined Jeanne d’Arc as the incarnation of “la cité française,” or the nation’s common spiritual values and the political system that expressed them within French geographical borders. See introduction by Matthew Affron and Mark Antliff to Fascist Visions, pp. 10, 17. In the same volume, see Matthew Affron, “Waldemar George: A Parisian Art Critic on Modernism and Fascism,” p. 195. 33. See Antliff, “La cité française,” pp. 131–​137, 149–​150, 161. On the related tendency in Germany, see Jeffrey Herf, Fascist Modernism: Aesthetics, Politics, and the Avant-​ Garde (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), pp. 133, 147. Also see the introduction by Affron and Antliff to Fascist Visions, pp. 15–​18. 34. See Jackson, France: The Dark Years, p. 349. Le Corbusier was finally accepted into the Order of Architects. 35. See Arthur Honegger, I Am a Composer, trans. Wilson O. Clough (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), p. 107, and James Harding, The Ox on the Roof: Scenes from Musical Life in Paris in the Twenties (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1972), p. 124. Also see Leslie Sprout, “Unlocking the Mystery of Honegger,” The New York Times. com, August 29, 2010, Arts: 1–​2. 36. On French fascist aesthetics, see the introduction by Affron and Antliff to Fascist Visions, p. 8. On the question of French fascism, see Robert Wohl, “French Fascism, Both Right and Left,” 95–​98. Also see Robert Soucy, “French Press Reactions to Hitler’s First Two Years in Power,” Contemporary European History 7, no. 2 (1998): 21–​22. For a broader discussion, see his book, French Fascism: The Second Wave, 1933–​39 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995). 37. See Serge Berstein, La France des années 30 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1993), pp. 98ff. Also see Zeev Sternhell, Neither Right nor Left:  Fascist Ideology in France, trans. David Maisel (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 21–​27. 32. And see Jane F. Fulcher, “Romanticism, Technology, and the Masses,” pp. 201–​215. 38. See Jane F. Fulcher, “Musical Style, Meaning, and Politics in France on the Eve of the Second World War,” Journal of Musicology 13, no. 4 (1995): 425–​453. On those aspects of Hitler and German fascism that the French did not like, see Soucy, “French Press Reactions,” p. 22. Also see Paul Sérant, Le romantisme fasciste: Étude sur l’oeuvre de quelques écrivains français (Paris: Fasquelle, 1959), pp. 94–​95. Berstein, in La France des années 30, pp. 97–​99, stresses French fascism’s activating mystique and exaltation of vitalist values. On the literary manifestations of French fascism, see David Carroll, French Literary Fascism: Nationalism, Anti-​Semitism, and the Ideology of Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995). 39. Fulcher, “Romanticism, Technology, and the Masses,” p. 208, on why the French premier was delayed. Although the work premiered in Orléans, it was widely reported in the Parisian and national press. Its performance in Orléans was a result of the initiative of the mayor and the archbishop. Ibid., p. 213.

Notes to pages 192–195  • 

401

4 0. On the work’s many subsequent performances during Vichy, see Porcile, Les conflits de la musique française, p. 39. For Coeuroy’s review of Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher, see the Mercure de France 293 ( July 1, 1939): 194–​199. On the theme of the soil in Coeuroy, see his, La musique et le peuple en France (Paris: Stock, 1941). 41. See Paxton, Vichy France, pp. 45, 213. 42. On Bergery and Honegger, see Jane F.  Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual, pp. 270–​274. 43. Bergery, although Jewish by birth, saw himself as integrated and culturally different from Jews in other countries; apparently he did not feel threatened by the racial laws of the fascist regimes, and was later protected during Vichy. See Philippe Burrin, La dérive fasciste:  Doriot, Déat, Bergery, 1933–​1945 (Paris:  Éditions du Seuil, 1986), p. 238. On Bergery’s break with the Ligue des droits de l’Homme, see pp. 219–​221. 4 4. As Paxton explains in Vichy France, p. 273, Bergery’s “frontiste” movement sought to bypass parties in a new kind of mass movement that would allow France to catch up with other European nations and escape her current mediocrity in the face of fascism and communism. 45. Bergery’s journal, La flèche, had grown regularly in subscriptions from 4,500 in 1936 to 10,000 in 1938. On Bergery and “frontisme” see Paxton, Vichy France, pp. 273–​ 274. On Bergery and La flèche, also see p. 243, as well as Burrin, La dérive fasciste, pp. 223–​228. For more background on Bergery, see Michèle Winock, Le siècle des intellectuels (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1997), pp. 235–​237. 4 6. On Tailleferre’s earlier support of Bergery, see Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual, pp. 232–​233. 47. Ibid., p. 155. 48. Ibid. 49. Ibid., p. 196. 50. Coeuroy praised Honegger in Gringoire on February 18, 1938. 51. See the introduction by Stefan Martens and Andreas Nielen to La France et la Belgique sous l’Occupation allemande, 1940–​1944, pp. 21, 29. 52. On the prominence of d’Indy now, see the issue of L’information musicale, no. 48 (November 28, 1941), devoted to d’Indy on the tenth anniversary of his death. It includes articles by Guy Ropartz, Paul Le Flem, and Gustave Samazeuilh. Le Flem’s article, “Vincent d’Indy et le retour à la terre,” pp. 386–​387, specifically links d’Indy’s aesthetic to current values. On the ties of certain Vichy circles to the Cercle Proudhon, see Gisèle Sapiro, La guerre des écrivains (Paris: Fayard, 1999), p. 57. 53. On d’Indy’s aesthetic and his political involvements, see Jane F. Fulcher, French Cultural Politics and Music from the Dreyfus Affair to the First World War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 133–​135. On Vichy’s censorship being based on racial and political considerations as opposed to style, see Laurence Bertrand ​Dorléac, L’art de la défaite, 1940–​1944 (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1993), p. 226.

4 0 2   • 

Notes to pages 196–198

54. As Martens and Nielen point out, La France et la Belgique, pp. 17–​18, Abetz (at the embassy), who was responsible for political questions in the occupied zone, was the organizer and manipulator of the collaborationist movement in France. For a list of German works translated into French for publication in France, along with the publication numbers of each, see AN-​AJ 40 1040, Services Allemandes implantées en France, Propaganda Abteilung Frankreich, Propaganda Staffel Paris. A  further discussion of the attempt of the Germans to influence French culture may be found in Serge Added, Le théâtre dans les années Vichy, 1940–​1944 (Paris: Éditions Ramsay, 1992), pp. 103–​104; he discusses the infighting among the German cultural bureaucracies on pp. 96–​97. Also see Manuela Schwartz, “La musique, outil majeur de la propaganda culturelle des Nazis,” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy, pp. 96–​99. And on the Franco-​German cooperation in musical projects, see Philippe Burrin, France under the Germans: Collaboration and Compromise, trans. Janet Lloyd (New York: The New Press, 1995), p. 347. On Radio-​Paris, see Cécile Méadel, “Pauses musicales ou les éclatants silences de Radio-​Paris,” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy, pp. 345–​351. For Moreaux’s article, see Serge Moreaux, “Regards sur la jeune musique européenne,” Comoedia, January 17, 1942: 7. 55. Georges Dandelot, “Musique contemporaine française et allemande,” L’information musicale, no. 59 (February 27, 1942):  795–​796. Also see Guy Ferchault, “Jeunes musiciens français et  allemands,” L’information musicale, no. 55 ( January 3, 1942): 746. 56. Porcile, Les conflits de la musique française, p. 34. 57. See AN-​AJ 40 1594 (Services allemandes implantées en France), pamphlet, “Une année d’activité du groupe Collaboration, Sept. 1940–​Sept. 1941,” p. 5. It is signed only with the initials J. W. 58. Ibid. 59. AN-​AJ 40 1594, pamphlet, “Pourquoi nous croyons en la Collaboration,” based on the lecture of December 27, 1940; it was probably published in early 1941. 60. AN-​AJ 40 1594, pamphlet, based on Les conférences du groupe Collaboration, “Jeunesse d’Europe, unissez-​vous,” by Marc Auger; dated Paris 1941. Also see the Resistance files on the group Collaboration in AN-​F1A 3845, especially the notice titled “Le groupe Collaboration,” from the Resistance section France Politique; it is dated October 3, 1943.. On the “groupe Collaboration,” see Ory, Les collaborateurs, 1940–​1945 (Paris:  Editions du Seuil, 1976), pp. 62–​6 4. Also see the pamphlet, “Une année d’activité du groupe Collaboration,” p. 7, and Porcile, Les conflits de la musique française, pp. 34, 45. 61. See Ferchault, “Jeunes musiciens français et  allemands,” L’information musicale, no. 55 ( January 3, 1942): 746. Also see Pierre Loti, “Concert de musique française organisé par l’Institut allemand,” Comoedia, February 28, 1942: 5, and Pierre Leroi, “Jeunes musiciens français,” Comoedia, February 28, 1942: 4. 62. Porcile, Les conflits de la musique française, p. 41.

Notes to pages 199–203  • 

403

63. See the editorial statement for the issue of L’information musicale, no. 48 (November 28, 1941): 383–​384. 6 4. Armand Machabey, “Arthur Honegger et la musique française,” L’information musicale, no. 40 (October 3, 1941): 98–​99. 65. Ibid. 66. Bernard Champigneulle, “Défense de la musique française,” L’information musicale, no. 45 (November 7, 1941): 276–​277. 67. Ibid. 68. André Jolivet, “Honegger, un homme d’abord,” L’information musicale, no. 76 ( June 26, 1942): 993. 69. As someone who was born in France (in 1892) of foreign parents, Honegger would have become French when he reached the age of twenty-​one (in 1913), the age of majority. Thus he would have had to make a legal declaration—​which he apparently did—​renouncing French citizenship. Significantly, in France the length of mandatory military service was extended to three years in 1913, hence renunciations of French citizenship were at their height. See Patrick Weil, How to Be French: Nationality in the Making since 1789 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), pp. 58–​60. 70. Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual, pp. 184–​188. On Honegger’s unique position and sometimes tense relationship with other members of Les Six, see pp. 172–​175. Also see Honegger, I am a Composer, pp. 122, 128. 71. Harding, The Ox on the Roof, pp. 127–​129. Honegger, counseled by Stravinsky (who was originally approached for the commission but declined it), wrote in a relatively uncomplicated manner for his amateur soloists and chorus, but enlivened their material with a more sophisticated orchestral style. On Cocteau’s sense of betrayal, see Harding, pp. 127–​129. Poulenc similarly felt betrayed, referring to the work in a letter to Paul Collaer (of April 8, 1924) as “une oeuvre stérile, sans portée, conventionnelle, pauvre de mélodie, en un mot, une réussite à la d’Indy.” See Francis Poulenc, Correspondance, 1910–​1963, ed. Myriam Chimènes (Paris: Fayard, 1994), p. 224. On the work’s triumph in Paris, see Poulenc’s letter to Durey of May 24, 1924, p. 228. For the critical praise of Le roi David, see, for example, André Coeuroy, “Un musicien moderne, Arthur Honegger,” Revue hebdomadaire, 1928:  67. Also see Geoffrey Spratt, The Music of Arthur Honegger (Cork: Cork University Press, 1987), pp. 57–​58. 72. Francis Steegmuller, Cocteau: A Biography (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1970), p. 292. Cocteau was originally asked by Dullin only to do the mise en scène, but ended up by making a free adaptation of the play. 73. Ibid. 74. Ibid., pp. 292–​293. I am grateful to Glen Bowersock for pointing out to me the strong possibility that, based on the translation, Cocteau (who did know ancient Greek) consulted the original Greek text. 75. As cited in Spratt, The Music of Arthur Honegger, p. 95.

4 0 4   • 

Notes to pages 203–208

76. Froma Zeitlin, “Thebes: Theater of Self and Society in Athenian Drama,” in Nothing to Do with Dionysis? Athenian Drama in Its Social Context, ed. John J. Winkler and Froma I. Zeitlin (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 1989), p.  152. On Antigone’s heroic vision of herself, see the commentary by David Franklin and John Harrison to Sophocles, Antigone, trans. David Franklin and John Harrison (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 38. 77. See Oddone Longo, “The Theater of the Polis,” in Nothing to Do with Dionysis?, p. 326. 78. Again, I wish to thank Glen Bowersock for his insight into the modern vocabulary that Cocteau employs and its faithfulness to the meaning of the Sophocles text. I am also grateful to Heinrich von Staden for pointing out that there are, in fact, colloquialisms in the Sophocles. On the role of the chorus in relation to the other characters, see Oddone Longo, “The Theater of the Polis,” p. 19. 79. I am once more grateful to Glen Bowersock for pointing out the frieze-​like effect created by the use of heavy woolens for the costumes. On the simplicity of ancient Greek staging, see Erika Simon, The Ancient Theater, trans. C. E. Vafopoulu-​ Richardson (New York and London: Methuen, 1982), p. 20. On the costumes and the scenery, see Steegmuller, Cocteau: A Biography, pp. 297–​298. 80. On the attacks on Cocteau and his play, see Steegmuller, Cocteau:  A Biography, pp. 299–​300. 81. Ibid. For a discussion of the music used in ancient drama, see the commentary by Franklin and Harrison to Sophocles, Antigone, p. 112. On Honegger’s admiration for the Greek-​based operas of Darius Milhaud and Richard Strauss, see Spratt, The Music of Arthur Honegger, p. 94. 82. See Honegger’s preface to the score, Antigone:  Tragédie musicale en 3 actes. Paroles de Jean Cocteau, adaptation libre d’après Sophocle (Paris: Éditions Maurice Sénart, 1927). 83. Spratt, The Music of Arthur Honegger, pp. 121, 131. As he explains, p. 132, in Le roi David Honegger had placed the accent on the higher vocal inflections to ensure comprehensibility of the text, and the resultant clarity had helped to win him great public success. 84. See Honegger, Antigone [score cited in note 82], Act II scene 8, pp. 95–​96. I am indebted to Heinrich von Staden for his insights concerning the effect of dividing the spokesman for the chorus into four different choral ranges. 85. On the fourth ode, see the commentary by Franklin and Harrison to Sophocles, Antigone, p. 70. I am again grateful to Glen Bowersock for pointing out the implications of the Danaë myth. 86. See Jane F. Fulcher, “Re-​inscribing Opera in History and in Politics,” Review-​ Essay, Journal of the American Musicological Society 54, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 147. Also see Jane F. Fulcher, “The Concert as Political Propaganda and the Control of Performative Context,” Musical Quarterly 82, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 41–​67.

Notes to pages 208–210  • 

405

87. Longo, “The Theater of the Polis,” p. 14. 88. On the original production in Brussels, and for an illustration of it, see Paul Collaer, Arthur Honegger:  Antigone (Paris:  Sénart, 1928), p.  17. On the cool but polite reception in Brussels and the more positive one in Essen (on January 11, 1928), see Delannoy, Honegger, p. 113. 89. For the reviews of the work in 1927 and 1928 see Spratt, The Music of Arthur Honegger, pp. 133–​134, 142–​144. Also see Collaer, Arthur Honegger, pp. 28 ff. and Delannoy, Honegger, p. 113. 90. Significantly, Cocteau did not refuse to be associated with the Nouvelle revue française after the avowed collaborator Pierre Drieu la Rochelle became its editor. See Sapiro, La guerre des écrivains, p. 97. As Ory points out in Les collaborateurs, p. 74, Cocteau also participated in the collaborationist journal La gerbe, together with Charles Dullin and Jean Anouilh. Cocteau had recently been chastened by the controversy over his play, Les parents terribles. Concerning the attacks on and subsequent withdrawal of the play, see Steegmuller, Cocteau: A Biography, p. 142, and Added, Le théâtre dans les années Vichy, p. 286. For Cocteau’s article in praise of Honegger and the opera, see Jean Cocteau, “Six-​cinquantaine,” L’information musicale, no. 76 (June 26, 1942): 990. Again, Rouché may also have presented Honegger’s Antigone in response to the law of January 1941 (signed by the minister of national education, Jacques Chevalier) that included a requirement that the Opéra schedule at least two evenings each year (and the Opéra-​Comique three) consisting of new productions of works whose composers and librettists were French—​the latter here apparently including Honegger. See Sprout, “Les commandes de Vichy, aube d’une ère nouvelle,” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy, pp. 170–​171, and “Music for a New Era: Composers and National Identity in France, 1936–​1946” (PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2000), p. 141. For Rouché the new productions also included that of Pelléas et Mélisande to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of its premiere, as well as Fauré’s Pénélope and new ballets by Poulenc, Delvincourt, and the recently deceased Maurice Jaubert. 91. Again, also paying tribute to Honegger in the special issue of L’information musicale was his former collaborator Paul Valéry of the Académie française, the pianist and now Vichy functionary Alfred Cortot, Jacques Chailley of the Paris Conservatoire, and Serge Lifar, head of the Opéra’s ballet. On Vichy’s stress on classicism in secondary education, see Paxton, Vichy France, p. 156. And see Leslie Sprout, The Musical Legacy of Wartime France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), p. 43. 92. My perspective on Rouché here is different from that of Frederick Spotts in The Shameful Peace: How French Artists and Intellectuals Survived the Nazi Occupation (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 2008), p.  205. Spotts characterizes Rouché as “never having wavered from his paramount aim of flying the French cultural flag in the face of the invader.” As we can see, the situation was much more complicated, and Rouché frequently sought accommodation with the Germans. For the request that L’aiglon be performed, see BnF Opéra, Fonds Rouché, Pièce

4 0 6   • 

Notes to pages 210–214

109A (24), letter to Rouché from the Secrétaire général des beaux-​arts, June 12, 1941. On the enthusiasm for Napoleon among collaborationist circles, see Ory, Les collaborateurs, p.  159. Also see Gerhard Hirschfeld and Patrick Marsh, eds., Collaboration in France: Politics and Culture during the Nazi Occupation (New York and Munich: Berg, 1989), p. 153. On the German attitude toward the expression of French patriotic feelings, see Rita Thalmann, La mise au pas: Idéologie et stratégie sécuritaire dans la France occupée (Paris: Fayard, 1991), p. 180. 93. On the censorship process and its anomalies during Vichy (with the subsection Musique et spectacles based in Paris, and thus enjoying a certain autonomy), see Added, Le théâtre dans les années Vichy, p. 52. For a discussion of the German censorship of the staging, as opposed to Vichy’s practices, see p. 42. On Vichy’s interdiction of Cocteau’s La machine à écrire (on April 29, 1941) and its reversal by the German censors, see p. 43. On Laval’s politics of censorship, which forbade anything that questioned entente with Germany, see p. 45. 94. Fifty-​nine extremely clear and detailed photographs of the 1943 Paris production of the opera are available at the BnF-​Opéra Sc./​Ph. Antigone, Honegger 1943. 95. On the acting style in antiquity, see the commentary by Franklin and Harrison to Sophocles, Antigone, p. 112. For a brief description of the physical disposition of the chorus in antiquity, see p. 9. 96. See Jane F. Fulcher, The Nation’s Image:  French Grand Opera as Politics and Politicized Art (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), ­chapter 1. 97. Ibid. On Marianne during Vichy, see Agulhon, Les metamorphoses de Marianne, pp. 93–​96. And on the “Marseillaise” during Vichy, see Nathalie Dompnier, “Entre ‘La Marseillaise’ et ‘Maréchal, nous voilà!’ Quel hymne pour le régime de Vichy?,” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy, pp. 69–​88. I am grateful to Gilbert Chaitin for pointing out that the nationalist writer Maurice Barrès several decades earlier had interpreted Créon as a Republican who malevolently destroyed those personal values represented by the family in the name of universal values. 98. The performances at the Opéra were often full throughout this period. See Grandgambe, “Le Réunion des théâtres lyriques nationaux,” p. 114. The tickets were usually sold out for performances, and Rouché refused free “places de faveur” except for German officers, since he was reimbursed for them by Vichy. Ten performances for such a challenging work was indeed remarkable. On Anouilh’s association with collaborationist productions, see Sapiro, La guerre des écrivains, p. 60, and Ory, Les collaborateurs, pp.  74, 117, 208. On Schaeffer’s Jeune France and its performance of Antigone at Saint-​Étienne in December 1941, see Véronique Chabrol, “Jeune France, une expérience de recherche et de décentralisation culturelle, nov. 1940–​ mars 1942” (thèse de 3e cycle, Université de Paris II, 1974), p. 241. 99. See H. G. McIntyre, The Theater of Jean Anouilh (London: Harrap, 1981), pp. 8, 44–​45, 49–​50, 52. Also see George Steiner, Antigones (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), pp. 170–​171, 293.

Notes to pages 214–216  • 

407

100. On the attitude of Vichy and the Resistance toward Anouilh’s play, see Added, Le théâtre dans les années Vichy, pp. 257, 289. 101. On Drieu La Rochelle’s position, see Sapiro, La guerre des écrivains, pp.  235–​ 236. On Robert Brasillach’s reading of Anouilh’s Antigone, see Added, Le théâtre dans les années Vichy, p. 287. Also see Antonio Gramsci, “Culture and Ideological Hegemony,” in Culture and Society: Contemporary Debates, ed. Jeffrey C. Alexander and Steven Seidman (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 53. 102. On the context for the original slight on the part of the Paris Opera, see André Coeuroy, “L’Antigone de Honegger,” Je suis partout, April 14, 1943. For a description of the audience’s spontaneous (if inappropriate) applause during Antigone’s farewell scene, see “Antigone, entendue et vue par Werner Egk,” Comoedia, no. 84 (February 6, 1943): 1. As Egk points out, the audience tried to applaud here: it was thus not the work of an organized claque, and it is unlikely that the French or German authorities would have permitted one. Sprout, in “Music for a New Era,” p. 258, argues that the opera was soon overshadowed by Werner Egk’s Peer Gynt, however this is belied by the fact of the continuing discussions of and enthusiastic praise for Honegger’s opera. Antigone would be performed eleven times during the Occupation; other new works at the Paris Opera could run from three to twenty-​ one performances, with the most frequently performed new works being ballets. 103. Paxton, Vichy France, pp. 280–​282. It is important here to recall that the Germans were undergoing defeat at Stalingrad between November 1942 and February 1943; hence as Added points out, Le théâtre dans les années Vichy, p. 335, the Germans sought to divert attention at any price. 104. On the premiere, see Jacques Tchamkerten, Arthur Honegger, p. 192. And see Émile Vuillermoz, “Antigone,” Comoedia, no. 81 ( January 16, 1943): 1. In Vuillermoz’s words, “Depuis seize ans Honegger a pris dans l’histoire de la musique française contemporaine une place que nos théâtres d’État avaient le devoir de consacrer plus dignement que par l’emprunt de L’Aiglon.” 105. On the modernism that Vichy did approve in its musical commissions, see Leslie Sprout, “Les commandes de Vichy,” pp. 159–​160, 167–​171. She argues, p. 167, that for performance Vichy selected those works most directly inspired by the French musical heritage. But the concept of such a heritage was so capacious and wrought with conflict that surprisingly modern currents could identify with it as a justification. The Nazis could also accommodate modernizing currents in Germany; for a brief survey of them, see Michael Kater, The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 183–​188. 106. On the “Ode to Bacchus” and its form as a classical prayer, see the commentary of Franklin and Harrison to Sophocles, Antigone, p.  84. See Hoérée’s review of Antigone in L’information musicale, no. 10 (February 5, 1943): 197. 107. André Cœuroy, “L’Antigone de Honegger,” Je suis partout, April 14, 1943 [page numbers not visible on the microfilm]. On the journal in which it appeared, Je suis

4 0 8   • 

Notes to pages 216–218

partout, see Pierre-​Marie Dioudonnat, Je suis partout, 1933–​1944: Les Maurrassiens devant la tentation fasciste (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1973). And again, see Machabey, “Honegger et la musique française,” pp. 98–​99, and Champigneulle, “Défense de la musique française,” pp. 276–​277. 108. My point that the collaborationists, as opposed to Vichy (which sought to use the opera to advance its conception of collaboration) were more traditionalist and thus reserved, is as opposed to the argument of Jacques Tchamkerten in “Les itinérarires de la gloire,” 115. For Vichy, jazz was condoned within certain limits, when given its proper rhetorical framing, which included its association with the rhythms of modern life as opposed to its connection with black American music. See the article by Robert Bernard, “Swing,” L’information musicale, no. 14 (October 10, 1941): 135–​136. Jazz was still being performed in Paris; see, for example, Henri Petit, “Concerts symphoniques de jazz,” L’information musicale, no. 51 (December 24, 1941): 529. On jazz in France in this period, see Ludovic Tournès, “Le jazz:  Un espace de liberté pour un phénomène culturel en voie d’identification,” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy, pp. 313–​332. On the ambiguities concerning what was and was not allowed in Germany, and the relative freedom that resulted here, see Michael Walter, Hitler in der Oper: Deutsche Musikleben 1919–​1945 (Stuttgart: J. P. Metzler, 1995). The Nazis, who recognized the centrality of music to the German sense of self-​worth, sought an image of cultural sophistication and hence even allowed some jazz and cabaret. 109. As Porcile points out, Les conflits de la musique française, p.  37, Honegger had already praised Egk’s ballet, Joan de Zarissa, in Comoedia on July 21, 1942, when it was performed at the Paris Opera. On the reactions to Egk’s work in Germany, see Michael Kater, Composers of the Nazi Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 17–​18. Other current works employed similarly eclectic stylistic tactics, including those of French composers. Delannoy’s Ginevra, for example (a work that had been intended to revive the genre of opéra-​comique) includes a diversity of styles that range from bel canto to rumba, and was a great success. See Sprout, “Les commandes de Vichy,” pp. 171–​172. 110. Indeed Le temps, August 7, 1942, p. 3, had praised Egk’s Joan de Zarissa—​its clarity and force, its often vertical (or harmonic) emphasis, and its expressive gestures. 111. On Egk and his admiration for Stravinsky (who was gaining acceptance in Nazi Germany by 1936), and on Goebbels’s protection of Egk, see Michael Kater, The Twisted Muse, pp.  182–​186. Egk also conducted for Radio-​Paris during the Occupation. See Ory, Les collaborateurs, p. 60. 112. See Werner Egk, “Antigone, entendue et vue par Werner Egk,” p. 1. 113. For the traditional authoritarian reading of the story of Antigone, particularly that of Hegel, see Steiner, Antigones, pp. 22–​23. On the concept of catharsis, see Longo, “The Theater of the Polis,” p. 19. Surprisingly, given Egk’s points of emphasis, and the insights of Sara Iglesias into the way in which critics were expected to

Notes to pages 218–220  • 

409

serve German goals, Tchamkerten, in “Les itinéraires de la gloire,” p. 115, claims that there was no ideological element in Egk’s review. See Sarah Iglesias, “L’âme, le coeur et toute l’aspiration d’un peuple: La critique musicale française, relais de la politique de collaboration,” in Chimènes and Simon, La musique à Paris sous l’Occupation, pp. 215–​226. 114. See Serge Added, “L’euphorie théâtrale dans Paris occupé,” in La vie culturelle sous Vichy, ed. Jean-​Pierre Rioux (Brussels: Éditions Complexe, 1990), p.  343. On the experience of art in this period, see Rioux’s own chapter in this volume, “Ambivalences en rouge et bleu:  Les pratiques culturelles des Français pendant les années noires,” pp. 41–​6 0. Although it has been suggested to me that those who attended the Paris Opera in this period may have been necessarily sympathetic to Vichy, this was clearly not always the case. A personal interview with the late historian of Islamic art, Oleg Grabar, at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, in November 2003 revealed the contrary. Grabar, who attended the Paris Opera as an adolescent during the Occupation, was a courier for a small resistance paper published at his lycée; his family, which did whatever it could to help Jews or other persecuted friends, found personal refuge in culture, including concerts and opera, not a reinforcement of Vichy’s ideal. This inclination is also attested to in the letters of artists who were increasingly alienated from Vichy, including Francis Poulenc. See Poulenc, Correspondance, esp. pp. 532–​534. 115. On the awareness of growing civil strife in this period, see Added, Le théâtre dans les années Vichy, p.  237. Composers such as Messiaen were drawn creatively by Honegger’s Antigone; in fact, Messiaen would analyze it (as well as other works of Honegger) with his students both in his private classes and at the Conservatoire. See Porcile, Les conflits de la musique française, p.  74. And see James Redfield, “Drama and Community: Aristophenes and Some of His Rivals,” in Nothing to Do with Dionysos?, p. 236. 116. Delannoy, Honegger, p. 189. 117. Ibid., p.  191. In 1941 Honegger was already composing, setting fragments from Suzanne et le Pacifique, after Giraudoux. And see José Bruyr, Honegger, p.  198. As Bruyr points out, Honegger made a trip to Switzerland during the “drôle de guerre,” when his French colleagues were conscripted; here he wrote his Partita pour deux pianos, his Dance des morts, and Christophe Colomb. 118. See Tchamkerten, Arthur Honegger, pp. 188–​189. Others who went included Louis Hautecoeur, Paul-​Marie Masson (representing the Sorbonne), René Dommange (director of the Éditions Durand), and Robert Bernard (editor of L’information musicale); the composers Florent Schmitt, Gustave Samazeuilh, and Marcel Delannoy; and the collaborationist writer and music critic Lucien Rebatet. Also see Krivopissko and Virieux, “Musiciens: Une profession en résistance?,” p. 347. Claude Delvincourt politely declined to participate in the trip.

4 1 0   • 

Notes to pages 220–223

119. Porcile, Les conflits de la musique française, p. 45. See Leslie Sprout, “Unlocking the Mystery of Honegger.” And on those who made the trip, see Armand Macabey, “Club de Presse,” L’information musicale, no. 15 (December 24, 1941), p. 524. 120. Porcile, Les conflits de la musique française, pp. 39–​4 0. 121. Sprout, “Unlocking the Mystery of Honegger,” pp.  1–​2. As she also observes, shortly after the reception at the German Embassy, French orchestras began to perform Honegger’s Pacific 231 (of 1924), which Nazi officials had previously considered degenerate. 122. Ibid. And see Tchamkerten, Honegger, p. 193. 123. Iglesias, “L’âme, le coeur et l’aspiration d’un peuple,” pp. 217–​218, 220. 124. Honegger had begun to write for Comoedia on June 21, 1941, when it reappeared as a weekly, on the invitation of its editor, René Dalange. See Porcile, Les conflits de la musique française, p. 38 and Bruyr, Honegger, p. 205. We previously saw that Comoedia was now under the direct control of the German Institute; but those who wrote for it in this period included members of the intellectual resistance: it was a question of what they wrote, and the context in which their articles appeared. As Claude Morgan wrote in Les lettres françaises, no. 11 (November 1943), everyone knew that each week Comoedia had a “page européenne” dedicated to Nazi propaganda, which included well-​known collaborators. On Comoedia, see Sapiro, La guerre des écrivains, p. 61. And as Sapiro points out, p. 92, many academicians served as intellectual mediators between the two regimes; significantly, Honegger had been elected a foreign member of the French Academy in 1938. 125. See Honegger, Écrits: Textes réunis et annotés par Huguette Calmel (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1992), p. 395. Honegger’s article is titled “Le festival Wagner au Grand Palais,” Comoedia, no.13 (September 13, 1941): 3. Also see Honegger, Incantations aux fossiles (Lausanne: Éditions d’Ouchy, 1948), p. 43. Here he points out that the musical programs for the Exposition de la France européenne at the Grand Palais were organized in conjunction with the Société des concerts du Conservatoire and included three Wagner festivals. 126. Honegger, Écrits, pp. 398–​399; “Que cesse la loi du moindre effort dans les associations symphoniques,” Comoedia, no. 15 (September 27, 1941): 1. 127. See Honegger, “Festivals de musique françaises,” Comoedia, no. 16 (October 4, 1941): 5, and his Écrits, p. 399. Also see Honegger, “Rythmes du monde aux concerts Pasdeloup,” Comoedia, no. 20 (November 1, 1941):  5, and his Écrits, pp. 413–​414. 128. For Honegger’s advocacy of French music, see his “Hommage à Claude Debussy,” Comoedia, no. 45 (May 2, 1942): 2, 5. Here he proudly places Debussy in the same artistic league as Wagner and stresses how the former constructed an entirely new kind of work in Pelléas—​this at a time when Debussy was being presented as a follower and adapter of Wagner. But Honegger also praised more conservative and retrogressive French works, such as Paul Le Flem’s Le rossignol de Saint-​Malo,

Notes to pages 223–225  • 

411

inspired by a Breton ballad and stylistically indebted to Debussy; it premiered on May 5, 1942. See Honegger, “Le rossignol de Saint-​Malo,” Comoedia, no. 47 (May 16, 1942): 5, and his Écrits, pp. 479–​480. Honegger, however, was not always so sanguine in his opinions concerning younger French composers, and this included his former student Marcel Delannoy, about whose Ginevra he was cool. This provoked a response on the part of Guy Ferchault in L’information musicale, no. 84 (October 2, 1942):  2. While Honegger did not approve of Delannoy’s stylistic approach in the work, Ferchault defended the latter, stressing its qualities of simplicity and unity. 129. See Honegger, “Premières auditions: Olivier Messiaen à la Pléiade,” Comoedia, no. 98 (May 15, 1943): 5, and his Écrits, pp. 465–​566. Also see his praise for Jolivet, in addition to his support for Georges Hugon, Georges Dandelot, Pierre Capdevielle, Jacques Chailley, and Tony Aubin, in his article “Musique de chambre moderne française,” Comoedia, no. 73 (November 14, 1942): 5, and his Écrits, p. 519. 130. Honegger especially praises the “L’Amen de l’agonie de Jésus” and the “L’Amen du désir,” going on to express the wish that it be presented, along with Messiaen’s commentaries on it, at the Jeunesses musicales de France. See his “Premières auditions: Olivier Messiaen à la Pléiade,” cited above. 131. See Honegger, Incantation aux fossiles (of 1948), pp. 71–​74, which includes this review. Also see Honegger, “À L’Opéra, Palestrina de Hans Pfitzner,” Comoedia, no. 41 (April 4, 1942): 1, 5, and his Écrits, pp. 485–​487. 132. Serge Moreaux, “Un grand musicien allemand contemporain. Hans Pfitzner,” Comoedia, no. 39 (March 21, 1942): 5. 133. See the review [no author given], “Palestrina à l’Opéra de Paris,” Le petit parisien, March 28–​29, 1942: 2. 134. Honegger, “Création à l’Opéra de Joan de Zarissa,” Comoedia, no. 56 ( July 18, 1942): 1, 5, and his Écrits, pp. 485–​487, which reprints this article. 135. Ibid. (Again, Honegger’s Écrits reprints this article, pp. 485–​487.) 136. Honegger, “La semaine Mozart à Vienne,” Comoedia, no. 26 (December 13, 1941): 1, and his Écrits, p. 427. 137. Porcile, Les conflits de la musique française, p. 38, documents that on November 8, 1943, Poulenc wrote to Roland-​Manuel, “Je sais que vous avez persuadé Arthur de cesser ses articles (assez foireux [cowardly], soit dit en passant). Bravo! Quand on est M. Arthur Honegger, on écrit de la musique, cela suffit si on n’a pas le don de plume de M. Croche [Claude Debussy].” And see Honegger, “Werner Egk à Paris,” Comoedia, no. 99 (May 22, 1943): 1, and Écrits, pp. 567–​568. 138. Iglesias, “L’âme, le coeur, et toute l’aspiration d’un peuple,” p. 221. Sprout, in The Musical Legacy of Wartime France, p. 17, also draws attention to Goebbels’s support for Egk. 139. Iglesias, “L’âme, le coeur,” p. 221. 140. Ibid., pp. 221, 223.

4 1 2   • 

Notes to pages 225–230

141. Ibid., p. 223. 142. Honegger, Écrits, pp. 567–​568. 143. Honegger, “Création à l’Opéra de Peer Gynt de Werner Egk,” Comoedia, no. 119 (October 9, 1943): 1, 4, and Écrits, pp. 590–​591. 144. Honegger, “Musique française,” Comoedia, no. 160–​161 (August 5, 1944):  1, 7; Honegger, Écrits, p. 604. 145. Tchamkerten, Honegger, p. 181; and Jean Maillard and Jacques Nahoum, Les symphonies d’Arthur Honegger (Paris: Leduc, 1974), pp. 54–​55. Honegger started with the Adagio in the winter of 1941, always beginning, as he explained (recalling d’Indy) with “cette partie central du tryptique.” 146. See Delannoy, Honegger, p. 191; Maillard and Nahoum, Les symphonies d’Arthur Honegger, p. 55; and Tchamkerten, Arthur Honegger, p. 189. Also see Porcile, Les conflits de la musique française, p. 40. 147. On Bakhtin’s theories and concepts, see Tzvetan Todorov, Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical Principle (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984). 148. On the “message symphony” as taught by d’Indy at the Schola Cantorum, see Brian Hart, “The Symphony in Debussy’s World: A Context for His Views on the Genre and Early Interpretations of La Mer,” in Debussy and His World, ed. Jane F. Fulcher (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 181–​201. Also see Maillhard and Nahoum, Les symphonies d’Arthur Honegger, p. 56; they perceive the influence of Beethoven and Franck in Honegger’s movement from D minor to D major in the work (as in Franck’s own symphony). And see Delannoy, Honegger, pp. 191–​192, who sees the symphony as a work of “musique pure,” but stresses the intensity of the dramatic and lyric feeling. This perspective is echoed by Marcel Landowski, Honegger (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1957), p. 135, who emphasizes the dramatic conflict in the work. 149. See Delannoy, Honegger, p.  142, and Maillard and Nahoum, Les symphonies d’Arthur Honegger, pp. 60–​63; and for a more recent analysis that makes related points, see Keith Waters, Rhythmic and Contrapuntal Structures in the Music of Arthur Honegger (Burlington: Ashgate, 2002), pp. 133–​168. 150. See Tchamkerten, Arthur Honegger, p. 183, and Delannoy, Honegger, p. 192. 151. Maillard and Nahoum, Les symphonies d’Arthur Honegger, pp.  55, 64–​ 65; Tchamkerten, Arthur Honegger, p.  184; and Bruyr, Honegger, p.  220. Also see the score, Arthur Honegger, Symphonie pour orchestre à cordes: Partition de Poche (Paris: Salabert, 1942). 152. This is a phrase aptly employed by Delannoy, Honegger, p. 192. 153. See Maillard and Nahoum, Les symphonies d’Arthur Honegger, pp.  55–​56, 71. On Honegger the Protestant, here purportedly evoking Easter, see Delannoy, Honegger, p. 192. 154. On the performances of Bach, together with Lully and Rameau, see the report (unsigned) on the concert series “Les mercredis,” L’information musicale, no.

Notes to pages 230–234  • 

413

51 (December 24, 1941):  522. Also see Maillard and Nahoum, Les symphonies d’Arthur Honegger, pp. 55–​56. 155. Porcile, Les conflits de la musique française, p. 40. 156. The Paris premiere took place on June 25, the opening night of the “Honegger week,” which concluded on July 3, 1942. See Maillard and Nahoum, Les symphonies d’Arthur Honegger, p. 74, and Tchamkerten, Arthur Honegger, p. 190. As the latter specifies, the only unfavorable review was by Lucien Rebatet in Je suis partout on July 8. 157. See José Bruyr, “Festival Honegger à Chaillot,” L’information musicale, no. 77 ( July 3, 1942): 1012. 158. Ibid. And see Bruyr, Honegger, p. 221. 159. See the anonymous review, “La musique à Paris. Le Drac et Jan se Jarissa [sic] à l’Opéra: La cinquantaine de M. Arthur Honegger,” Le temps, August 7, 1942: 3. 160. Lucien Rebatet, “Le festival Honegger,” Je suis partout, July 3, 1943: 7. Rebatet’s negative attitude was also a result of Honegger’s previous involvement with some of the programs of the Popular Front, as well as his collaboration with Ida Rubenstein on Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher. The latter work was again performed on May 9, 1943, for the feast day of the saint, with Honegger conducting. 161. Émile Vuillermoz, “Les grandes réussites d’Honegger,” in Arthur Honegger, by Paul Claudel, Arthur Hoérée, Roland Manuel, and Émile Vuillermoz (Paris: Comoedia-​ Charpenter, 1942), pp. 1–​13. 162. Ibid., p. 13. 163. Porcile, Les conflits de la musique française, p. 40. 164. See Delannoy, Honegger, p. 191. 165. On the Parisian network of musical resistants in the Front National, see Porcile, Les conflits de la musique française, p. 33. Charles Munch had joined in 1942, and by that summer the group also included Elsa Barraine and Roger Désormière (the latter two its cofounders) as well as Georges Auric, Francis Poulenc, Manuel Rosenthal, and Jacques Chailley, Also see Sprout, “Unlocking the Mystery of Honegger,” pp. 1–​2, and Tchamkerten, Arthur Honegger, p. 196. 166. Sprout, The Musical Legacy of Wartime France, p. 39. 167. Ibid., p. 54. 168. Ibid., pp. 39, 54, 45–​4 6. And see Sprout, “Unlocking the Mystery of Honegger,” p. 2, and Porcile, Les conflits de la musique française, p. 31. The latter states that Honegger was not to be performed for eight months, but apparently two were retroactive. Tchamkerten, Arthur Honegger, pp. 196–​197, explains that during the Épuration musicians were generally given lighter penalties than writers. 169. See Tchamkerten, Arthur Honegger, p. 190, who (like Brillant) dates the Chant de Libération from April 1942. Also see pp. 196–​197, where he posits that the “boycott” on Honegger’s music after the war was tacitly organized to make the composer pay for his immense success during Vichy. As Sprout points out in “Unlocking the

4 1 4   • 

Notes to pages 234–237

Mystery of Honegger,” she located the piano-​vocal score of the “Chant” in one of the several boxes containing material relating to Zimmer, a screenwriter, in the BnF-​Arts et Spectacles. The librarian there, Patrick Le Boeuf, found the score that the French music publisher Salabert had typeset in the fall of 1944. As Sprout advances, it was probably because of the temporary ban on Honegger’s music after the war that Salabert, in the end, did not publish it. 170. Tchamkerten, Arthur Honegger, pp. 196–​197, and see Winock, Le siècle des intellectuels, p. 341. And see Jackson, France: the Dark Years, p. 184. Here he points out that Claudel had written and “Ode to Pétain” in 1940, but had grown hostile to the maréchal in the course of 1941; in August 1942 he refused a production of his play Protée without the music that Milhaud composed for it. 171. Sprout, The Musical Legacy of Wartime France, pp. 40–​43. It was in March that the High Court of Justice began to try the senior Vichy officials. 172. Ibid. 173. Ibid., p. 78. 174. Sprout, The Musical Legacy of Wartime France, pp. 44–​45. And see Poulenc’s letter to Milhaud of March 17, 1945, in his Correspondance, p. 585. 175. See the unsigned article, “Théâtres,” in La nouvelle république, December 5, 1943: 2. It is preserved in BnF-​Musique Rés. G1470 (262). 176. Tchamkerten, Arthur Honegger, pp. 194–​195. 177. Sprout, The Musical Legacy of Wartime France, pp.  69, 78. And see Delannoy, Honegger, p. 196, where he contends that the composer had sought a better place for French music in programs pervaded by German Romanticism, and that he bravely defended his friend Ibert. 178. Honegger did have the choice of declining specific invitations that were politically compromising, an option taken by Claude Delvincourt, among others. 179. On Spender’s views concerning politics and the artist, see his article, “Poetry and Revolution,” originally published in New Country in 1933 and reprinted in Stephen Spender, The Thirties and After:  Poetry, Politics, People (1933–​75) (London: Macmillan, 1978), pp. 43–​53. 180. Significantly, as Sprout points out in The Musical Legacy of Wartime France, p. 43, when François Mauriac (a member of the Resistance) circulated a petition to de Gaulle to pardon the collaborationist writer Robert Brasillach (who had been condemned to death), Honegger signed it, along with Claudel, Valéry, Cocteau, and Jean-​Louis Barrault. Artists who signed it included André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck; both had been part of the French delegation of artists to the Vienna Mozart celebration in 1941. 181. For an example of Honegger presented as a hero, see Spratt’s discussion of him during the war years in The Music of Arthur Honegger, as well as that of Delannoy in his Honegger; here he presents the composer as unfairly victimized by circumstances. For Michel Faure’s condemnation of Honegger (along with other members of Les

Notes to pages 237–240  • 

415

Six) during the interwar period and after, see his Du néoclassicisme musical dans la France du premier XXe siècle (Paris: Klinksieck, 1997), pp. 258–​262, 338. 182. These concepts appear implicitly as well as explicitly throughout Rioux’s volume La vie culturelle sous Vichy as well as in the second volume (Cultures) of Jean-​ François Sirinelli, ed., Histoire des droites en France (Paris: Gallimard, 1992). 183. See Helen Lynd, On Shame and the Search for Identity (New  York:  Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1958), pp. 14–​15. 184. See Jean-​Paul Sartre, Un théâtre de situations, ed. Michel Contat and Michel Rybalka (Paris: Gallimard, 1973), pp. 19–​22. Chapter 5 1. On Gramsci and the concept of the hegemonic, see Richard Terdiman, Discourse/​ Counter-​Discourse: The Theory and Practice of Symbolic Resistance in Nineteenth-​ Century France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), p. 50. Also see Walter L. Adamson, Hegemony and Revolution: A Study of Antonio Gramsci’s Political and Cultural Theory (Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1980). On artists as intellectuals, see Jane F. Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual: Music and Ideology in France 1914–​1940 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 3–​18. For a background to the Shostakovich controversy, see Malcolm H. Brown, ed., A Shostakovich Casebook (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004). 2. On subjectivity as used here, see Craig Calhoun, Social Theory and the Politics of Identity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), p. 20. 3. See Julian Jackson, France: The Dark Years, 1940–​1944 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 413, and Philip Nord, France’s New Deal: From the Thirties to the Postwar Era (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), p. 113. They discuss those who first believed that Pétain was involved in a double game, or only pretending to work with the occupant. The realities of Vichy’s collaboration and cooperation with the Nazis are amply attested to in the recent exhibition at the French Archives Nationales in Paris, “Collaboration, 1940–​1945” (December 2014–​March 2015). On the exhibition, see Maïa de la Baume, “France Confronts an Ignoble Chapter,” New York Times, December 16, 2014. She emphasizes how the exhibition documents France’s political, administrative, economic, military, ideological, and cultural alliances with the Germans throughout this period. One of the organizers, Denis Peschanski, points out the distinction between collaborationists and collaborators, or “between those who were entirely allied with the occupier and those who accommodated to the circumstances.” And see Gisèle Sapiro, La guerre des écrivains (Paris: Fayard, 1999), p. 9, on those who now followed a logic that was in part political and in part professional. 4. On Adorno’s theory of contestation in music and its relation to formal innovations, see Theodor Adorno, The Philosophy of Modern Music, trans. Anne G. Mitchell

4 1 6   • 

Notes to pages 240–243

and Wesley V. Bloomster (London: Sheed and Ward, 1973), esp. p. 209. Here, to cite Adorno, “The statement attributed to Hitler, that a man could only die for an idea he does not understand, could be engraved as an inscription over the gate of neo-​classicism.” For an extensive study of irony, parody, and other related techniques in the music of Shostakovich, see Esti Scheinberg, Irony, Satire, Parody, and the Grotesque in the Music of Shostakovich (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2000). 5. Hervé Lacombe, Francis Poulenc (Paris: Fayard, 2013), p. 493. 6. Ibid., and Nicolas Southon, “Francis Poulenc ou la ligne fragile du civisme esthétique,” in La musique à Paris sous l’Occupation, ed. Myriam Chimènes and Yannick Simon (Paris: Fayard, 2013), pp. 143–​144. And see Étienne Fouilloux, Les chrétiens français entre crise et libération (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1997), p. 101. 7. Francis Poulenc, J’écris ce qui me chante, ed. by Nicolas Southon (Paris:  Fayard, 2011), p. 25. 8. Fouilloux, Les chrétiens français, pp. 101, 108. And see Lacombe, Poulenc, p. 495. 9. Lacombe, Poulenc, p. 497. And see Leslie Sprout, The Musical Legacy of Wartime France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), p. 120, who points out that although Poulenc had a small apartment in Paris, he preferred his home in Noizay, about 140 miles southwest of Paris. 10. Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France:  Old Guard and New Order, 1940–​1944 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), p.  136. On the hope of the French in 1940 and the “heady ferment” of technological progress, see p. 138. As Paxton also points out, in the southern third of the country (not yet occupied) it was far from evident whether hostility to the German enemy meant opposing the new French regime installed in Vichy and allowed by Hitler, or rejoicing in its pretense of independence and nationalistic rhetoric. On frustration with the Third Republic and anxiety over the fate of France, see pp. xiii–​xv, and on Vichy’s success with public opinion in the summer of 1940 (when it presented itself as the only alternative to a German “Gauleiter”), see p. 258. 11. On all being malleable, see Paxton, Vichy France, p. 131; and on the only certainty being that the recent past was gone, see p. 24. For a discussion of the new French constitution and the “massive urge for instant change,” see p. 20. And for a discussion of the drafting of the new constitution by the Conseil national, see Jackson, France: The Dark Years, pp. 153–​154. 12. See Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual, p. 261. 13. Ibid., p. 264. 14. Ibid., p. 260. 15. On Poulenc’s expression of hope for the future, see Francis Poulenc, Correspondance, 1910–​1963, ed. Myriam Chimènes (Paris: Fayard, 1994), pp. 498, 502. On Pétain and his appeal to the French, see Paxton, Vichy France, pp. xiv, 34–​35, and on Pétain’s plans for a National Revolution and the Catholic order he advanced, see pp. 140–​142. Indeed, prominent figures such as Paul Valéry continued to support

Notes to pages 243–246  • 

417

Vichy into 1941; see the collection that the latter edited, La France et la civilisation contemporaine (Paris: Flammarion, 1941). 16. On Vichy’s promotion of Catholicism, and thus the faith of many Catholics in Pétain, see Jacques Duquesne, Les Catholiques français sous l’Occupation (Paris:  Bernard Grasset, 1996; orig. ed. 1966), p.  164. For Poulenc’s response to Ibert’s departure, see Poulenc, Correspondance, p. 501, and on his reembrace of Catholicism, see Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual, pp.  258–​265. On his awareness of Milhaud’s escape, see Carl B. Schmidt, Entrancing Muse:  A Documented Biography of Francis Poulenc (Hillsdale, NY:  Pendragon Press, 2001), p. 268. 17. On Poulenc’s enthusiasm for his new creative projects, see Poulenc, Correspondance, pp.  504, 510. The Opéra’s director, Jacques Rouché, had already urged Poulenc to submit an idea for a ballet. Ibid., p.  518. Also see Schmidt, Entrancing Muse, pp. 268–​269, and Lacombe, Poulenc, pp. 498, 505–​507. 18. For a list of all of Poulenc’s compositions and concerts during the war, see Nicolas Southon, “Francis Poulenc ou la ligne fragile du ‘civisme esthéthique’,” pp. 134–​135. Also see Poulenc, Correspondance, pp. 507, 511, 518. 19. Poulenc, Correspondance, p.  504, and François Porcile, Les conflits de la musique française, 1940–​1965 (Paris: Fayard, 2001), p. 35. 20. Lacombe, Poulenc, p. 510. 21. Southon, in “Francis Poulenc ou la ligne fragile,” p. 141, argues for Poulenc’s continuity here, but in support of this he cites the Concert champêtre, of 1929, the attitude of which is substantially different, for it invokes both 18th century gaiety and current popular culture. And Southon sees Poulenc’s new ballet in terms of its continuing “francité” and not “Pétainisme,” while I maintain that the content of the two ballets is indeed substantially different. Also see Stéphanie Corcy-​Debray, Jérôme Carcopino, un historien à Vichy (Paris: L’Harmatton, 2001), p. 108; here she notes that the term “maréchaliste” indicates loyalty to the person of Pétain while “pétainiste” denotes an endorsement of the ideology of the National Revolution; Poulenc’s scenario indeed approaches the latter, particularly within the political context. 22. Lacombe, Poulenc, pp. 510, 517–​519. 23. Southon, “Francis Poulenc,” p. 144. 24. On Poulenc’s love of La Fontaine, see Henri Hell, Francis Poulenc: Musicien français (Paris: Plon, 1958), p. 112. On the “horror and wonder of violated boundaries,” see Caroline Walker Bynum, Metamorphosis and Identity (New York: Zone Books, 2001), p. 31. On Poulenc’s ballet, see Leslie Sprout, “Music for a New Era: Composers and National Identity in France, 1936–​1946” (PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2000), pp. 307ff. And see Poulenc, Correspondance, p. 531. 25. Bynum, Metamorphosis and Identity, pp. 21–​23, 25–​26. 26. Poulenc, Correspondance, p. 509.

4 1 8   • 

Notes to pages 246–250

27. See the scenario that prefaces the score, Francis Poulenc, Les animaux modèles: Ballet en un acte d’après La Fontaine; Argument et musique de Francis Poulenc (Paris:  Éditions Max Eschig, 1942). Also see Poulenc, Correspondance, p.  522. (This letter, to Colette describing his goals, was published in Comoedia on August 29, 1942.) 28. Sprout, The Musical Legacy of Wartime France, p. 20; and see her “Music for a New Era,” pp. 307–​315, where she rather sees the apotheosis of the wounded cock as a statement of the resuscitation of France herself. The issue here, I maintain, is which France is implied:  at the time the scenario was written it was presumably that of Vichy. 29. See Charlène St-​Aubin, “Poulenc, Nostalgia, and Parisian Popular Culture” (PhD dissertation, University of Toronto, 2008), p. 109. And see Nigel Simeone, “Making Music in Occupied Paris,” Musical Times 147 (Spring 2006):  33–​34. Also see Sprout, The Musical Legacy of Wartime France, p. 23. 30. See Sprout, The Musical Legacy of Wartime France, p. 25. Here she sees Poulenc’s intentions as clear to the orchestra, while Southon, in “Francis Poulenc,” p.  143, argues that the citations from the chanson were almost imperceptible to those who did not know they were there. 31. Poulenc, Correspondance, pp. 507, 511, 518. 32. See Francis Poulenc, Banalités (Paris: Max Eschig, 1941). 33. Francis Poulenc, Les animaux modèles (score). One may see the dominant perspective on Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande by early 1942 in the article by Gustave Samazeuilh in the booklet accompanying the first complete recording of the opera (which was released early that year), “Autour de Pelléas et Mélisande.” It is preserved in the BnF-​Opéra Pelléas et Mélisande B pièce 99. 34. Some scholars see a reference to Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé in the work. On the ballet and its reception, see Hell, Francis Poulenc, pp. 23–​24, and Sprout, “Music for a New Era,” pp. 307–​315. The latter discusses the reference to La mer on p. 312. 35. Introduction by Nicolas Southon to Poulenc, J’écris, p. 84. Significantly, the journal, which had been founded by the editor of La revue musicale, Robert Bernard, now proclaimed itself the official organ of the Comité national de propagande pour la musique. 36. Ibid., pp.  84–​87. Indeed, Stravinsky’s Les noces was programmed on March 2, 1941, by the Société des concerts du Conservatoire, with Poulenc at the piano. On the profascist press (including journals like La gerbe castigating French decadence in the interwar period), see Gerhard Hirshfeld and Patrick Marsh, eds., Collaboration in France: Politics and Culture during the Nazi Occupation (New York and Munich: Berg, 1989), p. 146. And see Je suis partout, June 25, 1943: 7, “Jeune musique française,” by André Coeuroy, which reviews Paul Landormy’s La musique française après Debussy. Here Coeuroy argues that Landormy is far too taken by Les Six—​although one should certainly recognize Honegger—​but above all credit

Notes to pages 250–252  • 

419

should be given to Stravinsky, who is as integral part of “our music” as were Lully and Gluck. 37. Henri Sauguet, “Chronique musicale: Musique d’entre deux guerres,” La nouvelle revue française, no. 324 (February 1, 1941): 370–​374. 38. Ibid., pp. 370, 372. 39. Francis Poulenc, “Centenaire de Chabrier,” La nouvelle revue française, no. 329 ( July 1, 1941): 110–​114. 4 0. Lacombe, Poulenc, p. 510, and Schmidt, Entrancing Muse, p. 274. Also see Poulenc, Correspondance, p. 512. 41. See Peter Hill and Nigel Simeone, Messiaen (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 2007), p. 122. On the eventual members of the Front national de la musique, see Colin Roust, “Sounding French:  The Film Music and Criticism of Georges Auric, 1919–​1945” (PhD dissertation, University of Michigan, 2007), p. 207. 42. Poulenc, J’écris, pp. 93, 568–​569, and Schmidt, Entrancing Muse, p. 274. 43. Southon, “Francis Poulenc,” p. 134. And Paxton, Vichy France, p. 134. On the regime becoming fascicizing after Laval’s return to Paris, see Michel Cointet-​Labrousse, “Le fonctionnement du régime, table ronde,” in Vichy et les français, ed. Jean-​Pierre Azéma and François Bédarida (Paris: Fayard, 1992), p. 235. For a discussion of the diminishing number of Vichy supporters in relation to the news of the war, see W. D. Halls, Politics, Society, and Christianity in Vichy France (Oxford: Berg, 1995), pp. 40–​41. 4 4. Introduction by Southon to Poulenc, J’écris, p. 25. Sprout, in The Musical Legacy of Wartime France, p. 12, notes that 1942 was the period of Poulenc’s participation in Vichy’s musical culture but also in several subversive or defiant gestures. 45. Denis Peschanski, Vichy 1940–​1944:  Contrôle et exclusion (Brussels:  Éditions Complexe, 1997), pp. 182, 186. 4 6. Renée Bédarida, Les Catholiques dans la guerre, 1939–​1945 (Paris: Hachette, 1998), pp. 118–​119. As she notes, p. 124, even in July 1940 some Parisian Catholics distrusted Vichy. Also see Cointet-​Labrousse, “Le fonctionnement du régime,” pp. 254–​255. On the perception of anti-​Semitic Jewish exclusion and persecution and the reaction of the church by 1942, see Peschanski, “Exclusion, persécution, répression,” p. 228. On the church’s original perception of the regime as a just revenge against the “godless” Third Republic, see Paxton, Vichy France, p. 149; on p. 153 he discusses how the Catholic left first grew skeptical. For a discussion of the gradually changing positions of other Catholic intellectuals, such as Emmanuel Mounier and François Mauriac, see Duquesne, Les Catholique français sous l’Occupation, p. 18. On Vichy’s concessions by the end of 1941 and the growing disillusion, see Yves Durand, “Les notables,” in Azéma and Bédarida, Vichy et les Français, p.  379. He discusses the developing Franco-​German alliance and the greater repression in 1942 on pp. 217–​ 222. Michel Cointet-​Labrousse examines the gradual alienation of the French from the National Revolution in “Le fonctionnement du régime,” p. 258. Also see Karine

4 2 0   • 

Notes to pages 252–255

Le Bail, “Émissions de minuit,” in Pierre Schaeffer: Les constructions impatientes, ed. Martin Kaltenecker and Karine Le Bail (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2012), p. 118. 47. Scott Gunther, The Elastic Closet:  A History of Homosexuality in France, 1942–​ Present (New  York:  Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 25–​27. Also see Richard D. Burton, Francis Poulenc (Bath, UK: Absolute Press, 2002), p. 43; on pp. 83–​84 he discusses homosexuals who were collaborators, such as Robert Brasillach. 48. See Poulenc, Correspondance, p. 618. Poulenc’s initial accommodations with Vichy are now recognized in several of the sources on him. See, for example, Benjamin Ivry, Francis Poulenc (London: Phaidon Press, 1996), pp. 117–​119. 49. See Poulenc, J’écris, p. 85, and Lacombe, Poulenc, p. 513. 50. Jackson, France: The Dark Years, p. 303. 51. Poulenc, Correspondance, p. 530. 52. F. Reynal, “Les animaux modèles,” L’information musicale, no. 79 (August 26, 1942): 3. 53. For Honegger’s perspective on the ballet, see Hell, Francis Poulenc, p. 125. 54. See Lacombe, Poulenc, p. 519. Also see Poulenc, “Le coeur de Maurice Ravel,” in the Nouvelle revue française, no. 323 ( January 1, 1941): 237–​240. The latter was a propos of the festival Mozart-​Ravel, conducted by Charles Munch; and here Poulenc notes his pleasure in hearing Ravel’s Concerto pour la main gauche, stressing Ravel’s passion for jazz and the way in which it imbues his work with authenticity and true sensibility, despite his own current skepticism concerning the use of jazz in European art music. 55. See “Entretien avec A.  P. Francis Poulenc nous parle de son nouveau ballet, Les Animaux modèles,” Le Figaro, August 14, 1942: 4. 56. Lacombe, Poulenc, p. 516. For Colette’s review and Poulenc’s diplomatic response, see Poulenc, Correspondance, p. 522. 57. Francis Poulenc, “À propos d’un ballet,” Comoedia, August 29, 1942: 6. 58. See Poulenc’s letter to Koechlin of August 19, 1942, in his Correspondance, p. 519. 59. Ibid., p. 520. The opera, which premiered shortly after the war, bears the influence not only of Chabrier but also of Ravel as well as Milhaud. See Wilfred Mellers, Francis Poulenc (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 102. It is significant that the notions of liberation and metamorphosis (ideas cultivated by the surrealists) also pervade this work, if here in a sexually comical sense. And here Poulenc, like Offenbach, pokes fun at operatic tradition, as in the funeral scene with chorus in Act I. 60. Poulenc, Correspondance, p. 510. 61. Ibid., p. 530. 62. Lacombe, Poulenc, p. 515. 63. See Sprout, The Musical Legacy of Wartime France, pp. 25–​26. Southon, in “Francis Poulenc,” p. 141, cites André Schaeffner’s reference to Poulenc’s “l’élan de civisme esthétique,” but again this was only after the fact, when Poulenc had become active with the musical resistance.

Notes to pages 255–256  • 

421

6 4. See Schmidt, Entrancing Muse, p. 282. 65. Poulenc, Correspondance, p. 530. 66. Ibid., pp. 553–​554, letter of December 3, 1942. 67. On the gradual development of the French Resistance from an initially small group, largely of marginal status, see Paxton, Vichy France, p.  40, as well as Sapiro, La guerre des écrivains, p. 21. On the recent notion of the “vichysso-​résistants,” or those who were either simultaneously or successively partisans of Vichy and resistants, see Johanna Barasz, “De Vichy à la résistance: Les vichysso-​résistants, 1940–​1945” (thèse de doctorat d’histoire, Institut d’études politiques de Paris, 2010). This concept is also cited in Ismail Fehrat’s review of Olivier Wieviorka’s 2013 Histoire de la Résistance, 1940–​1945, in Esprit critique no. 105 (May 16, 2013): 2–​5. According to Wieviorka, although the active Resistance was limited in number, there were many more who participated in resistance acts and helped save the Jews but were not formal members of the Resistance. 68. See Yves Durand, “Les notables,” in Azéma and Bédarida, Vichy et les français, p. 379. Also see Peschanski, “Exclusion, persécution, répression,” p. 228, on the shooting of French hostages and on the formation of the brutal and repressive Milice in November 1943. On the increase of deportations and of German terror and brutality, especially toward the Jews, see Robert Gildea, Marianne in Chains: Daily Life in the Heart of France during the German Occupation (New York: Metropolitan Books; Henry Holt, 2002), p. 18. On the highly unpopular Service du travail obligatoire en Allemagne, see Paxton, Vichy France, pp. 292–​293. Also see the conclusion by Jean-​ Pierre Azéma and François Bédarida to Vichy et les français, pp. 763–​771. And see the contribution by Stanley Hoffmann to the round-​table discussion in ­chapter 7 of the same volume, “Le fonctionnement du régime,” p. 252. On the contradictions in Vichy’s nationalism and the question of national interests and true patriotism, see Henry Rousso’s contribution to the round-​table discussion, pp. 261–​262. 69. Daniel Virieux, “Front national des musiciens,” in Roger Désormière, 1898–​ 1963, Actes du colloque, ed. Nicolas Guillot (Paris:  Comité Roger Désormière, 1999), p. 60. 70. Julian Jackson, France:  The Dark Years, p.  404, makes the important distinction between resistance “réseau,” or networks) and movements (with specific ideologies): it was the latter that developed a press. Also see Gildea, Marianne in Chains, p. 17, and Sapiro, La guerre des écrivains, p. 233. 71. See Margaret Atack, Literature and the French Resistance:  Cultural Politics and Narrative Forms, 1940–​1950 (New  York:  St. Martin’s Press, 1989), p.  9. On the “murky” moral universe of the Resistance and the way in which morality was defined collectively, as well as the internal differences over broader conceptions of France, see Gildea, Marianne in Chains, pp. 13–​17. 72. As Virieux notes in “Front national des musiciens,” although the Front national recruited in all professions, the committee on intellectuals constituted one of its

4 2 2   • 

Notes to pages 256–259

most original aspects. On the antifascist movement of French writers and intellectuals in the thirties, and the role of musicians within these groupings, see Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual, pp. 199–​237. Also see Brigitte Massin, Les Joachim: Une famille de musiciens (Paris: Fayard, 1996), pp. 233, 280, on the Front national and its use of interwar antifascist precedents. 73. Massin, Les Joachim, p. 281. Also see Les lettres françaises, September 1942: 2, and Jackson, France: The Dark Years, p. 423. 74. See James Steel, Littérature de l’ombre:  Récits et nouvelles de la Résistance, 1940–​ 1944 [no translator given] (Paris: Presses de la Fondation des Sciences Politiques, 1991), pp. 19, 28–​29. As he points out, although there were differences of opinions and tactics, clandestine literature was nevertheless controlled by the communists. 75. See Southon, “Francis Poulenc,” p. 134, and Sapiro, La guerre des écrivains, pp. 22–​ 24, 241–​243. As the latter notes (p.  243), Mauriac entered the Resistance early, in June 1941; on p.  30 she discusses the range of possible positions within the Resistance. 76. Sapiro, La guerre des écrivains, p. 502, and Steel, Littérature de l’ombre, pp. 11, 25, 181–​191. Also see Jackson, France: The Dark Years, p. 425. 77. On the process of making culture a field of struggle, see Terdiman, Discourse/​ Counter-​Discourse, p. 25. 78. Atack, Literature and the French Resistance, p. 87. And see François Bédarida, “Vichy et la crise de la conscience française,” in Azéma and Bédarida, Vichy et les français, pp. 83–​85. Pétain’s call for collaboration in October 1940 meant, paradoxically (as Paxton puts it), “taking advantage of a foreign army to carry out changes” in the government, in employment, and in all cultural spheres. See Paxton, Vichy France, pp. 33, 67, 72. 79. See Jackson, France: The Dark Years, p. 507; Steel, Littérature de l’ombre, p. 35; and Atack, Literature and the French Resistance, p. 10. For the Resistance, the rhetoric of “la terre,” in terms of territorial loss, was a means to reveal the harsh realities behind Vichy’s obfuscating propaganda. 80. See Steel, Littérature de l’ombre, p. 25, and Atack, Literature and the French Resistance, pp. 9–​10, 84. The latter (p. 84) notes the originally Italian resistance emphasis on humanism as opposed to fascism. On the way in which political refusal could be manifest through aesthetic opposition to Vichy, see Ingrid Galster, “Expliquer un succès,” in La naissance du phénomène Sartre, ed. Ingrid Galster (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1997), p. 23. 81. Terdiman, Discourse/​Counter-​Discourse, pp. 42, 51–​54, on the most effective markers of an adversative stance; and see Galster, “Expliquer un succès,” p. 23. Also see Susan Suleiman, Subversive Intent:  Gender, Politics, and the Avant-​Garde (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), p. 27. Here she discusses Bakhtin and the internally dialogic word, or that which is absent but may be inferred from the responses to it.

Notes to pages 259–262  • 

423

82. Louis Pinto, Gisèle Sapiro, and Patrick Champagne, eds., Pierre Bourdieu, sociologue (Paris: Fayard, 2001), p. 266. Also see Marc H. Ross, ed., Culture and Belonging in Divided Societies: Contestation and Symbolic Landscapes (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), p. 37. 83. On contestatory symbols, see Terdiman, Discourse/​Counter-​Discourse, pp.  51–​ 54. On the Resistance concept of authentic nationalism, see, for example, the Bulletin d’Information, no.  4504, stamped “Commissariat à l’Intérieur (Orientation): Bulletin de la presse hebdomadaire et quotidienne de la Zone Sud,” p. 4, “La faillite de la Révolution Nationale,” and dated November 10, 1943 in F1A 3759. S. C. D. D. 21 Bureau de Presse de la France Combattante. 84. See Sulieman, Subversive Intent, p.  11. Also see Ignez Hedges, Languages of Revolt: Dada and Surrealist Literature and Film (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1983), p. 35. 85. Hedges, Languages of Revolt, p. xvi; and see Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual, p. 190. 86. On frame-​breaking, see Hedges, Languages of Revolt, pp. 9, 38, 79. 87. See Greg Carey, “Symptoms of Resistance in the Book of Revelation,” in The Reality of the Apocalypse:  Rhetoric and Politics in the Book of Revelation, ed. by David L. Barr (Atlanta:  Society of Biblical Literature, 2006), p.  174. Also see Michael Steinberg, Listening to Reason: Culture, Subjectivity, and Nineteenth-​Century Music (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 7, 16, 182–​184. 88. On the quest for a secret yet communicable language, one in which the author may be identified only by the initiated, see Sapiro, La guerre des écrivains, p. 502. And on the opposition of French universalism to subjective romanticism, see p. 504. 89. See Keith Daniel, Francis Poulenc: His Artistic Development and Musical Style (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Research Press, 1982), p. 89. And on Éluard in this period, see Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual, p. 259. 90. Sapiro, La guerre des écrivains, p. 507. 91. Ibid., pp.  509, 511, 518. And see “Éluard, Paul [Eugène Grindel],” by François Buot, in Dictionnaire des intellectuels français (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1996), pp. 438–​439. 92. On the Deux poèmes de Louis Aragon, see Schmidt, Entrancing Muse, p. 287. And see Sprout, The Musical Legacy of Wartime France, p. 27. As she notes, by the time Poulenc set the poems Aragon was publishing illegally and hiding in the south of France as a member of the Resistance. 93. See Schmidt, Entrancing Muse, p.  284. Also see Sapiro, La guerre des écrivains, pp. 433, 505, 512–​513, as well as “Aragon, Louis,” by Nicole Racine, in Dictionnaire des intellectuels français, pp. 73–​76. 94. Jackson, France:  The Dark Years, p.  304, and Denis Peschanski et  al., eds., Collaboration and Resistance: Images of Life in Vichy France, 1940–​1944, trans. Lory Frankel (New York: Harry Abrahams, 2000), p. 211.

4 2 4   • 

Notes to pages 262–265

95. See “Silence de la mer, chroniques interdites” [anon.], Les lettres françaises, June 15, 1943: 5–​6. On Hell, see Porcile, Les conflits de la musique française, pp. 24–​25. On Claude Roy, see Michèle Winock, Le siècle des intellectuels (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1997), p. 360, and Sapiro, La guerre des écrivains, p. 430. 96. Sprout, The Musical Legacy of Wartime France, p.  23, and Roust, “Sounding French,” p. 207, on those in the Front National des Musiciens. Auric had become the chief editor of their journal by the end of 1943. 97. “Comment Radio-​Paris ‘sert’ la cause de la musique française” [anon.], Musiciens d’aujourd’hui, July 1943: 1–​2. 98. “Debussy—​musicien français,” [anon.], Musiciens d’aujourd’hui, October 1942: 2–​3. 99. Ibid. 100. See “À l’action” [anon.], Musiciens d’aujourd’hui, July 1943: 3. 101. On Magnard, see Jane F. Fulcher, French Cultural Politics and Music from the Dreyfus Affair to the First World War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 74–​77, and Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual, pp. 109–​110. On the call to composers to set patriotic poets, see “La victoire par l’action,” [anon.] Musiciens d’aujourd’hui, February 1944: 1. 102. For the general call to represent the spiritual and moral forces of the nation, see F1A 3758 “Traits divers: La Résistance demande un soutien materiel et moral.” Communiqué par Taille, chef FF1 de la région P. au mois d’avril. Réc. [received] 23/​6/​4 4; dif. [diffused] 30/​6/​4 4. Marked “Très secret.” 103. See BnF-​Opéra, Dossier d’artiste, Roger Désormière; it contains articles on him from Télérama March 24, 1999, and Le Figaro August 24, 1998. And see Massin, Les Joachim, pp. 281–​282, as well as Guy Krivopissko and Daniel Virieux, “Musiciens:  Une profession en résistance?,” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy, pp. 142–​143. On the events that helped to augment the number of musicians entering the Resistance, see Dominique Saudinos, Manuel Rosenthal: Une vie (Paris: Mercure de France, 1992), pp. 142–​143. 104. Myriam Chimènes, “Les concerts de la Pléiade: La musique au secours de la sociabilité,” in La musique à Paris sous l’Occupation, p. 47. 105. See “Itinéraire des concerts de la Pléiade,” by Denise Tual, BnF-​Musique Rés. Vm. dos. 70 (1), p. 3. Also see Antoine Goléa, Georges Auric (Paris: Ventadour, 1958), p. 21. 106. Porcile, Les conflits de la musique française, p. 26. Also see Krivopissko and Virieux, “Musiciens: Une profession en résistance?,” p. 335. 107. See Frédérick Robert, Louis Durey: L’aîné des Six (Paris: Ventadour, 1958), p. 21. 108. Poulenc was a member of the Comité professionnel des auteurs dramatiques, compositeurs, et éditeurs de musique (under Rabaud), and of the Comité d’organisation professionnelle de la musique. Yannick Simon argues that this does not imply a political engagement for the state [Vichy], but this seems specious,

Notes to pages 265–269  • 

425

since Poulenc eventually avoided all such involvements as he grew more aware of the government. 109. Saudinos, Manuel Rosenthal, p.  145; and see Jean Gribenski, “L’exclusion des juifs du Conservatoire (1940–​42),” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy, pp. 143–​156. 110. As Sprout points out in The Musical Legacy of Wartime France, Manuel Rosenthal found refuge among musician friends in Marseille after he was released from a German prison camp, Stalag XIA, in Altengrabow. Although a Jew, he had been allowed to direct a prison orchestra there, having been the assistant conductor of the French National Orchestra before the war; this perhaps saved him from being retained because of his race. Rosenthal returned to Paris in the summer of 1942, aided by resistance colleagues, and began to work in the Front national des musiciens, writing for and distributing its clandestine journal. 111. Again, on the call to composers to set patriotic texts, see “La victoire par l’action,” Musiciens d’aujourd’hui, February 1944:  1. On the actions of French composers before this time, see Robert, Louis Durey, p. 59. There is a collection of typical resist­ ance chansons contained (but not listed separately) in BnF-​Musique, Chansons. For a collection and commentary on Resistance chansons, see Silvain Chimellos, La Résistance en chantant, 1939–​1945 (Paris: Éditions Autrement, 2004). 112. I am indebted to Kristen Strandberg for these astute observations in her excellent research paper (for my seminar at Indiana University) on the Auric-​Cocteau collaboration in film. I  am also grateful to Colin Roust for giving me a copy of the relevant sections of his dissertation, “Sounding French,” cited in the preceding notes. 113. Good examples of Poulenc’s earlier attempts to locate himself between past and present are his Concert champêtre and Aubade; in both works (of the late 1920s) he invokes the eighteenth century, and in the latter through his choice of title he pays tribute to his beloved Chabrier. 114. See Southon’s introduction to Poulenc, J’écris, p. 22. The medal must be conferred in a ceremony and presented by another member of the Légion d’honneur. 115. On the dating of the Chansons villageoises, see Schmidt, Entrancing Muse, p. 280. 116. The Chansons villageoises would premiere on June 28, 1943, at a concert in the Pléiade series. For more background on the work, see Keith Daniel, “Francis Poulenc: A Study of His Artistic Development and His Musical Style (PhD diss., University of New York at Buffalo, 1980), p. 483. On Vichy and popular culture, see Christian Faure, Le projet culturel de Vichy:  Folklore et révolution nationale, 1940–​1944 (Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 1989), p. 154. 117. See John R. Gillis, ed., Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity, p. 244. 118. Ibid., pp. 245–​247. 119. Ibid., p. 248. And see Florence Gétreau, “Le patrimoine musical de deux musées parisiens,” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy, p. 193.

4 2 6   • 

Notes to pages 269–272

120. On such techniques, see The Empire Writes Back:  Theory and Practice in Post-​ Colonial Literatures, ed. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffeths, and Helen Tiffan (London: Routledge, 2004; orig. ed. 1989), pp. 42–​43. 121. Paul Collaer also notes that since Poulenc was frequently inspired by an impression already embedded in a musical style he was very often charged with creating pastiche. See Paul Collaer, A History of Modern Music, trans. Sally Abeles (New York: World Publishing, 1961), p. 271. 122. See Schmidt, Entrancing Muse, p. 281, and Poulenc, J’écris, p. 107. 123. See Lucie Kayas and Christopher B. Murray, “Portique pour une fille de France,” in Pierre Schaeffer: Les constructions impatientes, ed. Martin Kaltenecker and Karine Le Bail (Paris: CNRS Editions, 2012), pp. 100–​102. 124. See Daniel, “Francis Poulenc,” p. 483, and Hell, Francis Poulenc, pp. 127–​128. 125. On Poulenc’s conscious invocation of the Maurice Chevalier’s style of delivery, see Hell, Francis Poulenc, p. 127. Also see Schmidt, Entrancing Muse, p. 280. 126. As Daniel points out in “Francis Poulenc,” p. 484, despite Poulenc’s free treatment of the text, the regular rhythms and meter of the poetry are generally reflected in the music, there being only three changes of meter in the entire collection, which was unusual for Poulenc in the period. Also see Schmidt, Entrancing Muse, p. 280. 127. Trenet’s songs in the period play with an ambiguity of significance; see “Terre!” (1941), “La poule zazou” (1942), “La marche des jeunes” (1942), and “Douce France” (1943). I  am grateful to the historian of France, Robert Muchembled, for pointing out the erotic “double-​entendre” in argot in the text, as well as the parallels here with the chansons of Charles Trenet. On André Dubois, see Peter Hill and Nigel Simeone, Messiaen (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 122. 128. On the Pléiade’s private and public concerts, see Denise Tual, “Itinéraire,” p. 10, and Chimènes, “Les concerts de la Pléiade,” pp. 39–​6 4. 129. See BnF-​Musique Rés. Vm. dos. 70 (1), p. 2. This dossier contains letters, photographs, and articles relating to the Pléiade Concerts. Also see Massin, Les Joachim, p.  288. On Gallimard and his publishing house, see Pierre Assouline, Gaston Gallimard: Un demi-​siècle d’édition française (Paris: Balland, 1984). 130. Chimènes, “Les concerts de la Pléiade,” pp. 39–​42. 131. Ibid., pp. 42–​4 4. And see the letter from Gaston Gallimard thanking Poulenc for his help, in Poulenc, Correspondance, pp. 534–​535, and in his J’écris, p. 105. Also see Chimènes, “Les concerts,” p. 52. She cites, for example, the praise of José Bruyr in Aujourd’hui, February 17, 1943. 132. Chimènes, “Les concerts,” pp. 48–​50. She notes in p. 53 that Maurice Hewitt testified in Gallimard’s favor. 133. See the article from La gerbe on August 5, 1943, contained in BnF-​Musique Rés. Vm. dos. 70 (2).

Notes to pages 272–277  • 

427

134. Aubin had served as director of the radio station Paris Mondial since 1937, and himself had received a Vichy commission from the Opera in 1941. See Sprout, “Music for a New Era,” pp. 164, 242–​244. 135. See “Tony Aubin,” by Paul Griffiths in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. 2 (London: Grove, 2001)p. 160. For the Aubin review and others, see Tual, “Itinéraire,” p. 9. 136. Sprout, The Musical Legacy of Wartime France, p. 26. And see Schmidt, Entrancing Muse, p. 280. Poulenc, in his article in Comoedia in June 1943, prepared his later claim that he began the work in September 1942. See Poulenc, J’écris, p. 105. 137. Schmidt, Entrancing Muse, p. 284. 138. On Debussy during World War I, see Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual, pp. 52–​ 65, and Jane F. Fulcher, “Speaking the Truth to Power: The Dialogic Element in Debussy’s Wartime Compositions,” in Debussy and His World, ed. Jane F. Fulcher (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 203–​232. 139. Again, on how to mark an adversative stance with regard to the dominant approach, see Terdiman, Discourse/​Counter-​Discourse, p. 53. 140. See Hedges, Languages of Revolt, pp. xi, 35. On the potential role of art in changing cognition and the way in which we think about reality, see Suleiman, Subversive Intent, p. 11. 141. Hedges, Languages of Revolt, p. xvi. 142. Ibid., p.  83, on Surrealist techniques, especially that of frame-​breaking within genres. On Poulenc’s crisis and attraction to Surrealism, see Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual, p. 190. And see Pierre Bourdieu, Ce que parler veut dire: L’économie des échanges linguistiques (Paris: Fayard, 1982), pp. 149–​150. 143. For a personal background on the period during which Poulenc wrote the sonata, see Poulenc, Correspondance, pp. 532–​533. At the end of the score he inscribed the dates Noizay-​Été ’43-​Pâques ’43. Also see Sprout, The Musical Legacy of Wartime France, p. 26, and Poulenc, J’écris, p. 105. 144. On the journal Cahiers du sud, see Jean-​Michel Guiraud, “Marseille, cité refuge des écrivains et artistes,” in La vie culturelle sous Vichy, ed. Jean-​Pierre Rioux (Brussels: Éditions Complexe, 1990), p. 395. And see the score, Francis Poulenc, Sonate pour violon et piano (Paris: Max Eschig, 1944). It carries the inscription “Déd. à la mémoire de Federico Garcia Lorca (1899–​1937).” 145. I am grateful to Massimo Ossi for this insight into the Renaissance use of the disruption of musical logic. 146. Poulenc, Correspondance, p. 532. 147. See Fulcher, “Speaking the Truth to Power,” pp. 216–​220. 148. Ibid. And see Daniel, “Francis Poulenc,” pp. 234, 237. 149. Francis Poulenc, Sonate pour violon et piano (score cited in note 144). 150. In fact, Poulenc described the work in a letter of November 1942 (to André Schaeffner) as simply “not bad,” See Poulenc, Correspondance, p. 532. As he later

4 2 8   • 

Notes to pages 277–284

put it (in 1954), “Despite several delicious violinistic details, due entirely to [the violinist] Ginette Neveu, who greatly aided me in the instrumental realization, the sonata is a failure—​I am referring in particular to the last movement, but I find even greater fault with the artificially pathetic tone of the whole work.” As Cited in Daniel, Francis Poulenc, p. 234. 151. The sonata was followed by another of Poulenc’s recent works, his Sept choeurs mixtes. 152. For a collection of reviews (including that in L’illustration, which referred to the Sept choeurs as “bien sonnants et ingénieux), see BnF-​Musique Rés. Vm. dos. 70 (2). 153. Ibid. It also contains the review in Nouvelles continentales. 154. See Aubin’s review in Comoedia, no. 128 (December 11, 1943): 1, 5. 155. For Auric’s letter, see BnF-​Musique Rés. dos. 70 (2). 156. See Poulenc, Correspondance, p. 536. 157. This letter is cited in Daniel, Francis Poulenc, pp. 233–​234. 158. See Fulcher, French Cultural Politics and Music, pp. 186–​187. 159. On Paulhan’s collection “Metamorphoses,” see Sapiro, La guerre des écrivains, p. 454. And on Poulenc’s songs, see Massin, Les Joachim, p. 128. 160. Massin, Les Joachim, pp. 286–​287. 161. On Poulenc’s choral compositions and style in the thirties and forties, see Daniel, Francis Poulenc, pp. 217–​242. 162. Significantly, Poulenc would be enthusiastic and laudatory when he heard Messiaen’s Visions de l’Amen, which addressed the importance of individual agency or moral autonomy in the interpretation of scripture. See Poulenc’s letter to Bernac of June 24, 1944, in Poulenc, Correspondance, p. 554. 163. Karine Le Bail, “Émissions de minuit,” in Kaltenecker and Le Bail, Pierre Schaeffer, p. 120. 164. See Poulenc, Correspondance, p.  536. In July 1943 he wrote to Marie-​Blanche de Polignac to ask about Marya Freund. Poulenc had aided in Freund’s escape, as had Yvonne Gouverné; the latter helped her leave for the provinces to hide under a false identity. 165. Poulenc, Correspondance, pp. 536–​537. 166. Ibid., p. 548. 167. Ibid. And see Sprout, The Musical Legacy of Wartime France, p. 30. 168. Poulenc, Correspondance,, p.  540; and see Jackson, France:  The Dark Years, pp. 302–​303. 169. See the “Épreuve de travail” for Figure humaine (Paris: Lerolle et Cie., 1945), at the BnF-​Musique. 170. On Aragon’s poetic goals and techniques in this period, see Sapiro, La guerre des écrivains, pp.  433–​435. And see Daniel, Francis Poulenc, p.  411, as well as Hell, Francis Poulenc, p. 129.

Notes to pages 285–292  • 

429

171. For Poulenc’s key scheme and techniques in the cantata, see Hervé Lacombe, “Puissance expressive et ‘plastique chorale’ dans Figure humaine,” in Francis Poulenc et la voix:  Texte et contexte, ed. Alban Ramaut (Lyon:  Symétrie, 2001), p. 219. 172. See Hell, Francis Poulenc, p. 130. On the French Resistance and the humanist tradition, see Sapiro, La guerre des écrivains, pp. 65–​67. For an insightful analysis of the work, especially the final “Liberté,” see Sprout, “Music for a New Era,” pp. 345ff. 173. Daniel, Francis Poulenc, p. 413. 174. Francis Poulenc, Figure humaine [score]:  Poèmes de Paul Éluard; Cantate pour double choeur mixte a capella (Paris: Rouart, Lerolle et Cie., 1945). 175. Hell, Francis Poulenc, pp. 183–​184. 176. See Poulenc, Correspondance, pp. 546–​548. 177. Ibid., pp. 449, 554. 178. Southon, “Francis Poulenc et la ligne fragile,” p. 136. 179. Poulenc, Correspondance, pp. 573, 575. 180. Southon, introduction to Poulenc, “J’écris,” p. 25, and Southon, “Francis Poulenc,” p. 134. 181. Several critics have noted how Volkov reconfigures the evidence. Again, see Brown, A Shostakovich Casebook, and David Schiff, “Fruit of the Poison Tree: the Shostokovich Wars and Who Is Winning Them,” Times Literary Supplement, May 6, 2005: 3–​6. Chapter 6 1. Renée Bédarida, Les Catholiques français dans la guerre, 1939–​1945 Paris: Hachette, 1998), p. 124. There was already some Catholic opposition to Vichy in the occupied zone as early as July 1940. And see Pierre Bourdieu, Ce que parler veut dire: L’économie des échanges linguistiques (Paris: Fayard, 1982), p. 150. 2. See Marc-​Olivier Baruch, Servir l’État français: L’administration en France de 1940 à 1944 (Paris: Fayard, 1997), p. 49. As he notes, Vichy emphasized the Catholic values of expiation and redemption. This was particularly evident in the definition of the National Revolution that Pétain gave before his national council, for he stressed the will to be reborn after remorse, suffering, and self-​blame. 3. Joël Roman, “Sartre ( Jean Paul),” in Dictionnaire des intellectuels français, ed. Jacques Julliard and Michel Winock (Paris:  Éditions du Seuil, 1996), p.  1027. Sartre was born in 1905 and Messiaen in 1908. 4. Michel Winock, Le siècle des intellectuels (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1997), p. 396. 5. See Douglas Shadle, “Messiaen’s Relationship to Jacques Maritain’s Circle and Neo-​Thomism,” in Messiaen the Theologian, ed. Andrew Shenton (Farnham, UK:  Ashgate, 2010), pp. 83–​99. On Messiaen’s faith now, see Yves Balmer and Christopher B. Murray, “Olivier Messiaen et la reconstruction de son parcours sous

4 3 0   • 

Notes to pages 292–294

l’Occupation: La vide de l’année 1941,” in La musique à Paris sous l’Occupation, ed. Myriam Chimènes and Yannick Simon (Paris: Fayard, 2013) p. 151. On mysticism as traditionally a threat to the Catholic Church hierarchy, see Mosche Sluhovsky, Believe Not Every Spirit: Possession, Mysticism, and Discernment in Early Modern Catholicism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). 6. See Stephen Schloesser, Jazz Age Catholicism: Mystic Modernism in Postwar Paris, 1919–​1933 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), p. 5. 7. On Mounier and the journal in this period, see Tony Judt, Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals, 1944–​1956 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), p. 19. And see Michel Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier: Les non-​conformistes face aux années 40 (Paris: Economica, 1997), p. 31. 8. See Stephen Schloesser, “The Charm of Impossibilities:  Mystic Surrealism as Contemplative Voluptuousness,” in Shenton, Messiaen the Theologian, p. 180. 9. On Messiaen’s introduction to Hello’s work, see Stephen Schloesser, Visions of Amen: The Early Life and Music of Olivier Messiaen (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans, 2014), p. 340. 10. See Steven Broad, ed., Olivier Messiaen: Journalism, 1935–​1939, trans. Steven Broad (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 35–​36. 11. Schloesser, “The Charm of Impossibilities,” p. 179. 12. See Anna Balakian, Surrealism: The Road to the Absolute (New York: The Noonday Press, 1959), pp. 72–​74. 13. Claude Samuel, Messiaen:  Music and Color; Conversations with Claude Samuel, trans. E. Thomas Glasgow (Portland, OR:  Amadeus Press, 1944; orig. pub. in French, 1967), p. 233. 14. On a sense of authenticity as imposed by authority, see Bill Aschcroft’s introduction to Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin eds., The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-​Colonial Literatures (London: Routledge, 2004; orig. ed., 1989), p. 40. 15. Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual:  Music and Ideology in France, 1914–​1940 (New  York:  Oxford University Press, 2005), p.  298. Both L’ascension and Les offrandes oubliées include a text with the score; the latter concerns not faith and sin, but the struggle of the faithful to ascend from the temporal world to heaven. In illuminating such texts through musical means, Messiaen may have learned much from Charles Tournemire, who provided the precedent and who supported his efforts. I  am grateful to Elizabeth McClain for her insights here. See her book chapter, “Messiaen’s L’Ascension: Musical Illumination of Spiritual Texts after the Model of Tournemire’s L’Orgue mystique,” in Mystic Modern: The Music, Thought, and Legacy of Charles Tournemire, ed. Jennifer Donelson and Stephen Schloesser (Richmond, VA: Church Music Association of America, 2014), pp. 287–​310. 16. Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual, pp. 287, 291. 17. Ibid., p. 292.

Notes to pages 294–298  • 

431

18. Ibid., p. 293. 19. Ibid., p.  294. And see Peter Hill and Nigel Simeone, Messiaen (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), p. 59. 20. Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual, p. 298. 21. Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, pp.  92–​93. Messiaen wrote to Arrieu on January 31, 1940. 22. Yves Balmer and Christopher B. Murray, “Olivier Messiaen et la reconstruction de son parcours sous l’Occupation: La vide de l’année 1941,” p. 154. 23. Ibid., pp. 155–​156. 24. Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, p. 91. By the time the letter was published, Messiaen had already been taken prisoner. For the letter, see L’orgue 40, no.  4 (December 1939–​March 1940): 39. 25. Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, pp. 90–​91. The work to which Messiaen refers is Les Corps glorieux. 26. Ibid., p. 94. On Sartre, see Winock, Le siècle des intellectuels, p. 397. 27. Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, pp.  94–​ 95. They cite Guy Bernard-​ Delapierre, “Souvenirs sur Olivier Messiaen,” in Formes et couleurs nos. 3–​4 (1945), ed. André Held, (Lausanne: Formes et Couleurs). 28. Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, p. 96. 29. Ibid., pp. 95–​96. 30. Ibid. 31. See Leslie Sprout, “Messiaen, Jolivet, and the Soldier-​Composers of Wartime France,” Musical Quarterly 88 (2005): 268. 32. See Stanley Hoffmann, “Collaboration in France during World War II,” Journal of Modern History 40, no. 3 (September 1968): 375–​395, on Vichy’s trajectory toward ever greater collaboration. 33. Jacques Duquesne, Les Catholiques français sous l’Occupation (Paris: Grasset, 1996; orig. ed. 1966), pp. 51, 63. And see Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France:  Old Guard and New Order, 1940–​1944 (New  York:  Columbia University Press, 1972), pp. 148–​150. Also see Étienne Fouilloux, “Le clergé,” in Vichy et les français, ed. Jean-​ Pierre Azéma and François Bédarida (Paris: Fayard, 1992), p. 466, as well as Renée Bédarida, Les Catholiques dans la guerre, 1939–​1945 (Paris: Hachette, 1998), p. 51. 34. See Maurice Agulhon, La république, vol. 2, 1932 à nos jours (Paris: Hachette, 1990), p. 83. Also see Duquesne, Les Catholiques français, pp. 63, 140–​147, and Fouilloux, “Le clergé,” pp. 466–​4 68. 35. Renée Bédarida, Les Catholiques dans la guerre, pp. 118, 120. 36. Ibid., p.  124. And see Julian Jackson, France:  The Dark Years, 1940–​ 1944 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 302. 37. Bédarida, Les Catholiques dans la guerre, p. 127. As Bédarida points out, p. 149, during Vichy the French Catholic Church was isolated from the rest of the world, and its relations with the Vatican were complex. Also see Marc-​Olivier Baruch, Servir

4 3 2   • 

Notes to pages 298–302

l’État français:  L’administration en France de 1940 à 1944 (Paris:  Fayard, 1997), p. 330. 38. Duquesne, Les Catholiques français sous l’Occupation, pp. 87, 178. 39. Ibid., p.  87. On Vichy’s propaganda with regard to French prisoners of war, see Sprout, “Messiaen, Jolivet, and the Soldier-​Composers,” p. 301. 4 0. Sprout, “Messiaen, Jolivet, and the Soldier-​Composers,” pp.  269, 300. On the composer-​prisoners, also see Yves Simon, Composer sous Vichy (Lyon:  Symétrie, 2009), pp. 27–​31. And on Messiaen’s camp, see Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, pp. 100–​101. 41. Sprout, “Messiaen, Jolivet, and the Soldier-​Composers,” pp. 269–​270. 42. Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, pp.  99–​100. Sprout, “Messiaen, Jolivet, and the Soldier-​Composers,” p. 287, notes that this is different from the version later offered by Messiaen’s second wife, Yvonne Loriod, in an interview with Rischin in which she claimed that he was locked up in a latrine and forced to compose. And Sprout notes, p. 288, that Brull also sheltered French Jewish prisoners, such as the clarinetist Henri Akoka, from additional mistreatment, as attested to by another French Jew in the camp, David Gorouben. 43. Sprout, “Messiaen, Jolivet, and the Soldier-​Composers,” pp. 270, 299–​300. 4 4. Fouilloux, “Le clergé,” p. 466. 45. Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, p. 140. 4 6. Ibid. 47. Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France:  Old Guard and New Order, 1940–​ 1944 (New  York:  Columbia University Press, 1972), pp. 41, 57, 69. And see Jackson, France: The Dark Years, pp. 172, 340. 48. Jackson, France: The Dark Years, p. 340, and Philip Nord, France’s New Deal: From the Thirties to the Postwar Era (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), p. 297. 49. Stanley Hoffmann in the “Table Ronde” in Azéma and Bédarida, Vichy et les français, p. 252. 50. Fouilloux, “Le clergé,” p. 466 and Paxton, Vichy France, pp. 31, 40. 51. Fouilloux, “Le clergé,” p.  467, and Duquesne, Les Catholiques français sous l’Occupation, p. 164. 52. As cited by Sprout, “Messiaen, Jolivet, and the Soldier-​Composers,” p. 261. Messiaen made this statement in 1958. Also see Winock, Le siècle des intellectuels, p. 390. 53. On the case of Sartre, see Ingrid Galster, Sartre, Vichy, et les intellectuels (Paris: L’Harmatton, 2001), pp. 11–​12. 54. See Marc-​Olivier Baruch, Servir l’État français, p. 49, on Vichy’s invocation of the Apocalypse. And see Étienne Fouilloux, Les Chrétiens français entre crise et liberation, 1937–​1947 (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1997), pp. 117, 134. 55. Greg Carey, “Symptoms of Resistance in the Book of Revelation,” in The Reality of the Apocalypse: Rhetoric and Politics in the Book of Revelation, ed. David L. Barr

Notes to pages 302–305  • 

433

(Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006), p. 169. And see Kenneth Newport, Apocalypse and Millennium:  Studies in Biblical Exegesis (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 71. 56. Greg Carey, “Symptoms of Resistance,” pp. 171–​173, 179. 57. Ibid., p.  175. And see David L. Barr, “The Lamb Who Looks Like a Dragon? Characterizing Jesus in John’s Apocalypse,” in Barr, The Reality of the Apocalypse, p. 206. 58. Carey, “Symptoms of Resistance,” pp. 177–​179. 59. David L.  Barr, “The Lamb Who Looks like a Dragon?,” pp.  206, and Gregory L. Linton, “Reading the Apocalypse as Apocalypse:  The Limits of Genre,” in The Reality of the Apocalypse, p.  10. And see David L. Barr, “Beyond Genre:  The Expectations of Apocalypse,” in Barr, The Reality of the Apocalypse, p. 86. 60. Sprout, “Messiaen, Jolivet, and the Soldier-​Composers,” pp.  287–​288. She notes that Pasquier bought his cello from an instrument maker in Görlitz, after a collection was organized among fellow prisoners. 61. Ibid., p. 276. Sprout points out that Messiaen’s work of 1937 was commissioned by the city of Paris as part of its contribution to the Exposition. On this “fête,” also see Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual, pp. 237–​241. 62. See Sprout, “Messiaen, Jolivet, and the Soldier-​Composers,” pp. 275–​276. Also see Christopher Dingle, The Life of Messiaen (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 40, and Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, p. 54. 63. Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, p. 97. The most recent dating of the individual movements in the Quartet, based on the newly opened Messiaen Collection at the BnF, was presented in the paper by Yves Balmer, “Listening in Görlitz: The Quartet for the End of Time in Context.” National Meeting of the American Musicological Society, Rochester, NY, November 10, 2017. His dating is close to that already published by Leslie Sprout and others and concerns mainly the first movement, written while Messiaen was still in France, before being sent to Silesia. This information will undoubtedly be published soon. Significantly, he stresses how the sketches of the instrumentation for it indicate the influence of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande. 6 4. Ibid., p.  98. On Messiaen’s use of nonretrogradable rhythm in the Quatuor, see Caroline Potter, “French Music and the Second World War,” in French Music since Berlioz, edited by Richard Langham Smith and Caroline Potter (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2006) p. 297. 65. The original score, published by the Éditions Durand, is marked 1941, the date that the work was completed, although it appeared in 1942. On the premiere, see Sprout, “Messiaen, Jolivet, and the Soldier-​Composers,” p. 261. 66. See James L. Resseguie, Revelation Unsealed: A Narrative Critical Approach to John’s Apocalypse (Leiden: Brell, 1998), p. 155. 67. Ibid, p. 156.

4 3 4   • 

Notes to pages 305–309

68. Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, pp. 95–​96, 98. On the church’s traditional fear of mysticism, again see Mosche Sluhorsky, Believe Not Every Spirit, esp. ­chapter 8. 69. For the text, see Olivier Messiaen, Quatuor pour la fin du temps: Pour clarinette en si bémol, violon, violoncello, et piano (1941) (Paris: Éditions Durand, 1942). 70. See Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, pp. 100–​102, and Sprout, “Messiaen, Jolivet, and the Soldier-​Composers,” p. 258. 71. Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, p. 100. 72. Ibid., p. 101. 73. Sprout, “Messiaen, Jolivet, and the Soldier-​Composers,” pp. 293–​294. 74. Ibid., p. 293. 75. Ibid. 76. Ibid., pp. 261, 268, 294. 77. Ibid., p. 269. Sprout points out, p. 275, that there were private performances in the homes of friends and patrons, but the only other public performance was of the fifth movement alone—​that for cello and piano, performed by Messiaen and Pasquier on July 19, 1941. Sprout also notes, pp. 288–​289, that although the score was eventually published, only one hundred copies were made, and that the score was approved for publication by Vichy’s Diplomatic Service for Prisoners of War, a fact that was transmitted to the camps for propaganda in the camp paper Le trait d’union. For responses to Messiaen’s earlier compositions, see the review of Messiaen’s Chants de la terre et du ciel in “La musique à Paris,” by C. T., Le temps, January 1, 1941: 3. It was performed along with works of Franck and Roussel at the Association de musique contemporaine. The reviewer particularly notes the “sentiment poétique très réel,” despite the complexities of the harmony, which sometimes harm or interfere. 78. See Sprout, “Messiaen, Jolivet, and the Soldier-​Composers,” pp.  268–​269. And see the article by Serge Moreaux, “Théâtre des Mathurins: Oeuvres de Messiaen,” L’information musicale, no. 34 ( July 11, 1941): 759. 79. As translated in Sprout, “Messiaen, Jolivet, and the Soldier-​Composers,” p. 292. 80. As Sprout points out, “Messiaen, Jolivet, and the Soldier-​Composers,” p.  280, Delannoy’s review appeared in Les Nouveaux temps on July 13, 1941. For her translation of his observations, see p. 292. 81. See Arthur Honegger, “Olivier Messiaen,” Comoedia, July 12, 1941: 3. 82. Sprout, “Messiaen, Jolivet, and the Soldier-​Composers,” p. 300, notes that Messiaen’s quartet was not exploited in programs of music by both current and former prisoners of war. 83. Ibid., p. 299. And see Winock, Le siècle des intellectuels, p. 397. 84. Sprout, “Messiaen, Jolivet, and the Soldier-​Composers,” p.  299. She also points out that ironically the clarinetist, Akoka, was in fact a “soldier musician,” but was removed from the train at the very last minute by a German guard who identified him as a Jew. However, Akoka was able to escape a few months later, fleeing to Marseille, where he found work as a member of the Orchestre National de la Radio.

Notes to pages 309–314  • 

435

Le Boulaire, the violinist, was not able to return to Paris until December 1941, when Brull was able to forge the papers for him. On Dupré’s efforts on Messiaen’s behalf, see Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, pp. 110–​111. 85. Balmer and Murray, “Olivier Messiaen et la reconstruction de son parcours sous l’Occupation,” p. 156. 86. Ibid., p. 157 and Sprout, “Messiaen, Jolivet, and the Soldier-​Composers,” p. 297. And see Lucie Kayas and Christopher B. Murray, “Portique pour une fille de France,” in Pierre Schaeffer: Les Constructions impatients, ed. Martin Kaltenecker and Karine Le Bail (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2012), p. 100. Messiaen remained in Vichy until June 1941. See Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, pp. 104–​106. 87. Jackson, France: The Dark Years, pp. 306, 342–​343. And see Cécile Auzolle, ed., Regards sur Daniel-​Lesur: Compositeur et humaniste (1908–​2002) (Paris: Presses Université de Paris-​Sorbonne, 2009), p. 355. 88. On Mounier, see Michel Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier: Les non-​conformistes face aux années 40 (Paris: Economica, 1997), pp. 82, 87. 89. Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier, p. 87. On Mounier and the influence of Ressourcement theology on him, see Andrew Shenton, “Introducing Messiaen the Theologian,” in Shenton, Messiaen the Theologian, p. 3. 90. See Kayas and Murray, “Portique pour une fille de France,” p. 100. On Messiaen’s youth and experiences, see Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, p. 14. Also see Dingle, The Life of Messiaen, pp. 104–​105. 91. Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, p. 106. On Messiaen’s contribution to the work, see p. 109. 92. Kayas and Murray, “Portique pour une fille de France,” pp. 107. 93. Ibid., p. 108. And see Stephen Schloesser, Visions of Amen, p. 283. 94. See Nigel Simeone, “Messiaen in the 1930s: Offrandes oubliées,” Musical Times 194, no. 1873 (Winter 2000): 33–​38, 40–​41. 95. Kayas and Murray, “Portique pour une fille de France,” p. 110. 96. Ibid. 97. See Franck Manning, “Spectacle,” in Folklore, Cultural Performance, and Popular Entertainments, ed. Richard Bauman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 27–​28. 98. Claude Roy, Moi je (Paris:  Gallimard, 1969), pp. 406–​ 4 09, and Francine Gaillard-​Risler, André Clavé: Théâtre et resistances—​Utopies et réalités, 1916–​1981 (Paris: Association des Amis d’André Clavé, 1998), p. 35. 99. Pierre Schaeffer, Les antennes de Jéricho (Paris:  Stock, 1978), pp.  279 ff. On Bernard-​Delapierre and his contacts with Messiaen during the war, see Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, p. 132. 100. Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, pp. 104–​105. 101. Ibid. 102. Ibid., pp. 105–​108.

4 3 6   • 

Notes to pages 314–317

103. Balmer and Murray, “Olivier Messiaen et la reconstruction de son parcours,” p. 158. And see Leslie Sprout, The Musical Legacy of Wartime France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), p. 84, on Bloch’s firing. 104. Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, p. 105. 105. Ibid., p. 106. 106. Ibid., p. 107. Also see Balmer and Murray, “Olivier Messiaen et la reconstruction de son parcours,” p. 159. 107. Myriam Chimènes, “Alfred Cortot et la politique musicale du gouvernement de Vichy,” in La vie musicale sous Vichy, ed. Myriam Chimènes (Brussels:  Éditions Complexe, 2001), p. 38. And see Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier, p. 28. 108. Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, pp. 107, 109. 109. Ibid., p. 110. For the complete text of the Statut des Juifs, see Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, Vichy et les juifs, trans. Marguerite Delmott (Paris: Calman-​ Lévy, 1981), pp. 610–​612. 110. Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, p.  110. Also see François Porcile, Les conflits de la musique française, 1940–​1965 (Paris:  Fayard, 2001), p.  39. And see Balmer and Murray, “Olivier Messiaen et la reconstruction de son parcours,” p. 160. 111. See Stefan Martens and Andreas Nielen, introduction to La France et la Belgique sous l’occupation allemande, 1940–​1944: Les fonds allemands conservés au Centre Historique des Archives Nationales. Inventaire de la sous-​série AJ40 (Paris: Centre Historique des Archives Nationales, 2002), 29. 112. Balmer and Murray, “Olivier Messiaen et la reconstruction de son parcours,” p. 159. On the broadcasts of Dupré’s organ recitals on Radio Paris, see Sprout, The Musical Legacy of Wartime France, p. 13. 113. Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, pp.  110–​111. As they note, by the time of the vote Claude Delvincourt had been appointed the new director of the Conservatoire. 114. Ibid., p.  111. Also see Sprout, “Messiaen, Jolivet, and the Soldier-​Composers,” p. 288, as well as Sprout, The Musical Legacy of Wartime France, pp. 95–​102. 115. Munch’s was the first of Paris’s four main orchestral associations to devote an entire concert to the music of French repatriated prisoners. See Sprout, “Messiaen, Jolivet, and the Soldier-​Composers,” p. 270. On Munch’s concerts with the Société des concerts in this period, see D. Kern Holoman, Charles Munch (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 58–​70. 116. See Sprout, “Messiaen, Jolivet, and the Soldier-​Composers,” p. 270. 117. Ibid., pp. 265–​267. 118. See Arthur Honegger, “Olivier Messiaen,” Comoedia, no. 4 ( July 12, 1941): 3. Also see Honegger, Écrits, ed. Huguette Calmel (Paris:  Honoré Champion, 1992), p. 390. And see Honegger’s article on Messiaen, “Un nouveau langage musical,” Comoedia, no. 76 (December 5, 1942): 1, 4. It also appears in his Écrits, p. 526. 119. Norbert Dufourq, “Olivier Messiaen,” L’information musicale, no. 54 ( January 23, 1942): 644.

Notes to pages 317–320  • 

437

120. Serge Moreaux, “Regards sur la jeune musique européenne,” Comoedia, no. 30 ( January 17, 1942):  7. And see Armand Machabey, “Galerie de quelques jeunes musiciens parisiens:  Olivier Messiaen,” L’information musicale, no. 71 (May 22, 1942): 945. 121. On the Nazi’s goals for music in France, see Manuela Schwartz, “La musique, outil majeur de la propagande culturelle des Nazis,” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy, pp. 89–​105. On the recording of Messiaen’s Les offrandes oubliées, see Leslie Sprout, “Music for a New Era: Composers and National Identity in France, 1936–​ 46” (PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2000), p.  237. Also see her “Messiaen, Jolivet, and the Soldier-​Composers,” p. 265. And see Philippe Morin, “Une nouvelle politique discographique pour la France,” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy, pp. 261–​262. Also included were the works of Jolivet and Daniel-​Lesur. 122. Leslie Sprout, “Les commandes de Vichy, aube d’une ère nouvelle,” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy,” pp. 160, 164. 123. On Messiaen’s complex relation to the Vichy regime in terms of commissions and performances, see Sprout, “Messiaen, Jolivet, and the Soldier-​Composers,” pp. 264–​265. On Duruflé’s commission, see Sprout, “Les commandes de Vichy,” pp.  176–​177. And on Duruflé, see Roland Ebrecht, Maurice Duruflé, 1902–​ 1987: The Last Impressionist (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2002), p. 4. 124. Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, p. 117. Joachim was a singer whom Messiaen greatly admired, particularly in her role as Mélisande. On Joachim’s role, see Guy Krivopissko and Daniel Virieux, “Musiciens:  Une profession en résistance?,” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy, p. 388. 125. Others commissioned included Michel Ciry, Jean Françaix, Léo Préger, Henri Sauguet (who was close to Poulenc), Georges Auric, Jean-​Jacques Grunewald, and André Jolivet. 126. Gisèle Sapiro, La guerre des écrivains (Paris: Fayard, 1999), pp. 45–​4 6. On Aragon and Éluard in this period, see pp. 484–​485. On Sartre, see Joël Roman, “Sartre ( Jean-​Paul),” Dictionnaire des intellectuels français, ed. Jacques Julliard and Michel Winock (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1996), p. 1029. 127. Denise Tual, Au coeur du temps (Paris:  Carrère, 1987), p.  252. On the commission of 1963 (to be Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum), see Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, pp. 121–​122. 128. Tual, Au coeur du temps, pp. 252, 262. 129. Ibid., pp.  257–​259. Also see her “Itinéraire des concerts de la Pléiade,” BnF-​ Musique. Rés. Vm. dos. 70 (1), p. 7. 130. Tual, Au coeurs du temps, p. 257. 131. On the “zazous” and their refusal of Vichy’s norms and restrictions, see Dominique Veillon, “La mode comme pratique culturelle,” in La vie culturelle sous Vichy, ed. Jean-​Pierre Rioux (Brussels: Éditions Complexe, 1990), p. 372. And see Jackson,

4 3 8   • 

Notes to pages 320–323

France: The Dark Years, p. 340. Photographs of Messiaen throughout his career attest to his proclivity for bright colors and independent or creative modes of dressing. 132. Simeone, “Messiaen and the Concerts of the Pléiade:  A Kind of Clandestine Revenge against the Occupation,” Music and Letters 81, no. 4 (November 2000): 557. 133. Schloesser, Visions of Amen, p. 291. 134. See Denis Peschanski et al., eds., Collaboration and Resistance: Images of Life in Vichy France, 1940–​1944, trans. Lory Frankel (New York: Harry Abrahams, 2000), p. 64. On French Catholics in this period, see W. D. Halls, Politics, Society, and Christianity in Vichy France (Oxford: Berg, 1995), pp. 74–​75. Also see Fouilloux, “Le clergé,” p.  466, on those who followed the evolution of the regime toward greater collaboration. 135. See Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, p. 119. Also see Duquesne, Les Catholiques français sous l’Occupation, p.  175, and Paxton, Vichy France, pp.  152–​153, as well as Foullioux, “Le clergé,” pp. 463, 470. The latter also cites anti-​Vichy clerics like Mgr. Chevier of Cahors, who became a résistant; however, as Fouilloux notes, many priests remained loyal to Pétain, and some moved even closer to collaboration. 136. 8,260 Jews were held—​1,129 men, 2,916 women, and 4,115 children. See Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, p. 119. For more background and context on the Jewish round-​ ups, see Serge Klarsfeld, Le calendrier de la persécution des Juifs en France, 1940–​ 1944 (Paris: The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, 1993). 137. Klarsfeld, Le calendrier de la persecution, esp. pp. 305–​336. 138. See Schloesser, Visions of Amen, p.  285, where he points out that few Parisians were unaware of the roundup. And between August 26–​28, another 7,000 Jews were arrested in the unoccupied zone, where Messiaen was spending his summer vacation. 139. See Jean Gribenski, “L’exclusion des juifs du Conservatoire,” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy, p. 153, and Schloesser, Visions of Amen, p. 288. 140. AN-​F 21 5330 #1. Ministère de l’instruction publique et des Beaux-​Arts. Letter of May 5, 1942, from the ministre secrétaire d’État à l’éducation nationale (now Bonnard) to Claude Delvincourt. 141. See Jean-​Paul Sartre, Un théâtre des situations (Paris: Gallimard, 1973). On p. 227 Sartre speaks of Dullin’s role and his support. For the documentation of Dullin’s presence at the wartime Pléiade concerts, see the photographs in BnF-​Musique Rés. Vm. dos. 70 (2) #18, where he appears at the performance of Messiaen’s Visions de l’Amen, with Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod at the pianos. Also see Julian Jackson, France: The Dark Years, p. 315. He notes that Dullin was viewed favorably by the Propaganda Abteilung. 142. Jean-​Paul Sartre, L’existentialisme est un humanisme (Paris: Nagel, 1975), pp. 14, 16–​17. And see Schloesser, Jazz Age Catholicism, p. 4.

Notes to pages 323–326  • 

439

143. See Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having: An Existentialist Diary, introduction and notes by James Collins, trans. Katherine Farrer (New  York:  Harper and Row, 1975), p. vi. 144. Ibid., pp. vii, 22, 215. 145. Ibid., pp. 22–​23. Also see Sartre, L’existentialisme est un humanisme, pp. 24–​25, and Bergès, Vichy contre Mounier, p. 303, as well as Schloesser, Visions of Amen, p. 340. 146. Sartre, Un théâtre des situations, pp. 223, 230. Again, Sartre inserted his preface to the first edition of the play, published by Gallimard in 1943. In late 1942 Messiaen was still writing letters to attempt to obtain his brother’s release. See Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, p. 121. 147. Sartre, Un théâtre des situations (preface to Les mouches, 1943), pp. 229–​230. 148. See Christopher Dingle, The Life of Messiaen, p.  81. On Hello, see Massin, Les Joachim, pp. 155–​156. 149. Stephen Schloesser, “The Charm of Impossibilities:  Mystic Surrealism as Contemplative Voluptuousness,” in Shenton, Messiaen the Theologian, pp.  163–​ 182. As Schloesser notes, pp. 175–​176, each chapter begins with one or two lined from scripture, which are then followed by Hello’s reflections. And see Ernest Hello, Paroles de Dieu:  Réflexions sur quelques textes sacrés (Paris:  Nouvelles Éditions, 1919). 150. Ernest Hello, Paroles de Dieu, pp. 389–​391. 151. Ibid., pp.  392–​394. On Hello see Siglind Bruhn, Les visions d’Olivier Messiaen (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2008), pp. 81–​83. 152. See Sartre, L’existentialisme est un humanisme, pp. 26–​27. Messiaen’s original text and program are preserved in in BnF-​Musique Rés. Cm. dos. 70 (2). 153. Schloesser, in Visions of Amen, p. 291, sees the final version as having shifted from agony to desire, or from suffering to yearning. 154. Claude Rostand, Olivier Messiaen (Paris: Ventadour, 1957), p. 23. 155. Ibid. Also see p.  32. And see Yves Balmer, “Comment compose Messiaen? Analyse et critique génétique des Visions de l’Amen.” Mémoire soutenu au Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, cycle de recherche et ana­ lyse (Perfectionnement), 30 janvier 2008. 156. Balmer, “Comment compose Messiaen?,” pp.  322–​ 333. Balmer posits that Messiaen’s techniques here may be related to ­chapter 12 of his treatise, particularly where he examines such developmental procedures. 157. Indeed, the more formally rigorous Pierre Boulez would later denounce Messiaen for just such an approach, opining here (with derogatory connotations) “Messiaen ne compose pas, il juxtapose.” Balmer, “Comment compose Messiaen?,” pp. 33, 41–​42. 158. Ibid., p. 41. See the end of the first movement of the score, Olivier Messiaen, Visions de l’Amen (Paris: Durand et Cie., 1950). It is dated Paris 1943 on the cover.

4 4 0   • 

Notes to pages 327–332

159. Balmer, “Comment compose Messiaen?,” pp. 41, 43. And see Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, p. 124. On the cyclic use of themes in the Visions de l’Amen, see Robert S. Johnson, Messiaen (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1984), pp. 64–​66. 160. See Schloesser, Visions of Amen, pp. 350–​351, and Balmer, “Comment compose Messiaen?,” p. 40. 161. Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, p.  124. For a discussion of the progression of the cycle, see Pierrette Mari, Olivier Messiaen (Paris:  Éditions Seghers, 1965), pp. 97–​103. 162. See Ingrid Galster, Sartre, Vichy et les intellectuels (Paris:  L’Harmattan, 2001), pp. 11–​12. Also see Serge Added, Le théâtre dans les années Vichy (Paris: Éditions Ramsay, 1992), p. 257, on those who saw a resistance message in Sartre. 163. See Denis Tual, “Itinéraire des concerts de la Pléiade,” BnF-​Musique Rés. Vm. dos. 70 (1), p. 7. 164. Ibid. In a letter of April 18, 1943, Messiaen sent Tual a list of fifty names and addresses of those whom he wanted invited, including students. For this letter, see BnF-​Musique Rés. Vm. dos. (3). On the performance of Sartre’s Les mouches, see Sartre, Un théâtre des situations, p. 226. Sartre notes Dullin’s persistence despite the financial losses and largely critical reviews. 165. See Tual, “Itinéraire.” p.  8, and her Au coeur du temps, p.  260. And see Arthur Honegger, “Olivier Messiaen à la Pléiade,” Comoedia, no. 98 (May 15, 1943): 5. 166. Honegger, “Olivier Messiaen à la Pléiade,” p. 5. 167. Ibid. Also see Yannick Simon, “Les jeunesses musicales de France,” in Chimènes, La vie musicale sous Vichy, pp. 203–​209. And see the article by Robert Bernard, “Les jeunesses musicales de France,” L’information musicale, no. 76 ( June 26, 1942): 994–​995. 168. Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, p. 128. 169. Ibid., pp. 128–​129. And see Tual, “Itinéraire,” p. 8. The fourth and fifth concerts took place on June 21 and 28, 1943, at the Salle Gaveau, with tickets sold for the benefit of French prisoners of war. 170. Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, pp. 128–​129. 171. See the review by Armand Machabey in L’information musicale, no. 79 (September 24, 1943): 6. 172. Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, pp. 129–​130. Sprout, in “Messiaen, Jolivet, and the Soldier-​Composers,” p. 285, points out that Tual ignored Messiaen’s plea to perform his quartet in the series, preferring a new commission. 173. See Tchamkerten, “From Fête des belles eaux to Saint François d’Assise:  The Evolution of the Writing for Ondes Martenot in the Music of Olivier Messiaen,” in Olivier Messiaen: Music, Art, and Literature, ed. Christopher Dingle and Nigel Simeone (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007), p. 66. Hill and Simeone note, Messiaen, pp.  118–​119, that Messiaen would work again with Fabre in 1945 on Tristan et Yseult.

Notes to pages 332–335  • 

441

174. Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, pp.  134, 138. For documents concerning Toesca’s role in the French Military Command and as adjunct cabinet director of the Paris Prefect of Police in 1944, see Robert O. Paxton, Olivier Corpet, and Claire Paulhan, eds., Collaboration and Resistance: French Literary Life under the Nazi Occupation (New  York:  Five Times, 2009), pp. 396, 400. And see Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, pp. 134–​135. They observe that one finds the trace of Toesca only in the “note de l’auteur,” where Messiaen refers to Toesca’s “les douze regards,” to which he added his own. And see Olivier Messiaen, Vingt regards sur l’enfant Jésus (Paris: Durand et Cie., 1944). On the work also, see Pierrette Mari, Olivier Messiaen, pp. 103–​106. 175. See Fouilloux, “Le clergé,” p.  468, and Duquesne, Les Catholiques français sous l’Occupation, p. 175. 176. Paxton, Vichy France, pp. 40–​41. 177. See Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, p. 127. They also note that Messiaen gave a private preview of the new work at Delapierre’s home. The observation concerning the recordings from the Musée de l’Homme comes from my question to Boulez during the public interview with him, moderated by Glenn Watkins, at the University of Michigan on January 28, 2010. 178. Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, pp. 122, 138. 179. Ibid., pp. 137–​138. For Messiaen’s notes, see BnF-​Musique Rés. Vm. dos, 70 (3). 180. For the programs, see BnF-​Musique Rés. Vm. dos. 70 (2). The concert also included works by Claude Le Jeune, Jean Françaix, and Poulenc. Also see Nigel Simeone, “Making Music in Occupied Paris,” Music and Letters 147 (Spring 2006): 575. 181. The works performed that were associated with the Enlightenment included Rameau’s satirical comédie-​ballet Platée, on March 1, 1944. His works had already appeared on previous programs in the series. 182. For more information on the Resistance appropriation and interpretation of Debussy, see Jane F. Fulcher, “Debussy as National Icon: From Vehicle of Vichy’s Compromise to French Resistance Classic,” Musical Quarterly 94, no. 4 (Winter 2011): 471–​473. 183. See Poulenc’s praise of Messiaen’s Visions de l’Amen in his letter to Pierre Bernac of June 24, 1944, in Francis Poulenc, Correspondance, 1910–​1963, ed. Myriam Chimènes (Paris: Fayard, 1994), p. 554. 184. See BnF-​Musique Rés. Vm. dos. 70 (2), p. 8. 185. Ibid., p. 12. 186. Simeone, “Making Music in Occupied Paris,” p. 577. As Hill and Simeone point out, Messiaen, p. 130, Messiaen had initially hoped to have his work premiered in June 1944. 187. In a letter of April 1, 1945 (addressed only to Cher Monsieur), shortly before the premiere, which had been delayed by the Liberation, Messiaen included the text of

4 4 2   • 

Notes to pages 335–346

his new commission as well as the specific layout that he desired in the program. See BnF-​Musique Rés. Vm. dos. 70 (3). 188. See Yannick Simon, Composer sous Vichy (Lyon: Symétrie, 2009), pp. 330–​331. 189. See the text and notes in BnF-​Musique Rés. Vm. dos. 70 (3); included here is Messiaen’s letter of April 1, 1945. 190. Ibid. 191. Ibid. 192. Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, p. 137. 193. On Messiaen’s use of the ondes Martenot, see Tchamkerten, “From Fête des belles eaux to Saint François d’Assise,” pp. 63–​6 4. 194. Ibid., pp. 63, 67. 195. Ibid. And see Olivier Messiaen, Trois petites liturgies de la présence divine (Paris: Durand et Cie., 1952). The front of the score is marked Paris, 15 nov. 1943–​ 25 mars, 1944. 196. Tchamkerten, “From Fête des belles eaux,” pp. 67–​68. 197. Ibid., p. 68. And once again, see Messiaen’s letter of April 1, 1945, in BnF-​Musique Rés. Vm. dos. 70 (3). 198. On Sartre’s play Les mouches and its interpretation as carrying a resistance message, see Added, Le théâtre dans les années Vichy, p. 255. 199. See the article (anonymous), “Perles nazies,” in Musiciens d’aujourd’hui, no.  4 (October 1942): 2. And see Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, pp. 139–​140. 200. See Lilise Boswell-​Kurc, “Olivier Messiaen’s Religious War-​time Works and Their Controversial Reception in France (1941–​4 6)” (PhD dissertation, New York University, 2001), p. 12. Delapierre’s article was titled “Le cas Messiaen devant la pensée catholique orthodoxe.” On the journal Confluences, see Gisèle Sapiro, La guerre des écrivains (Paris: Fayard, 1999), p. 463. 201. Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, pp. 132, 141. On Dutilleux’s entry into the Resistance, see Krivopissko and Virieux, “Musiciens: Une profession en résistance?,” p. 349. 202. Hill and Simeone, Messiaen, p. 141. Co n c lus i o n 1. On dominant or hegemonic discourses and responses to them, see Richard Terdiman, Discourse/​ Counter-​ Discourse:  The Theory and Practice of Symbolic Resistance in Nineteenth-​Century France (Ithaca, NY:  Cornell University Press, 1985). And see Antonio Gramsci, “Culture and Ideological Hegemony,” in Culture and Society: Contemporary Debates, ed. Jeffrey C. Alexander and Steven Seidman (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 47. 2. Jean-​Pierre Rioux, “Ambivalences en rouge et bleu: Les pratiques culturelles des Français pendant les années noires,” in La vie culturelle sous Vichy, ed. Jean-​Pierre Rioux (Brussels: Éditions Complexe, 1990), pp. 45–​4 6.

Notes to pages 346–347  • 

443

3. See Frederick Spotts, The Shameful Peace:  How French Artists and Intellectuals Survived the Nazi Occupation (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 2008), esp. p.  4ff. One finds a similar perspective in Alan Riding, And the Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-​Occupied Paris (New York: Knopf, 2010). 4. See Edward Rothstein’s review of Collaboration and Resistance:  French Literary Life under the Nazi Occupation, edited by Robert O. Paxton, Olivier Corpet, and Claire Paulhan; the review appeared in the New York Times, April 25, 2010, Section C.  Another recent treatment of the moral complexities and compromises of the period may be found in the catalogue to the exposition on the Collaboration at the Archives nationales in Paris, La collaboration: Vichy, Paris, Berlin, 1940–​1945, ed. Thomas Fontaine and Denis Peschanski (Paris: Éditions Tallandier, 2014). 5. See Michael P. Steinberg, Listening to Reason: Culture, Subjectivity, and Nineteenth-​ Century Music (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 5–​6, 182–​184 on authentic subjectivity, as opposed to the category of “the subject.”

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INDEX

Abbate, Carolyn, 79 Abendroth, Herman, 41, 359n112 Abetz, Otto, 17, 30, 53, 56, 87, 197, 272, 402n54 Académie des beaux-​arts, 42, 54, 66 Académie française, 257, 357n87, 405n91 Académie des inscriptions et belles-​lettres, 39 Action artistique à l’étranger, 87, 181 Action française, 34, 51, 92, 109, 193 Added, Serge, 5, 62, 92, 218, 365n2 Administration des beaux-​arts (Administration of the Fine Arts), 37, 39–​42, 55–​56, 60–​61, 108, 139, 210, 317. See also Direction des beaux-​arts Administration des finances, 160 Adorno, Theodor W., 11, 240, 415n4 Aeschylus, 181, 204, 387n86 Agostini, François, 175 Aguet, William, 236 Akoka, Henri, 295–​296, 432n42, 434n84 Algeria, 24 Alsace and Lorraine, 18, 247 Alten, Michèle, 47–​49, 361n150 Amitiés chrétiennes, 145, 158, 162

Annunzio, Gabriele d’, 111, 182, 189, 191 Anouilh, Jean, 213–​214, 405n90 Ansermet, Ernest, 227, 236–​237, 255 Apollinaire, Guillaume, 248, 254, 275 Aragon, Louis, 68, 116, 144, 174, 261, 266, 318 Deux poèmes de Louis Aragon, 262, 281 Armistice Commission, 40, 375n121 Arrieu, Claude, 144, 172, 174, 295, 312 Art français (L’), 116 Association de musique contemporaine, 219–​220, 313, 316, 434n77 Association des directeurs de théâtre, 47, 54 Association française d’action artistique, 60, 182, 317 aube (L’), 234 Auber, Daniel-​François-​Esprit, 212 Aubin, Tony, 61, 153, 265, 272, 279, 295, 314 Augier, Marc, 197 Aujourd’hui, 99 Auric, Georges, 121, 172, 251, 256–​257, 263–​266, 279 writings for the Nouvelle revue française, 69, 86–​87 Auschwitz, 24, 321

4 7 6   • 

Index

Bach, Johann Sebastian, 66, 117, 127, 201, 216, 230 Brandenburg Concerti, 299 Magnificat, 150 Bachelet, Alfred, 44, 87, 372n81 Bakhtin, Mikail, 227, 422n81 Balakirev, Mily, 116 Ballets russes, 53, 75 Ballets suédois, 75 Balmer, Yves, 326, 433n63, 439n156 Barbier, Pierre, 132–​133, 140, 153–​155, 159, 166, 170, 311 Barraine, Elsa, 121, 251, 256, 264–​265, 333, 351n20, 373n93, 413n165 Barraud, Henry, 144, 236, 251, 256 Barrault, Jean-​Louis, 45, 110, 171, 181, 331, 396n4, 414n180 Bartok, Béla, 196, 328 Bastide, Paul, 89 Bathélemy, Joseph, 58 Baty, Gaston, 54, 322 Baudelaire, Charles, 118, 334 Baudrier, Yves, 136, 141, 156, 293–​294, 309–​311 Baudrillard, Cardinal Alfred-​Henri-​Marie, 298 Bayreuth, Germany, 79, 91, 108 Bazaine, Jean, 140, 149 BBC, 25, 251, 286, 298, 301, 319 Beaumont, Comte Étienne de, 253 Beaune, 168–​171 Beck, Conrad, 196 Beer, Jean de, 153 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 66, 91, 112, 201, 226–​228, 232 Fidelio, 64 Performances and Festivals, 47, 59, 359n112, 371n75 String Quartet Opus 130, 228 Symphony #5, 227

Belgium, 1, 21, 180, 283–​284 Brussels, 18, 112, 200, 208–​209, 214–​215 Bellaigue, Camille, 109 Bérard, Jean, 50, 58–​60, 94–​95, 98, 101, 181, 220 Berg, Alban, 300 Bergen, Caesar, 196 Bergery, Gaston, 21, 192–​194 Bergès, Michel, 31, 33, 384n47 Berlin Philharmonic, 57–​58 Berliner Konzert-​führer, 221 Berlioz, Hector, 45–​4 6, 72, 108–​114, 121, 145, 222, 226, 263 Benvenuto Cellini, 73 La Damnation de Faust, 45, 50, 59, 73, 89, 91, 110–​112, 123–​124, 168 L’Enfance du Christ, 73 Requiem, 59 Roméo et Juliette, 73 Bernac, Pierre, 241, 281 Bernard, Robert, 44–​45, 114, 219, 221, 235, 252–​253, 372n79 Mme Robert Bernard, 219 Bernard-​Delapierre, Guy, 296–​297, 313, 330, 332, 337, 340 Beuve-​Méry, Hubert, 67, 143, 310 Beydts, Louis, 98, 269 Bhabha, Homi, 155 Bianchini, Virgine, 318 Bibliothèque nationale, 255 Bigot, Eugène, 45, 51, 198 Birkenau, 321 Bizet, Georges, 222 Carmen, 74, 117 Blanchot, Maurice, 140–​141 Bloch, André, 48, 314, 363n212 Boll, André, 82–​83, 104 Bonnard, Abel, 22, 29, 31–​34, 38, 40–​42, 53, 96–​97, 271, 372n79 and homosexuality, 56–​58, 252

Index  • 

as minister of education, 7, 19, 49, 100–​102, 112, 210, 321–​322, 343 Book of Revelation, 302–​306 The Apocalypse of Saint John, 302–​306, 324, 333 Borchard, Adolphe, 44 Borodin, Alexander, 116 Boschot, Adolph, 109, 123 Bouffant, René, 272 Boulanger, Nadia, 127, 142, 149, 156, 196, 280–​281, 319 Boulez, Pierre, 76, 79, 98–​99, 124, 329, 332, 378n167, 439n157 Bourdet, Edouard, 235–​236 Bourdieu, Pierre, 4, 8, 35, 71, 111, 150, 274, 289 Bouthillier, Yves, 28, 38, 52, 155 Boyer, Noël, 92–​93, 109 Brahms, Johannes, 275–​276, 280 Brasillach, Robert, 110, 190, 252, 407n101, 414n180 Braun Gallery, Paris, 149 Brecker, Arno, 58, 101, 209 Breton, André, 202, 204, 410n128 Brianchon, Maurice, 251, 253, 255 Brillant, Maurice, 234 Brinon, Fernand de, 32, 43, 48–​49, 56 Brouillon, Léon, 131 Brull, Karl-​Albert, 300, 303, 309 Bruneau, Alfred, 78, 117 Brunet, Marcelle, 318 Bruyr, José, 232, 237, 396n5, 409n117 Buchenwald, 158, 265, 312 Burrin, Philippe, 192 Busser, Henri, 52, 61, 63, 65, 80–​81, 91 Butler, Christopher, 183 Bynum, Caroline, 246 Cahiers du Rhône, 281 Cahiers du sud, 275

477

Cahiers du témoignage chrétien, 161, 298, 302 Cahiers franco-​allemands, 44, 56, 235, 300 Calhoun, Craig, 10, 28 Calinescu, Matei, 184 Camus, Albert, 176 Candide, 191 Canteloube, Joseph, 34, 51, 88, 93, 146 Capdevielle, Pierre, 149, 153, 196, 340 Capitant, René, 235 Caplet, André, 334 Carcopino, Jérôme, 20, 31, 37–​42, 49, 56–​57, 63, 160, 252 Carrefour, 292 Carroll, David, 3 cas Messiaen, le, 340 Casadesus, Francis, 182, 198 Cathala, Pierre, 63 Ce soir, 283 Centre d’action des prisonniers, 160 Centre musical et théâtrale de la 2e armée (CMTA), 295–​296, 299, 309, 311 Cercle Proudhon, 195 Chabrier, Emmanuel, 41, 45, 97, 101, 226, 248, 250, 269, 272 Gwendoline, 254 Chaigneon, Suzanne, 80 Chailley, Jacques, 47–​48, 99, 140, 142, 149, 153, 405n91, 413n165 Champigneulle, Bernard, 199–​200, 216 Chancerel, Léon, 129, 133, 139, 141, 154, 157 Chantiers de la jeunesse, 144, 147, 385n64, 390n118 Charpentier, Gustave, 78 Louise, 154 Chateaubriant, Alphonse de, 58, 197, 359n121, 372n79 Chausson, Ernest, 79, 97, 374n106

4 7 8   • 

Index

Chavannes, Puvis de, 83, 85 Chénier, Marie-​Joseph, 154 Chérier, André, 164 Chevalier, Jacques, 20, 33, 38, 49, 53, 102 Chevalier, Maurice, 270 Chimènes, Myriam, 6, 150, 271 Chorale Yvonne Gouverné, 334 Christian Democrats, 126, 160–​162, 298–​299, 309 Christian-​Jacques [pseudonym for Christian Maudet], La Symphonie fantastique (film), 45, 109–​110 chronique de Paris (La), 225 Clair, René, 187 Claudel, Paul, 140, 146, 176, 234–​237, 292, 298, 323 Danse des morts, 180 Domaine française, 235 Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher, 151–​152, 180 Soulier de satin (Le), 182 Clavé, André, 136, 139, 158, 312 Cluytens, André, 89–​91 Cocteau, Jean, 30, 193–​194, 201–​206, 208–​220, 242, 294, 329 Le Coq et l’harlequin, 201 L’Éternel retour, 266 Les mariées de la Tour Eiffel, 202 Coeuroy, André, 113, 118, 191–​192, 194, 225, 418n36 Cognat, Raymond, 138 Colette, Sidonie-​Gabrielle, 253, 397n11 Collaboration, 111 collaboration d’État, 2, 4, 7, 18, 30–​35, 69, 96, 178–​179 Collaer, Paul, 244, 268 Colonne Concert Society, 110, 398n14 Combat, 25, 162, 173, 385n57 Comédie française, 62, 168, 171, 182, 202, 213 Comédiens-​Routiers, 129, 133, 141, 143–​144

Comité des écrivains, 261 Comité d’organisation des enterprises du spectacles (COES), 54, 60, 62 Comité d’organisation des industries et commerces de la musique, 58, 60, 94–​95, 314 Comité France-​Allemagne, 43, 197 Comité Mozart français, 198 Comité national de folklore, 57 Comité professionnel de l’art musical, 60 Comité professionnel de l’art musical et de l’enseignement libre de la musique, 57, 60 Comité professionnel des artistes dramatiques, compositeurs, et éditeurs de musique, 60 Commissariat général de la jeunesse, 55 Committee of National Liberation, 22 Communist Party, 24, 67, 75, 141, 262 French Communist Party, 99, 186 Comoedia, 43, 69, 171, 195–​196, 215 Honegger and, 180–​181, 220–​226, 233–​236 Poulenc and, 253, 269, 272, 275, 279 Comoedia-​Charpentier, publishers, 109, 233 Compagnons de France, 133, 390n118 Companie des discophiles français, 283 Concerts de la Pléiade, 69, 271 Confluences, 144, 340 Conseil des ministers, 38 Conseil national, 16, 55, 57 Conservatoire national de Paris, 142, 201, 265, 289, 313–​316, 321–​322 Conseil supérieur de l’enseignement, 57 Oversight of, 42–​43, 47–​50, 65–​66 Société des concerts du Conservatoire, 41, 58, 150–​153, 180–​181, 223, 264, 316 Contrepoints, 288 Cooper, Frederick, 27

Index  • 

Copeau, Jacques, 140, 168–​171 Corcy-​Debray, Stéphanie, 18, 39 Cortot, Alfred, 37, 42, 52, 54–​60, 133–​137, 194, 198, 237 and Poulenc, 241, 243, 283 and Wagnerian performances, 88–​92 Costeley, Guillaume, 333 Couperin, Francis, 12, 248, 371n75 Courville, Xavier de, 295 croix (La), 298 Cuny, Louis, 182 Dada, 164, 183, 202, 274 Dandelot, Georges, 153, 182, 196, 269, 411n129 Daniel-​Lesur, Jean-​Yves, 132–​133, 136, 140–​141, 144, 166, 293, 309, 310, 313 Darlan, François, 4, 13, 17, 19–​22, 36–​39, 87–​89, 92, 96, 160–​161 Darnand, Joseph, 18, 22, 24, 26 Déat, Marcel, 18, 22, 58 Debussy, Claude, 12, 71–​123, 155, 175, 196, 201, 251, 262–​263 Cinq poèmes de Baudelaire, 118 damoiselle élue (La), 248 En blanc et noir, 122, 277 Images (Piano), 277 martyr de Saint-​Sébastien (Le), 59, 111, 370n58 mer (La), 59, 247–​248 Pelléas et Mélisande, 23, 50–​51, 71–​109, 114–​117, 122–​124, 205, 342–​343 Prélude à l’après-​midi d’un faune, 113–​114, 300 Promenoir des deux amants, 277 String Quartet, 276 Trois chansons de Charles d’Orléans, 277, 280, 285, 333–​334 Decour, Jacques [pseudonym for Daniel Dourdemanch], 256–​257

479

Delange, André, 181 Delannoy, Marcel, 60–​61, 198, 219, 228, 308 Ginevra, 7, 54, 374n99 Delapierre, Bernard, 142 Délégation générale du gouvernement dans les territoires occupies, 32, 43, 48 Delforge, Lucien, 113 Delvincourt, Claude, 42, 49, 56, 65–​66, 102, 321–​322 and resistance activities, 153, 251, 256, 265, 286 Demain, 299, 391n128 Demaison, André, 171 Derain, André, 250–​251, 284, 414n180 Desnos, Robert, 99, 170, 174 Désormière, Roger, 24, 51, 239, 318–​319, 331, 334, 340 and Pelléas et Mélisande, 80–​81, 87–​90, 95–​96, 98, 343 and resistance activities, 65–​70, 72, 74–​75, 99–​100, 121, 236, 251, 256, 264, 283 Destouches, Raymond, 245 Deutsche Akademie, 43 Deutzsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 113 Dieudonnet, Annette, 140 Direction des beaux-​arts, 31, 38, 40 Disques, 97 Dom Columbia Marmion, 292 Dommange, René, 95, 314, 409n118 Doriot, Jacques, 58, 190 Dorléac, Laurence Bertrand, 4, 387n90 Drancy, 283, 321 Drewer, Heinz, 221 Drieu La Rochelle, Pierre, 69, 170, 190, 214, 250, 257, 271 Dubois, André, 251, 270, 332 Duc de Reichstadt, 210 Dufourq, Norbert, 317 Duhamel, Georges, 257

4 8 0   • 

Index

Dukas, Paul, 78, 172, 174, 272 Arianne et Barbe-​bleue, 90 Dullin, Charles, 202, 322, 329, 367n34, 368n40 Dunoyer de Ségonzac, Pierre, 142, 385n64 Dupré, Marcel, 36, 49, 289, 293, 295, 309, 314–​315 Durand, Publishers, 314 Durey, Louis, 121, 251, 256–​257, 264–​266, 333 Duruflé, Maurice, 62, 314, 318 Dutilleux, Henri, 174, 264, 265–​266, 340 école d’Arcueil, 75 École de danse (Paris Opera), 53, 361n166 École de Louvre, 32, 40 École Française de Rome, 63 Écoles nationales de musique, 42, 65 École national des cadres, Uriage, 67, 142–​144 École nationale des beaux-​arts, 32, 40 École normale de musique, 55, 314 École Polytechnique, 52, 128, 380n6 Éditions de Minuit, 257, 261 Egk, Werner, 44, 103, 196, 198, 215, 217–​218 Christophe Colomb, 224 Joan de Zarissa, 50, 58, 64, 94, 223–​224, 252 Peer Gynt, 64, 112, 209, 217, 224–​226 Zaubergeige (Der), 224 église de la Trinité, 319 église Saint-​Sulpice, 315 Éluard, Paul [pseudonym for Eugène Grindel], 170, 174, 176, 261, 266, 297, 333–​334, 336 and Poulenc, 246, 281–​284, 286 Enlightenment (the), 10, 12, 259, 263, 282

Émissions de Minuit, 174, 395n189 Epting, Karl, 39, 43, 45 Erikson, Erik, 10, 179, 380n4 Ernst, Robert, 196 Esprit, 129, 132–​133, 142–​143, 145, 161–​162, 289, 292–​294, 301 Etcheverry, Henri-​Bertrand, 89, 95 Fabre, Jean, 331 Fabrègues, Jean de, 141, 159, 160–​162, 164, 299 Fauré, Gabriel, 59, 196, 201, 222, 315, 334 Pénélope, 90, 102, 405n90 Faÿ, Bernard, 255 Ferchault, Guy, 44–​45, 211, 235, 410n128 Festival Berlioz-​Wagner, 113 Fête des belles eaux, 303 Fêtes Légionnaires, 89, 92 Figaro (Le), 138, 253, 306 Fischer, Lore, 58, 198 Flamand, Paul, 132, 138–​142, 146, 150 Flandrin, Pierre-​Étienne, 21 flèche (La), 192–​193, 382n24 Fombeure, Maurice, 153, 269–​270 Fontaine, 116, 144, 262 Fontaine, Jean de la, 244–​247, 253 Formes et couleurs, 296 Fouchet, Max-​Pol, 116, 139, 144–​145 Fournet, Jean, 46, 50, 59, 110, 198 Francaix, Jean, 60, 149–​150, 196, 198, 302, 317 L’Apocalypse selon saint-​Jean, 150 France (La), 87 Francisque, 56 Franck, César, 87, 97, 195–​196, 199, 227–​228, 275–​276, 377n142 Freemasons, 15, 39, 53 French Empire, 24, 301 French Revolution, 101, 212, 241, 256 Freund, Marya, 283

Index  • 

Front national, 67, 75, 100, 116, 235, 256 Front national de l’Opéra, 65 Front national des écrivains, 256, 322 Front national des musciens, 221, 234–​236, 251, 256, 265, 333 Frontisme, 192–​193 Fumet, Stanislas, 161 Gaillard, André, 61 Galerie Charpentier, 271, 325, 329 Gallimard, Editions, 68, 261, 265, 271, 281, 290, 318–​319, 322, 330–​333 Gaston, 69, 271–​272, 329 Galster, Ingrid, 3 Gance, Abel, 189 Capitaine Fracasse, 182 Napoléon, 187 Roue (La), 187 Garden, Mary, 80, 90–​91 Gartenlaub, Odette, 321 Gaubert, Philippe, 52, 63, 223 Gaudet, Pierre, 130 Gauleiters, 18 Gaulle, Charles de, 18–​19, 25, 27, 143, 160, 175, 291, 322 and Catholics, 289, 298, 300–​301 Gaullists, 22, 25, 160, 163, 175, 298, 301 Gédalge, André, 222 Gendré-​Réty, Jean, 102, 368n35 gerbe (La), 250, 272 German Embassy, 29–​30, 43–​4 4, 49, 113, 180, 195, 221, 272 Gervais, Claude, 157, 280 Gieseking, Walter, 241 Gillis, John, 27 Gilson, Paul, 169 Girardet, Raoul, 163 Giraudoux, Jean, 140, 168, 170–​171, 181 Gluck, Christoph Willibald, 199, 216 Goebbels, Joseph, 45, 48, 64, 110, 217, 220–​221, 225

481

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 73, 112 Gogol, Nikolai, 172 Görlitz, Silesia, 297–​299, 433n60 Goudimel, Claude, 201 Gounod, Charles, Faust, 117, 375n123 Gramophone, 50, 94–​95 Gramsci, Antonio, 8, 23, 115, 214, 239, 259, 345 Grand Casino-​Théâtre, Vichy, 88 Grandgambe, Sandrine, 64 Grand Orchestre de Radio-​Paris, 46, 50 Grand Palais, 222 Grand Théâtre d’Amsterdam, 82 Grémillon, Jean, 75, 100 Gribenski, Jean, 47, 49 Gringoire, 191, 194 Group(e) Collaboration, 7, 23, 44, 58, 60–​61, 111, 197, 235, 308 Grunewald, Jean-​Jacques, 265, 437n125 Guignebert, Jean, 174–​175 Guitry, Sacha, 171 Gurdjieff, Georges Ivanovitch, 130, 165 Haedrich, Marcel, 306–​307 Handel, George Frederick, 201 Hautecoeur, Louis, 32–​33, 36–​42, 52–​54, 60–​66, 100, 108 Hello, Ernest, 292, 322–​326 Henriot, Philippe, 22, 171–​172, 174 Herrand, Marcel, 331 Hesiod, 148 Hessenberg, Karl, 196 Hilaire, Georges, 33, 38 Hill, Peter, 326, 351n19 Hillemacher, Louis, 64 Himmler, Heinrich, 24 Hitler, Adolph, 17, 24, 39, 86, 199, 210, 215, 225 Hoérée, Arthur, 215–​217, 220 Hoffmann, Stanley, 2, 18, 107, 372n79 Holland, 1, 18, 108

4 8 2   • 

Index

Honegger, Arthur, 29, 36, 171–​172, 178–​238, 253, 308–​309, 329–​330, 346 Antigone, 25, 36, 41, 102, 153, 179, 184, 200–​219, 238, 328 Battements du monde, 236 Chant de la délivrance, 237 Chant de Libération, 234, 237 Danse des morts, 180, 182, 409n117 First Sonata for Violin and Piano, 182 Horace victorieux, 300 Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher, 142, 151–​153, 180, 182, 191, 237, 311 Le roi David, 182, 201, 205 Nicolas de Flue, 186 Pacific 231, 189, 232, 410n121 Rugby, 181–​182 Second Symphony, 182, 189, 226–​233, 237–​238 Sept pièces brèves, 182 Sonata for Cello and Piano, 182 Hôtel de Ville, Paris, 3 Hüe, Georges, 61, 65 Huisman, Georges, 61 humanité (L’), 114 Huntziger, General Charles-​Léon, 21, 295–​296, 309 Hussenot, Olivier, 135, 140, 143–​144, 157, 168–​169 Husserl, Edmond, 291 Ibert, Jacques, 210, 243, 414n177, 417n16 Iglesias, Sara, 43, 221, 351n20, 372n79 illustration (L’), 270, 278, 374n105 indépendance (L’), 195 Indy, Vincent d’, 78, 87, 97, 109, 195–​196, 201, 250 Cours de composition musicale, 325 Fervaal, 90 information musicale (L’), 87, 98–​99, 107–​108, 180–​182, 198–​199, 252–​253, 308, 317

Inghelbrecht, Désiré-​Émile, 75, 88, 90–​92, 97, 107, 111 Institut allemand (German Institute), 29, 43–​45, 69, 180, 195, 197, 221, 225 Institut Catholique de Paris, 292 Institut de France, 66 International Exposition (1937), 40, 303 Jackson, Julian, 11, 16, 34, 66–​69, 136, 161, 252 Jacques, Henry, 97 Janequin, Clément, 333–​334 Jansen, Jacques, 80, 89, 95 Jaquemont, Maurice, 133 Jarrel, Randal, 184 Jeanne d’Arc, 23, 147, 150–​154, 234, 259, 298, 311, 321–​322 Jeanne d’Arc (oratorio), 269 Je suis partout, 98, 180, 191, 216, 232, 250, 372n79 Jeune, Claude (Le), 334, 337 Jeune France, Association, 29–​33, 55, 67–​68, 125–​130, 135–​169, 180–​181, 309–​313, 331, 344 Concert Society, 123, 132, 136, 141, 149, 223, 293–​294, 309–​310, 316 Jeunesses Musicales de France, 56, 330 Joachim, Irène, 65, 80–​81, 89–​91, 95, 174, 264, 318–​319, 334 Joachim, Joseph, 80 Jolivet, André, 136, 141–​142, 153, 293, 310, 337 Joujard, Jacques, 235 Jusseaume, Lucien, 83–​84 Karajan, Herbert von, 47 Kempf, Wilhelm, 58 Kerman, Joseph, 78 Klausz, Ernest, 54

Index  • 

Koechlin, Charles, 75, 116–​118, 222, 254, 265 Kristeva, Julia, 259 Lacombe, Hervé, 244, 361n66 La France européenne, exposition, 88, 222 Lagardelle, Hubert, 184–​185 Lalo, Edouard, 45, 97, 222, 226 Le roi d’Ys, 64, 102 Lalo, Pierre, 83, 109 Laloy, Louis, 53, 114, 145 Lamirand, Georges, 55, 130–​131, 137, 139–​140, 143–​144, 147, 160 Lamour, Philippe, 185 Lamoureux, Charles, 92 Lamoureux Concert Society, 110 Landormy, Paul, 74, 112, 114, 375n123, 418n36 Landowski, Marcel, 148 Langlais, Jean, 62, 318 Laubreaux, Alain, 46, 110 Laurencie, Général de la, 48 Laurent, Jeanne, 66 Laval, Pierre, 17, 19, 21–​22, 42–​43, 53, 74, 107, 134, 210 and deportations, 24, 320–​321 La Voix de son Maître, 47, 50, 58–​59, 94, 101, 181, 220, 222, 232 Le Bail, Karine, 67, 172, 351n20 Leenhardt, Roger, 132–​133, 137, 139–​144, 162–​163, 170, 177, 340 Le Flem, Paul, 401n52 Le rossignol de Saint-​Malo, 7, 102 Leahy, Admiral William D., 22 Léger, Fernand, 187 Légion des voluntaires contre le bolchevisme, 91 Légion françaises des (anciens) combattants, 23, 91, 150, 158, 163 Leiris, Michel, 318 Lescure, Pierre de, 257

483

Les Six, 185, 193, 201–​202, 205–​206, 242–​243, 250, 333 Lettres françaises (Les), 116, 119, 121, 262–​263, 288, 377n146 Lévy, Lazare, 48, 314 Liberation, the, 40, 123–​124, 175, 234, 284, 299, 334 Liesche, Richard, 41 Lifar, Serge, 53, 62–​63, 192, 224, 243–​244, 252 Ligue de l’Action Française, 26, 66, 88, 92–​94, 109, 126, 141, 146, 161 Ligue des droits de l’Homme, 192 Liszt, Franz, 108 Long, Marguerite, 65 Longo, Oddone, 208 Lorca, Garcia, 275–​277 Loriod, Yvonne, 329, 332, 432n42 Lourié, Arthur, 145 Lourmarin, village of, 144, 153 Loustou, Robert, 160, 162 Lowell, Robert, 184 Lubin, Germaine, 47, 58, 63, 91, 283 Lugné-​Poë, Aurelien, 85 Lully, Jean-​Baptiste, 199–​200, 216, 295, 412n154 Lumignon: Bimensuel du stalag VIII, 306 Lycée Charlemagne, 292 Lyon soir, 156 Lyotard, Jean-​François, 183–​184 Machabey, Armand, 199–​200, 216, 317, 331 Machiavelli, Niccolo, 182 Maeterlinck, Maurice, 76–​78, 81, 98–​99, 113, 205 Magnard, Albéric, 201, 222, 264 Main à plume (La), 261, 377n139 Maisons de jeunesse, 55 Maisons Jeune France, 139, 149–​150 Mallarmé, Stéphane, 334 Mangeot, Auguste, 55

4 8 4   • 

Index

Maquis, the, 25, 221, 258, 385n64 Marais, Jean, 181 Marcel, Gabriel, 138, 290, 310, 323 Marion, Paul, 19–​20, 139–​4 0, 160–​161, 369n49 Maritain, Jacques, 292 Marrou, Henri-​Irénée, 133, 145–​146, 155, 158, 166 Marseillaise (La), 212, 406n97 Marseille, 89–​90, 102, 139, 157, 163, 166–​167 Martenot, Ginette, 334 Martenot, Maurice, 133, 140–​142, 144, 166, 169, 309, 314 Martin, Frank, 196 Massenet, Jules, 41, 118, 328 Massis, Henri, 295 Matisse, Henri, 116 Maulnier, Thierry, 170 Mauriac, François, 257, 267, 329, 357n87, 414n180 Maurras, Charles, 28, 66, 118, 268 Méhul, Nicolas-​Étienne, 112, 154, 311 Mercure de France, 191 Messager, André, 80–​82, 88 Messiaen, Alain, 292, 324 Messiaen, Claire, 309, 313–​14, 316, 320–​321 Messiaen, Olivier, 24–​25, 62, 98, 123, 136, 141, 156, 196, 289–​341, 345–​347 Ascension (L’), 293, 316 Diptyque, 303 Leçons d’harmonie, 314 nativité du Seigneur (La), 293 offrandes oubliées (Les), 293, 316, 318 Poèmes pour Mi, 293, 330 Quatuor pour la fin du temps, 295–​297, 299, 301–​309, 316, 433n63 Technique de mon langage musical, 320, 325

Traité de rhythme, de couleur et d’ornithologie, 328 Trois petits liturgies de la presence divine, 157, 290, 311–​312, 334–​340 Vingt regards sur l’enfant Jésus, 332, 340 Visions de l’Amen, 223, 290, 316, 320, 323, 325–​333 Meyerbeer, Giacomo, 108, 200 Michelet, Edmond, 241 Milhaud, Darius, 174, 201, 204, 233, 236, 243–​244, 334 Milice, the, 26, 112, 255 Ministère de l’économie, 60 Ministère de l’information (Ministry of Information), 19 Ministère des affaires étrangères, 31 Ministère des finances, 33, 40, 62 Mireau, Émile, 33, 38, 55 Monteverdi, Claudio, 315 Montoire, 17, 86–​87, 134 Moran, Paul, 169 Morax, René, 201, 236 Moreaux, Serge, 196, 223, 308, 317 Morocco, 24, 251 Moser, Franz Joseph, 223 mot d’ordre (Le), 102, 368n35 Mounier, Emmanuel, 67, 129, 132–​133, 137–​138, 141–​144, 160–​162, 320, 335–​336 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 41, 49, 87, 198, 221, 224, 235 Enlèvement au serial (L’), 45 Munch, Charles, 59, 87, 148, 182, 230, 232, 251, 256, 264 Société des concerts du Conservatoire, 91, 150–​151, 180, 223, 234, 243, 316 Muratore, Lucien, 64

Index  • 

Musée de l’Homme, 25, 114, 271, 332, 337 Musée des Arts et Traditions Populaires, 29, 268 Musée du Luxembourg, 39–​4 0 Musée Nationale d’Art Moderne, 100 Musicien d’aujourd’hui (Le), 121, 263, 377n146 Musicien patriote (Le), 91, 264 Musiciens d’aujourd’hui, 118, 120–​121, 198, 263–​264, 266, 281, 340 Mussolini, Benito, 188 Mussorgsky, Modest, 78, 117, 270 Boris Godunov, 91, 117 Nasenta, Raymond, 271 National Radio, French. See Radiodiffusion française (nationale) National Revolution (Révolution nationale), 15–​16, 18–​23, 34–​35, 39–​4 0, 65, 71, 93, 138, 243–​244, 259 and Jeune France, 150, 159–​165 National Socialism, 42, 134, 225 Nazis, 37, 67–​68, 96, 116, 134, 158, 162, 210, 257–​258, 263, 302 and Egk, Werner, 216–​218, 225 use of Propaganda, 45–​47, 94, 113, 324 use of Wagner, 120, 124 Neveu, Ginette, 272, 428n150 new Europe, the, 17, 22–​23, 63, 96, 180, 195, 222, 232, 238 New York Public Library, 3 Nicoly, René, 56 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 74 Noailles, Marie-​Laure de, 286 Noizay, 241, 244, 253, 286 Nord, Philip, 22, 32, 66, 149, 152 nouveaux temps (Les), 44, 66, 308 nouvelle république (La), 236, 472

485

Nouvelle revue française, 69, 86, 186, 214, 250, 253, 257, 261, 265 Nouvelles continentals, 279 Obey, André, 181 Odéon Theater, 54, 62 Ollivier, Albert, 132–​3, 140–​141, 168–​175 Ollone, Max d’, 44, 58, 63–​6 4, 111, 198 ondes Martenot, 133, 331, 334, 336–​339, 397n8 Opéra, Paris, 40–​41, 50–​54, 62–​65, 72–​73, 102, 209–​218, 243–​244, 251–​252. See also Réunion des théâtres lyriques nationaux Opéra-​comique, 44, 52–​54, 62–​66, 71–​78, 82–​85, 99, 101–​102. See also Réunion des théâtres lyriques nationaux Orchestre national de France, 75 Orchestre symphonique de France, 142, 316 Ordre nouveau (L’), 141, 186, 382n24 Orgue (L’), 296 Palais de Chaillot, 46–​47, 59, 87, 182, 222, 232, 316 Panorama, 113 Paray, Paul, 113 Pariser Zeitung, 44, 57, 109, 113 Pascal, Blaise, 251 Pas-​de-​Calais, 18 Pasdeloup Concert Society, 110 Pasquier, Étienne, 295–​296, 306, 309, 433n60 Passereau, Pierre, 334 Pathé Marconi, 58, 94–​95, 98 Paulhan, Jean, 86, 261, 265, 271, 281, 329 Paxton, Robert O., 1–​2, 22, 24, 54, 66–​67, 128, 173, 301

4 8 6   • 

Index

Péguy, Charles, 134–​135, 143, 146, 162, 169, 171 Pelerson, Georges, 139 Pelliot, Alice, 314 Peschanski, Denis, 16, 18, 21, 24, 115, 415n3 Pétain, Philippe, 15–​27, 38, 55–​56, 92–​93, 131–​134, 161–​164, 192, 241–​246, 297–​302 petite gironde (La), 87 petit parisien (Le), 44, 46, 110, 223 Pfitzner, Hans, 44, 64, 103, 223 Picabia, Francis, 164 Picasso, Pablo, 149, 204, 255, 284, 286 Piérné Concert Society (Concerts Gabriel Piérné), 110 Piersig, Fritz, 43–​4 4, 49, 63, 113, 220, 315 Pignon, Édouard, 140, 149 Pinto, Louis, 259 Plans, 185–​186, 189 Platon, Admiral Charles, 59 Pléiade Concerts, 69, 265, 270–​272, 279–​280, 316–​318, 329–​334 Poe, Edgar Allan, 169 Polignac, Jean de, 270 Polignac, Marie-​Blanche de, 241, 279, 283, 286 Politzer, Georges, 68 Popular Front, 33, 75, 136, 146, 154, 159, 185, 242–​244, 294 Porte de Theil, Général Paul de la, 147 postcolonial theory, 11–​12, 155, 269 Poulenc, Francis, 29, 67–​70, 166, 233, 236, 239–​288, 314, 345–​346 animaux modèles (Les), 20, 244–​252, 254, 361n66 Aubade, 276, 425n113 Banalités, 248 biches (Les), 248, 254, 268 Chansons gaillardes, 269

Chansons villageoises, 26, 254, 267, 269–​270, 272, 332 Deux poèmes de Louis Aragon, 262, 281 Exultate Deo, 282 Litanies à la Vièrge noire, 242, 248, 281 mamelles de Tirésias (Les), 254 Mélancolie, 241, 248 Métamorphoses, 281 Nocturnes, 248, 275–​276 Rapsodie nègre, 255 Salve Regina, 282 Sept chansons, 283 Suite française, 280 Preger, Léo, 142, 156, 311 Prés, Josquin des, 334 Prix de Rome, 44, 79, 272 Prokofiev, Sergei, 275–​276 Propaganda Abteilung, 30, 43, 46–​48, 63, 220, 402n54 Propaganda Staffel, 43, 45, 48, 87, 148, 225, 402n54 Prouvost, Jean, 131 Pucheu, Pierre, 19, 21, 88, 159–​162, 164 Quatuor Capet, 265 Rabaud, Henri, 47–​49, 61, 66, 314 Radiodiffusion française (nationale), 46, 59–​60, 90, 126, 131, 151–​153, 166–​175, 236, 295, 340 Radio-​Jeunesse, 55, 127, 129–​135, 146, 163, 166, 175, 313 Radio-​Paris, 46–​47, 57, 59, 131–​132, 235, 263, 315 Radio-​Vichy, 23, 46, 135–​136, 139–​140 Rahn, Rudolf, 272 Rameau, Jean-​Philippe, 12, 77, 93, 119, 196, 263, 265, 280, 283, 333 Rassemblement national populaire, 322

Index  • 

Ravel, Maurice, 59, 196, 201, 222, 248, 253, 263, 328, 371n75 heure espagnole (L’), 91 Ma mère l’oye, 300 Trois chansons de Mallarmé, 277 Rebatet, Lucien, 98, 180, 216, 221, 232–​233, 372n79 Red Cross, French (Croix rouge française), 88, 91, 299 Redfield, James, 219 Reger, Max, 201 Reich Minister of Propaganda, 40, 64, 220 Reichsmusikkammer (Reich Music Chamber), 58, 224–​225 Renaissance, the French, 10, 12, 117, 259, 265, 280–​285, 333–​338 Renan, Ernest, 26 Renoir, Jean, 75 Renoir, Pierre, 322 Réunion des théâtres lyriques nationaux (RTLN), 52–​53, 62–​63, 65, 102. See also Opéra, Paris and Opéra-​comique Reverdy, Pierre, 292–​293, 297 Révolution nationale. See National Revolution Revue des beaux-​arts, 31, 103 Revue des deux mondes, 109 Revue des jeunes, 128 Revue musicale (La), 194, 198, 308, 376n125 Rioux, Jean-​Pierre, 3, 140, 218, 345, 365n2 Rivaud, Albert, 55 Rivet, Paul, 318 Rivier, Jean, 144 Rivière, Georges-​Henri, 268–​269 Rocamadour, 242, 283 Rocher, René, 54, 61

487

Roland Garros Stadium, 181 Roland-​Manuel, Alexis, 121, 233, 251, 256, 264, 329 Rolland, Romain, 154, 189 Ronsard, Pierre de, 334 Ronsin, Eugène, 83–​85 Roosevelt, Franklin, 22 Rosenthal, Manuel, 120–​121, 251, 256, 264, 369n56 Ross, Marc, 10 Rostand, Edmond, 210 Rothstein, Edward, 3 Rouart et Larolle, Editors, 284 Rouché, Jacques, 45, 52–​54, 62–​66, 71–​74, 102–​103, 209, 248–​252 Rougemont, Denis de, 186 Roussel, Albert, 87, 222 Mme Albert Roussel, 314 Rousso, Henry, 3, 5, 18, 75, 100 Routiers (Rover Scouts), 128, 149 Rovan, Joseph, 158 Roy, Claude, 134–​135, 137, 140–​141, 157–​158, 170, 172, 262 Rubenstein, Ida, 111, 191, 219, 232 Sacher, Paul, 220, 227 Saint-​Saëns, Camille, 91, 202 Samson et Dalila, 64 Saliège, Monseigneur Jules-​Gérard, 320 Salle Gaveau, 270, 281, 288, 317, 330 Salle Pleyel, 46, 322 Samazeuilh, Gustave, 37, 45, 51, 91–​92, 96–​97, 107–​109, 329 Samuel, Claude, 293, 315 Samuel-​Rousseau, Marcel, 63, 65, 223, 316 Sapiro, Giselle, 3, 36 Sartre, Jean-​Paul, 238, 290–​291, 309–​310, 318–​319, 322–​329, 341 être et le néant (L’), 302, 319, 322

4 8 8   • 

Index

Sartre, Jean-​Paul (cont.) existentialisme est un humanism (L’), 323 imagination, (L’), 291 mouches (Les), 68, 322, 324, 328–​329, 340 nausée (La), 291 transcendance de l’égo (La), 291 Satie, Erik, 75, 172, 202, 282 Parade, 193 Socrate, 204 Sauguet, Henri, 29, 75, 250, 437n125 Sauvage, Cécile, 292 Schaeffer, Pierre, 33, 67, 125–​178, 262, 282, 309–​313, 331–​332, 344–​345 Clotaire Nicole, 128–​129 Coquille à planètes, 172 L’Esthétique et technique des arts-​relais, 167 Mystère des rois mages, 130 Portique pour une fille de France, 151, 153–​159, 311–​312, 337 Prélude, choral et fugue, 127, 158, 171 Vingt leçons et travaux pratiques destines aux musiciens mélangeurs de RDF, 131 Schaeffner, André, 251–​252, 254–​255, 271, 273, 288, 318–​319, 332–​334 Schlumberger, Jean, 170 Schmidt, Albert-​Marie, 140 Schmitt, Florent, 44, 61, 87, 171, 172,  198, 269 Schoenberg, Arnold, 174, 206, 296, 308, 328 Schola Cantorum, 61, 87, 117, 120, 141, 191, 195, 242, 269 Schorske, Carl, 183 Schubert, Franz, 266 Schumann, Robert, 57, 109, 266, 315 Schwartz, Solange, 63

Scriabin, Alexander, 266 Scribe, Eugène, 212 Secours national, 88, 91 secrétaires d’État, 38, 164, 171, 174, 315 Secrétariat aux sports, 181 Secrétariat d’État à l’économie nationale et aux finances, 62, 155 Secrétaire général à la jeunesse, 31, 33, 55, 130, 137–​138, 147, 150, 160 Secrétariat général de la vice-​président du conseil, 40, 56, 139, 210 Secrétariat général des beaux-​arts, 40, 56, 139, 210 Seghers, Pierre, 137, 144, 170 Serrau, Jean-​Marie, 158 Service du Travail Obligatoire (STO), 25, 170, 255, 332 Seuil, Le (publishing house), 129 Shostakovich, Dimitri, 228, 239–​240, 266, 288 Simeone, Nigel, 247, 326 Simon, Yannick, 6–​7, 12 Sirach, Baldur von, 220, 235 Sivade, Nelly, 329 Société des auteurs, compositeurs et éditeurs de musique (SACEM), 60, 235 Société des concerts du Conservatoire. See under Conservatoire national de Paris Société d’études germaniques, 113 Société nationale de musique française, 273 Sophocles, 202–​204, 208, 213–​214, 219 Sordet, Dominique, 60, 93 Sorel, Georges, 187–​188, 195 Soupault, Philippe, 169 Soutou, Jean-​Marie, 145, 158, 312 Spanish Civil War, 261 Spratt, Geoffrey, 205, 237 Spender, Stephen, 237

Index  • 

Sprout, Leslie, 6, 102, 152, 220, 234–​235, 247 Staatsoper, Berlin, 47, 235 Stalingrad, 25, 215, 221 Statut des juifs, 172, 315 Steinberg, Michael P., 119, 260 Sternhell, Zeev, 190 Strauss, Richard, 201, 205, 217, 223, 232 Ariadne auf Naxos, 64, 209 Elektra, 205 Stravinsky, Igor, 172, 205, 217, 227–​228, 248, 253, 266, 270, 282 Noces (Les), 250, 328 Oedipus rex, 202 Oiseau de feu (Le), 250 Petroushka, 169, 300 Sacre du printemps (Le), 85, 193, 326 Strobel, Heinrich, 43, 113–​114 Stülpnagel, Otto von, 62 Suleiman, Susan, 3, 422n81 Surrealism, 183, 260–​261, 274 Tailleferre, Germaine, 61, 193 Tardieu, Paul, 174, 176 Tchamkerten, Jacques, 234, 237 Teitgen, Pierre-​Henri, 176 Témoignage chrétien, 134, 161, 298, 302 temps (Le), 51, 83, 88, 152, 232 Terdiman, Richard, 345 Teyte, Maggie, 80, 370n60 Théas, Monseigneur Pierre-​Marie, 320 Théâtre Arlequin, 295 Théâtre de la Bruyère, 340 Théâtre de la Cité, 322 Théâtre des Arts, 52, 367n34 Théâtre des Champs-​Élysées, 46, 85 Théâtre des Mathurins, 307 Théâtre du Châtelet, 182 Théâtre du Jorat, 236

489

Théâtre nationale populaire, 62 Thévenot, Jean, 135, 163 Thibaud, Jacques, 65 Third Republic, 1, 32, 38, 73, 101, 126–​127, 186, 241–​242 Tilly, Charles, 10 Toesca, Maurice, 332 Tournemire, Charles, 141, 222, 317, 430n15 trait d’union (Le), 300, 434n77 Trebor, Robert, 47 Trenet, Charles, 270 Triptych Concert Society, 316–​317 Tual, Denise, 270–​271, 279, 318–​320, 329–​331 Turner, Victor, 9, 26, 71, 124–​125, 157, 342 Union des Artistes, 54 Valéry, Paul, 329 Valois, Georges, 187–​188 Van Dongen, Kees, 271 Vélodrome d’Hiver, 24, 321 Vel d’hiv round-​ups, 24, 50, 231, 255, 301, 320–​321, 331 Vercors [pseudonym for Jean Marcel Brueller], 257 Verdi, Giuseppi, 64 Verlaine, Paul, 334 Vermorel, Claude, 340 vichysso-​résistants, 67, 126, 255 Vilar, Jean, 140, 146, 148, 177 Villon, François, 122 Viseur, Georges, 80 Vocht, Louis, 182 Voix de son Maître (La), 47, 50, 58–​59, 87, 101, 181–​182, 222 Vuillemin, Louis, 194 Vuillermoz, Émile, 46, 60, 172, 215, 233

4 9 0   • 

Index

Wagner, Richard, 46, 74, 77–​81, 87, 90–​93, 108–​109, 118–​121, 195, 205, 222 crépuscule des dieux, Le, 56 Die Meistersinger, 114 Lohengrin, 89 Parsifal, 97, 108, 111, 114, 117, 248 Ring of the Nibelung, The, 114 Tannhäuser, 97 Tristan und Isolde, 47, 56, 76, 88–​92, 99, 103–​104, 113–​114, 117 Vaisseau fantôme, Le, 45, 56, 64

Wagner, Winifred, 56 Wehrmacht, 47, 220–​221, 324 Widor, Charles-​Marie, 222 Wohl, Robert, 183 Ybarnégaray, Jean, 55 Zay, Jean, 52 Zazous, 319 Zeitlin, Froma, 203 Zimmer, Bernard, 234