Interpreting the Musical Past

Abstract

Abstract What did it mean for French musicians to sing Handel's choral music in the 1870s, to defend the operas of Lully and Rameau against hostile criticism, or to vote for Palestrina, alongside plainchant, as being essential to the Catholic musical liturgy? The early music revival in France gives us a vivid sense of how music's cultural meanings were contested, distilled into dominant visions, and then often revised. Peppering the century are famous fakes, pastiches, and other creative negotiations between past and present. When contemporary witnesses described these phenomena, the resulting dissension could run along social, religious, and political lines, helping us understand why certain musical genres became idealized while others were disparaged. This book discusses what is at stake in the construction of a musical heritage, and how ideology informs musical value judgements. In its focus on the nature of musical experience and the meaning of music in society, it explores amateur and professional music-making; working-class, aristocratic, and bourgeois cultural life; national pride; religious politics; and ritual, both liturgical and secular. Covering five centuries of music (from the mid-13th to the mid-18th centuries) and a century of French history, this book explains long-term changes of cultural meaning while celebrating the richness of local detail, and explores what lies at the heart of the construction and development of a musical cultural memory.

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