Introduction
This article examines the efforts of French musicologists to create a specialized journal at the turn of the twentieth century that would clearly associate music criticism and musicology. These musicologists strove to develop music criticism that met intellectual standards suitable to history, aesthetics, musical analysis and sociology, the latter discipline making its progressive appearance, though hesitantly in music.Footnote 1 Using as case study a set of music journals, from La Revue d’histoire et de critique musicales (herafter Revue musicale), a journal founded in 1901 by Jules Combarieu, Romain Rolland and Louis Laloy, to the Mercure musical and the Revue S.I.M. that followed, I will establish the connections that brought together the nascent musicological milieu, the musical press and the artistic affinities among the principal actors in their attempt to create a new network of music critics guided by musicological exigencies. Table 1 lists the journals and the main protagonists to be discussed in this article.
Table 1 Network of musicologist-critics, 1900–1914
From the final decades of the nineteenth century until 1914, music criticism occupied a considerable space in daily newspapers, journals on general culture and specialized music journals. Given the number of people writing reviews and reports on music, and the vast range of writing styles, music criticism constituted one of the principal written genres on music at that time. French music criticism in the nineteenth century was not necessarily penned by specialists and, as Emmanuel Reibel has affirmed for the central portion of that century, classifying music critics is far from a simple matter: the critics’ profession (or their principal activity) did not necessarily account for their particular approach to criticism or the intermingling of literary, musical, journalistic and musicological involvement within the milieu.Footnote 2 And although it is possible to identify the political orientations of certain newspapers and journals, and perhaps even to thus account for a journal’s endorsement of certain artistic trends, it is very difficult to establish any firm connections between the diverse orientations, standpoints and principles that guided the activity of the critics. However it is possible to conceive links between the content of criticism and political direction for some newspapers and journals. For example, at La Patrie, a daily newspaper with strong nationalistic and anti-Semitic views, the music column was written by Achille de Lauzières, Marquis de Thémines, who felt that the evolution of musical style in opera would bring about the collapse of social order;Footnote 3 as for La Revue blanche, it supported Dreyfus and the French intellectual avant-garde. Overall, as we shall see, the networks encouraged music critics to move from one newspaper or specialized journal to another quite apart from the political orientation of the journals or reviewers. The case is different when money issues are involved, for instance when journals are associated with a publisher. Le Ménestrel, which belongs to Heugel, must principally defend the works of Heugel’s composers. Music criticism was far from uniform in terms of its methods and objectives. Critics had diverse interests, and – perhaps even more important – the press was governed by financial interests: the survival of a journal typically meant reaching the widest readership possible. Grand gestures, flamboyant style, and gossip thus became part and parcel of the language of music criticism, which all too often took on the air of sophisticated literary exercise.
In 1827, François-Joseph Fétis (1784–1871), recently appointed librarian of the Conservatoire de Paris, founded La Revue musicale. He gave the journal a musicological orientation and an editorial structure that would serve as the model for the next generation of ‘Revues musicales’. Considered the first specialized music journal of its kind, La Revue musicale’s objectives were to inform and educate readers via pedagogical articles, composer biographies, articles on music history and organology, news of contemporary musical life and reviews of books and scores.Footnote 4 The journal had a very strong editorial bias, as the founder’s presence could be detected in every corner. Music from the Renaissance, Baroque and Classical periods (Mozart in particular) was upheld as an ideal, against which Fétis criticized Berlioz’s music as well as works by Wagner. Fétis’s journal, however, survived only a few years: in 1835, it was bought out by La Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris (1834–1880), a journal founded by an editor of German origin Maurice Schlesinger (Moritz Schlesinger) who supported the German romantic movement.Footnote 5 Even though Schlesinger invited Fétis to contribute to the Revue et Gazette, his ‘intention was to produce a journal whose criticism departed from current modes and which would, specifically, provide an antidote to the professorial aridity of the Revue musicale’.Footnote 6 Removing the ‘aridity’ from this kind of methodical music criticism was therefore a crucial move: it made reading the reviews a more pleasant experience for the journal’s audience and, more importantly, it ensured that the works promoted in accordance with the journal’s editorial stance were not too harshly criticized. In his book on Fétis, Rémy Campos provides an example of the pattern developed by Schlesinger, which strays at least in part from the intended simplification in critical approach. It has to do with the representation of Meyerbeer’s opera Le Prophète, on a libretto by Scribe, a musical event of the 1849 season. The score and many adaptations were published by Barandus & Cie, owners of the Revue et Gazette. For more than a month, the journal published inserts to publicize the score. It also published the libretto as page-bottom banners and ordered a critical study of the work by Fétis. Campos mentions that Fétis was allowed twice the usual space for the purpose, allowing him to develop ‘a more extensive commentary on the score’, with numerous musical examples.Footnote 7
By the mid-nineteenth century, the main French music journals were controlled by publishing houses: besides Revue et Gazette, there was also Le Ménestrel (1833–1940), brought out by the Heugel publishing house, Le Guide musical (1855–1914), founded first in Brussels by the publisher Schott and then moved to Paris in 1892, and La France musicale (1837–1870), established by the Escudier brothers, who also published and distributed the works of Verdi in France. There were a number of smaller journals that maintained their independence; however, these typically came and went with the musical seasons.Footnote 8 Often devoted to a single musical genre or a particular instrument,Footnote 9 these journals focusing on a specific subject targeted a very specialized, and therefore very small, readership. The music criticism in such journals thus had very limited influence on the general milieu.
Once La France musicale shut down operations in 1870, followed by La Revue et Gazette in 1880, Le Ménestrel and Le Guide musical were left as the only leading journals still in circulation until 1889, when Arthur Dandelot founded Le Monde musical.Footnote 10 There were many small journals intended primarily for musical information in various cities throughout France, including La Musique à Paris (1894–1900), L’Écho des concerts (Marseilles, 1893–1896) and La Chronique musicale trimestrielle du Sud-Est (Nice, 1905–1914), but those journals contributed only modestly to the development of music criticism. From a purely quantitative perspective, then, music criticism was predominantly being published in daily newspapers and in numerous journals on general cultureFootnote 11 like La Revue des deux mondes Footnote 12 and the Mercure de France.Footnote 13
It took another decade for all the required pieces of a new approach to music criticism to fall into place and for the musical press to gain some momentum. Many new journals were established at that time; among them, one particular series of journals deserves special attention: La Tribune de Saint-Gervais. Bulletin mensuel de la Schola Cantorum (1895–1929), Le Courrier musical Footnote 14 (1897), La Revue musicale (1901–1912), Musica (1902–1914) and the Mercure musical (1905), which would become the Revue musicale S.I.M. This list, however, excludes certain journals on culture like Comoedia that, from 1907, closely followed contemporary literary, theatrical, and musical life. Many musicians and musicologists wrote for these journals. Nor does the list include the journals published outside of Paris, which in some cases played a significant role. Such is the case, for instance, of the Revue musicale de Lyon (1903–1912), which merged with the Revue musicale du Midi in 1912 in order to create the Revue française de musique.Footnote 15 With the exception of Musica, a monthly illustrated journal destined for a non-specialized public, these journals were inspired in varying degrees by Fétis’s project: they sought to instruct and inform the public via musicological articles and music columns that operated independently of any editorial stance that might be advocated by the journal’s owner.
Within this dynamic universe of divergent objectives in which almost anyone could take up the pen, some people began to question the importance, pertinence and value of music criticism, and to ask under which conditions it should be exercised. The founding of new music journals around 1900 that encouraged intellectual production in history, aesthetics and sociology of music contributed to renew the debate on the nature of music criticism. Intellectuals, music critics and young musicologists sought to relocate music criticism at the centre of the scholarly activity about early and modern music. The founding of La Revue musicale in 1901, by Jules Combarieu, Romain Rolland and Louis Laloy, became the launching point for a concrete attempt at conceptualizing music criticism as an intellectual endeavour that required institutional independence and would draw on knowledge provided by a nascent humanities discipline, French musicology.
Between Music and Literature
When Frédéric HellouinFootnote 16 published his Essai de critique de la critique musicale, in 1906, he proposed a typology of music critics. He categorized critics according to their relationship with music, either as composers, musicians or authors (‘littérateurs’).Footnote 17 He selected key figures who were well known for their music criticism at the time to construct his typology (see Table 2).
Table 2 Frédéric Hellouin’s classification of music critics in 1906.
AlthoughFootnote Footnote its excessive positivism was undoubtedly restrictive,Footnote 20 this typology nevertheless revealed certain perceptions of the milieu of music criticism at the turn of the century; specifically, it articulated the relationship between the critics’ qualifications either as musicians or as ‘littérateurs’, a term that Hellouin used to mean a person ‘who attaches a particular importance to the form of his discourse which bears more on container than on contents’.Footnote 21 And yet three musicologists, according to Hellouin’s typology, are classified either as ‘musician-littérateurs’ (Louis LaloyFootnote 22 and Charles MalherbeFootnote 23 ) or simply as ‘littérateur’ (Jules CombarieuFootnote 24 ). By focusing on the form of the discourse, an historical or aesthetic approach to music is thus likened to a literary exercise that loads down the music criticism. Despite weaknesses, itemizing music critics by ‘classes’ gives us a sense of those critics’ reputation (relative to one another), and it reveals that French readers had a rather paradoxical relationship to writing during that period. Music criticism should be rigorous and impartial, but not excessively serious. Consider, for example, what Hellouin wrote about Laloy:
In criticism, two characteristics distinguish the academic. First of all, due to the numerous exercises he completed while in school, he uses an abundance of phrases, an abundance that can be laborious for some [writers], and easy for others. Finally, an irresistible impulse that comes straight from his profession pushes him to regard the task he must accomplish much too seriously.Footnote 25
Hellouin’s remark confirms how, from the mid-nineteenth century onward, much of the debate about the role and methods of music criticism centred on the nature of the discourse. The question of whether criticism should be ‘serious’ would have encouraged Saint-Saëns to return to music criticism in 1879 for the journal Le Voltaire after a three-year interruption:Footnote 26
It is not without some hesitation that I decided to take up the critic’s pen once again. If I join the fight, it is because it seems to me – forgive me if it is a delusion – that I must. This is what one of the most clever, honest, and intelligent critics that I know wrote yesterday:
‘To speak frankly, music criticism, in the philosophical sense of the word, does not and cannot exist in France. The French public will not tolerate the long tracts on art that are relished by our English and German neighbours; for them [French], music is an ornamental art, fine for passing the time, for awaking sensibility, for providing pleasant subjects for conversation, but positively unworthy of the attention of serious people; it does not seem possible for this art to have this [kind of] logic, rhetoric, and aesthetic, and the critic who ventures into this territory will certainly have fewer than ten readers behind him’.Well, I feel that my kind colleague and friend is wrong; I believe that there are more than ten people in France capable of reading criticism that has the courage to venture onto the territory in question.Footnote 27
In fact, Saint-Saëns seized the opportunity of resuming writing for a journal in which reputed authors and political figures from the Republican milieus publish,Footnote 28 a circumstance that he considers favourable from his image and the diffusion of his ideas. The reputation of Le Voltaire doubtlessly influenced the involvement of Saint-Saëns, who wished to vindicate what he took to be informed and independent criticism.Footnote 29 For his remark on the capacity of ‘serious’ musical criticism to attract a large readership, Saint-Saëns relied on the high number of readers of which Le Voltaire could boast. Marie-Gabrielle Soret underlines how aware Saint-Saëns was of the need to convey ideas about music to the largest possible audience.Footnote 30 Over next two decades, Saint-Saëns wrote many critical essays, mostly for the daily press. This presence in journalism added to his reputation as a musician, but also as an aggressive musical thinker with clear-set ideas. Elected to the Académie des beaux-arts in 1881, he became an eminent representative of the French cultural milieu of the time. Also tagged as a ‘littérateur’ by the journalist Albert Dyrolles in Le Figaro,Footnote 31 Saint-Saëns as a writer did not shy away from the issue of the nature of the discourse. Writing about Gluck, Mozart and Meyerbeer as often as about contemporaries such as Gounod and Massenet (his rival) or Wagner, and interested in issues of composition and instrumentation as well as in those of interpretation, Saint-Saëns was an example of a broadly embracing approach to musical knowledge; but his stance, sometimes radical and outmoded, contrasted with the intellectual rigour and independence embraced as ideal by the new generation of writers led by figures like Romain RollandFootnote 32 and Louis Laloy. However, because of his position in the Academy, because he had become famous as a musician across Europe and had written abundantly on music, it came as no surprise that Saint-Saëns was appointed Honorary President of the Congrès d’histoire de la musique, which took place in 1900 and brought together historians, composers and music critics.
The commitment to ‘serious’ art criticism was not the sole prerogative of music in the last decades of the nineteenth century. One can give the example of La Revue d’art dramatique, founded in 1886 by Edmond Stoullig, who sought to adopt a more critical approach to the arts. The journal announced the creation of various sections, one for each art (music, theatre, dance, literature, etc.) to be entrusted to specialists. The music column was written by Albert Soubies (1886–1914), in collaboration with the composer and musicologist Charles Malherbe, from 1886 to 1893, and with Robert BrusselFootnote 33 from 1897 to 1914.Footnote 34 In addition, the editorial board engaged in so-called ‘impartial’ criticism, while in the same breath recognizing the great difficulty of such an undertaking. In the November 1896 issue, following the journal’s redesign, the editorial board announced to its readers:
And finally, we will be impartial. Let us be clear, however, about the meaning of this word. We know that impartiality is relative. Absolute impartiality degenerates into the impersonal. We are not promising that to our readers: they will assume that we are just keeping our word and quickly become weary of our neutrality. We would like to publish criticism that goes beyond simply providing information. We cannot promise anything except being understanding and sincere, that is, to accept and to express our impressions that are the most intimate and spontaneous.Footnote 35
Although the editors’ declaration of faith once again brought up the issue of how the critics’ authority was often undermined by suspicions of incompetence and bias,Footnote 36 it nevertheless encouraged the very sceptical Romain Rolland to contribute to the journal, even though he found criticism mediocre, even dangerous, for art:
No criticism. Criticism is dangerous, both for art and for the public. It has no meaning except under the condition that it is put back in its place as humble servant to art; it should open up the path to new kinds of thinking. – And it cannot. To be capable to fight this battle, criticism needs to have the new ideal clearly in sight, and to have faith in this ideal. And this feat can come only from a creative artist who has already internalized the ideal. Truth be told, the only criticism worthy of being read has been, by far, that written by geniuses judging other geniuses, like Wagner, Schiller or Goethe.Footnote 37
Rolland thus condemns a practice of criticism that does not come from creators. Only they can pretend to judge works from the perspective of their own genius and with the independence that goes along with it. Rolland does not hereby define the ideal that must rule over critical practice. Later on, however he evokes originality, and we thus learn that he rejects fashion and conservatism in work as well as criticism:
But if an original work appears, is it not obvious that it will be a threat to this pseudo-elite, the epitome of society’s trends and mediocrity, eternally conservative of the past that created it and guarantees its income?Footnote 38
Rolland certainly alluded to works of the younger generation of musicians, around Ravel, whose career he followed, while bitterly criticizing the conservatism of the public, who hesitated before of these new works as well as those of the past which were being progressively rediscovered. Through the words of Rolland, the set of events and situations that were modifying the French musical stage were surfacing. In addition to the rise of a new generation of artists (Ravel, Schmitt, Roussel, Koechlin) and musicologists (Laloy, La Laurencie, Prunières), there was an important rediscovery of early music of the medieval period and Renaissance, a renewed interest in the composers of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, such as Couperin and Rameau, and a new generation of music critics (Vuillermoz, Landormy) who were defending the music of their time. The expansion of the press contributed to these developments, particularly with new specialized music journals being launched, which provided a platform for a new elite that built on ‘all the resources of its culture, its sensibility and its conscience’.Footnote 39
Professional Mobility
Without delving too deeply into the structural details of the networks of music critics in late nineteenth-century French musical journalism, I will discuss two different career tracks, to illustrate the mechanisms at work in attempts to create a critical network in La Revue musicale, the Mercure musical and La Revue S.I.M – mechanisms that must be understood in the context of musicology and its dissemination through the press. Music critics were typically recruited on the basis of their reputation as writers; literary writers were often given precedence because of the quality of their writing and their connections within the milieu. For example, Judith Gautier (1850–1917), a member of the Académie Goncourt and an ardent defender of Wagner, was recruited by Pierre LafitteFootnote 40 for his new journal, L’Excelsior. The Mercure de France entrusted the music column to the young poet Charles-Henri Hirsch (1870–1948) in 1894; in 1904, the column was then delegated to Jean Marnold,Footnote 41 who had been primarily educated in literature. However, besides Romain Rolland, who was both a man of letters and a music historian, very few literary specialists wrote in musicological journals as regular contributors. René Chalupt and André Suarès wrote only sporadically in the Revue musicale S.I.M. Footnote 42 Musical training thus became considered a distinct advantage when hiring a music critic, especially for those journals and newspapers popular with upper-middle-class intellectuals. Camille Bellaigue (1858–1930) was recruited in 1883 by Ferdinand Brunetière, the director of La Revue des deux mondes, following the publication of the young pianist’s ‘Étude artistique et littéraire sur Faust’ in Le Correspondant.Footnote 43 Pierre LaloFootnote 44 was similarly hired by Adrien Hébrard, the director of the daily newspaper Le Temps, after the publication of his analysis of Fervaal in La Revue de Paris in 1898.Footnote 45
Hiring a music critic often involved a string of connections, including musical qualification (or not), artistic affinities and personal contacts. Le Figaro hired Alfred Bruneau in 1895 to write primarily on theatre matters (he kept this position until 1903);Footnote 46 he replaced Charles Darcours,Footnote 47 who worked as a music critic from 1890 until his death. The appointment of Bruneau is probably not unrelated to Zola’s intervention. The writer, with whom the composer collaborated for several years, wrote regularly in Le Figaro.Footnote 48 Composer Louis Vuillemin (actually Louis Francis, 1873–1929) was hired to write for Musica in 1911 by Xavier Leroux, his teacher and the editor of the journal from 1910 on; Vuillemin was also working as a critic for Comoedia. And Louis de Boussès de Fourcaud (1853–1914), a committed Wagnerian, was hired in 1881 by Le Gaulois to replace Catulle Mendès, the ‘principal creator of the Wagnerian cult in France’.Footnote 49 Fourcaud thus shifted from writing on politics to writing on music, with a brief stopover as the columnist for painting and art history, all within the same journal.
Although most music critics moved between newspapers, journals on culture and musical journals, some had more stable careers. The daily paper La Liberté had a preference for composers: Victorin Joncières wrote the music column from 1871 to 1900, and Gaston Carraud (1864–1920), a student of Jules Massenet and winner of the Prix de Rome in 1890, later took over the column and remained at the journal for over 20 years. Up to that time, there were very few musicologists in the music criticism milieu, with the notable exception of Jean Chantavoine,Footnote 50 who replaced Paul Dukas at the Revue hebdomadaire in 1903 and Judith Gautier at L’Excelsior in 1911. Even though Romain Rolland published several concert reviews between 1899 and 1905, mainly in La Revue de Paris, his was a modest contribution to the field of general music criticism in France at the turn of the twentieth century.Footnote 51
A New Kind of Journal for a New Kind of Critic
An important event for the development of musicology took place during the Paris World’s Fair in 1900: the Congrès international d’histoire de la musique (International Conference on Music History). The conference committee initially included Camille Saint-Saëns (Honorary President), Louis-Albert Bourgault Ducoudray (President), Julien TiersotFootnote 52 (Vice-President) and Romain Rolland (Secretary-General). Tiersot was one of the mainstays of the project. Finding the committee much too small for an international event of such importance, he advised Rolland in October 1899 that the committee should be expanded, and suggested immediately involving the music critic Camille Bellaigue:
he would complement our committee well, as he embodies an important element that is missing, [that is,] high music criticism – alongside a distinguished musician like Saint-Saëns, two composer-historians, both at the Conservatoire, Bourgault and myself, and you, representing the academic music movement.Footnote 53
The committee ultimately became quite large, as the original members and Bellaigue were soon joined by the musicologists Pierre Aubry,Footnote 54 Jules Combarieu, Charles Malherbe, Henry ExpertFootnote 55 and Frédéric Hellouin, as well as the composers Charles Bordes, Maurice EmmanuelFootnote 56 and Vincent d’Indy.Footnote 57 Two remarks are in order. The first one relates to Aubry, whose course at the Institut Catholique de Paris in 1898–1899, ‘La Musicologie médiévale: histoire et methodes’, was an essential preliminary step toward the Congress, as he was the first to use the word ‘musicologie’ and to define its principles.Footnote 58 . The second relates to the strong representation of the Schola Cantorum (Bordes, Emmanuel and d’Indy), an institution in whose methodological orientation the musicological approach had a significant place. It will come as no surprise that in 1908 the school review, La Tribune de Saint-Gervais, adopted the subtitle ‘Revue musicologique de la Schola’.Footnote 59
The conference committee brought together the future founders of the new Revue musicale, a journal that was initially the brainchild of another conference attendee, Paul Landormy. In a conference paper, the young musicologist put forth the idea of creating a ‘league for the protection and development of music’, accompanied by a bulletin or a journal intended ‘to create connections between musicians, to spread new ideas, [and] to develop musical taste’.Footnote 60 Although the league never came to fruition, the journal was soon launched by Jules Combarieu. In a memo circulated in December 1900 to potential subscribers, Combarieu highlighted the journal’s twofold objective, clearly encapsulated in the title, La Revue d’histoire et de critique musicales (A Journal of Music History and Criticism). The journal was to publish articles on ‘early French musical works, [according to] the methods employed in history’s auxiliary sciences [and to create] a substantial space … for the analysis of contemporary works’.Footnote 61 In the memo, Combarieu named those who had agreed to participate in the project: Aubry, Emmanuel, d’Indy and Rolland. Laloy, who worked as editor-in-chief at the journal from 1901 to 1905, mentioned in his memoirs that Rolland nevertheless felt that the project was premature; Rolland had imagined a journal that was, above all, wholly scholarly, which would certainly have excluded the branch of music criticism that diminished the journal’s prestige and placed it at the same level as other musical journals in circulation at the turn of the century, like Le Ménestrel and Le Monde musical.Footnote 62 La Revue musicale’s chief founder, however, wanted the journal to have a direct influence on musical circles, both in matters of historical knowledge and with regard to criticism. He outlined his editorial programme in the first issue, published in January 1901:
Concerning questions of music history, first invoke ‘sources’; closely examine original documents, compare them, and make them speak as much as possible; step aside from the monuments that we wish to promote and, rather than using rhetoric under the pretence of making them more beautiful, endeavour instead to describe them and surround them with illuminating facts; observe patiently before judging, ensuring that we see things as they are, and not as it pleases us or as it would benefit us to see them; consider the analysis of early compositions as a source of fine intellectual pleasure, and study everything, the beautiful and the less beautiful, without bias, following the example of the historian who, rather than making himself an object of his work, is obliged to focus at times on heroes, and at other times on monsters or vulgar men; bring this passionate curiosity to the study of the musical past, this love of details, this meticulousness and authenticity that defines the true lover of art (consequently, restore the respect for consecrated masterpieces in the eyes of certain theatre directors and publishers who, in the lowly spirit of commercial exploitation, regularly denature, falsify, and betray the intentions of the great masters); finally, with regard to contemporary art, promote all that which seeks to reinvent not only our aesthetic, but also the outdated musical system that we use;Footnote 63 be the best friend possible to everything that is new, bold, sincere, human, and French: for us, these should be the rules of music criticism.Footnote 64
According to Reibel, ‘in the nineteenth century, the goal of criticism was not to be intelligible, but to prolong and convey the impression [of intelligibility]’.Footnote 65 This objective, which ruled over music criticism in the newspapers and in widely distributed music journals like Musica, was not immediately overturned with the creation of La Revue musicale. Critics still characterized music by and large by describing the nature of its effects, rather than trying to understand its internal mechanisms.Footnote 66 However, in the new journal, Combarieu and the other musicologists brought to light a new possibility – that of an informed and well-sourced music criticism. Music criticism was thus reconceived as an outcome of knowledge, dedicated to the analysis and interpretation of musical works, its free expression being guaranteed by the journal’s independence. The project was not necessarily new, but the circumstances were certainly favourable to its success: the journal was run independently and therefore was free of the vested interests of institutions and music businesses, and, with the support of a select group of readers, it was also technically free from financial constraints.Footnote 67 Nonetheless, such independence and freedom were relative: Combarieu’s La Revue musicale, and those journals that followed (Le Mercure musical and La Revue S.I.M.), soon had to contend with the financial necessity of subscription revenues. Consequently, they had to ensure that the contents could draw the widest readership possible, all the while maintaining the journal’s initial ‘scholarly’ orientation. Despite the material impossibility of avoiding these financial restrictions, La Revue musicale (as would Le Mercure musical and subsequent journals) still managed to reset music criticism and provide it with new historical and theoretical bases in order to achieve its pedagogical objectives. Music criticism in La Revue musicale thus focused on early music and would interpret the works according to historical knowledge about the era in question. In his first column, Combarieu explored the principles that guided Paul Taffanel’s decision to systematically introduce a very short instrumental prelude to provide the singers with the right key for all a cappella pieces, whether they were composed by Janequin, Bach or Schumann, when he conducted concerts for the Société des concerts du Conservatoire. The critic determined that Taffanel’s approach did not conform to historical performance practice. Recalling Théodore Dubois’s remarks: ‘I can tolerate criticism, but I wish that it would justify itself and base itself on proof’,Footnote 68 Cambarieu also based his criticism on the understanding of musical practices and works. In this spirit, La Revue musicale offered its readers critical studies of recently performed early and modern musical works, accompanied with musical examplesFootnote 69 that could be found in the main text of the journal. Concert reviews accompanied by musical examples, however, were still quite rare.
A New Network for the New Critics
The initiative of Combarieu and his colleagues inaugurated a new network of music critics that comprised music specialists and musicologists. During the first couple of years (1901–1902), it was difficult to persuade new contributors to participate in the project; nevertheless, Romain Rolland actively sought to recruit new writers. Traces of his efforts have remained: in a letter of February 1902 he solicited Paul Dukas’s collaboration at La Revue musicale by suggesting that composers were particularly well-placed to write good music criticism:
We are fairly well equipped to deal with music of the past but less so for contemporary music …. All it takes to write passable criticism for music of the past is some intelligence and work: everything is already in order and has been explained; the preceding generations have worked to shape our judgment and taste. But for criticism of the present, it takes a lot more; one needs to be, in one shape or form, a creator. However, artist-creators much prefer to create than to analyze, except in very few cases where the two strengths are combined.…Footnote 70
Dukas had already acquired a solid reputation as a music critic by that time; his contemporaries greatly admired his work, which Goubault designated as ‘erudite criticism’.Footnote 71
Unfortunately for Rolland and his colleagues, Dukas was already writing the music columns in the Revue hebdomadaire (1892–1901) and the Chronique des arts et de la curiosité (1894–1905), and so could not contribute to the new journal. In another letter from May 1902, Rolland asked Tiersot if he would publish a talk he had recently given in the Revue musicale.Footnote 72 Although Tiersot had previously published material in the journal,Footnote 73 his work as a columnist at Le Ménestrel curtailed his activity as a critic for the Revue musicale. His contributions were sporadic, and tended to be essentially musicological. In the end, Rolland regularly had to write the concert reviews himself.Footnote 74 This work ceased to please him, however, when he was prevented from expressing his opinions freely.
In a letter of 1907 to a friend, Esther Marchand, Rolland explained that in the past Combarieu had refused to publish extracts from a collection of musical works from the seventeenth century that he had put together for his dissertation because he had judged it to be ‘uninteresting’.Footnote 75 The problem of freedom of expression that he encountered at La Revue musicale tainted in the same way its participation to La Revue de Paris.Footnote 76 Rolland could not wholeheartedly commit himself to Combarieu’s journal. The two men did not get along very well;Footnote 77 Rolland was critical of his colleague’s judgment and the stranglehold he maintained over the journal’s contents, which restricted the writers’ freedom of expression.Footnote 78 This disagreement soon pushed Rolland to switch allegiances and support the creation of a new journal.
As for Combarieu, while he kept certain articles and reviews for himself, he did share part of the editorial responsibility with Laloy.Footnote 79 Laloy, in turn, became a rather prolific writer. He published a number of articles and pieces of music criticism in the early years of the Revue that garnered much admiration, such as his critical analyses of works of ‘modern music’, the first of which examined d’Indy’s L’Étranger, Debussy’s L’Après-midi d’un faune and Chausson’s Serres chaudes.Footnote 80 By and large, between 1901 and 1904, the principal authors of the new criticism in the Revue d’histoire et de critique musicales were Combarieu, Rolland and Laloy. The network of music critics was admittedly quite small. Although the journal published a few writings by well-known critics like Louis Schneider (1902) and Gauthier-Villars (1903), the editorial board, which was dominated by Combarieu, seems to have struggled to generate enthusiasm for this new approach to criticism within the journal. And yet, as Rolland recalled, following the conference in 1900 and with the establishment of music history courses at the Schola Cantorum and a lecture series at the École des hautes études sociales,Footnote 81
the development of music criticism was actually quite swift. University professors, former students of the École normale supérieure and the École des chartes, like Henri Lichtenberg, Louis Laloy and Pierre Aubry, sought to use precise methods of historical criticism in their analysis of works of the past as well as of the present. Choirmasters or organists with rare erudition like André Pirro and Gastoué, composers like Vincent d’Indy, Debussy, and a few others, produced exceptional analyses of their art, [a quality] that can be attributed to the intimate understanding of their artistic practice …. There is a public and a host of distinguished writers to sustain … five or six good music journals of a scholarly nature, some of which could rival the best in Germany.Footnote 82
The journal that ‘could rival’ German journals was not Combarieu’s La Revue musicale. Instead, it was the Mercure musical that fitted the bill. The new journal was, in fact, established in response to Combarieu’s lack of vision and commitment, and as a counterpart to the Revue musicale which remained, in Laloy’s words, too ‘moderate’.Footnote 83 Laloy clearly indicated that Rolland and Jean Marnold (who was working at that time as a music critic for the Mercure de France) convinced him to leave Combarieu’s journal in May 1905 in order for them to launch the new journal together. Prior to this, Marnold and Rolland, with Laloy’s support, had tried to convince Combarieu to reorganize his journal in order to take advantage of the infrastructure that was already in place. Combarieu’s journal, it should be recalled, had received a grant from the Ministère de l’instruction publique et des Beaux Arts. Furthermore, it was printed by the Benedictines of Solesmes Abbey, which, according to Laloy’s recollections, was one of the sole printshops owning music fonts.Footnote 84 In July 1904, Rolland wrote:
I completely agree with you about the Journal, and I feel that it is best to wait for Laloy to disassociate himself from Combarieu, if he can, or to transform the Revue musicale according to our wishes. That way, we could benefit in part from the material organization and from the editor’s experience. It goes without saying that, whatever happens, I am at your service.Footnote 85
In August, Marnold confirmed his intention to infiltrate Combarieu’s journal in a letter to Rolland:
For our project of the Revue musicale, once Laloy returns, I shall see if it is possible to penetrate bit by bit, and in doing so show Combarieu how the journal would benefit from the change. He might ask his associate to abduct you (!!!) from the Revue d’art dramatique (there are cats that eat with relish only that which they have stolen).Footnote 86
The overhaul of Combarieu’s journal never happened, and so Laloy quitted his position as editor-in-chief. With the creation of the new journal, Marnold, Rolland and Laloy sought to foster intelligent and independent music criticism. Judging from Rolland’s correspondence, he respected Marnold’s style and way of thinking – at least that is what he seems to have meant.Footnote 87 He wrote to Marnold:
I read your columns with keen interest. They are free, lively, and prolific. Is there anything new regarding the journal project? I am, more than ever, in favour of it. The last few issues of the Revue musicale are the best proof of the utility and, moreover, the necessity of a new journal. Even the free spirits are no longer free when they write for Combarieu’s journal.Footnote 88
The project came to fruition in the Spring of 1905 and the first issue of the new journal, the Mercure musical, appeared on 15 May 1905.Footnote 89 Of the initial trio, however, only Laloy and Marnold remained on the editorial board of the Mercure musical, after Rolland withdrew from the journal. Musicological and critical activity had become less of a priority, for Rolland who was then intensely involved in the writing of his celebrated novel Jean-Christophe. It is indeed because he wanted to be free to criticize in his novel, even indirectly, the musical milieu that he progressively withdraws from the latter.Footnote 90 Between 1905 and 1906, Laloy and Marnold published many provocative articles,Footnote 91 and reviews were often written with the kind of freedom of expression for which Rolland had called.Footnote 92 The journal became involved in several controversies in defence of modern music – particularly in support of Debussy – and in attacks against the conservatism of certain works for the operatic stage.Footnote 93
Rolland still wrote some articles for La Revue d’art dramatique in 1905, a journal he particularly liked, but he was increasingly less motivated to write criticism. Even so, Marnold asked Rolland if he would take over the opera reviews. The writer hesitated:
I will do my best to help you with the new journal. As for the theatre [column], I would ask for a delay in giving you my answer until the start of the term in October. It’s partly an issue of my health, as I am constantly prevented from going out in the evening in Winter. But to tell you the truth, it’s a question of taste. You praise my honesty. Understand that I am sickened by the endless, ridiculous, and childish farce that is musical theatre. You will tell me it is all the more crucial to take up the battle. I dread that it will be a waste of time and that this farce is pretty much inherent to the genre. You are asking me to clean the Augean stables. They should rather be burned.Footnote 94
In the end, the art critic Raymond BouyerFootnote 95 took over the theatre column. His music criticism did not resort to the historical or analytical methods promoted by the musicologists, nor did it have a polemical style like that of Marnold and Laloy. The latter two critics took care of the main bulk of the bi-weekly column (‘Chronique de la quinzaine’) until 1907 when the journal, for financial reasons, merged with the Bulletin de la Société internationale de musique (French section), a journal recently launched by the musicologist Jules Écorcheville,Footnote 96 who had participated in 1904 in the creation of a French section of the Société internationale de musique and had afterwards held the office of treasurer in it.Footnote 97 Écorcheville’s name first appeared on the list of the main collaborators in the June 1905 issue. In fact, he collaborated but scantly to the journal, under the name Jean Leroux.Footnote 98 However, his works on French string music of the seventeenth century were much cited in the journal through his friend Laloy, who reported on his thesis defence and publications. In the 15 July 1906 issue, Le Mercure musical even published an article by Lionel de la Laurencie devoted to Ecorcheville’s two theses: Vingt Suites d’orchestre du XVIIe siècle (1640–1670) and De Lulli à Rameau (1690–1730). L’esthétique musicale.Footnote 99 The newly amalgamated journal was managed by Laloy and Écorcheville, and had a dependable readership that comprised the members of the S.I.M. Marnold’s combative spirit probably did not fit well with Écorcheville, who chose to shift the journal away from aesthetic polemics about modern music and, instead, promote historical studies. The musicologist sought to make the journal more scholarly in character,Footnote 100 while still providing substantial space for musical news and events (in the column ‘Le mois’). The music chronicle was an important part of the journal, as its readership included many of music enthusiasts from the upper classes who supported the S.I.M.Footnote 101 and enjoyed reading news about musical life, particularly when controversies erupted. Laloy fully supported the journal and wrote extensively for it,Footnote 102 but there were also several new contributors, including Rolland’s student, Henry Prunières,Footnote 103 and Lionel de La Laurencie, a musicologist who was already building a reputation for his work on seventeenth-century French music. These two men were to play an important role in the milieu, Prunières with the revival of La Revue musicale after World War One and La Laurencie in the creation of the Société française de musicologie in 1917. But in the early years of their careers, from 1907 to 1908, these young musicologists mainly published articles on music history that related to their doctoral dissertations,Footnote 104 and wrote music criticism with a kind of free spirit instilled in them by Rolland, which nevertheless also betrayed debutants’ hesitation, a kind of bookishness mixed with judicious commentary.Footnote 105
The Bulletin français de la S.I.M. ran into financial difficulties in 1909 when the publisher went bankrupt. Laloy gave Écorcheville the necessary funds to publish the last few issues of the year and then left the journal definitively, having decided to be no longer ‘involved in managing journals, [and instead] be content writing for them’.Footnote 106 Écorcheville thus turned to Émile Vuillermoz,Footnote 107 who had an established reputation as a music critic and an extensive network in modern music circles, to fill the position of editor-in-chief. The editorial board for the journal, henceforth called S.I.M. Revue musicale,Footnote 108 soon expanded with the addition of René Lyr as the editor for Belgium in 1910 and Émile Heintz-Arnault for Germany in 1912.Footnote 109
In order to ensure the journal’s survival, Écorcheville needed to provide it with fresh momentum and guarantee a larger readership. While the musicology articles still maintained an important presence, they were accompanied by increasingly larger sections devoted to gossip items, memoirs, music news and happenings (concerts, books, music-halls and cabarets), curiosities and investigations. Obviously, the review could not afford to publish only pure musicological content that would have only aroused the interest of a handful of musicologists. With its prosperity thus secured, the journal absorbed two other music journals, Combarieu’s La Revue musicale in 1912 and Le Courrier musical in 1913.
With regard to music criticism, the coverage of the theatres and concerts changed course: in 1910 Écorcheville handed the critical platform over to the established critic and former composer, Gaston Carraud, who penned ‘Le mois à Paris’ and the ‘Théâtres et concerts’ column in the journal’s supplement, L’actualité musicale.Footnote 110 In 1911, Vuillermoz took over, and wrote the main bulk of the theatre reviews. Prunières wrote a review of the performance of Molière’s and Lully’s Bourgeois gentilhomme at the Odéon in December 1911,Footnote 111 and La Laurencie penned another two reviews in 1912: however, these were the last articles written by the members of the network of musicologist-critics in the journal. Beginning in 1912, Écorcheville and Vuillermoz seemed to adopt the premise initially promoted by Rolland: that is, to invest composers with the necessary authority to write music criticism.Footnote 112 Between 1912 and 1914, Debussy, Ravel, d’Indy (aided by either Auguste Sérieyx or Pierre de Bréville), Alfredo Casella and Reynaldo Hahn wrote the concert reviews; Vuillermoz, however, continued to write the theatre criticism. Readers reacted enthusiastically as composers took over this critical platform, and the journal moved decisively into its most successful period ever.Footnote 113
Conclusion
When Laloy recalled the founding of Combarieu’s La Revue musicale several years later, he reminded his readers that, at that time, Rolland felt the project was premature.Footnote 114 Was it French musicology that was not yet ready in Rolland’s mind? Or was it the French reading public, who lacked the education required to contend with an approach to writing about music that differed from what they were used to reading in newspapers or the music journals already in existence? Ten years later, Rolland would insist that there now existed ‘a public and a host of distinguished writers to sustain … five or six good music journals’.Footnote 115 In reality, however, Laloy and Marnold, and later Écorcheville and Vuillermoz, found themselves in the position of continually adapting the content of the Mercure musical and the Revue S.I.M. to accommodate at once the journals’ relatively fragile financial situation and a readership that was not yet ready to follow scholarly criticism, as the musicologists and founders of La Revue musical had originally hoped for back in 1901. Rolland, Laloy and Écorcheville had attempted to build a real network of musicologists working as music critics.
Laloy seems to have been the pillar of the new criticism; however, his commitment to Debussy, and the controversies he stirred up (particularly in his articles against Camille Mauclair),Footnote 116 contributed to his being associated with the gang of fighters of the Mercure musical, an option that Écorcheville would not favour for La Revue musicale S.I.M. When Laloy withdrew voluntarily from the management of the journal in 1909, once the publisher went bankrupt, he was relegated to a secondary role from 1910 on. Rolland’s former students, Écorcheville and Prunières, worked as music critics at a time when the conditions were the closest to his ideal of independent journalism. Although Écorcheville, in his position as editor-in-chief, still penned some of the journal’s review columns, the other musicologists stopped writing criticism and composers instead took over the task. The network of musicologist-critics thus broke down and, paradoxically, the journal resumed a tradition of composer-criticism inherited from the nineteenth century, which had been dominated by the figures of Berlioz or Schumann. The years 1912–1914 stood out, however, as the golden age of this independent Revue so coveted by Rolland, Tiersot and Laloy. Écorcheville managed the journal with palpable tact, balancing the journal’s interests with those of the partner institutions, the S.I.M. and the Société française des amis de la musique, and the journal boasted an extraordinarily large readership,Footnote 117 despite a highly competitive market. The network that brought to life this music criticism, regarded as ‘serious, thoughtful, patiently speculative and calmly curious, intelligent and never afraid to reveal its scholarship, and courteously combative’,Footnote 118 came to an end with the outbreak of war in 1914, as the Revue S.I.M. ceased its operations. It was revived, however, after the war with the founding La Revue musicale by Prunières. But Prunières, prudently, would not hire musicologists to develop a music criticism at once rigorous and combative, as Laloy or Marnold had done. Instead, he took up the characteristically Republican project of promoting musical culture, more in the style of Écorcheville, and thus responding to the interests of both the cultivated bourgeoisie and the musical, literary and artistic milieus through diffusion of music knowledge. He strove for a music criticism that would ‘deploy the best effort to dissipate the ignorance of the public and their absurd prejudices, and to make them appreciate both the art of the past that they do not mistrust and the art of the present that they abhor a priori’.Footnote 119
