The Harlequin Years. Music in Paris 1917-1929

Paris during the Twenties was a cheap place for travellers, so everybody went there. It was, as Stravinsky said, the hub of the musical world. As a result, few decades in the life of any European city have been as rich in musical personalities and achievements.

Composers working in or near the city included Ravel, Fauré, Satie, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Dukas, Koechlin, d?Indy, Enesco and Roussel as well as the up-and-coming members of Les Six, notably Poulenc, Milhaud and Auric. Among their collaborators were the painters Picasso, Braque, Derain, Laurencin, Dufy and Gris. Jean Cocteau kept a watchful eye on the new trends and impresarios ? Diaghilev, Ida Rubinstein and Serge Koussevitzky among them ? did their best to dragoon these multifarious talents into ordered enterprises. Horowitz, Robert Casadesus and Vlado Perlemuter all made their Paris debuts in this decade, as did the young prodigies Ginette Neveu and Yehudi Menuhin.

It was also a time of tensions. The war had cast doubt on old certainties. The whole notion of respect (about which Debussy had already had sour things to say) was called into question. Irreverence was in, short was beautiful, the circus was aesthetically at least as valuable as the symphony orchestra. It was also a time in which women were coming into their own: the composers Germaine Tailleferre and Lili Boulanger; salon hostesses the Princesse de Polignac and Mme Clemenceau; teachers such as Nadia Boulanger, Lili?s formidable elder sister; and the amazing harpsichordist Wanda Landowska.

The Harlequin Years charts a course through these turbulent waters, noting currents as well as personalities, telling stories as well as pondering the occasional philosophical problem. Through the whole book runs the double thread spun by Cocteau in his little volume Le coq et l?arlequin: the warp of the traditional French cock being woven with the weft of the foreign, multi-coloured harlequinade.

The story starts in 1917, with the premiere of Satie?s extraordinary ballet Parade. As Auric was to write some sixty years later, ?a breeze of fresh air had just begun to blow...?.

CONTENIDO:

Map: Paris in the 1920s
Introduction
Ackonwledgments
Chronology

- The legacy of peace and war
- Orchestras, conductors, chamber ensembles
- The Opéra
- The Opéra-Comique and other musical theatres
- 'Opérettes', music-hall, revues, 'chanson'
- Ballet
- The Establishment: the teaching institutions; the churches; the salons; the press
- Composer old and new
- Paris, the past and elsewhere

Select bibliography
List of photographs
Index