Whose Spain?: Negotiating Spanish Music in Paris, 1908-1929
January 24, 2013, Pages 1-360
(Book)
University of Birmingham, United Kingdom
Abstract
This book studies the process through which the concept of "Spanish music" was negotiated in Paris between 1908 and 1929, and analyses the contributions of French and Spanish musicologists, music critics and opera composers and producers who took part in it. Since the early nineteenth century, Spain enjoyed pride of place in the French culture of"exoticism," and music played an important role in helping to articulate representations and conceptions of that country. In the early twentieth century, however, Spain and "Spanish music" gained a new position in the French intellectual imaginary thanks to the consolidation and institutionalisation of Hispanic studies as an academic discipline and, related to it, the re-emergence of the Hispanists. These specialists on Spanish culture, history and music, endowed the academic and critical production about "Spanish music" and culture with a knowledgeable basis. The writings of the Hispanists and music critics distilled a highly propagandistic attitude aimed at opposing "Spanish music" to the expansion of German and-to a lesser extent-Italian music and culture. Furthermore, their descriptions of "Spanish music" relied, to some extent, on inherited tropes of exoticism and marginalisation aimed at reinforcing French cultural hegemony. In addition to their essays and concert reviews, the production and reception of operas and other musical works for the stage provided a privileged space for negotiating notions of "Spanish music" in a way that reflected the intellectuals' concerns over the fate of French music. © 2013 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
Author keywords
Criticism; Exoticism; France; Hegemony; Nationalism; Opera; Spanish music; Transcultural
ISBN: 978-019997990-5;978-019985846-0 Original language: English
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199858460.001.0001Document Type: Book
Publisher: Oxford University Press
