The Nineteenth Century Musical Renaissance in France (1870–1895)

Extract

Before I start on the main body of what I have to say, a few words of explanation are perhaps necessary.

First of all, with regard to the limits which I have set myself. You will have seen the dates—1870–1895—and possibly wondered at their apparent arbitrariness. But all I could hope to do here is to trace the main outlines of the first stage of France's musical revival. Debussy is only just on my map; Ravel, Roussel and even the later Fauré quite off it. But by 1895 all the main contributory elements which formed these later styles had made their appearance. Satie and Chabrier—the models acclaimed by a later generation—were active before Franck was dead: the Schola Cantorum was founded in the same year as Debussy's Après midi d'un faune appeared—in 1894. These twenty-five years are not the most glorious: much of the music was still tentative and the sense of national style was by no means complete. But because they were years of growth they are particularly worthy of sympathetic study.