Institutionalized Folklore and Helvetic Ideology

Extract

Anyone who wonders about the aesthetic process behind convincing artificiality—its methods, functions and status—would scarcely find a more topical example than musical regionalism and, in French Switzerland in particular, representations linked to a domain of vocal music commonly described as “popular”, “folk”, “traditional” or even by the name of the region to which it refers. This music, which is performed by a large number of lay and religious choirs, is, as we shall see, one of synthesis. It lies on the border of verisimilitude because it is cast in a poetic and fictional vein, yet is evocative of past aspects of peasant song at the same time, through the incorporation of religious (Roman Catholic) and classical musical elements in simplified form. It has generally been accepted as revelatory of a specific culture, though in actual fact it derives from a patchwork of images of rurality (flashes), fractured in time and space, which court the brief impulse for escapism, for exotic sensations, to the point where its adepts become less mindful of how difficult it is to think out musical culture today.