The list of the morning
This week, “the world of books” advises reading a story of the wedding of French music and power, from Louis XIV to the present day, a beautiful book of the scholarly musicologist Maryvonne de Saint-Pulgent; Quebecers’ stories of Quebecers Jean-François Beauchemin who say singular and wacky lives; of Nathalie Azoulai’s new novel, which seriously addresses on October 7 in a comedy of mores…; Sinno snow account, in which she tackles her discovery of Mexico through a road trip to Chiapas in the early 2000s; Finally, new empathetic Rumena Buzarovska, which explore the tightness of North Macedonians – in exile or not.
HISTORY. “The musicians and the power in France”, by Maryvonne de Saint-Pulgent
In Musicians and power in FranceThe historian and musicologist Maryvonne de Saint-Pulgent, former heritage director, shows an incredible erudition to trace a course which leads us from Louis XIV to Emmanuel Macron (ten years of piano and a third prize at the Conservatoire d’Amiens, she notes).
She details the way in which proximity to the executive helped to shape the French musical scene, leading, according to her, to an impasse with her last incarnation, the composer Pierre Boulez (1925-2016), which she overwhelms under her light irony. Born from absolutism and courtesy, the figure of the great musician would have ended up borrowing more than one line.
If there is a French exception in this area, it lies above all in the early foundation of institutions capable of perpetuating the wedding of music and the State: the Academy, the Conservatory, the Prix de Rome and today IRCAM … These constitute the very early honor courses forced aspirants to glory. Sometimes the public hold is relaxing, when the big ones are less sensitive to music or less convinced of its supposed effects on the mass.
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