From Servant to Savant: Musical Privilege, Property, and the French Revolution

by Rebecca Dowd Geoffroy-Schwinden

Overview

Before the French Revolution, making music was an activity that required permission. After the Revolution, music was an object that could be possessed. Everyone seemingly hoped to gain something from owning music. Musicians claimed it as their unalienable personal expression while the French nation sought to enhance imperial ambitions by appropriating it as the collective product of cultural heritage and national industry. Musicians capitalized on these changes to protect their professionalization within new laws and institutions, while excluding those without credentials from their elite echelon. From Servant to Savant demonstrates how the French Revolution set the stage for the emergence of so-called musical "Romanticism" and the legacies that continue to haunt musical institutions and industries. As musicians and the government negotiated the place of music in a reimagined French society, new epistemic and professional practices constituted three lasting values of musical production: the composer's sovereignty, the musical work's inviolability, and the nation's supremacy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780197511534
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	01/18/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	296
File size:	10 MB

About the Author

Rebecca Dowd Geoffroy-Schwinden is an Associate Professor of Music History at the University of North Texas who works on eighteenth-century music cultures and musical labor during the early Age of Revolution.

Table of Contents

Preface Acknowledgements Abbreviations Note on Translation of Sources Introduction On Privilege, Property, and Professionalization The Abolition of Privilege The Politics of Historiography and the Archive Chapter Summaries Part I Musical Privilege Chapter 1 Legal Privilège and Musical Production The Privilege to Perform Musical Privilege in Publishing, Commerce, and Manufacturing Privilege as Property The "Dilution" of Privilege Chapter 2 Social Privilège and Musician-Masons French Masonry, Music, and Parisian Sociability Brother Servants and Occasional Brothers Talented Brothers, Architects of Music, and Free Associates Fellow Professionals and Savants "A Little Lesson in Social Harmony" Part II Property Chapter 3 Private Property: Music and Authorship Proprietary Tremors on the Eve of Revolution From Musical Privilege to Musical Property The "Declaration of the Rights of Genius" Chapter 4 Public Servants From Pleasing Paris to Serving the Nation An Institution of Their Own Patriotic Servants Professionalization and Public Patronage Chapter 5 Cultural Heritage: Music as Work of Art Music and the Fine Arts under the Revolution The Conservatory's "Museum" of Musical Works The Museum's Imperial Agenda "The Edifice is Rising" Cultural Property and Artworks for the Future Chapter 6 National Industry: Music as a "Useful" Art and Science Music, the Useful Arts, and Mechanical Invention Interlude: A Method in the Madness Mechanical Innovations: Useful to Whom? The Conservatory's Design for a "Romantic Machine" Postlude: A "Detractor" Breaks his "Silence" Conclusion: Privilege by Any Other Name Appendix Bibliography Index

Editorial Reviews

"Geoffroy-Schwinden's study is a model of its kind." — Claire Fontijn, Journal of the American Musicological Society

"Geoffroy-Schwinden provides a compelling new framework for investigating the politics of music-making in the French Enlightenment, one rooted in the ethics and practices of musicians' labour. This study has the potential permanently to upend our understanding of the musical work in the eighteenth century by offering novel ways of looking at old problems of Revolutionary historiography." — Callum Blackmore, Eighteenth-Century Music

"This interesting book provides documentary and archival evidence for a transition in the source of musicians' support in France at the time of the French Revolution." — W. E. Grim, Strayer University, CHOICE

"...an insightful examination of the years around the French Revolution when the legal protections for music moved from a system of monopolies granted by the sovereign that regulated music as an activity to a framework that assumed music was a kind of property." — Kristen M. Turner, North Carolina State University, New Books Network

"Geoffroy-Schwinden has made a big breakthrough in reinterpreting what happened in musical culture during the French Revolution. By digging deep into the social contexts surrounding musical events she demonstrates how musicians reinvented themselves as professional savants to wield a broad new authority." — William Weber, Department of History, University of California, Long Beach

"A pioneering assessment, conjoining musicological assessment with research into professionalisation, institutional history, and cultural history. Geoffroy-Schwinden promises to transform our understanding of a key period in European musical history." — Mark Darlow, University of Cambridge

"Balancing evocative narratives with historically-informed analysis, Rebecca Dowd Geoffroy-Schwinden brilliantly reveals how French revolutionaries dethroned privilege in the musical world. In its place, they installed music as property. With inventions legally protected and works commercially produced, musicians became professionals. As contemporaries elevated musical monuments to represent national and universal values, the foundations of modern music history took root." — Jann Pasler, Distinguished Professor of Music, UC San Diego

"A strength of this book is its fresh use of archives...Her demonstration of...the role of musicians in asserting national glory is the book's most powerful, and at times shocking, contribution." — James H. Johnson, French History

"I think this bottom-up approach is the real stuff of history, so to see a book like this is refreshing. I hope it will inspire more scholars to join in conducting such research." — Shaena B. Weitz, Music & Letters

"...to see a book like this is refreshing. I hope it will inspire more scholars to join in conducting such research." — Shaena B. Weitz, University of Bristol

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