Le Concours du Prix de Rome de musique (1803–1968) ed. by Julia Lu and Alexandre Dratwicki (review)

The first thirty pages of this biblical book are obligatory reading for francophile musicologists, many of whom—like myself—will have at some time indulged in vacuous phrases about the ‘coveted Prix de Rome’ (or somesuch) without really knowing much about it. As the authors suggest, many make elementary mistakes such as confusing the applicants’ cantatas with the winners’ envois. Such slips have inevitably resulted from the recopying of erroneous snippets from previous sources: clearly a more focused study has been needed for some time. Here it is at last.

Detailing the lifespan of the prize from birth to death, the authors/editors cogently present its history in their introduction and trace the changes it underwent. After informing us of its raison d’être and its role in the pattern of subvention for post-Revolutionary support of the musical arts, it recounts this history of change: change of administration—from Institut to Académie to Conservatoire; change of requirements for the concourants—from fugues to arias, duets, trios, choruses, and orchestrated overtures (to respond to changes in the fashion for opera); changes to the subject matter of the prescribed cantata texts; and changes in its public face, through concerts and ceremonies. We begin to see, suggest Dratwicki and Lu, that its days are numbered as early as the 1920s through remarks that its prescribed subjects were ‘d’une faiblesse extrême’ (p. 393 n. 10). This preface whets our appetite for an important theme that pervades the rest of the book: the relationship between the ‘coveted prize’ and the actuality of real music.

If you can afford this beautifully presented book, have it on your shelf. If you can’t, read the preface. The remainder is written by many authors, champions of the graveyard of concourants who, as winners, losers, runners up, or even non-entrants related to the prize in some way. Maybe they won and disappeared into obscurity. Maybe they lost and became famous. Maybe they didn’t bother with it but still had a story to tell.

Dratwicki and Lu begin by placing the institution among the others that existed around the turn of the eighteenth century when the essential link was between the Institut de France and the Académie in Rome. At its centre was the cantata, a form that had been central to French music since the seventeenth century. This inheritance (seen by some as a millstone) was never entirely dropped. The stages of the competition were constantly in flux, beginning with a two-stage process: the concours d’essai, and the concours définitif. A fugue (at first only an exposition) and a chorus were the earliest requirements.

But the Baroque heritage had to catch up with Romanticism, and as Lu explains, Romantic texts had to be prefaced with an opera overture: here we begin to see how the prize—and the current book—impinges importantly on wider musical history. Minutes of meetings even mention the price of winners’ dinners! Their concerts were also big occasions: not only for haute-coutured women but also for talent-spotters from the trade. Debutante singers, for example, would willingly sing for free in the hope of attracting further dates. The enterprise was becoming central to professional musical life in Paris.

Several crucial changes are underlined. In 1831, for example, the cantata was expanded to two voices and in 1839 it was prescribed for STB, and it had to have a solo, a duet, and a trio and to mix genres from the grave to the doux. Also introduced was a ‘scène lyrique’: doffing the cap to Parisian taste. Libretto subjects were also updated: antiquity was on the decline, realist subjects on the increase, and beside these came legendary, biblical, and fictitious themes. By 1863 the Opéra-Comique had influence.

Political agendas, later explored by Jann Pasler, also impacted and...