Composing the Citizen: Music as Public Utility in Third Republic France (review)

This exceptional book is cultural history at its richest and most thought-provoking. Though it is a long text, Pasler’s prose is unfailingly engaging, with a strong sense of narrative flow notable for its lucidity, detail, and depth. She offers a survey of French musical culture in the late nineteenth century from perspectives that are different from those in any previous study, taking as her starting point the role of music as “utilité publique.” This approach may sound a little dry as a concept, but its realization is revelatory. Pasler’s thesis is that musical activity of all sorts was an essential component in the revitalization of France after the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune—whether in the realms of high art (especially opera), popular song and dance, or musical accompaniments to public occasions—ranging from state celebrations and political manifestations to trips to the zoo and department store.

Her text is illustrated and illuminated with a vast array of documentary material. One of the triumphs of this book is that it brings these documents vibrantly to life, puts them into a context broader than a purely musical one, and demonstrates that music played a central part in defining French identity during the years following the humiliation of the Franco-Prussian war. It did so thanks to music of all sorts, by composers both unknown—like Jean-Jacque Debillemont, Louis Cesar Desormes, L. Ratz, and Felix Bayle—and known—like Jules Massenet, Léo Delibes, Camille Saint-Saëns, and Maurice Ravel (whose La Valse is the subject of the book’s brief “Coda”). Pasler uses all of them to exemplify specific social or emotional aspects, or ways in which “Frenchness” was asserted. The rewriting for the Opéra-Comique of Ambroise Thomas’ Mignon is a fine case in point, the ending now providing a suitable affirmation of the family values that contributed to making this work a hit (179–183).

Divided into twelve chapters, Pasler explores a number of themes: music as public utility, its use in public instruction and festivals, its role in defining politics and culture, its contribution to a spirit of national renewal and pride, its relationship with colonialism and resistance, its central place in popular entertainment and everyday experience (such as informal concerts presented by department stores), its importance as part of an emergent artistic avant-garde, and the significance of “exotic” and “bizarre” music at the 1889 Universal Exhibition.

In other hands, the deluge of documents presented as evidence might have proved intractable, but not in Pasler’s. Pasler presents examples that include a number of entertaining images, such as F. Chaffiol-Debillemeont’s “Marche of the Rajahs” from his incidental music to Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days (415), the relatively well-known Alphonse Allais funeral march “for a great deaf man” (539), and a delightful Cham (Amédée de Noé) cartoon depicting the conductor Jules Pasdeloup falling down a staircase made up of Wagnerian marches (281). Pasler’s other illustrations give the reader substance, too, in the form of carefully chosen music examples.

Presentation is exemplary; illustrations are clear and well-captioned; a series of appendixes provide valuable documentary support; and the index is as useful as it is thorough. Surprisingly, even though books, articles, newspapers, manuscripts, concert programs, and other documents are all scrupulously referenced in footnotes, the book has no bibliography. This omission is the only potential weakness in an otherwise highly distinguished publication. This inspiring and brilliantly original book will be essential reading for anyone interested in the broader impact of music in France at the end of the nineteenth century.