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1 Introduction T wo disasters struck France in 1870. The first was the FrancoPrussian War, a catastrophe whose effects on European geopolitical balances were felt for generations. Under Napoleon III and his ravishing redheaded empress Eugénie, France enjoyed glittering balls and apparent prosperity. Paris was gradually being transformed into the city of broad boulevards, gracious parks, and elegant buildings we know today. The haute bourgeoisie enriched itself by way of land speculation associated with the reconstruction of the city, while the less fortunate were crowded into undesirable areas. The gap between rich and poor, always enormous, continued to grow. The military seemed to be at the height of its power and glory, but magnificent uniforms and splendid parades only masked the essential weakness of French forces. In 1867 Offenbach’s Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein mocked the pretensions of the large number of heads of state who had flocked to the Paris Exposition. Only one visiting dignitary was neither amused nor fooled: Chancellor Otto von Bismarck of Prussia. A recent turn of events alerted Bismarck to the cracks beneath the French surface. At the urging of the ardently Catholic Eugénie, Napoleon had sent the Austrian Maximilian along with his wife, Charlotte, to rule Mexico as a puppet emperor. In a particularly bizarre instance of colonial hubris, Eugénie was convinced that the Mexicans would welcome the foreigners as their sovereigns and convert to their religion. The Mexicans themselves felt differently about their new ruler, however, and Napoleon was unable to send enough troops across the Atlantic to save the hapless Maximilian from execution (this tragic dénouement was captured in a remarkable painting by Manet). Bismarck recognized France’s baseless bravado for what it was, and advised his Kaiser accordingly. Bismarck cleverly manipulated the French into attacking Prussia, thereby rendering any mutual-aid treaties it had signed with other European countries null and void. Within six weeks the entire French army had capitulated, and Bismarck won an easy victory. Only Paris, besieged by Prussian troops, held out until the entire populace was in danger of Music Musique 2 starving to death. Napoleon and his empress went into exile, and the party was over. The second cataclysmic event that marked the year 1870 was nature’s own contribution: a plague of the dreaded vineyard-destroying Phylloxera vitifoliae; its effects were equally felt in the United States. The earliest wines produced in North America came from vines indigenous to the territories that eventually became the New England states. Like the settlers of this rocky, only partially arable area, these vines were certainly hardy, but the grapes they brought forth seemed unsuited to the production of the finest wines. In the second half of the eighteenth century, Franciscan monks from Spain, seeking a way to make their tours of missionary duty a little less ascetic, brought European grape-producing plants to San Diego. This was the beginning of a flourishing California wine industry, which soon incorporated the finest stock from France. And then along came phylloxera. This tiny insect, with its fly-like transparent wings and voracious appetite, relished the taste of the roots of the California and European vineyards and soon demolished every last one. Fortunately, the roots of the New England plants did not appeal to the fussy phylloxera, and so these aboriginal vineyards remained alive and well. The roots of a vine do not affect the taste of the grape it produces, and so these roots were bought by vineyard owners in France and California alike. Onto these strictly American roots wine producers were able to graft the branches of their own plants, thus saving the wine industries of both continents. As we shall see, the Franco-Prussian War had a direct effect on the development of French music. Composers of that humiliated nation, determined to shake the influence of the great German masters, began to forge a distinctive French style either by returning to their own Lully-RameauCouperin roots or veering in new idiosyncratic directions. This surge of patriotic pride was but one manifestation of the spirit of nationalism that swept nineteenth-century Europe, leading to Czech, Finnish, Russian, Spanish, and other folk-based, easily identifiable alternatives to the Germanic tradition. The United States in 1870 was far too preoccupied with the aftereffects of its own Civil War to worry about internecine European squabbles. The sorely buffeted Union had its own reasons for wanting to create discernibly American styles in the arts, owing to its sense of...

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