Barbara L. Kelly – författare

Described by Maurice Ravel as one of the most considerable talents in French music of his generation, Darius Milhaud remains a largely neglected composer. This book reappraises his contribution, focusing on the emergence of the composer's style until his Jewish background forced his exile to the United States on the eve of the World War II. The period 1912-1939 spans the crucial years that mark the development of Milhaud's mature style. It was also during this time that he published his most important writings on contemporary music and its relationship to the past. Barbara Kelly discusses the extent to which Milhaud's complex views on the idea of a French national musical heritage relate to his own practice, and considers how his works reflect the balance between innovation and tradition. Drawing comparisons with contemporaries, such as Debussy, Satie, Schoenberg, Stravinsky and Poulenc, the book argues that the rhythmic vitality of Milhaud's style and his modal approach within a polytonal context mark him out as an original and distinctive composer.

This collection of essays by scholars of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French music has been assembled in homage to the influential and inspirational French musicologist François Lesure who died in 2001. Lesure's immense erudition was legendary and spanned music from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. Two French composers who were particular foci in his scholarship were Berlioz and Debussy and this collection is based on scholarship around these two composers and the sources, contexts and legacies relating to their work.

The Parisian Musical Avant-Garde during the Great War brings music in the city to life during and immediately after the conflict. It tells the extraordinary story of singer, Jane Bathori, who became temporary director of an avant-garde theatre in Paris, the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier. Drawing on a wide inter-artistic network, Bathori collaborated with writers, set designers, choreographers, performers and composers to create highly original programmes by commissioning new works, reviving early music, staging chamber opera, mixing high art music with folk, popular and patriotic songs, and incorporating literary events. Bathori is remembered for her advocacy of composers such as Ravel, Satie, Poulenc and Milhaud, but was systematically written out of theatre history. Drawing on a rich range of archival materials, I show that her war-time artistic action sparked inter-artistic collaborations and shaped interwar musical taste, alongside figures such as Serge Diaghilev and Jean Cocteau.

The Parisian Musical Avant-Garde during the Great War brings music in the city to life during and immediately after the conflict. It tells the extraordinary story of singer, Jane Bathori, who became temporary director of an avant-garde theatre in Paris, the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier. Drawing on a wide inter-artistic network, Bathori collaborated with writers, set designers, choreographers, performers and composers to create highly original programmes by commissioning new works, reviving early music, staging chamber opera, mixing high art music with folk, popular and patriotic songs, and incorporating literary events. Bathori is remembered for her advocacy of composers such as Ravel, Satie, Poulenc and Milhaud, but was systematically written out of theatre history. Drawing on a rich range of archival materials, I show that her war-time artistic action sparked inter-artistic collaborations and shaped interwar musical taste, alongside figures such as Serge Diaghilev and Jean Cocteau.

Described by Maurice Ravel as one of the most considerable talents in French music of his generation, Darius Milhaud remains a largely neglected composer. This book reappraises his contribution, focusing on the emergence of the composer's style until his Jewish background forced his exile to the United States on the eve of the World War II. The period 1912-1939 spans the crucial years that mark the development of Milhaud's mature style. It was also during this time that he published his most important writings on contemporary music and its relationship to the past. Barbara Kelly discusses the extent to which Milhaud's complex views on the idea of a French national musical heritage relate to his own practice, and considers how his works reflect the balance between innovation and tradition. Drawing comparisons with contemporaries, such as Debussy, Satie, Schoenberg, Stravinsky and Poulenc, the book argues that the rhythmic vitality of Milhaud's style and his modal approach within a polytonal context mark him out as an original and distinctive composer.

This collection of essays by scholars of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French music has been assembled in homage to the influential and inspirational French musicologist François Lesure who died in 2001. Lesure's immense erudition was legendary and spanned music from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. Two French composers who were particular foci in his scholarship were Berlioz and Debussy and this collection is based on scholarship around these two composers and the sources, contexts and legacies relating to their work.

Over a century after his death, Debussy remains prominent in concert programmes and international scholarly research. This collection showcases the latest developments in the field. It reflects new preoccupations in aesthetics, using an array of archival sources to piece together Debussy's literary tastes and influences, and drawing on philosophy and contemporaneous ideas about perception and cognition to explore the perceived links between Debussy's music, emotion and nature. The volume is notable for its embrace of the composer's earliest and latest works, which are often seen as unrepresentative of the 'real' Debussy. Its fresh approaches to analysis give new focus, in particular, to rhythm, metre, and the dance. It also reflects the current musicological preoccupation with performance and recording. Debussy Studies 2 ends with an assessment of the ways in which the scholarly debates immediately after his death have continued to influence our understanding one hundred years on.

New, insightful essays from musicologists, historians, art historians, and literary scholars reconsider the relationship of Debussy, Gauguin, Zola, and other great French creative artists to cultural and political trends during the Third Republic.This collection of new essays examines the relationships between discourses of French national and regional identity, political alignment, and creative practice during one of France's most fascinating eras: the Third Republic.The authors, from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, explore the ways in which the architects of the Third Republic [re]constructed France culturally and artistically, in part through artful use of the press and [at the 1889Paris World's Fair] new technologies. The chapters also investigate changing attitudes toward Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande, attempts by composers and critics to define a musical canon, and the impact of religious education, spirituality, and exoticism for Gauguin and Jolivet. Tensions between the center and region are seen in celebrations for the national musical figurehead, Rameau, and in the cultural regionalism that flourished in the annexed territories of Alsace and Lorraine.Contributors: Edward Berenson, Katharine Ellis, Annegret Fauser, Didier Francfort, Brian Hart, Steven Huebner, Barbara L. Kelly, Detmar Klein, Deborah Mawer, James Ross, Marion Schmid, and Debora Silverman.Barbara L. Kelly is Professor of Musicology at Keele University.

This collection uncovers how music criticism contributed to national and transnational preoccupations and agendas.Music Criticism in France examines the aesthetic battles that animated and informed French musical criticism during the interwar period (1918-1939). Drawing upon a rich corpus of critical writings and archival documents, the book uncovers some of the public debates surrounding classical music in the immediate aftermath of the Great War until the eve of World War II. As such, it provides new insights into the priorities, values and challenges that affected the musical milieu of this war-bound generation.This collection of essays brings together scholars from different areas of musicology and related humanities disciplines; it also draws on different anglophone and francophone intellectual traditions. As well as considering the reception of individual works, the contributors examine key individuals, composer-critic pairings, the composer as critic and technician, the role of influential journals, and music criticism as a pedagogical tool for concert-going and radio audiences.Focusing on the themes of authority, advocacy and legacy, it shows the contribution of principal critics such as Vuillermoz, Vallas, Prunières, Schloezer and Koechlin to shaping our understanding of music in the first half of the twentieth century in France. We see how criticism contributes to national and transnational preoccupations and agendas, which were of considerable importance throughout the interwar period and continue to have relevance today.BARBARA L. KELLY is Director of Research and Professor of Musicology at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester. CHRISTOPHER MOORE is Associate Professor of Musicology at the University of Ottawa. Contributors: PHILIPPE CATHÉ, MICHEL DUCHESNEAU, KIMBERLY FRANCIS, JACINTHE HARBEC, BARBARA L. KELLY, PASCAL LÉCROART, CHRISTOPHER MOORE, RACHEL MOORE, JANN PASLER, CAROLINE RAE, DANICK TROTTIER, MARIANNE WHEELDON

Music and Postwar Transitions takes a groundbreaking and much anticipated dive into the concept of postwar transitions and how these affect and are affected by the world of music. Leading scholars in the field explore new approaches to create a novel understanding of music and postwar periods.

From the Napoleonic Wars to the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda, via the great world conflicts of the 20th century, Music and Postwar Transitions in the 19th and 20th Centuries is the first book to highlight the significance of ‘postwar transitions’ in the field of music and to demonstrate the influence that musicians, composers, critics, institutions, and publics have had on the period that follows conflict. Leading historians, political scientists, psychologists and musicologists explore the roles of music and culture in demobilization, reconstruction, memory, reconciliation, revenge, and nationalist backlash. Moving beyond the popular conception of music as an agent of peace, this study reveals music’s more complex and ambivalent role in the process of transition from war to peace.

Brings new insights to the music of well-known European composers by telling a fascinating, little-known story about French music publishing, specifically through the lens of Jacques Durand's Édition Classique.French composers, performers and musicologists acted as editors of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European 'classics', primarily for piano. Among these editors were Fauré, Saint-Saëns, Debussy, Ravel and Dukas; the objects of their enquiries included core works by Rameau, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Chopin. Presenting six composer-editor case studies, the volume shows that the French 'accent', both musical and cultural, upon this predominantly Austro-German music was highly varied. Editorial responses range from scholarly approaches to those directed by performance or compositional agendas, and from pan-European to strongly patriotic stances. Intriguing intersections are revealed between old and new, and between French and cross-European canons. Beyond editing, the book explores the Édition's role in pedagogy and performance, including by pianists Robert Casadesus and Yvonne Loriod, and in the reassertion of contemporary French composition, especially regarding innovation around neoclassicism. It will interest a wide readership, including musicologists, performers and concert-goers, cultural historians and other humanities scholars.