French Cultural Politics & Music

This book argues that French musical meanings and values in the years from 1898 to 1914 are best explained not in terms of contemporary artistic movements, but rather in terms of the political culture, which was undergoing subtle but profound transformation as nationalist Leagues enlarged the arena of political action. Applying recent insights from French history, sociology, political anthropology, and literary theory, the book reveals how nationalists used critics, educational institutions, concert series and lectures to disseminate their values through a discourse on French music and how the Republic and Left responded to this challenge.

Jane F. Fulcher is also the author of The Nation's Image: French Grand Opera as Politics and Politicized Art (1987), as well as numerous articles. She served as Visiting Professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris in 1985 and again in 1995. She has been a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (Paris) and a Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study (Berlin), the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Council of Learned Societies. Fulcher earned a Ph.D. at Columbia University and is now Professor of Music at Indiana University.