La musique à Paris sous l'Occupation

Under the Occupation, Paris did not remain silent. Shortly after the occupation of the Germans, musicians restarted their activities like the majority of artists. The concert halls, the radio studios, and recordings began to work again. In this context, many French composers and performers benefited from the unprecedented working conditions, taking advantage of the absence of foreign competition combined with the isolation of composers, alive or dead, excluded by criminal laws. Centered on scholarly music, this collective work examines the diffusion of music, thanks to the studies on a few concert companies specific to this period, on works from the repertoire, on contemporary creation and on the role of certain performers. It highlights the personalities of Francis Poulenc, Olivier Messiaen, et Arthur Honegger as well as Alfred Cortot, Germaine Lubin, Charles Munch, and Wilhelm Kempff, by insisting on the ambiguities retroactively maintained by certain actors of musical life on their career during these dark years. It also analyzes the way in which a few great figures of the past (Mozart, Berlioz, Wagner) are likely to fit into a discourse of propaganda, largely driven by critics and musicologists. This reflection on the memorial trace of an era ends with an evocation of two recent debates, which shows that this past passes with difficulty.