Description
Book SynopsisLanguage, education, politics, and music come together in Katherine Bergeron's Voice Lessons, a study of the French mélodie in the Belle Epoque. Close readings of songs by Fauré, Debussy, and Ravel, along with poems, sound recordings, and other historical documents, seek to uncovers the cultural meanings of this art: why it emerged, why it mattered, and why it eventually disappeared.
Trade ReviewBergeron is no score-dodger and the music is exactly in the right place: central. Surrounding this is a wealth of detail and context opening up bypaths previously unexplored. * Richard Langham Smith, Music and Letters *
excellently researched and illuminating ... this is a book to be reckoned with. It tells its bedtime story eloquently and it approaches its repertory in more detail than elsewhere. * Richard Langham Smith, Music & Letters *
Table of ContentsList of Figures ; List of Musical Examples ; Foreword: Telling History ; 1. ; Eve Sings, An Origin Story ; Melody ; Eve Sings ; Muteness ; Oral Pleasures ; Melos and Mimesis ; Mortal Melody ; Perfect prosody, androgynous melody ; Selfless Singers ; NOTES TO CHAPTER ONE ; The Mother Tongue Teaching the modern ABCs ; The People's Mouth L Figures of Speech Talking Machines Indelible Accents ; NOTES TO CHAPTER TWO ; Free Speech, Free Verse, and Music Before All Things ; Poetry and the People Vibrations of Language Accentus/ ad cantus Music After All Transcribing the voix parlee Unsung symbols ; NOTES TO CHAPTER THREE 4. L'Art de dire, or Language in Performance Venetian glass and marqueterie ; Vibrant noise, expressive elegance Dir(e) Expressions lyriques ; Forget that you are singers A Bird in a branch ; NOTES TO CHAPTER FOUR ; 5. Farewell to an Idea ; La verite ; Natural history ; Une voix du passe? ; Realism revisited ; In the shadow of the Faun ; Mirages ; NOTES TO CHAPTER FIVE ; Bibliography
