Introduction Trading in the Unthinkable

Journal of Music Criticism, Volume 3 (2019), pp. i-xvi© Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini. All rights reserved.

IntroductionTrading in the Unthinkable

Mark Everist(University of Southampton)[email protected]

Reading the PRess

The outlines of an analysis of the nineteenth-century music press are already beginning to take shape, not only through the research of the authors of the articles that follow and their colleagues in the ‘France: Musiques, Cultures, 1789-1918’ network, but also through the imaginative work beyond music in such collections as Presse et plumes, Le Miel et le fiel, and most recently the remarkable La Civilisation du journal 1; and that is to say nothing of the work coming out of the Médias19 project2. It is now conventional to distinguish between music journalism published in daily newspapers, weekly or bi-monthly journals, the formally-constituted music press, and between the feuilleton, the ‘Nouvelles’ section of a journal, and the importance, for example, of a text on music migrating from the feuilleton of a daily newspaper to the main body of its text. There is a sense of the carrières croisées of journalists and the mechanics of the embryonic press-release, together with what one might today like to think of as ‘conflict of interest’ or even ‘ethics’; the interrogation of questions of attribution and ‘voice’ is made possible through the analysis of pseudonyms, the pavillon neutre, and so on3.

It is of value to distinguish between types of scholarship that focus ‘on the press’ and those that work ‘through the press’. Many of the collections

1. théRenty – Vaillant 2004; BuRy – laPlace-claVeRie 2008; Kalifa – RégnieR – théRenty – Vaillant 2011. This article originates in a keynote address given to the tenth anniversary annual meeting of the ‘France: Musiques, Cultures, 1789-1918’ network at the Bilbiothèque historique de la Ville de Paris in July 2017. I am grateful for Katharine Ellis and Emmanuel Reibel for the invitation to speak.

2. <http://www.medias19.org/>.3. See ReiBel 2018. For the analysis of critics’ pseudonyms, see the list on the website

of the ‘France: Musiques, Cultures, 1789-1918’ network: <http://fmc.ac.uk/collections/bibliographical-resources-and-work-in-progress/>.

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of essays mentioned in the previous paragraph and a lot of what is visible on Médias19 falls into the category of working ‘on the press’. What one might be more sceptical about is the idea that work ‘through the press’ can take place without working ‘on’ it. In other words, working with the nineteenth-century press in French is perilous without taking into account the types of questions adumbrated in these collections and reflected in the chapters assembled here: the place of musicography in the individual critic’s career, external pressures on the author, the journalist’s vested interests, and so on. Reassembling the social network in which writing about music takes place, it could be argued, is an essential prerequisite to a close reading of a music-critical text of any sort.

But before there is too much self-congratulation on current sensitivity to all the contingent factors to which one might want to attend, there are less positive aspects to the study of, or through, the press. Texts published in newspapers and other types of journal form only part of a range of sources that might be used for the reconstruction of nineteenth-century musical cultures. The press — in all its forms — constitutes only a part of a complex network of witnesses to the past; part of a matrix of sources that include various types of administrative document — from lighting bills to censors’ reports, from singers’ contracts to copying records — personal papers of various types (correspondence most obviously, but private journals as well), and more public presentations of a life — the published memoir and so on. Each of these categories deploys its own discursive power, and that power requires as much sophisticated analysis as that of the press. And in some areas, the analysis of that discursive power has barely begun; think, for example, of the use to which Mein Leben is put in a lot of Wagner scholarship: verbatim quotation with only rare attempts to verify, cross-check or contextualise4. Not only does each of these categories demand analysis in its own right, but each entails a methodology for treating the resulting networks: how does the press interact with the administrative structure of a concert series? What is the relationship between the libretto of a stage work and the text submitted to the Censor? And so on.

Equally problematic is the comfortable elision between the study of the press and the concept of ‘reception’. Anyone exposed to the ideology of Jauss, Iser and the Konstanz School, before flipping through the pages of La France musicale or grappling with the microfilms of the Journal de Paris, will find it a little strange to read studies that depend exclusively on the press for the construction of a musical phenomenon’s reception, and that do not seem to recognise the —

4. WagneR 1963 / 1983.

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Introduction: Trading in the Unthinkable

sometimes much more active — ways in which music is ‘consumed’ via other vehicles of reception. Questions that then come into play are the interaction of different agents and actors, matrices of activity, and ultimately the analysis of networks of relationship, behaviour and influence.

The five articles collected together in this digital volume span the long nineteenth century from the fallout from the querelles around music for the theatre of the 1780s to the press response to the performances of oratorio at Paris’ Saint-Eustache at the very end of the nineteenth century. Beverly Scheibert focuses on Marmontel’s Polymnie as a text that can be read against factual realities, and Jennifer Walker explains how oratorios at Saint-Eustache could be made to function as a symbol of Republican ideology that could be simultaneously read as both sacred and secular. Between these two contributions are two very different approaches to the music of the July Monarchy and Second Empire. Matthieu Caillez introduces the journalistic output of Adolphe Adam and a view of opéra-comique given by one of its most gifted exponents. Adam’s output of c300 texts (not as many as 900 for Berlioz or 800 for Castil-Blaze, but a significant contribution nevertheless) projects the author not only as a key figure simply in terms of volume, but also in terms of ability to write authoritatively on, and background in, opéra-comique. By contrast, Kristen Strandberg gives an account of 1830s discussions about questions of altruism, taking Paganini’s gift to Berlioz as a point of departure, and bringing Jules Janin centre stage. Lesley Wright provides a welcome close reading of the Parisian press’s response to the Massenet’s Werther, a work that — like so many — had its world premiere elsewhere. These acts of artistic lèse-majesté developed challenges for critics who were used to premieres taking place in Paris, and Wright’s analysis serves as a model for works premiered in Vienna, Rouen, Monte-Carlo and elsewhere.

As is clear even from the titles of the five articles, three work clearly through the press. Jennifer Walker plunders titles as wide-ranging as the La Gazette de France, Le Temps, La Vérité, Le Voltaire and L’Estafette in order to probe the theatrical elements in the performances of oratorio at St Eustache around 1900. But she marries this material with the personal correspondence of those such as Eugène d’Harcourt preserved in the Archives Nationales de France and institutional records from the Archives Historiques de l’Archevêché de Paris, in a way that develops the web of culture in a way that such anthropologists as Clifford Geertz would have effortlessly recognised5. This thick description contrasts in profound

5. For the possible impact of Geertzian anthropology, see tomlinson 1984, pp. 350-362. See also geeRtz 1973 / 1975.

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ways with Strandberg’s close reading of Jules Janin’s attacks on Paganini in the Journal des débats in the 1830s; but his apparently narrow view is countered with a range of texts from the Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris by Henri Blanchard and Franz Liszt in what begins to emerge as a sort of pamphlet war. Again, though, Strandberg’s approach to the press is broadened by a consideration of Liszt’s correspondence with Paganini, opening up a range of networks in play between the three protagonists in this particular art world6.

Matthieu Cailliez’s contribution to this work however focuses directly on the press, giving a much-needed account of Adolphe Adam’s critical output. The picture is one with two sides. On the front is Adam’s journalistic writing in twenty different publications ranging from such well-known titles as the Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris, Le Ménestrel and La France musicale to such less well-known texts as La Revue pittoresque, Le Monde dramatique and Les Guêpes. And on the back is Adam’s significance as a composer of opéra-comique, examined both in its Parisian and Viennese incarnations. This then forms the basis of an analysis of Adam’s writing about opéra-comique (and now the study turns to working through the press) and an examination of the risks of self-promotion, on the one hand, and sponsoring the success of rivals, on the other.

All five articles hint at the complicity of their agents in the performance, criticism and reception of various forms of musicography: Janin, Marmontel, Adam, d’Harcourt — they all approach the musicographical table from different directions. Their prose work forms part of a carrière croisée that in each case involves agency in another field: the opera house, music theory, belles lettres and so on. One might want to explore this further, however, and begin to think about the implications of such complicity: how it might work, and — perhaps more urgently — how scholarship might deal with it. Three examples make some attempt to come to terms with this question.

BeRlioz and the PResent

Those who have spent a lot of time reading French nineteenth-century music journalism are now a long way from the point where it was defined exclusively by the work of Hector Berlioz. They are also further on from claiming that the music journalism in the Journal des débats was, quite simply, «Excellent, du fait de la

6. BecKeR 1982 / 2008.

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présence de Berlioz»7. But Berlioz still continues to fascinate. It is certainly the case that reading a range of texts on the same subject — the dossier de presse is an obvious example — shows how out of step Berlioz seems with the rest of the critical fraternity. His theatrical and musical preoccupations however align closely with the high modernism of the second half of the twentieth century which, after all, was when his modern reputation was largely made, both as a critic and a composer.

Many of these concerns are now shaded by a more subtle understanding of the context in which Berlioz wrote. Both in terms of innovatory power and of musical expertise, Berlioz’s claims were undercut on most occasions by his older contemporary, Castil-Blaze, and it is not difficult to find examples of the exasperation of other critics as they attempt to negotiate Berlioz’s pronouncements. Much of Berlioz’s journalism is straightforward polemic, and it is easy to see how the late twentieth century could sympathise with the ways in which he defended the composer against the impresario, the singer, the incompetent conductor and of course against the critic. And what made these polemics so attractive was the virtuosic control of language that Berlioz deploys, which is one of the reasons — perhaps the most important one — why his journalism had attained the status that it had by the end of the millennium, and also perhaps why in this post-Berlioz critical phase he still remains, for some, so hard to resist.

In Berlioz’s treatment of other composers — both classic and contemporary — it seems that the closer the composer’s aesthetic was to Berlioz’s own the more likely the former was to receive a sympathetic hearing. Never is this more striking than in Berlioz’s journalistic contributions when he is close to mounting performances of his own stage works: Les Troyens à Carthage in the late 1850s and early 1860s, Les Francs-juges in the late 1820s, and perhaps most strikingly in the late 1830s around the time of the catastrophic failure of Benvenuto Cellini. The idea of an opposition between critical discourse and polemic may be developed via an example from around 1840.

Donizetti’s La Fille du régiment, premiered in 1840, was the most spectacular success of any opéra-comique composed by a foreigner. But this success had to wait for nearly a decade: there were no performances of the work between 1842 and 1847 nor in 1850, but after that, La Fille du régiment was one of the most popular opéras-comiques into the Second Empire, the Third Republic and beyond. The work is today so well known that it is difficult to imagine just how rare it was to have an opéra-comique on the stage of the same name composed by a foreigner.

7. muRPhy 1985, p. 20.

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The number of examples is tiny in comparison with foreigners at the Opéra, the Théâtre-Italien, and the troisièmes scènes lyriques: the Odéon, the Renaissance and the Théâtre-Lyrique.

Berlioz’s review of the premiere of La Fille du régiment is notorious. It is the one that talks about «une véritable guerre d’invasion»8. Berlioz’s response to the requirements of writing the conventional plot synopsis is witty and amusing: many would say that these are the best parts of his journalism, where his poetic flair and mordant humour are kept in check by a pre-existing structure. The review ends with eight lines on one of the singers, and the middle section is little more than a rant. An interesting rant, nonetheless, it betrays much about questions of critical discourse. Berlioz finishes the synopsis and begins to add information of his own.

La musique de cette pièce a déjà été entendue en Italie, du moins en grande partie; c’est celle d’un petit opéra imité ou traduit du Châlet, de M. Adam, et au succès duquel M. Donizetti n’attachait probablement qu’une très mince importance9.

French commentators were assiduous in analysing debts to history, especially when it came to tracking literary and musical genealogies. This looks like no exception: according to Berlioz, Donizetti’s new opéra-comique is nothing more than a French translation of an Italian opera based in turn on the French libretto of Adolphe Adam’s opéra-comique, Le Châlet. Donizetti, therefore, might attach relatively little importance to the work. This is of course completely wrong. Berlioz muddled La Fille du régiment with Donizetti’s Betly, ossia La capanna svizzera, premiered at the Teatro Nuovo in Naples three and half years earlier, whose libretto, written by Donizetti himself, was indeed based on Scribe and Mélesville’s libretto for Adam’s Le Châlet, itself premiered at the Opéra-Comique in 1834. Le châlet has however nothing whatsoever to do with La Fille du régiment.

No-one could fail to forgive a simple slip like this were it not for the fact that Berlioz uses it as a pretext for a sustained diatribe against what he calls works written per la fama especially when it is a case of a pasticcio, which is what he thinks La Fille du régiment is. The review keeps returning both to Adolphe Adam and to Le Châlet, and Berlioz bottoms out in the middle of the review with the famous line about ‘une véritable guerre d’invasion’; this takes him to a hypothetical proposition:

8. Le Journal des débats, 16 February 1840.9. Ibidem.

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Là, franchement, que dirait ou que penserait M. Donizetti, si Florence, par exemple, était la capitale du monde civilisé, si elle contenait quatre théâtres lyriques, dont trois rudement subventionnés par l’Etat, c’est-à-dire par les Florentins, et si M. Adam non content de faire claquer haut et ferme le fouet de son Postillon [du Lonjumeau (1836)] sur la scène française de Florence, venait encore distribuer aux directeurs des trois autres théâtres des traductions ou des mélanges du Châlet [1834], du Proscrit [1833], de Régine [ou Les Deux nuits (1839)], du Brasseur [de Preston (1838)], du Fidèle Berger [1838], de la Reine d’un Jour [1839], etc. etc.!!10

The review triggered a formal letter of complaint from Donizetti, published both in the Journal des débats and the Moniteur universel in which the composer put the journalist very firmly in his place:

Si M. Berlioz, qui place avec raison la conscience au rang des premiers devoirs de l’artiste, avait pris la peine d’ouvrir ma partition de Betly, dont le poëme est en effet une traduction du Châlet, partition qui a été gravée et publiée à Paris, chez M. Launer, il se serait assuré que les deux opéras qu’il cite n’ont aucuns morceaux communs entre eux; qu’il me soit permis d’affirmer à mon tour que les morceaux qui composent la Fille du régiment sont tous écrits exprès pour le théâtre de l’Opéra-Comique […]. Je dois me borner, Monsieur le rédacteur, à relever cette erreur matérielle, sur laquelle repose, du reste, tout l’article de M. Berlioz […]11.

Berlioz’s review reveals the collision of three critical discourses: one, Berlioz’s use of humour verging on ridicule, two, a critical discourse based on fact and data (La Fille du régiment is an entirely new work with no relationship whatsoever to Adam’s Le Châlet), and three, Berlioz’ self-interest manifested in his anger at the guerre d’invasion but also at the absolute dominance of Adam’s opéras-comiques in the mid to late 1830s, and Donizetti’s authority at the Opéra thereafter.

fétis and the Past

A second example moves from the public world of the opera house to the more rarefied atmosphere of the embryonic revival of early music and the

10. Ibidem.11. Le journal des débats, 17 February 1840.

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concert historique. As is well known, François-Joseph Fétis mounted the first of his concerts historiques on 8 April 1832. It also included three discours that he read at the concert and that were published during the following month in the Revue musicale, which Fétis edited, owned and mostly wrote12:

• 8 April 1832: concert• 14 April 1832: ‘Discours sur l’origine et les progrès de l’opéra depuis

1581 jusqu’en 1650’• 28 April 1832: ‘Discours sur les progrès de l’opéra en Italie, en France et

en Allemagne, depuis 1650 jusqu’en 1760’• 5 May 1832: ‘Discours sur les progrès de l’opéra en Italie, en France et en

Allemagne, depuis 1650 jusqu’en 1760’ [sic].The final discours is mistitled, but deals with opera from Gluck up to the

present (Fétis’ final example is from Guillaume Tell, premiered just three years previously). But what this conceals is that the text printed at the beginning of the first of these printed discours gave an eyewitness account of the concert itself, in effect a review.

Tel était l’intérêt qui s’attachait à cette séance d’un genre absolument neuf, et dont il n’y a jamais eu d’exemple en aucun pays de l’Europe, que, malgré la désertion d’une multitude de personnes riches de Paris, occasionnée par le fléau qui désole en ce moment cette capitale, les avenues du Conservatoire étaient assiégées par une foule considérable, long-temps avant que les portes fussent ouvertes. Le public avait compris que l’histoire de la musique dramatique, exposée d’abord succinctement par un professeur qui a fait une longue étude de toutes les parties de l’art, et rendue sensible par les monumens mêmes de cette histoire suivant l’ordre chronologique, était une des instructions les plus profitables qu’il pût recevoir sur ce même art qui fait ses délices13.

This opening text is a massive piece of self-aggrandisement: according to Fétis, the concert was sold out many times over, despite the cholera outbreak, it was the first of its kind in Europe, the presenter was someone who had made a profound study of the subject, and the event was «one of the most profitable expositions that the public could receive about the art that delights it so much». The review continues in the same vein for a column and a half before Fétis’

12. For an account of the first two parts of the concert, see ellis 2005, pp. 23-24. For a broader view of Fétis career, see camPos 2013.

13. Revue musicale, 14 April 1832.

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discours begins. Interpreting this text is hampered by the very limited number of reviews that might be expected for a concert of this sort. The date is revealing. Given the fact that daily, weekly and monthly non-musical publications almost never carry reviews of concerts — or at least music for the stage receives massively greater attention — and given the fact that Heugel’s Le Ménestrel did not start publication until the following year and Schlesinger’s Gazette musicale de Paris not until 1834, the text given here may be the only surviving witness to the event, and the only source that can be used, for example, even to reconstruct the programme.

So the fact that there is no point of comparison for this review means that it is impossible to test its claims against a single other report. This is even more problematic than the position from the next year forward where there are at least two journals covering concerts; from the late 1830s there are three such publications, with the possibility of setting one review against another, and the opportunity for one author to comment on the views of another. Here, while it is certain that the discours printed in these three issues of the Revue musicale indeed consists of Fétis’ words, it is not equally assured that the opening text was authored by him. Although the opening page of the first issue of the Revue musicale claims that it was to be «rédigée / PaR une société de musiciens, / comPositeuRs, aRtistes et theoRiciens»14, there is not much evidence of anyone apart from Fétis at work, and that claim is certainly not repeated on the title page of the volume for 1832. So there is a technical issue with the authorship of the words on this page, but its rhetoric — and the frequency of the appearance of Fétis’ name — strongly suggests authorial intention (ill. 1, p. x).

Fétis, in summary, is reviewing himself.The threads from these first two examples from the early years of

nineteenth-century French music journalism may be drawn together into the view that modern concepts of ‘conflict of interest’, ‘ethics’ and even ‘objective journalism’ are dangerous if applied wholesale to literary and musical cultures that may not share them. The past is a very different country, and it is certainly the case that nineteenth-century France did things very differently there. Both Berlioz and Fétis fall far short of a putative ‘principled criticism’, but that merely raises the question of what such a critical practice might imply for the long nineteenth century and its modern interpretation. Such a set of ideas may be developed by reference to one of the most contentious figures in the criticism of theatre and music for the stage in the first half of the Parisian nineteenth century.

14. Revue musicale, i/1 (1 February 1827).

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mauRice, ethics and ‘conflict of inteRest’

Charles Maurice was the director of a series of publications that ran from 1818 to 1849:

• 1818-1820: Le camp-volant: journal des spectacles de tous les pays;

ill. 1: Revue Musicale, Vi/11 (14 April 1832).

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• 1820-1823: Journal des spectacles, de la littérature et des arts;• 1823-1842: Le courrier des théâtres: littérature, beaux-arts, sciences;• 1842-1849: Le coureur des spectacles15.Maurice was one of the most combative critics of his generation; he makes

Berlioz at his most cruel seem like a kitten. But we know this largely because Maurice left behind an extraordinary account of his life, published in 1856 (he died in 1869). The title page deserves analysis in its own right16.

15. ledda 2012.16. mauRice 1856.

ill. 2: mauRice 1856, title page.

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An anecdotal history of the theatre, of literature and of various contemporary impressions, it is, according to the title page and most strikingly perhaps, «a work enriched with several autographs». In many respects, Maurice’s memoir is a routine account of his life, but it is interspersed with large numbers of documents from the glitterati of the nineteenth-century Parisian stage: Boieldieu, Déjazet, Talma, Paganini, Mademoiselles Mars, Taglioni, Jenny Vertpré, and Rachel, Meyerbeer, Fanny Essler, and so on. The real purpose of the memoir is much more a rebuttal of the view of Maurice as some sort of journalistic hooligan, and unsurprisingly the texts quoted leave Maurice in the most favourable light possible. And the purpose of the autographs — which are given in facsimile — is clearly to deflect the obvious criticism that the printed extracts are fake.

In terms of making Maurice look less like the monster he might appear from his published journalism, the extracts quoted in the Histoire anecdotique are successful. But they seem to reveal so much more.

This document reprinted in the first volume17 has the appearance of a nice chatty letter from Boieldieu to Maurice, thanking him for a kind review, and catching him up on some news (ill. 3, p. xiii). But the subtext is clear. When Boieldieu writes in the second and third lines about ‘un article tout aimable’, he puts it in italics and it is difficult to avoid the reason why Boieldieu threw this into relief: that the article, although aimable, was in some way compromised — and the most likely reason for this — not just from this text but from dozens of others — is that money changed hands in return for a kindly article. Furthermore, Boieldieu notes that Spontini has just been made a member of the Légion d’honneur, and blatantly invites Maurice to act on his behalf in pursuit of the same aim. Furthermore, Boieldieu talks about the rehearsals for his new work, Le petit chaperon rouge, ending with the words: «I hope you will come to the last of these […]». And the ellipsis speaks volumes….

This is an instructive text for several reasons. First, it confirms what many have thought: that Maurice’s palm was greased by composers, librettists and artists in return for favourable reviews. But more interestingly, it shows Boieldieu actively courting Maurice’s assistance, not only seeking a favourable review of Le Petit chaperon rouge but also membership of the Légion d’honneur. So this document looks much more like the proposal for a contract and much less like the smoking gun that might condemn the deceitful Maurice: it reveals much more of a transactional relationship between the two rather than the sorts of

17. Ibidem, p. 230.

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extortion or protection that characterised 1920s Chicago or 1950s London. It encourages thinking more about Maurice’s publications in terms of the same sorts of relationships that exist between librettists, composers, theatres and the claque: where money changes hands effectively for allowing a performance to proceed as normal with applause led from a small group, who would otherwise sabotage it. Members of the claque were as much a retained part of the institutional personnel as any of the other agents involved in the life of the theatre.

It may now be time to think the unthinkable. Maurice’s transactions may be understood largely because of the evidence presented in his Histoire anecdotique du

ill. 3: mauRice 1856, p. 230.

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théâtre; and actually his beastliness as a reviewer is beside the point. What is striking is that he allowed the evidence for these transactional relationships to be published at all. Is it possible that while he considered it important to show that he had cordial relations with the entire theatrical and musical fraternity, he did not think that it mattered if he revealed evidence of these transactional relationships? In other words — and this is thinking the unthinkable — is it possible that these behaviours might have been common coin for the period, and that other editors, composers and librettists might have acted in exactly the same way but simply left no trace?

There might be little appetite for investigating the conflicts of interest with major named and revered composers. Might it be because it is hard to trust sources as generously as might be liked? And might that not be such a bad thing? It would begin to allow a number of things to fall into place. One of the reasons for the vilification of Meyerbeer, and the evidence adduced for such a reception, is that he apparently paid regular visits to the press, and may have ‘paid them off ’. Now, if the practice exposed inadvertently by Maurice is in fact the tip of a larger iceberg, Meyerbeer’s practice may be nothing more than the purely conventional, work that would be undertaken by most, as illustrated by Maurice. The only reason why so much more is known about Meyerbeer’s relationship with the press is that — unlike Halévy, Auber and Adam — Meyerbeer confided all his innermost thoughts to his diary and to his private correspondence, all of which has now been published and a large part translated into English, despite its intimate nature. It bears no comparison with the public, carefully sanitised self-image of Berlioz in his Mémoires or of Wagner in Mein Leben.

Needless to say, transactional relationships do not necessarily have to involve the exchange of money. There are plenty of other currencies in which to trade in nineteenth-century France, ranging from sedition to sex, from prestige to power. And it seems that simply — but rightly — arguing that the personal background and ideology of any author under investigation goes some way to understanding these relationships. A more careful reading of the texts — their critical discourse — is at least as important, however. It may however well be the case that such close readings require a context in which ethical practices that conflict with those claimed for more modern periods is possible.

conclusion

Late twentieth-century approaches to authorial integrity, to conflict of interest, to ‘principled criticism’ are a very poor fit to the complexities of

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nineteenth-century musical life, not only in France but across the musically literate world. Reviewing a text by Berlioz is a reminder that the days of assuming that he alone was the voice of nineteenth-century musical Paris are long gone, and it also shows that he was as fallible as the next journalist. But juxtaposing him with other critical voices opens up the possibility of re-reading fallibility, duplicity, conflict of interest and deceit in very different ways. More careful reconstructions of the past reveal more productive ways of interpreting it in the present. So Berlioz’s foundation of an entire polemic on a falsehood, Fétis’ apparent review of his own work and Maurice’s putative ‘corruption’ require a different context. Discarding the pejorative — replacing condemnation with a spirit of scholarly inquiry — discloses subtle matrices of power and networks of agency that promise to deliver not only a more nuanced reading of the nineteenth-century musical press but of the history of its music and culture. The five articles in this collection are proof of how this might be successfully undertaken.

BiBliogRaPhy

BecKeR 1982 / 2008BecKeR, Howard. Art Worlds, Berkeley (CA), University of California Press, 1982; 25th

anniversary edition, updated and expanded, 2008.

BuRy – laPlace-claVeRie 2008Le Miel et le fiel: la critique théâtrale en France au xixe siècle, edited by Mariane Bury and Hélène

Laplace-Claverie, Paris, Presses Universitaires de Paris, 2008.

camPos 2013camPos, Rémy. François-Joseph Fétis musicographe, Geneva, Droz, 2013 (Musique et

Recherche 2).

ellis 2005ellis, Katharine. Interpreting the Musical Past: Early Music in Nineteenth-Century France,

Oxford-New York, Oxford University Press, 2005.

geeRtz 1973 / 1975geeRtz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures, New York, Basic Books, 1973; London,

Hutchinson, 1975.

Kalifa – RégnieR – théRenty – Vaillant 2011La Civilisation du journal: une histoire de la presse française au xixe siècle, edited by Dominique

Kalifa, Philippe Régnier, Marie-Ève Thérenty and Alain Vaillant, Paris, Nouveau Monde éditions, 2011 (Opus magnum).

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ledda 2012ledda, Sylvain. ‘«Vous rendez les artistes si heureux par votre bienveillance»: Notes sur

Charles Maurice’, in: Presse et scène au xixe siècle. Relais, reflets, échanges, edited by Olivier Bara and Marie-Ève Thérenty, Médias19 (2012), <http://www.medias19.org/index.php?id=2924>.

mauRice 1856mauRice, Charles. Histoire anecdotique du théâtre, de la littérature et de diverses impressions

contemporaines, tirée du coffre d’un journaliste, avec sa vie à tort et à travers, Paris, Plon, 1856.

muRPhy 1985muRPhy, Kerry. ‘La Critique musicale dans les grands quotidiens parisiens de 1830-1839’,

in: Revue internationale de la musique française, no. 17 (June 1985), pp. 19-28.

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Documents

Introduction Trading in the Unthinkable