Contenu du sommaire : Les mondes de la musique

Musical media and music as a media: the case of the Italian Renaissance
In Renaissance Italy, the links between media, such as avvisi and other pamphlets, and music were not that simple : music was rarely – and perhaps never – the subject matter, but was instead the principal vehicle of information, since daily news were read, or intoned, even sung, on the piazze, with a musical accompaniment. Music was the media. Avvisi did not deal with music, but princes, during the sixteenth-century, monopolized the mediatization of music : musical festivities were mediatized thanks to printed books that aimed to represent, for the absent, the musical performance. That was how was build a new literary genre that submitted the mediatization of music to politics of grandeur but that also suggested a way to compensate the ephemeral feature of music.

Piano and French music press (18th-21st centuries)
The 19th century knew a golden age of the French press, when at the same time the piano became the beloved instrument of the bourgeoisie. Such a concomitance needed to be investigated. Based on a recent panorama of about 4.000 music periodicals, the present article shows how the piano, seen through this prism, reflects same national trends, why the titles devoted to this instrument hardly struggled to survive, and which were or are currently the conditions of their success.
The place and function of the piano have surely evolved from the 18th century to the present -when digital keyboard oft replaced the acoustic instrument- but most of the characteristics of theses journalistic texts remain the same in their intention, from the first pianistic periodical (Le Pianiste, 1833-1835) to the to-day French magazines (Piano, Pianiste...) ; it is an old advice : both entertain and educate the reader.

The multiple stakes in the musical criticism: Gaetano Donizetti's reception in France (1830s-1850)
“Providence of parisian theaters” from 1835 till 1843, Gaetano Donizetti is nevertheless an (-unpopular composer of the French press, in his lifetime and during all XIXth century. It blames him in particular its prolific production. Most of the time manhandled even slandered, he succeeds nevertheless in being made some allies. But, more pragmatic than strategist, he is not generally possible that to undergo the attacks a victim of which he is. The contempt of the criticism is also translated by the indifference which welcomes the announcement of its disappearance. However, in the years which follow, we notice a truce which, to be short-lived, is not less significant there. The denigrators take back very fast their rights and the end of the century sees Donizetti decreased by composer's rank in that of the improviser. His example calls back how much the sentence of the press can influence the career and the offspring of a musician. It also illustrates the narrow links between the musical newspapers and the partitions publishers. Finally, he confirms the decisive role of the relational networks, in France or somewhere else.

Offenbach, media man
The career of Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880) developed from the mid-1850s onwards. In the 1860s and 1870s a real fashion for his work entrained the public world-wide. The personality of Offenbach partly explains this phenomenon as he was a remarkable “communicator” who knew like no other composer before him how to play with the media. From his arrival in Paris in the 1830s onwards, the musician made people talk of himself, even by launching a polemic to ensure the success of one of his works. This strategy is facilitated by the alliance that he concluded with the daily newspaper Le Figaro. “Official Journal of the Parisian Operetta Theatres”, as claimed by his director, Le Figaro offered the composer a platform which he used skillfully during his whole career. In 1876, while staying in the Etats Unis, Offenbach took the opportunity to observe the American press, an experience that he describes in a chapter of the book which he published about this journey after his return. The finesse of his observations shows that Offenbach was indeed a media man.

Paris Opera and newspapers, just beafore World War one
In the beginning of the XXth century, the Opera enjoyed good relationships with the main newspapers. Some of its staff's members had been journalists or used to write music reviews. The theater published some notes about new productions or important singers in order to give its public a foretaste of the show. Letters from composers, singers and foreign conductors were divulged. Some members of the staff used their relations with their former colleagues and wrote articles praising the Opera and the new works, or asked another reviewer to write a paper including photographs supplied by the theatre. Despise this collusion between the Opera and the newspapers, the music critics still maintained a form of independence, but tuned their writings with their papers' or magazines' main line. This equilibrium came to an end when the directors of the Opera let known their anger at reading the bad reviews published by Comoedia. This newspaper attacked relentlessly the theater and tried to obtain the two director's dismissal. The consequences, however, were dire for Comoedia : prosecuted, its staff decided to tone down the reviews and recruited another journalist.

The phonographic industry and the patrimonialisation of the music in the first half of the XXth century Contrary to an idea widespread by the critical theories of mass culture and the culture industries, the growth of the phonographic industry led to an unprecedented patrimonialization of music. Studying how « classical » music was treated by this industry and its consumers in the first half of the XXth century leads to highlighting three intertwinned components of this patrimonialization : first, the formation of a monument of music through a repertoire making it materially available ; second, the valorization of the past through various set ups (« rediscoveries », discursive and material mediations such as collections and commemorations) ; last but not least, the advent of a patrimony being at the same time an object of use and material possession, and of pleasure and aesthetic enjoyment. This case study leads us to question our representation of a « patrimony » and the mechanisms of its construction in more recent periods and for other music genres.

Listen to the history in the time of vinyl. Vinyl records as sources for the history of the media
After 1945, the most important media for the recording of music was the vinyl record. Through the vinyl record music became a product which could be sold piece by piece – a fact that changed this product significantly. Musical performances were not the only source of music anymore – instead they often served as a promotion for the record sale. Records were not only important for aesthetics, but also media for politics. They caused debates, bans, boycotts, and often cases of censorship. Records also shaped new cults and practices of listening, new (written) media, new markets and even were even used as “social capital” for group distinction and they stimulated intellectual debates. Although records had in many cases an overtly wider circulation than books and could be used by larger groups (by illiterate audiences for example), records are still not used very often in historiography. Despite the fact, that they contain more information than written texts (such as phonetics and intonation in the case of spoken word recordings for example), most historians still quote written texts, only. Although there are meanwhile national record collections, historians are not used in using them. The article discusses advantages and problems of records for contemporary historiography and names the main collections. It brings together approaches from the multidisciplinary sound studies and those of contemporary cultural history. By pleading for the usage of records as historical sources for sound, but also for visual history and as a source of texts the article advice how to find them and how to use them as typical sources of an epoch of media history that can be described as the age of vinyl.

You said “classic”? The classical music on the French television from the 1950s to 1990s
In the 1950's, some television shows were destined to broadcast to a large audience what is best in classical music. This project, which was meant to be sustained, has been modified. Bernard Gavoty, who was a precursory figure in musical television, had a vast musical culture which was perceived, rightly or wrongly, as elitist. In the 1960's, a period of experimentation allowed contemporary music to reach television with a show entitled Arcana. Le Grand Echiquier by Jacques Chancel brought another public dimension to this, in which classical music has integrated a global cultural logic.

The own of the radio. Radio functions and new status of the radio in the digital environment
Based on previous surveys on music radio stations this paper argues for a model for thinking about the new status of music radio stations in the digital environment that affects its status, both on content, more widely available, and on listener, less dependent on the medium. Identification, novelty, programming and “situated presence” that radio seems to have provided until now are being rivaled by the emergence of other actors and mediations of musical and social fields (music files, radio online, social networks). In the second part, the paper proposes a prospective model for thinking the status of the “generalist” and “thematic” radio stations and the new function of “radio library”.

Music and globalization: “techno-logics” of musical creation
With the democratization of digital technology since the beginning of 2000s, a real technological mutation affects the creation, the distribution and the circulation of music and dance. If the question is analysed since a few years for the North countries, on the other hand we ignore widely how, in less industrialized contexts, creative regimes develop at the time of digital technology. Besides, in numerous countries, we observe that the digital technology coexists with “obsolete” technologies such the analog cassette, the vinyl record, or the VHS. In spite of their lack of visibility in the North countries, these mixed technologies testify nevertheless of knowledges and know how, of imaginaries, but also industrial networks which we could qualify as alternatives, suggesting of real “subterranean ways of the cultural globalization” (Tristan Mattelart, 2011). From my field experience in Mali, and more generally in Western Africa, I shall be interested on one hand in the cohabitation and in the interpenetration of these various technological regimes, on the other hand in the way they give rise to singular esthetic creations which join independent economies of the culture. The approach around these local initiatives will so allow to see how, in the South countries, the “globalized” technologies of the communication give rise to a big diversity of practices, appropriations and manipulations, from the point of view of the musical creation, but also those of the reproduction, the circulation and the preservation of the musics.

The books of the politics: from the presidential privilege to the everyday acceptance
Publication strategies of policy professionals have evolved over time. Status of author, or even of writer, was given to general de Gaulle. This status is now after him a presidential attribute. His successors had to be write and to publish. There is yet a trivialization of political writing in a context of individualization of the political field. All politicians seeking visibility now publish political books.

The music on the Internet, between generation effects and social paradox: some tracks
This contribution about music on the Internet is a synthesis of students'works of Master 1 Information and Communication of the Institut Français de Presse (Université Panthéon-Assas). Interested in techno or classical music, they sought to understand what happens for music, musicians and music lovers with the Internet. They study two musical styles, music and electro-techno classical music. Popular music, especially music for “young”, techno quickly found its place on the Internet in terms of both music production, assessment and exchange of artists sound devices, because of its close proximity to ICT. For the classical music, the reluctance to use the Internet is to listen or to reconfigure forms of socialization around this genre are numerous. If younger music lovers and musicians are experimenting with the Internet, and in particular the YouTube platform, the reluctance remain strong. The generation effect plays less. The taste for live practices is still widely worn by deeply rooted practices and older generations who have only very utilitarian use of the Internet. Social, cultural and generational affiliations construct varied, even contradictory, relationship with the musical Internet.

“L'Alsace-Lorraine française”, aspects and limits of a propaganda of State during the Great War The propaganda of State about Alsace-Lorraine during the Great War is shared between the propaganda structure of the war ministry and that of the quai d'Orsay. The dispersal of the means and the energies testifies of the incapacity of the State to centralize the propaganda action which it limits in the time of war. By neglecting to prepare the frames of a “good peace” public authorities so show them not much interest for the “psychological warfare”.