Contenu du sommaire : Musique et société

Pierre Lantz, Music and Politics The critique of Rameau 's music by the Encyclopedists was not only aesthetic. In stressing harmony Rameau implied that music is founded upon the discovery of a general order of things where the relationships between sounds express emotional dynamics and where all political disorder can be resolved as so much dissonance. The Encyclopaedists, however, were opposed to cartesian premises and to Rameau 's static political vision. Rousseau 's opposition is even more systematic. For him, recourse to the human voice, oratory and melody was best adapted to revolutions and contrary to monarchy.

Pierre Dubois, The Organ and Society : Identity and Role Changing in Eighteenth- Century England Contrary to the situation on the European continent, the English organ of the eighteenth century played a major role outside of the Church, and in the performance of oratorios and in pleasure gardens. Free from Church control, the organ gradually came to express new symbolic meanings in the collective psyche. It became synonymous with national virtues and patriotic sentiments. At the same time, this changed the role of the organ within the Church. The organ appears, therefore, as a factor in the changing relationship between Church and State and implies that changes of style are part of larger social, political and ideological transformations.

Julien Mallet, Urban Music and the Political Construction of ldentity in Angola The nature of Portuguese colonization explains the important role played by mestizos in the formation of national identity. Some have chosen music as the expression of an Angolese culture and as a form of political struggle. Analysis of a musical repertoire reveals characteristics of a urban music created during the 1940s which is intimately a part of this process. Study of the musician « Liceu » Vieira Dias shows how this music was part of a far larger process. Placed within the social and political context of Luanda, it is clear how musical creation can contribute to the formation of collective identity.

Christian Marcadet, The Exemplary Cycle of Rébétiko Within the underclass of continental Greece, the first exponents of rébétiko gained prominence by borrowing from village traditions and Turkish musics to which they gave a new form and a new sensibility. This musical genre was integrated into the commercial music industry in the 1930s. Removed from its original milieu and emptied of its more marginal tendencies, rébétiko began to be considered a folk music in the 1970s. This is an evolution which poses the question of the dialectic existing between popular creativity and market influences in the production of popular music.

Larry Portis, Popular Music and Capitalism : Towards a Sociology of Authenticity Music has an important place in the evolution of capitalist societies in adapting its rhythms, its cadences and the expression of themes which reflect emotional needs in a changing social environment. A sociology of popular music must therefore consider musical sensibilities and tendencies from both aesthetic and political points of view. Nowhere have musical cultures resisted entirely the powerful influence of African-American music, the result of marketing strategies and of cultural fascination. The notion of authenticity is central in the process of subordination and revolt in industrial-capitalist societies.

Joseph Ghosn, From Sampler to Raver : Towards a Sociology of Techno A sociology of techno must show how this music is produced thanks to computer techniques affecting musical composition and the different phases of record production in particular ways, thus redefining existing modalities. Techno has developed within musical production, but its musicians have remained anonymous, something which poses the question of the social identification of these artist-technicians.

François Ribac, Voice Re-Composed Like images, voice is today manipulated and numerized. Thanks to sampling techniques, voices can be reproduced and reinterjected into « intelligent » messages used to identify us or to speak to us. Certain musicians have taken up these techniques and invented new vocal signatures. Human voice are sampled and inserted in commented and harmonized pulsions. The spoken language, its sense and its melody have, consequently, become a musical project.

Sylvie Dallet, Pierre Schaeffer and the Revolution of Concrete Music Concrete music appears in the the work of Pierre Schaeffer as the revolutionary culmination of a general reflection about image and sound in contemporary societies. This work explores new technologies in order to rediscover spacial-temporal phenomena which, previously, only the ear could apprehend. In Schaeffer 's thinking, we cannot dissociate the capacity to appreciated traditional music and the audiovisual field in its broadest sense.

Pierre Schaeffer, Concrete Music and Human Communication Between spoken language and image perception, music represents a middle area which is particularly ambiguous but which has the quality of being concrete like an image and abstract like a text. All language phenomena (sounds, words, images j depend physically on an operational series that we analyze « scientifically » in terms of cause and effect. But the meaning of the message, linked to these physical supports, is to found through the contrary process, through a mechanism of the human spirit which fonctions against and indépendant of the pirysical series.