Vincent d'Indy's Istar (1897), a set of variations for orchestra, commands attention for its unusual ground plan: the variations proceed from complex textures to simple ones. Analysis reveals how certain melodic and harmonic details unfold at larger structural levels. Istar's symmetries and organic construction are set in the context not only of previous variation sets but also of Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, a symphonic poem of similar dimensions that was premiered shortly before d'Indy composed his piece. Resemblances between the two works suggest that d'Indy may have intended Istar as a response to Debussy. Juxtaposition of Debussy and d'Indy provides insight into the different connotations of modernity at the fin de siècle. Istar's programme and compositional strategies reflect d'Indy's firm historicism and commitment to tradition. Yet the work was received as experimental and daring in its day. In its materials Istar paradoxically illustrates a ‘backward progression’: its stylistic allusions move backward in time, yet the tonal direction aims forward towards the concluding tonic. Such idiosyncrasies provide insight into d'Indy's aesthetics and ideology, which sought to conflate commitment to progress with adherence to Faith.

This article examines the ways in which critics and music historians in the Third Republic wrote about Meyerbeer's national and racial identity focusing particularly on the period around the time of the centenary of his birth, the period just before the explosion of the Dreyfus affair. The centenary of Meyerbeer's birth was celebrated in November 1891, by a performance to a packed audience at the Paris Opéra. Critics marked the centenary by writing substantial articles about Meyerbeer.

Although many of Meyerbeer's contemporary critics conferred honorary French citizenship on him, by 1891 a significant number saw him as lacking any national identity. This should be seen in the context of a period in which French composers were intensely debating the issue of their own national identity, and clearly since the Franco-Prussian war, they were no longer so complacent about welcoming a German as a Frenchman. Yet the perceptions of Meyerbeer's lack of national identity were also often motivated by negative associations of Meyerbeer as Jew.

Derogatory stereotypes of the Jewish composer are present in Meyerbeer criticism from the July Monarchy onwards, but in the early days of the Third Republic they change slightly in focus and also, as might be expected, become more overtly stated. This article presents a brief overview of this change in focus and concentrates on a number of discrete topics: eclecticism, nationhood, originality and artistic capitulation. The examination of this last topic leads to a short discussion of the impact of Wagner on the musical world at this time, and the effect that this had on Meyerbeer reception. The centenary celebrations occurred only two months after the success of Lohengrin at the Opéra (16 September 1891) and the proximity of the two events caused many critics to ponder whether the celebrations marked the end of Meyerbeer's reign at the Opéra and the beginning of the reign of Wagner. The centenary event forced critics to take a position on Meyerbeer's current standing in the operatic world.

Research on music and musical life in nineteenth-century Europe and North America has been increasing at a smart pace over the past few decades, revealing an admirable variety and welcome sense of fresh initiative. But many of these efforts – especially ones dealing with pieces that are rarely if ever performed today – have proceeded in relative isolation or have not been granted the attention that they deserve. And many important topics – including whole forgotten repertoires – remain to be explored.

The evidence of more than three hundred concerts of early music given by the Parisian Schola Cantorum and its sister association, the Chanteurs de Saint-Gervais, as well as more than four hundred performances of this repertoire outside the Schola shows that the most consistently performed composer in Paris at the French fin de siècle was the German Johann Sebastian Bach. This is coupled with a shift at the Schola, from a preponderance of works by Palestrina in the 1890s to a new emphasis on Rameau operas in the early 1900s. This article is an attempt to understand these repertorial preferences as manifestations of at least two types of nationalism: first as a mass movement to attain ethnic-linguistic homogenization and second as a movement by the social elite as a means of establishing its difference. All three composers examined in the case studies emerge as vehicles for both types of nationalism, though there is more evidence of the second type than there is of the first. This article also shows that there is a distinction between the ways in which these repertoires were either co-opted or received by the social elite and the intelligentsia, the latter using early music as a metaphor for the ‘serious’.

On Wednesday 24 May 1871, during the uprising of the Paris Commune, the Sacristine of the convent of the Sœurs Auxiliatrices des Ames du Purgatoire was disturbed by the sound of rapidly approaching gunfire and explosions. From the secluded convent compound in the rue de la Barouillère in Paris, she wrote in the convent diary: ‘Everyone believes that the house is shaking! . . . The Mother Superior makes an act of faithfulness to the Holy Will of God! . . . it is an explosion in the Luxembourg gunpowder magazine and our tiled floor shatters! The Tuileries, the Louvre, the Ministry of War, the Palace of the Legion of honour are in flames.’ However, the Sacristine's attention was soon shifted from the noise of conflict towards the many other types of sounds outside and within the convent. Even the sound of the doorbell began to strike with a seemingly ominous edge. At ‘1 o′clock pm: The bell rings very loudly, the Mother Superior looks out of the window, it is her brother!’ Amidst the noises of war surrounding the compound, the nuns continued their musical routine of song and organ playing: ‘6 pm: Les Mères nevertheless sing pieces to the Holy Sacrament and the Most Holy Virgin.’

On the eve of the First World War the French musical press enjoyed a freedom of expression which allowed it to put works and composers into clear-cut categories. This same freedom of expression authorized it to denounce explicitly the state's stranglehold over the organization of its grand theatres through the implementation of the cahiers des charges. This study is based on the articles which Jean Chantavoine published in l'Année musicale in 1911, 1912 and 1913. He writes annual statements which were more organizationally – rather than musically – orientated, and it is this feature which forms the basis of this article. In fact, Chantavoine (1877–1952), critic for the Journal des débats, Excelsior, etc., had no hesitation in criticizing state interference in the cultural dynamic of the Opéra and the Opéra-Comique, which he saw as leading to musical productions more abundant in quantity than quality. In order to appreciate his views more fully, an overview of three cahiers des charges is provided: those of 1908 and 1914 for the Opéra and of 1911 for the Opéra-Comique. For example, since subventions were distributed unequally between the two theatres, it is noticeable that the number of productions is greater for the Opéra-Comique, when, paradoxically, it was that theatre which received the smallest financial subsidy. In summarizing the years 1911–13 Chantavoine quite rightly takes these circumstances into account, and in reviews of the years’ principal productions he unintentionally provides a more accurate picture of himself as critic than the musical year as whole. In the course of his reviews, therefore, one can observe the emergence of certain traits of his aesthetic personality. He appears a complex character, for instance, interested in folk idioms, but only if they have obvious or immediate relevance. Finally, however, he illustrates the decisive position Paris occupied in the European musical panorama, and offers readers a valuable survey of the musical years before the war.

It was Paganini's request for a concerto that prompted Berlioz to embark on the composition that eventually became Harold in Italy. The legendary virtuoso, then at the height of his fame, had recently acquired a fine Stradivari viola and needed a suitable vehicle for introducing the instrument to the public. He was puzzled and disappointed by Berlioz's score. It certainly was not the anticipated virtuoso vehicle, and within months Paganini had composed a substitute for himself, the Sonata per la grand viola. Berlioz explained that his work was ‘a new kind of symphony and not a composition written to show off a unique talent like [Paganini's]’. Berlioz's programmatic symphony with solo viola – the concerto that wasn't – would appear on the surface to be utterly devoid of the established codes of the virtuoso concerto.

22 July 1824. Many Londoners had waited years for this night. They thronged to the English Opera House, filling the boxes and cramming the benches in the pit and gallery. It was worth the heat, the expense, the danger from pickpockets. After hearing of its success for three years, after glimpsing snatches of it in concert and sheet music excerpts, and after enduring weeks of advertising for the English Opera House production, they would finally be the first in London to witness the most celebrated German opera of the time: Weber's Der Freischütz.