Bergeron, Katherine - Voice Lessons

Language, education, politics, and music come together in Katherine Bergeron's Voice Lessons, a study of the French melodie in the Belle Epoque. Close readings of songs by Faure, Debussy, and Ravel, along with poems, sound recordings, and other historical documents, seek to uncovers the cultural meanings of this art: why it emerged, why it mattered, and why it eventually disappeared.

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CONTENTS

List 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

Series	New Cultural History of Music