Art and the everyday : popular entertainment and the circle of Erik Satie / Nancy Perloff.
| Author/creator | Perloff, Nancy |
| Format | Book |
| Publication Info | Oxford [England] : Clarendon Press ; New York : Oxford University Press, ©1991. |
| Description | x, 227 pages, 8 pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Subjects |
| Contents | Introduction. Symphonies without 'sauce': the reaction against impressionism ; The formation of the new French avant-garde ; Jean Cocteau's anti-impressionist stance ; Satie's anti-impressionist stance ; Anti-impressionism in the writings of Milhaud, Poulenc, and Auric -- Popular institutions in the turn-of-the-century Paris. The Cabaret Artistique ; The cafe-concert ; The circus ; The fair ; The music-hall ; The cinema -- The arrival of American popular music and dance on the Parisian scene. American entertainers ; Sheet music and sound recordings -- Satie and the cabaret. Accompanist and composer for Parisian venues ; Cabaret humour in Satie's writings -- The popular world of Cocteau, Milhaud, Poulenc, and Auric. Popular encounters ; The appeal of popular entertainment -- Ragtime, diversity, and nostalgia: the language of Satie's 'Parade'. Simple tunefulness. Ostinati and pendulum figures ; Thematic figures ; Satie's paraphrase of 'That mysterious rag' -- Musical diversity ; Musical nostalgia -- Embracing a popular language. Music-hall 'spoofs', children's tunes and furniture music, 1918-1919 ; The 'Spectacle-concert' of 1920: a music-hall re-creation ; Weapon against the 'false-sublime': Les Maries de la tour Eiffel (1921) ; Three 'Monuments to frivolity' and a blues ballet. Les Biches (1942) ; Les Facheux (1923) and Le Train bleu (1924) ; La Creation du monde (1923) -- 'No performance': Satie's last two ballets. |
| Abstract | This book examines the early twentieth-century movement that was sparked by the premiere of Erik Satie's ballet Parade in May 1917. The author argues that Satie and his colleagues, including Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, Max Jacob, and Jean Cocteau, led French music away from Impressionism by infusing their compositions with French and American popular idioms. They also adopted aesthetic principles of parody, diversity, nostalgia, and repetition from the Parisian cabaret, cafe-concert, circus, fair, and music hall. With their collaborators Pablo Picasso, Fernand Legér, and Francis Picabia, they shared a radical disregard for traditional divisions separating popular and classical forms of creative expression. |
| Local note | Little-284354 |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references (pages 215-221) and index. |
| LCCN | 90041301 |
| ISBN | 0198161948 : |