Music and War in Europe: From French Revolution to WWI

This book investigates the relationship between music and war from the end of the eighteenth century to World War I. The centennial commemorations of the Great War in 2014 have yielded significant research on the relationship between music and this first world-wide conflict. Thanks to several conferences and publications, knowledge about the musical repertoire played on the home front, the musical practices of the soldiers, or the war's impact on European musical life is expanding. While joining the efforts to enlighten this particularly little-known period of music history, this book aims to investigate that relationship by adopting a larger time-span: from the end of eighteenth century until the outbreak of the First World War. What kind of connections can be found between music, musicians or the musical economy (editions, the circulation of scores, opera and concert programming, professionalisation) and the different conflicts that would tear the European continent apart? Bringing together more than twenty case studies dealing with several European wars, this volume also investigates the evolution of the perception of the sound of war and proposes new perspectives based on recent 20th-century music and war studies.