Femmes en musicologies francophones

de Michel Brenet (1858-1918) à Solange Corbin (1903-1973)

and (direction scientifique)

Abstract from a book in French

This book paints a collective portrait of women in French-language musicologies from the emergence of the discipline at the end of the xixe century until the final phase of its academic institutionalization in the 1970s. It compares different contexts and networks in which musicology was practiced in French, Parisian spheres, in Strasbourg, Clermont-Ferrand, Poitiers, Liège and Brussels, via Aures, Ravensbruck, Greece and Bourbonnais. Without escaping contemporary gender inequalities and norms, however, French musicology was initially more inclusive than its German, Austrian or American counterparts, promoting the emergence of prominent figures such as Michel Brenet/Marie Bobillier, Yvonne Rokseth, Geneviève Thibault de Chambure or Solange Corbin, and many others often ignored. Researchers, university teachers, musicians, librarians, or collectors, these women have contributed greatly to the development of their discipline, sometimes on the fringes of academic circuits. Through four axes – their role in the institutionalization of the discipline, their theoretical contribution, their participation in the rediscovery of ancient music and their contribution to the beginnings of ethnomusicology – this book traces the trajectories of these pioneers through many sources never before exploited. It thus offers an unprecedented and necessary contribution to the history of musicology and the history of women scientists.

Summary

  • Introduction: Women in French-speaking musicologies, a transnational state of play1

    Catherine Deutsch

  • Part I: Women and institutions17
  • A gloomy life: Michel Brenet and the institutionalisation of musicology in France19

    Catherine Deutsch

  • “You see, I’m losing my time here a little… and life is short”: Marie-Louise Pereyra (1878-1944), a life in the service of musicology41

    Yves Balmer

  • The Yvonne Rokseth collection in the Music Department of the Bibliothèque nationale de France81

    François-Pierre Goy

  • Suzanne Clercx, pioneer of musicology in Belgium97

    Henri Vanhulst

  • Part II: Thinking and rethinking musicology109
  • The “Michel Brenet method”, between classical erudition and modern scientificity111

    Raphaëlle Legrand et Théodora Psychoyou

  • Readers, translators, polemists: French musicologists and “the impossible German model” (1900-1945)137

    Louis Delpech

  • La Revue critique de musique et de musicologie, an unfinished project by Yvonne Rokseth and Vladimir Fedorov (1945-1947)165

    Catherine Massip

  • Thérèse Marix-Spire (1898-1987) : from George Sand to Pauline Viardot, itinerary of a ten-nuviémist191

    Florence Launay

  • Part III: Ars rediviva: reviving old music239
  • “Musicare console vivement ” : auditions for medieval music organized by Yvonne Rokseth (1932-1948)241

    Isabelle Ragnard

  • Claude Crussard and Ars rediviva : Unpublished Baroque music revealed to the general public283

    Laurence Decobert

  • Geneviève Thibault de Chambure (1902-1975) : reviving the “musics of old”309

    Florence Gétreau

  • Solange Corbin, between Paris and Poitiers: from musicology to cultural policy333

    Isabelle His

  • Part IV: Women in the field: ethnography at the gates of musicology367
  • Melpo Logothéti-Merlier (1890-1979) and the beginnings of ethnomusicology in Greece369

    Lucile Arnoux-Farnoux

  • Marguerite Gauthier-Villars (1890-1946) : A musicologist in Bourbonnais391

    Jean-François « Maxou » Heintzen

  • Germaine Tillion, musicologist? Ethnology and musical collection of Aures in Ravensbruck413

    Marie-Hélène Benoit-Otis

  • Nelly Caron (1912-1989), writer, ondist, ethnomusicologist, founder of the Centre for Oriental Music Studies, a woman between East and West433

    François Picard

  • Land and women’s life, a balancing act: interview with Mireille Helffer445

    Mireille Helffer, Catherine Deutsch, et alii

  • Index of names455