Before the French Revolution, making music was an activity that required permission. After the Revolution, music was an object that could be possessed. Everyone seemingly hoped to gain something from owning music. Musicians claimed it as their unalienable personal expression while the French nation sought to enhance imperial ambitions by appropriating it as the collective product of cultural heritage and national industry. Musicians capitalized on these changes to
protect their professionalization within new laws and institutions, while excluding those without credentials from their elite echelon.
From Servant to Savant demonstrates how the French Revolution set the stage for the emergence of so-called musical "Romanticism" and the legacies that continue to haunt musical institutions and industries. As musicians and the government negotiated the place of music in a reimagined French society, new epistemic and professional practices constituted three lasting values of musical production: the composer's sovereignty, the musical work's inviolability, and the nation's
supremacy.
- ISBN10 0197511511
- ISBN13 9780197511510
- Publish Date 29 April 2022
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 5 April 2022
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 328
- Language English