Argument

The present colloquium aims to provide an opportunity for reflection on modal music—more generally, modality—in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in France, while questioning the diverse influences that enriched the music of this period, such as Greco-Roman antiquity, plainchant, different oral traditions, jazz, music from Asia or so-called “folkloric” musics. Modality, often associated with the music of the past or the Orient, finds itself juxtaposed with tonality—the latter associated with erudite Western music. Yet this dichotomy neglects the impact of cultural exchange on the development of music in the upper echelons of European art, present throughout the so-called “classical” period and culminating in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Moreover, such a partitioning presumes that tonality is fundamentally distinct from modality rather than representing a particular manifestation thereof. Admitting that, for numerous reasons, it is nevertheless practical to distinguish between modality and tonality, the present colloquium invites a critical examination of the influence of the former on the latter. Music since the late nineteenth century has found in modality a form of “singular suppleness” allowing for “an extreme richness of means” (Kœchlin/Duchesneau 2006). Modality, having a “less directional character” (Caron 2002), offers fertile ground for composers. They appropriate modality in various ways, confronting it with tonality (or atonality), and make it evolve constantly. Modality resembles a “construction whose precise characteristics and theoretical foundations change constantly” (Leßmann 2019). If numerous studies exist on the analysis and the theory of modality in early music or the music of oral traditions (Bourgault-Ducoudray 1885, Duhamel 1910, Emmanuel 1913 and 1928, Labussière 2008), those addressing French music from the Third Republic are less common (Gonnard 2000, Corbier 2010, Douche 2012, etc.). By opening a space for discussion, this event seeks to be a place for reflection on theories of modality as well as on the analytical methods and approaches for understanding modality in French music at the turn of the twentieth century.