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Symétrie announces the publication of three new books devoted to music during the two World Wars.

La Grande Guerre des musiciens (The Musicians’ Great War) a collection of essays edited by Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, Esteban Buch, Myriam Chimènes and Georgie Durosoir. For the fighters of the Great War the ear was sometimes the organ which taught them the conflict’s technical novelty; it also allowed them to maintain, through musical activities developed in precarious conditions, a link with their part of humanity. Behind the front line, the ritual nature of musical practices gave the discussions about commitment and patriotism a direct political translation, testified by the reorganization of musical life as well as the creation of institutions. Finally, because of war, composers had to face a real aesthetic and moral alternative between a culture of “pure music” and the production of a political music that some considered as a form of combat.

For more details or excerpts of the book, please consult our website.

Musique, art et religion dans l’entre-deux-guerres (Music, the arts and religion in the inter-war period) a collection of essays edited by Sylvain Caron and Michel Duchesneau. How do religion, “neo” trends and modernism manifest themselves in music and art during the inter-war period? This book engages with the complex question of the place of religion in the ideas and the arts, more particularly music, produced between the First and Second World Wars. This period of great upheavals saw a progressive withdrawal of the Church from both public and private spheres without preventing artists and musicians from proclaiming their faith through their art or from seeking to rebuild a Catholic culture under a new guise.

For more details or excerpts of the book, please consult our website.

Composer sous Vichy (Composing during the German Occupation) by Yannick Simon. Despite the German Occupation, French audiences are rushing to concerts halls as well as movie theaters and art exhibitions. Learned music thus becomes one of the German authorities artistic priorities while the French State undertakes a reorganization of the musical sector which is inevitably involving the composers. In spite of cyclical difficulties, those of them who are not silenced benefit from the intervention of the State, the nationalistic climate and from the lack of foreign competition.

For more details or excerpts of the book, please consult our website.