Penser l'après-guerre : aspirations et réalisations dans le monde musical (1914-1918)

Considering the music world in the postwar years draws on a prolific and varied literary output from 1914 onwards: soldiers’ letters and diaries, surveys and press articles, administrative documents and official speeches, etc. Both at the rear and at the front, aspirations multiplied, rapidly differed and were asserted or altered as the months went by. Transcending individual or collective sensibilities, these often contrasting positions also revealed concerns, contexts or plans which this article seeks to identify and explain. The study of several characteristic examples (words by musicians who were soldiers, conversations of eminent composers, texts written by musicians on the home front, etc.) makes it possible to shed light on the actual achievements of a music world which was at that time wavering between the status quo and radical reform.