Research Update

You may remember my first encounter with the Archives nationales (AN) almost exactly three months ago - I went, I saw, I came home empty-handed. This week, I ventured back with a better idea of what I needed from the AN, and had greater success.

Thanks to my previous experience, I knew the drill: deposit things at vestiaire, proceed directly to Salle des inventaires.. After confirming the côtes (call numbers) of the materials I wanted to consulter, I was finally able to register for a year pass (only 10 euros for students!), and was permitted to enter (insert dramatic music here) the Salle de consultation. Basically it's a reading room. Nifty architectural details. Photography is allowed.

Over a few days, I sifted through the contents of series F/21, boxes 4626 and 4657, which contain the records of the Ministère des Beaux-Arts, specifically the Ministère de l'Instruction Publique, which oversaw state subventions for theatres, concert series, and institutions of music education, among others. I looked at a lot of stuff like this:

Since they told me I didn't need permission to make photographic reproductions of everything I looked at, I assume it's ok to share with you . . . as long as you promise to bail me out of jail if I get in trouble for this. Also, give yourself a point for every composer's name you recognize out of that list. Who is J. Jongen??

Concert series and theatres receiving state funding were obligated to perform a certain amount of new French music every year, and this document shows how they proved to the state that they were satisfying the quota. These documents may be relevant to my dissertation in that they demonstrate one kind of demand for music composition - a demand that could either increase or decrease the financial incentive to compose for the concert-going public. I'm interested in how (or if) that demand was perceived by composers, and how (or if) they reacted to it. In a sense, I already know how composers felt about concert series: getting new works performed there was difficult, prohibitively expensive, and less rewarding (financially, professionally, psychologically) than they wished it would be.

Those are just some current thoughts. We'll have to see where these sources take me in the future. Dissertation research: always an adventure!

Total non sequitur: I had to post this cartoon because it's almost as topical today as it was in 1921. The text reads, "Everything's going down - except for one thing." "What's that?" "Unemployment!"