First Week of Research
Having a series of deja-vu during the first week of research can be quite an unique experience. Reading new chapters from known books is like a date with old acquaintances: old memories penetrate the new stories narrated in a familiar tone. I was reminded of the...
How to Succeed in Research Without Cranial Frying
Believe it or not (I don't), the first week of this summer's CURI project has come and gone, leaving me tired, excited, and a little hungry. We spent the week reading, writing, typing, thinking, plotting points on maps, and getting to know each other; it's been busier...
Crash course in all things French (other than fries)
We have researched successfully for four days. I now know what arrondissements are, how to pronounce "Théâtre" (among other French words mostly relating to people and venues), and that the French culture, vibrant and consuming as it was for the Lost Generation, has...
First Blog Post for 2016 CURI
Here is the second summer of the musical geography of 1920s Paris! With an emphasis on the musicological applications of digital maps and other interactive media, our project will continue to visualize and archive musical events of 1920s Paris. This year, we are...
A Second Year, A Second Team
Bonjour à tous! This summer, our research will continue to work toward the goal of creating a series of engaging, informative maps of Parisian musical life during the 1920s. The interactive features and embedded media in these maps will help students, teachers,...
CURI 2016 – The Beginning
This summer, our mission is to use a series of maps to represent the musical scene in 1920s Paris. Using spreadsheets, web forms, databases, and an array of mapping platforms, we will accumulate information about musical events throughout the decade and analyze it...
Musical Geography of 1920’s Paris – First Blog Post
Our goal, as I understand it, is to continue work on the website created last year that provides detailed maps of various subjects providing information about music in Paris in 1924. My role will be as a general researcher, uncovering dates/times/locations of works...
A Critique of Queer Readings of Satie and Poulenc
In the past few decades, readings and analysis through the lens of queerness have become more and more popular in academia; the two articles discussed below, by Samuel Dorf and Christopher Moore, are perfect examples of this trend. And while both articles bring...
Pas de Pasdeloup
My next research paper is focused on the Concerts Pasdeloup, a musical organization/orchestra that regularly gave performances throughout the concert season that were available to a wide audience. The group is of particular interest to me for three reasons. First,...
Rebuilding History
In the book In 1926: Living at the Edge of Time, Hans Gumbrecht attempts to demonstrate something that was entirely new in 1997, and is still largely unfamiliar to historians. Instead of describing an event or a person from a traditional standpoint, using words, a few...
8 things I learned from mapping the musical geography of 1924 Paris
Yesterday was our CURI final symposium, and the team loved sharing our research from the past ten weeks with the St. Olaf College community. Just because CURI has ended, though, this project is by no means over. We hope to broaden, enlarge, and advance this project...
Révérence
Back when I was studying ballet (many, many years ago), we were taught to end each class with the révérence. A kind of closing bow, the révérence acknowledges the end of a period of collaboration (between students and teachers, fellow participants of the same...
Music in Multicultural Paris
Paris has long been known as an international city – a place were people from all around the world gathered to live, work, and make art, among many other activities. Most of the “foreigners” we’ve focused on through this project have been...
Concerts Crossing Oceans: The New Technology of the Wireless
Downton Abbey fans anyone? If so, you might recall that the fifth season starts in 1924 (nice coincidence, eh?). And you might remember the season’s second episode when Robert reluctantly agrees to install a “wireless” (radio) in order to hear King George V’s speech...
Introduction to Cinema Part II—Introduction to Cinema Music
Despite the fact that we call them “silent films,” films of the 1920s were by no means silent. To a modern audience, we may be bored when watching old silent films, but it's easy to forget that we are experiencing them out of context. In addition the to intrigue the...
Source Evaluation: Etiquette Manuals
Good manners never go out of style, or so they say. Unfortunately, that particular proverb neglects the fact that even that most conservative aspect of society - social etiquette - necessarily evolves. Otherwise no one would publish updated and revised versions of...
World News: France and Germany in the Entre-Guerre
A Tale of Two Countries In our project, we have focused mainly on events centered within the Parisian city limits. Every now and then, though, it helps to widen our perspective in order to see the larger context of the mapping project. Of particular importance during...
Cultural Diplomacy in 1924 Paris?
In addition to creating the map, many of us have taken on other projects in order to apply the data we've collected and (since we come from an interdisciplinary background) to explore our own interests. I sought to incorporate my interest in international relations...
More Americans in Paris
I think we were all excited to discover just how many Americans were in Paris in 1924. From Hemingway to Fitzgerald, their well-documented stays in the city of lights provided valuable contextual information that transplants the reader into Paris during the roaring...
The Hunt for “la Semaine à Paris:” Neither Action, Nor Thriller
As some may already know, I have spent the past two weeks in Paris, researching vigorously with the help of the Bibliothèque Nationale, the national library of France. While my research experience here has been for the most part incredible, from time to time it has...
1924 travel guides…an unexpected source
In A Room with a View, E.M. Forster’s beloved 1908 novel, the young British protagonist Lucy Honeychurch religiously clutches her Baedeker travel guide as she explores the Italian city of Santa Croce. The tactless and comical Miss Lavish believes herself to be more...
An American in Paris
As I was researching jazz music, I saw references to Langston Hughes’ autobiography The Big Sea. 1 In it, he describes his arrival to Paris in February 1924. He details finding work and housing, discovering the jazz scene and the city, and finding love. Using his...
Introduction to Cinema–Part I
In 1924, film technology had been around for slightly more than thirty years, yet the relatively new medium was already playing multiple roles, from popular entertainment to experimental art. Paris contained more than 100 cinema houses. Some theaters were owned by...
Dear Future CURI students
Dear future CURI students (for this project, at least), A few words of advice. As you've undoubtedly realized by now, finding information is relatively easy. Plugging into the spreadsheet in a usable fashion, though, may be turning out to be slightly more gnarly. All...
Tips and Tricks
Dear future mapper of 1924 Paris, Congratulations! You’ve joined a wonderful project led by an inspiring professor. I hope that you’ll take away as much as I have from your work here (for the record, I was not obligated to say those nice things). As a former mapper,...
More on Methodology
Now that we’ve all emerged from our so-called “hack-fest” (a three day period of solely data-entry), we can pause and take a breath knowing that the bulk of our data entry is behind us. We can also pause to make more nuanced and informed critiques of our methodology....
How we do what we do.
Our principal tasks as researchers thus far has been seeking out performances that happened in 1924 Paris. At first, we thought we would be finding them by reading letters and biographies of prominent artists and composers of the time. We began with this tactic, and...
Dear Future CURI Researcher…
Dear Future CURI Researcher, First of all, congratulations! You’re working on a great project and have an exciting 10 weeks ahead of you. Now down to business. I’m writing to provide you with tips on managing our entry form and our spreadsheet. We use a data entry...
The Madness in the Method(ology)
The Trouble with the Methodology A few posts back, I made a few comments on the methodology. Hopefully, between that and the rather more lucid explanations provided by my colleagues, you, dear reader, have some coherent notion of what our project...
Non-Parisian Parisians
What exactly delineates Parisians from their immigrant counterparts? Long ago, as I started looking into the spread of immigrant population within the city limits of Paris (say, two, maybe three weeks ago?), I knew that I would encounter certain difficulties....
Music in the Catacombs
As we've been researching these past few weeks, I have made it a personal goal to try and find music in untraditional spaces in Paris. This quest began for me in the catacombs. I had always thought of these tunnels as irksome dungeons under the streets of Paris that...
10 things you need to know about Nicolas Obuhov.
You might be asking yourself, "Who even is Nicholas Obuhov?" I know that's what I first asked myself when I came across him in a general music chronology of 1924. The description indicated that he finished his score for "Le Livre de Vie" - so that's pretty normal -...
Planes, Trains, and… Actually, Just Planes
The impact of art is necessarily limited by the audience that can witness it. That's why it's so important to examine what transportation was availableto whom in Paris; of course train was the predominant formof long-distance land travel at the time, and passenger...
Dear reader, meet…
Newly Familiar Faces As I comb through the digitized leaves of various newspaper archives, complimentary of the French Bibliothèque Nationale, there are certain elusive figures who reappear with striking frequencies. One of these is a gentleman by the name of Feodor...
Art and everyday objects, art and everyday activities
While watching the 1924 ballet, Le Train Bleu, with the rest of the CURI team the other day, I was surprised at how light-hearted, playful, and funny it was. Particularly after watching Ballet Mécanique and other 1920s art cinema, Le Train Bleu was certainly a...
More Joyce, anyone? Happy Bloomsday!
Today, June 16, is the day known to James Joyce fanatics as “Bloomsday.” The literary holiday is named after Leopold Bloom, the main character of Joyce’s one-day novel and masterpiece Ulysses, which takes place on June 16, 1904 (and which, need I remind you, was first...
Five W’s and an H
Most of us, I would assume, are familiar with the old mnemonic device "five W's and an H." I remember learning it in 1st grade, and thought it was both painfully boring and absurdly obvious for something that we had to learn in school. I would much rather have gone...
Map Methodology
One of the best parts of this project so far has been at once contributing to and developing the project while also stepping back and looking with curiosity and to see how it develops in the hands of my team members. It has been through actually working on the project...
Comments on the Methodology
If you've been following our progress for a little while now (and of course you have, otherwise I'd be talking to an empty room), you might have a few questions as to what exactly we are trying to do in this project and, my personal favorite category, how. The...
What, How, and Why?
When I tell people I’m working on a project called “Mapping the Musical Geography of 1924 Paris” I usually get a polite response of “that sounds...interesting,” (refer to the facial expression below), and a prompt diversion of the conversation. To be honest,...
Ballet Mécanique (observations from a cinema newb)
Modernists, cubists, Dadaists, the many new and radical artistic moments from the early 20th century experimented and took advantage of the new and the old. One new art form they grabbed hold of was cinema. I just watched Ballet Mécanique, a highly influential...
Leonide Massine: Reflections on Artistic Identity in 1924
Léonide Massine: Reflections on Artistic Identity in 1924 What intrigues me the most about Leonide Massine is the conflict between the image of the gifted dancer and choreographer and the somewhat inapproachable, certainly difficult to get along with man. The son of...
From Montparnasse to Montmartre: modern music scenes in Paris
Perhaps you’ve seen the iconic advertisement for Le Chat Noir in a French souvenir shop and thought, “that’s so French!” Maybe you’ve seen the infamous youtube star Henri the existentialist chat noir and thought, “that’s even more French!” Located in the bohemian...
Satie the Satirist
Erik Satie (1866-1925) was a French composer from Normandy; he studied at the Paris Conservatory (which he despised) and in 1887 left his music publisher and amateur composer father and his stepmother (whom he found unbearable) to live in Montmartre (link to map), the...
James Joyce, the musician?
There is no question that James Joyce played a major role in the 1920s literary scene in Paris. Moving there in 1920, he befriended and harnessed the aid of Sylvia Beach, owner of the now famous Shakespeare and Company bookstore and lending library. Beach took on the...
In Focus
I once heard learning equated to the way computers with dial-up service could load information on the screen. There are two separate ways in which this could occur; the first method loads information line by line and it slowly stacks to reveal a picture bar by tedious...
Week One: Done!
With week one done, I think I am well into my crash course on music history of the 1920's. I feel like I'm learning another language filled with composer names, genres, and works of music. What's helpful though is that these "vocabulary words" continue to appear and...
State of the Research
After having taken a week (and a few days) to ease my way into the world of 1924 Paris, the major players in the field of music performance and composition of the time, and the scholarship that exists around these, I can confidently say that I know absolutely nothing...
Connections, connections…
Who knew that James Joyce’s daughter and Zelda Fitzgerald were trying their hands at dance or that a single ballet such as Le Train Bleu could bring together the choreography, music, dance, writing, fashion, and visual art talents of Nijinsky, Milhaud, Diaghilev,...
Week One Check-In
Now that a week of this summer's research project has passed into the abyss of the past without too many casualties, I believe I can say that I am finding a rhythm for my work. There is certainly a great deal to be done, and I am realizing that the time we have is...
British Library Finds
It's been a full day: morning and afternoon at the British Library, evening at the opening events of the conference I'm attending here. Highlights included: - Looked at letters written to Walter Leigh, an English composer who died fighting the Germans in Libya in...
Bonjour, let’s begin…
As yet another enthusiastic member of our eclectic CURI team, I am eager to get started mapping musical geography! The final product of our project, an interactive map to contextualize the music scene of 1924 Paris, will be used as a teaching tool and research aid,...
What are we doing and why am I here?
For the next 10 weeks, I am excited to work alongside four brilliantly intelligent people to discover the musical geography of Paris in 1924. Together, we will create a dynamic map and timeline that should act as a useful resource for anyone interested in the topic....
What I Learned in Summer School Is…
Hi. I’m Derek Smith. I am working with a CURI team at St. Olaf College on a project that is loquaciously entitled “The Musical Geography of Nineteen-Twenty Four Paris”. The goal of my peers is to essentially map the musical soundscape of this very specific time period...
How do I fit in?
As someone looking to move into the world of music education, it might be somewhat odd to think that I would be working on an archival research project on 1924 Paris, even if it does focus on the music scene of the time. However, I have done a fair amount of prior...
Salut! Je me présente…
As a relatively casual musician, I admit I had some personal reservations going into this research project. I certainly would not consider myself an expert on the music of 1920's Paris. However, it would seem that I find myself in good company, each member of this...
Getting Summer Research Started Right
On this first day of CURI research, I'm . . . in London. In my defense, I'm here to present a paper on the 1924 Soirées de Paris season, which means I'm thinking about (and soliciting feedback on) the topic of our summer-long project. I'm also doing some archival...
Manifesto
Premieres, innovations, and influential revivals jump off the pages of musicological scholarship, contributing to a historical narrative that emphasizes progress and the new even when the overwhelming majority of historical evidence suggests that "progress" and...