The city ofParis has been an important center for European music since theMiddle Ages. It was noted for its choral music in the 12th century, for its role in the development ofballet during theRenaissance, in the 19th century it became famous for its music halls and cabarets, and in the 20th century for the first performances of theBallets Russes, itsjazz clubs, and its part in the development ofserial music. Paris has been home to many important composers, including:Léonin,Pérotin,Jean-Baptiste Lully,Jean-Philippe Rameau,Christoph Willibald Gluck,Niccolò Piccinni,Frédéric Chopin,Franz Liszt,Jacques Offenbach,Georges Bizet,Claude Debussy,Maurice Ravel,Hector Berlioz,Paul Dukas,Gabriel Fauré,César Franck,Charles Gounod,Jules Massenet,Vincent d'Indy,Camille Saint-Saëns,Erik Satie,Igor Stravinsky,Sidney Bechet.

In theMiddle Ages, music was an important part of the ceremony in Paris churches and at the royal court. The EmperorCharlemagne had founded a school at the first cathedral of Notre Dame in 781, whose students chanted during the mass; and the court also had a school, theschola palatina, which traveled wherever the imperial court went, and whose students took part in the religious services at the Royal Chapel. Large monasteries were founded on the Left Bank atSaint-Germain-des-Prés,Sainte-Geneviève, andSaint-Victor, which taught the art of religious chanting, adding more elaborate rhythms and rimes. When the newCathedral of Notre Dame de Paris was constructed, theNotre Dame school became famous for its innovations in vocal counterpoint, or polyphony. TheArchdeacon Albert of the Notre Dame school became famous for composing the first known work for three voices, each chanting a different part at the same time. Another famous teacher at the Notre Dame school,Pérotin, composed for four different voices, with highly complex rhythms, blending all the voices together in ways never heard before. In the 13th century, the monks of the Notre Dame school developed an even more complex form, themotet, or "little word"; short pieces for two or three voices, each chanting different words, and sometimes in different languages. The motet became so popular that it was used in non-religious music, in the court and even by musicians and singers on the streets.^[1]

A second important music school was established at theSainte-Chapelle, the royal chapel on theÎle de la Cité. Its choir had twenty-five persons, both men and boys, who were taught chanting and vocal techniques.The music of the religious schools became popular outside the churches; the melodies of chants were adapted for popular songs, and sometimes popular song melodies were adapted for church use.^[2]

Prior to the ninth century there were no written manuscripts ofliturgy related to music. TheGallic music of the churches ofGaul was replaced by the plain songs traced to Rome.^[3]

In the late 12th century, a school ofpolyphony was established at Notre-Dame. A group of Parisian aristocrats, known astrouvères, became known for their poetry and songs.^[4] Choral polyphony is a musical genre which was introduced in the 15th century in the Western church music culture. At Notre-Dame, this culture became intertwined as its construction progressed.^[3] Composition of music and poetry was a culture that prevailed in the cathedral among itscanons and dignitaries.^[5]

In the cathedral, polyphony andorgan music were reserved for solemn occasions at a time when acoustics were not well developed.^[6] Organizing of the music group in the cathedral was such that the polyphonic vocal choir singing musicians were set behind thetapestries whereas the organ was placed in thenave.^[5] Before the 16th century all music performed in the cathedral wasa cappella, except for use of organ while chanting.^[6]

One of the most famous composers of the 14th century wasGuillaume de Machaut, who was also renowned as a poet. A canon atNotre-Dame de Reims, he composed a famous mass, theMesse de Nostre Dame, or Mass of our Lady, in about 1350, for four voices. Some ofhis motets use texts byPhilip the Chancellor. Besides church music, he wrote popular songs in the style of thetroubadours andtrouvères.^[7]

The crowds on the streets, squares and markets of Paris were often entertained by singers of different kinds. Thegoliards were non-conformist students at the religious colleges, who led a bohemian life, and earned money for food and lodging by reciting poems and singing improvised songs, either love songs or satirical songs, accompanying themselves on medieval instruments. Thetrouvéres sang popular songs, romantic or humorous, largely borrowed in style and content from the troubadours of southern France. They often entertained crowds gathered on thePetit Pont, the bridge connecting theÎle de la Cité with the left bank. They introduced a particular form, therondeau, a round song. TheJongleurs were famous for burlesque songs, making fun of the merchants, clergy, and the nobility. Some of them became immensely popular, and received lodging and gifts from the nobles they amused.

TheMenestrels, (Minstrels), were usually street singers who had established a more professional means of living, entertaining in the palaces or residences of noble and wealthy Parisians. In 1321, thirty-seven minstrels andjongleurs formed a professionalguild, theConfrérie de Saint-Julien des ménétriers, the first union of musicians in Paris. Most of them played instruments: the violin, flute,hautbois, or tambourine. They played at celebrations, weddings, meetings, holiday events, and royal celebrations and processions. By theirstatutes enacted in 1341, no musician could play on the streets without their permission. In order to become a member, a musician had to be anapprentice for six years. At the end of the six years, the apprentice had to audition for a jury ofmaster musicians. By 1407, the rules of theConfrérie were applied to all of France.^[8]

Musicians were also an important part of court life. The court of QueenAnne of Brittany, wife ofCharles VIII of France, in 1493 included three well-known composers of the period:Antonius Divitis,Jean Mouton, andClaudin de Sermisy, as well as a tambourine player, alute player, two singers, a player of therebec (a three-stringed instrument like a violin), an organist, and a player of themanichordion, as well as three minstrels from Brittany.^[9]

At the death ofCharles VI in Paris in 1422, during the devastatingHundred Years' War which ended in 1453, the city had been occupied by the English and their Burgundian allies since 1418. The new (disinherited) French king,Charles VII, had his court established inBourges, south of theLoire Valley, and did not return to his capital before liberating it in 1436. His successors chose to live in the Loire Valley, and rarely visited Paris. However, in 1515, after his coronation inReims, kingFrancis I made his grand entrance in Paris and, in 1528, announced his intention to return the royal court there, and began reconstructing theLouvre as the royal residence in the capital. He also imported theRenaissance musical styles fromItaly, and recruited the best musicians and composers in France for his court.La Musique de la Grande Écurie ("Music of the Great Stable") was organized in 1515 to perform at royal ceremonies outdoors. It featuredhaut, or loud instruments, including trumpets, fifes, cornets, drums, and later, violins. A second ensemble,La musique de la Chambre du Roi ("Music of the King's Chamber") was formed in 1530, withbas or quieter instruments, including violas, flutes and lutes. A third ensemble, the oldest, theChapelle royale, which performed at religious services and ceremonies, was also reformed on Renaissance models.^[10]

Another important revolution in music was brought about by the invention of theprinting press; the first printed book of music was made in 1501 inVenice. The first printed book of music in France was made in Paris byPierre Attaingnant; his printing house became the royal musical house in 1538. After his death, Robert Ballard became the royal music printer. Ballard established a shop in Paris in 1551. The most popular musical instrument for wealthy Parisians to play was the lute, and Ballard produced dozens of books of lute songs and airs, as well as music books for masses and motets, and pieces from Italy and Spain.^[11]

The most popular genre in Paris was thechanson: hundreds of them were written on love, work, battles, religion, and nature.Mary, Queen of Scots and wife of kingFrancis II wrote a song of mourning for the loss of her husband, and French poets, includingPierre de Ronsard andJoachim du Bellay, had their sonnets and odes put to music. The most popular composers of songs includedClément Janequin, who wrote some two hundred and fifty pieces, and became Court composer, andPierre Certon, who was a cleric at the Sainte-Chapelle while he wrote some three hundred chansons, ranging from religious and courtly music to popular melodies, such as the famousSur le Pont d'Avignon. In the second part of the century, a variation of the chanson, theair de cour or simplyair (melody), became popular.Airs were lighter in subject, and were accompanied by a lute. They became immensely popular in Paris.^[12]

The movement ofProtestant Reformation, led byMartin Luther in theHoly Roman Empire andJohn Calvin in France, had an important impact on music in Paris. Under Calvin's direction, between 1545 and 1550 books ofpsalms were translated fromLatin intoFrench, turned into songs, and sung at reformed services in Paris. TheCatholic establishment reacted fiercely to the new movement; the songs were condemned by theCollege of Sorbonne, the fortress of orthodoxy, and in 1549 one Protestant tailor in Paris, Jacques Duval, wasburned at the stake, along with hissong book. When the campaign against the new songs proved ineffective, theCatholic Church, at theCouncil of Trent (1545-1563) which launched theCounter-Reformation, also launched a musical counter-reformation. It was calling for an end to complex but unintelligible chants, simpler melodies, and more serious and elevated lyrics.^[13]

The beginning of the 16th century saw the firsttheater performances in Paris, which frequently included music and songs. An amateur theater group called theConfrérie de la Passion was periodically performingPassion Plays, based on thePassion ofJesus, in a large hall on the ground floor of the Hospital of the Trinity (Hôpital de la Trinité) onrue Saint-Denis, where it remained until 1539. In 1543, the group bought one of the buildings attached to theHôtel de Bourgogne at 23rue Étienne-Marcel, which became the first permanent theater in the city. The church authorities in Paris denounced Passion and religiousmystery plays, which they banned in 1548. TheConfrérie rented out its theater to visiting theater troupes, notably an English company directed by Jean Sehais, an Italian company called theComici Gelosi ("Jealous Comedians"), and a French company headed byValleran Le Conte.^[14]

The Renaissance saw a great increase in the number and quality of musical instruments: theharp,violin andflute were produced with many new variations, theseven-string guitar appeared, and thelute, which was based on theoud, anArab instrument brought to theIberian Peninsula during theMoorish invasions. Thetrumpet evolved to something similar to its present form. Powerfulorgans were built for Paris churches, as well as smaller portable organs and theclavichord, ancestor of thepiano. The lute, most often used to accompany songs, became the instrument of choice for minstrels and musically inclined aristocrats. In 1597, there were so many different instrument-makers in Paris that they, like the minstrels, were organized into aguild, which required six years of apprenticeship and the presentation of a master-work to be accepted as a full member.^[15]

Dance was also an important part of court life. The first French book ofdance music was published in 1531 in Paris, with the title: "Fourteengaillardes, ninepavanes, sevenbranles and twobasses-danses". These French dance books, calledDanceries, were circulated all over Europe. The names of the composers were rarely credited, with the exception of Jean d'Estrée,^[16] a member of the royal orchestra, who published four books of his dances in Paris between 1559 and 1574.

At the end of the 16th century, theballet became popular at the French court. Ballets were performed to celebrate weddings and other special occasions. The first performance ofCircé byBalthasar de Beaujoyeulx was performed at theLouvre Palace on September 24, 1581, to celebrate the wedding ofAnne de Joyeuse, a royalfavourite ofHenry III, with Marguerite de Vaudémont.^[17] Ballets at the French royal court combined elaborate costumes, dance, singing, and comedy. During the reign ofHenry IV, ballets were often comic or exotic works; those performed during his reign included "The Ballet of the fools", "The Ballet of the drunkards", "The Ballet of the Turks", and "The Ballet of the Indians".^[18]

In the 17th century, music played an important part at the French royal court; there was no day without music.Louis XIII composed songs, and in 1618 organized the first permanent orchestra in France, calledLa Grande Bande or the Twenty-four ordinary violins of the King, who performed for royal balls, celebrations, and official ceremonies. His son,Louis XIV, an accomplished musician, was taught the guitar and the harpsichord by the best musicians of the period. In 1647,Jean-Baptiste Lully was brought to Paris from his nativeFlorence to be in the service ofLa Grande Mademoiselle. In early 1653, he caught the attention of Louis XIV, who named him court composer for instrumental music. Under Lully, music became not simply entertainment, but an expression of royal majesty and power.^[19]The royal ministers, CardinalsRichelieu andMazarin encouraged the development of French music in place of the Italian style.^[20]

In the families of the nobles and the wealthy, children were taught to sing and to play musical instruments, such as harp, flute, guitar, and harpsichord, either in the convent schools, or at home with private tutors. Louis XIV established the Royal Academy of Music (Académie royale de musique) in 1672, and commissioned Lully to create a music school, but a school for opera singers in Paris was not opened until 1714, and its quality was very poor; it closed in 1784.^[21] One notable music teacher and composer wasJacques Champion de Chambonnières, Louis XIV's harpsichord teacher, whose compositions established the French school of harpsichord music.

TheAir de Cour, or Court Air, became very popular in the early 17th century, during the reign of Louis XIII, both at the royal court and in the palaces of the nobility and the wealthy. It was designed to be sung in a large room (chamber) where the nobility entertained their intimate friends. They usually were improvised songs on the themes of gallantry and love, in the form of a dialogue, performed with thelute and thethéorbe. The composerPierre Guédron, music teacher to the children of the King, published several books of court airs, and trainedAngélique Paulet, the most famous Parisian singer of the early 17th century. The published songs were learned and sung by both nobles and wealthy Parisians.^[22]

Cardinal Mazarin, raised in Rome, was an enthusiastic supporter of Italian culture and imported Italian painters, architects and musicians to work in Paris. In 1644, he invited thecastratoAtto Melani to Paris, along with his brotherJacopo Melani and the Florentine singer Francesca Costa, and introduced the Italian singing style to the French capital. The Italian style was much different than the French style of the day; voices were stronger and the singing expressed stronger emotions, rather than the finesse of the classical French style.^[23] The first Italian opera to be performed in Paris was acomédie italienne (which may have beenMarco Marazzoli'sIl Giudizio della Ragione tra la Beltà e l'Affetto (1643), although this has been disputed) at thePalais-Royal on February 28, 1645,^[24] followed by Francesco Sacrati'sLa finta pazza in December of that year and in 1647 by the more famousOrfeo ofLuigi Rossi at thePetit-Bourbon next to the Louvre.^[25]

The debut of Italian opera in Paris had exactly the opposite effect that Mazarin desired. As Parisian audiences were not prepared for a theatrical work that was entirely sung, the Cardinal was denounced and ridiculed by Parisian streets singers and pamphlets calledmazarinades for spending a fortune on opera decoration and bringing Italiancastrati and singers to Paris. Furthermore, during the disorders of theFronde, Mazarin was forced to leave Paris. When calm was restored, he returned to the capital and carried forward his project to build an opera house. At the time the city had no theater to rival the opera houses of Venice or Rome and, in 1659, Mazarin began construction of theSalle des Machines, a new theater in the north wing of theTuileries Palace, between theMarsan Pavilion and the chapel. It could seat six thousand persons, had marble columns, was lavishly decorated, and contained the elaborate machinery needed to produce dramatic stage effects. The death of Mazarin delayed the opening, but it was finally inaugurated in 1662 with an Italian opera,Ercole amante, byCavalli. The premiere was a disaster: the acoustics in the new hall were terrible, and the sound of the stage machinery drowned out the music.^[26]

The efforts to create a French opera continued. The poetPierre Perrin persuaded the newController General of Finances,Colbert, to establish anAcademy of Opera, and in 1669 Perrin was given a commission by the king to create works "in music and in French verse comparable to that of Italy." The first opera by Perrin,Pomone, with music byRobert Cambert, was performed on March 3, 1671, inside a convertedjeu de paume, or tennis court, theJeu de Paume de la Bouteille, between the rue des Fossés de Nesles (now rue Mazarine) and therue de Seine. It was an enormous success, running for one hundred forty-six performances.^[27]

Seeing the success of Perrin's work, the official court composer, Lully, moved quickly; he persuaded the royal government to issue a decree banning any theatrical performances with more than two songs or two instruments without Lully's written permission. On November 15, 1672, he opened his own opera house in theSalle du Bel-Air. He also demanded and received from the king the exclusive rights to use the theater of the Palais-Royal, until then used by the theater company ofMolière, giving him control over any and all musical performances in Paris. He presented a new opera each year, entirely funded by the royal treasury. In April 1673, he premieredCadmus et Hermione, the first French opera in the lyric-tragedy form. This form, which dominated French opera for the next two centuries, but was rarely exported, featured stories based on mythology and ancient heroes. The performances made maximum use of machinery, allowing the creation on stage of storms, monsters, and characters descending or ascending into the heavens. The texts involved recitation of verse in a classical half-spoken, half-sung style, borrowed fromRacine andCorneille, with a vocal range of an octave, words mingled with sighs, exclamations and vibrato. The works included not only singing, but also dance. The operas were all dedicated to the glory of the Sun King: in the dedication ofArmide, Lully wrote: "All of the praises of Paris are not enough for me; it is only to you, Sire, that I want to consecrate all the productions of my genius."^[27]

After 1672, Louis XIV no longer lived in Paris, preferring the royal residences ofSaint-Germain-en-Laye,Chambord,Fontainebleau, and finallyVersailles where he and the court moved permanently in 1682. The royal musicians and opera singers went with him, and Versailles, not Paris, became the center of French musical life.

During his residence in Paris, the young Louis XIV was an avid dancer and participant inballet. Ballet was commonly practiced by young nobles, along with fencing and horsemanship. Only men danced, except in ballets given by the ladies of the Queen. Louis practiced several hours a day, and made his first ballet appearance in theBallet de Cassandre at the age of thirteen. He was featured in theBallet Royal de la Nuit, at thePetit-Bourbon theater, on 23 February 1653. This court ballet lasted 12 hours, from sundown until sunrise, and consisted of 45 dances. Louis XIV appeared in five of them, the most famous of which saw the young monarch in the role ofApollo, the Sun King, appearing as theSoleil levant ("rising Sun").^[28][29]

With the arrival of the twenty-six-year-old Jean-Baptiste Lully at the court, the ballet began to take on a new dimension. Lully premiered his first Grand Ballet Royal,Alcidiane, on February 14, 1658, with the entire court in attendance. The performance, composed of seventy-nine different tableaux, or scenes, lasted several hours. In the 1660s, Lully evolved the performances into a combination of ballet, singing, and theater. The performance of Molière's comedy-balletLe Mariage forcé ("The Forced Marriage"), at the Louvre on 29 January 1664, included not only scenes by Molière and his actors, but several ballets, and also songs by the leading singers of the day, Mademoiselle Hilaire and Signora Anna. However, in 1670, at the age of twenty-six, Louis XIV decided to give up dancing. As a result, Lully revised the format of the court ballets to please the King as a spectator, rather than dancer. For his newtragédie-ballet,Psyché, performed before the King on January 17, 1671, the performance included dancing, singing, acting, orchestral music, and immense visual spectacles created by stage machinery. At one point in the performance, three hundred performers were on or suspended above the stage, singing, dancing, or playing lutes, flutes, trumpets, cymbals, violins, the harpsichord, thehautbois and thethéorbe.^[30]

In theBaroque era, music was an important weapon to win ordinary people to the side of theCatholic Church, as it had been since theCounter-Reformation, a time when music was given a larger role in religious services. TheSainte-Chapelle was renowned for the purity and beauty of its music, while theTe Deum sung at Notre-Dame was reputed for its soloists, choirs, and double-choirs, and for the musical form called themotet created for the cathedral's singers. The churches were equipped with magnificent organs. Most organists of the churches of Paris were members of families who held the post for generations: the most illustrious were members of theCouperin family, who were organists at the church ofSt-Gervais-et-St-Protais, near the Louvre, for over two centuries, from 1650 until the French Revolution. The most outstanding member of the family wasFrançois Couperin, who composed and published numerous pieces, both religious and secular, for the organ and harpsichord. The dynasties included several women who made their mark on Parisian music: François' daughter, Louise Couperin, was a celebrated singer, and his granddaughter Marguerite became the first woman harpsichordist attached to the royal orchestra.Elisabeth Blanchet, the daughter of a prominent Paris harpsichord maker and wife ofArmand-Louis Couperin, often took the place of her husband at the organs of Saint-Gervais, Sainte-Chapelle and Notre Dame. Her daughter, Céleste, also became a noted Paris organist at Saint-Gervais.^[31]

• 
  Musicians at home, by Abraham Bosse (about 1632)
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  ThePont Neuf was the most popular venue for street singers and musicians (painting by Hendrick Mommers, 1694)
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  Tabarin's actors and musicians perform onPlace Dauphine (17th century)
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  Guillaume de Limoges, the ribald street singer called the "Lame Lothario" on thePont Neuf (17th century)

The most popular gathering place for street musicians and singers, as well as clowns, acrobats, and poets, was thePont Neuf, inaugurated by Louis XIII in 1613. All the carriages of the aristocracy and the wealthy crossed the bridge, and since it was the only bridge not lined by houses, there was room for a large audience. Listeners could hear comical songs about current events, romantic poems set to music, and (after 1673), the latest melodies of the court composer,Lully. Philipotte, the "Orpheus of the Pont-Neuf", Duchemin, "The Choir boy of the Pont-Neuf", and the one-legged Guillaume de Limoges, the "Lame Lothario", known for his ribald songs, were famous throughout Paris. The celebratedbateleurTabarin set up a small stage onPlace Dauphine, at the point where the bridge crosses theÎle-de-la-CIté; his company presented theater, songs and comedy. Between acts, his business partner sold medicines and ointments.^[32]

The debuts of each of the lyric-tragic operas of Lully were followed almost immediately by parodies performed on the stages at the large outdoor fairs of Paris, at Saint-Germain and Saint-Laurent. A large stage was constructed at the Saint-Germain fair in 1678. The Academy of Music moved quickly to have the city ban recitation of text on stage, which was the exclusive right of theComédie-Française and the Royal Academy of Music. The actors at the fairs responded by writing their dialogue on signs and holding them up, where the audience read them aloud. The singers sometimes also sang with unintelligible words, mimicking the formal court style of Lully's music. The performers at the fairs invented a new style which combined comic songs with satire, and acrobatics, a form which took the namevaudeville.^[32]

The foundation of the Royal Academy of Music in 1672 created a growing gulf between the official musicians of the court and the popular musicians of Paris, who were members of the guild ofménétriers (minstrels), with its own rules and traditions, under their traditional head, the elected "King of the Minstrels". While the guild of minstrels had a monopoly over the music in the streets, Lully, the head of the royal academy, had an ordinance passed which gave academy members the exclusive right to play at balls, serenades, and other public events. Academy members did not have to go through the apprenticeship required to be a member of the minstrels guild. The guild of minstrels brought a lawsuit against François Couperin and all organists of the Paris churches, demanding that they join the minstrels guild. The guild won the lawsuit, but the organists appealed to theParliament of Paris, which exempted them from the rules of the guild. The guild continued to exist until the Revolution: in 1791, it was quietly dissolved.^[33]

The musical life of Paris at the beginning of the 18th century was gloomy; the court was atVersailles, andfrivolity was officially frowned upon by Louis XIV and his second wife, theMarquise de Maintenon, and the religious party at court. The King's favorite composer, Lully, fell into disgrace because of his unorthodox lifestyle. Musical satires and farces continued to be sung on stages at the fairs, but they were constantly under attack from the Royal Academy of Music, which claimed a monopoly on singing performances. TheThéâtre-Italien troupe was forced to leave Paris because of accusations that they made fun of Madame de Maintenon. After the death of the Louis XIV in 1715, theRegent and royal court returned to Paris, and the musical world brightened.

The opera continued to create lavish productions of lyrical tragedies, in the style of Lully. In 1749, the management of the opera was transferred from the court to Paris, much to the dismay of city authorities, who had to pay for the huge spectacles. The opera performed at the theater of the Palais-Royal until April 6, 1763, when a fire destroyed that venue. It moved to the Hall of Machines of the Tuileries, then back to the Palais-Royal in 1770 when the theater was rebuilt. It burned down again in 1781. After Lully, the lyric-tragedy style of opera was faithfully maintained by a series of composers, the most prominent of whom wasJean-Philippe Rameau, who arrived in Paris from Dijon in 1723 and premiered his first opera,Hippolyte et Aricie, in 1733. TheMercure de France, the first Paris newspaper, described his music as "manly, harmonious, and of a new character" different from the music of Lully. The musical world of Paris soon divided intoLullyistes andRamistes (orRameauneurs, as they were termed byVoltaire). The prolific Rameau produced not only lyrical tragedies, but also opera-ballets,pastorales, and comic ballets.^[34]

By the 1750s, Paris audiences were beginning to tire of the formality, conventions, repetitive themes, mechanical tricks and great length of the lyrical tragedies. In theEnlightenment begun in France in 1715, critics demanded a new, more natural form of opera. The battle was launched by the first performance in 1752 ofLa Serva Padrona, a 1733 Italian opera byGiovanni Battista Pergolesi at the Academy by the company of Bouffons. The philosopherJean-Jacques Rousseau praised the Italian opera for its simple plot, popular characters, and melodic singing. Describing the quarrel in hisConfessions, Rousseau wrote: "On the one side, the most powerful and influential, were the rich, the nobles, and women, supporting the French style; on the other side, more lively, more proud, and more enthusiastic, were the trueconnaisseurs, the people of talent, the men of genius".^[34] Rameau defended his music: "Do you not know that music is a physical-mathematical science, and that sound is a physical object, and that the relationships between the different sounds are made by mathematics and geometry?" Roussau responded that music was the language of feelings; "from the melody comes all the power of music over the human spirit." To illustrate his point, Rousseau wrote a text for a new one-act opera (intermède),Le devin du village ("The village soothsayer"), about the love of two simple peasants, which became part of the Academy repertoire for the next sixty years. Over the course of the 18th century, the heroic style of Lully and Rameau quietly disappeared from Paris stages, replaced by the more natural and more romantic Italian style.^[34]

Another operatic feud began with the arrival of the German composerChristoph Willibald Gluck in Paris in 1776. He had already written a series of successful Italian operas. In Vienna, he had studied French and had been the music teacher of the youngMarie Antoinette. In 1774, he staged the operaIphigénie en Aulide in Paris, which became a huge popular triumph; he followed it with a French version ofOrfeo ed Euridice, which he had written in Vienna in 1762, and thenAlceste, reviving the classical lyrical tragedy style. The supporters of Italian opera responded by bringing the Italian opera composerNiccolo Piccinni to Paris in 1776. The rival new operas written by Gluck and Piccinni did not please the fickle Parisian audiences, and both composers left Paris in disgust. By the time of the Revolution the repertoire of the Paris opera consisted of five operas by Gluck, and those of Piccinni,Antonio Salieri,Sacchini andGretry. Rameau and the French classical style had almost disappeared from the repertoire.^[35]

Throughout the 18th century, the stages of the largest fairs, theFoire Saint-Germain andFoire Saint-Laurent, were the places to see popular entertainment, pantomime and satirical songs. They were only open for a short period of time each year, and were strictly controlled by the rules of the Royal Academy of Music. In 1714–15, the Academy was short of money, and decided to sell licenses to producers of popular theater. TheComédiens-Italiens, expelled from Paris under Louis XIV, were invited back to Paris to perform satirical songs and sketches on the stage at theHôtel de Bourgogne. In 1726, a new company, theOpéra-Comique, made up of performers from the Saint-Germain fair, was formed. It first settled near the fair onrue de Buci, then moved to the dead-end streetcul de sac des Quatre-Vents. Some of the most famous popular French singers of the period and the playwrightCharles-Simon Favart made their debut there. In 1744, theOpéra-Comique was taken over by an ambitious new director, Jean Monnet, who built a new theater at the Saint-Laurent fair, with decorations by the famed artistFrançois Boucher, and an orchestra of eighteen musicians conducted by Jean-Philippe Rameau. In 1762, the two competing comic opera theaters were merged under a royal charter, and were allowed to perform all year long, not just during the fairs. The two groups first performed independently on the stage at theHôtel de Bourgone, and engaged the best composers of the time, includingPierre-Alexandre Monsigny,François-André Danican Philidor andAndré Grétry. In 1783, they built a brand-new theater, between rues Favart, Marivaux, and the futureboulevard des Italiens. The new theater, calledSalle Favart, opened on April 28, 1783, in the center of what soon became the city's main theater district.^[36]

Much of the musical activity of the city took place in thesalons of the nobility and wealthy Parisians. They sponsored private orchestras, often with a combination of both professional and amateur musicians, commissioned works, and organized concerts of very high quality, often with a mixture of both professional and amateur musicians. Some very wealthy Parisians built small theaters within their homes. In 1764,Louis François, Prince of Conti hosted a reception in his palace where the featured attraction was the ten-year-oldWolfgang Amadeus Mozart at the harpsichord. A musical society was organized by theMarquise de Prie, the mistress of theDuke of Bourbon, which gave concerts of Italian music twice a week at the Louvre. The sixty-odd members who attended paid an annual fee, which went to the musicians. Though private individuals were forbidden to hold concerts without the permission of the Royal Academy of Music, a wealthy Parisian named Monsieur Bouland had a theater within his house on rue Saint-Antoine with a stage for two actors, an orchestra of twenty, and seating for three hundred. The owners of salons invited not only classical musicians, but also popular singers of comic opera from the Paris fairs, such as Pierre Laujon and Charles Collé, who became quite wealthy.

TheMasonic movement became immensely popular among the Parisian upper classes; the first lodge opened in Paris in 1736, and had four famous musicians among its first members. By 1742, there were more than twenty, each with its own musical director. One of the most famous concert societies was theConcert Spirituel, created in 1725, which organized public concerts of religious music in Latin, and later Italian and French, in a salon within the Tuileries Palace provided by the King. Attendees at the concerts included queen Marie Antoinette. The society commissioned works of music by important composers, includingHaydn and Mozart, who wrote and performed theSymphony n° 31, K. 297/300a, known as the "Paris Symphony", for the Society during his visit to Paris in 1778. In 1763, the society moved to the Hall of Machines, and had an orchestra of fifty-four musicians and vocal ensemble of six sopranos, six tenors, and six basses.^[37]

The most popular venues for popular music, satire, and comic songs continued to be the stages at the major fairs, where crowds listened to satirical, comical and sentimental songs, though they were only open part of the year. In 1742, the royal government decided that the street singers on thePont-Neuf were a public nuisance, and were blocking traffic. Only booksellers were allowed to remain, and they had to pay a fee to the royal government. The street and popular musicians migrated across town to theBoulevard du Temple, a wide street with vestiges of the old city walls on one side, and houses on the other. In 1753, the city authorized the construction of cafés and theaters, at first made of canvas and wood, along the boulevard; and the boulevard quickly became the center of popular theater of Paris, a position it held until the Second Empire.^[38]

Publicballs were banned on moral grounds during the last years of the reign ofLouis XIV, and were not permitted again until after his death in September 1715. Shortly after, aroyal ordinance of 31 December 1715 authorized the first public balls in the city. These were the famousmasked balls of theParis Opera, which took place on Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays beginning onSt. Martin's Day (November 11) and continuing untilCarnival (February–March).

Patriotic and revolutionary songs gave, as one journal of the period, theChronique de Paris, wrote, "The national color to the Revolution".^[39] They were sung at political meetings, in theaters, in schools and on the streets. The most popular were theCarmagnole (about 1792); with words by an anonymous author, and music from an existing song; andÇa ira with words by Ladré and the music of an oldcontredanse by the violinist Bécaut calledLe Carillon national. The song took its title from an expression, "That will happen," whichBenjamin Franklin, the American envoy to Paris, had popularized, describing the American Revolution. The most famous song of the period was theChant de guerre pour l'armée du Rhin (Battle Song of the Army of the Rhine), by a young army officer,Claude Rouget de Lisle. It was first sung in public on 30 July 1791 by a battalion of volunteers fromMarseille as they marched into Paris, and thereafter became known as theHymne des Marseillais, which became, on10 August 1792, the official anthem of the Revolution. During the revolutionary period,Ça ira was played by the orchestra in every theater before a performance, with the audience and performers singing. TheMarseillaise was always performed at the intermission. Often the songs were sung during the performances, if the audience demanded it. In 1796, theDirectory made the singing of such songs obligatory for all theaters, while banning the singing of songs by other political factions, such as theRéveil du people (Wake-up call of the People), the song of theThermidorians.^[40]

Music was also an important ingredient of the enormous public festivals that were organized by the Revolutionary governments, usually on theChamp de Mars, which was transformed into an immense outdoor theater to host these spectacles. The first was theFête de la Fédération on 14 July 1790, a festival marking the first anniversary of the taking of the Bastille. Thefêtes began in the morning with the ringing of church bells and firing of cannons; patriotic songs were sung throughout the ceremonies, which always concluded with a concert by the musicians of the National Guard and a ball in the streets. The last of the great festivals was theFestival of the Supreme Being, organized on June 8, 1794, byRobespierre, as a substitute for traditional religious celebrations; it had singers and choirs surrounding an artificial mountain crowned by the Tree of Liberty. Robespierre's role in the event did not entirely please the audience; he was arrested and executed a few weeks later.

The flight of the aristocracy from Paris had created an enormous number of unemployed musicians and music teachers. However, the growing number of public concerts and ceremonies required a great number of trained musicians, particularly for the orchestra and band of theGarde Nationale, which had been formed in June 1790 to perform at the Festival of the Federation on theChamp de Mars.Bernard Sarrette, a captain of the National Guard, founded a school to train eighty young musicians, who at first were taught only wind instruments. The first national music school in France, it was given the name theInstitut national de Musique. The teachers were leading musicians and composers of the period. The revolutionaryCommittee of Public Safety (Comité de salut public) instructed the new music school to concentrate on the composition of "civic songs, music for national festivals, theater pieces, military music, all types of music which will inspire in Republicans the sentiments and memories most dear to the Revolution."^[41]

In 1792, the revolutionary government, theNational Convention, decided to create a larger and more ambitious school of music, which would teach all instruments and genres of music. It was named theConservatoire national de musique, using the name "Conservatory", an Italian Renaissance institution much praised by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. It became the first music conservatory in France, with 350 students of both sexes from the 83 departments of France of that time. The 115 music teachers were paid by the State. The institute, in the meanwhile, collected the musical instruments and musical libraries of the thousands of aristocrats who had fled France, and stored them in a central depository for the use of students. The Conservatory opened its doors in 1796.^[40]

Despite the turmoil of the Revolution (or perhaps partly because of it) musical theater thrived during the period. New theaters appeared: theThéâtre du Vaudeville, thePalais-Variétes and theThéâtre Feydeau. The Feydau theater featured both a troupe performing French comic operas, and another performing Italian comedies. A half-dozen new theaters on theBoulevard du Temple, the new theater district of the city, performed vaudeville, pantomime and comic opera. The actressMademoiselle Montansier opened her own musical theater in the Palais-Royal. The great fair of Saint-Germain, was closed by the Revolution, but a new theater, theThéâtre Lyrique de Saint-Germain, opened on its old site in 1791. Seventy-six new comic operas or vaudeville programs were staged in 1790, and fifty new works in each of the following years. Censorship of theatrical works was abolished in 1791, but this freedom did not last long. In 1793, the Committee of Public Safety decreed that any theater which put on plays "contrary to the spirit of the Revolution" would be closed and its property seized. After this decree, musical works on patriotic and revolutionary themes multiplied in the Paris theaters.^[42]

The opera itself, a symbol of the aristocracy, was officially taken away from the former Royal Academy and given to the city of Paris in 1790. When theTerror began in 1793, one of its two new directors fled abroad, and the second was arrested, and only escaped the guillotine because Robespierre was executed first. Price of tickets was reduced, and special free performances were given for the poor. The program at both the Opera and theOpéra-comique were largely patriotic, republican and sometimes anti-religious. At the same time, operas by Lully and Gluck were still performed, though sometimes new lyrics were added attacking the King and monarchy. In March 1793, in the midst of the terror, Parisians heard their first Mozart opera,The Magic Flute, in French and without the recitatives. The opera was forced to move from its theater atPorte Saint-Martin in 1794 to theSalle Montansier at the Palais-Royal so the government could use the theater for political meetings. The Opera saw its name changed from theAcadémie royale de musique to theThéátre de l'Opéra (1791),Théátre des Arts (1791),Théátre de la République et des Arts (1797),Théâtre de l'Opéra again in 1802, then, under Napoleon, to theAcadémie impériale (1804).^[43]

During the late 18th century, and particularly after the end of theReign of Terror, Parisians of all classes were in constant search for entertainment. The end of the century saw the opening of the pleasure gardens of Ranelegh, Vauxhall, andTivoli. These were large private gardens where, in summer, Parisians paid an admission charge and found food, music, dancing, and other amusements, from pantomime to magic lantern shows and fireworks. The admission fee was relatively high; the owners of the gardens wanted to attract a more upper-class clientele and keep out the more boisterous Parisians who thronged the boulevards.

With the closure of the fairs by the1789 Revolution, the most popular destination for musical entertainment becamePalais-Royal. Between 1780 and 1784, theduc de Chartres, (who became the Duke of Orleans in 1785 at the death of hisfather), rebuilt the garden of the Palais-Royal into a pleasure garden surrounded by wide covered arcades, which were occupied by shops, art galleries, and the first true restaurants in Paris. The basements were occupied by popular cafés with drinks, food and musical entertainment, and the upper floors by rooms for card-playing. The first famous musical café was theCafé des Aveugles, which had an orchestra and chorus of blind musicians. In its early days it was popular with visitors to Paris, and also attracted prostitutes, trinket-sellers and pickpockets. Later cafés in the Palais Royal, namedcafés chantants, offered musical programs of comic, sentimental and patriotic songs.^[44]

Theguinguette was mentioned as early as 1723 inSavary's posthumously publishedDictionnaire du commerce. It was a type of tavern located just outside the city limits, where wine and other drinks were much cheaper and taxed less. They were open Sundays and holidays, usually had musicians for dancing, and attracted large crowds of working-class Parisians eager for rest and recreation after the work week. As time went on,guinguettes also attracted middle class Parisians with their families.^[45]

During the reign ofNapoléon Bonaparte asFirst Consul and thenEmperor, music in Paris was used to celebrate his victories and glory. Napoleon installed his brotherLucien as chief censor in 1800, and all musical and theater works were examined by the police before being performed. The former Academy of Music became theAcadémie impériale de musique. The official composer of Napoleon's regime wasJean-François Lesueur, who wrote a heroic opera,Ossian, ou Les bardes to glorify Napoleon. It was performed more than a hundred times in Paris beforeNapoleon's fall. Lesueur also wrote a special march for thecoronation of Napoleon as Emperor at Notre-Dame, and directed the solemn mass,Te Deum and other music performed at the coronation. Lesueur wrote new operaLe Triomphe de Trajan, to celebrate Napoleon's victories atJena,Friedland andEylau. The opera had spectacular staging, with parades of soldiers and cavalry on stage. Lesueur continued his musical career after Napoleon's fall, as a professor of composition at the Conservatory; his future students includedHector Berlioz andCharles Gounod.^[46]

TheEmpress Joséphine had her own favorite composer, the ItalianGaspare Spontini, who became her official composer of both historical dramas and comedies. Spontini's first lyrical work,La vestale, had a considerable success. His next work,Fernand Cortez, was commissioned when Napoleon decided toinvade Spain, and celebrated theconquest of Mexico byHernán Cortés. Unfortunately, the French army was defeated in Spain andFernand Cortez was pulled from the repertoire, but it made a great impression on other French composers with its grand scenic effects, a Mexican ballet and a cavalry charge, its use of drums, and its huge chorus. Napoleon recreated the grandeur of the earlier royal court, constructing a new theater at the Tuileries Palace, which was finished in 1808. He also brought together an exceptional troupe of musicians and singers from Italy, including the composerFerdinando Paër, who became master of his household music, the castratoGirolamo Crescentini, and the contraltoGiuseppina Grassini. Napoleon did not allow applause in the hall during performances. The orchestra played a special air byAndré Grétry when Napoleon entered the theater, and theVivat Imperator when he departed. But, because of his military campaigns, he was rarely in Paris to enjoy them.^[47]

Napoleon gave eight theaters official status and, to avoid competition to his official theaters, he closed all the others. The Imperial Academy and theOpéra-Comique were at the top of the hierarchy; followed by theThéâtre de lEmpereur, the newOpera buffa of theThéâtre de l'Impératrice, the theater of the Empress, run by Mademoiselle Montansier. Major operas and melodramas were performed at the theater at Porte-Saint-Martin andOpéra-Comique; parodies at theThéâtre du Vaudeville, and rustic comedies at theThéâtre des Variétés. With the signing of theConcordat in 1801 between Napoleon andPope Pius VII, the churches of Paris were re-opened, and religious music was allowed once more.

After Napoleon's second abdication at the end of theHundred Days in 1815, and his exile to the island ofSaint Helena, the new government ofLouis XVIII tried to restore the Parisian musical world to what it had been before the Revolution. The opera once again became the Royal Academy; the Conservatory, renamed theÉcole royale de musique, was given a new department of religious music; and the composerLuigi Cherubini was commissioned to write a coronation solemn mass, the "Mass in G major", for Louis XVIII, and in 1825, the "Mass in A major" for his successor,Charles X.Spontini was named director of royal music. Lavish concerts in salons resumed in theFaubourg Saint-Germain, often given with the most popular new keyboard instrument, thepiano. However, the government greatly irritated ordinary Parisians by banning music and dancing on Sundays, closing the popularguinguettes.

At the beginning of the Restoration, the Paris Opera was located in theSalle Montansier onrue de Richelieu, where the square Louvois is today. On 13 February 1820,Charles Ferdinand, Duke of Berry was assassinated at the door of the opera, and King Louis XVIII, in his grief, had the old theater demolished. In 1820–1821, the opera performed in theSalle Favart of theThéâtre des Italiens, then in thesalle Louvois onrue Louvois, and, beginning on 16 August 1821, in thenew opera house onrue Le Peletier, which was built out of the material of the old opera house. It was intended to be a temporary home until a new opera house was built; it was neither elegant nor well-located, but it was large and had modern lighting and stage equipment, with gas lights installed in 1822, and the first electrical lighting in 1849. It remained the primary opera venue of Paris for a half century, until the opening of thePalais Garnier.

The opera repertoire was largely familiar works of Gluck, Sacchini and Spontini, to which were added fresh works by new composers, such asFrançois Adrien Boieldieu,Louis Joseph Ferdinand Hérold, andDaniel Auber. An opera byCarl Maria von Weber,Der Freischütz, was translated into French under the titleRobin des Bois ("Robin Hood"), and presented in 1824, causing a sensation. The first of new genre of romantic and nationalist French operas,La muette de Portici by Auber, premiered in February 1829; the hero was an Italian patriot fighting against Spanish occupation and oppression. A performance of the same opera in Brussels in 1830 led to a popular uprising and the liberation of Belgium from Dutch rule. The opera also featured grand spectacles created with ingenious stage machinery and lighting, including recreations of the eruption ofMount Vesuvius and the realistic illusions of flames and moving water.^[48]

The grand rival of the royal opera was theThéâtre-Italien, which beginning in 1819 performed at theSalle Favart. It was formally under the administration of the royal opera, but it had its own administrator and repertoire and produced only works in Italian. It presented the works of the composerGioacchino Rossini, who staged his first work in the Paris,L'italiana in Algeri in 1817, followed by a series of successes. Rossini presented his most famous work,The Barber of Seville, in 1818, two years after it premiered inRome. Rossini made modifications for the French audience, changing it from two to four acts and changing Rosina's part from acontralto to asoprano. This new version premiered at theOdéon-Théâtre on 6 May 1824, with Rossini present, and remains today the version most used in opera houses around the world. Rossini decided to settle in Paris and became the musical director of the theater. With Rossini at its head, theThéâtre-Italien had a huge success; its company included several of the finest singers in Europe, includingGiulia Grisi, the niece of Napoleon's favorite,Giuseppina Grassi; andMaria Malibran, who became the most famous interpreters of the music of Rossini. After a fire burned theSalle Favart in 1838, the troupe had several homes before it finally settled in theSalle Ventadour in 1841.

Rossini continued to produce lavish operas with spectacular sets, rapid pace, the use of unusual instruments (the trombone, cymbals and triangle) and extravagant emotion. He stagedSiege of Corinth (1827), followed byMoses and the comic operaLe comte Ory. He then undertook to write an opera that was entirely French; he wroteWilliam Tell based on a play bySchiller, which premiered at theSalle Le Peletier on August 3, 1829. Though the famous overture was a success, the public reception for the rest of the opera was cool; the work was criticized for excessive length (four hours), a weak story, and a lack of action. Rossini, deeply wounded by the criticism, retired, at the age of thirty-seven, and never wrote another opera.^[49]

The musical salons of the aristocracy were imitated by a new institution; thegoguette, musical clubs formed by Paris workers, craftsmen, and employees. There weregoguettes of both men and women. They usually met once a week, often in the back room of a cabaret, where they would enthusiastically sing popular, comic, and sentimental songs. During the Restoration, songs were also an important form of political expression. The poet and songwriterPierre Jean de Béranger became famous for his songs ridiculing the aristocracy, the established church and the ultra-conservative parliament. He was imprisoned twice for his songs, in 1821 and 1828, which only added to his fame. His supporters around France sentfoie gras, fine cheeses and wines to him in prison. The celebrated Paris police chiefEugène François Vidocq sent his men to infiltrate thegoguettes and arrest those who sang songs ridiculing the monarch.^[50]

Public resentment against the Restoration government boiled over in July 1830 with an uprising in the streets of Paris, the departure of King Charles X, and the installation of theJuly Monarchy ofLouis Philippe I. Music played its part in the 1830 Revolution; the famed tenorAdolphe Nourrit, who had starred in the operas of Rossini, went onto the stages of Paris and emotionally sang theMarseillaise, which had been forbidden during the First Empire and the Restoration. As Europe was upset by revolutions and repression, many of the finest musicians in the continent came to seek sanctuary in Paris.

The most famous wasFrédéric Chopin, who arrived in Paris in September 1831 at the age of twenty-one, and did not return toCongress Poland because of the crushing of thePolish uprising against Russian rule in October 1831. Chopin gave his first concert in Paris at theSalle Pleyel on 26 February 1832, and remained in the city for most of the next eighteen years. He gave just thirty public performances during these years, preferring to give recitals in privatesalons. On 16 February 1838 and on 2 December 1841,^[51] he played at the Tuileries forKing Louis-Philippe and the royal family. (He also gave a recital for the royal family in October 1839 in theChâteau de Saint-Cloud). He earned his living from commissions given by wealthy patrons, including the wife ofJames Mayer de Rothschild, from publishing his compositions and giving private lessons. Chopin lived at different addresses in Paris: upon his arrival in September 1831 until 1836, at 27boulevard Poissonnière, then at 38rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin, and 5rue Tronchet. He had a ten-year relationship with the writerGeorge Sand between 1837 and 1847. In 1842, they moved together to theSquare d'Orléans, at 80rue Taitbout, where the relationship ended. His last address in Paris was 12Place Vendôme, where he moved in the second half of September 1849.^[52]

Franz Liszt also lived in Paris during this period, composing music for the piano and giving concerts and music lessons. He lived at theHôtel de France onrue La Fayette, not far from Chopin. The two men were friends, but Chopin did not appreciate the manner in which Liszt played variations on his music. Liszt wrote in 1837 inLa Revue et Gazette musicale: "Paris is the pantheon of living musicians, the temple where one becomes a god for a century or for an hour; the burning fire which lights and then consumes all fame."^[53] The violinistNiccolò Paganini was a frequent visitor and performer in Paris. In 1836, he made an unfortunate investment in a Paris casino, and went bankrupt. He was forced to sell his collection of violins to pay his debts.Richard Wagner came to Paris in 1839, hoping to present his works on the Paris opera stages, with no success. Some interest was finally shown by the director of the Paris Opera; he rejected Wagner's music but wanted to buy the synopsis of his opera,Le Vaissau fantôme, to be put to music by a French composer, Louis-Philippe Dietsch. Wagner sold the work for five hundred francs, and returned home in 1842.

The French composerHector Berlioz had come to Paris fromGrenoble in 1821 to study medicine, which he abandoned for music in 1824, attending theConservatory in 1826, and won thePrix de Rome for his compositions in 1830. He was working on his most famous work, theSymphonie Fantastique, at the time of theJuly 1830 revolution. It had its premiere on 4 December 1830.

Three Paris theaters were permitted to produce operas; The Royal Academy of Music on rue Le Peletier; theOpéra-Comique, and theThéâtre-Italien, nicknamed "Les Bouffes". The Royal Academy, financed by the government, was in dire financial difficulties. In February, the government handed over management of the theater to a gifted entrepreneur, Doctor Véron, who had become wealthy selling medicinal ointments. Véron targeted the audience of the newly wealthy Parisian businessmen and entrepreneurs; he redesigned the theater to make the loges smaller (six seats reduced to four seats), installed gas lights to improve visibility, and launched a new repertoire to make the Paris Opera "both brilliant and popular". The first great success of the new regime wasRobert le Diable by the German composerGiacomo Meyerbeer, which premiered on November 21, 1831. The opera combined the German orchestral style with the Italian lyric singing style; it was an immense critical and popular success. Meyerbeer wrote a succession of popular operas, including At the end of his four-year contract, Doctor Véron retired, leaving the Opera in an admirable financial and artistic position.^[54]

The Opéra-Comique also enjoyed great success, largely due to the talents of the scenaristEugène Scribe, who wrote ninety works for the theater, put to music by forty different composers, includingDaniel Auber,Giacomo Meyerbeer,Fromental Halévy (La Juive (1835)),Cherubini,Donizetti,Gounod andVerdi (for whom he wroteLes vêpres siciliennes). Scribe left behind the grand mythological themes of earlier French opera, and wrote stories from a variety of historical periods which, with a mixture of strong emotion, humor and romanticism, exactly suited the taste of Parisian audiences.^[55]

The Théâtre-Italien completed the grand trio of Paris opera houses. After the fire at the Salle Favart, it moved briefly to the Odéon Theater and then permanently to the Salle Ventadour. In their repertoire, the ballet played a very small part, part, the costumes and sets were not remarkable, and the number of works was small; only a dozen new operas were staged between 1825 and 1870; but they included several famous works ofBel Canto opera, includingI Puritani byBellini andMarino Faliero andDon Pasquale byDonizetti.Verdi lived primarily in Paris between 1845 and 1847, and staged four of his operas at the Théâtre-Italien;Nabucco,Ernani,I due Foscari, andJérusalem. The leading Italian singers also came regularly to sing at the Théâtre-Italien, includingGiovanni Rubini, the creator of the role of Arturo in Bellini'sI Puritani,Giulia Grisi,Fanny Persiani,Henriette Sontag andGiuditta Pasta, who created the role ofNorma in Bellini's opera.^[56]

French composers includingHector Berlioz struggled in vain against the tide of Italian operas. Berlioz succeeded in getting his operaBenvenuto Cellini staged at the Royal Academy in 1838, but it closed after just three performances, and was not staged again in France during his lifetime. Berlioz complained in theJournal des Debats that there were six operas by Donizetti in Paris playing in one year. "Monsieur Donizetti has the air to treat us like a conquered country," he wrote, "it is a veritable war of invasion. We can no longer call them the lyric theaters of Paris, just the lyric theaters of Monsieur Donizetti."^[57]

With the growing popularity of classical music and the arrival of so many talented musicians, Paris encountered a shortage of concert halls. The best hall in the city was that of the Paris Conservatory on rue Bergére, which had excellent acoustics and could seat a thousand persons. Berlioz premiered hisSymphonie Fantastique there on December 30, 1830; on December 29, 1832, Berlioz presented the Symphony again, along with two new pieces,Lelio andHarold en Italie, which he wrote specially forPaganini to play. At the end of the performance, withVictor Hugo andAlexandre Dumas in the audience, Paganini bowed down humbly before Berlioz. in tribute.

The Concert Society of the Paris Conservatory was founded in 1828, especially to play the symphonies of Beethoven; one at each performance, along with works by Mozart, Hayden and Handel. It was the first professional symphonic association in Europe. A second symphony association, the Societé de Sainte-Cecile, was founded shortly afterwards, which played more modern music; it presented the Paris premieres of Wagner'sTannhäuser overture, works by Schubert, theSymphonie Italienne ofMendelssohn, theFuite en Égypte of Berlioz, and the first works ofCharles Gounod andGeorges Bizet.^[58]

The ballet had been an integral part of the Paris Opera since the time of Louis XIV the 17th century. A new style,Romantic ballet, was born on March 12, 1832, with the premiere ofLa Sylphide at theSalle Le Peletier, with choreography byFilippo Taglioni and music byJean-Madeleine Schneitzhoeffer.^[59] Taglioni designed the work as a showcase for his daughterMarie.La Sylphide was the first ballet where dancingen pointe had an aesthetic rationale and was not merely an acrobatic stunt. Other romantic ballets that had their first performances at the Opera wereGiselle (1841),Paquita (1846) andLe corsaire (1856)Among the greatballerinas to grace the stage of the Opéra during this time wereMarie Taglioni,Carlotta Grisi,Carolina Rosati,Fanny Elssler,Lucile Grahn, andFanny Cerrito.

Lucien Petipa danced the male lead inGiselle at its premiere, and his younger brotherMarius Petipa also danced for a time at the Paris Opera. Marius Petipa moved from Paris to Saint Petersburg, where he became the ballet-master for the Russian Imperial ballet and created many celebrated ballets, includingThe Sleeping Beauty,La Bayadère andThe Nutcracker.

The Champs-Élysées was redeveloped in the 1830s with public gardens at either end, and became a popular place for Parisians to promenade. It was soon lined with restaurants, cafes-chantants. and pleasure gardens where outdoor concerts and balls were held. The Café Turc opened a garden with a series of concert-promenades in the spring of 1833, which alternated symphonic music with quadrilles and airs for dancing. The 17-year-oldjacques Offenbach wrote his first compositions for the dance orchestra at the Café Turc. The Tivoli, the Bazar of rue Saint-Honoré and the Casino Paganini competed with the Café Turc. In 1837, the King of the Viennese waltz,Johann Strauss, came in person to in Paris, competing with the French waltz king,Philippe Musard. The outdoor concerts and balls did not stay in fashion for long; most of the gardens began to close after 1838, and Musard took charge instead of the famous masked balls at the Paris Opera. The romance, a song with a simple, tender melody, sentimental words, accompanied on the piano, became the fashion in the Paris salons. Thousands of copies were sold by Paris publishers.^[60]

The July monarchy saw a surge in sales of instruments, especially pianos, for the French upper and middle class. Production of pianos in Paris tripled between 1830 and 1847, from four thousand to eleven thousand a year. The companies organized concerts and sponsored famous musicians to promote their brands. Chopin was contracted to play exclusively the Pleyel piano, while Liszt played on the Érard piano. The Paris firms of Pleyel, Érard, Herz, Pape and Kriegelstein exported pianos around the world. The crafts of other instruments also flourished; the Parisian firm of Cavaillé-Coll reconstructed the great organs of Notre-Dame, Saint-Sulpice, and the Basilica of Saint-Denis, which had been destroyed during the French Revolution.

In 1842 the BelgianAdolphe Sax, 28-years old, arrived in Paris with his new invention, thesaxophone. He won a silver medal for his new instrument at the Paris Exposition of French Industry in 1844, and in April 1845 won a competition held by the French Army on the Champs-de-Mars, in which a fanfare was played on traditional instruments and then on the instruments of Adolphe Sax. The jury chose the instrument of Sax, and it was adapted by the French Army, and then by orchestras and ensembles throughout the world.

At the beginning of the 1830s, the Paris police counted 271 wandering street musicians, 220saltimbanques, 106 players of the barbary organ, and 135 itinerant street singers. Thegoguettes, or working class singing-clubs, continued to grow in the popularity, meeting in the back rooms of cabarets. The repertoire of popular songs ranged from romantic to comic and satirical, to political and revolutionary, especially in the 1840s. in June, 1848, the musical clubs were banned from meeting, as the government tried, without success, to stop the political unrest, which finally exploded into the1848 French Revolution.

following the 1848 Revolution and the abdication of Louis-Philippe, the censorship of Paris theaters was briefly abolished. The Opera was renamed theThéâtre de la Nation, thenOpéra-Théâtre de la Nation, thenAcadémie nationale de musique. A new musical theater, the Théâtre-Lyrique, was created, devoted to presenting the works of young French composers, who had been largely ignored during the July monarchy. It was located on the Boulevard du Temple, the new theater district, in a building which had previously been occupied by the theater founded by Alexander Dumas to present historical plays.

The cafés chantants became increasingly popular, spreading from the Champs Élysées to the Grand boulevards. Some, like theCafé des Ambassadeurs, had outdoor concert gardens lit by gaslights. They presented romances by popular singers, and also a new comic genre, the minstrel show, featuring French singers with blackened faces playing the banjo and violin. The famous music cafés included the Moka on rue de la Lune, the Folies and Eldorado on boulevard Strasbourg, and the Alcazar on rue de Faubourg-Poissonniére,^[61]

During the reign of EmperorNapoleon III (1852–1870), the top of the hierarchy of Paris theaters was theAcadémie Imperial, or Imperial Opera Theatre, in the Salle Peletier. The opera house on Rue le Peletier could seat 1800 spectators. There were three performances a week, scheduled so as not to compete with the other major opera house in the city,Les Italiens. The best seats were in the forty boxes, which could each hold four or six persons, on the first balcony. One of the boxes could be rented for the entire season for 7500francs. One of the major functions of the opera house was to be a meeting place for Paris society, and for this reason the performances were generally very long, with as many as fiveintermissions. Ballets were generally added in the middle of operas, to create additional opportunities for intermissions. The Salle Peletier had one infamous moment in its history; on 14 January 1858, a group of Italian extreme nationalists attempted to kill Napoleon III at the entrance of the opera house; they set off several bombs, which killed eight people and injured one hundred and fifty persons, and splattered the EmpressEugénie de Montijo with blood, though the Emperor was unharmed.^[62]

Giuseppe Verdi played an important part in the glory of the Paris opera. He had first performedNabucco in Paris in 1845 at theThéâtre-Italien, followed byLuisa Miller andIl trovatore He signed a new contract with the Paris Opera in 1852, and wanted absolute perfection for his next Parisian project,Les Vêpres siciliennes He complained that the Paris orchestra and chorus were unruly and undisciplined, and rehearsed them an unheard-of one hundred and sixty-one times before he felt they were ready. His work was rewarded; the opera was a critical and popular success, performed 150 times, rather than the originally proposed forty performances. He was unhappy, however, that his operas were less successful in Paris than those of his chief rival, Meyerbeer; he returned to Italy and did not come back for several years. He was persuaded to return to stageDon Carlos, commissioned especially for the Paris Opera. Once again he ran into troubles; one singer took him to court over the casting, and rivalries between other singers poisoned the production. He wrote afterwards, "I am not a composer for Paris I believe in inspiration; others only care about how the pieces are put together".^[63]

Napoleon III intervened personally to have Richard Wagner come back to Paris; Wagner rehearsed the orchestra sixty-three times for the first French production ofTannhäuser on March 13, 1861. Unfortunately, Wagner was unpopular with both the French critics and with the members of theJockey Club, an influential French social society. During the premiere, with Wagner in the audience, the Jockey Club members whistled and jeered from the first notes of the Overture. After just three performances, the Opera was pulled from the repertoire. Wagner got his revenge in 1870, when thePrussian Army captured Napoleon III and surrounded Paris; he wrote a special piece of music to celebrate the event,Ode to the German Army at Paris.^[62]

Napoleon III wanted a new opera house to be the centerpiece connecting the new boulevards he was constructing on the right bank. The competition was won byCharles Garnier and the first stone was laid by the Emperor in July 1862, but flooding of the basement caused the construction to proceed very slowly. As the building rose, it was covered with a large shed so the sculptors and artists could create the elaborate exterior decoration. The shed was taken off on August 15, 1867, in time for theParis Universal Exposition, so visitors and Parisians could see the glorious new building; but the inside was not finished until 1875, after Napoleon's fall.

The operetta was born in Paris with the work of Louis Auguste Florimond Ronger, better known under the name ofHervé. His first operetta was calledDon Quilchotte et Sancho Panza, performed in 1848 at the théâtre Montmartre. In the beginning they were short comic works or parodies, with a combination of songs, dance and dialogue, rarely with more than two persons on stage, and rarely longer than one act. Early operettas by Hervé was namedLatrouillat and Truffaldini or the Inconvenience of a vendetta infinitely too prolonged andAgammemnon or the Camel with Two humps. Hervé opened a new theater, theFolies-Concertantes, on the Boulevard du Temple in 1854, later renamed theFolies-Nouvelle. The new genre was termedOpera Bouffe; works by Hervé appeared at a half-dozen theaters in the city, though the genre was ignored by the opera and the other official theaters.

In 1853, the young German-born musician and composerJacques Offenbach, then director of the orchestra of theComedie-Française, wrote his first operetta in the new style,Pepita for the Théatre des Varietes. It was a success, but Offenbach was still unable to perform his works in the official theaters. During the first Paris Universal Exposition, he opened his own theater, theBouffes-Parisiens, in an old theater at the Carré Marigny on the Champs-Élysées. It was an immense success; Rossini termed Offenbach "The Mozart of the Champs-Élysées". Offenbach moved to a larger theatre on the passage Choiseul, and presented his next operetta,Ba-ta-clan, which also enjoyed spectacular success. In 1858 Offenbach wrote a more serious and ambitious work,Orphée aux enfers, a four-act opera with a large cast and chorus. It was also a popular and critical success; Emperor Napoleon III attended, and afterwards presented Offenbach with French citizenship. With the approval of the Emperor, the official theaters of Paris were finally open to Offenbach, and his works became popular with the upper classes. He achieved further success withLa Belle Hélène withHortense Schneider in the leading role; then, again with Schneider, inLa Vie parisienne adla Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein In 1867, five different Paris theaters were staging works by Offenbach. He was the champion of the Paris operetta, but he also had the ambition to be considered a serious composer of orchestral works; unfortunately he died before the successful premiere of his most ambitious orchestral work, theContes d'Hoffmann.^[64]

• 
  TheThéâtre Lyrique, on Place Chatelet, in 1869. It hosted the first performances of the operaFaust andRomeo et Juliette byCharles Gounod, and ofThe Pearl Fishers by Georges Bizet.
• 
  The Théâtre Lyrique was known for its lavish sets and staging. The throne room of Didon for the operaLes Troyens byBerlioz. aCarthage (1863)
• 
  TheSalle Ventadour was the home of theThéâtre-Italien; The first French performances of the operas ofVerdi were staged there, and the famed soprano Adelina Patti sang there regularly during the Second Empire.

Besides the Imperial Opera Theater, Paris had three other important opera houses; theThéâtre Italien, theOpera-Comique, and theThéâtre Lyrique.

TheThéâtre Italien was the based at theSalle Ventadour, and hosted the French premieres of several byGiuseppe Verdi, includingIl Trovatore,La Traviata (1856),Rigoletto (1857) andUn ballo in maschera (1861). Verdi conducted hisRequiem there, andRichard Wagner conducted a concert of selections from his operas. The sopranoAdelina Patti had an exclusive contract to sing with the Italiens when she was in Paris.

TheThéâtre Lyrique was originally located on the Rue de Temple, the famous "Boulevard de Crime," but when that part of the street was demolished to make room for thePlace de la Republique,Napoleon III built a new theater for them atPlace du Châtelet. The Lyrique was famous for putting on operas by new composers; it staged the first French performance ofRienzi byRichard Wagner; the first performance ofLes pêcheurs de perles (1863), the first opera by the 24-year-oldGeorges Bizet; the first performances of the operasFaust (1859) andRoméo et Juliette (1867) byCharles Gounod; and the first performance ofLes Troyens (1863) byHector Berlioz.

TheOpéra-Comique was located in the Salle Favart, and staged both comedies and serious works. It staged the first performances ofMignon byAmbroise Thomas (1866) and ofLa grand'tante, the first opera ofJules Massenet (1867).

Paris also had an enormous influence on the development ofromantic ballet, thanks to the ballet troupe of the Paris Opera and its famous ballet masters. The first performance ofLe Corsaire, choreographed by the ballet master of the opera,Joseph Mazilier to the music ofAdolphe Adam, took place at the Paris Opera on January 23, 1856.Coppélia was originally choreographed byArthur Saint-Léon to the music ofLéo Delibes, and was based upon two stories byE. T. A. Hoffmann: It premiered on 25 May1870 at theThéâtre Impérial l'Opéra, with the 16-year-oldGiuseppina Bozzacchi in the principal role of Swanhilde. Its first flush of success was interrupted by theFranco-Prussian War and theSiege of Paris (which also led to the early death of Giuseppina Bozzacchi, on her 17th birthday), but eventually it became the most-performed ballet at theOpéra.

Napoleon III re-established the custom of concerts at the imperial court, performed at the Louvre, with a new orchestra composed of students at the Paris Conservatory under the direction ofJules Pasdeloup. To reach a broader public, in 1861 he began a series of concerts by the orchestra at the huge Cirque-Napoléon (now theCirque d'hiver) which could four thousand persons. Admission was fifty centimes. 1861 Pasdeloup decided to widen the audience for his orchestra. Besides playing the classical works of Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn and Mendelssohn, the orchestra performed new works by Schumann, Wagner, Berlioz, Gounod, andSaint-Saëns.

Napoleon had built a large number of new parks and squares in Paris, including theBois de Boulogne and theBois de Vincennes. The Emperor had bandstands installed in the new parks, and organized public concerts. Amateur as well as professional and military musicians were invited to take part in the concerts. The repertoire included classical music, military music, quadrilles, polkas and waltzes, and the latest music from Paris musical theater. Another force promoting musical education in Paris was theOrpheonic movement, which led to the creation of many new amateur orchestras and choral societies. Gounod directed theOrphéon of Paris between 1852 and 1856.

The Paris Universal Expositions of 1855 and 1867, highlighting technological progress, also had an important musical component. New musical instruments, such as the saxophone and the Steinway piano, were put on display, and several new compositions were commissioned especially for performance during the expositions, including Verdi'sLes Vêpres siciliennes andDon Carlos, Offenbach'sLa Grand-Duchesse de Gerolstein andLa Vie parisienne, and Gounod'sRomeo et Juliette.^[65]

During the Second Empire, the Café-Concert became extremely popular in Paris; by 1872, there were nearly one hundred and fifty in the city. Some were very simple; a cafe with a piano or small organ; others had an orchestra and professional singers. The café-concerts were strictly regulated, to prevent them from competing openly with the musical theaters. The singers were not allowed to wear costumes, and there could no sets, dialogue, or dancing by the performers. No more than forty songs could be sung in an evening, and the owners of the cafes were required to submit the musical program for each night to the police for review. If a song sounded subversive, the program was cancelled. After an actress of the Comedie-Française was condemned by the police for reciting classical verse at the Café Eldorado, and for wearing a long black dress rather street clothing, the law was relaxed in 1867. Thereafter cafe performers could wear costumes, recite dialogue, and have scenery on the stage. This opened the way for a new musical genre, themusic hall, a few years later.^[66]

Paris composers during theBelle Époque period had a major impact on European music, moving it away fromRomanticism towardImpressionism in music andModernism.

The defeat of France in theFranco-Prussian War of 1870-71 led to the downfall of Napoleon III, and the brief reign of theParis Commune. During the two-month reign of the Commune, theTuileries Palace was renamed theMaison du Peuple and hosted concerts of the music of Auber and Verd, while brass bands Bands of the Commune's National Guard gave concerts in the parks. The Commune produced one memorable song,Le Temps des cerises, with the melody of an 1866 song. In May 1871, as the French Army entered Paris and crushed the Commune, the Communards set fire to musical landmarks of the old regime, including theTuileries Palace, theThéâtre-Lyrique on Place du Chatelet, and the house ofProsper Mérimée, the author of the novelCarmen and friend of Napoleon III. Despite the destruction, the opera reopened in July 1871 at rue de Pelletier with a performance of Auber'sLa Muette de Portici. The ruins of the Tuileries were eventual torn down, but theThéâtre-Lyrique was repaired and re-opened in November 1874,^[67] The opera house of Charles Garnier was completed and finally dedicated on January 5, 1875, in the presence of the President of the new Third Republic,Patrice de MacMahon and the King of Spain, with excerpts of music by Auber, Rossini, Halévy, Meyerbeer, and a ballet byDelibes andMinkus. Garnier appeared on the grand stairway during the intermission and received the applause of the crowd.^[68][67]

The outbreak of the war between France and Germany in 1870 caused a group of French composers to form theSociété Nationale de Musique, (SNM), officially founded on February 25, 1871, to promote new French music and resist the current of German music and particularly the influence of Wagner. It was led by Camille Saint-Saëns and includedCésar Franck andJules Massenet. The Society held its first concert at theSalle Pleyel in the autumn of 1871. The SNM played an important part through theBelle Époque by introducing Paris audiences to the music of new French composers, including Debussy,Gabriel Fauré, andMaurice Ravel.^[69][70]

In addition to the SNM, Paris had three world-class symphony orchestras during theBelle Époque. In 1873 the Concert National was founded, under the direction ofÉdouard Colonne. It performed regularly at the Théatre du Châtelet, and premiered works by Debussy, Franck,Charles Gounod, Fauré, Massenet, and Sant-Saëns. Colonne invited leading European composers, includingRichard Strauss,Edvard Grieg, andPiotr Tchaikovsky to conduct their works in Paris. He was also the first conductor of note to make commercialgramophone (phonograph) records, for thePathé company in 1906.^[71]

A second orchestra, theSocieté des nouveaux concerts, was founded byCharles Lamoureux in 1881, devoted largely to the work of Wagner and his followers. This orchestra performed the Paris premiere of Wagner'sLohengrin at the Eden Theater in 1887. The society became known as the Lamouroux orchestra. A third symphony was created in 1905 by Victor Charpantier, brother of composerGustave Charpentier, composed of amateur musicians, which gave free concerts at the Trocadero, under the direction of composers including Charpentier, Fauré and Saint-Saëns.^[72] In 1901, Gustave Charpentier founded the first trade union of professional musicians in France. Some of the SNM musicians felt that organization was too conservative, and in 1910 they founded the Societé musicale indépendante, or SMI, to promote "new tendencies" and music from abroad. Gabriel Fauré became head of the new organization; the SMI would go on to premiere his new works, as well as works byRavel,Manuel de Falla, andVaughan Williams, and the first performances of works byEric Satie before a large public.^[70]

In July 1872 theOpéra-Comique commissionedGeorges Bizet to write an opera based on the novelCarmen byProsper Mérimée. The rehearsals for the finished opera were extremely difficult; in previous operas, the chorus simply lined up on stage and sang, but inCarmen, they were asked to walk around the stage, act, and even smoke cigarettes. It defied all conventions of comic opera, with its musical style, the profession of its heroine and its tragic ending. At its premiere on March 3, 1875, it scandalized both the critics and the audience; one critic reported it "was neither scenic nor dramatic." It was defended by Camille Saint-Saëns, who called it a masterpiece, but when Bizet died three months after the premiere, it was considered a failure. With time it became one of the most-performed works of Paris opera.

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) was born in Paris and was admitted to theParis Conservatoire when he was thirteen. When he finished the Conservatory, he became an organist at the church ofSaint-Merri, and later atLa Madeleine. His opera,Samson et Dalila (1877), was in the grand romantic tradition, though the music was new and innovative. He also won fame in Paris forDanse Macabre, the operaThe Carnival of the Animals (1877), and hisSymphonie No. 3 "avec orgue" in C minor, op. 78 (1886).Société Nationale de Musique,^[69]

Claude Debussy (1862-1918) was born atSaint-Germain-en-Laye, near Paris, and entered the Conservatory in 1872. He became part of the Parisian literary circle of thesymbolist poetStéphane Mallarmé, and an admirer ofRichard Wagner, then went on to experiment withimpressionism in music,atonal music andchromaticism. His most famous works includedClair de Lune (1890),La Mer (1905) and the operaPelléas et Mélisande (1903-1905). He lived at 23square de l'Avenue-Foch in the16th arrondissement from 1905 until his death in 1918.^[73]

Other influential composers in Paris during the period includedJules Massenet (1842-1912), author of the operasManon andWerther;Gustave Charpentier, composer of the working-class "opera-novel"Louise; andErik Satie (1866-1925), who, after leaving the Conservatory, made his living as a pianist atLe Chat Noir, acabaret onMontmartre. His most famous works were theGymnopédies (1888).^[74]

Spanish music had an important part in the music of Paris in theBelle Époque, particularly between 1907 and 1914. The prominent Spanish composersEnrique Granados,Isaac Albeniz,Joaquín Turina andManuel de Falla all lived in Paris, were inspired by the new works French music as well as traditional Spanish themes, and created a new school of modern Spanish music. They also in turn influenced French music; Debussy and Ravel wroteIberia andRapsodie espagnole inspired by Spanish themes.^[75]

The great Paris Universal Expositions of 1878, 1889 and 1900 brought the greatest musicians in the world to Paris to perform, and also introduced musical genres from around the world, including Javanese, Congolese, New Caledonian, Algerian and Vietnamese music, to Paris audiences, The 1889 Exposition offered concerts byNikolai Rimsky-Korsakov andAlexander Glazunov, while the 1900 Exposition featured band concerts conducted byJohn Philip Sousa. At the 1900 Exposition, Claude Debussy conducted a grand concert of his work at the Palais de Trocadero. The 1881 Exposition of electricity featured the first transmission of the sound of a musical performance from the Paris opera house to the Palace of Industry, while the 1889 Exposition displayed the newphonograph patented byThomas Edison, which played the latest songs byCharles Gounod.^[76]

The café concert was an extremely popular musical venue at the beginning of theBelle Époque. Following the 1870 war, sentimental songs and songs calling for revenge against Germany for the loss of Alsace and Lorraine were the staple of all musical cafes. Over the course of the Belle Époque, the café chantant evolved into two different musical institutions; some, like theCafé des Ambassadeurs and the Eldorado, became very large, crowded and filled with noise and smoke, with orchestras, dance reviews, singers and comedy.

Themusic hall originated in England in 1842, and was first imported into France in its British form in 1862, but under the French law protecting the state theaters, performers could not wear consumes or recite dialogue, something only allowed in theaters. When the law changed in 1867, the Paris music hall flourished, and a half-dozen new halls opened, offering acrobats, singers, dancers, magicians, and trained animals.

The first Paris music hall built specially for that purpose was theFolies-Bergere (1869); it was followed by theMoulin Rouge (1889), theAlhambra (1866), the first to be called a music hall, and theOlympia (1893). ThePrintania (1903) was a music-garden, open only in summer, with a theater, restaurant, circus, and horse-racing. Older theaters also transformed themselves into music halls, including theBobino Music Hall (1873), theBataclan (1864), and theAlcazar (1858). At the beginning, music halls offered dance reviews, theater and songs, but gradually songs and singers became the main attraction. At the end of theBelle Epoque, the music halls began to face competition from movie theaters. The Olympia responded in 1911 with the invention of the grand stairway as a set for its musical and dance spectacles.^[77]

The smaller, more intimate clubs, called cabarets, focused on individual singers and personal songs, often written by the singer, along with satire and poetry.^[78]TheLe Chat Noir, neighborhood ofMontmartre, was created in 1881 by Rodolphe Salis, a theatrical agent and entrepreneur. It combined music and other entertainment with political commentary and satire.^[79] The Chat Noir brought together the wealthy and famous of Paris with the Bohemians and artists of Montmartre and the Pigalle. Its clientele was described by the historian Paul Bourget: "a fantastic mixture of writers and painters, of journalists and students, of employees and high-livers, as well as models, prostitutes and true grand dames searching for exotic experiences."^[80] The composerEric Satie earned his living after finishing the Conservatory playing the piano at the Chat Noir.^[80]

By 1896 there were fifty-six cabarets and cafes with music in Paris, along with a dozen music halls. The cabarets did not have a high reputation; one critic wrote in 1897, "they sell drinks which are worth fifteen centimes along with verses which, for the most part, are worth nothing.".^[81]

Russian music became extremely popular in Paris at the end ofBelle Époque; The orchestras Lamoureux, Colonne, and the Paris Conservatory performed the music ofModest Mussorgsky,Glazunov,Mikhail Glinka,Borodin,Rimsky-Korsakov,Tchaikovsky andScriabin and flocked to hear the singerChaliapin. In 1907 the French impresarioGabriel Astruc organized a season of Russian music, with performances by Scriabin andSergei Rachmaninov.

In 1908 the Russian impresarioSergei Diaghilev brought to Paris a production ofBoris Gudonov by Mussorgsky, with Chaliapin the leading role, while the Opéra-Comique stagedThe Snow Maiden byRimsky-Korsakov. In 1909 Diaghilev brought dancers from the Imperial Théater in Saint Petersburg includingVaslav Nijinsky,Anna Pavlova andIda Rubenstein, to the Châtelet theater with a program of classical ballet. The Paris audiences loved the dancers but were not excited by the ballets, which lost money. For 1910, Diaghilev decided to do something entirely new, and commissioned Ravel to write a ballet,Daphnis and Chloë, for his new company, now called theBallets Russes. The season made a celebrity of unknown composer,Igor Stravinsky and his balletThe Firebird. The Ballets Russes returned to Paris in 1911 with a new work of Stravinsky,Petrushka and a new version ofDaphnis et Chloé with choreography byFokine and sets byLéon Bakst. In 1912, the Ballets Russes presentedAfternoon of a Fawn by Debussy, choreographed and danced by Nijinsky. Nijinsky and the ballet were denounced by the French press, which called his performance "vile, bestial and erotic", and by Debussy himself, though it was defended by many French artists, includingRodin andOdilon Redon.

The 1913 season, performed at the newThéâtre des Champs-Élysées, brought a new scandal, withThe Rite of Spring, written by Stravinsky and choreographed by Nijinsky. The shouts of the audience during the performance, both for and against the dancers, were so loud that the dancers could not hear the music; the choreographer, in the wings, had to count in a loud voice to help them. The ballet transformed the way in which subsequent composers thought about rhythmic structure. The outbreak of World War I and the subsequent Russian Revolution of 1917 left the Ballets Russes stranded in Paris. They continued to perform in France and toured around Europe and the world, but never had the opportunity to perform in their own country.^[82]

Parisians of all social classes had a passion for dancing. TheBal-musette was a popular kind of dancing venue for working-class Parisians. It originated among theAuvergnats who came to Paris in large numbers in the 19th century. They took place at cafés and bars where patrons danced thebourrée to the accompaniment of thecabrette (abellows-blownbagpipe locally called a "musette") and often thevielle à roue (hurdy-gurdy). Later Parisian andItalian musicians who played theaccordion adopted the style. The Bal-musettes featured simple, fast and sensual dance steps, often with dancers holding each other very close; it could be danced in a small space.^[83][84]

TheCakewalk was introduced in Paris in 1903 by pair of American professional dancers, Professor Elk and his wife, at the Nouveau Cirque. The cakewalk was soon featured in other music halls, and was made into an early recording, with the singerMistinguett. Claude Debussy composed a cakewalk, calledColliwog's cake-walk, between 1906 and 1908.

TheCan-can originated in the 1820s, and in its original form was danced in cabarets and balls by couples at the fast pace of agalop. It was often described as immoral, because women lifted their shirts and showed their stockings. Beginning in the 1850s, it was modified into stage form, with dancers in a line facing the audience making high kicks, splits and cartwheels; a version which became known as the French can-can. The most famous accompaniment was Offenbach's TheInfernal Galop fromOrpheus in the Underworld (1858), though it was not written for that dance.^[85] The can-can was performed at music halls throughout theBelle Époque and remains popular today.

Thetango was introduced into Paris in 1905, and was popularized by the Argentinian singer and composer Alfredo Gobb and his wife, singer Flora Rodiriguez, who came to Paris in 1907. They became professional tango teachers, and made numerous recordings of their music. It became popular throughout Paris; in 1913, even the President of France,Raymond Poincaré, danced a few steps of a tango at an official ball.^[86]

• Le Temps des cerises (Music 1866, words 1871)[1]
• Maria Callas sing theHabanera from the operaCarmen, byGeorges Bizet[2]
• Traditional Bal-Musette music[3]
• Debussy playingGolliwog's Cakewalk[4]
• Excerpt of Stravinsky's balletRites of Spring (1913)[5]

The first World War disrupted the Paris musical world; many musicians went into the army, and Ravel, too short to serve in the army, became a volunteer ambulance driver; but it did not stop musical creation altogether. The first cubist musical work,Parade, with a text byJean Cocteau, music byEric Satie, decor byPablo Picasso, and choreography byMassine, was presented at the Chatelet theater on May 18, 1917. The poet and criticApollinaire coined a new word,sur-realism, to describe it. The music by Satie featured an unusual mixture of instruments, including a saxophone, a harp, xylophone, abouteillophone of bottles filled with varying amounts of water, and various noise-making devices, including a typewriter, siren, and a revolver. The production was denounced by one Paris newspaper as "the demolition of our national values" but Stravinsky praised it for its opposition to the "waves of impressionism, with language that is firm, clear, and without any connection with images."^[87]

Many prominent composers worked in Paris during between the wars, includingMaurice Ravel,Erik Satie, andIgor Stravinsky. Ravel was born in 1875; one of his last works,Boléro, written in 1928, became his most famous and most-often performed work. It was written on a commission from the Russian dancerIda Rubinstein, who had been a member of theBallets Russes before starting her own company. The composition was a sensational success when it was premiered at theParis Opéra on November 22, 1928, with choreography byBronislava Nijinska and designs byAlexandre Benois. Satie (1866-1925) was in poor health, due largely to a long life of excessive drinking. Nonetheless, he established connections with theDadaist movement, and wrote the music for two ballets shortly before his death.

Igor Stravinsky (1888-1971) first achieved fame in Paris just beforeWorld War I with his revolutionary compositions for the Ballets Russes. In 1920 he returned for a production of a new ballet,Pulcinella, with sets designed byPablo Picasso. He, his wife and daughter were invited by designerCoco Chanel to stay in her new house in the Paris suburb ofGarches. Struggling for money, he obtained a contract with the Paris piano companyPleyel et Cie to re-arrange his music for their popularplayer pianos. In February 1921 he met the Russian dancerVera de Bosset and began a long affair with her, both in Paris and on tours around Europe. He became a French citizen in 1931 and moved into a house on the rue de Faubourg-Saint-Honoré. It was a very unhappy period for him; both his daughter and wife died oftuberculosis. In 1939, asWorld War II approached, he left Paris for theUnited States; he married Vera in 1940 and settled inLos Angeles.

New musical movements flourished in Paris. The most famous wasLes Six, a group of six young French composers; brought together byJean Cocteau andEric Satie. They wereGeorges Auric,Louis Durey,Arthur Honegger,Darius Milhaud,Francis Poulenc andGermaine Tailleferre, all born between 1888 and 1899. Their music had no common style; they were united mainly in opposition to the dramatic style of Wagner and the impressionistic style of Debussy and Ravel. They provided music for many colorful theatrical pieces written by Cocteau for the Paris stage.^[88]

Between the wars, Paris was home to a remarkable colony of foreign composers, includingAaron Copland from the United States (from 1920 to 1925),Heitor Villa-Lobos from Brazil (1923-1930); andBéla Bartók from Hungary (after 1922). The American composerGeorge Gershwin came to Paris in 1926 and 1928 and tried (without success) to have composition lessons with Ravel and Nadia Boulanger. During his 1928 visit, while staying at the Majestic Hotel, he wrote a symphonic poem,An American in Paris, which, at one point, turned into music the sound of Paris taxi horns on the nearbyEtoile.

A new three-thousand seat concert hall, theSalle Pleyel, was built in Paris in the interwar period. It was commissioned in 1927^[89] by piano manufacturerPleyel et Cie and designed by Gustave Lion.^[89] The inauguration concert was performed by theOrchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, withRobert Casadesus as soloist andIgor Stravinsky,Maurice Ravel, andPhilippe Gaubert as conductors, A fire ravaged the interior of the hall on 28 June 1928, and it was extensively renovated, and the number of seats reduced to 1,913.

The most famous Paris dance company was theBallets Russes, Founded bySergei Diaghilev in 1909. The company performed in Paris and internationally until Diaghilev's death in 1929. The set designers includedPablo Picasso,Henri Matisse,Georges Braque,Joan Miró, andSalvador Dalí. Its choreographers includedBronislava Nijinska (1891-1972), the younger sister of the star dancerVaslav Nijinsky, and a youngGeorge Balanchine (1904-1983). In 1924, Balanchine, then a dancer, fled aSoviet dance company on tour in theWeimar Republic and came to Paris, where Diaghilev hired him as a choreographer. The most famous production was the 1924 balletLe Train Bleu with a story by Cocteau, music byDarius Milhaud, costumes byCoco Chanel and a curtain painted by Picasso.^[90]

The dancerIda Rubinstein left the Ballets Russes in 1911 and started her own troupe, commissioning famous poets, includingAndré Gide andPaul Valéry, and composers, including Stravinsky and Honneger, to write ballets for her. Her most famous creation wasBoléro, written for her by Ravel, which she first danced at the Paris Opera on November 22, 1928. Ravel originally called the musicFandango, since it much more closely resembled that dance rather than a truebolero.^[91]

In 1920 a new ballet company, directed by Swedish choreographer and dancerJean Börlin, was established at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, and then performed in a more intimate new hall, theStudio des Champs-Élysées. Like the Ballets Rousses, Börlin also commissioned famous artists, includingPierre Bonnard andFernand Léger to create the decor, famous poets includingPaul Claudel to write the texts, and avant-garde musicians, including Ravel, Satie and members of the Group of Six, including Taillefere, Milhaud Honnege to write the music.

Jazz came to Paris in 1917, with the American soldiers arriving to fight in the First World War. The soldiers were accompanied by military bands, including the 369th regiment band, composed of fifty black musicians directed by a celebrated Broadway band leader,James Reese Europe, and several other regimental bands led by famous American musicians. They gave concerts at the kiosks in the parks of Paris, performing thefoxtrot, the two-step, the one-step, and theMemphis Blues and "The Army Blues" ofW.C. Handy.

In August 1918, the orchestra of J.R. Europe was invited to perform at a music hall on the Champs-Élysées. The one-night performance was extended for eight weeks. TheCasino de Paris presented the first French jazz review, with Gaby Deslys and Harry Pilcer and a ragtime orchestra. A black American jazz orchestra, the Jazz Kings, led by drummer Louis Mitchell, came to the Casino de Paris in 1919 to present a jazz review calledPa-ri-ki-ri, followed in 1920 by the jazz reviewLaisse-les-Tomber, with the young singerMistinguett. The authorjean Cocteau, enchanted by the new sound, described jazz as "an improvised catastrophe" and "a sonic cataclysm".^[92]

By 1930, Parisians were listening to recordings of American jazz;Duke Ellington brought his orchestra to Paris in 1932,Louis Armstrong andCab Calloway in 1934,Bill Coleman,Coleman Hawkins andBenny Carter in 1935. The first famous Paris jazz club, theHot Club de Paris, was founded in 1932. The first famous French jazz group, theQuintette du Hot Club de France, was formed in 1934; its members wereDjango Reinhardt, his brother Joseph,Stephane Grapelli,Louis Vola and Roger Chaput. They became the most famous jazz ensemble in France, touring Europe and eventually to the United States.^[93]

The singerMistinguett made her debut the Casino de Paris in 1895 and continued to appear regularly in the 1920s and 1930s at theFolies Bergère,Moulin Rouge and Eldorado. Her risqué routines captivated Paris, and she became one of the most highly-paid and popular French entertainers of her time.^[94]

The Swedish ballet performing at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées closed in 1925, and its manager, André Davin, decided to create a musical show in the American style. He dispatched an American producer, Caroline Dudley, to New York, to recruit a company. She went toHarlem and returned in September 1925 with a troupe of twenty-five black musicians, singers and dancers, including the pianistClaude Hopkins, the clarinetistSidney Bechet and the nineteen year old singerJosephine Baker. The new show was calledLa Revue nègre. The director, Jacques Charles, recruited from the Moulin Rouge, persuaded Baker to perform a Charleston called 'Danse sauvage,' half-nude, wearing only ostrich feathers.^[95] The audience at opening night on October 2, 1925, included Jean Cocteau, composersDarius Milhaud and Maurice Ravel, and fashion designer Paul Poiret. The show was an immense success. After a successful tour of Europe, Baker returned to France three months later to star at theFolies Bergère. The Théâtre des Champs Élysées continued its American series in July 1926 with the first French performance of George Gershwin'sRhapsody in Blue by thePaul Whiteman Orchestra The other music halls, including the Casino de Paris, Moulin Rouge and les Ambassadeurs presented jazz reviews, while the main concert halls, Pleyel and Gaveau, offered symphonic jazz concerts. New cabarets featuring jazz, including Bricktop's, the Boeuf sur le toit and Grand Écart opened, and American dance-styles, including the one-step, the fox-trot, the boston and the charleston, became popular in the dance halls. .^[96]

The music-halls suffered growing hardships in the 1930s, facing growing competition from movie theaters The Olympia was converted into a movie theater, and others closed. But others continued to thrive; In 1937 and 1930 the Casino de Paris presented shows withMaurice Chevalier, who had already achieved success as an actor and singer inHollywood.

One genre remained highly popular in Paris; theChanson réaliste; dramatic, emotional, tragic songs about love and passion. The leading singers of the genre wereYvonne George,Marie-Louise Damien andFréhel. 1935, a twenty-year old singer namedÉdith Piaf was discovered in thePigalle by nightclub ownerLouis Leplée, whose clubLe Gerny, off theChamps-Élysées, was frequented by the upper and lower classes alike. He persuaded her to sing despite her extreme nervousness. Leplée taught her the basics of stage presence and told her to wear a black dress, which became her trademark apparel. Leplée ran an intense publicity campaign leading up to her opening night, attracting the presence of many celebrities, including Maurice Chevalier. Her nightclub appearance led to her first two records produced that same year, and the beginning of a legendary career that continued into the 1960s.

The arrival of radio and the musical film had a gradual but dramatic impact on Paris music. The first radio station in Paris,Radio Tour Eiffel, broadcast from theEiffel Tower starting on December 24, 1921. The first classical music concert broadcast on French radio, was transmitted by the station Radiola on November 6, 1922, beginning with a march composed byChristoph Gluck, followed by symphonic and opera works. In 1929, a weekly series of broadcasts of classical music for school students was launched, but it had limited success. Due to the financial crisis, very few Paris schools had money to buy radios. At the beginning ofLes Années Folles, the French company Pathé had a monopoly on the sale of phonograph records in France, and kept out records by other artists. In 1925, the Pathé label was bought by the American company Columbia, and soon American disks began to appear in the French market. After 1926, Parisians could buy records made by other foreign companies.^[97]

The motion picture had the greatest impact on Paris music. Due largely to competition from the movies, between 1910 and 1920 two-thirds of the Paris music halls were transformed into movie theaters. Collaboration between the Paris movie studios and the film industry had begun early. The composerCamille Saint-Saëns had written music to accompany the 1908 filmL'Assassinat du duc de Guise. The composerArthur Honegger composed music for two of the most important silent films ofAbel Gance,La Roue andNapoleon.Napoleon had its grand premiere on April 7, 1927, at thePalais Garnier with a full orchestra playing the score.

The arrival in France of the first sound film,The Jazz Singer in 1927 caused a revolution in the French movie business, and was quickly followed by the production of French film musicals at the studios just outside Paris. New French films featured the singing talents ofJean Gabin (Pépé le Moko,Cœur de lilas), andDanielle Darrieux (La crise est finis,Mon cœur t'appelle,Un mauves garçon),Maurice Chevalier etClaudette Colbert (La Chanson de Paris) both made successful careers in Hollywood; Colbert remained in the U.S., but Chevalier returned to Paris and continued his singing career on the Paris music hall stage. Music hall singers, includingFernandel,Frehel andJosephine Baker, began making musical films. The 1934 musical filmZouzou, with Jean Gabin and Josephine Baker, was the first film to star a black actress. The French music industry was born, as movie studios merged with record companies and used films to promote records. The route to success for Paris singers became the recording and film.

In 1939, in the early days of World War II, the music hall orchestra ofRay Ventura had a popular hit with the songWe'll hang out our laundry on the Siegried Line, but many musicians and composers living in Paris, including Stravinsky, Darius Milhaud and Kurt Weil, departed Paris for the United States. The German army crossed the Meuse, and by the end of June occupied Paris. The repression of Jews in the musical world of Paris began; Jewish faculty were dismissed from the Conservatory; Jewish students were banned in 1942. The director of the orchestra of the Conservatory,Roger Désormière, helped organize an underground organization of French musicians, with a clandestine newspaper. The new director of the Conservatory,Claude Delvincourt, organized and clandestine music lessons for Jewish pupils. He also organized a student orchestra, and protected the male musicians from being sent to forced labor in Germany by promising to organize concerts for the German soldiers in Paris.^[98]

The four major symphony orchestras of Paris (Pasdeloupe, Colonne, Lamoureux and the Conservatory Concert Orchestra) continued to perform, giving 650 concerts during the four seasons of the Occupation. The Colonne orchestra, named for the composer Édourard Lamoureux, was forced to change its name. The Germans also organized a series of thirty-one concerts in Paris by the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted byHerbert von Karajan, and other German orchestras. French composers and musicians, including Martin Honegger, were invited to participate in music festivals in Vienna and Salzburg. The pianistAlfred Cortot became the Commissioner of Fine Arts of the Vichy government, took part in the Berlin music festival, and made a tour of German cities.^[99]

French music hall performers continued to perform to audiences of Parisians and German soldiers. The Germans organized a tour to Germany of several the most popular singers, including Maurice Chevalier, Édith Piaf, andCharles Trenet; they performed for French workers who had been forced to work in German factories.

Radio Paris became an important vehicle for Nazi and Vichy propaganda; it had an orchestra of ninety musicians and gave free concerts at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, which featured everything from Beethoven to Tangos and jazz. Jazz was officially banned in Germany as "decadent", and American records were banned after but remained highly popular in occupied Paris.Charles Delaunay organized a jazz festival in Paris in December 1940, and two concerts month were given at the Gaveau, and continued through 1944. Delaunay's band, called Jazz de Paris, gave a concert at the Salle Pleyel on January 16, 1941. The singer Johnny Hess also had an enormous success with his 1940 jazz-swing song,ils sont Zazous.

American jazz returned to Paris with the U.S. army on August 25, 1944. The program director of theVoice of America, Sim Copans, equipped a truck with loudspeakers and broadcast excerpts of Gershwin and other American musicians in the Paris streets. The VOA also distributed V-disks, phonograph records with the songs ofBing Crosby,Frank Sinatra,Louis Armstrong,Count Basie,Lionel Hampton andCab Calloway. These were the first American records to arrive in Paris since the war began.^[100]

Just a month after the liberation of Paris, the first of a series of concerts was performed by the Orchestre national at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, presenting pieces by composers whose work was banned from public performance during the Occupation, includingGustave Mahler,Prokofiev, Stravinsky,Hindemith andBartók. In May 1945, a Committee of National Cleansing was created for the artistic professions, to investigate musicians accused of collaborating with the Germans. Honegger was censured for touring in Germany, Mistinguett for singing on Radio-Paris. The pianistAlfred Cortot was stripped of his professorship at the Conservatory and moved back to his native Switzerland, but returned to Paris with a triumphant concert at the Salle Pleyel in 1949.^[101]

In the earlypost-war period, immediately afterWorld War II, theSaint-Germain-des-Pres neighborhood and the nearbySaint-Michel neighborhood became home to many smalljazz clubs. They were mostly located incellars, due to the shortage of any suitable space, and because the music at late hours was less likely to disturb the neighbors. The first to open in 1945 was the Caveau des Lorientais, near Boulevard Saint-Michel, which introduced Parisians toNew Orleans Jazz, played by clarinetistClaude Luter and his band. It closed shortly afterward, but was soon followed by other cellars; Le Vieux-Columbier, the Rose Rouge, the Club Saint-Germain; andLe Tabou. The clubs attracted students from the nearby university, the Paris intellectual community, and celebrities from the Paris cultural world. They soon had doormen who controlled who was important or famous enough to be allowed inside into the cramped, smoke-filled cellars. A few of the musicians went on to celebrated careers; Sidney Bechet was the star of the firstjazz festival held at theSalle Pleyel in 1949, and headlined at theOlympia music hall in 1955.^[102]

A concert byDizzy Gillespie and his orchestra at the Salle Pleyel in 1948 introduced Paris to a new variety of jazz, calledbebop, and soon the jazz world of Paris was divided into two rival camps, those for bebop and those for more traditional New Orleans jazz, in the style ofLouis Armstrong; this group was led bySidney Bechet and trumpet playerBoris Vian;Mezz Mezzrow, André Rewellotty, and guitaristHenri Salvador.

Beginning in 1958, the leading figures in American jazz, includingMiles Davis,Duke Ellington,Thelonious Monk andJohn Coltrane came to Paris to perform in a series called Paris Jazz Concert, at the Olympia music hall. The musician/composerQuincy Jones came to Paris both to perform and to study composition withNadia Boulanger andOlivier Messiaen. Jazz also played an important part in theFrench New Wave films of the 1950s; the filmLes Liaisons dangereuses ofRoger Vadim, set in Paris in the 1960s. featured music by Thelonious Monk andArt Blakey;À bout de soufflé (Breathless) byJean-Luc Godard had a jazz score music byMartial Solal. Most of the clubs closed by the early 1960s, as musical tastes shifted towardrock and roll.^[103]

Rock and roll made its first appearance in Paris in 1956, when pianist and arrangerMichel Legrand returned from the United States with American rock and roll records and, with Boris Vian and Henri Salvador, recorded the first French rock and roll recordsRock coquet andRock n'roll mops. In 1957 Legrand andAlbert Raisner recorded a French version ofBill Haley'sRock around the Clock and Eddy Constantine recordedRock! Rock!. At about the same time, the Golf Druout, an indoor miniature golf course at the corner of rue Drouout and boulevard Montmartre installed the firstjukebox in Paris, supplied with records from an American military base. The juke box attracted crowds of listeners, and became the first rock-and-roll club in Paris. Among the young musicians who came to the Golf Druout to hear new sound was Jean-Philippe Met, who had changed his name toJohnny Hallyday and became the most enduring Parisian rock singer. The first Parisian rock band, the Five Rocks, was founded at the beginning of the 1960s; it soon changed its name to theChausettes Noirs (the black socks) The lead singer of the Chausettes noirs,Eddy Mitchell, became famous singingEddie sois bon, a French remake ofJohnny be Good by Chuck Berry. He left the band in 1962 and became a popular film actor. In 1965, theBeatles gave two hugely successful concerts at the Palais des Sports. Rock was firmly installed as the preferred music of young Parisians.^[104]

Popular music took a big step forward in 1981 when the government gave up its monopoly over radio stations. Two hundred new private radio stations appeared in Paris alone, the great majority devoted entirely to music, covering every genre, including classical, jazz, world music, French songs from the 1920s to 1960s, and every type of rock and roll.

During the first part of the 20th century, the music from France's colonies in North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean was largely ignored; or, during the 1900 Universal Exposition and theParis Colonial Exposition of 1931. it was treated as an exotic novelty, performed by costumed singers and dancers for the benefit of Exposition visitors. That began to change after World War II, when large numbers of temporary workers and students came to live, work and study in Paris. In the 1960s the migration grew even larger, as the colonies were granted their independence. The migrants settled in the outer neighborhoods and suburbs and brought their music with them. The music was almost entirely ignored by the French television and radio stations until 1981 when private radio stations were allowed. Soon dozens of new stations went on the air, playing the music of the new wave of immigrants.

The singerDalida was one of the first musicians from North Africa to achieve fame in Paris. Her father was Italian, the first violinist at the Cairo Opera. She moved to Paris in 1954 at the age of twenty and became a singer atOlympia Paris, and began making recordings. Her songBambino in 1956 became a hit in France, selling three hundred thousand records, making her one of France's leading popular singers. She recorded Italians in French, Arabic, Italian, and a half-dozen other languages, before her death in 1987.

One of the first popular styles imported from North Africa wasRaï, a singing style from the Algerian city ofOran. One of the first famous singer of the style,Khaled, was born in Oran in 1960, started a band when he was fourteen, and moved to France in 1986, where he became a recording star with an international audience.

In the 1980s and the 1990s, the traditional African, Maghreb and Caribbean musical styles were blended together with French and American styles of hip-hop, techno, and rap, to create an original style, which became popular well outside the immigrant communities.

Musical styles imported into Paris includeSega from the Island ofMauritius.Zouk from the Caribbean islands ofGuadeloupe andMartinique,Zouglou, a dance-oriented style of music fromCôte d'Ivoire; andMbalax fromSenegal and theGambia. a fusion of popular Western music and dance such as jazz, soul, Latin, and rock blended with sabar, the traditional drumming and dance music of Senegal.

Between 1945 and 1960 thecabarets andmusic halls played an important part in Paris culture, giving a stage to established stars and new talent. The most important music halls of the period were theOlympia Paris andBobino, while the important cabarets includedLa Galerie 55,L'Echelle de Jacob,le Port de Salut,l'Ecluse andTrois Baudets. Future French stars who debuted in the cabarets after the war includedBourvil in 1946,Yves Montand in 1947,Juliette Gréco in 1948,Georges Brassens at theTrois Baudets in 1952, andJacques Brel at the same club in 1953. Headliners at the Olympia includedÉdith Piaf in 1949,Gilbert Bécaud in 1954, andCharles Aznavour,Tino Rossi andDalida in 1955. Paris singing stars in the 1980s and 1990s includedSerge Lama,Serge Gainsbourg,Michel Berger,Yves Duteil,Francis Cabrel,Patrick Bruel, andJean-Jacques Goldman.^[105]

During first decades after the war Paris could boast four top-quality professional symphony orchestras: the Colonne orchestra at the Châtelet; the Lamoureux at Salle Pleyel; the Pasdeloup at the palais de Chaillot, and the Concert Society of the Conservatory at the théâtre des Champs-Élysées. The orchestras did not coordinate their programs; they played during the same season (October to Easter) at the same time (Sunday afternoons at 5:45) and for the most part played the same classical repertoire, rarely venturing into modern music.

In the late 1960s,André Malraux, the Minister of Culture under PresidentCharles de Gaulle, decided to create a new orchestra as the prestige symphony of Paris. the Society of Concerts of the Conservatory was abolished in 1967, and replaced by theOrchestre de Paris. The French government provided sixty percent of the funding for the new orchestra, with smaller shares from the City of Paris and the Department of the Seine. The first conductor of the orchestra wasCharles Munch. After his death in 1968, it was conducted byHerbert von Karajan, thenGeorg Solti, thenDaniel Barenboim, who directed the orchestra from 1975 to 1989.^[106]

Much musical experimentation was taking place inside other Paris institutions. In 1954Pierre Boulez foundedLe Domaine musical, which between 1954 and 1966, presented regular concerts of new music by composers includingSchoenberg andWebern. The most influential modernist composer in post-war Paris wasOlivier Messiaen (1908-1992), organist at the Trinity Church beginning in 1930 and professor at the Paris Conservatory of Music from 1942. he was noted for his scientific study ofbird songs (1958), his adaptations of traditionalAsian andLatin American rhythms (1960); and originalchurch music. Other notable composers includedPierre Schaeffer, founder of the school calledMusique concrète, based on recorded sounds of the real world, such as the noise made by trains; and composer ofSymphonie pour un home seul (1950) andOrphée 51 (1951); the composerPierre Henry, a collaborator of Schaeffer, pioneer ofelectroacoustic music; and composer ofThe Well-Tempered microphone; and the conductor and composer Boulez, a pioneer ofSerial music.^[102]

Musical theater had a difficult time in the postwar years, due to stiff competition from musical films and high production costs. The exceptions were several mega-musicals first produced in Paris;Les Misérables, based on the novel by Victor Hugo, with music byClaude-Michel Schönberg and original French lyrics by Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel, opened in Paris in 1980, and went on to success in London and New York, and became one of the most popular musicals of all time.Notre Dame de Paris, also based on a novel byVictor Hugo, with music composed byRiccardo Cocciante and lyrics byLuc Plamondon, opened on September 16, 1998, and made immediate stars of its lead singers,Hélène Ségara as Esmeralda andGarou, who playedQuasimodo.

When PresidentFrançois Mitterrand took office in 1981, his new culture minister,Jack Lang, launched a series musical innovations. On June 21, 1982, he began theFete de la Musique, a day of free musical performances all over Paris and in other cities of France. A giant rock concert took place at the Trocadero, the opera orchestra played on the steps of the Opera Garnier, and the Garde Republicaine band played at the Pantheon. The Fete became an annual event. He also planned and began construction of a second opera house at Place de la Bastille, in place of an old suburban train station. Revolution. It was designed to have an equally good view from all seats (unlike the Palais Garnier) and to have less expensive tickets. After many technical problems, design changes, controversies and the dismissal of the opera's director, theOpera Bastille opened in July 1989.during the celebration of the bicentennial of the French Revolution.^[107]

The second grand musical project of Mitterrand and Lang, announced in 1982, was theCité de la Musique, a large musical performance center at La Villette, a former-industrial section of the city. The first piece built was theLe Zénith, a concert hall with six thousand seats, inaugurated on January 12, 1984. It hosted concerts by Johnny Halladay,Serge Gainsbourg,Vanessa Paradis, the rock groupTéléphone, and other celebrated Paris pop musicians. The Paris Conservatory of Music was moved to a new building on the site, opened to students in 1990. The museum of musical instruments of the Conservatory was opened at the beginning of 1997. The final piece, thePhilharmonie de Paris concert hall, designed by architectJean Nouvel, with 2,500 seats,^[108] was opened on January 24, 2015.^[109]

• Music of France

• Bezbakh, Pierre (2004).Petit Larousse de l'histoire de France. Larousse.ISBN 2-03505369-2.
• Blanchard, Pascal; Deroo, Eric; El Yazami, Driss; Fournié, Pierre; Manceron, Gilles (2003).Le Paris Arabe. La Découverte.ISBN 2-7071-3904-1.
• Combeau, Yvan (2013).Histoire de Paris. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.ISBN 978-2-13-060852-3.
• Damschroeder, David; Williams, David Russell (1990).Music Theory from Zarlino to Schenker: A Bibliography and Guide. Pendragon Press.ISBN 978-0-918728-99-9.Archived from the original on 1 January 2016. Retrieved25 October 2015.
• Dussault, Éric (2014).L'invention de Saint-Germain-des-Pres. Vendémiaire.ISBN 978-2-36358-078-8.
• Fierro, Alfred (1996).Histoire et dictionnaire de Paris. Robert Laffont.ISBN 2-221-07862-4.
• Héron de Villefosse, René (1959).Histoire de Paris. Bernard Grasset.
• Marchand, Bernard (1993).Paris, histoire d'une ville (XIX-XX siecle). Éditions du Seuil.ISBN 2-02-012864-0.
• Powell, John S. (2000).Music and Theatre in France 1600–1680. Oxford University Press.ISBN 9780198165996.
• Sarmant, Thierry (2012).Histoire de Paris: Politique, urbanisme, civilisation. Editions Jean-Paul Gisserot.ISBN 978-2-755-803303.
• Vila, Marie Christine (2007).Paris musique. Parigramme.ISBN 978-2-84096-419-3.
• Wright, Craig (2008).Music and Ceremony at Notre Dame of Paris, 500-1550. Cambridge University Press.ISBN 978-0-521-08834-3.
• Dictionnaire historique de Paris. La Pochothèque. 2013.ISBN 978-2-253-13140-3.
• Petit Robert - Dictionnaire universal des noms propres. Le Robert. 1988.

Early music

• Medieval motet in three voices from the School of Notre Dame
• Mass of Notre Dame in four voices byGuillaume de Machaut

16th century

• [6] Listen toSong of the birds byClement Janequin
• [7] Listen to the songJe n'ose le dire byPierre Certon

17th century

• [8] Listen to songs of the French Royal Court from the 17th century
• [9] Listen to "March for the Turkish Ceremony" byJean-Baptiste Lully
• [10] Watch a ballet from the operaArmide by Lully (1686)
• [11] Listen to an organ work byFrançois Couperin (1690)

18th century

• [12] WatchHippolyte et Aricie byJean Philippe Rameau (1733)
• [13] Listen to Mozart'sSymphony number 31 (The Paris Symphony), written for theConcert Spirituel
• [14] Listen to French popular music from the 18th century
• [15] Listen to a song byAndré Grétry from the ParisOpéra-Comique (1788)

Songs of the French Revolution

• Listen to the Revolutionary songÇa ira
• Listen toLa Carmagnole[16]
• Listen to theMarseillaise, with English translation[17]

The Second Empire

• [18] Watch a scene from the operaLes Troyens byHector Berlioz (1858)
• [19] Watch scenes from the operaLa Belle Hélène byJacques Offenbach (1864)

1917–1939

• [20] Watch an excerpt of the balletParade with music byEric Satie and costumes byPicasso (1917)
• [21] Listen toMistinguett singMon Homme (1920)
• [22] Watch performance ofJosephine Baker at theFolies Bergere (1927)

Links to music (1940–1945)

• [23] Listen to Johnny Hess singJe suis Swing (1940)

Links to music of postwar Paris (1945–2000)

• [24] Listen toQuartet for the End of Time byOlivier Messiaen (1941)
• [25] Listen toStudy of trains, a work ofconcrete music byPierre Schaeffer (1948)
• [26]Edith Piaf singsMilord
• [27]Sidney Bechet andClaude Luter playPetit Fleur (1952)
• [28] Watch performances ofSidney Bechet,Django Reinhardt andLouis Armstrong (1952)
• [29] Watch an early performance byJohnny Hallyday (1961)
• [30] Listen toEddy Mitchell and theChaussettes noires (1962)

• Music history of France
• Music in Paris

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata