From Servant to Savant

Before the French Revolution, making music was an activity that required permission. After the Revolution, music was an object that could be possessed. Everyone seemingly hoped to gain something from owning music. Musicians claimed it as their unalienable personal expression while the French nation sought to enhance imperial ambitions by appropriating it as the collective product of cultural heritage and national industry. Musicians capitalized on these changes to protect their professionalization within new laws and institutions, while excluding those without credentials from their elite echelon. From Servant to Savant demonstrates how the French Revolution set the stage for the emergence of so-called musical "Romanticism" and the legacies that continue to haunt musical institutions and industries. As musicians and the government negotiated the place of music in a reimagined French society, new epistemic and professional practices constituted three lasting values of musical production: the composer's sovereignty, the musical work's inviolability, and the nation's supremacy.

Rebecca Dowd Geoffroy-Schwinden is an Associate Professor of Music History at the University of North Texas who works on eighteenth-century music cultures and musical labor during the early Age of Revolution.

- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Note on Translation of Sources
- Introduction
- On Privilege, Property, and Professionalization
- The Abolition of Privilege
- The Politics of Historiography and the Archive
- Chapter Summaries
- Part I Musical Privilege
- Chapter 1 Legal Privilège and Musical Production
- The Privilege to Perform
- Musical Privilege in Publishing, Commerce, and Manufacturing
- Privilege as Property
- The "Dilution" of Privilege
- Chapter 2 Social Privilège and Musician-Masons
- French Masonry, Music, and Parisian Sociability
- Brother Servants and Occasional Brothers
- Talented Brothers, Architects of Music, and Free Associates
- Fellow Professionals and Savants
- "A Little Lesson in Social Harmony"
- Part II Property
- Chapter 3 Private Property: Music and Authorship
- Proprietary Tremors on the Eve of Revolution
- From Musical Privilege to Musical Property
- The "Declaration of the Rights of Genius"
- Chapter 4 Public Servants
- From Pleasing Paris to Serving the Nation
- An Institution of Their Own
- Patriotic Servants
- Professionalization and Public Patronage
- Chapter 5 Cultural Heritage: Music as Work of Art
- Music and the Fine Arts under the Revolution
- The Conservatory's "Museum" of Musical Works
- The Museum's Imperial Agenda
- "The Edifice is Rising"
- Cultural Property and Artworks for the Future
- Chapter 6 National Industry: Music as a "Useful" Art and Science
- Music, the Useful Arts, and Mechanical Invention
- Interlude: A Method in the Madness
- Mechanical Innovations: Useful to Whom?
- The Conservatory's Design for a "Romantic Machine"
- Postlude: A "Detractor" Breaks his "Silence"
- Conclusion: Privilege by Any Other Name
- Appendix
- Bibliography
- Index