La contribution litteraire de Camille Mauclair au domaine musical parisien à la fin du dix-neuvième siècle = the literary contribution of Camille Mauclair to the late nineteenth century musical world of Paris

Camille Mauclair (1872-1945), French writer, poet, essayist and musical critic, left a considerable legacy to the literary world. Many aspects of his works have already been examined by other researchers, however, to this present day, his contribution to the musical education of the French public has been neglected. Viewed from a twenty-first century perspective, the fact that this homme de lettres wrote on music seems unusual, for he had not received any formal theoretical music education. This observation led the author of this thesis to question whether Mauclair had a particular kind of musical aesthetic and how he chose to express himself on musical matters. The literary contribution that Camille Mauclair made in the musical milieu is studied in this thesis. In the first section of the dissertation, factors that fashioned Mauclair's unique musical aesthetic are elucidated. The evolution of this aesthetic is traced by examining the effect of the philosophical influences of Wagner and Schopenhauer present in France towards the end of the nineteenth century, Mauclair' s exposure to symbolist intellectualism experienced in his early years and the incorporation of anarchist, internationalist and other social concepts into his ideas at later stages of his life. Camille Mauclair' s works are then analysed in order to illustrate how he conveys his musical ideas to his readers. A study of his works of fiction is undertaken in the second section to demonstrate how he broached musical topics, the literary styles he favoured and his use of analogies and musical metaphors. As Mauclair also wrote texts directly on musical topics including a biography of Schumann, a history of European music covering sixty years from 1850, and more general works dealing with different aspects of music, these are examined in the third section of the thesis to illustrate his various writing styles and the specific roles he adopted therein such as music critic, pedagogue, historian and litterateur. Contribution of musical articles to several journals and magazines was also made by Camille Mauclair. The particular perspective he adopted on musical matters in these articles was opposed by some of the newly fledged musicologists of the day. Such opposing approaches to music criticism are highlighted in the discussion of Mauclair's war of words with Louis Laloy. This study concludes that Camille Mauclair had his own particular musical aesthetic into which he incorporated many elements during his life stages. He firmly believed that the artist (synonymous here with writer) had an important educative role to play in society, that the search for \Beauty\" both in the aesthetic sense and in his written expression was a constant goal and that above all music was a form of religion. He saw' his duty as a litterateur was to help others appreciate music as much as he did himself."