Music, Poetry, Propaganda: Constructing French Cultural Soundscapes at the BBC during the Second World War (Modern French Identities)

Offering new perspectives on the role of broadcasting in the construction of cultural memory, this book analyses selected instances in relation to questions of French identity at the BBC during the Second World War. The influence of policy and ideology on the musical and the poetic is addressed by drawing on theoretical frameworks of the archive, memory, trauma and testimony. Case studies investigate cultural memories constructed through three contrasting soundscapes. The first focuses on the translation of ‘Frenchness’ to the BBC’s domestic audiences; the second examines the use of slogans on the margins of propaganda broadcasts. In the third, the implications of the marriage of poetry and music in the BBC’s 1945 premier of Francis Poulenc’s cantata setting of resistance poems by the surrealist poet Paul Éluard in Figure humaine are assessed. Concentrating on the role of the archive as both narrative source and theoretical frame, this study offers a new approach to the understanding of soundscapes and demonstrates the processes involved in the creation of sonic cultural memory in the context of global conflict. Offering new perspectives on the role of broadcasting in the construction of cultural memory, this book analyses selected instances in relation to questions of French identity at the BBC during the Second World War. The influence of policy and ideology on the musical and the poetic is addressed by drawing on theoretical frameworks of the archive, memory, trauma and testimony. Case studies investigate cultural memories constructed through three contrasting soundscapes. The first focuses on the translation of 'Frenchness' to the BBC's domestic audiences; the second examines the use of slogans on the margins of propaganda broadcasts. In the third, the implications of the marriage of poetry and music in the BBC's 1945 premier of Francis Poulenc's cantata setting of resistance poems by the surrealist poet Paul Éluard in Figure humaine are assessed. Concentrating on the role of the archive as both narrative source and theoretical frame, this study offers a new approach to the understanding of soundscapes and demonstrates the processes involved in the creation of sonic cultural memory in the context of global conflict.-- Provided by publisher ±Launchbury's 'Music, Poetry, Propaganda' is a highly useful contribution to the literature on music at the BBC, as well as to the growing body of literature concerned with the use of music in propaganda and group identity construction in the context of war. Readers interested in musical modernism and nationality will also find much of value in this book, which enriches understandings of how and why works by French composers became such an important part of the post-Second World War repertory. Finally, Launchbury makes a thought-provoking contribution to interdisciplinary understandings of cultural memory, music, and mediation - and the uses and limits of the archive.? (Christina Baade, Music and Letters 94, 2013/3) Contents 7 Acknowledgements vii 9 List of Abbreviations ix 11 List of Tables xi 13 Chapter 1 - On Cultural Memory and Soundscapes 1 15 Chapter 2 - Sounding the Nations 19 33 Chapter 3 - Translating Cultural Memory in Features and ‘French Night’ at the BBC 55 69 Chapter 4 - Constructing Cultural Soundscapes at the French Service 99 113 Chapter 5 - The Cultural Soundscapes of Liberation 139 153 Conclusion 167 181 Bibliography of Primary Sources 171 185 Bibliography of Secondary Sources 183 197 Index 205 219 Offering perspectives on the role of broadcasting in the construction of cultural memory, this book analyses selected instances in relation to questions of French identity at the BBC during the Second World War. It includes case studies that investigate cultural memories constructed through three contrasting soundscapes.