A philosopher of music history: F.-J. Fétis

Despite their seemingly Classical outlook and their exact contemporaneity, Castil-Blaze and Fétis were critics of very different kinds. Fétis, by far the more intellectual and ambitious as a critic, was, by his death in 1871, the undisputed doyen of music journalism in France – despite residing in Brussels from 1833 onwards. The impact of his thought on French critics working in virtually every branch of the discipline has yet to be appreciated fully, and merits a study in itself. The Revue musicale, which Fétis produced almost single-handedly from 1827 to 1833, and direction of which was passed to his son until its close in 1835, is a supremely important cultural document of the years preceding and inaugurating the July Monarchy. It is important not only because of the range of subject matter about which Fétis wrote with authority (though not without pedantry), but also because many of the ideas contained within his criticism represent the application to music of important cultural and philosophical notions of the 1820s. The sheer force and originality of Fétis's arguments, combined with the length of his career, ensured that his ideas, born of the heady intellectual atmosphere of the Sorbonne during the Restoration, outlived him. The history of the Revue musicale and its criticism has been treated in detail elsewhere; the philosophical context of Fétis's thought has received less attention.