Music's role in the construction of different national identities reveals what Pierre Bourdieu has called the “Montesquieu effect.” The eighteenth-century philosopher Montesquieu posited correlations between climate and social and political attitudes in particular regions. In Bourdieu's analysis, regional characteristics that conform to stereotypes are due to a population adapting to expectations placed on them from the outside rather than being expressions of a preexistent essence. The easygoing nature of southern French people, for example, as depicted in French films from the 1930s, exemplify this phenomenon. What is more difficult is the characterization of regions that are less “picturesque” than Provence. Yet these types of characterizations have been made from the center to the north of France, as illustrative of the French national spirit.

This investigation is more historical than musicological. I analyze how music helped to shape the perception of the French region of Lorraine during the period of its division into two as a result of the 1871 German annexation of the department of Moselle and the neighboring region of Alsace. The Lorraine region can be viewed as a model for understanding how national identities are constructed on both sides of a permeable yet significant border. In French Lorraine, music was used to affirm a sense of national identity that was otherwise perceived to be damaged. The border region, despite suffering from the perception that it was unmusical, witnessed the development of an institutional presence that encouraged musical activity. Furthermore, French Lorraine was described in the local cultural press not only as a region with a French spirit but indeed as the most French region of the nation. I conclude my discussion with an examination of musical institutions and aspects of musical life on the opposite side of the border in the annexed region of Moselle.

A History without Music

“The greatest pains are wordless.” These were no doubt the thoughts of Guy Ropartz, director of the Nancy Conservatoire, on July 24, 1897, when he realized that the version of Rhin allemand for orchestra and men's choir that his friend Albéric Magnard had based on poetry by Alfred de Musset was not as successful with the Lorrain public as had been expected. In his biography of Magnard, Simon-Pierre Perret cites numerous testimonies of the “cold welcome” that the work received in Lorraine, “where the pulse of the nation beats ardently and feverishly.”