Jennifer Walker, Ph.D. 2019

Advisor: Annegret Fauser

Dissertation Title: Sounding the Ralliement: Republican Reconfigurations of Catholicism in the Music of Third Republic Paris, 1880–1905

Dissertation Abstract:

Military defeat, political and civil turmoil, and a growing unrest between Catholic traditionalists and increasingly secular Republicans formed the basis of a deep-seated identity crisis in Third Republic France. Paradoxically, as the divide between church and state widened on the political stage, more and more composers began writing religious—even liturgical—music for performance in decidedly secular venues, including popular cabaret theaters, prestigious opera houses, and international exhibitions. My study of this music provokes a fundamental reconsideration of music’s role in the relationship between the French state and the Catholic Church in the Third Republic that has largely gone unquestioned by historians and musicologists alike and, in doing so, dismantles the somewhat simplistic epistemological position that emphasizes a sharp division between the Church and the “secular” Republic during this period. 

I draw on extensive archival research, critical press reception-studies, and close readings of musical scores to demonstrate how composers and critics from often opposing ideological factions undermined the secular/sacred binary through musical composition and the act of musical performance in an effort to craft a brand of Frenchness that was founded on the dual foundations of “secular” Republican ideology and on the heritage of the Catholic Church. The resulting constructions of French identity reveal an asymmetrically configured middle ground, with the state apparatus absorbing seemingly opposing subject positions into appealing and reconciliatory visions of an inclusive Republic with a broad range of constituencies. 

Recipient of the Glen Haydon Dissertation Award

Dr. Walker is currently an Assistant Professor of Musicology in the School of Music at West Virginia University. Her research focuses on music’s role in the relationship between the French state and the Catholic church at the end of the nineteenth century. She has published widely, and has a book forthcoming with Oxford University Press entitled Sacred Sounds, Secular Spaces: Transformations of Catholicism in the Music of Third Republic Paris. She is also an Editorial Assistant for the Journal of the American Musicological Society, and is active in several academic societies.