La thèse se propose de vérifier la présence du saxophone dans le répertoire français et italien pour orchestre de la première moitié du XXème siècle, avec le but de confirmer la possibilité d’intégrer le saxophone à l’orchestre de façon permanente.Le choix d’étudier le répertoire pour saxophone dans l’orchestre en France et en Italie des premières décennies du XXème siècle a été fait car cet instrument, créé par Adolphe Sax, facteur d’instrument d’origine belge, a sa première diffusion sur le territoire français pendant la seconde moitié du XIXème siècle, avant de « s’expatrier » dans d’autres pays. C’est à la France donc de vanter les premières compositions pour le saxophone, et c’est au XXème siècle que cette production augmente considérablement. La France, avec son goût pour la couleur du timbre des instruments, influence l’Italie d’une façon particulière, pays où cet instrument est déjà présent au milieu du XIXème siècle, aussi grâce aux appréciations de Gioachino Rossini (qui à l’époque est à Paris), qui poussent le Lycée Musical de Bologna à acheter les produits de la maison Sax. La thèse est subdivisée en trois parties : la première, d’empreinte théorique, dédiée à la présence du saxophone dans les traités d’instrumentation et d’orchestration français et italiens, ainsi que d’autres pays des XIXe et XXe siècle ; la seconde, de caractère illustratif, dans laquelle on analyse les partitions de trois compositeurs français (Ravel, Honegger et Ibert) ; la troisième, toujours de nature illustratif, dédiée à l’étude des compositions de deux auteurs italiens (Marinuzzi et Zandonai). / The thesis’ purpose is to examine the presence of the saxophone in the French and Italian repertoire for orchestra in the first half of the 20th century, and aims at confirming its possible, permanent inclusion in the orchestra. The decision of investigating the repertory of the saxophone in the orchestra in France and Italy in the first decades of the 20th century was made because this instrument, created by the inventor of plenty of other musical instruments, Adolphe Sax (born in Belgium), spreads out for the first time in France during the second half of the 19th century and then ‘expatriates’ to other countries. It is France that can boast the first compositions for this instrument and it is in the 20th century that its production grows excessively. France, with its taste for the color of the instruments’ timbre, influences especially Italy, where the instrument is already present in the first half of the 19th century, thanks to Gioachino Rossini’s appreciations (who was in Paris at that time), pushing the Liceo Musicale in Bologna to buy the maison Sax’s products. My thesis is divided into three parts: the first, with a theoretical purpose, is dedicated to the presence of the saxophone in instrumentation and orchestration treatises published in France, Italy and other countries in the 19th and in the 20th century. In the second part, of explicative kind, the scores of three French composers (Ravel, Honegger and Ibert) are analyzed. Finally, the third section, of explicative kind as well, is dedicated to the study of some compositions by two Italian authors (Marinuzzi and Zandonai).

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La version intégrale de cette thèse est disponible uniquement pour consultation individuelle à la Bibliothèque de musique de l’Université de Montréal (www.bib.umontreal.ca/MU). / Cette étude porte sur la musique de film des années 1930 en France, durant la décennie qui a vu naître et évoluer le cinéma parlant. Le cinéma de cette période y est appréhendé à travers son statut artistique et son rôle dans la transmission des idées. Dans le contexte de la crise économique et des bouleversements politiques et internationaux qui sévissent, les années 1930 offrent aux artistes, écrivains et compositeurs français, une opportunité de redéfinir leur rôle dans la cité, en intervenant à travers un médium nouveau. Ces circonstances, propices à la définition d’un nouvel engagement en arts, guident le choix de trois films à partir desquels sont analysées les contributions musicales et la démarche du compositeur en lien avec ses motivations et ses attentes face au cinéma. En se penchant sur l’aspect musical de ces films, l’auteure cherche à dégager le rôle de la musique au sein des processus de communication artistiques, dans le but de comprendre les moyens avec lesquels le compositeur défend ses idées tout en collaborant à celles du réalisateur. À quel point l’engagement du compositeur s’arrime-t-il à la réalité de l’industrie cinématographique? À quel point la musique permet-elle l’expression des idées au sein d’un art dont elle n’est qu’une composante? C’est à ces questionnements que cette recherche a voulu donner voix, tout en faisant une place privilégiée à la musique elle-même. / The subject of the present study is film soundtracks from the 1930s in France. The music under examination originated during a decade which saw the birth and early development of talking films. French cinematographic productions from this period are examined on the basis of their artistic status and their role in the transmission of ideas. The pandemic economic crisis, combined with international political upheavals, were actual incentives for artists, writers, and composers to redefine their societal role through an innovative artistic medium, and to give voice to new types of artistic engagement. The choice of the three cinematographic works in this study is based on these conditions; their soundtracks are analyzed in relation to composers’ motivations and expectations of what cinema had to offer them. By closely examining the musical components of these films, the author also aims to define the ways in which music, among other artistic communication processes, was a vehicle for composers to defend their own ideas while endorsing those of a film’s director and/or producer. At what point does the composer’s personal engagement coincide with the requirements of the film industry during the period under examination? What are the limitations of the musical expression of ideas, in the context of an art form in which music was only a component part? These questions are at the heart of this study, with the music itself as the primary focus of research.

Begun in Berlin, completed in exile in Paris, and premiered on both sides of the Atlantic, Kurt Weill's Symphony No. 2 sets up the symphony circa 1933 as both resolutely international and messily interdisciplinary, and spotlights how fundamentally a transnational approach is needed in order more comprehensively to understand both the genre and the localised political and social issues shaping symphonic discourse at this time. Taking the issues raised by Weill's symphony as a starting point, and borrowing fine-grained, historically synchronic approaches from year studies, this thesis examines the symphonic genre in 1933 through four other case-study works composed or premiered in that year. I thus position the symphony as a site of cultural exchange between and within the major contexts traversed by Weill and his work: Berlin, Paris, and a messier U.S. East-Coast nexus that centres on New York and Boston, via Mexico City, looking in detail at Hans Pfitzner's Symphony in C-sharp minor, Roy Harris's Symphony 1933, Aaron Copland's Short Symphony, and Arthur Honegger's Mouvement Symphonique nr. 3. The Germanic genre has long been associated with nationalism, monumentality, and power display, wedded to Germanic Enlightenment philosophical discourses about universalised selfhood and its relationship to society. 1933, the year in which Hitler took power and the Great Depression reached its peak, was politically and economically fraught, concentrating social questions that intersect with symphonic issues about power, selfhood, space, and mass audiences. It is also a neglected year within symphonic surveys. The thesis combines archival work and hermeneutic perspectives to foreground those social and political discourses historically associated with the genre. I argue for the significance of their differing legacies in co-existent contexts, for the complicity of the genre in establishing and perpetuating political and colonial hegemonies, and for the urgency of rethinking the symphony as an international phenomenon.

The central role that avant-garde music and dance theatre played in the interplay and synthesis of the arts and media in the 1920s, particularly in Paris, is well known. However, the creative potential of ballet has hardly been recognized in its manifold relationships with film and cinematic-inspired expression. The extent to which especially ballet music interacted with the latest cinematographic principles and techniques and referred to cinematic aesthetics in a variety of ways can instructively be seen regarding the productions of the Ballets Suédois. This is discussed in this article with an exemplary look at Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel (1921), Within the Quota (1923), Skating Rink (1922) and Relâche (1924). By that it becomes clear that the transmedia inclusion of cinematographic ideas not only inspired the vocabulary of avant-garde dance and modern choreography, but was also distinctively reflected in the conception and composition of film-affected music.