Notes
“Compte-rendu moral de l’année 1913 de l’Union des Femmes Artistes Musiciennes, présidente Mme L. Tassart, 6, rue Pierre Charron”, p. 3, fonds de l’Association des anciens élèves du Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris (AAEC), sans cote.
“Brochure de l’Union des femmes artistes musiciennes”, Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand (BMD), fonds Jane Misme.
On the subject of careers for women in music, Le Figaro wrote on 11 March 1910, “Here [in this industry] as elsewhere, it is primarily a problem of saturation”. As stated in an article published in Aurore on 20 March 1910, “Madame Tassart has just begun an interesting philanthropic endeavour. Women musicians – whose numbers are growing significantly each year even as paid contracts, engagements and lessons become rare – are often victims of poverty”, p. 2.
“Trésorerie. 1914. Recettes”, fonds de l’AAEC, sans cote.
Darmon Muriel, La Socialisation, Paris, Armand Colin, coll. 128, 2007, p. 6.
The aim here is to use these notions, not as concepts to be applied literally, but as prisms for interpreting individuals’ assertions about themselves and their activities. A methodological example is Alexandre Robert’s work on the Parisian academy La Schola Cantorum, which he sees both as a musical institution and as a forum for socialisation in which the individual is led to incorporate certain ways of perceiving and appreciating music and, by the same token, of understanding the social world. Robert Alexandre, “La transformation d’une oreille. Déodat de Séverac à la Schola cantorum”, Revue de Musicologie, 2017, vol. 103, no. 1, 2017, p. 53-92.
Darmon Muriel, La Socialisation, p. 9.
AN, sous-série F21; AN 19910855/20; AN 19860731/48.
BMD, DOS 780 UNI, 091-TAS, fonds Jane Misme.
In October 2021, five boxes of non-inventoried documents were found on the premises of the Association des anciens élèves du Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris (AAEC – Alumni Association of the Paris Conservatory). They were made up entirely of administrative records dating from 1913 to 2007. We would like to thank Catherine Ledos-Kraut, a former member of the UFAM and a member of AAEC, for allowing us to consult these documents.
The concerts organized by the UFAM from 1911 to 1939 are the subject of a dossier in the Dezède database, which can be consulted at: dezede.org/dossiers/id/500/ (accessed 17 january 2023).
It is worth noting, as shown by Nancy B. Reich in 1993, the history of women musicians tends to be limited to the study of “figures”, whether cultural elites, soloists or leaders of movements. We might add to Reich’s observation that this tendency is consubstantial with the availability of sources; in the case of the UFAM, in addition to the oft noted gender bias, there is also a class bias, as files on women, especially poor women, are rarely conserved. Reich Nancy B., “Women as Musicians: A Question of Class”, Solie Ruth A. (dir.), Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1993, p. 125-146.
Several studies have paved the way in this field, making historical and methodological contributions on subjects such as the education and training of women musicians (Pasler Jann, “Classe sociale, genre et formation musicale : préparer le prix de Rome au Conservatoire de Paris entre 1871 et 1900”, Romantisme, vol. 153, no. 3, 2011, p. 85-100; Bougard Fauve, “L’ascension des femmes vers les classes de composition : le cas du Conservatoire royal de Bruxelles au xixe siècle”, Women Composers in New Perspectives, 1800-1950: Genres, Contexts and Repertoires, Brepols, Turnhout, à paraître), their path to having a career (Launay Florence, “Les musiciennes : de la pionnière adulée à la concurrente redoutée. Bref historique d’une longue professionnalisation”, Travail, Genre et Sociétés, vol. 19, no. 1, 2008, p. 41-63; Gillett Paula, Musical Women in England, 1870-1914. Encroaching on All Man’s Privileges, New York, St Mary’s Press, 2000), and collective forms of women’s work (Koivisto Nuppu, “New Data, New Methods? Sources on Ladies’ salon Orchestras in Europe, 1870-1918”, Muzikologija, no. 26, 2019, p. 41-60; Hamer Laura, Female Composers, Conductors, Performers. Musiciennes of Interwar France, 1919-1939, London, Routledge, 2018), to cite just a few examples pertaining to the 19th and 20th centuries. As far as we know, the subject of professional unions for women musicians is still an unexplored field.
Here we note the collective book edited by Christian Topalov, Philanthropes en 1900. London, New-York, Paris, Genève, Creaphis, 2019. On the role played by, specifically, women’s philanthropic social action, see in particular Varikas Eleni, “Auslander Leora and Zancarini-Fournel Michelle (dir.), Différence des sexes et protection sociale xixe-xxe siècles”, Clio. Histoire‚ femmes et sociétés [Online], no. 4, 1996, accessed 5 september 2023. URL: https://journals.openedition.org/clio/448.
Victor Courbouleix was Chairman of the Board of Gil Blas.
Jules Tassart was appointed Vice-President of the Paris Court of Appeal in 1906. He was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour in 1920.
In the press of the day, we found 157 mentions of Lucy Tassart’s presence at various salons over the period 1894-1910, i.e. from her entry into society to the founding of the UFAM, offering insight into the company she frequented and whether her visits were occasional, recurring or only anecdotal.
“Mondanités”, Le Gaulois, 27 mars 1875, p. 2.
Beyond raising political awareness, Marie Rôze seems to have provided her students with aid similar to the types of aid the UFAM would set up several years later in a more structured, in line with a widely adopted practice. “Une bonne œuvre”, Gil Blas, 15 March 1910, p. 2: “Madame Rôze, single-handedly, had long been running her own little relief fund (I know this from a very reliable source); she did not just recommend her students but helped them perform, brought them audiences, [and] when necessary… lent them an evening gown. And she was frustrated by her limited means. Now she is thrilled. She has been understood: others share her convictions”.
Tassart Lucy, “La femme dans les sports modernes”, La Revue : ancienne Revue des revues, 1er janvier 1900, p. 18.
On the topic of the International Women’s Congress, see in particular Rasmussen Anne, “Les Congrès internationaux liés aux Expositions universelles de Paris (1867-1900)”, Mil neuf cent, no. 7, 1989, p. 23-44.
Bard Christine (dir.), Les féministes de la première vague, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, coll. Archives du féminisme, 2015.
“Secrétariat général”, Recueil des actes administratifs de la Préfecture du département de la Seine, 1910, p. 174.
The official founder of the UFAM is Privât de Sévérac, a society composer and conductor involved in charitable music associations. However, there should be no misunderstanding about his actual role: his title of founder was honorary. Privât de Sévérac was not involved in the Union’s decision-making and did not sit on its Board. To a certain extent, Sévérac served as a guarantor for the UFAM’s leaders. Officially, women-only charitable organisations (associations d’utilité publique), as the UFAM in fact was, were not allowed; the UFAM’s female leaders needed this male guarantor to apply for grants and, in fact, just to exist in the competitive charity arena.
Founded by journalist and activist Marguerite Durand in 1897, La Fronde was the first newspaper to be designed, run and produced exclusively by women. It quickly became one of the leading platforms for first wave feminism. On the activities of La Fronde, see Chaignaud François, L’Affaire Berger-Levrault : le féminisme à l’épreuve (1897-1905), Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2009. La Fronde was not the only feminist publication to cover the UFAM’s work; Fémina magazine also published numerous articles on the Union over the same period.
This contributed to the UFAM quickly obtaining the status of a charity “recognized in the public interest”, on 18 November 1913 (Bulletin municipal officiel de la Ville de Paris, 18 novembre 1913, p. 4621). From 1917 to 1938, the UFAM received an annual grant of 600 francs from the City of Paris.
The UFAM honorary committee included notables such as Saint-Saëns, Massenet, Dubois, Lenepveu, Fauré, Debussy, Vidal and Pierné. “Courrier des théâtres”, L’Action française, 20 mai 1910, p. 4.
Bunzel Anja and Loges Natasha (dir.), Musical Salon culture in the Long Nineteenth century, Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 2020. On the French case, see Chimènes Myriam, Mécènes et musiciens. Du salon au concert à Paris sous la IIIe République, Paris, Fayard, 2004.
Fayet-Scribe Sylvie, Associations féminines et catholicisme. De la charité à l’action sociale xixe-xxe, Paris, Les Éditions Ouvrières, 1990. On the subject of charity at the turn of the century and the gradual shift from a duty to offer charity to a duty to offer assistance, see also Brodiez Axelle, Combattre la pauvreté. Vulnérabilités sociales et sanitaires de 1880 à nos jours, Paris, Éditions du CNRS, 2013.
The Association des artistes musiciens is currently the subject of a research project at IREMUS. Relevant information can be found at the following URL: https://www.iremus.cnrs.fr/fr/programme-de-recherche/association-des-artistes-musiciens-1843-1880 (accessed 5 september 2023). On the orphéonique movement, a tradition of popular music clubs dedicated to the study and practice of choral music that began in France in the 19th century, see the work of Philippe Gumplowicz, Les travaux d’Orphée. 150 ans de vie musicale amateur en France. Harmonies, chorales, fanfares, Paris, Éditions Aubier, 1987. On the orphéonique movement studied with regard to interpersonal solidarity, see also Vadelorge Loïc, “L’orphéon rouennais : entre protection et promotion sociale”, in Tournès Ludovic and Vadelorge Loïc, Les sociabilités musicales, Rouen, Cahier du GHRIS, p. 61-86, 1997.
The creation of women’s professional unions was not limited to the field of music. One example is the Union des femmes peintres et sculpteurs (Union of women painters and sculptors), founded in 1881, whose article of association are similar to the UFAM’s.
“Compte-rendu moral de l’année 1913 de l’Union des Femmes Artistes Musiciennes, présidente Mme L. Tassart, 6, rue Pierre Charron”, p. 2, fonds de l’AAEC, sans cote.
Vialatte Raymond, “Pour des cigales”, Le Figaro, 11 mars 1910, p. 1.
In 1910 alone, the year the UFAM was founded, at least four articles in various newspapers (Le Figaro, Le Petit sou, Fémina, etc.) used the cicada metaphor in reference to women musicians in need. The term was used within UFAM as well, appearing in the minutes of general meetings and in president’s reports.
Vialatte Raymond, Ibid. Painting a less pitiful picture than this depiction by Vialatte, a journalist for Le Figaro, this feminist take appeared in Fémina several months later: “The cicadas [here] are women musicians. Not that all of them are improvident, as in La Fontaine’s fable; but, alas, there are so many [in need] and the grains of millet are not inexhaustible”, “Les bavardages de Françoise”, Fémina, 1er juillet 1910, p. 368. Where Vialatte sees their woes as the product of misfortune that is simply consubstantial with being a woman musician, Françoise from Fémina instead, unambiguously, calls out inequity in the market.
For a genealogy of the connotations associated with the figure of the cicada in music, see McDonald Grantley, “Josquin’s Musical Cricket: El grillo as Humanist Parody”, Acta Musicologia, vol. 81, no. 1, 2009, p. 39-53.
Monnot Catherine, De la harpe au trombone. Apprentissage instrumental et construction du genre, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, coll. “Le sens social”, 2012.
Reich Nancy B., “Women as Musicians”, p. 135 : “Nominally, in most schools, women could study any subject, but in fact for a good part of the century they were limited to voice, piano, and harp”.
Pistone Danièle cited by Rousselin-Lacombe Anne, “Piano et pianistes”, La Musique en France à l’époque romantique (1830-1870), Paris, Flammarion, 1991, p. 27.
The pairing, almost always side by side, of the terms “housewife” or “homemaker” (femme d’intérieur) and “musician” (and its variants: “with a flair for music”, etc.) seems to be a trope in these matrimonial advertisements. To take the example of a monthly dedicated exclusively to matrimonial ads, L’Intermédiaire : organe des mariages : paraissant le 1er de chaque mois published in Lyon, we found no fewer than 50 pairings of these terms in the May 1920 issue alone; in another matrimonial monthly, Revue mensuelle : liste d’annonces matrimoniales paraissant le 20 de chaque mois published in Montélimar, we counted some twenty occurrences in the December 1920 issue; two other papers L’Hymen and Le Trait d’union des intérêts réciproques : combinaison mariage créée en 1905 also featured these words in close proximity to each other. It appears that “housewife” and “musician” are understood as two moral virtues that can be easily paired because they both exist in the same space, the home, and are therefore potential qualities looked for in a future wife. On the subject of matrimonial advertisements, see Gaillard Claire-Lise, “Célibataire épouserait demoiselle avec dot : histoire du marché de la rencontre en France (xixe au xxe siècle)”, doctoral thesis, 2021, Université de Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne.
Marquié Hélène, “‘Le prestige de l’Opéra couvre tout’. Les coulisses de la danse à l’Opéra Garnier, 1875-1914”, Histoire des coulisses, Revue d’Histoire du Théâtre, vol. 281, no. 1, 2019, p. 73-86.
Tailleferre Germaine, “Mémoires à l’emporte-pièce”, in Robert Frédéric (dir.), La Revue internationale de la musique française, no. 19, 1986, p. 12, cited by Hamer Laura, Female Composers, p. 51.
De Donville François, Guide pour le choix d’une profession, à l’usage des jeunes filles : les professions des femmes, Paris, Garnier, 1894, p. 25.
Pouradier Maud, “La musique disciplinée. Le contrôle de la musique dans les conservatoires français du xixe siècle”, Musurgia, vol. 14, no. 1, 2007, p. 11.
Examples include the following guides: Juranville Clarisse and Berger Pauline, La civilité des petites filles, Paris, Larousse, 1895; Staffe Baronne, Usages du monde : règles du savoir-vivre dans la société moderne, Paris, Flammarion, 1899; Magallon Comtesse de, Le Guide mondain. Art moderne et savoir-vivre, Larousse, Paris, 1910.
On this topic, see the seminal book by Hoffmann Freia, Instrument und Körper: die musizierende Frau in der bürgerlichen Kultur, Berlin, Insel Verlag, 1991. On the subject of brass instruments, see Ellis Katharine, “The Fair Sax: Women, Brass-Playing and the Instrument Trade in 1860s Paris”, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, vol. 124, no. 2, 1999, p. 221-254.
With regard to cello playing, this passage is of note: “Not many women play cello; we have never really known why. Out of habit, we have come to see this instrument as essentially male, like the trombone, the French horn or the double bass, yet no serious justification for this way of thinking has ever been given. What objection can there be to women playing the cello? That it is unattractive? This critique might be true if the woman holds the cello the same way a man does, but it does not hold if she adapts [the instrument] to her feminine grace. This, I believe, is how a woman should hold a cello: she should sit on the edge of the chair, move her left foot slightly forward and slant her knee to the left, while her right leg folds back and her foot disappears under her dress. This way, her right leg is partly hidden”, “Le violoncelle chez la femme”, Boucherit Larronde Cécile, Musica : publication mensuelle, no. 12, Paris, septembre 1903, p. 191.
“Une leçon de harpe”, Musica : publication mensuelle, no. 18, Paris, mars 1904, p. 280.
“Les positions du violoniste”, Musica : publication mensuelle, no. 3, Paris, décembre 1902, p. 37.
Laura Hamer compares the cases of Jane Evrard and Nadia Boulanger: while the former cultivated a style of dress describes by Hamer as “hyper-feminine” (long gowns and constant nods to Hollywood glamour), the latter chose a wardrobe that was as neutral as possible. “On the conductor’s podium: Jane Evrard and the Orchestre féminin de Paris”, The Musical Times, vol. 152, no. 1916, 2011, p. 97.
Sendra Frédérick, “Notions de féminité et de masculinité dans le jeu pianistique français des années 1850 aux années 1910”, in Traversier Mélanie and Ramaut Alban (dir.), La musique a-t-elle un genre ?, Paris, Éditions de la Sorbonne, 2019, p. 131-150.
Cheng William, “Hearts for Sale: The French Romance and the Sexual Traffic of Musical Mimicry”, 19th-Century Music, no. 35, 2011, p. 34-71.
By way of example, the following scores are representative of the vast corpus of literature: Van Gæl Henri, Les Deux cousines, opérette pour jeunes filles, poème de M. Wille, Paris, Leduc, 1881; Blanchon Joseph, Chœur de mère. Drame biblique en quatre actes pour jeunes filles, Paris, René Hatton, 1907; Meudrot Jean and Christiani Henri, Luce et Lucette. Chanson pour femmes, Paris, Ondet, 1909. As scores do not usually state their target audience, most of the musical literature written for women is not explicitly labelled as such.
Between 12 March and 24 May 1910, shortly after the UFAM was founded, twenty press publications (La République française, Le Petit Caporal, L’Estafette, Le Petit sou, Le Constitutionnel, Le Petit Moniteur universel, Gil Blas, L’Aurore, Fémina, Comœdia, L’Action, Le Siècle, Le Figaro, Le Soir, Le xixe siècle, Le Rappel, L’Écho de Paris, L’Action française, Le Ménestrel and Le Journal) reported on the UFAM and its mission. The great similarity between the articles published would suggest that they were part of an advertising campaign instigated by the UFAM; thus, they should not necessarily be taken as objective descriptions but considered part of an official discourse.
D’Anjou René, “Les belles œuvres féminines sociales”, Le Petit Écho de la Mode, 19 mars 1911, p. 187.
“Les bavardages de Françoise”, Fémina, 15 avril 1910, p. 217.
The situation of women orchestra musicians in the early 20th century has been documented by a musicologist who was a contemporary of the UFAM. See Daubresse Mathilde, Le musicien dans la société moderne, Paris, Librairie Fischbacher, 1914.
Reich Nancy B., “Women as Musicians”, p. 136 : a conservatory diploma was a prize that could be an asset in the marriage market.
“Rapport moral 1920 par Madame Albert Dufour, secrétaire générale”, 2 mars 1921, BMD, fonds Jane Misme.
Jann Pasler discusses this subject in “Challenging the boundaries of gender, class and nation: Female musicians, composers, critics, musicologists, and patrons, 1870-1917”, Montenach Anne et al. (dir.), Genre Révolution Transgression : Études offertes à Martine Lapied, Aix-en-Provence, Presses universitaires de Provence, 2015, p. 205-226.
Daubresse Mathilde, Ibid.
“Les bavardages de Françoise”, Fémina, 1er juillet 1910, p. 368.
“Compte-rendu moral de l’année 1913 de l’Union des Femmes Artistes Musiciennes, présidente Mme L. Tassart, 6, rue Pierre Charron”, p. 3, fonds de l’AAEC, sans cote.
The studio was set up in the workshop of Victor Charpentier, brother of the composer Gustave Charpentier, at 17 rue des Martyrs in Paris. Lucy Tassart was probably connected to the Charpentier family through the Œuvre de Mimi Pinson, a charitable and musical association set up by Gustave Charpentier for the benefit of young women workers, to which Lucy Tassart contributed.
“Compte-rendu moral de l’année 1913 de l’Union des Femmes Artistes Musiciennes, présidente Mme L. Tassart, 6, rue Pierre Charron”, p. 3, fonds de l’AAEC, sans cote.
Chapman Mary, Making Noise, Making News: Suffrage Print Culture and U.S. Modernism, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014.
“Compte-rendu moral de l’année 1913 de l’Union des Femmes Artistes Musiciennes, présidente Mme L. Tassart, 6, rue Pierre Charron”, p. 3, fonds de l’AAEC, sans cote.
The first mention of this Conservatory, about which little is known, was in Le Populaire du 13 novembre 1923, p. 4.
“Les bavardages de Françoise”, Fémina, 1er juillet 1910, p. 368.
The orchestra’s first public performances provoked strong reactions, as illustrated by the following commentary, which appeared in Paris-Midi on 21 December 1912, p. 2: “You know the U.F.A.M. You saw at first glance that this was the Union des femmes-artistes-musiciennes. This evening at the Salle Gaveau, they will, by definition, be demonstrating their union, their feminism, their artistic sentiment and their musical talent. Today’s strong virgins fight their battles on the stage of a theatre, and in their hands marked by labour, the bow has replaced the symbolic spindle of the patriarchal eras. Our Margarets’ delicate foot no longer pumps the treadle of the spinning wheel, but rather the pedals of a piano or a harp, while instead of spinning wool, the daughters of Queen Bertha content themselves with spinning sounds. The house of music has fallen. Let us bow our heads under this flowery yoke and wait for our fair companions to tire of this pastime and replace it with another. This moment may come faster than we think. The ranks of our Amazons are already thinning. Tonight, unexpected allies join their cohort. Mr Fournets, Mr Le Lubez, Mr Fournier and Mr Raugel cannot deny their belonging to the less-fair sex. What are they doing here in the gynaeceum? Why have the ladies summoned their help? What danger are they in? Now truly, this is an unfortunate venture for feminist pride!”
Note manuscrite sur le budget 1932 de l’UFAM, AAEC, sans cote.
“Rapport moral 1936”, 13 mai 1937, fonds de l’AAEC, sans cote.
Brancour René, “Concerts divers”, Le Ménestrel, 29 avril 1921, p. 187.
Following the death of a former benefactor, Madame Parise, the UFAM was bequeathed an old house in Samoreau, in the Seine-et-Marne region, which was renovated to become a retirement home that could accommodate a few members for periodic stays, AN, 19910855/20.
Rennes Juliette, Le mérite et la nature. Une controverse républicaine : la mixité des professions (1880-1940), doctoral thesis, 2005, Université de Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, p. 172-173. Juliette Rennes cites the case of Maria Deraimes (Ce que veulent les femmes, 1891), Jules Blois (L’Ève nouvelle, 1896) and Jeanne Chauvin (Des professions accessibles aux femmes en droit romain et en droit français. Évolution historique de la position économique de la femme dans la société, 1892), three authors who set out to dismantle the then predominant historical narrative that takes for granted the subordination of women in ancient societies.
Ibid., p. 171.
“Concours international de musique et de declamation”, Le Matin, 14 octobre 1942, p. 2.
The Bourdieusian notion of habitus is defined by Muriel Darmon as “the inertia of acquired dispositions, resistance to change and the individual’s tendency to continue in the direction set by family socialisation”, Darmon Muriel, La Socialisation, p. 23.
Topalov Christian (dir.), Laboratoires du nouveau siècle. La nébuleuse réformatrice et ses réseaux en France, 1880-1914, Paris, Éditions de l’EHESS, coll. “Civilisations et sociétés”, 1999.
The UFAM was officially dissolved by a decree dated 13 May 2016. After World War II and until its dissolution, it was dedicated almost exclusively to the organisation of its annual competition, gradually phasing out its aid and support for women musicians.
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