France

G

Culture

The culture of France has profoundly influenced that of the entire Western world, particularly in the areas of art and letters, and Paris has long been regarded as the fountainhead of French culture. France first attained cultural pre-eminence in Europe during the Middle Ages; later, the wealth of the French Crown in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries provided subsidies for art on a scale comparable to that of the papacy in Rome, attracting to Paris many of Europe’s most talented artists and craftsmen. Wealth also created a leisured class, which had both the time and the means for developing elegance in dress, manners, architecture, and design. French styles still pervade much of Western culture. In the 20th century French cinema assumed a leading world position.

H

Literature

See French Literature.

I

Art and Architecture

See French Art and Architecture.

J

Music

France has a long and distinguished musical tradition. From the 11th to the 13th century, chansons de geste (“songs of deeds”), epic poems sung by minstrels, were produced in northern France, and the troubadours, aristocratic poet-musicians who wrote eloquent songs dealing with courtly love, war, and nature, were active in southern France.

The most influential French composer of the 14th century was Guillaume de Machaut, an outstanding practitioner of polyphonic vocal music, both sacred and secular. In the 15th and 16th centuries, songs, motets, and settings of the Mass were among the most important French musical compositions.

In the second half of the 17th century, the Italian-born Jean-Baptiste Lully created a French operatic style by combining traditional court spectacle with the plots of contemporary French dramas, set to musical forms that blended dance with Italian opera. In the early 18th century volumes of suites for harpsichord were composed by François Couperin and Jean Philippe Rameau; the latter is also known for such operas as Castor et Pollux and Les Indes Galantes.

In the late 18th and 19th centuries, many foreign-born opera composers were active in Paris; these included Gluck, Cherubini, Grétry, Meyerbeer, and Offenbach. French-born opera composers of the 19th century included Jacques Halévy, Charles Gounod, Georges Bizet, and Jules Massenet.

The chief French composer of orchestral music in the early 19th century was Hector Berlioz. Camille Saint-Saëns first became active in the 1850s; he in turn taught Gabriel Fauré. Towards the end of the 19th century Claude Debussy composed a wide variety of works in new styles influenced by trends in literature and painting.

In the early 20th century Maurice Ravel produced works with more formal outlines. Les Six, a group of Neo-Classic composers formed in 1918-1919, included Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, and Georges Auric, whose work was influenced by that of the eccentric Erik Satie. Igor Stravinsky worked in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s; while more recent French composers include Olivier Messiaen and Pierre Boulez.

K

Libraries and Museums

Most provincial cities in France have municipal libraries and museums. The largest concentration of such facilities is, naturally, in Paris. Major libraries in Paris include the Bibliothèque Nationale, with more than 10 million books, and the libraries of the Universities of Paris. The Louvre, also in Paris, contains one of the largest and most important art collections in the world. Another Parisian museum, the Pompidou Centre (Centre National d’Art et de Culture Georges-Pompidou), also contains major collections, notably of 20th-century painting and design. Many of the great masterpieces of French architecture, such as churches, cathedrals, castles, and châteaux, are maintained as national monuments.