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Charting the Currents: A Cartography of the Water Topic in Fin-de-siècle French Music
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Thesis/Dissertation
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2025-08
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Music Theory
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https://doi.org/10.34944/qw0k-qc36
Abstract
This dissertation explores French music written around the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries—a period commonly referred to as the fin de siècle—that depicts characteristics and narratives of water. Using tools from music semiotics and hermeneutics, I identify music written in this style as a “water topic,” and argue that narratives of water falling within this topic further signify Orientalized, unveiled femininity, often by proxy of a preoccupation with fairy brides and Greek nymphs. The musical signifiers of water explored in this dissertation operate as markers within a broader cultural discourse through which water-related narratives reflect shifting representations of Orientalism, femininity, and the other.
For example, Gabriel Fauré was head of the Paris Conservatory and stood as a paternalistic figure with some level of sociopolitical control over other prominent composers. I interpret his barcarolles, written over the course of thirty years, as relatively restrained and anxious compared to music by composers such as Maurice Ravel, Mel Bonis, and others who used their compositions to more overtly explore feminine liberation. Cécile Chaminade’s music provides another contrast, as she portrayed watery femininity in a more domestic light, perhaps reflecting her class status and stylistic alignment with an earlier compositional period. Case studies in Chapters 4 and 5 illustrate that all of these composers engaged with the water topic in ways that were deeply shaped by their respective positionalities within the larger socio-political and cultural landscape of fin-de-siècle France.
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