Contacts and cooperation between German musicology and the French Society of Musicology in the 1920s

This paper addresses the contacts between the Societe fiancaise de musicologie and German musicologists in the nineteen-twenties, as well as the coverage of French musicological research in German periodicals of that time. The reception of French musicology in Germany after the First World War was complicated by the political and institutional situation, as Germans had only restricted access to international organizations. Nevertheless, in its early years, the SFM accepted members from both Germany and Austria (primarily in 1926 and 1929) and established contacts with libraries as well as with some German-speaking scholars, most of whom were in the early stages of their careers. A growing interest in French research can be observed in the German musicological periodicals (e.g. Zeitschrift fir Musikwissenschaft, Die Musik, Signale fir die musikalische Welt), even though competition between the two nations remains a dominant theme. At major international musicological conferences organized by the Union musicologique and by the Societe internationale de musicologie, the relationship between both Germany and France was explicitly addressed, and the hopefor closer international collaboration was expressed; in particular, the activities of such scholars as Prunieres, Pirro, and Tiersot, were reported upon. In the later nineteen-twenties, articles by German musicologists attempted to analyze what appeared to be the methodological differences between the allegedly historicophilological style as it was practiced in France, and the humanities-driven approach as it was practiced in Germany, even though this opposition, not only national, is in fact a rather more general feature of musicology itself.