Paris: A Musical Gazetteer.(Review)

Paris: A Musical Gazetteer. By Nigel Simeone. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. [ix, 299 p. ISBN 0-300-08053-0 (cloth); 0-300-08054-9 (pbk.). $40 (cloth); $18.95 (pbk.).]

Paris offers abundant material for a musical gazetteer. The magnificent centralized institutions, rich concert life, and wealthy patrons of this important musical capital have long attracted not only French musicians but also musicians of other nations. Many of the buildings where composers lived and worked and many of the institutions where they were educated or saw their works performed still survive, A delightful addition to the libraries of both serious Francophiles and more casual music lovers, Nigel Simeone's Paris: A Musical Gazetteer compiles information drawn from numerous biographies and collections of letters, as well as from histories of culture, institutions, and the city itself, to reveal historic musical locations in nineteen of the twenty city districts (arrondissements), readily pinpointed by reference to the standard Michelin map of Paris and the nearest public transit stations.

The introductory section of the book suggests four musical walks in different parts of the city. The third of these, for example, charts a course through the ninth arrondissement to areas that do not usually figure on tourist itineraries--at first along the boulevards, up the slope behind the Sainte-Trinite church (where Messiaen was organist for many years), and to the Montmartre cemetery, a route that passes by residences of Rossini, Franck, Nadia and Lili Boulanger, Debussy, Berlioz, Bizet, Ravel, Honegger, and Milhaud. Even in a city liberally supplied with historical plaques, these buildings are largely unmarked and would be easy to bypass entirely without this invaluable finding aid. Navigating around the square Berlioz (with its 1886 monument to the composer) involves some backtracking if the visitor takes a natural detour to look at Berlioz's last residence; however, Simeone's directions are generally clear.

The introductory material also suggests ten musical landmarks for the visitor with limited time and hints at Simeone's particular fondness for certain composers (principally Debussy, Faure, Ravel, and Messiaen). This interest also seems to shape his commentary elsewhere. His discussion of the Prix de Rome (pp. 212-13), for example, focuses largely on the Ravel scandal of 1905, without the balance of positive comments by major Prix de Rome winners; and in the section on churches, Saint-Honore d'Eylau merits a paragraph, though its sole claim to fame seems to be that Faure was organist there for just a few weeks in 1871.

A brief, well-organized outline of music in Paris from the ...