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The Salle Pleyel, close to the Champs-Elysées in Paris, hosts some 200 concerts each year. Since 2006, the Cité de la musique has managed and organized the programming for this venue. If you want to know more about it
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Alexandre Rodtchenko, Pionnier trompettiste (1930), Galerie Tretiakov, Moscou
LENIN, STALIN AND MUSIC
October 12, 2010 to January 16, 2011
Continuing the theme of the relationship between music and power, begun back in 2004 with the “Third Reich and music” exhibition, the Cité de la musique is presenting a chronicle of musical life during the first thirty years of Soviet Russia. This exhibition places musical creation within the context of Russia’s artistic movements and history, from the 1917 October Revolution to Stalin’s death in 1953. It examines the role of art and artists in revolutionary impulse, and how these slowly became exploited by Soviet totalitarianism. Looking beyond this regime, the exhibition addresses the independence of artistic creation in the face of political power.
Designed in two main parts that oppose revolutionary utopias with Stalinian domination, “Lenin, Stalin and music” unites over 400 works related to music (autographed and printed music scores, musical instruments, models and costumes from ballets and operas), visual art (paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures), photography and photomontage, film (film excerpts and posters) and audiovisual archives (propaganda, filmed concerts, etc.) Organised for the France-Russia Year 2010, the exhibition requires exceptional loans from the Moscow’s main museums (Tretyakov Gallery, Glinka Museum, State Historical Museum, A.A. Bakhrushin State Central Theatre Museum, the Gorky Museum and more) and from St. Petersburg (Russian Museum, Museum of Theatre and Music, St. Petersburg City History Museum, National Library, and more).
Visits are conducted with an audioguide providing access to movie soundtracks and to the exhibition’s musical content. A special audioguide and game-booklet has been designed for young visitors. For the visually impaired, tactile elements are placed throughout the exhibition and complement the audio description.
The exhibition is organised for the France-Russia Year 2010 / www.france-russia2010.com
France Culture radio is organising a special evening for the exhibition on October 20th, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Cité de la musique (free entry, limited space).
From October 18 to 22, France Culture’s radio programme “La Fabrique de l’Histoire” will be devoted to the relationship between power and artistic creation.
Exhibition curator:
Pascal Huynh, musicologist
Scenography:
Projectiles
OPENING HOURS :
Tuesday to Saturday, noon to 6 p.m.
Extended hours on Friday, to 10 p.m.
Sunday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Exceptionally open until 8 p.m. on October 7, 9, 12, 13, 14 and 16, December 18 and January 5 and 8.
Richard Melloul, Georges Brassens à Bobino,, 1969
BRASSENS, OR FREEDOM
MARCH 15 TO AUGUST 21, 2011
Georges Brassens, who was born in 1921 and died in 1981, will be doubly celebrated in 2011. The Cité de la musique is paying him special tribute by going beyond the classic images and showing Brassens in a brand-new, often surprising light.
Everyone knows Brassens, in France and also throughout the world - everyone, one day, has whistled his most famous tunes - Le Gorille, Les Amoureux des bancs publics, Auprès de mon arbre and many others. But beneath those aspects that today seem consensual and representative of the good old days, there hides an uncommon individual - a man who was extremely well-read, a connoisseur of the great French poets, from François Villon and Baudelaire to his own contemporary, Paul Fort; a man who was shy and uncomfortable on stage, but a formidable musician, mad about swing and devoted to Charles Trenet; an anarchist who chose a solitary and individual path rather than the collective struggle, without betraying his own convictions; a man who opposed war, the values of “proper society” and the arbitrary nature of justice and of the police.
How to describe Brassens today?
The Cité de la musique has asked the cartoonist and writer Joann Sfar – the creator of Le Chat du Rabbin and the director of the first feature film on Serge Gainsbourg – to share his passion for Brassens through an exhibition that speaks to everyone, big and small. An exhibition that makes you want to play or sing Brassens, that invites you to take a new look at his libertarian power in France during the 1950s to 1980s. An exhibition that makes learning fun, inviting you to stroll in a forest of trees and discover numerous unpublished documents, manuscripts, archived sounds, TV images, photographs, guitars (collected by Clementine Deroudille), and more.
Brassens’ world meets the eclectic, whimsical and irreverent world of Joann Sfar, who has entrusted the exhibition’s sound design to his partner in music, Olivier Daviaud.
Exhibition curators:
Joann Sfar, Clementine Deroudille
Sound design:
Olivier Daviaud
Scientific consultant:
Joël Dugot
OPENING HOURS :
Tuesday to Saturday, noon to 6 p.m.
Extended hours on Friday, until 10 p.m. (except July and August)
Sunday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Exceptionally open until 8 p.m., March 16 – 19.