Moments musicaux: high culture in the Paris Commune

During the Paris Commune of 1871, four spectacular concerts took place at the Tuileries Palace. Although the musical genre most often associated with the Communards is popular song, these Tuileries concerts primarily featured instrumental works and operatic numbers. Indeed, during much of their short reign the Communards sought to nurture elite music, in particular through attempts to control the Paris Opéra and its repertory. This article treats the Tuileries concerts as a starting point for understanding the Commune’s brief direction of the Opéra, exploring ways in which the movement’s attitude towards elite music at both venues engaged with a number of its central preoccupations. It suggests that Communards, often depicted as merely destructive, were anxious to rehabilitate their reputation and legitimise their status through the appropriation of high culture.