André Cœuroy

André Cœuroy, né Jean Bélime (24 February 1891, Dijon — 8 November 1976, Chaumont-en-Bassigny, Haute-Marne) was a controversial French musicologist, music critic, translator, editor, journalist, and academic researcher. At once, distinguished and reputable scholar, and one of the leading proponents of "re-integration" of German musical tradition in francophonic world between the First and Second World Wars, Cœuroy is well-known as the most fervent early supporter of Edgard Varèse, as well as Jeune France ("Young France") group, which united "four little spiritualist brothers," in André's words: Yves Baudrier, André Jolivet, Olivier Messiaen, and Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur. On the other hand, in the 1930s, André Cœuroy adopted and propagated his increasingly radical far-right political stance, wholeheartedly embracing the collaborationist movement during WWII. He published two infamous books, La Musique et le peuple en France ("Music and the people in France") in 1940, and Histoire générale du jazz ("General History of Jazz") at Éditions Denoël in 1942 — fervently criticized by Philippe Gumplowicz (b. 1950) in his article Reactionary musicographers of the 1930s (Le Mouvement Social, №208, July–September 2004) as "caricatured reactionary" and for the "nationalist, identitarian impulse." In 1943, André Cœuroy succeeded French fascist Lucien Rebatet (1903—1972) as the chief editor of the notorious anti-Semitic collaborationist newspaper Je suis partout, published in France under the German occupation. Jean L.M. Bélime initially studied at the Regional Conservatory in his hometown of Dijon, relocating to Paris as a teenager; subsequently, Bélime was only known professionally as "André Cœuroy." After graduating from Lycée Louis-le-Grand in central Paris, Cœuroy enrolled in the Ecole Normale Supérieure in 1911, passing his agrégation in German in 1914. He regularly traveled to Germany as a student, studying philology at the University of Munich, as well as composition under Max Reger (1873—1916) in Leipzig. During World War I, André Cœuroy was imprisoned by German troops, sparing time and avoiding harsh treatment by organizing various musical activities, such as entertaining lectures on Wagner. After WWII, Cœuroy returned to Paris, where he collaborated with Henry Pruniéres (1886—1942), co-founding La Revue Musicale in 1920, an acclaimed monthly music journal. André served as the editor-in-chief for the first 17 years, also writing as a columnist for other notable French newspapers, such as Paris-Midi (1925—1939) and Gringoire (1927—1939). He taught in Paris extensively and was a visiting lecturer at Harvard University in the United States in 1931–32, in addition to serving as the musical director for the League of Nations between 1929 and 1939. As a German-French translator, André Cœuroy worked for major publishing houses in Paris, like Gallimard, and translated many seminal books by Heinrich Heine, Goethe, Friedrich de La Motte-Fouqué, Theodor Fontane, Max Frisch, Eduard Mörike, and Friedrich Sieburg. Notable works included Richard Ellmann's biography of James Joyce, Bruno Walter's memoirs, and Heinrich Strobel's renowned 1940 "Claude Debussy." Cœuroy also translated many musical works, notably a French libretto for Carl Maria von Weber's 1821 opera Der Freischütz, Op. 77. He published articles and treatises on contemporary French music, notable for his role in popularizing Groupe des six, an informal collective of celebrated Montparnasse composers: Louis Durey (1888—1979), Georges Auric (1899—1983), Arthur Honegger (1892—1955), Darius Milhaud (1892—1974), Germaine Tailleferre (1892—1983), and Francis Poulenc (1899—1963). Cœuroy specialized in the oeuvre of César Franck, Hector Berlioz, and Georges Bizet, and extensively studied Weber, Richard Wagner, Robert Schumann, Frédéric Chopin, and Franz Schubert's songbook.