Educational Independence
Two underresearched aspects of French provincial education concern the centralist (but “alternative”) ambitions of the Paris Schola Cantorum across France and the distinctive character of conservatoires which either freed themselves from the national system or refused to join it. Discussion centers on Montpellier (the Schola set up by Charles Bordes in 1905), Strasbourg (a proudly municipal conservatoire which retained many Germanic elements after its return to France in 1919), and Bordeaux (the Société de Sainte-Cécile, also independent, and which, unusually, included a plainchant class alongside its secular provision). Composition emerges as the elusive yet defining feature of the finest and most ambitious of the provincial conservatoires, whether national or not, while the pedagogical commitment of the “scholistes” to regionalist composition (ostensibly one of their calling cards) is revealed as both belated and fragile.