ABSTRACT
The homology between performances here occurring was charged: the audience that was present in the Opera was being manipulated astutely toward identification with that represented on the stage. French composers, considered intellectuals, were necessarily implicated in this dialogue, for their public choice of classic values was rife with connotations within this system of political representation. French music would henceforth become an agent, a 'weapon,' to establish a strong French presence, and thus a political influence abroad in the uncertain postwar era. It is thus not surprising that Ravel's postwar style, if more "austere," was not, as some have claimed, typical of interwar neoclassicism, for if anything were "typical" in France, it was the Schola's. Culturally, the Left was in a weakened position in the immediate wake of the war: ideologically less unified than the Right, it splintered over Communism, among other issues.
