Revue musicale de Lyon
RIPM Preservation Series: European and North American Music Periodicals (2018)
Publisher: Waltener & Cie, Réunies
Periodicity: Weekly
Language: French
Becomes: Revue française de musique
Founded by the musicologist and critic Léon Vallas (1879-1956), the Revue musicale de Lyon was Vallas's first music journal; this journal would later become the Revue française de musique (1912-1914) and, following the First World War, the Nouvelle Revue musicale (1920-1929). During the period of the Revue musicale de Lyon, Vallas directed the local Schola Cantorum and pursued a doctoral degree in music with a thesis on music at the Académie de Lyon in the eighteenth century. Later, Vallas would be well-known for his studies of Debussy, Franck, and d'Indy.
Issues of the Revue musicale de Lyon open with articles on diverse musical topics, including biographical investigations, source studies, analyses of compositions, musical history (with an emphasis on Lyon), and musical aesthetics. A concert chronicle appeared in most issues, reviewing recent performances in Lyon and elsewhere in France, with an emphasis on performances of new works, concert and operatic works such as those by Lalo, d'Indy, Franck, Chabrier, Ravel, Debussy, and Ambroise Thomas. Sympathetic to Wagnerism, Vallas regularly published articles on Wagner's operas and reviews of their performances, as well as articles on the works of German and Austrian composers, ranging from Bach to Bruckner. M. D. Calvocoressi, a regular contributor throughout the journal's run, becomes co-editor when Vallas changes the journal title to Revue française de musique in 1912.