‘La Fanfare en Carton‘ by Emile Spencer, published ca 1897 by Eveillard & Jacquot in Paris and illustrated by Louis Oury.
The instruments on this cover are clearly not the ones played in a normal brass band. They are bigophones named after a French toy maker, Romain Bigot. From 1881 on he brought out a series of instruments which were shaped like orchestral ones.
Left a Bigophone. Right a page from a French novelties catalogue (Société de la Gaîté Française). The bigophone in the form of a wine bottle is interesting: one could give the impression of getting sloshed, while in fact merely humming a funny tune.
The common feature of most bigophones is that they start at the mouthpiece with some kind of kazoo, which is attached to a horn section made in papier mâché (hence La Fanfare en carton/The Cardboard Brass Band) or in zinc. A bigophone had no finger holes and wasn’t used for any serious music. It was an instrument for carnival music: very noisy, cheap and easy to manufacture with a typical nasal sound. Just because of the nasal twang of the first telephones, bigophone became the slang word for a telephone in France. If you listen to the following fragment it will come as no surprise that a bigophone sounds just like… well, a kazoo.
As no musical knowledge was required to play the bigophone, soon complete bands were formed with it. But these were regarded with contempt by a certain elite. Louis Ferdinand Céline makes this clear in one of his letters, raging against the whole world and more in particular against Louis Aragon and Henri de Régnier: ‘Why do you want me to suddenly start playing the bigophone just because twelve dozen failures around me play it ? I who play the grand piano rather well. Why? To reduce myself to the same level as these shrivelled, constipated, envious, hateful bastards?’
Bigophonic society from Bléré, France.
Nonetheless, during 50 years the bigophones would remain immensely popular in France and in Belgium. Numerous bigophonic societies would be established, and even compete one another.
Catalogue Lecour et Brouchot 1912. Bigotphones: small but very noisy models.
As the bigophones were also popular to put some spark into carnival parties, small ones were made in all kind of funny forms. And if one forgot to bring along his or her bigophone, one could always pretend…
‘Ta-ra-ta-ta‘ by Theodor Pinet published by Lundquist, Stockholm. Illustrated by Lydia Skottsberg.
‘En Goguette‘ by Aimé Lachaume, published by Enoch & Cie, Paris 1907. Illustrated by Marius Stéphane.
We didn’t know the expression ‘en goguette’ so we had to look it up. It means going on a spree, being in a good mood, ready to have fun. Or to say it with a beautiful English word: gallivanting. It goes without saying that the participants are often mildly or hopelessly inebriated…
According to our examples of sheet music covers everyone could take delight of being ‘en goguette’, even cantors (chantres) or statues.
‘Les Chantres en Goguette‘ by Gérald-Baldran, published by Bassereau in Paris. Illustrated by Faria.‘Les Statues en Goguette‘ by Wachs, published by Répertoire Paulus in Paris. Illustrated by Butscha. Do you recognise all of the historical figures in the merry row of statues ?
Even figures on a poster can be en goguette as can be seen in this surreal short film Affiches en goguette (The Hilarious Posters). It features a wall full of advertising posters coming to life to make fun of the French police. The film was made in 1906 by the French film maker and pioneer in special effects, George Méliès.
‘La vraie Furlana papale‘ by Théo Noletty, published by Philippo, Paris 1914, illustrated by Clérice Frères.
Traditionally the furlana was an Italian folk dance from Friuli, a region between Trieste and Venice. Dating back to the 17th century it became popular on the European continent in the first half of the 18th century, thanks to Couperin and Rameau. Pietro Longhi the painter of Venetian 18th century everyday life immortalized the furlana in one of his typical genre scenes.
Left, Peasants dancing the Furlana by Pietro Longhi (1702-1785). Right, ‘La piu bella Furlana‘ by Alfredo Barbirolli, published by Au Ménestrel Paris in 1914, illustrated by René Péan.
By the end of the 18th century the furlana was passé. Apart from an opera or two in which the furlana was staged, nobody cared about the dance anymore, let alone knew how to dance it. It was a rather cheerful tune though if the version from Amilcare Ponchielli‘s opera La Gioconda is anything to go by.
And then all of a sudden at the eve of the Great War, in the spring of 1914, the furlana became the dance craze! It was extremely short-lived and lasted but a few months. But in that fleeting period it had the ambition to replace the tango which had invaded Europe around 1912. As the story goes we have to thank Pope Pius X for this fad. Pius X was strongly opposed to modernist interpretations of Catholic doctrine. He advocated traditional devotional practices, and of course abhorred the sensual and shocking tango.
Left, Pope Pius X carefully watches a couple dancing the Tango. From L’Illustration.Right, ‘Friuli‘ by Bonincontro, published by Bornemann Paris in 1914, illustrated by Pousthomis.
Allegedly Pope Pius X, in a reaction to the dangerous vogue of the tango, had invited two young members of the Pontifical aristocracy to perform the notorious tango in a strictly private audience. Having witnessed these ‘ridiculous barbarian contortions’, Pope Pius X advised young people to adopt the delightful Venetian dance instead of the devilish tango. It was a (chaste) dance that he had often seen in his youth, where physical contact went no further than clasped hands. This papal advise was repeated in Rome’s Il Tempo newspaper. And before long the furlana became the vogue in Rome, soon to be followed in Paris.
Left, ‘La Giocosa Furlana‘ by L. Durand, published by Dupuis, Paris in 1914, illustrated by Léon Pousthomis. Right, ‘La Furlana‘ by Emile Doloire, published by Delormel, Paris in 1914, illustrated by Clérice Frères.
It is in that very short period of time, between the spring of 1914 and the outbreak of WWI, that every self-respecting dance teacher, every composer and every publishing house had to quickly concoct ‘the real’ furlana. A Venetian dance teacher claimed he had succeeded in recreating the original furlana after an interview with an octogenarian. It looked like this:
The Furlana, reconstructed by the Venetian Professor Galante. La Revue Musicale S.I.M. april 1914.
At the same time a Roman dance teacher was quick to tell of his good fortune to discover an ancient dance manual explaining all the original movements of the furlana.
Left, ‘La Furlana‘ by Paul Fauchey, published by Adolph Furstner in 1914, illustrated by Hippolyte Fournier. Right, ‘La Furlana‘ by Attic, published by E. Joullot, illustrated by Pousthomis.
In Paris as well, all in the music business were frantically claiming their importance in the furlanamania. One publisher tried to lure his potential clientèle reassuring them that the furlana could be danced everywhere: ‘La Furlana, nouvelle danse Vénitienne approuvée par sa sainteté le Pape Pie X, et pour cette raison adoptée dans les salons aristocratiques et mondains’. Another one boldly retraced the origins of the furlana to an ancient gondolier dance.
Left, ‘Célèbre Furlana Venitienne‘ by Saratosga, published by Bons Auteurs, Paris, illustrated by Paul Dubois. Right, ‘Furlana Jolie‘ by Maria Rosset, published by Rosset, Paris 1914, illustrated by Clérice frères.
Parisian stylish dance teachers hurried to scrape together some movements in order to create a new choreography. Some of these teachers succeeded in attaching their name and theory to the published music. The best known of them was the elegant Duque (Antonio Lopes de Amorim Diniz) a Brazilian who abandoned a career in dentistry to become a dancer and dance teacher in Paris. Duque was responsable for another dance craze: the maxixe. But this is for a later post. For now we’re off to Venice, going to dance with a gondolier!
‘La vrai Furlana‘, published by Edouard Salabert, Paris 1914. Photograph of L. Duque by Henri Manuel.
