Captivity in the Concert Hall: Prisoner of War Music as Propaganda in Occupied Paris, 1940-1945

Vichy Prisoner of War Propaganda

The German Propaganda Abteilung and the French Office français d’information, and later the Direction des services des prisonniers de guerre (DSPG), strictly controlled information about prisoners of war and the conditions of camps, allowing the government to manipulate French civilians’ view of life in the POW camps and public opinion about the prisoners themselves.¹² Vichy’s leaders quickly prioritized assuring French citizens that their loved ones in German captivity mattered to the government. Immediately after the French defeat and armistice between Hitler and Pétain, many French civilians believed their loved ones would be returned from captivity within a short time; if France and Germany were no longer at war, why should French soldiers remain imprisoned? At first, the Vichy government even encouraged this view.¹³ Once officials realized that they would not be able to achieve a quick liberation of all their prisoners, they focused on negotiating the release of specific groups. Vichy officials managed to convince German authorities to release over 200,000 prisoners during the war, including veterans, fathers of large families, and prisoners repatriated under the Relève, among others.¹⁴ However, Vichy was also quick to take credit for repatriations covered under other agreements and international law. Demonstrating their ability, even fictitiously, to secure repatriations legitimized the success of their foreign policy of collaboration with the Germans.¹⁵ As the war continued, other propagandistic manipulations of POW camp life resulted in a variety of contradictory portrayals of the prisoner of war experience. Fishman and others highlight images of POWs as vacationers participating in athletic, scholastic, and creative activities, as model French citizens engaging in perfect patriotism, as martyrs suffering for their country’s sins, and as seekers of enlightenment giving up their worldly belongings and daily routines.

The image of content, mentally and physically healthy prisoners with ample access to entertainment benefited both German and French authorities; it painted the Germans as reasonable collaborators and Vichy as a legitimate government with a successful foreign policy. Fishman explains that Vichy officials and the media presented Stalags and Oflags as a sort of “summer camp” or vacation (as suggested by the title of the famous POW memoir by Francis Ambrière: Les grandes vacances [1946]), highlighting the prisoners’ participation in intellectually, artistically, physically, and socially enriching activities.¹⁶ Media portrayals depicted prisoners playing sports, teaching and taking university classes, and especially putting on theater productions, which was a favorite focus in prisoner propaganda. For example, the Musée Galliera in Paris displayed an exhibition featuring items from camp theaters, including masks used in a production, a model of a camp theater, and photographs, in 1942.¹⁷ Since activities like theater productions primarily took place in Stalags and Oflags (POW base camps), prisoners in work Kommandos, with their long hours of physical labor and scant time for intellectual and cultural pursuits, were almost completely excluded from idealized images of POW “summer camps.” An exceptional example, the only Kommando group to be featured on the cover of the Parisian magazine L’illustration was a work detail of French sculptors employed at the studio of Arno Brecker.¹⁸

The feature-length propaganda film, Prisonniers (also titled Nos prisonniers), filmed in the Stalags and Oflags in 1941 and shown in French cinemas later that year, also exemplifies the vacation portrayal of the POW experience. Coproduced by French and German filmmakers, the film features footage displaying camp common areas and cultural activities, such as orchestra and theater rehearsals, art exhibitions, and newspaper work. Reflecting the media’s special interest in POW theater productions, the end of the film is dedicated to the end-of-year revue produced at Oflag III C in December 1941. Prisonniers spreads its message through creative twisting of the truth; with the absence of Kommandos, the only work depicted is railroad construction, wood chopping, fieldwork, and small crafts—not the hard labor experienced by prisoners in forest, quarry, and factory Kommandos.¹⁹ Wartime reviewers of Prisonniers seemed convinced by the film’s depictions of prisoners spending their days engaged in leisure activities. In a review for Comœdia, Arthur Hoérée wrote, “Brutally torn from their homes, from their occupations, by war, transplanted by defeat into a country that is not their own … these ‘captives,’ faithful to their tradition as men, immediately adapted to their new environment, immediately organized to get closer to normal life through work, sports, leisure, intellectual escape.”²⁰ Bertin-Maghit explains that the film “illustrates the propaganda developed at once by Vichy and by the Germans, which is directed toward families: showing that the prisoners are well treated and that they do not suffer from being uprooted.”²¹

As public dissatisfaction with Vichy and the war grew, another type of POW propaganda emerged. Vichy used idealized images of prisoners as model French citizens to shame civilians in France into compliance.²² In an April 1943 speech, Pétain told French citizens, “Our prisoners set us the example. In the camps, they work: far from partisan passions and struggles of influence.”²³ Other rhetoric from the government and media presented prisoners as the quintessential patriots, symbols of the French remaining French in the face of enemy control.²⁴ According to Fishman, photos like one published in L’illustration, which featured prisoners saluting a poster of Pétain on his birthday, showcased the prisoners’ loyal patriotism and encouraged civilians to follow their example.²⁵

With the government deeply tied to conservative Catholicism, the idea of redemption through suffering also became a central characteristic of much of Vichy’s prisoner of war propaganda. In the view of Vichy’s traditionalist Catholics, the 1940 defeat resulted from divine punishment for the sins of Republican France.²⁶ Thus, the French had to pay their penance before they could be redeemed. According to Vichy, the prisoners felt the tragedies of the defeat more intensely than any other French group, transforming them collectively into an almost Christ-like figure, enduring captivity so that the French could be cleansed of their sins.²⁷ Following this interpretation, Pétain never blamed the POWs for failing to hold off the Germans and losing the Battle of France in summer 1940; rather, the leaders of the Third Republic had been wrong to declare war on Germany, and as for the prisoners, “It was by clinging to the soil of France that they fell into the hands of the enemy.”²⁸

In conjunction with the Catholic-informed portrayal of prisoners of war, media sources presented the Stalags and Oflags as a sort of “monastic retreat.” As with propaganda that portrayed a version of prison camp life akin to vacation, these “monastic retreat” representations never included the hard labor of the work Kommandos, focusing instead on the communal living and opportunities for personal betterment of the Stalags and Oflags.²⁹ These depictions featured POWs who “separated from their past, worldly lives, were freed for meditation and spiritual renewal.”³⁰ Families of POWs usually accepted these Catholic-influenced descriptions of their loved ones as generous soldiers who suffered and bettered themselves for the salvation of their country. However, the “monastic retreat” and “suffering for France” accounts of the POW experience became difficult for Vichy to maintain in the later years of the war; as Fishman explains, “If the prisoners were in Germany to atone for France’s sins, many wives wondered why they did not return once they had atoned sufficiently.”³¹

False or distorted narratives that implied all POWs and POW camps were the same formed another critical part of Vichy’s prisoner propaganda; if Vichy and the press could find one Stalag or Oflag with particularly robust artistic, intellectual, or spiritual life, the image of prisoners on a sort of vacation or a “monastic retreat,” rather than suffering in miserable living and working conditions, became infinitely more believable. For example, POW propaganda like the film Prisonniers used certain camps to project an image that its creators wanted French citizens to believe represented all POW camps. The film combines footage from Stalag XII F in Lorraine, a German-annexed part of eastern France, with that of Stalag I A, in Stablack near Königsberg, Germany.³² Prisoners at Stalag XII F established some “leisure” activities, such as a library, orchestra, theater, and camp newspaper, but eighty-five percent of the POWs were deployed on work detachments with limited access to such activities, and reports about the general camp conditions ranged from “good” to “poor/very poor.”³³ Stalag I A, however, was a special camp for aspirants (officer cadets) known for its particularly robust academic, artistic, and religious life. Because most of the aspirants were students, they prioritized academics, recruiting professors from the Oflags for their “university.”³⁴ With many seminarians at the Stalag, religious life also blossomed at Stalag I A. Theater performances, including an elaborate Exposition de la Révolution nationale performed in June 1942, became integral to camp life at Stalag I A.³⁵ Bertin-Maghit explains that by mixing footage from Stalags I A and XII F, the film “quash[es] distinctions between them [and] participates in deception. It gives us a stereotyped and embellished picture of the prisoners’ camps.”³⁶ Moreover, Lorraine was a highly contested region, having changed hands many times even in recent memory, most notably annexed by Germany during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, regained by France in the aftermath of World War I, and recaptured by Germany after the Battle of France in 1940; by using footage from Stalag I A to embellish the quality of life at Stalag XII F, the film also seems to imply that because the Nazis treated French POWs relatively well, life under German rule would acceptable for Lorrainian civilians, too. Prisoner concerts publicized in the media inherently aided in this type of manipulation; a French civilian who saw an advertisement for a concert of “prisoner music” while flipping through a newspaper might develop certain opinions about the quality of life in all POW camps upon realizing that some prisoners had the time and means to write music in captivity.

Music Policies under Vichy

Vichy’s propagandistic use of music is a vast and multifaceted topic even more complex and self-contradictory than its prisoner of war propaganda, and it features historical ties to pre-Revolution France and political connections to far-right organizations of the fin-de-siècle, such as the Action française. French and international musicologists have produced an extensive body of work about Vichy’s musical propaganda, including the manipulation of musical and historical icons, antisemitic musical practices, musical efforts toward German collaboration, and more.³⁷ While all these publicity angles certainly mattered for prisoners and shaped the musical milieu in which their works were performed, prisoner concerts mostly engage with three particular facets of Vichy’s musical politics: the government’s fight against unemployment, the use of music by young, promising composers to project France’s cultural value to French citizens and German officials, and the development of radio programs to disseminate musical propaganda.

Scholars position the Vichy years as a time of greatly increased connection between music and the state in France. The average number of works the French government commissioned grew from ten per year between 1938 and 1939 to fifteen per year between 1941 and 1944.³⁸ Even more dramatically, the Vichy Administration des beaux-arts, under Louis Hautecœur, raised subsidies for the four major Parisian orchestras— the Société des concerts du Conservatoire, the Orchestre Lamoureux, the Orchestre Pasdeloup, and the Orchestre Pierné (formerly Colonne)³⁹—by nearly 800 percent starting in 1942.⁴⁰ Musicians also received government support through special recording programs, membership on federal committees, and involvement with state-controlled radio.⁴¹ According to Yannick Simon, Vichy granted musicians such extreme funding and resources for career advancement for two primary reasons: to fight unemployment and to create symbols of France’s continued prosperity and cultural worthiness, despite its military defeat and subsequent occupation.⁴² Understanding the ways in which the Vichy government improved sponsorship for music is particularly significant to building context for performances of prisoner-of-war compositions in wartime France. As now-unemployed soldiers returning to their homeland, former prisoners became a major target of the French government’s efforts to counter unemployment, and POW composers benefitted significantly from government music programs.

Commissions were a major means of government assistance for prisoner and civilian composers alike. Vichy certainly did not invent the idea of government commissions for composers in France; in 1938, the Ministère de l’éducation nationale and the Administration des beaux-arts of the Popular Front government, then under the direction of Jean Zay and Georges Huisman, respectively, began the commission program, which started out small, costing a total of 200,000 francs in 1938.⁴³ The commission program expanded under Vichy, with 270,000 francs spent on commissions from May through August 1941 alone.⁴⁴ The program encountered other major changes during the war, as well; what had been a diverse group of “men and women, ranging in age from twenty-eight to seventy-one years old, who represented not only differing institutional affiliations but also widely diverse aesthetic approaches” in 1938 became a much more homogeneous set of composers during the wartime years.⁴⁵ Of the composers who received commissions from the Vichy government, forty percent were between the ages of thirty and thirty-nine, only six percent were women, and none had Jewish or foreign roots.⁴⁶ Moreover, many professional musician prisoners who returned to France during the war received commissions, including one composition each for Henri Challan, Émile Damais, René Guillou, and Jean Martinon, as well as Raymond Gallois-Montbrun, from whom the Vichy government commissioned two works.⁴⁷

Ultimately, Vichy’s commissions achieved more success in countering unemployment than in projecting any sort of ideological or cultural message to the public; only thirteen of the sixty-seven works commissioned by Vichy were premiered before the end of the war.⁴⁸ However, other Vichy initiatives encouraged performances of new works by living composers, including current and former POWs. Following the same two reasons that formed the basis for the commission program—employing French musicians and displaying French prosperity—Vichy drastically increased government grants for the four major Parisian orchestras, as well as the Opéra and the Opéra Comique. This financial support helped musicians remain employed by giving the organizations better budgets to hire and retain performers. Rules attached to the higher government subsidies also protected living composers by ensuring that their works were performed by prestigious ensembles and promoted the idea of continued French cultural excellence to French civilians and German soldiers in Paris.⁴⁹ Like the commissioning of works, trading government financial support for rules about the kind of works to be performed was not a new idea in the 1940s; the subsidized orchestras had been required to meet a quota of new and/or French music since the fin-de-siècle, although they generally found loopholes in the prewar decades.⁵⁰ Under Vichy, the minimum percentage of French music was raised from one quarter to one third of the whole season’s programming, works by living (or recently deceased) composers had to make up four hours total of the season’s programming, and the new works had to be spread over several different concerts.⁵¹

The government also worked with the concert associations specifically to promote prisoner-composers’ works; a 1942 letter from the Vichy office of press and propaganda to Louis Hautecœur explains that all four orchestras had agreed to give two concerts each season, in which works by current or former POWs would make up at least fifty percent of the program. The orchestras also agreed to allow the composers to conduct their works, when possible, and to audition soloists who had recently been repatriated.⁵² The reports submitted by the orchestras seem to follow these instructions, and minutes from a meeting of the Concerts Lamoureux board dated one day before Laffon’s letter to Hautecœur already shows a general decision to leave space for prisoners’ works in their upcoming concert season.⁵³ The Société des concerts du Conservatoire, likewise, reported three works by POW composers among their premieres for the 1942–43 season, as well as listing a benefit for prisoners of war as one of their galas for the season.⁵⁴ This agreement with the orchestras contributed to Vichy’s goals: repatriated musicians had jobs to return to, and performances of works written by POW composers demonstrated the French ability to create culturally significant art even in the most dire circumstances.

Vichy also used music on Radiodiffusion nationale (national radio) stations to promote a type of French patriotism that aligned with the Révolution nationale. The music played on this station, especially later in the war, was overwhelmingly French; Karine Le Bail estimates that around sixty percent of the music broadcast on these stations in 1943 and 1944 was by French composers.⁵⁵ Radio entertainment programs on the Radiodiffusion nationale stations also focused on themes from French history. For example, in 1944, writer Simone de Beauvoir and musician Pierre Lantier constructed a historically oriented entertainment program for the station called L’origine du music-hall, which featured French music and other entertainment from previous centuries, emphasizing pre-Revolution sources, such as fifteenth-century composer Adam de la Halle.⁵⁶ Following Révolution nationale ideals, radio programming also emphasized traditional music from the countryside; a 1940 program compiled by Joseph Canteloube and broadcast on radio stations in Toulouse and Paris called Anthologie des plus beaux chants de toutes les provinces françaises promoted French folk music.⁵⁷ However, Canteloube’s program seems to be an anomaly; Le Bail notes that in the early years of the war, Vichy at first did not prioritize music and then, starting in summer 1941, played mostly “serious” music.⁵⁸ POW music—“serious” music written by (usually) classically trained French composers—joined this atmosphere of Vichy-approved patriotism on the radio.

Prisoner Concerts in French Wartime Media

The entire system of Vichy’s messages and policies regarding POWs and music outlined above contextualizes performances of prisoner music in wartime France and related media discourse. In conjunction with government commissions and agreements with subsidized orchestras, prisoner concerts became the principal way in which prisoner music gained public attention during World War II. For the purpose of my close reading in this section, I define “prisoner concert” as any musical performance in wartime France displaying these characteristics:

1. it included one or more pieces written by one or more current or former prisoners;

2. those pieces were composed before or during World War II;

3. the prisoner status of the composer or composers was highlighted.

As I demonstrate below, prisoner status was most often emphasized in concert announcements and reviews through the titles of programs, such as “Musique des prisonniers,” or by the inclusion of information about the composers’ camps.⁵⁹ Although benefit concerts and fundraisers for POWs proliferated during the war, I do not include them in my discussions of prisoner concerts, because they usually programmed standard popular and classical repertoire, rather than music by the prisoners themselves. Whether intentionally or not, prisoner concerts, both government-funded and privately sponsored, played into propagandistic messages being disseminated in France during the war by Vichy and the media outlets it influenced. Examining these concerts and assessing how critics wrote about them demonstrates how POW music helped promote the ideals Vichy attached to prisoners of war and music separately.

The phenomenon of prisoner concerts began nearly a year after the May 1940 invasion, and these concerts reached their peak in popularity in late 1942, according to concert announcements and reviews in newspapers of the time. However, the musical press began to demonstrate public interest in soldiers who had been killed in action during the German invasion several months before the first prisoner concerts. Three young composers were among the soldiers morts pour la France: Jehan Alain (1911–1940), Maurice Jaubert (1900–1940), and Jean Vuillermoz (1906–1940).⁶⁰ Concerts organized in homage to these musicians received comparable press coverage and used similar structures to prisoner concerts; they can be considered a prototype for the prisoner concerts that gained popularity later in the war.

Newspaper articles about concerts in honor of musicians killed in action used rhetoric that emphasized the wartime context of the featured composers and works. On November 25, 1940, the Association de musique contemporaine (AMC), an organization associated with L’information musicale and created from the remnants of music societies interrupted by the war, performed one of the earliest examples of a concert honoring a composer killed in action.⁶¹ A review of the concert in L’information musicale highlighted Jaubert’s tragic wartime circumstances, describing “Intermèdes (1937) by Maurice Jaubert, gloriously fallen last June,” listing the compositional merits of the “late artist,” and ending with an explanation of how Jaubert’s “living memory was piously greeted with a triple and moving ovation.”⁶² Discussions of other works by composers killed in battle even worked the composers’ wartime demises into analyses of the music itself; a commentary on Alain’s Trois danses for organ (1937–1938) published in L’information musicale depicts how the composer “who had to gloriously give his life for our country, moved by a sort of prescience, evokes, in a daring, quick way, the drama of long-suffering humanity.”⁶³ By invoking Alain’s “prescience,” the author implies an intuitive relationship between the composer’s music and the future events of the war, including his own death. Articles about the music of composers killed in battle also contain subtle parallels to some of Vichy’s prisoner of war and music propaganda strategies; by choosing to underscore Jaubert and Alain’s “glorious” sacrifices, these authors utilize the image of soldiers as Christ-like figures suffering for the sins of France common in Vichy’s media dealing with POWs. Additionally, showcasing these young French composers’ musical excellence played into Vichy’s goal of establishing France’s lasting cultural value through musical propaganda.

Similar press language is not the only commonality shared by concerts in homage to fallen soldiers and those honoring prisoners of war; these concerts paralleled one another in organization, as well. Notable members of the Vichy government attached their names to some concerts for composers killed in action, which gave the events even more patriotic legitimacy. For example, Jérôme Carcopino (1881–1970), who had been appointed Secretary of State for National Education just a few months earlier, presided over one such concert honoring Jaubert in July 1941.⁶⁴ By involving themselves in events like the Jaubert concert (and later, prisoner concerts), Vichy officials demonstrated their commitment to the affairs of prisoners, war dead, and their families. Concert organizers also created themed concerts memorializing multiple composers. A concert on October 17, 1942, organized by G. Dufy, honored “trois compositeurs morts pour la France,” making the “killed in battle” theme of the concert clear from the name alone. The program consisted of a Vuillermoz composition and several works by Alain and Jaubert.⁶⁵ This organizational strategy helped make the concert’s purpose of honoring soldier-musicians killed in battle explicit and allowed for the performance of works by the less-prolific Vuillermoz, whose smaller oeuvre was could not support an entire concert on its own. Likewise, prisoner concerts often included works by several prisoner-composers on the program for a single concert.

Prisoner concerts seem to have peaked in mid-to-late 1942, but performances as early as 1941 showed growing enthusiasm for music by prisoner-composers. For example, repatriated prisoners from the theater troupe at Stalag IX A performed Maurice Thiriet’s “musical fresco” on Jean Cocteau’s Œdipe-Roi in March 1941.⁶⁶ Demonstrating early public interest in prisoner music, this performance also connects to the popular POW propaganda subject of theater performances in the camps, which sources like the 1942 exhibition at the Musée Galliera and the 1941 film Prisonniers used to aid in the portrayal of Stalags and Oflags as a getaway characterized by free time and entertainment. Similarly, the May 26, 1941, concert of the AMC featured a program of works by prisoner-composers and musicians morts pour la France. Even without an explicit “prisoner concert” title, an announcement of the AMC concert in L’information musicale makes these composers’ statuses clear: “the program will include, in addition to the melodies of Jehan Alain, musician of great Valor, fallen on the battlefield; the chorales of Maurice Thiriet, composed in captivity and dedicated to the memory of M. Jaubert; finally, a piece for piano by Émile Goué, presently prisoner in Germany.”⁶⁷ This program highlights the wartime hardships associated with these composers and works, and its performance establishes that French audiences and performers sought out prisoner music as early as May 1941.

Enthusiasm for prisoner concerts grew but also faced challenges in 1942; on June 5 and 24, performers associated with the Club de France gave two of the earliest concerts entirely featuring prisoner-composers under the title “Concerts du prisonnier.” Unlike later examples, these concerts did not involve government officials or government-subsidized ensembles; instead, reviews cite the Club de France and Marquès as the organizers of these concerts.⁶⁸ The June 5 concert included two new works by Paul Challine, Quintet for flute and strings (1941) and Sonata for violin and piano (1941), as well as Thiriet’s Chant élégiaque for cello and piano (1929) and several of his mélodies. More composers made it onto the program of the June 24 concert, which featured two unnamed works by Théodora Gouin, Jean Martinon’s Sonatina for piano (1940), Goué’s Sonata for violin and piano (1941) and Horizons for solo piano (1939), and Olivier Messiaen’s Thème et variations for violin and piano (1932), as well as recitations of poems by Patrice de la Tour de Pin, Paul de Robert, Charles Péguy, and Guillaume Apollinaire.⁶⁹

Despite these robust programs, reviews indicate that neither concert achieved great public success, citing too many concerts on the same night and a relatively inaccessible venue as reasons these two performances only drew small crowds.⁷⁰ One review suggests the poetry recited at the June 24 concert was added to fill the space of two unspecified larger works that could not be played because of a lack of performers.⁷¹ The June 1942 concerts also do not seem to have received as much press attention as other prisoner concerts; although L’information musicale published a review of the June 5 concert and two of the June 24 performance, this enthusiasm is contained to the specialized music publication. Except for one announcement of the June 24 concert in Comœdia, broader arts newspapers and general daily publications, which did publish announcements and reviews of other prisoner concerts, completely ignored the June 1942 performances.⁷²

Although the Vichy government was not officially involved with the June 1942 concerts, the reviews of the performances published in L’information musicale still echo much of Vichy’s rhetoric surrounding prisoners of war and music. For example, Fishman and Yves Durand note that Vichy began to use idealized images of POWs as quintessential patriots to fight public dissatisfaction with the government as early as 1941.⁷³ Though reviewers of the June 1942 concerts do not compare French citizens to the POWs to point out their lack of patriotism, they do express disappointment in the public’s failure to support France’s beloved prisoners; both practices use prisoner-related shame to try to influence public behavior, inviting French citizens to reconsider whether they have behaved as good patriots. In a review of the relatively unsuccessful June 5 concert, the author begins by explaining, “In the tormented times we live in, this concert should have been an important event, musically and socially. Unfortunately, an unforeseen and unlucky combination of various circumstances… tarnished the intense and radiant brilliance of this exceptionally high-quality performance.”⁷⁴ At the end of the review, he entreats his readers to support future prisoner concerts: “At the next sessions, all of musical Paris must come and hear the works of our composer friends still imprisoned in the camps in Germany and applaud our recently released comrades who are their ardently devoted interpreters.”⁷⁵ Less than a month later, José Bruyr, a former prisoner, doubled down on his colleague’s stance in his review of the June 24 concert; he even used words from the review of the June 5 concert to highlight his disappointment that public enthusiasm did not improve for the second concert. Bruyr writes, “These concerts continue, and I pass the quill. But, under no circumstances should the colleague who receives it be able to begin his ‘paper’ for tomorrow in this way: ‘In the tormented times we live in, this concert should have been an important event. Unfortunately…’”⁷⁶

Reviews of the June 1942 concerts feature other language reflective of Vichy propaganda, leaning on Vichy-influenced images of prisoners of war as martyrs who must suffer to cleanse their country of its sins. At the end of the review of the June 5 concert, the author implores his readers to “think constantly of our prisoners and … give everything of ourselves, our heart, our sensitivity, to soothe their moral suffering.”⁷⁷ In contrast, J. Baudry’s review of the June 24 concert (published in L’information musicale several months after Bruyr’s review of the same concert) echoes Vichy musical propaganda: Baudry emphasizes the contributions of these prisoner composers to the tradition of French musical greatness. He first describes the repatriated prisoner-composers participating in the concert as “several of our greatest hopes, including at least two Prix de Rome winners.”⁷⁸ The review ends, “The quality of works and especially their direct sensitivity made us very hopeful about the general contribution of our prisoners … to the glory of the French School,” establishing the cultural significance of French music and positioning the featured prisoner-composers as heirs to the “glorious” French tradition.⁷⁹

Two concerts in December 1942 were some of the largest in scale and received more attention in the press than other prisoner concerts. Billed as the Concerts Gabriel Pierné’s first “concert prisonnier,” one performance occurred on December 13, 1942, at the Théâtre du Châtelet.⁸⁰ The program featured only one work by a prisoner-composer, Thiriet’s Rapsodie sur des thèmes incas (1935), as well as a work by one of the composers killed in battle: Jaubert’s Concert flamand (1936). The program was rounded out by two older works: A cello concerto (no sources specify which one) by Luigi Boccherini, performed by former POW cellist André Bourdon, and Ernest Chausson’s Symphony in B-Flat (1890). Jean Gitton, another liberated prisoner, helped conduct the concert.⁸¹ The Société des concerts du Conservatoire gave another prisoner concert just a few days later, on December 17, and it was advertised similarly to the Concerts Gabriel Pierné concert, called the Société’s “premier gala ‘prisonnier.’”⁸² The December 17 concert featured a stricter “prisoner composer” theme with a program of works by current and former POWs: Psaume CXXIII (1940) by Goué, Ô nuit (1942) by Damais, Le livre pour Jean (1929) by Thiriet, and Symphonie en sol (1942) by Challan. Advertisements for this concert in L’information musicale and Comœdia made the composers’ POW connections even more explicit by listing each musician’s camp after his name: Oflag X B, Stalag II B, Stalag IX A, and Stalag VII A, respectively.⁸³

In addition to being performed by orchestras that received funds from the French government, both concerts boasted connections with the Vichy government. An announcement of the concerts in Comœdia begins with a statement about George Scapini’s and Maurice Pinot’s support for performances of POW music by the grandes associations symphoniques.⁸⁴ As director of the Service diplomatique des prisonniers de guerre (SDPG) and the face of most of Vichy’s prisoner of war initiatives, Scapini represented a strong link between these prisoner concerts and government POW services. Pinot, likewise, headed the Commissariat général aux prisonniers de guerre rapatriés et aux familles de prisonniers de guerre (CGPGR), a Vichy office designed to assist returning prisoners with professional and social reintegration.⁸⁵ By creating such obvious connections between POW music and Vichy, the December 1942 prisoner concerts enhanced the government’s public image and demonstrated Vichy’s concern for prisoners’ interests. Moreover, by highlighting government investment in music, a so-called leisure activity, the concerts suggested that Vichy could keep French prisoners safe and relatively happy, perpetuating the idea that Vichy maintained successful diplomatic relations with Nazi Germany.

Reviews of the December 1942 prisoner concerts, like those of the June 1942 concerts, feature similar messages to those present in Vichy POW and music propaganda. In fact, discussions of some prisoners’ works lean on the composers’ prisoner status and eschew analysis of the actual music to such an extent that one wonders whether these POW composers were included on the programs purely for their propagandistic value, rather than their artistic merit. No composer receives this treatment so blatantly as Goué. Tony Aubin reviewed both December 1942 concerts in an article in Comœdia; his discussion of Goué’s Psaume CXXIII reads, in its entirety, “From the same sources [as the previous piece on the program] draws Mr. Goué, the only one not to have returned from captivity, and to whose heart naturally must have gone the warm welcome given to ‘Psalm 133’ [sic].”⁸⁶ Aubin mentions only Goué’s enduring status as a POW, giving no description or opinion about the music, which is perhaps so unimportant that the review misprints the name of the piece; the title should be “Psalm 123.”

Like the reviews of the June 1942 concerts, reviews of the December concerts also borrow the image of POWs as martyrs from Vichy propaganda. Guy Ferchault, a former prisoner himself, hints at this depiction at the beginning of his review of the December 17 concert, stating, “if all the authors of the works we heard were prisoners, there is reason to distinguish between those which were composed at the Stalag and those which were conceived previously or later.”⁸⁷ Why make this distinction, except to highlight the experience of the prisoner composing in captivity? Ferchault also includes evocative descriptions of the prisoners’ suffering in his review of Damais’s Ô nuit: “How one feels, through these pages, the poignancy and the profound agony of waiting behind the barbed wire.”⁸⁸ He explicitly presents Damais, who made a surprise appearance to conduct his piece at the concert, having been repatriated not long before its performance, as a “living symbol” for all prisoners still suffering in the camps.⁸⁹ Aubin uses similar rhetoric in his review; he begins with a description of the concerts in honor of “our comrades who have suffered the most from the cruelties of fate.”⁹⁰ Although Jaubert was never a prisoner, Aubin writes of his sacrifice for his fellow Frenchmen and introduces him: “Maurice Jaubert, who answers for his peers before the blind gods, therefore knows this beautiful and unfortunate glory.”⁹¹

In Vichy-directed media, images of prisoner of war camps as “monastic retreats,” where prisoners could free themselves from worldly concerns and concentrate on their spiritual well-being, also appeared frequently.⁹² Aubin’s review shows influence of this propaganda tactic; he writes that Damais’s Ô nuit “testifies to this inimitable accent, which is that of a man facing his suffering and having only it as inspiration, as witness, as audience.”⁹³ The idea of Damais’s pain as his inspiration evokes the image of the prison camp as a source of enlightenment. Yes, Aubin implies, Damais suffered in the camp, but the separation from material belongings and worldly comforts also benefited him. In this case, however, Damais received not spiritual growth from his prisoner experience, but artistic inspiration.

In a curious twist, reviewers of the December 1942 prisoner concerts ignore some composers’ prisoner status entirely. This phenomenon occurs particularly in discussions of Thiriet’s Rapsodie sur des thèmes incas and Livre pour Jean, as well as Challan’s symphony—all works written before or after the composers’ time in captivity. However, writings about these works still connect to Vichy propaganda. Both reviewers highlight positive attributes of Thiriet’s and Challan’s works that have historically been valued in French music; Ferchault comments on the “exquisite freshness” of Le livre pour Jean, while Aubin uses words and phrases like “frankness,” “concision,” and “lapidary brilliance” to describe Rapsodie sur des thèmes incas and “frank,” “light,” and “clear” for Challan’s symphony.⁹⁴ These comments, understood in the context of Vichy music propaganda, showcase French musical greatness, suggesting that these young composers write valuable music in the French style.

Moreover, in a review which scarcely mentions the accolades of the other composers, Ferchault carefully notes that Challan is a Prix de Rome winner, emphasizing the young musician’s talent and musical promise while placing him within a long line of great French composers.⁹⁵ Ferchault’s comments about Challan’s Prix de Rome, alongside the fact that forty-one percent of Vichy’s commissions went to Prix de Rome winners, indicate a seeming interest in aligning the regime with the prestigious award.⁹⁶ The 1944 Prix was even awarded to a former prisoner with possible pro-Vichy leanings: Raymond Gallois-Montbrun.⁹⁷ According to Werner Schwalm, an employee of the memorial museum in Trutzhain (the location of Gallois-Montbrun’s camp, Stalag IX A), the composer may have held some pro-Vichy political leanings, or at least, was opportunistic enough to pretend that he did; he composed a setting of a poem by Jean Marait, a prisoner known for propagating the ideals of the Révolution nationale.⁹⁸

The December 1942 prisoner concerts are not the only examples of government-sponsored performances of prisoner compositions. In late October 1942, L’information musicale announced a new joint initiative to play prisoner composers’ music by the CGPGR and the four government-subsidized Parisian orchestras.⁹⁹ This announcement, supported by the letter from Laffon to Hautecœur mentioned above, indicates the orchestras’ agreement to play music by prisoner composers and feature repatriated prisoners as guest conductors and soloists. Some performances under this government initiative were hardly recognized as prisoner concerts. The announcement in L’information musicale specifies that the first performance under the CGPGR partnership with the orchestras was an October 25 premiere of Thiriet’s Nuit venitienne (1939) by the Concerts Pasdeloup.¹⁰⁰ However, reviews of this performance focus mostly on the music and Thiriet’s compositional inspirations; Marcel Delannoy’s review of the work for Les nouveaux temps fails to mention POWs, the government, or this particular project until its final sentences.¹⁰¹ In contrast, some concerts that were likely performed under the Vichy prisoner music program ensured that the prisoner compositions stood out from other works; an announcement for a Concerts Pasdeloup performance on February 21, 1943, listed the concert program:

Overture to Fidelio - Ludwig van Beethoven

Concerto for piano and orchestra - Robert Schumann

Prisoner works, including:

Sortilèges - Paul Challine

Symphonietta - Jean Martinon

L’Ascension - Olivier Messiaen¹⁰²

By separating the prisoner works from the standard repertoire and placing them in their own category, this L’information musicale concert announcement highlights the POW connections of these composers and their works. Though the newspaper article does not give any details about the programming choices other than the work titles and composers, the decision to perform the Fidelio overture on this concert could indicate a desire on the part of the organizers to give the whole program a theme of imprisonment.

Later in the war, Vichy broadcast prisoners’ music on Radiodiffusion nationale, directly connecting performances of prisoner concerts on its stations to the messages the French government wished to disseminate amongst its citizens. Music on the radio could reach broader audiences, eliminating obstacles faced by earlier prisoner concerts, like those of the Club de France in June 1942. Unlike in-person audience members, listeners tuning in to the radio may not have actively sought out prisoner music. Stumbling upon musical compositions by prisoners on the radio might imply the same ideas as the recordings of theater productions in the film Prisonniers or magazine covers featuring prisoners working with a German sculptor: that the POW camps were almost a vacation, with ample time for leisure and organized activities.¹⁰³

The inclusion of amateur composers in a series of “prisoner concert” broadcasts on Radiodiffusion nationale stations in late August and early September 1943 further invites an interpretation of the POW experience as a holiday of sorts. In his review of these performances, Paul Le Flem introduces the featured composers: “The first four [composers] are professionals, who work and live by their pen. As for the other two, one, Jean Robert, is a member of the judiciary, and the other, Goué, teaches science in a high school in Paris.”¹⁰⁴ By highlighting Robert’s and Goué’s non-musical professions, Le Flem presents writing music as a hobby that these composers could practice during their time in captivity. Moreover, Le Flem’s analyses of both amateur composers’ works present music as an “escape” or a way to mitigate the hardships of their captivity. Of Robert’s Reflets d’Espagne (date unknown), Le Flem writes, “Returning to memories of a trip made in 1935, Jean Robert brightens his captivity by composing his Reflets d’Espagne.”¹⁰⁵ Likewise, he explains that for Goué, “music is an escape from reality, the search for another world,” presenting music as a satisfying diversion from captivity.¹⁰⁶

The radio was a powerful tool because it allowed Vichy-influenced communication to reach both French citizens and French soldiers. An announcement of a May 1944 prisoner concert organized by the Tryptique states, “For the first time, a concert will be broadcast in the prisoner of war camps.”¹⁰⁷ What exactly this author means by “the first time” is somewhat unclear; Leslie Sprout notes that the Vichy government received permission from German authorities to broadcast the Société des concerts du Conservatoire’s December 17, 1942, “Gala prisonnier” into the camps, nearly two years before the Tryptique concert.¹⁰⁸ However, Goué’s letter to his wife explains he could not listen to the December 1942 broadcast because of an air-raid siren.¹⁰⁹ Perhaps, then, the May 1944 concert was the first performance successfully broadcast to the camps. Regardless, the concert sent an important message to French prisoners and civilians. Announcements and reviews of the concert positioned Laval and Pétain as honorary directors of the concert, as well as mentioning the support of the CGPGR.¹¹⁰ Within the context of Vichy prisoner of war propaganda, attaching the names of these government officials and organizations to this concert demonstrated Vichy’s continued support for POWs to the prisoners themselves and their loved ones. Much of Vichy’s public activity related to prisoners of war concerned securing repatriations for as many POWs as possible, but by the time of the Tryptique concert in May 1944, some prisoners had remained in captivity for nearly four years.¹¹¹ By attaching Laval, Pétain, and the CGPGR to the concert and broadcasting it in the camps, Vichy showed prisoners in captivity, repatriated prisoners, and French civilians that, despite the time that had passed since the summer 1940 invasion and capture, the French government had not forgotten about its prisoners in Germany.

Composition Competitions

In addition to prisoner concerts, public and private organizations sponsored composition competitions for prisoners that demonstrate qualities associated with Vichy POW and music propaganda. The Société des auteurs, compositeurs et écrivains de musique (SACEM) sponsored one such competition in Autumn 1942. SACEM significantly predates the events of World War II; it was created in 1850 to coordinate authorship rights for music creators.¹¹² Despite not being a government organization, SACEM adopted several political policies to stay on the good side of Vichy and the German occupiers, including discriminating against Jewish composers and taking measures against foreign composers and French members of the society living abroad.¹¹³ Furthering its connection with Vichy, in October 1940, delegates from SACEM asked the government to create an office that united several different authors’ organizations and put them under state control, resulting in the creation of the Comité professionnel des auteurs dramatiques, compositeurs et éditeurs.¹¹⁴ The 1942 competition had further connections to the Vichy government: announcements of the competition placed it under the “high patronage” of Scapini.¹¹⁵ Moreover, several of the judges of the competition had strong ties to Vichy. Of the twenty judges listed in the competition announcement published in the September 5, 1942, issue of Comœdia, five were members of the Comité professionnel and three received professional support from the government during the war in the form of state commissions and/or state-sponsored recording projects.¹¹⁶ A second composition competition took place in Winter 1943–1944, also with Vichy support; the government’s quintessential musician collaborator, Alfred Cortot (1877–1962), organized this competition, and the government-subsidized Société des concerts du Conservatoire sponsored it.¹¹⁷

Both competitions supported prisoners, but they did so in subtly different ways. The 1942 SACEM competition accepted submissions from prisoners still in captivity as well as those who had been repatriated (although compositions by current POWs were preferred), while the 1943 Société des concerts competition was only open to current prisoners. The SACEM contest included categories for songs, poetry, mélodies, light music, and symphonic music, and the Société des concerts competition called exclusively for chamber works with specific instrumentation: woodwinds in pairs, optional trumpet and trombone, timpani, one-player battery percussion, and five-part string orchestra.¹¹⁸ The impact of these competitions is difficult to discern. The SACEM competition offered substantial prizes, including prizes of 5000, 2500, 1500, and 1000 francs for each of the five categories.¹¹⁹ However, neither of the newspapers that advertised the contest ever reported on the results of the competition, making it unclear whether the competition came to fruition. L’information musicale did print results of the Société des concerts competition, naming three winners in its March 31, 1944, issue: Robert Lannoy, Goué, and P.-H. Bourdon. This competition did not have the same potential for widespread financial impact as the SACEM one, offering only three prizes total of 2000 francs each.¹²⁰

Despite the uncertainty of these competitions’ financial impact for prisoner-composers, who mostly could only have sent their winnings to their families in France anyway, POW composition competitions still furthered musicians’ careers. Offering monetary prizes helped young musicians support themselves through their art, the same goal of Vichy’s other musical projects like increasing both state commissions and quotas of new French music required for government subsidized orchestras.¹²¹ Even if the SACEM competition never awarded prizes, it offered employment and financial assistance to the members of the jury, many of whom also received other government support during the war. In addition, the Société des concerts du conservatoire performed one of its competition’s winning works, Lannoy’s Cantilène et danse pastorale (1943), publicly.¹²² This performance not only supported Lannoy’s musical career but also contributed to Vichy messages related to performances of new works by demonstrating the cultural status of new French music to both French citizens and German occupying authorities.¹²³

Prisoner composers also succeeded in competitions not designed specifically for them. In 1943, Martinon’s Psaume 136: Chant des captifs (1943) won the musical prize of the City of Paris. An article in L’œuvre establishes the prestige associated with this award by nicknaming it the “Goncourt de la musique,” after the esteemed Prix Goncourt in literature.¹²⁴ Unlike the competitions sponsored by SACEM and the Société des concerts, this prize was not restricted to prisoners, but ex-POW Martinon and his explicitly prisoner-themed work won anyway. Whether the work was chosen purely for its musical merit or because of its prisoner connections, the article announcing Martinon’s win leans heavily on the work’s POW camp origins. The author states that Martinon returned to France “carrying in his measly repatriated baggage the manuscript for the work that has today brought him the ‘Prix Goncourt de la musique.’”¹²⁵ The same article also includes a quote from the composer about his desire to capture the feelings he associated with captivity through music in Psaume 136: “I conceived of this work in the Stalag, among all the prisoners who waited to see their homeland again. Some of them returned. Others hope. It is this hope and also this despair which I wanted to fix in sound and to resurrect in sound.”¹²⁶ The phenomenon of highlighting prisoner works in general contests was not confined to musical competitions; in 1942, the committee of the Prix Goéland, an award for poetry, decided to award an extra prize to the runner up, prisoner André Lebois, as a “token of brotherly sympathy to all poets in captivity.”¹²⁷

As in prisoner concerts, ideals of Vichy POW propaganda can be found in the establishment of prisoner composition competitions and the awarding of general prizes to works with POW ties. First, prisoner competitions contributed to the goal of convincing prisoners and their loved ones of their importance to the government; by offering monetary prizes, government-affiliated competition organizers visibly assisted prisoners still in captivity and repatriated POWs adjusting to life in France. Although the Société des concerts competition excluded repatriated prisoners from participating, it still supported some of them; the contest judges were all prisoners who had returned from captivity, including René Guillou, Challan, and Martinon. Additionally, the existence of composition competitions for prisoners of war, advertised in French civilian newspapers, perpetuated the propagandistic idea of the Stalags and Oflags as a vacation. Likewise, awarding the musical prize of the City of Paris to Martinon’s prisoner work implies that he had plenty of time for musical activities while he was a POW, conveniently leaving out details about hard labor, insufficient food, and the other horrors of captivity. The inclusion of statements about the piece being drawn from feelings associated with captivity also suggests that Martinon’s POW experience afforded him spiritual and artistic inspiration, engaging with prisoner propaganda in a similar manner to Aubin’s description of Damais’s Ô nuit.

Conclusion: Prisoner Music during and after the War

In postwar performances, some prisoner works retained connotations of war and captivity, and others became curiously divorced from the circumstances of their composition. Reviews of postwar performances of Thiriet’s Œdipe-Roi, for which the composer completed the music and spoken parts in 1942 but added costumes and staging in 1962, rarely mention the work’s Stalag origins.¹²⁸ However, postwar reviews of other works, like Jean Martinon’s award-winning and vehemently anti-Nazi Psaume 136, seem to indicate that certain prisoner-compositions cannot be separated from their wartime context.¹²⁹ Perhaps the most famous French POW composition, Olivier Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps (1941) has been through a series of connections to and divorces from the context of its composition; unlike most prisoner concerts, reviews of the Quatuor’s premiere in occupied Paris hardly mentioned Messiaen’s prisoner circumstances. Scholars including Sprout and Rebecca Rischin have shown that the piece was not strongly connected to his prisoner experience until after 1945 and that Messiaen exaggerated some details of the work’s performance in the POW camp.¹³⁰ Yves Balmer and Christopher Brent Murray also call into question other details Messiaen recalled from his wartime experience, such as the dating of his time in the POW camp, the circumstances surrounding the composition of the Quatuor, and the reconstruction of his career during the war.¹³¹ Regardless of the treatment of POW works in later decades, wartime performances of prisoner compositions relied heavily on Vichy-produced impressions of both the POW camps and French culture, and they must be understood within this context.

Throughout the years of war and occupation, the Vichy government and the media it influenced employed a variety of strategies to shape public opinion, many of which involved prisoners of war and music. Prisoners of war became objects of diverse propagandistic messages; French citizens saw images of prisoners as Catholic martyrs suffering for the sins of France and perfect French patriots, read contradictory portrayals of the POW experience as a vacation and a spiritual journey, and gained impressions that the Vichy government cared about prisoners’ welfare and successfully worked with the Germans and secure positive outcomes for the prisoners. Vichy organizations used music in similarly diverse ways. In addition to spreading propagandistic musical portrayals of a Catholic, traditionalist, provincial French patriotism and using music to promote collaboration with the German occupiers, music administrators in the Vichy government created policies that fought unemployment, established France’s potential for future cultural greatness in a Nazi-ruled Europe, and used radio broadcasting to further disseminate its music propaganda.

Taken together, Vichy’s varied propagandistic strategies form a contextual framework in which prisoner music, performed and promoted in wartime France, should be interpreted. The press discourse surrounding homages to composers killed in battle, prisoner concerts (government-sponsored and otherwise), and composition competitions demonstrates implicit and explicit ties to Vichy’s messages and strategies surrounding prisoners and music. The music performed in these concerts, especially the compositions written in captivity, filled diverse roles for composers and their fellow prisoners; in the POW camps, music could be everything from a means of concealing resistance messages to a spiritual device to a psychological coping mechanism. Performed in France, however, alongside press discourse that connected to Vichy’s political agenda, the same music that served prisoners in so many ways became inextricably tied to Vichy’s web of propagandistic manipulation.