This event will be held in English.
Organized by the Institute for Ideas and Imagination. Co-sponsored by Columbia Global Centers | Paris.
2023 marks the 60th anniversary of the beloved French film musical Les parapluies de Cherbourg, created in 1963 by Jacques Demy and Michel Legrand. This bittersweet tale of two young lovers is sung from beginning to end, with no spoken dialogue-a bold and unique idea at the time. Working closely with the composer and with the designer Bernard Evein, Demy fashioned a film in which each dramatic, visual, and musical element contributes to the whole. Legrand’s rich score ranges across many styles, including jazz, the romantic, and the neo-baroque. Using sources from the archives of Demy and Legrand, Frisch will trace the development of Les parapluies. He will discuss the film’s social, cultural and historical contexts, its place with the oeuvre of Demy and Legrand, and its influence on later film musicals.
Walter Frisch is H. Harold Gumm/Harry and Albert von Tilzer Professor of Music at Columbia University in New York, where he has taught since 1982. Frisch is a specialist in the music of composers from the Austro-German sphere in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, ranging from Schubert to Schoenberg. He has written numerous articles and two books on Brahms, including Brahms and the Principle of Developing Variation (1984) and Brahms: The Four Symphonies (1996, 2003). Frisch’s publications on Schoenberg include the book The Early Works of Arnold Schoenberg, 1893-1908 (1993) and the edited volume Schoenberg and His World (1999). His volume in the series, Music in the Nineteenth Century, was published in Fall 2012. His book Arlen and Harburg’s Over the Rainbow appeared in 2017. His latest work, Harold Arlen and His Songs, Oxford University Press, is forthcoming.
The place
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This event will take place in the Grande Salle Ginsberg-LeClerc, built at Reid Hall in 1912 and extensively renovated in 2023 thanks to the generous support of Judith Ginsberg and Paul LeClerc.
For nearly 60 years, Columbia University students and faculty have come to study, teach, and pursue their research at Reid Hall, home to Columbia Global Centers | Paris. Nestled in the Montparnasse district, Reid Hall also hosts several other Columbia University initiatives: Columbia Undergraduate Programs, M.A. in History and Literature, GSAPP Shape of Two Cities Program, and the Institute for Ideas and Imagination. This unique combination of resources is enhanced by our global network whose mission is to expand the University's engagement the world over through educational programs, research initiatives, regional partnerships, and public events.
From graduate and undergraduate courses to webinars attracting audiences worldwide; from executive training to artist residencies, the Paris Center is a hub for scholars, students, and artists who cross both disciplinary and national boundaries alike. Through its public programs, the Center also addresses pressing global issues that are at the forefront of international education and research: agency and gender; climate and the environment; critical dialogues for just societies; encounters in the arts; and health and medical science.
The views and opinions expressed by speakers and guests do not necessarily reflect the official policies or positions of Columbia Global Centers | Paris or its affiliates.
