Ron Alexander Memorial Lectures in Musicology: Walter Frisch, Columbia University

Topic: Un Matisse Qui Chante’:  Image, Sound, and Story in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

A film screening of "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" will take place Monday, November 18 at 6:00 PM in Pigott Hall (Building 260)

Abstract: The year 2024 marks the sixtieth anniversary of the release of Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, 1964), which has since become a beloved classic in France and around the world.  Diverging in many respects from the aesthetics of the contemporary Nouvelle Vague, Umbrellas was a bold experiment by writer-director Jacques Demy and composer Michel Legrand that also departed markedly from traditional film musicals. Umbrellas was sung from beginning to end, without any spoken dialogue. The creators aimed for a “transposed realism” that also bore little resemblance to opera. Legrand's score, composed in close collaboration with Demy, was recorded before any filming began. The painterly costumes and sets were also coordinated with the music and screenplay. Umbrellas has been recognized as reflecting important cultural, political, and social issues of the France of its day, including modernization and commodification in the decades after World War II, the pervasive impact of Algerian War of 1954–1962, and changing family values during an early wave of feminism in France. More recently, Umbrellas has been interpreted within the framework of queer cinema. This talk will explore the genesis and unique qualities of Umbrellas, as well as some of these important contexts.

Walter Frisch is H. Harold Gumm/Harry and Albert von Tilzer Professor of Music at Columbia University, 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 and in American popular song. His books include German Modernism: Music and the Arts (2005), Music in the Nineteenth Century (2012), Arlen and Harburg’s “Over the Rainbow” (2017), and Harold Arlen and His Songs (2024).  He is currently working on a book about the classic French film musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Frisch also been a guest professor at the University of Freiburg in Germany, Yale University, Princeton University, and the University of Pennsylvania. He has lectured on music throughout the United States, and in England, France, Spain, Germany, and China. His writings have been translated into French, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, and Chinese. Frisch has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany, the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and Columbia’s Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris.

Admission Information

• Free admission