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Music has existed since prehistoric times (songs, hand clapping, clashing with stones or wood), but the history of "known" music does not really begin until the birth of the notation of music (beginning of the music theory), in the Middle Ages in Europe (Western music). Music is an art and a cultural activity consisting in combining sounds and silences over time. The main ingredients are rhythm (a way of combining sounds over time) , pitch (combination in frequencies), nuances and timbre. French music was born in the Middle Ages, with the genre close to the Gregorian plainchant, called organum. The Renaissance saw the development of polyphony and song.The opera was introduced in France by Jean-Baptiste Lully in the 1670s.
Finally, regional songs, military, sailors, religious, workers and peasants have reappeared in the French musical heritage in recent years.
In October 1981, Jack Lang, French Minister of Culture, appointed Maurice Fleuret to the post of director of music and dance who applied his reflections on musical practice and its evolution and laid the foundations of a new conception: "La music will be everywhere and the concert nowhere ”.
He evokes a "revolution" in the field of music, which tends to bring together all types of music - without hierarchy of genre or origin - in a common search for what he calls "a sound liberation, an intoxication, a vertigo that is more authentic, more intimate, more eloquent than art ”.
So, they imagine a big popular demonstration that allows all musicians to express themselves and make themselves known.
This is how the first Fête de la Musique was launched on June 21, 1982, the symbolic day of the summer solstice, the longest of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. The Festival will be free, open to all types of music.
“Without hierarchy of genres and practices” and to all French people. The Fête de la Musique began to be exported in 1985 on the occasion of the European Year of Music. In less than ten years, the Fête de la Musique has taken place in eighty-five countries, on five continents. Coming from the Ministry of Culture, the Fête de la Musique flourishes, is broadcast in the public space, with the public and for the public.
The music festival is the continuum of music and its natural outcome. The music was reserved for professional musicians, it was played mostly in closed places and you often had to pay to be able to listen to it. The music festival was created to be a great free popular event, open to all music and played everywhere!
"Music makes the conscience dance" - Enzo Cormann
