1998). François Lesure discusses the Chat Noir’s influence on Debussy in “De-
bussy et Le Chat Noir,” Cahiers Debussy 23 (1999), 35–43. Mention should also
be made of Mary Ellen Poole, “Chansonnier and Chanson in Parisian Cabarets
artistiques, 1881–1914” (PhD diss., University of Illinois, 1994).
2. Interpreting the meaning of the gothic illustrates how necessary it is to
understand signification in cultural context. In England, owing to the Gothic
Revival architects, it was regarded as a serious, morally wholesome style. David
Wright, for instance, describes the Gothic façade of Royal College of Music
(opened 1894) as denoting “a public building intended for a serious profes-
sional purpose.” “The South Kensington Music Schools,” Journal of the Royal
Musical Association 130, no. 2 (2005), 236–82, 262. John Ruskin emphasizes the
moral elements of Gothic style in “The Nature of Gothic,” in The Stones of Venice,
3 vols. (London: Smith, Elder, 1851–53). For Ruskin, the very presence of im-
perfection and “savageness” in gothic buildings makes them an index of the
Christian religious principle that recognizes the individual value of every soul
while confessing its imperfection.
3. See Mariel Oberthür, Cafés and Cabarets of Montmartre (Layton, Utah:
Gibbs M. Smith, 1984), 21.
4. Mariel Oberthür claims that there was no surveillance of cabaret chan-
sons until 6 April 1897 in Le Chat Noir 1881–1897 (Paris: Réunion des musées
nationaux, 1992), 18. However, this contradicts the information given in note
68 below.
5. See Peter Hawkins, Chanson: The French Singer-Songwriter from Bruant to
the Present Day (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2000).
6. They were embraced by opposing political camps, since they offered a
picture of a unified French culture. Some prized them for their naïveté, while
others admired their shrewdness. See Jane Fulcher, “The Popular Chanson of
the Second Empire: ‘Music of the Peasants’ in France,” Acta Musicologica 52,
no. 1 (1980), 27–37.
7. See Pierre d’Anjou, Au Temps du Chat Noir (Paris: Henri Lemoine, 1943),
15–20.
8. See Patrick Biau, Jules Jouy 1855–1897: Le “poète chourineur” (Paris: Edi-
tions Fortin, 1997), 43, and Harold B. Segel, Turn-of-the-Century Cabaret (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 6–7. Further information on the club
of the Hydropathes can be found in Michael Herbert, La Chanson à Montmartre
(Paris: Éditions de la Table Ronde, 1967), 15–52.
9. Maurice Donnay, Mes Débuts à Paris (Paris: Libraire Anthème Fayard,
1937), quoted in Segel, Turn-of-the-Century Cabaret, 36.
10. Phillip Dennis Cate, “The Spirit of Montmartre,” in Phillip Dennis Cate
and Mary Shaw, eds., The Spirit of Montmartre: Cabarets, Humor, and the Avant-
Garde, 1875–1905, exhibition catalogue (New Brunswick, N.J.: Jane Voorhees
Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, 1996), 1–93, 25.
11. Georges Fragerolle, Le Fumisme, quoted in Cate, “The Spirit of Mont-
martre,” 89 n. 19.
12. Whiting, Satie the Bohemian, 45.
13. Allais later published it in his Album Primo-Avrilesque (Paris: Ollendorf,
1897), 25, and it is reprinted in Guy Schraenen, Erratum Musical (Bremen: In-
stitut Français, 1994).
14. “La blague est la seule arme à employer contre la solennité,” quoted
on “Histoire de Paris” notice at 84 boulevard de Rochechouart. Further infor-
262 Notes to Pages 196–198