Before the French Revolution, making music was an activity that required permission. After the Revolution, music was an object that could be possessed. Everyone seemingly hoped to gain something from owning music. Musicians claimed it as their unalienable personal expression while the Frenchnation sought to enhance imperial ambitions by appropriating it as the collective product of cultural heritage and national industry. Musicians capitalized on these changes to protect their professionalization within new laws and institutions, while excluding those without credentials from theirelite echelon. From Servant to Savant demonstrates how the French Revolution set the stage for the emergence of so-called musical "Romanticism" and the legacies that continue to haunt musical institutions and industries. As musicians and the government negotiated the place of music in a reimagined French society, new epistemic and professional practices constituted three lasting values of musical production: the composer's sovereignty, the musical work's inviolability, and the nation's supremacy. | From Servant to Savant by Rebecca Dowd Geoffroy-Schwinden, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters