Lucien Romain Rebatet is a French author and journalist. He began his writer career as a music and film critic for the far right newspaper "Action Française", before writing for the right-wing newspaper "Je suis partout", where he expressed his sympathy for National Socialism. During World War II, Lucien Rebatet became a radio reporter for the Vichy Government and a journalist for "Cri du Peuple", and thus clearly collaborated. He wrote in 1942 a pamphlet entitled "Les Décombres" ("The Ruins") and begun writing "Les Deux Etendards" ("The Two Standards"), that he continued at Sigmaringen, where he had fled as well as Louis-Ferdinand Céline or the Vichy authorities. In 1945, Rebatet was arrested in Austria and sent back to France. There, he has been condemned to forced labor. He then finished "Les Deux Etendards" in jail in 1951, and was released from prison one year later. He returned to journalism in 1953, and his second novel, "Les Epis Mûrs" ("The Ripe Grains"), was published in 1954. He also wrote in 1969 "An History of Music" which is his less polemical work, but contains nonetheless traces of his opinion.
In spite of his fascist ideas, Lucien Rebatet is sometimes considered to be an important author whose masterpiece is "Les Deux Etendards".
Malgré l'idéologie immonde de l'auteur (fasciste certifié), et le parti pris ridicule tout au long de la première partie du livre concernant les musiques anciennes, la partie à partir du XVIe siècle est très intéressante et constitue une bonne entrée en matières pour l'histoire des compositeurs de cette époque au XXe siècle.
Ne vous attendez à aucune description théorique ou exemples sur partitions, Lucien Rebatet n'est que journaliste et ne possède de toute évidence pas les connaissances musicales suffisantes à l'élaboration d'une Histoire de la Musique pointue.