Louis Durey

Louis Edmond Durey (; 27 May 18883 July 1979) was a French composer. He was among the Les Six group of composers. Biography Durey was born into a bourgeois Parisian family, the son of a local businessman. It was not until he was nineteen years old that he chose to pursue a musical career after hearing a performance of music by Claude Debussy. As a composer, he was primarily autodiadictic. From the beginning, choral music was of great importance in Durey’s productivity. His L’Offrande Lyrique (1914) has been called the first piece of French twelve-tone music. The first of his works to gain recognition in the music world was for a piano duet titled Carillons. At a 1918 concert, this work attracted the interest of Maurice Ravel, who recommended him to his publisher. Communicating with his colleague, Darius Milhaud, he asked him to contribute a piano piece that would bring together the six composers who, in 1920 were dubbed Les Six, culminating in L’Album des Six. Despite their acclaim, Durey refused participation in the 1921 collaborative work Les mariés de la tour Eiffel, which gravely offended Jean Cocteau. Following the Les Six period, Durey continued with his career. Never feeling