Darius Milhaud on Music Theory Print

Christophe Colomb

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Synopsis#

The opera tells the life of Christopher Columbus in a series of episodes which avoid chronological order and are sometimes allegorical.

Recording#

Janine Micheau (Reine Isabelle), Claudine Collart (Duchesse Medina Sidonia), Robert Massard (Christophe Colomb), Xavier Depraz (Christophe Colomb II, Messenger, etc.), Jean Giraudeau (Majordome, Cuisinier, Valet, Sultan), Lucien Lovano (Roi d’Espagne, Commandant, Aubergiste etc.), Orchestre Radio Lyrique, Chœurs de la RTF, conducted by Manuel Rosenthal. Disques Montaigne CE 8750 (from the INA), released 1987; recorded at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées on 31 May 1956. (A 1954 recording “conducted by Pierre Boulez” is of the Claudel play, with different incidental music by Milhaud, and a cast including Jean-Pierre Granval, Jean Desailly, Jean-Louis Barrault, Pierre Bertin, and Madeleine Renaud).

Genesis Suite

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

Shilkret conceived of the Genesis project while traveling with his friend Rex Schepp, perhaps around 1943. A letter from Nathaniel Shilkret to his son dated 9 February 1944 indicates that music for four of the parts had already been written (although not necessarily delivered to Shilkret) and that contractual matters with Stravinsky were holding up the writing of his part. A letter from Shilkret to Béla Bartók and a 24 July 1945 letter from Werner Janssen to Shilkret (see the commons for copies) indicates that Bartók had received a down payment for writing the “Prelude” and, as of July 1945, was preparing the work. According to Shilkret, In a personal letter dated 26 November 1945 from Nathaniel Shilkret to his wife (see the commons for a copy), Shilkret gives insight into his purpose in writing the piece and his thoughts on the resulting work: “However, let me explain the original purpose of the Bible Album. It was never intended to be a work of musical art. If I prepared the Album for musicians I would not have done it with narrative, but like an oratorio—all singing—this would have put me in competition with Haydn’s Creation—Bach—Handel etc. I would, even if I were successful musically, have sold about 500 Albums.” “It would have been silly to have attempted such a work. My idea is strictly one for the masses—I wanted to appeal to all record buyers.” “I admit that Schoenberg, Strawinsky, Milhaud and maybe Toch did the artistic job away from Hollywood influence, but my number received more applause at the premiere performance even from the concert audience. Tansman (not strictly a Hollywood composer), Tedesco (also not too Hollywoodish) and I did a more operatic style of scoring.” “In fact, so successful was my score at the concert that we Shilkret and Werner Janssen, who conducted the premiere concert performance and was shortly to conduct the premiere recording are changing the order of the records. Instead of starting with Schoenberg and scaring the buyer, the album starts with Shilkret—Creation 2 sides… We leave the futuristic music of Strawinsky and Schoenberg for one double faced record and at the last.” “The critics didn’t dare to criticize the 2 giants Strawinsky and Schoenberg because they didn’t understand them. Schoenberg’s music is so ultramodern and in the 12 tone scale that even you with all your experience will think that the cat is just jumping all over the piano—It is a great piece of music but oh—so new in sound.” “My appeal is to record buyers—not only music lovers of the ultra modern type but to all buyers and lovers of music and the bible.” “If you think that Shilkret, Tedesco, Tansman and Toch wrote cheap music, you are mistaken—of course we used some dramatic tricks but you’ll find them modern and beautiful—What is wrong in writing music to accentuate the scene or words—Wagner did it all the time. We do it in picture music because it is effective. For ordinary people even our music is strange and modern.”

L'Album des Six

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

This publication occurred in the same year as Les Six was first named as a recognisable group in French music. The journalist Henri Collet supplied that name in an article in the arts journal Comoedia published on 16 January 1920, which followed a joint concert by the six composers on 8 January. The group was only ever a very loose association, and did not exist in order to create compositions collaboratively. However, there were six occasions on which more than one member was involved in joint compositional projects (sometimes along with composers from outside the group of Les Six). L’Album des Six was the first of these occasions, and it was the only time that all six composers were involved in the same publication.

L'Éventail de Jeanne

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

References#

Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 5th ed.
What’s What in Titles of Classical Music – and Beyond
The Music of Albert Roussel

External links#

*Video – Darius Milhaud – L’éventail de Jeanne (30:00).

L'Homme et son désir

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Structure#

The ballet is composed of eight parts played as a single movement: # Scène I # Apparition de la lune # L’Homme endormi et le fantôme de la femme morte # L’Homme qui dort debout, oscillant comme dans un courant d’eau et comme sans aucun poids # Toutes les choses de la forêt qui viennent voir l’homme endormi # Danse de la passion # Réapparition de la femme qui entraîne l’Homme peu à peu en tournant lentement devant lui sur elle-même # La lune I a disparu la première. La lune II disparaît à son tour. Les heures noires se sont écoulées. On voit apparaître les premières heures blanches A typical performance lasts around 20 minutes.

La Cheminée du roi René

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

The suite is an adaptation of the music that the composer wrote for Raymond Bernard’s 1939 film Cavalcade d’amour. It was first performed in 1941 at Mills College in Oakland, California. The screenplay by Jean Anouilh and Jean Aurenche portrays three love stories set in three different centuries (medieval, 1830, 1930), with incidental music by the composers Darius Milhaud and Arthur Honegger, orchestrated by the conductor Roger Désormière. Milhaud chose the medieval court of René I in the fifteenth century. The castle and the court of René I, count of Provence, were situated in Aix-en-Provence, where Milhaud grew up and who was always fascinated by the history of the king, his code of chivalry and the legendary tournaments that took place at his court. Although the composer studied several musical manuscripts of the period, the writing of La Cheminée shows very little evidence of this; the piece bears the characteristic hallmarks of the rest of Milhaud’s music. The title of the piece can be found in a nineteenth-century short story on "" and courtly love, "" by Louis Lurine for the literary journal , published in 1853; the journal is a collection of anecdotes and legends, of which the Provençal saying is one. Prior occurrences of the expression can be found in French dictionaries of proverbs from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. In Sir Walter Scott’s historical novel Anne of Geierstein, translated almost immediately into French, René of Anjou appears as one of the characters; Scott used the phrase “King René’s chimney” to describe his favourite pleasure of promenading outdoors in the sun.

La Création du monde

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

It was in London in 1920 that Milhaud discovered jazz. On a trip to the United States in 1922, Darius Milhaud heard “authentic” jazz on the streets of Harlem, which left a great impact on his musical outlook. It was like nothing he had heard before. He wrote “against the beat of the drums, the melodic lines crisscrossed in a breathless pattern of broken and twisted rhythms.” When Milhaud first heard an American jazz band in London (1920), he was reportedly so captivated that he took off to New York City to spend time in clubs and bars, visit Harlem and mingle with jazz musicians. After returning to France, Milhaud began to write in what he called a jazz idiom. He chose to color his music with bluesy turns of harmony and melody, swinging climaxes, and stomping rhythms. Jazz influences appear in many of his compositions, but this ballet was the first opportunity to express his new passion; even the instrumental grouping draws on his memories of New York City. “In some of the shows,” Milhaud noted, “the singers were accompanied by flute, clarinet, trumpets, trombone, a complicated percussion section played by just one man, piano and string quartet.” Leonard Bernstein said of the piece, “The Creation of the World emerges not as a flirtation but as a real love affair with jazz.”

La Délivrance de Thésée

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Roles#

Main roles: *Aricie (mezzo-soprano) *Phèdre (soprano) *Hippolyte (baritone) *Théramene (baritone) *Thésée (tenor) Distant chorus (SATB)

Plot#

Setting: The palace of Thésée. The love of Thésée’s son Hippolyte for Aricie arouses the jealousy of Phèdre, his stepmother. When he rejects her, Phèdre denounces him to his father, who arranges his death at the hands of a monster. In revenge, Théramene kills Phèdre, and is in turn executed on the orders of Thésée. Aricie comforts Thésée.

Le Bœuf sur le toit

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Music#

Milhaud said that he composed Le Bœuf sur le toit as “fifteen minutes of music, rapid and gay, as a background to any Charlie Chaplin silent movie”. The composer spent two years in Brazil in the French diplomatic service during the First World War, and was influenced by its music in his own compositions. There have been various explanations of the title: the musicologist James Harding mentions one, that the title was taken from the sign-board of a tavern, and another, that it is from an old Parisian legend of a man in a top-floor flat who insisted on keeping a calf, which grew into a large ox, too big to be removed. It is also worth noting that “Faire un boeuf” in French translates to “to do a jam session”. During WW1 assemblies were not allowed, therefore concert halls were closed, many musicians would meet in cafés or similar places. Some cafés were too small for ensembles and would practice on the roof of the establishment. When Madeleine Milhaud visited Mills College in the early eighties, Emmanuel of Radio à la Carte was able to have a conversation with her about her husband’s playing before they moved to California for a while. She shared that when people asked where they could hear the new young musicians, they would be told that the “Boeuf est sur le toit”, the jam sessions is taking place on the roof. Milhaud himself said that it was the title of a Brazilian folk dance.

Le Pauvre Matelot

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Performance history#

The work was a successful part of a triple bill at La Monnaie in Brussels at the end of 1927 conducted by Corneil de Thoran, preceded by the premiere of Antigone by Honegger, and followed by Shéhérazade. The German premiere was at the Kroll with Zemlinsky conducting in 1929 and with Novotná in the cast. In 1934 an amended orchestrated version was produced in Geneva under Scherchen in tandem with L’Histoire du Soldat then in Vienna, and the work was revived at the Opéra-Comique the following year. Turin, Florence and Prague saw local first performances in 1934 and 1935. The United States premiere of the opera, produced by the Curtis Institute of Music, took place on 1 April 1937 at the Philadelphia Academy of Music in a production directed by Austrian composer, librettist, and stage director Ernst Lert and using set and costume designs by Tony Award winning designer Donald Oenslager. The opera was presented in a double bill with the world premiere of Gian Carlo Menotti’s Amelia Goes to the Ball. Both operas were conducted by Fritz Reiner with Sylvan Levin serving as chorus master and a young Boris Goldovsky working as Assistant Conductor. The Milhaud/Menotti double bill played later that month in Baltimore at the city’s Lyric Theatre and at the New Amsterdam Theatre in New York City. Kaminski describes the work as the most often performed of Milhaud’s operas.

Le Train Bleu (ballet)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Sections#

Introduction
Choeur des poules et des gigolos
Entrée de Beau-Gosse
Entrée de Perlouse
Rentrée de Beau-Gosse
Choeur des poules et des gigolos (farce des cabines et scène de l’avion)
Entrée de la championne de tennis et couplets avec Beau-Gosse
Entrée du joueur de golf et valse avec Perlouse
Introduction et duo de Beau-Gosse et de Perlouse
Choeur des poules et des gigolos; Fugue de l’engueulade
Final du chapeau.

Notes#

Richard Buckle’s biography of Diaghilev made a mistake in citing the setting as Deauville. Deauville was a fashionable resort in Normandy, and it was not on the line of the Blue Train.

References#

Au, Susan (2002). Ballet and Modern Dance. Thames and Hudson Ltd.
Grumbach, Didier (2008). Histoires de la mode. Paris: Éditions du Regard.
New York Times article by Gay Morris, 4 March 1990

Les Mariés de la tour Eiffel

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

The ballet had its genesis in a commission to Jean Cocteau and Georges Auric, from Rolf de Maré of the Ballets suédois. Cocteau’s original title for his scenario was The Wedding Party Massacre. Running short of time, Auric asked his fellow members of Les Six to also contribute music, and all of them did except Louis Durey, who pleaded illness. It had a brief moment of fame and even scandal, but then fell into oblivion, although it was given in New York City in 1923. A new production opened there in 1988.

Little Symphony No. 1 (Milhaud)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Movements#

The work has three movements:

I. Allant#

The first movement begins at a relaxed tempo and is slightly less upbeat and allegro than other first movements to symphonies, such as Milhaud’s Symphony No.1. The basic analysis of this symphony is based on a recording by the Orchestra of Radio Luxembourg. The first movement has a very flowy, pastoral texture, with the harp playing a significant role. The harp could be compared to a trickling stream during the springtime, due to the numerous, continuous, thirty-second notes that at times were arpeggiated for the entirety of the movement. With the harp, the woodwinds take control of the melody, whereas the strings involved do not play a significant role in this particular movement, as they only play basic quarter-note and half-note rhythms throughout. The cello has some pizzicato sections which adds to the texture of the piece.

Little Symphony No. 2 (Milhaud)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Music#

Despite slightly disconcerting polytonality, the three movements of the piece maintain traditional pastoral ambience, evoking images of nature through the various topoi (ideas symbolically suggested by the sounds of various instruments). Wind and string phrases generally begin and end at regular, coordinated intervals, even as they oppose each other harmonically and rhythmically.

I. Joyeux#

The first movement is a frolicsome piece in ternary form that juxtaposes duple and triple meters between strings and woodwinds. Played separately, the soaring melodies of the flute and the English horn are typical of the romantic period but are contrasted with the aggressive double bass line. However, as is typical of Milhaud’s polyphony, the voices sound fairly cacophonic when played simultaneously. The movement frantically climaxes and suddenly ends, following a quick run in the woodwinds.

Little Symphony No. 3 (Milhaud)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Music#

The work is a septet for the following instruments: flute, clarinet, bassoon, violin, viola, cello, and double bass. It can be divided into three movements as indicated in the score: It runs a total time of about three minutes and 40 seconds. The first movement, , begins with the clarinet and bassoon and then expands to add the strings and flute after four measures. The use of the clarinet lends a unique quality, and the addition of each new instrument adds increasing dissonance and polytonality to the work. The first movement lasts about 75 seconds. The second movement, , begins with alternating sixteenth note figures in the flute and clarinet, accompanied by pizzicato cello and bass. This segment is marked by its intense chromaticism. The second movement lasts about 85 seconds. The work ends with , which returns to the frenzied sound of the work’s beginning. The pastoral feeling (aided by the clarinet) returns, having been absent during the . The work builds increasing tension as it approaches the final cadence, finally ending on a B major ninth chord. This movement lasts about 60 seconds.

Little Symphony No. 4 (Milhaud)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Reception#

Little Symphony No. 4 has received mixed reviews since its inception. G.W. Hopkins pointed out the “irritating antics” of this little symphony in his 1970 review in The Musical Times. Christopher Headington of the classical music review website Gramophone referred to the etude movement as “comic.”

Recordings#

A 1975 recording on vinyl on the ABC Westminster Gold label, featuring The Chamber Orchestra of The Leningrad Philharmonic conducted by Gennady Rozhdestvenski
A 1994 CD recording on the Koch Schwann label, featuring Capella Cracoviensis and Karl Anton Rickenbacher
A 1969 recording on vinyl on the Candide label, featuring the Orchestra of Radio Luxemburg

External links#

Video - New Violin Family Orchestra performs - Darius Milhaud - Chamber Symphony No. 4 (1 of 3) (2:14) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUeSD1Wp3y8
Video - New Violin Family Orchestra performs - Darius Milhaud - Chamber Symphony No. 4 (2 of 3) (2:58) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuqnLwvJ-GM
Video - New Violin Family Orchestra performs - Darius Milhaud - Chamber Symphony No. 4 (3 of 3) (3:25) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cussANFHukI

Little Symphony No. 5 (Milhaud)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Music#

Chamber Symphony No. 5 is written for an ensemble of ten wind instruments, consisting of a piccolo, flute, oboe, English horn, B clarinet, bass clarinet, two bassoons and two horns. It consists of three movements with a collective run time of about six minutes: All three movements use a motivic cell construction, scalar chromatic motion, and predominantly contrary motion between voices. The form of the piece is more ambiguous, however, since the symphony was written after Milhaud’s excursion to Brazil. It displays elements of baroque musical forms popular in the neo-baroque revitalization that characterized Milhaud’s time. Mawer notes some characteristics common to Milhaud’s compositions in his early years that can be applied to the Chamber Symphonies. They include: “chromaticism bordering on atonality, a distinctive jazz-inspired modality, and a surprising aleatoric element, bound together by neoclassical aesthetic.”

Little Symphony No. 6 (Milhaud)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

Milhaud visited the United States in 1922, and composed this piece in 1923 while in New York City. While there, he heard live jazz and its influence is evident in this piece and his following works, including the 1923 ballet, La création du monde. Little Symphony No. 6 was published in 1929 by Universal, separate from the previous five, which were published by Universal in 1922 and were reprinted by Dover in 2001. It is also the only piece out of the six with no subtitle attached.

Scaramouche (Milhaud)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

The music in Scaramouche is taken from incidental music that Milhaud composed for two plays. The first and third movements are inspired by themes composed for Henri Pascar’s production of an adaptation of Molière’s Le Médecin volant (The Flying Doctor); it is from here that Scaramouche gets its name, as Pascar’s group of players was named the Théatre Scaramouche. The second movement takes its theme from music Milhaud composed in 1936 for Jules Supervielle’s opera, Bolivar. Although he did not use any of the 1936 themes for the final score, Milhaud later decided to repurpose the original overture for Scaramouche.

Variations sur le nom de Marguerite Long

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Structure#

The suite is structured as follows: * Jean Françaix: Hymne solennel * Henri Sauguet: Variations en forme de Berceuse pour Marguerite Long * Darius Milhaud: La Couronne de Marguerites (“The Crown of Daisies”), Valse en forme de rondo, Op. 353 * Jean Rivier: Nocturne * Henri Dutilleux: Sérénades * Daniel Lesur: Intermezzo * Francis Poulenc: Bucolique, FP 160 * Georges Auric: ML (Allegro: Finale)

Notes#

Rollo Myers, “Notes from Abroad”, The Musical Times, July 1956, p. 380