Arthur Honegger

For more information on Arthur Honegger, visit Britannica.com.

(b Le Havre, 10 March 1892; d Paris, 27 Nov 1955). Swiss composer. He studied from 1911 at the Paris Conservatoire, then returned to Switzerland for military service (1914-15), though Paris remained his home. He was a member of Les Six, and set Cocteau's libretto in his stylized opera Antigone (1927), but he had no time for Satie or for the group's flippancy: he was acutely aware of artistic responsibility and took his guidelines from Bach and Beethoven. His harmony, though fundamentally tonal, is often dense and wide-ranging, set in motion by a vigorous rhythmic propulsion that suggests Baroque formality wielding modern means: that is the manner of his oratorio-style stage works, including Le roi David (1921) and Jeanne d′Arc au bûcher (1938). His other works include five symphonies (1930, 1941, 1946, 1946, 1951), three ‘symphonic movements’ (Pacific 231, 1923; Rugby, 1928; no.3, 1933), chamber pieces, songs and much incidental music.

works:
Dramatic music

• Le roi David, dramatic psalm (1921)
• Antigone, opera (1927)
• Judith, biblical opera (1926)
• Jeanne d′Arc au bûcher, stage oratorio (1938)
• Nicolas de Flue, dramatic legend (1941)
• 14 ballets
• incidental music for 26 plays
• 8 radio scores
• over 40 film scores

Orchestral music

• Pastorale d′été (1920)
• Chant de joie (1923)
• Pacific 231 (1923)
• Pf Concertino (1925)
• Rugby (1928)
• Mouvement symphonique no.3 (1933)
• Vc Conc. (1934)
• 5 syms. (1930, 1941, 1946, 1946, 1951)
• 10 vocal orchestral works, incl. La dense des morts (1938), Une cantate de Noël (1953)

Chamber and instrumental music

• 3 str qts (1917, 1936, 1936)
• sonatas, suites, sonatinas, preludes, dance movts

Songs

• over 60

---

Although Arthur Honegger (1892-1955) was a Swiss composer, he was identified with France because of his long residence in Paris. He was a middle-of-the-road 20th-century composer; as a result, some of his compositions were immediately popular.

Arthur Honegger was born in Le Havre, France, where his Swiss father was a coffee importer. The family was cultured and encouraged their son's interest in music by giving him violin and harmony lessons, studies that were continued at the Zurich Conservatory (1909-1911). In 1911 he commuted once a week from Le Havre to Paris to study violin at the conservatory and in 1913 became a full-time student.

This was an exciting time for a young musician to be in Paris, and Honegger plunged into the musical stream, attending the ballet and opera and becoming acquainted with the new works of Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and Igor Stravinsky. Because of his study in Switzerland, his musical orientation had been German; Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss, and Max Reger had been his models, and he never really abandoned them even when he became influenced by the newer French music. Darius Milhaud was his classmate at the conservatory and introduced him to a group of young composers; in 1920 they gave a joint concert of their works. The critic who reviewed the concert entitled his article "The Russian Five and the French Six, " referring to the great school of Russian nationalistic composers and to Honegger and his friends - Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, Germaine Tailleferre, Louis Durey, and Georges Auric. The label stuck, and for the rest of their lives these composers never lived down the association, no matter how divergent their mature styles became. The term "Les Six" connoted an attitude that was antiromantic and which held that music should not take itself too seriously. "Down with Wagner. Down with Beethoven, " they said. "Let's have music that is clever and gay, as simple as the music of the street."

Honegger never shared these views. On the contrary, he said: "My great model is J. S. Bach. I do not seek, as do some anti-impressionist composers, a return to harmonic simplicity. I find, on the contrary, that we should use the harmonic materials created by the school that preceded us, but in a different way, as the base for lines and rhythms. Bach availed himself of the elements of tonal harmony, as I want to avail myself of modern harmony. I am not a party to the cult of the Music Hall and the Street Fair, but on the contrary I am dedicated to chamber music and symphonic music in their most serious and austere aspects."

Honegger was fascinated by sports and machinery. Two of his early compositions, Pacific 231 (1923), a vivid description of a powerful locomotive starting, accelerating, and stopping, and Rugby (1928), a description of a football game, were instantly popular. Another early work that brought him recognition was his oratorio King David (1923), a large-scale work for chorus, soloists, orchestra, and a narrator, who provides continuity between the musical numbers. Based on the biblical story of David, Honegger's score includes pseudo-Oriental orchestral pieces and Bach-style choruses, along with dissonant harmonies. The total effect is rich and brilliant. Other large-scale choral works include Jeanne d'Arc aux bûcher (1938; Joan of Arc at the Stake), which is sometimes staged in operatic manner, and The Dance of Death (1940). Antigone (1927) is an austere one-act opera. He also wrote chamber music and five symphonies, the fifth commissioned and first performed by the Boston Symphony in 1952.

Honegger stated his creed as a composer: "My desire and my endeavor have always been to write music which would be attractive to the large masses of listeners and which would, at the same time, be sufficiently devoid of banalities to interest music lovers." Certain of his compositions succeed in achieving this balance, and Honegger was one of the most successful composers of his generation.

Further Reading

There is no book-length study of Honegger in English, but a series of interviews with him has been translated as I Am a Composer (1966). Honegger is considered in these discussions of contemporary music: David Ewen, ed., The New Book of Modern Composers (1943; 3d rev. ed. 1964), and Ewen's own work, The World of Twentieth-Century Music (1968); Howard Hartog, ed., European Music in the Twentieth Century (1957); Peter S. Hansen, An Introduction to Twentieth Century Music (1961); Joseph Machils, Introduction to Contemporary Music (1961); and A. L. Bacharach, ed., The Music Masters, vol. 4 (1970).

Honegger, Arthur (b Le Havre, 10 Mar. 1892, d Paris, 27 Nov. 1955). Swiss composer who wrote the music for several ballets including Börlin's Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel (together with the other members of ‘Les Six’, 1921) and Skating Rink (1922), Nijinska's Les Noces de l'amour et de Psyché (after Bach, 1938), Massine's Amphion (1934), Fokine's Semiramis (1934), Lifar's Cantique des cantiques (1938) and Chota Roustaveli (with Tcherepnin and Harsanyi, 1946), and Peretti's L'Appel de la montagne (1945). Other works using his music include T. Shawn's Pacific 231 (1933), Howard's Lady into Fox (1939), Neumeier's Von Unschuld und Erfahrung (1967), and van Manen's Brainstorm (1982).

• Period: Modern (1910-1949)
• Country: France
• Born: March 10, 1892 in Le Havre, France
• Died: November 27, 1955 in Paris, France
• Genres: Ballet, Band Music, Chamber Music, Choral Music, Concerto, Film Music, Keyboard Music, Orchestral Music, Symphony, Music Theater, Vocal Music

Biography

Born in France to Swiss parents, Arthur Honegger was a major twentieth century composer whose musical style was more cosmopolitan than either French or Swiss. An almost exact contemporary of Prokofiev (1891-1953), he rivaled Poulenc as the most successful member of Les Six and was without doubt among the greatest French composers of his day. Stylistically, he was quite protean, eschewing the Impressionism of Debussy while absorbing certain features of neo-Classicism and taking on a sometimes brash and usually rugged expressive manner, always within a tonal context.

Honegger became proficient on the violin as a child, but also developed an interest in composition early on. His first work, an unorchestrated opera, Philippa, dates to 1903. He enrolled at the Zurich Conservatory while in his teens, where he studied composition with Friedrich Hegar and violin with Willem de Boer. He left after two years for the more prestigious Paris Conservatory in 1911, where he studied composition with Widor and Gédalge. Although he continued to take instruction on the violin there, he was clearly more interested in a career as a composer. In 1913, his family relocated to Zurich, but Honegger remained in Le Havre and commuted daily to Paris by train, perhaps one of the reasons he developed a fascination with locomotives. His first works began gaining exposure by 1916 and four years later, he and his conservatory friends Milhaud, Auric, and Tailleferre, along with Poulenc and Durey, found themselves aligned in the famous musical group called Les Six, a name coined by critic Henri Collet. Les Six was formed in reaction to Impressionism and Wagnerian ideas, but Honegger did not recognize any musical creed in his association with the group.

In 1923, Honegger composed one of his most famous works, Pacific 231 (Mouvement symphonique No. 1), a work whose motoric qualities were inspired by the sounds and rhythms of a locomotive. The piece was a tremendous success and spawned many imitations. In 1926, Honegger married a young, highly gifted French pianist Andrée Vaurabourg. The two rarely lived together during their marriage, owing to the composer's need for solitude in his creative activities. On concert tours, however, they apparently shared quarters and throughout their marriage were otherwise a happy, loving couple. The 1928 Rugby (Mouvement symphonique No. 2) was also a success for Honegger and is another example of the composer being inspired by an extra-musical interest: he was a sports enthusiast, especially of rugby. Honegger made many concert tours in the 1930s with his wife, who would perform his piano and chamber works or serve as accompanist to his songs. His concert and compositional activity was curtailed for a year when he nursed his wife along to recovery following a serious injury in a 1935 automobile accident. During the war years, Honegger taught at the École Normale de Musique and made many trips to Zurich, where his Symphony No. 2 (1940-1941) was successfully premiered by Paul Sacher and the Collegium Musicum on May 18, 1942. Honegger remained quite prolific during these dark years, especially in the realm of film music. He wrote 11 film scores in the period of 1942-1943, though some were collaborations with other composers, such as Jolivet. In 1947, on a concert tour in the United States, Honegger suffered a heart attack and thereafter his health declined, severely limiting his musical activities, with his wife tending to him in his final year. ~ Robert Cummings, All Music Guide

Discography

Honegger Conducts Honegger Buy this CD

• Born: Mar 10, 1892
• Died: 1955
• Occupation: Actor
• Active: '20s-'50s
• Major Genres: Drama
• Career Highlights: Napoléon, Pygmalion, Crime and Punishment
• First Major Screen Credit: La Roue (1923)

Biography

Distinguished contemporary Swiss composer Arthur Honegger is best known for his operas, oratorios, such as Jeanne d'Arc au Bucher and his symphonic works. Honegger also scored a number of French, British and Italian films. During the silent era, Honneger composed several scores for Abel Gance). Shortly after Honegger's death in 1955, {$Georges Rouquier release a biographical documentary about the great composer. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Pygmalion Buy this Movie	Regain Buy this Movie	Mayerling Buy this Movie	Crime and Punishment Buy this Movie
Napoléon Buy this Movie

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)