Darius Milhaud

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(b Aix-en-Provence, 4 Sept 1892; d Geneva, 22 June 1974). French composer. He studied with Widor, Gédalge and Dukas at the Paris Conservatoire and became associated with Claudel, who took him to Rio de Janeiro as his secretary (1916-18): he wrote incidental music for Claudel's translation of the Oresteia (1922), making innovatory use of chanting chorus and percussion; he also drew on Brazilian music in his ballet L′homme et son désir (1918). But Claudel's influence was briefly succeeded by Cocteau's, and he became a member of Les Six; works of this period include the ballet Le boeuf sur le toit (1919). In 1922 he sought out jazz in Harlem and used the experience in another ballet, Le création du monde (1923). Thereafter he travelled widely, taught on both sides of the Atlantic and produced a colossal output in all genres, normally in a style of fluent bitonality. His operas include Les malheurs d′Orphée (composed1925), Le pauvre matelot (1926), Christophe Colomb (1928), Maximilien (1930), Bolivar (1943), David (1952) and Saint Louis (1970). There are also 12 symphonies and much other orchestral music, sacred and secular choral music, 18 quartets and songs.

works:
Dramatic music

• 15 operas, incl. Les malheurs d′Orphée (1926)
• Le pauvre matelot (1927)
• Christophe Colomb (1930)
• Maximilien (1932)
• Bolivar (1950)
• David (1954)
• Saint Louis (1972)
• 17 ballets, incl. L′homme et son désir (1921)
• Le boeuf sur le toit (1919)
• La création du monde (1923)
• Moïse (1940)
• incidental music for 40 plays, incl., Protée (1919)
• Les choëphores (1919)
• Les euménides (1927)
• 26 film scores, incl. Madame Bovary (1933)
• 11 radio scores and miscellanea

Orchestral music

• 2 sym. suites
• 6 chamber syms.
• 12 syms. (no.3 with chorus)
• 5 pf concs.
• 3 vn concs.
• 2 va concs.
• 2 vc concs.
• Le carnaval d′Aix, pf, orch (1926)
• Concertino de printemps, vn, chamber orch (1934)
• Suite provençale (1936)
• Kentuckiana (1948)
• Suite cisalpine, vc, orch (1954)
• other ovs., concs., concertinos, fanfares
• 5 works for brass band, incl. Suite françcaise (1944)

Vocal music

• 39 choral works, incl. Service sacré (1947)
• 34 solo vocal works, incl. Alissa, cycle, S, pf (1913, rev. 1931), Catalogue de fleurs, 1v, pf/7 insts (1920)
• c30 sets of songs, incl. Poèmes juifs (1916)
• many single songs

Chamber and instrumental music

• 18 str qts, 20 other chamber works, incl. trios, 4 qnts
• c25 sonatas, sonatinas
• 20 pf works, incl. Saudades do Brasil (1921)
• 5 works for 2 pf, incl. Scaramouche (1937), Carnaval à la Nouvelle-Orléans (1947)
• 5 org works

Other

• 9 children's works
• arrs. of Auric, Poulenc, Satie
• 3 bks, incl. Notes sans musique (1949) [autobiography]

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The French composer and teacher Darius Milhaud (born 1892) was the main champion of polytonality in the 20th century.

Darius Milhaud was born on Sept. 4, 1892, in Aixen-Provence. His family, descended from a line of Jews established in the region for generations, had the time and means to encourage their son's musical interests: violin lessons at age 7, participation in the quartet organized by his violin teacher at age 13, and studies at the Paris Conservatory (1909-1912) mark the well-planned stages of his student career. Typical of his generation, he voiced a strong distaste for the music of Richard Wagner and an equally strong admiration for Modest Mussorgsky and Claude Debussy. Sensing, nevertheless, the dangers of impressionism for his own development - "too much fog," "too many perfumed breezes" - Milhaud resolved to "break the spell" of Debussy, although "my heart always remained faithful."

Anti-impressionism was undoubtedly one of the two major factors uniting, just after World War I, the group of composers known as Les Six; the author Jean Cocteau was the other. Not a musician and therefore, by his own designation, not eligible for "membership" in the group, Cocteau was nevertheless its guiding spirit. His collaboration with Milhaud resulted in Le Boeuf sur le toit (1919), Le Train bleu (1924), and Le Pauvre matelot (1926). Cocteau also seems to have been responsible for stimulating Milhaud's interest in jazz, which resulted in one of his most enduring works, La Création du monde (1923).

Yet, for all their success, the Cocteau works do not reveal the essential Milhaud. Before Cocteau there had been the experience of yet deeper formative influence: that of the writer Paul Claudel. On first reading Claudel, in 1911, Milhaud was struck by a "force which shakes the human heart… like an element of nature." The two artists began a long collaboration, which Milhaud said was "the best thing of my life as a musician." They collaborated on Agamemnon (1913), Les Choéphores (1915), LesEuménides (1917-1922), Christophe Colomb (1928), Maximilien (1932), Bolívar (1952-1953), and David (1954).

Claudel was minister of France to Brazil (1917-1919) and took Milhaud along as his secretary. In Rio de Janeiro, Milhaud worked out the details of the technique which, rightly or wrongly, came to be particularly identified with his style: polytonality. What had been a "superimposition of chords proceeding by masses" in Les Choéphores was to become in L'Enfant prodigue (1918) a polytonality residing "no longer in chords but in the meetings of lines."

If polytonality was a unifying factor for Milhaud's style, his origins served to define his esthetic: "Latinity, Mediterranean are words which have a deep resonance in me." The locales of his stage works - Greece, Palestine, Mexico, and Brazil - are significant for their strong affinities with his native Provence, and the music of these places furnished him with many melodic and rhythmic ideas. The themes of southern landscape and popular life are so omnipresent in his vocal works that they have tended to obscure his image as a composer of absolute music, that is, music free from extramusical implications.

The number of symphonies (16), concertos (31), and chamber works (about 60) that Milhaud composed is considerable; indeed, in 20th-century terms his production of over 400 works is enormous, a fact which engendered some negative criticism about his work, such as unevenness in quality, inattention to detail, and signs of haste. Such accusations ignore Milhaud's basic motivation as a composer, namely, that the act of creation is more important than the thing created. His production was all the more remarkable in view of his teaching schedule. From 1948 on he spent alternate years in Paris and at Mills College, Calif.

Further Reading

Milhaud's own account is Notes without Music: An Autobiography (1949; trans. 1953). Biographical information on Milhaud is also in Edward Burlingame Hill, Modern French Music (1924; rev. ed. 1970), and David Ewen, The World of Twentieth Century Music (1968).

Milhaud, Darius (b Aix-en-Provence, 4 Sept. 1892, d Geneva, 22 June 1974). French composer. He wrote many ballet scores, starting with Cocteau's Le Bœuf sur le toit (1920), which was originally staged as a pantomime for acrobats and clowns. For Les Ballets Suédois he wrote the music for three works by Börlin: L'Homme et son désir (1921), Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel (with Honegger, Auric, Poulenc, and Tailleferre, 1921), and La Création du monde (1923). He also wrote the music for Massine's Salade (1924), Nijinska's Le Train bleu (1924), Balanchine's Les Songes (1933), Graham's Imagined Wing (1944), Page's The Bells (1946), Charrat's 'Adame miroir (1948) and Petit's La Rose des vents (1958). Other ballets using Milhaud's music include Béjart's Concerto pour percussion et orchestre (1957), MacMillan's The Sphinx (1968), and Bintley's Meadow of Proverbs (1979).

Milhaud, Darius (1892-1974). Prolific composer of largely dramatic music for opera, theatre, ballet, and film, and an important member of the group known as ‘Les Six’. His music makes use of popular-music idioms—for instance, his ballet La Création du monde (1923) is strongly influenced by jazz. He was a close friend of Claudel and based many works on Claudel texts, including innovative music for an entire ‘Oresteia’ trilogy (1913-22) and an allegorical opera, Christophe Colomb (1928). He also worked with Cocteau, their most successful collaboration being the chamber opera Le Pauvre Matelot (1927). Milhaud wrote three books, one his autobiography.

[Kerry Murphy]

• Period: Modern (1910-1949)
• Country: France
• Born: September 04, 1892 in Aix-en-Provence, France
• Died: June 22, 1974 in Geneva, Switzerland
• Genres: Ballet, Band Music, Chamber Music, Choral Music, Concerto, Keyboard Music, Miscellaneous Music, Opera, Orchestral Music, Symphony, Music Theater, Vocal Music

Biography

One of the more prolific composers of the twentieth century, Darius Milhaud was born to a Jewish family in southern France during the last decade of the nineteenth century. He learned the violin as a youth. Studies at the Paris Conservatoire from age 17 on gave the young composer opportunity to work with some of the most prominent French composers and theorists of the day, including Charles Marie Widor, Vincent d'Indy and André Gedalge, and allowed him to focus on developing his skills as a pianist.

While serving as an attaché at the French delegation in Rio de Janeiro during the First World War, Milhaud began a long and fruitful association with poet Paul Claudel (who was at that time a Minister at the delegation), several of whose plays Milhaud would go on to provide with incidental music (Proteé, 1919; L'annonce fait à Marie, 1934) and who, in turn, would supply libretti for many of Milhaud's compositions (e.g. the opera Christophe Colomb of 1928).

After returning to Paris in 1919 Milhaud was adopted into the circle of "Les Six," a group of progressive French composers brought together under the guidance of Jean Cocteau. However, like any such artificial collection, Les Six was quick to dissolve, and during the 1920s Milhaud adopted an assortment of new musical influences (notably jazz, which the composer first discovered during a trip to the U.S. in 1922, and which features prominently in much of his subsequent music).

Milhaud composed, performed, and taught ceaselessly during the 1920s and 1930s, only abandoning his homeland in late 1939 after all hope of resisting the German advance vanished. Settling in the United States, Milhaud accepted a teaching position with Mills College in Oakland, California, and continued to compose prolifically. From 1947 he combined his American teaching duties with a similar position at the Paris Conservatoire, remaining at both institutions until 1971, when his poor health forced him into retirement (Milhaud had suffered from a serious, paralyzing rheumatic condition since the 1920s; in later years he was only mobile through the use of a wheelchair). He died in Switzerland three years later.

Milhaud's musical output is impressive, both in terms of quantity and quality. The numbers alone are staggering for a twentieth century composer: nine operas, 12 ballets, 12 symphonies (in addition to six chamber symphonies), six piano concertos (one of them a double concerto), 18 string quartets, and about 400 other compositions in almost every conceivable form and instrumentation. The most frequently discussed feature of his musical language is polytonality (the simultaneous use of multiple tonal centers), though Milhaud was familiar with and fluent in any number of twentieth century "techniques." A skillful contrapuntist, Milhaud composed two string quartets (Nos. 14 and 15, both from 1949) which may also be performed simultaneously as an octet.

~ Blair Johnston, All Music Guide

Discography

Darius Milhaud: Symphonies Nos. 4 & 8 Buy this CD	Milhaud: Double Piano Concerto; Symphonic Suite No. 2; Suite Provençale Buy this CD	Satie: Jack in the Box; Milhaud: Symphony No. 10 Buy this CD	Darius Milhaud: The 6 Little Symphonies; L boeuf sur le toit; L'homme et son désir; Others Buy this CD	Darius Milhaud Plays and Conducts Buy this CD
Milhaud: Composer, Pianist & Conductor Buy this CD

• Born: Sep 04, 1892
• Died: Jun 22, 1974
• Active: '20s-'50s, 2000s
• Major Genres: Drama
• Career Highlights: The Private Affairs of Bel Ami, L'Espoir, L'Inhumaine
• First Major Screen Credit: L'Inhumaine (1923)

Biography

Versatile French composer Darius Milhaud created scores of musical works and scored numerous feature films of the '30s, '40s, and '50s. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The Private Affairs of Bel Ami Buy this Movie

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