Page 38 - BBC Music (January 2020)
P. 38
Les Six
Entente cordiale:
a 1931 photo of (left to
right) Poulenc, Tailleferre,
Durey, Cocteau, Milhaud
Honegger and a portrait
for the absent Auric
The joy of six
Post-war France saw the old order booted aside in
an attempt to restore morale to a bruised nation.
Roger Nichols reveals how, 100 years ago, a group
of young composers ushered in a bright new dawn
o make sense of the collection of Darius Milhaud, Arthur Honegger, Germaine
young composers who in January Tailleferre, Louis Durey – and himself, with
1920 were given the label Le Groupe Georges Auric and Francis Poulenc joining later.
T des Six, we have to go a little back in Then, in November, Satie resigned from the
time. In the late 19th century, French composers group (no one knows for sure why), and his place
were facing the Wagner problem. Letters of was taken by the upwardly mobile Jean Cocteau.
the time from composers such as Chabrier, Although not a trained musician, Cocteau was
Chausson and Debussy groan under complaints attracted by the idea of musical collaborations.
of how the German’s musical vocabulary, what Given the cold shoulder by Stravinsky, he
Debussy called ‘the ghost of old Klingsor’,
dominated their efforts, try as they might. But Audacity, economy,
ignoring him, while not easy, could be done, as
two younger composers, Maurice Ravel and Erik down-to-earthness and
Satie, showed with considerable success.
The compositional path Ravel marked out for lightheartedness were
himself led to masterpiece after masterpiece.
But the pre-war group of Jeunes Ravélites the new watchwords
never amounted to much, largely because, as
Alexander Goehr has said, Ravel was ‘a bit too saw this young group bereft of intellectual
clever to be of much influence, because you’ve leadership, and between March and August
got to be too good at it to actually do it.’ Satie, 1919 used his column in the journal Paris-Midi
though, was a different matter. It’s accepted to create a public for it. Also grist to the mill was
these days that Satie was not a great musical Cocteau’s 74-page pamphlet Le Coq et l’Arlequin,
technician, but his contribution to 20th-century published in spring 1918 and taking its cue from
music lies elsewhere, in cleansing the sonorous Satie’s 1917 Parade which had brought fresh air
palate of his time from the rich morsels left into the ballet scene. A sample of quips from Le
over from the 19th-century banquet. He also Coq gives a good idea of where the Nouveaux
had a soft spot for the young, and towards the Jeunes were now heading: ‘knowing how far to
go too far’, ‘a composer always has too many
end of the First World War became a mentor
GETTY, ALAMY to a group of budding composers whom, in notes on his keyboard’, ‘build me music I can
live in like a house’, ‘all music to be listened to
March 1918, he christened the Nouveaux Jeunes:
40 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
