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27-636: Darius Milhaud ( French: [daʁjys mijo] ; 4 September 1892 – 22 June 1974) was a French composer, conductor, and teacher. He was a member of Les Six —also known as The Group of Six —and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions are influenced by jazz and Brazilian music and make extensive use of polytonality . Milhaud is considered one of the key modernist composers . A renowned teacher, he taught many future jazz and classical composers, including Burt Bacharach , Dave Brubeck , Philip Glass , Steve Reich , Karlheinz Stockhausen and Iannis Xenakis among others. Milhaud

54-402: A group of composers around himself to be known as Les nouveaux jeunes , forerunners of Les Six . According to Milhaud: [Collet] chose six names absolutely arbitrarily, those of Auric, Durey, Honegger, Poulenc, Tailleferre and me simply because we knew each other and we were pals and appeared on the same musical programmes, no matter if our temperaments and personalities weren't at all

81-561: A son, the painter and sculptor Daniel Milhaud, who was the couple's only child. Nazi Germany's invasion of France forced the Milhauds to leave France in 1940. They emigrated to the U.S. (Milhaud's Jewish background made it impossible for him to return to France until it was liberated ). He secured a teaching post at Mills College in Oakland, California , where he composed the opera Bolivar (1943) and collaborated with Henri Temianka and

108-400: A suite of songs for baritone or bass and piano on words of Louise Lévêque de Vilmorin in commemoration of the centenary of the death of Frédéric Chopin. In 1952, Auric, Honegger, Poulenc, Tailleferre and three other composers collaborated on an orchestral work called La Guirlande de Campra . In 1956, Auric, Milhaud, Poulenc and five other composers created an orchestral suite in honour of

135-670: A wheelchair during his later years (beginning in the 1930s), compelled him to retire. He also taught on the faculty of the Aspen Music Festival and School . As well as Brubeck, his students include William Bolcom , Steve Reich , Katharine Mulky Warne , and Regina Hansen Willman . He died in Geneva at the age of 81, and he was buried in the Saint-Pierre Cemetery in Aix-en-Provence. Darius Milhaud

162-510: Is titled Notes sans musique ( Notes Without Music ), later revised as Ma vie heureuse ( My Happy Life ). Please note: "Faire un boeuf" in French translate to "to do a jam session". During WW1 when assemblies were not allowed, therefore concert hall were closed, many musicians would meet in cafés or such. Some cafés were too small for ensembles and would practice on the roof of the establishment. When Madelaine Milhaud visited Mills College in

189-516: The Nouveaux jeunes less than a year after starting the group, was the "gift from heaven" that made it all come true for Cocteau: his 1918 publication, Le Coq et l'Arlequin , is said to have kicked it off. After World War I , Jean Cocteau and Les Six began to frequent a bar known as "La Gaya" which became Le Bœuf sur le toit (The Ox on the Roof) when the establishment moved to larger quarters. As

216-674: The Paganini Quartet . In an extraordinary concert there in 1949, the Budapest Quartet performed his 14th String Quartet, followed by the Paganini Quartet 's performance of his 15th; and then both ensembles played the two pieces together as an octet. In 1950, these pieces were performed at the Aspen Music Festival by the Paganini and Juilliard String Quartets . Jazz pianist Dave Brubeck became one of Milhaud's most famous students when Brubeck studied at Mills College in

243-454: 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. Writing in his Guide to Twentieth Century Music , critic Mark Morris described Milhaud's work as "one of

270-477: The famous ballet by Milhaud had been conceived at the old premises, the new bar took on the name of Milhaud's ballet . On the renamed bar's opening night, pianist Jean Wiéner played tunes by George Gershwin and Vincent Youmans while Cocteau and Milhaud played percussion. Among those in attendance were impresario Serge Diaghilev , artist Pablo Picasso , filmmaker René Clair , singer Jane Bathori , and actor and singer Maurice Chevalier . Another frequent guest

297-648: The first centuries of the Common Era. Milhaud's mother was partly Sephardi on her father's side, via a Sephardi family from Italy. Milhaud began as a violinist, later turning to composition. He studied at the Paris Conservatory , where he met fellow Les Six members Arthur Honegger and Germaine Tailleferre . He studied composition with Charles Widor and harmony and counterpoint with André Gedalge . He also studied privately with Vincent d'Indy . From 1917 to 1919, he served as secretary to Paul Claudel ,

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324-451: The group also participated. Auric and Poulenc were involved in all six of these collaborations, Milhaud in five, Honegger and Tailleferre in three, but Durey in only one. In 1920 the group published an album of piano pieces together, known as L'Album des Six . This was the only work in which all six composers collaborated. In 1921, five of the members jointly composed the music for Cocteau's ballet Les mariés de la tour Eiffel , which

351-445: The late 1940s. In a February 2010 interview with JazzWax , Brubeck said he attended Mills, a women's college (men were allowed in graduate programs), specifically to study with Milhaud, saying, "Milhaud was an enormously gifted classical composer and teacher who loved jazz and incorporated it into his work. My older brother Howard was his assistant and had taken all of his classes." Brubeck named his first son Darius . In 1947 Milhaud

378-705: The next year conducted both the French and British premieres of Pierrot lunaire after multiple rehearsals. On a trip to the United States in 1922, Milhaud heard "authentic" jazz for the first time, on the streets of Harlem , which greatly influenced his music. The next year, he completed La création du monde (The Creation of the World), using ideas and idioms from jazz, cast as a ballet in six continuous dance scenes. In 1925, Milhaud married his cousin Madeleine , an actress and reciter. In 1930 she gave birth to

405-595: The other hand had a deep-seated scorn for Satie , whom Auric, Milhaud and I adored. But, that is only one reading of how the Groupe des Six originated. Other authors, like Ornella Volta , stressed the manoeuvrings of Jean Cocteau to become the leader of an avant-garde group devoted to music, like the cubist and surrealist groups which had sprung up in visual arts and literature shortly before, with Pablo Picasso , Guillaume Apollinaire , and André Breton as their key representatives. The fact that Satie had abandoned

432-405: The painter Moïse Kisling decided to put on concerts at 6 rue Huyghens  [ fr ] , the studio of the painter Émile Lejeune (1885–1964). For the first of these events, the walls of the studio were decorated with canvases by Picasso , Matisse , Léger , Modigliani , and others. Music by Erik Satie , Honegger, Auric, and Durey was played. This concert gave Satie the idea of assembling

459-488: The poet and dramatist who was then the French ambassador to Brazil, and with whom Milhaud collaborated for many years, writing music for many of his poems and plays. In Brazil, they collaborated on the ballet L'Homme et son désir . On his return to France, Milhaud composed works influenced by Brazilian popular music, including songs by pianist and composer Ernesto Nazareth . Le Bœuf sur le toit includes melodies by Nazareth and other popular Brazilian composers, and evokes

486-437: The same! Auric and Poulenc followed ideas of Cocteau, Honegger followed German Romanticism, and myself, Mediterranean lyricism! And according to Poulenc: The diversity of our music, of our tastes and distastes, precluded any common aesthetic. What could be more different than the music of Honegger and Auric? Milhaud admired Magnard , I did not; neither of us liked Florent Schmitt , whom Honegger respected; Arthur [Honegger] on

513-487: The second Viola Concerto – a consequence perhaps of his prolific and uneven output. Lycée intercommunal Darius-Milhaud near Paris is named after him. Les Six The members were Georges Auric (1899–1983), Louis Durey (1888–1979), Arthur Honegger (1892–1955), Darius Milhaud (1892–1974), Francis Poulenc (1899–1963), and Germaine Tailleferre (1892–1983). In 1917, when many theatres and concert halls were closed because of World War I , Blaise Cendrars and

540-696: The sounds of Carnaval . Among the melodies is a Carnaval tune by the name of "The Bull on the Roof" (in Portuguese, which he translated to French 'Le boeuf sur le toit', known in English as 'The Ox on the Roof'). He also produced Saudades do Brasil , a suite of 12 dances evoking 12 Rio de Janeiro neighborhoods. Shortly after the original piano version appeared, he orchestrated the suite. Contemporary European influences were also important. Milhaud dedicated his Fifth String Quartet (1920) to Arnold Schoenberg , and

567-439: The unassessed quantities of 20th century music. For as one of its most prolific composers (around 450 works), the quality of his music is so patently uneven that the reputation for the banal and the shallow has masked what is or might be (given the paucity of performances) both inspired and fascinating." For a composer of acknowledged influence and significance, a number of his pieces lack contemporary professional recordings, such as

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594-586: Was among the founders of the Music Academy of the West summer conservatory, where songwriter Burt Bacharach was among his students. Milhaud told Bacharach, "Don't be afraid of writing something people can remember and whistle. Don't ever feel discomfited by a melody." From 1947 to 1971, he taught alternate years at Mills and the Paris Conservatoire , until poor health, which caused him to use

621-679: Was born in Marseille , the son of Sophie (Allatini) and Gad Gabriel Milhaud. He grew up in Aix-en-Provence , which he regarded as his true ancestral city. His was a long-established Jewish family of the Comtat Venaissin —a secluded region of Provence—with roots traceable there at least to the 15th century. On his father's side, Milhaud's Jewish lineage was thus neither Ashkenazi nor Sephardi , but specifically Provençal—dating to Jewish settlement in that part of France as early as

648-455: Was in the repertoire of the Ballets suédois throughout the 1920s. In 1927, Auric, Milhaud and Poulenc, along with seven other composers who were not part of Les Six, jointly composed the children's ballet L'éventail de Jeanne . In 1949, Auric, Milhaud and Poulenc, along with three other composers, jointly wrote Mouvements du coeur: Un hommage à la mémoire de Frédéric Chopin , 1810–1849 ,

675-656: Was produced by the Ballets suédois , the rival to the Ballets Russes. Cocteau had originally proposed the project to Auric, but as Auric did not finish rapidly enough to fit into the rehearsal schedule, he then divided the work up among the other members of Les Six. Durey, who was not in Paris at the time, chose not to participate. The première was the occasion of a public scandal rivalling that of Le sacre du printemps in 1913. In spite of this, Les mariés de la tour Eiffel

702-449: Was the young American composer Virgil Thomson whose compositions in subsequent years were influenced by members of Les Six. Although the group did not exist to work on compositions collaboratively , there were six occasions, spread over 36 years, on which at least some members of the group did work together on the same project. On only one of these occasions was the entire Groupe des Six involved; in some others, composers from outside

729-677: Was very prolific and composed for a wide range of genres. His opus list ended at 443. Milhaud (like such contemporaries as Paul Hindemith , Gian Francesco Malipiero , Henry Cowell , Alan Hovhaness , Bohuslav Martinů , and Heitor Villa-Lobos ) worked very rapidly. His most popular works include Le bœuf sur le toit (a ballet that lent its name to the legendary cabaret Milhaud and other members of Les Six frequented), La création du monde (a ballet for small orchestra with solo saxophone, influenced by jazz), Scaramouche (a suite for two pianos, also for alto saxophone or clarinet and orchestra), and Saudades do Brasil (a dance suite). His autobiography

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