" Les Six " ( French: [le sis] ) is a name given to a group of six composers, five of them French and one Swiss, who lived and worked in Montparnasse . The name has its origins in two 1920 articles by critic Henri Collet in Comœdia (see Bibliography ). Their music is often seen as a neoclassic reaction against both the musical style of Richard Wagner and the Impressionist music of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel .
27-598: Othmar Schoeck (1 September 1886 – 8 March 1957) was a Swiss Romantic classical composer , opera composer , musician , and conductor . He was known mainly for his considerable output of art songs and song cycles , though he also wrote a number of operas, notably his one-act Penthesilea , which was premiered at the Semperoper in Dresden in 1927 and revived at the Lucerne Festival in 1999. He wrote
54-452: A girl hanging on a wall of the shop. The picture comes to life, and in typical Busoni fashion, the scene immediately dissolves into a fantastical Chinese temple. The opera ends with Novalis awaking from his dream-state and escaping from the shop into the reality of the street. It is one of Schoeck's most unusual creations, "almost minimalist in conception." Around 1918 Schoeck's music began a stylistic shift. At this time he became involved with
81-402: 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
108-584: A handful of instrumental compositions, including two string quartets and concertos for violin (for Stefi Geyer , dedicatee also of Béla Bartók 's first concerto), cello and horn . Schoeck was born in Brunnen , studied briefly at the Leipzig Conservatory with Max Reger in 1907/08, but otherwise spent his whole career in Zürich. His father, Alfred Schoeck was a landscape painter, and as
135-579: A letter to Volkmar Andreae , saying: "Schoeck has completely abandoned me. I have not entirely given him up. He lacks (or lacked ) certain ingredients, which are not available at the chemists'. Which should however be manufactured in his own laboratory." In the summer of 1923 Schoeck visited Arthur Honegger in Paris, and he later participated in the Salzburg ISCM festival. Not long afterwards, his affair with de Senger came to an end. His distress over
162-461: A prelude and the first scene, but lost interest and dropped the project. Undaunted, in June 1918 Busoni offered it to Schoeck. Schoeck, who appears to have taken the offer as a sort of challenge, immediately set aside the orchestration of Don Ranudo , and in three days, produced the new opera. Das Wandbild is set in a Parisian antique shop around 1830. A student, Novalis, is captivated by a picture of
189-749: A substantial number of composers, especially those born after 1860, whose works cannot be conveniently classified as " Romantic ", or those whose early compositions did begin in the Romantic style but later developed beyond it in the 20th century. Repertoire key: B=In Classical Net's basic Timeline of Major Composers 1600–present Notes Sources 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
216-400: 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
243-598: A young man, Othmar seriously considered following in his father's footsteps and attended classes an art school in Zürich before dropping out to go to the Zürich Conservatory . During World War I Schoeck earned his living in Zurich initially as a chorus director and as a freelance accompanist and conductor. An annuity given him by the Winterthur industrialist Werner Reinhart from 1916 onwards, coupled with
270-532: Is now the Czech Republic. A European-wide debate took place, particularly in Germany, on what the ideal course of music was, following Beethoven's death . The New German School —primarily Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner —promoted progressive ideas, in opposition to more conservative composers such as Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann . Note that this list is purely chronological, and includes
297-516: 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
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#1732798375427324-404: The breakup, combined with the shock of the new music he had heard in Paris and Salzburg, seems to have led to a new maturity in his compositional style. Two weeks after his affair ended, he composed the song Die Entschwundene (1923), which was "as much a farewell to the tonal world of his previous music as to his departed lover." Schoeck was not given to overt signs of gratitude, but he dedicated
351-1183: The broader Romanticism movement of Europe, Ludwig van Beethoven , Gioachino Rossini and Franz Schubert are often seen as the dominant transitional figures composers from the preceding Classical era . Many composers began to channel nationalistic themes, such as Mikhail Glinka , The Five and Belyayev circle in Russia; Frédéric Chopin in Poland; Carl Maria von Weber and Heinrich Marschner in Germany; Edvard Grieg in Norway; Jean Sibelius in Finland; Giuseppe Verdi in Italy; Carl Nielsen in Denmark; Pablo de Sarasate in Spain; Ralph Vaughan Williams and Edward Elgar in England; Mykola Lysenko in Ukraine; and Bedřich Smetana and Antonín Dvořák in what
378-477: 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
405-451: 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
432-642: The income from his appointment as conductor of the St Gall Symphony orchestra in 1917 (with special permission to remain resident in Zürich), allowed Schoeck to give up choral conducting and devote more time to composition instead. In 1916, Schoeck became acquainted with Ferruccio Busoni , who had moved to Zurich from Berlin to escape the adverse effects of the war. Busoni was not alone in coming to Zurich. The war had turned "provincial" Zurich, in neutral Switzerland, into an international metropolis. Schoeck
459-595: 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
486-405: 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
513-468: The pianist Mary de Senger, who appears to have had a profound influence on his compositional style. The second act of his next opera, Venus (1919–1921), employs interesting polyrhythmic and bitonal effects. As he became acquainted with the work of Alban Berg and Les six in Paris, he began to feel isolated by his stylistic conservatism. By 1922 his former mentor, Busoni, who was now back in Berlin, wrote
540-501: The presence of Schoeck. Schoeck himself did not harbor Nazi sympathies, but the angry Swiss reaction to his actions damaged his reputation and put great strain on Schoeck. He suffered a heart attack in March 1944, but continued to compose. List of Romantic-era composers The Romantic era of Western Classical music spanned the 19th century to the early 20th century, encompassing a variety of musical styles and techniques. Part of
567-437: 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
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#1732798375427594-717: The song cycle Gaselen (1923), the Sonata for Bass Clarinet and Piano (1927–28), and the Suite in A flat for Strings (1945) to Werner Reinhart . His work with the German poet Hermann Burte on the opera Das Schloss Dürande , for production at the Berlin State Opera , caused great controversy for Schoeck with the Swiss, because of his association with artists of Nazi Germany. The opera was premiered in Berlin on 1 April 1943 in
621-402: Was a great admirer of the songs of Hugo Wolf ; Busoni disliked them, and he said so. Despite their differences, their relationship quickly developed into one of mutual respect, and even one with a bit of affection. In fact, it was Busoni's suggestion that Schoeck use Ludvig Holberg 's Don Ranudo de Colibrados as the subject of an opera. On 19 June 1917 Philipp Jarnach , a French composer who
648-544: Was also a refugee in Zurich, and an assistant of Busoni, gave Busoni a copy of Martin Buber 's book Chinesische Geister- und Liebesgeschichten [Chinese Ghost and Love Stories] (Frankfurt, 1911). Jarnach suggested that one of these short stories might be suitable for an opera. Busoni immediately wrote a libretto, Das Wandbild [The Picture on the Wall], a short scene and pantomime, which he finished eight days later. Jarnach composed
675-455: 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 ,
702-604: 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
729-449: 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
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