Auric / Honegger /
Milhaud / Poulenc / Tailleferre:
Les Maries de la
Tour Eiffel
Honegger: Six Poems by Cocteau
Milhaud:
Les Machines Agricoles
“I
have never wanted to be one of a school, because schools begin standing and end
sitting down. I like the movement of youth. Even if youth is wrong, it is not
wrong because it moves. Schools turn to stone.”
Genius feeds on paradox. The quotation is taken from an interview with
Jean Cocteau published in July 1960 in the review Les Cahiers du Cinema, that
same Cocteau who, in the years after the second World War, released unusual
ferment in the world of Paris in gathering around him all those who shared his
artistic convictions. He wrote, he drew, he directed in the theatre, but this
poet of many talents could not be satisfied with creative work: he feIt the
need, in the frenzy of the 1920s, to push others also to create. The muse
changes into poet or the poet becomes muse. .it matters little, for his force
of character was irresistible. Satie experienced it, Stravinsky succumbed to it
on several occasions and so too did the famous Groupe des Six, bringing
together Milhaud, Honegger, Durey, Auric, Poulenc and Tailleferre.
A
group but not a school, for it was really friendship that united these young
composers and not a common artistic programme. In Le Coq et I' Arlequin, published in
1918, Cocteau claimed in artistic matters what he calls a French clarity and
simplicity, inspired by popular music. Found side by side are vindictive
aphorisms against Wagner and brilliant thoughts on creativity , but this
collection has nothing of the manifesto about it. If the Six ever had a dominating influence it was
rather to Satie that one should look or perhaps even to Chabrier.
It
was, therefore, friendship that allowed the production of Les Maries de la
Tour Eiffel at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees on 18th June 1921 under
the direction of Inghelbrecht, with the Swedish Ballet of Rolf de Mare, Cocteau
and Pierre Bertin speaking the text, hidden in large phonographs. That interested and amused us all, w rote Milhaud, to take part in a show
where so many elements were mixed and the fantasy of which would not have been
repudiated by the Dada movement, then flourishing.
This
collective enterprise, however, had no result and the happy Saturday night
dinners that brought together in a little restaurant in Montmartre
musicians, painters and poets with Jean Cocteau, these meetings where "art
was never mentioned”, ended after the premature death of Raymond Radiguet in
1923. Already in 1922 Satie declared: There is no longer a Groupe des Six,
but... there are simply six musicians, talented and independent, whose
independent and individual existence is incontestable, whatever one may say or
do.
Although
the original score of Les Maries de la Tour Eiffel calls for a sizable
orchestra, the version realised by Marius Constant in 1987 makes use of only
fifteen instruments, wind quintet, string quintet, trumpet, trombone, harp and
two percussion. The music
perfectly matches Cocteau's biting text: a scathing criticism of the war and of
conformism is evident on every page and each composer knew how to translate
these texts into music in his own way; thus, at the dramatic climax of the Marche
funebre (Funeral March) Honegger adds in the bass Gounod's Waltz from Faust.
Arthur
Honegger is certainly the composer whose presence among the Groupe des Six is
most surprising, but this passionate Wagnerian had immediately understood that,
apart from the flashes of the fashionable and of snobbery, Cocteau was above
all a real poet. That is why he
composed, between 1920 and 1923, Six Melodies on poems by Cocteau,
written for Rose Geart in Geneva, to be scored in 1930 by Arthur Hoeree for
flute and string quintet. The same
singer, some years before, had given the first performance of paques a New York
(Easter in New York),
three fragments taken from the first poem of Du Monde entier (Of the
Whole World) of Blaise Cendrars. These songs, written at a time often regarded
as purely frivolous and superficial, are really much more profound than they
seem. An element of nostalgia
colours their apparent light-heartedness.
It
was with a certain enthusiasm that Honegger in 1923 wrote Pacific 231,
as Milhaud had in 1919 composed his Les machines agricoles (Agricultural
Machinery). In both cases the
intention was in no way to carry out a hoax, but to translate into music a
genuine fascination. Milhaud explained
the origin of the work as follows: I had set to music some
descriptions of machines taken from a catalogue that I had picked up in 1913
at an exhibition of agricultural machinery... I had been so impressed
by the beauty of these great multicoloured metal insects, magnificent modern
brothers of the plough and the scythe, that I had the idea of
celebrating them... None of the critics understood what had compelled me to
write this work or that the spirit that inspired it was
comparable to that which once made composers sing of the harvests of
corn and grapes.
Les
machines agricoles, written for mezzosoprano
and an ensemble of seven instruments, flute, clarinet, bassoon, violin, viola,
cello and double bass, bears witness to the extraordinary mastery that Mi1haud
had of polytonal techniques. The
use that he makes of these, his very elaborate counterpoint and his bringing
together of timbres cunningly used reveal the astonishing beauty in sound of
these machines in action. Les machines agricoles consists of six
movements that Mi1haud dedicated respectively to Jean Cocteau and to each of
his colleagues of the Groupe des Six. La faneuse (The Haymaker) is
dedicated to Germaine Tailleferre, while Honegger is given the Dechaumeuse-semeuse-enfouisseuse
(Plough-Sower-Digger) and Auric the Foui/leuse-draineuse (Ditcher). Musicologists will no doubt question the malice that
perhaps guided these choices...
Bernard Desgraupes
(English version
by Keith Anderson)
Les maries de la
Tour Eiffel
In the preface to Les maries Cocteau explains that a stage work
ought to be written, to have decor and costumes and to have music, played and
danced, all by one man alone. Since such a complete athlete did not exist, the
individual might be replaced by something that was like such a person, a group
of friends. While there might be many groups of musicians, there were very few
such groups. Nevertheless he had been lucky enough to form such a group with
some young musicians, poets and painters. Les maries de la Tour Eiffel was
the result, to which he was proud to have contributed.
It
is impossible to summarise the action of the piece, set by the writer on the
first floorof the Eiffel Tower. Better
to turn once again to the words ofCocteau, who explained that Les maries, because
of its openness, is unlike an esoteric work: mystery makes the public afraid
and here he has renounced mystery , illuminating and underlining everything:
with no Sunday, no people or ready- made expressions, dissociation of ideas in
the flesh, wildness of childhood, poetry and the miracle of everyday life, this
was his work, understood so weil by the young musicians who provided
accompaniment. The piece, to which Durey alone of Les Six did not contribute,
consists of eight musical interludes, with three ritomellos by Georges Auric.
The contributions of the five composers, which include the witty Marche
funebre of Honegger, based on the Waltz from Faust, are as
follows:
1.
Ouverture: Georges Auric
2.
Marche nuptiale (Wedding
March): Darius Milhaud
3.
Discours du general (The
GeneraYs Lecture): Francis Poulenc
4.
La baigneuse de Trouvi11e
(The Trouvi11e Bather): Francis Poulenc
5.
Le massacre (The
Massacre): Darius Milhaud
6.
Valse des depeches
(Despatches Waltz): Germaine Tai11eferre
7.
Marche funebre (Funeral March): Arthur Honegger
8.
Quadri11e: Germaine Tailleferre
9.
Marche nuptiale (sortie)
(Wedding March): Darius Milhaud
Alain
Cochard (English version by Keith Anderson}
