FABULOUS TIMES, PLACES AND PEOPLE
PARIS IN THE 20s and 30s.
MUSIC
Satie was closely connected with the group of Parisian composers championed by Jean Cocteau and known as Les Six. Honegger was a member of Les Six but didn't feel the deep fascination with popular Parisian entertainment of Satie and other members of the group, and so these influences can't be heard in his music. By contrast, in his first major work, Dit des Jeux du Monde, there are echoes of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, in both its theme - a sort of allegory of the creation of the world - and the instruments it uses: double string quartet, double bass, flute, trumpet, bass drum, and bouteillophone (Bottlephone). The action apparently happens "nowhere" and when it was staged at Paris's Théâtre du Vieux Colombier in December 1918 it was advertised as a "mystery" production, with words by the Belgian poet Paul Méral. Its first performance caused yet another Parisian scandal. Milhaud wrote Le Boeuf sur le Toit shortly after returning from Brazil in 1919, where he had been acting as secretary to the diplomat and poet Paul Claudel. Influenced by the music he heard there, Milhaud's Le Boeuf sur le Toit is full of the rhythms of South American dances. On Saturday nights Milhaud had often visited Paris's fairgrounds and circuses where he was fascinated by the sounds of so much going on at once; so many colourful chance combinations. Along with the South American dance-styles in Le Boeuf, Milhaud also cleverly imitates this colourful fairground simultaneity through polytonal writing (music written in more than one key at a time). Milhaud originally called the work Cinéma Fantasie. By about 1917 Charlie Chaplin's films were beginning to be screened in Paris (Chaplin himself appeared in person at the Casino de Paris in 1917), and Milhaud saw Le Boeuf sur le Toit as a possible accompaniment to a Chaplin film. During the 1920s Milhaud and Les Six met regularly at a bar in Paris which soon moved to larger premises, re-naming itself after this work. Poulenc was a true Parisian. He grew up in the city and claimed to have "frequented the Parisian music-hall without stop" from the age of fifteen to thirty. His favourite music-hall singer was Maurice Chevalier, and it's Chevalier's unique, rubato singing style that can be heard echoing through Cocardes. During the war, music-hall stars had become more and more popular, and in the Paris of the 1920s Chevalier and the singer and dancer Mistinguett reigned supreme. Cocardes were a part of what Poulenc referred to as his "street music" side - snapshots of the Paris he grew up in.
He was convinced that using
popular tunes gave a national voice to modern music, a theme that chimed
with Cocteau's new musical aesthetic at the time. Jean Cocteau
wrote the texts, which are full of references to aspects of urban life - the
circuses, fairs, cinemas and music hall - as well as lots of different kinds
of confectionery … "Child's Nurse" begins: "Tecla our golden age / Pipe /
Carnot Joffre / I offer to everyone who has neuralgia / Giraffe wedding / a
"Good day" from Gustave / Gounod's ave Maria / Virtuous rose-queen of
the village / Song by Mayol / Touring Club phonograph...Auric's
Overture is his contribution to a work commissioned from him and Jean
Cocteau by Rolf de Maré, director of Paris's Ballets Suédois
(Swedish Ballet). Auric had suggested that it be a combined
effort by all the members of Les Six, but Louis Durey declined,
unhappy with his friends' radical attitudes towards Impressionism, and
Ravel in particular, and so only five composers contributed. Les
Mariés de la Tour Eiffel shows Cocteau's ideas in their extreme.
It was a ballet with a difference - a ballet with dialogue, and Cocteau's
dialogue, like the rest of the work, is full of his favourite everyday
themes and references to popular entertainment. The action takes place on
the first platform of the Eiffel Tower, and shows the eccentric antics of a
wedding party gathered there. Auric's Overture sets the mood, with
lots of brass and timpani, creating a bizarre, bumpy march instead of the
wedding march that would normally be expected. Brass fanfares combine with
melodies in different keys producing all the effects of the fairground.
Antheil described his Ballet Mécanique as "the new fourth
dimension of music" - as well as a dead-end. It was originally a
collaboration with the French artist Fernand Léger, famous for his
"machine-art" paintings. Léger had toyed with the idea of "simultanist
art" which involved film-like techniques of cutting and close-ups with no
logical progression or explanation. This led to his decision to attempt a
film with no scenario, using a prism in front of the camera to destroy the
perspective. The result was Ballet Mécanique, for which George
Antheil was chosen to write the music. Having written it Antheil
felt the music could also stand alone and it was premiered in its own right
two years later in Paris. The incredible line up of instruments called for
were 4 player-pianos (all playing simultaneously), an aeroplane propeller,
gongs, rattles and a xylophone. Repetition and syncopation are powerful
elements in the music, as is the influence of jazz styles. The outrageous
premiere drew many of Paris's celebrities to the Théatre des Champs-Èlysées
in 1926. James Joyce was there sporting an eye-patch, T. S. Eliot
was spotted with an unidentified woman in black, and Diaghilev and
Ezra Pound were also present. Ballet Mécanique has been
described as symbolising "the acme of demented modernism" but is highly
significant in that it can be seen as looking forward to minimalism.
Continues next