Milhaud, Darius

(b Marseilles, 4 Sept 1892; d Geneva, 22 June 1974). French

composer. He was associated with the avant garde of the 1920s,
whose abundant production reflects all musical genres. A pioneer
in the use of percussion, polytonality, jazz and aleatory techniques,
his music allies lyricism with often complex harmonies. Though his
sources of inspiration were many and varied, his music has
compelling stylistic unity.
1. Life.
2. Works.
WORKS
WRITINGS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
JEREMY DRAKE
Milhaud, Darius
1. Life.
Though born in Marseilles, Milhaud grew up in the nearby town of
Aix-en-Provence. His father was a well-to-do almond dealer who
lived and worked at the Bras d’Or, a former inn where the Milhaud
family had been established since 1806. From his earliest years
Milhaud was exposed to the songs of the amandières, the women
who sorted the almonds on the ground floor of the house while
singing Provençal airs and comic songs of the café-concerts.
Milhaud admitted in his autobiography that he was a ‘rather
neurotic’ child, and even as an adult easily prone to anxiety, yet
noise must have been a constant feature of life at the Bras d’Or.
Half awake in the morning, or in bed at night, he would hear the
clamour of the men and women at work, and the ‘soft sound of fruit
falling into the baskets and the monotonous and soothing drone of
the machines’. It was at night too, before falling asleep, that he
would hear a mysterious music he was quite unable to imagine
written down, music he later realized was a premonition of
polytonality.
He was profoundly marked by Provence, a region of striking
contrasts: hot sun and grateful shade, harsh, arid landscapes with
a majestic river, the Rhône, running through the heart of it. From
the fishing villages to the great, desolate plain of the Camargue, as
a young man he would go on long walks, absorbing the landscape
and light of Provence. Judaism was a no less important element in
his make-up, and, though not a strict orthodox Jew, he always had
deeply-held religious beliefs. Aix is the heart of the Comtat
Venaissin, where the Jews have their own liturgy and were for
centuries under the special protection of the Pope, a situation that
forms the background to his opera Esther de Carpentras.
His father was an excellent amateur pianist and pillar of the local
musical society, and his Italian mother (née Allatini) was a fine
contralto. (He himself came to possess a beautiful baritone voice.)
His musical disposition was soon clear: from the age of three he
played duets with his father, which ‘at once instilled in me a sense
of rhythm’, and at seven he took up the violin, progressing well
enough to give recitals and, from 1902 to 1907, play second violin
in the quartet of his violin teacher, Léo Bruguier. In 1905 they
studied Debussy’s quartet, which was such a revelation for Milhaud
that he at once bought the score of Pelléas. The same year he
started to take harmony lessons with a local teacher who used the
treatises of Reber and Dubois. He was bored, but he had started to
compose, and his letters of the time prove that, despite his success
with the violin, he already realized that composition was to be his
real occupation.
Highly important also in his early years were two exceptionally
close friendships, complementary in many ways, and
corresponding to different aspects of Milhaud’s character. Léo Latil,
the son of a local doctor, was an earnest Roman Catholic of a
dreamy, poetic disposition, with a deep love of literature and music.
Armand Lunel, who became a novelist and historian as well as
librettist for Milhaud, had a more philosophical and also more
playful disposition. For these three young men, literature, music
and aesthetics were the main subjects of conversation and of the
numerous letters that have survived. At first deeply impressed by
Maeterlinck and the rather morbid, oniristic symbolist poets, they
changed radically when, in 1908, they discovered the poetry of
Francis Jammes. Jammes’s homely simplicity and love of nature
came like a breath of fresh air, and in these early years Milhaud not
only set many of his poems, but made an opera of his play La
brebis égarée. ‘When I started to compose’, he recalled, ‘I at once
sensed the danger in following the paths of impressionist music. So
much woolliness, perfumed billows, rocketing pyrotechnics,
shimmering finery, vapours and wistfulness, marked the end of an
era whose affectation I found insurmountably repugnant. The poets
saved me.’ (Despite this he always had immense love and respect
for Debussy’s music. He had taken part in the first, private,
performance of the Sonata for viola, flute and harp in 1916, on
which occasion he went to see Debussy for advice: that was their
only meeting.)
In 1909 he went to Paris to study at the Conservatoire. He was to
stay there until 1915, though he returned to Aix regularly for
holidays; his main teachers were Berthelier (violin), Dukas
(orchestral playing), Leroux (harmony), Widor (fugue) and Gédalge
(counterpoint, composition and orchestration). Gédalge had the
most decisive impact on him, and he gained a mastery of French
academic counterpoint that was to remain, for better or for worse,
an important part of his technical apparatus. He also became an
excellent orchestrator and a competent conductor, while gaining
proficiency as a pianist quite unaided. Paris also exposed him to a
much wider range of musical styles. During the early years in Aix,
he had attended concerts in Marseilles, but nevertheless, until his
arrival in Paris he had been more or less cut off from recent
developments in music. Now he discovered the music of, among
others, Fauré, Ravel, Koechlin, Satie, Bloch, Magnard (‘I really
believe that [the music of] Magnard helped me to find my own
path’), Roussel and Wagner (which repelled him from the start),
and also Boris Godunov (a score he kept next to Pelléas),
Petrushka and The Rite of Spring (which he analysed in 1914 with
Koechlin). He was fascinated, if puzzled, in 1910 by Schoenberg’s
piano pieces op.11 and a few years later by the op.19 pieces.
Milhaud described his first meeting with Paul Claudel in 1912 as
‘the great stroke of luck in my life’. Though 24 years older, the poet,
playwright, diplomat and fervent Roman Catholic was to become
not only a frequent source of texts but also a close personal friend.
Gide was also an important, if passing influence: ‘Gide’s prose has
an enchanting rhythm that is highly attractive for a composer’, he
later remarked, and he set extracts from Gide’s novel La porte
étroite as a kind of song cycle, Alissa (1913). One of the themes of
the novel, the ‘desire for purity through so much suffering and
sacrifice’ had deeply impressed him, as had the themes of adultery
and forgiveness in Jammes’s La brebis égarée. These Christian
preoccupations are, too, a surprising but constant feature of his
correspondence with Latil and Lunel at this time. As he matured
such ideas lost their importance, yet they reflect a truly catholic
spirit that led him to write several works of specifically Christian
inspiration, such as the Te Deum in the Third Symphony, the
Cantate de la croix de charité, Pacem in terris (a papal encyclical)
and many works with texts by Claudel, including Christophe
Colomb.
At the outbreak of World War I Milhaud was unable for medical
reasons to join the armed services, and found work helping Belgian
refugees. In 1915 came the shattering news of the death of Léo
Latil at the front. In 1916 Milhaud took up a job in the propaganda
department of the foreign ministry. With the turmoil of war and the
loss of such a close friend, his world was thoroughly shaken, so
when Claudel, as newly appointed minister to Brazil, offered him
the post of attaché in charge of propaganda, he accepted with
alacrity. In early January 1917 he embarked at Lisbon, conscious
of leaving behind him his ‘little habits, his little fads, his little flat full
of little objects from the 1830s’. In Brazil he discovered the tropical
forest, the sounds of which were ever after to haunt his music, and
Brazilian popular music, whose rhythms had a wonderfully
liberating effect on his works. His official duties consisted of
translating coded messages and accompanying Claudel on his
travels, but he also organized concerts and lectures in aid of the
Red Cross. Leaving Brazil on 23 November 1918, he returned via
the West Indies and New York, and arrived in Paris on 14 February
1919.
Though in Brazil he had not been completely cut off from French
musical life, for Ansermet, Artur Rubinstein, Nizhinsky and the
Ballets Russes had visited Rio, he now plunged into the postwar
effervescence of Paris. This was the period of the Bar Gaya, soon
to be renamed ‘Le boeuf sur le toit’ after Milhaud’s Brazilian pot-
pourri, the Cirque Médrano with the Fratellini brothers, Les Six (not
that this is of any importance for his music), the ‘Wiéner concerts’
and the Saturday evenings in Milhaud’s flat when poets, artists and
musicians would share their latest work. It was a time of renewing
old acquaintances (with Koechlin, Honegger and Poulenc among
others) and especially of making new friendships, including that of
Satie. During the 1920s he also made journeys that were crucial to
him as man and composer: to London in 1920 (bringing the
revelation of jazz) and Vienna in 1921 (he went with Poulenc and
Marya Freund to meet Schoenberg, Berg and Webern), and
concert tours of the USA (1922 and 1927) and USSR (1926, with
his cousin Madeleine Milhaud, whom he had married in 1925, and
Jean Wiéner). Throughout the decade, compositions flowed with
unfailing regularity and growing success. As a pianist he gave
numerous concerts, mainly of his own works, while his most
notable achievement as conductor was the French première of
Pierrot lunaire on 15 December 1921 (first part only) and 12
January 1922 (complete). He also wrote music criticism regularly
for the Courrier musical from 1920 to 1924; some articles of this
period, including ‘Polytonality and Atonality’, are crucial to an
understanding of his musical aesthetics. (His Notes sur la musique
includes a representative selection.) By the end of the decade he
had established himself as a major composer, especially with the
remarkable success of his multimedia opera Christophe Colomb in
Berlin in 1930.
The next ten years were marked by an increasing amount of film
and incidental music (from which he was able to recuperate a
number of concert works: Scaramouche, Suite provençale, etc.).
Indeed, from 1935 to 1938 he composed little else. He continued
his activity as a music critic for the daily Le jour (1933–7) and
occasionally other publications. Unhappily, during this decade his
paralysing attacks of rheumatoid arthritis became increasingly
severe and frequent: by 1948 he would be permanently confined to
a wheelchair.
Knowing that his name was on the Germans’ wanted list of
prominent Jewish artists, Milhaud was obliged, after the fall of
France in 1940, to emigrate to the USA. During the crossing he
received a telegram from Mills College, Oakland, offering him a
teaching post, which he accepted. Later he also taught at the
summer school in Aspen, Colorado, and from 1948 to 1951 he was
honorary director of the Music Academy of the West in Santa
Barbara. In 1947 he made his first return to France and became
professor of composition at the Paris Conservatoire. Since he only
gave up his Mills post in 1971, the latter part of his life was divided
between the two countries. With the constant round of concerts,
this all meant a lot of travel, yet despite his handicap, he relished it:
‘Travel is one of the most necessary things for my imagination …. I
love travel and I need it … whatever the destination’. To the
continuing prodigious output of compositions was thus now added
intense activity as a teacher. Milhaud’s approach was
characteristically undogmatic: ‘teaching composition involves, I
believe, allowing [students] to liberate themselves from all the
conventional formulae … helping them, by a sort of cleansing
process, to realise their often sensitive and refined personalities,
which many years of strict but necessary exercises have prevented
from flowering’. Among his pupils number many French and
American composers, as well as the jazz pianist Dave Brubeck.
Milhaud composed almost to the end and left no unfinished works.
His last, a wind quintet, was written for the 50th anniversary of his
marriage to Madeleine, his inseparable companion, helpmate and
muse.
Milhaud, Darius
2. Works.
There is scarcely a genre not represented in Milhaud’s output.
From grand opera to children’s piano pieces, everything seems to
be there in extraordinary profusion. Capable of composing
anywhere, even while travelling he was not disturbed by the
presence of other people or by ambient noise. He found his
musical voice very early on, and there was neither anguish in
creation, nor any problem of language or expression, let alone of
technique. He rarely made sketches or notes.
Such serenity in the act of creation – allied to an independence of
mind and musical style, an indifference to criticism (unless from his
close friend, the Belgian musicologist Paul Collaer), and a
seriousness of purpose that his sense of fantasy sometimes seems
to belie – meant that he was receptive to many and varied sources
of inspiration. Provence was a seemingly inexhaustible stimulus
whether as a setting for opera and ballet (Les malheurs d’Orphée,
Le carnaval d’Aix, La cueillette des citrons, La branche des
oiseaux) or as a direct musical source (the Chansons de
troubadour and the Suite provençale include 18th-century
Provençal themes while Barba Garibo uses songs and dances
from the Menton area). The Symphony no.8 is a portrait of and
homage to the river Rhône. Similarly the Comtat Venaissin was a
setting (Esther de Carpentras) and its liturgy a source of music
(e.g. Etudes for string quartet) or a stimulus to composition
(Liturgie comtadine). A more generalized Jewish inspiration is
apparent in many works, from the Poèmes juifs to the Ode pour
Jérusalem. In his epic opera David he portrays the warrior-king’s
life and its effect on present-day Israelis; in one of his most
powerful works, Le château de feu, he remembers the holocaust,
as in Ani maamin; the Service sacré and the Service pour la veille
du sabbat are liturgical works.
Milhaud’s attachment to these origins was inclusive, not exclusive.
Provence was part of the Mediterranean, which for him extended
all the way from Istanbul to Rio de Janeiro. A globe-trotter both
physically and musically, he used themes from, or composed in the
style of, folk music from many other countries. His suite Le globe
trotter evokes France, Portugal, Italy, the USA, Mexico and Brazil.
Kentuckiana and the Carnaval à la Nouvelle-Orléans use local
American tunes. The Suite française is based on French themes,
and the third act of his opera Le pauvre matelot is entirely
constructed from French shanties. The influence of Brazilian folk
music was exceptionally strong, anecdotally in Le boeuf sur le toit,
a medley of tangos and maxixes written as music for an imaginary
Chaplin film, and much more profoundly in a work such as
Saudades do Brasil (‘Memories of Brazil’), two suites of original
and deeply felt piano pieces that go far beyond musical tourism.
His use of existing music also extended to older classical music.
He made arrangements of The Beggar’s Opera and Le jeu de
Robin et Marion; he wrote works using the music of Corrette (Suite
d’après Corrette), François Couperin (Introduction et allegro), and
the little-known 18th-century composer Baptiste Anet (Viola Sonata
no.1, L’apothéose de Molière), whose Tenth Violin Sonata he also
transcribed. In La bien-aimée he transformed Liszt’s arrangements
of Schubert waltzes, writing for a mechanical piano and orchestra.
His fascination with jazz began in London in 1920, where he heard
the Billy Arnold Jazz Band, recently arrived from New York. Noting
the subtle use of timbre and the complex rhythmic vitality, he was
inspired to write Caramel Mou, a shimmy. Two years later, on tour
in the USA, he heard the Paul Whiteman Band, and on his return
composed the Trois rag caprices. The decisive, overwhelming
experience, however, was the jazz of the blacks in Harlem:
‘Against the beat of the drums, the melodic lines criss-crossed in a
breathless pattern of broken and twisted rhythms’. Out of this – in
1923, the year before Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue – came La
création du monde, a highly successful blend of jazz and classical
elements (including a properly developed fugue). Yet this seems to
have got jazz out of his system, for in 1926 he was able to
announce to American journalists that jazz no longer interested him
– though he later recommended it to young classical musicians as
it ‘would teach them to count four beats in a 4/4 bar …. A fault of
rhythm or of beat is so much more serious than a wrong note’.
Percussion plays an important and highly effective part in La
création du monde, yet Milhaud had already shown himself to be a
notable 20th-century pioneer in the use of unpitched instruments,
in several works which antedate, for instance, those of Varèse. Les
choéphores (1915–16) includes three movements written for
rhythmically recited text (solo and chorus with whistles)
accompanied solely by percussive instruments with sirens, though
it was not until after experiencing the Brazilian forest that he wrote
sections of music exclusively for percussion. The long percussion
episodes in L’homme et son désir (1918) are a direct imitation of
the sounds he heard there after dark. In later examples he was
attracted by the dramatic force of percussion, allied in some cases
to a chorus (La mort du tyran, Christophe Colomb). He also wrote
the first Percussion Concerto (1929–30) and perhaps the first work
to include music for performance by the audience, clapping,
stamping and whistling in Musique pour San Francisco. No less
pioneering was his use of metrically uncoordinated music in
Cocktail (1920) for solo voice and three clarinets and the lost
Aérogyne femme volante (1921), though it was not until the 1950s
that this ‘controlled aleatory technique’, as he called it, really
entered his textural vocabulary (for example in Etude poétique –
his only work of musique concrète – and Neige sur la fleuve). The
Suite de quatrains and the String Septet mix aleatory and fixed
elements, and Adieu is his first score in which contrapuntal
relationships are enriched by having instruments play
simultaneously in different tempos (cf also Musique pour Graz,
Musique pour Ars Nova, Hommage à Igor Stravinsky).
Milhaud’s sense of fantasy, coupled with his often quirky
inventiveness, led him to be stimulated by almost anything
unusual, be it an instrument, such as the ondes martenot (which he
used several times in the 1930s, largely in incidental music) or the
Pleyela piano (La bien-aimée), the use of musical cryptograms,
which encipher the names of friends, as in La couronne de
Marguerite (‘Marguerite Long’), Le chat (‘Marya Freund’) and the
Symphony no.10 (‘Oregon’), or extended palindromes (Christophe
Colomb, Part I, scene iv and Part II scene xvi). On being given a
manuscript book containing 84 pages of eight staves, he was
inspired to write two string quartets (nos.14 and 15) that can be
played separately or simultaneously, his music fitting exactly into
those 84 pages. It amused him to set a catalogue of agricultural
machinery to music, with total artistic seriousness (Machines
agricoles), and – though a lover of poetry and the composer of one
of the largest and most important bodies of song and choral music
in the 20th century, to texts by a remarkably wide range of poets –
he had a particular fascination with setting prose. Alissa is an early
example, and, in his first surviving opera, La brebis égarée
subtitled a ‘musical novel’, he even sets the stage directions to
music. Moreover, he was specially attracted to didactic or scientific
prose, whether an 18th-century political harangue (La mort du
tyran), a papal encyclical (Pacem in terris) or a plan for universal
education (Hommage à Comenius).
Despite the impression his music usually gives, he had at times,
and especially during the early years, a distinctly theoretical turn of
mind, a feature that sets him quite apart from his contemporaries.
This comes out especially in his researches into polytonality, which
might be better called in his case ‘polymodality’, for he almost
never used the functional relationships that characterize tonality.
Already in Agamemnon (1913) he constructed his score on a
series of 13 chromatically descending pedal notes, above which a
recurrent theme appears, always at the same pitch, thus creating
various polymodal combinations. In Les choéphores and Les
euménides several movements are based on a pre-established
sequence of polymodal chords, and for once sketches exist which
indicate the extensive preliminary work; the vocal and instrumental
lines are all derived from these basic harmonies. The most
complex example of this technique is the Finale from Les
euménides, where Milhaud predetermined not only the sequence
of chords to serve as the basis for multiple ostinatos but also the
number of different modes to be used in each section, and even
derived the sung notes from a number of constructed matrices.
This chordal polymodality was (quite apart from its inherent
fascination) a means for Milhaud to come to terms with large-scale
construction. His early style, until about 1913, had been notably
unsuccessful as regards form. The effusive, rhapsodic and vaguely
Debussian style of his first works (mainly songs) is characterized
by long, shapeless, often interminable phrases, and piano parts
that are largely chordal or arpeggiated. There is little variety of
texture in the course of a movement, and the harmony, the
predominant parameter, is repetitive and monotonous. In a letter to
Lunel of 1911, Milhaud recognized this, realizing he must write
purely instrumental music in order to develop form. By 1914 he had
begun to move away from this early style, using more
chromaticism, moving to outright dissonance and the first hints of
polymodality. Textures became lighter, the piano writing less
heavy, and he developed a growing awareness of rhythm as a
means of articulating form.
Counterpoint entered his music only during his time at the
Conservatoire, and it was not until he went to Brazil that it became
an important textural element. If the fine Sonata for flute, oboe,
clarinet and piano, his first work to show a clear influence of
Brazilian folk music, still shows lingering traces of Debussy and
Ravel, in Le retour de l’enfant prodigue (1917) his mature style
burst forth, with melody and harmony integrated into a balanced
framework of polymodal counterpoint. (The role played by Koechlin
in his research into polymodality has yet to be adequately
investigated. It was undoubtedly important, as was the more
general influence of Koechlin, to whom Les choéphores is
dedicated.)
With polymodality now linear, Milhaud developed a new, shorter,
more pliable phrase with which he was better able to construct
form, and melody became the basis of his style. The ultimate in
pure, linear polymodality is his Fifth String Quartet, dedicated to
Schoenberg. But aside from the compelling musical reasons for
adopting polymodality, Milhaud said that ‘a polytonal chord is much
more subtle when soft and much more powerful when violent than
a tonal combination’. To go further, it gave a kind of sound and
texture he instinctively preferred. He had – a result perhaps of his
childhood experience surrounded by noise – a very high tolerance
for simultaneity: in many works, polymodal or not, there is simply
so much (sometimes too much) going on at the same time.
Milhaud’s theorizing extended to establishing a clear view of the
French tradition within which he worked. In various articles of the
1920s he developed his view of modern music as composed of two
complementary traditions: the diatonic, Latin tradition, which gave
rise to polymodality, and the chromatic, Germanic tradition, which
gave rise to atonality. For the latter, as exemplified by the Second
Viennese School, he had only admiration and respect, though he
realized his path lay elsewhere, in the footsteps of Rameau,
Berlioz, Gounod and Chabrier.
These were the basic elements of Milhaud’s style and aesthetic.
Though they evolved, they did not change radically, and the further
course of his output can be traced quite briefly.
Few of his works of the 1920s are in the spirit of Les Six, however
one might seek to define it. The Trois poèmes de Jean Cocteau
would no doubt qualify, as might Le train bleu or the orchestral
Serenade. Le boeuf sur le toit had nothing to do with Les Six until it
was hijacked and turned into a ballet by Cocteau. Ironically, in the
only work to which all members of the group contributed, the Album
des six (1920), Milhaud is represented by a Mazurka he wrote in
1914. More important to his music of the 1920s was the
confirmation of opera as a major and continuing thread. He wrote
relatively little chamber music during this time, but seven operas in
the space of five years, ranging from the miniature ‘opéras-
minutes’ (L’enlèvement d’Europe, L’abandon d’Ariane, La
délivrance de Thésée) to opera on the grandest scale. The decade
ended with Christophe Colomb and Maximilien, the former a justly
celebrated work (possibly the first to use film), the latter one of
Milhaud’s most riotously noisy scores. Together with the later
Bolivar, these huge works of pageantry and spectacle reveal his
connection with Berlioz.
The works of the 1930s are characterized by a greater tendency
towards through-composition, in comparison with the clearcut
sectional divisions of the earlier works. Along with this came a
thickening of the light, contrapuntal textures which had
characterized his music of the 1920s. The decade saw him
providing a vast amount of incidental and film music – a means of
earning a living, but also, as Milhaud acknowledged, an excellent
lesson in discipline and humility. The opera Médée is perhaps his
finest work of this period: a fascinating study of a woman scorned,
graphically portrayed in some of the composer’s most angular,
expressionist music.
His preoccupation with the war in Europe was given expression in
several works, including Bolivar and the Suite française, the
movements of which were composed with folktunes from various
regions of France as those regions were being liberated. Two other
masterpieces were to stem from the experience of the war: the Six
sonnets composés au secret for chorus, to poems Jean Cassou
wrote in captivity, and Le château du feu, also with a text by
Cassou, and dedicated to the memory of close relatives deported
during the war. In the 1940s Milhaud also wrote extensively for the
standard symphony orchestra, having started his series of 12 fully
fledged symphonies in 1939.
Then in the course of the 1950s emerged what might be called his
‘final’ style. Counterpoint returned to his music, as did lighter
textures, more supple rhythms and a particularly mordant harmonic
language. This development can be seen by comparing the operas
David and Fiesta (with a libretto by Boris Vian), though it comes out
especially in the chamber music which, in his late years, he
produced abundantly. His 18 string quartets (1912–50) were
followed by the four extraordinary string quintets, a sextet and a
septet (one of his most acidulous and spikily refreshing chamber
compositions).
Vocal music had again become an important constant in his output;
examples include one of his most beautiful song cycles, Tristesses
(a sign that Jammes was still part of his universe), as well as the
splendid Adieu (one of two works on texts by Rimbaud). Choral
music was another important genre, either a cappella or with
orchestral accompaniment. His symphonies continued under the
guise of the ‘Music for’ series, and in 1964 he produced his one
real operatic failure, La mère coupable, a work full of bustle and
commotion and very little inspiration that completes a
Beaumarchais trilogy with Il barbiere di Siviglia and Le nozze di
Figaro. Yet the 1960s saw too a further refinement and purification
of his style, especially in his chamber music, and from his last
years come two of his finest achievements: an opera-oratorio,
Saint Louis, roi de France, notable for its astonishing long-breathed
lyricism, and the cantata Ani maamin which succeeds despite
Wiesel’s interminably lachrymose text. That Milhaud’s inspiration
was not failing him is clear also from Les momies d’Egypte, a lively
romp for vocal quartet and mime or dance with a Commedia
dell’arte text by Regnard in an amusing mix of French and Italian,
and the Etudes sur des thèmes liturgiques du Comtat venaissin,
the composer’s final work in a form he had so assiduously
cultivated, and his last homage to his Judaic roots. The chief glory
of Milhaud’s later works are the superb slow movements.
Sometimes funereal in character, they are all (whether in
symphonic, chamber or operatic works) of extraordinary beauty
and intensity, often exploiting the extreme high register as never
before. There is a distillation of melody in these later works,
articulated across fluctuating modes, transparent textures and
subtly shifting instrumental colour.
Milhaud, Darius
WORKS
operas
ballets
other dramatic works
orchestral
 choral
solo vocal
songs
chamber
solo instrumental
children’s works
electro-acoustic
arrangements
Milhaud, Darius: Works
operas
La brebis égarée (3, F. Jammes), op.4, 1910–14; Paris, OC (Favart), Dec
1923
Les euménides (3, P. Claudel after Aeschylus), op.41, 1917–23; [Brussels,
Belgian Radio, 1949]
Les malheurs d’Orphée (chbr op, 3, A. Lunel), op.85, 1925; Brussels,
Monnaie, 7 May 1926
Esther de Carpentras (comic op, 2, Lunel), op.89, 1925–6; Paris, Radio
Rennes, 1937; stage, Paris, OC (Favart), 1 Feb 1938
Le pauvre matelot (complainte, 3, J. Cocteau), op.92, 1926; Paris, OC
(Favart), 16 Dec 1927
L’enlèvement d’Europe (1, H. Hoppenot), op.94, 1927; Baden-Baden, July
1927 [pt 1 of trilogy]
L’abandon d’Ariane (1, Hoppenot), op.98, 1927; Wiesbaden, April 1928 [pt
2 of trilogy]
La délivrance de Thésée (1, Hoppenot), op.99, 1927; Wiesbaden, April
1928 [pt 3 of trilogy]
Christophe Colomb (2 pts, Claudel), op.102, 1928; Berlin, Staatsoper, 5
May 1930; rev. version, Graz, Oper, 27 June 1968
Maximilien (3, R.S. Hoffman, after F. Werfel), op.110, 1930; Paris, Opéra, 5
Jan 1932
Médée (1, M. Milhaud), op.191, 1938; Antwerp, Opéra Flamand, 7 Oct 1939
Bolivar (3, M. Milhaud, after J. Supervielle), op.236, 1943; Paris, Opéra, 12
May 1950
David (5, Lunel), op.320, 1952–3; concert perf., Jerusalem, 1 June 1954;
stage, Milan, La Scala, 2 Feb 1955
Fiesta (1, B. Vian), op.370, 1958; Berlin, Städtische Oper, 3 Oct 1958
La mère coupable (3, M. Milhaud, after P.-A. Beaumarchais), op.412,
1964–5; Geneva, Grand, 13 June 1966
Saint Louis, roi de France (op-orat, 2 pts, Claudel, H. Doublier), 1970; RAI,
18 March 1972; stage, Rio de Janeiro, Municipal, 14 April 1972
Milhaud, Darius: Works
ballets
L’homme et son désir (Claudel), op.48, 1918
Le boeuf sur le toit (Cocteau), op.58, 1919
La création du monde (B. Cendrars), op.81, 1923
Salade (A. Flament), op.83, 1924
Le train bleu (Cocteau), op.84, 1924
Polka for L’éventail de Jeanne (Y. Franck, A. Bourgat), op.95, 1927
La bien-aimée, op.101, Pleyela (player pf), orch, 1928 [after Schubert and
Liszt]
Les songes (A. Derain), op.124, 1933
Moyen âge fleuri, op.152d, 1936
Moïse (Opus americanum no.2), op.219, 1940
Jeux de printemps, op.243, 1944
Les cloches (after E.A. Poe), op.259, 1946
‘Adame Miroir (J. Genet), op.283, 1948
La cueillette des citrons, op.298b, 1949–50
Vendanges (P. Rothschild), op.317, 1952
La rose des vents (A. Vidalie), op.367, 1957
La branche des oiseaux (A. Chamson), op.374, 1958–9
Milhaud, Darius: Works
other dramatic works
Incid music: Agamemnon (Claudel, after Aeschylus), op.14, 1913; Protée
(Claudel), op.17, 1913–19; Les choéphores (Claudel, after Aeschylus),
op.24, 1915–16; L’ours et la lune (Claudel), 1918; L’annonce faite à Marie
(Claudel), op.117, 1932; Le château des papes (A. de Richaud), op.120,
1932; Se plaire sur la même fleur (Moreno, trans. C. Fuerte), op.131, 1934;
Le cycle de la création (L. Sturzo), op.139, 1935; Le faiseur (H. de Balzac),
op.145, 1935; Bolivar (J. Supervielle), op.148; La folle du ciel (R.
Lenormand), op.149, 1936; Tu ne m’échapperas jamais (M. Kennedy),
op.151, 1936; Bertran de Born (Valmy-Baisse), op.152a, 1936; Le trompeur
de Séville (A. Obey), op.152e, 1937; Le quatorze juillet (R. Rolland),
op.153, 1936 [Introduction et marche funebre for finale of Act 1 only]; Le
conquérant (J. Mistler), op.154, 1936 [orch suite Fragments dramatiques];
Amal, ou La lettre du roi, op.156 (R. Tagore, A. Gide), 1936; Le voyageur
sans bagages (J. Anouilh), op.157, 1936; Jules César (W. Shakespeare),
op.158, 1936; La duchesse d’Amalfi (Fluchère, after J. Webster), op.160,
1937; Roméo et Juliette (S. Jollivet, after Jouve, after Shakespeare),
op.161, 1937; Liberté (various), op.163, 1937 [ov. and interlude only]; Le
médecin volant (Vildrae, after Molière), op.165, 1937; L’opéra du gueux
(Fluchère, after J. Gray), op.171, 1937; Naissance d’une cité (various),
op.173, 1937; Macbeth (Shakespeare), op.175, 1937; Hécube, op.177
(Richaud, after Euripides), 1937; Plutus (Jollivet, after Aristophanes),
op.186, 1938; Tricolore (P. Lestringuez), op.190, 1938; Le bal des voleurs
(Anouilh), op.192, 1938; La première famille (Supervielle), op.193, 1938;
Hamlet (J. Laforgue), op.200, 1939; Un petit ange de rien du tout (C.A.
Puget), op.215, 1940; L’annonce faite à Marie (Claudel), op.231, 1942;
Lidoire (G. Courteline), op.264, 1946; La maison de Bernard à Alba (F.
García Lorca), op.280, 1947; Shéhérazade (Supervielle), op.285, 1948; Le
jeu de Robin et Marion (after A. de la Halle, op.288, 1948; Le conte d’hiver
(Puget, after Shakespeare), op.306, 1950; Christophe Colomb (Claudel),
op.318, 1952 [new music for stage play with only 1 reference to opera];
Saül (Gide), op.334, 1954; Protée (Claudel), op.341, 1955; Juanito (P.
Humblot), op.349, 1955; Mother Courage (B. Brecht), op.379, 1959; Judith
(J. Giraudoux), op.392, 1961; Jérusalem à Carpentras (Lunel), op.419,
1966; L’histoire de Tobie et Sarah (Claudel), op.426, 1968
Film scores: Actualités, op.104, 1928; La p’tite Lilie (dir. A. Cavalcanti),
op.107, 1929; Hallo Everybody (dir. H. Richter), op.126, 1933; Madame
Bovary (dir. J. Renoir), op.128, 1933; L’hippocampe (dir. J. Painlevé),
op.137, 1934; Tartarin de Tarascon (dir. R. Bernard), op.138, 1934; Voix
d’enfants (dir. Reynaud), op.146, 1935; The Beloved Vagabond (dir. K.
Bernhardt), op.150, 1936; Mollénard (dir. R. Siodmak), op.174, 1937; La
citadelle du silence (dir. M. L’Herbier), op.176, 1937 [collab. Honegger];
Grands feux (dir. Alexeiev), op.182, 1937; La conquête du ciel (dir. Richter),
op.184, 1937; Tragédie impériale (dir. L’Herbier), op.187, 1938; Les otages
(dir. Bernard), op.196, 1938; Islands (dir. A. Cavalcanti), op.198, 1939;
Espoir (A. Malraux), op.202, 1939; Cavalcade d’amour (dir. Bernard),
op.204 [collab. Honegger]; Gulf Stream (dir. Alexeiev), op.208, 1939; The
Private Affairs of Bel Ami (dir. A. Lewin, after G. de Maupassant), op.272,
1946; Dreams that Money can Buy (dir. Richter), op.273, 1947 [Man Ray
sequence only]; Gauguin (dir. A. Resnais), op.299, 1950; La vie commence
demain (dir. N. Vedres), op.304, 1950; Ils étaient tous des volontaires,
op.336, 1954; Celle qui n’était plus (Histoire d’une folle) (dir. G. Colpi),
op.364, 1957; Péron et Evita (TV score), op.372, 1958; Burma Road (TV
score), op.375, 1959; Paul Claudel (dir. A. Gillet), op.427, 1968
Radio scores, unpubd: Voyage au pays du rêve (J. Ravenne), op.203,
1939; Le grand testament (N. Franck), op.282, 1948; La fin du monde
(Cendrars), op.297, 1949; Le repos du septième jour (Claudel), op.301,
1950; Samaël (A. Spire), op.321, 1953; Le dibbouk (C. Anski), op.329, 1953
Miscellanea: Les mariés de la tour Eiffel (ballet-show, Cocteau), Marche
nuptiale and Fugue du massacre only, op.70, 1921, rev. 1971; La sagesse
(stage spectacle, Claudel), op.141, 1935; Fête de la musique (light and
water spectacle, Claudel), op.159, 1937; Vézelay, la colline éternelle (son
et lumière, M. Druon), op.423, 1967
Milhaud, Darius: Works
orchestral
Syms.: no.1, op.210, 1939; no.2, op.247, 1944; no.4, op.281, 1947; no.5,
op.322, 1953; no.6, op.343, 1955; no.7, op.344, 1955; no.8 ‘Rhodanienne’,
op.362, 1957; no.9, op.380, 1959; no.10, op.382, 1960; no.11
‘Romantique’, op.384, 1960; no.12 ‘Rurale’, op.399, 1962; see also
choral[Sym. no.3, op.271]
Concs.: Vn Conc. no.1, op.93, 1927; Va Conc. no.1, op.108, 1929; Conc.,
op.109, perc, chbr orch, 1929–30; Pf Conc. no.1, op.127, 1933; Vc Conc.
no.1, op.136, 1934; Conc., op.197, fl, vn, orch, 1938–9; Pf Conc. no.2,
op.225, 1941; Conc. [no.1], op.228, 2 pf, orch, 1941; Cl Conc., op.230,
1941; Vc Conc. no.2, op.255, 1945; Vn Conc. no.2, op.263, 1946; Pf Conc.
no.3, op.270, 1946; Conc., op.278, mar, vib, orch, 1947; Pf Conc. no.4,
op.295, 1949; Hp Conc., op.323, 1953; Va Conc. no.2, op.340, 1954–5; Pf
Conc. no.5, op.346, 1955; Ob Conc., op.365, 1957; Vn Conc. no.3 (Concert
royal), op.373, 1958; Conc. no.2, op.394, 2 pf, 4 perc, 1961; Hpd Conc.,
op.407, 1964
Other concertante: Poème sur un cantique de Camargue, op.13, pf, orch,
1913; Ballade, op.61, pf, orch, 1920; 5 études, op.63, pf, orch, 1920; Le
carnaval d’Aix, op.83b, pf, orch, 1926 [after ballet Salade, op.83];
Concertino de printemps, op.135, vn, chbr orch, 1934; Fantaisie pastorale,
op.188, pf, orch, 1938; Suite anglaise, op.234, harmonica/vn, orch, 1942;
Air, op.242, va, orch, 1944 [after Va Sonata no.1, op.240]; Suite
concertante, op.278a, pf, orch, 1952 [after Conc., op. 278]; Suite, op.300, 2
pf, orch, 1950; Concertino d’automne, op.309, 2 pf, 8 insts, 1951;
Concertino d’été, op.311, va, chbr orch, 1951; Concertino d’hiver, op.327,
trbn, str, 1953; Suite cisalpine, op.332, vc, orch, 1954; Symphonie
concertante, op.376, bn, hn, tpt, db, orch, 1959
Other: Suite symphonique no.1, op.12, 1913–4 [from op La brebis égarée,
op.4]; Symphonie de chambre no.1 ‘Le printemps’, op.43, 1917; Symphonie
de chambre no.2 ‘Pastorale’, op.49, 1918; Suite symphonique no.2, op.57,
1919 [from incid music Protée, op.17]; Serenade, op.62, 1920–21;
Saudades do Brasil, op.67b, 1920–21; Symphonie de chambre no.3
(Sérénade), op.71, 1921; Symphonie de chambre no.4, op.74, 1921;
Symphonie de chambre no.5, op.75, 1922; Symphonie de chambre no.6,
op.79, 1923
2 hymnes, op.88b, 1925; Suite provençale, op.152c, 1936; Le carnaval de
Londres, op.172, 1937; L’oiseau, op.181, 1937; Cortège funèbre, op.202,
1939 [after film score Espoir]; Fanfare, op.209, 1939; Sym. no.1, op.210,
1939; Indicatif et marche pour les bons d’armement, op.212, 1940;
Introduction et allegro, op.220, 1940 [after Couperin: La sultane]; Mills
Fanfare, op.224, str, 1941; Fanfare de la liberté, op.235, 1942; 2 marches,
op.260, 1945–6; 7 danses sur des airs palestiniens, op.267, 1946–7;
Kentuckiana, op.287, 1948
Suite campagnarde, op.329, 1953; Ouverture méditerranéenne, op.330,
1953; Pensée amicale, op.342, str, 1955; Les charmes de la vie (Hommage
à Watteau), op.360, 1957; Aspen Serenade, op.361, 1957; Symphoniette,
op.363, str, 1957; Les funérailles de Phocion (Hommage à Poussin),
op.385, 1960; Aubade, op.387, 1960; Ouverture philharmonique, op.397,
1962; A Frenchman in New York, op.399, 1962; Meurtre d’un grand chef
d’état, op.405, 1963; Ode pour les morts des guerres, op.406, 1963
Music for Boston, op.414, 1965; Musique pour Prague, op.415, 1965;
Musique pour l’Indiana, op.418, 1966; Musique pour Lisbonne, op.420,
1966; Musique pour la Nouvelle-Orleans, op.422, 1966; Promenade
concert, op.424, 1967; Symphonie pour l’univers claudélien, op.427, 1968;
Musique pour Graz, op.429, 1968–9; Stanford Serenade, op.430, chbr orch,
1969; Suite, G, op.431, 1969; Musique pour Ars Nova, op.432, 1969;
Musique pour San Francisco, op.436, 1971; Ode pour Jérusalem, op.440,
1972
Brass band: Suite française, op.248, 1944 [also for orch, additional movts
for ballet, op.254, 1945]; West Point Suite, op.313, 1951; Fanfare, op.396, 4
hn, 3 tpt, 3 trbn, tuba, 1962; Fanfare, op.400, 2 tpt, trbn, 1962; Musique de
théâtre, op.334b, 1954–70 [after incid music Saül, op.334]
Also orchs of pf works
Milhaud, Darius: Works
choral
Psalm cxxxvi (trans. Claudel), op.53 no.1, Bar, chorus, orch, 1918
Psalm cxxvi (trans. Claudel), op.72, male vv, 1921
Cantate pour louer le Seigneur (Pss cxvii, cxxi, cxxiii, cl), op.103, solo vv,
chorus, org, orch, 1928
Deux poèmes extraits de l’anthologie nègre (Cendrars), op.113, chorus,
vocal qt, 1932
La mort du tyran (Lampride, trans. D. Diderot), op.116, chorus, wind, perc,
1932
Devant sa main nue (M. Raval, op.122), female vv/vocal qt, 1933
Adages, op.120c (Richaud), vocal qt, chorus, small orch, 1932
Les amours de Ronsard, op.132, chorus/vocal qt, small orch, 1934
Cantique du Rhône (Claudel), op.155, chorus/vocal qt, 1936
Cantate de la paix (Claudel), op.166, children’s vv, male vv, 1937
Main tendue à tous (C. Vildrac), op.169, unacc., 1937
Les deux cités (Claudel), op.170, unacc., 1937
Quatre chants populaires de Provence: Magali, Se canto, L’Antoni, Le mal
d’amour, op.194, chorus, orch, 1938
Incantations (Aztec poems, A. Carpentier), op.201, male vv, 1939
Quatrains valaisans (R.M. Rilke), op.206, unacc., 1939
Cantate de la guerre (Claudel), op.213, unacc., 1940
Borechou schema Israël, op.239, 1v, chorus, org, 1944
Kaddisch (Prière pour les morts), op.250, 1v, chorus ad lib, org, 1945
Pledge to Mills (G. Hedley), op.261, chorus, pf, 1945
6 sonnets composés au secret (J. Cassou), op.266, vocal qt/chorus, 1946
Sym. no.3 (TeD), op.271, chorus, orch, 1946
Service sacré, op.279, Bar, reciter, chorus, orch/org, 1947
L’choh dodi, op.290, 1v, chorus, org, 1948
Naissance de Vénus (cant. Supervielle), op.292, unacc., 1949
Barba Garibo (trad., Lunel), op.298, chorus, orch, 1949–50
Cantate des proverbes (Bible), op.310, female vv, ob, hp, vc, 1950
Les miracles de la foi (cant., Bible: Daniel), op.314, T, chorus, orch, 1951
Le château de feu (cant., J. Cassou), op.338, chorus, orch, 1954
3 psaumes de David, op.339, unacc., 1954
2 poèmes de Louise de Vilmorin, op.347, chorus/vocal qt, 1955
Le mariage de la feuille et du cliché (M. Gerard), op.357, solo vv, chorus,
orch, tape [realized by P. Henry], 1956
La tragédie humaine (A. d’Aubigné), op.369, chorus, orch, 1958
8 poèmes de Jorge Guillen, op.371, unacc., 1958
Cantate de la croix de charité (L. Masson), op.381, solo vv, chorus,
children’s vv, orch, 1959–60
Cantate sur des textes de Chaucer, op.386, chorus, orch, 1960
Cantate de l’initiation (Bar Mitzvah Israël 1948–1961), op.388, chorus, orch,
1960
Traversée (P. Verlaine), op.393, unacc., 1961
Invocation à l’ange Raphael (Claudel), op.395, female vv (2 groups), orch,
1962
Caroles (cant., Charles d’Orléans), op.402, chorus, 4 inst groups, 1963
Pacem in terris (Pope John XXIII), op.404, A, Bar, chorus, orch, 1963
Cantata from Job, op.413, Bar, chorus, org, 1965
Promesse de Dieu (Bible: Isaiah, Ezekiel), op.438, unacc., 1971–2
Les momies d’Egypte (choral comedy, J.F. Regnard), op.439, unacc., 1972
Ani maamin, un chant perdu et retrouvé (cant., E. Wiesel), op.441, S, 4
reciters, chorus, orch, 1972
Milhaud, Darius: Works
solo vocal
2 or more solo vv: 2 poèmes du Gardener (Tagore, trans. Perrin), op.35, 2
solo vv, pf, 1916–17; No.34 of L’église habillée de feuilles (Jammes), op.38,
vocal qt, pf 6 hands, 1916; 2 poèmes (Saint Léger, R. Chalupt), op.39,
vocal qt, 1916–19; Le retour de l’enfant prodigue (cant., Gide), op.42, 5 solo
vv, 21 insts, 1917; 2 poèmes tupis (Amerindian), op.52, 4 female vv, hand-
clapping, 1918; 2 élégies romaines (J.W. von Goethe), (2 S, 2 A)/SSAA,
1932; Pan et Syrinx (A.-P.A. de Piis, Claudel), op.130, S, Bar, vocal qt, 5
insts, 1934; Cantate de l’Homme, op.164 (R. Desnos), vocal qt, reciter, 6
insts, 1937
Prends cette rose (Ronsard), op.183, S, T, orch, 1937; Les 4 éléments
(cant., Desnos), op.189, (S, T)/S, orch/pf, 1938, rev. 1956; 3 élégies
(Jammes), op.199, S, T, str, 1939
Suite de sonnets (cant., J. du Bellay, J. Jodelle, O. de Magny, A. Jamin),
op.401, vocal qt, 6 insts, 1963; Adam (Cocteau), op.411, S, 2 T, 2 Bar,
1964; Hommage à Comenius (cant., Comenius), op.421, S, Bar, orch, 1966
Milhaud, Darius: Works
songs
1v (with pf unless otherwise stated): Désespoir (Lunel), 1909; Poèmes de
Francis Jammes, 2 sets, op.1, 1910–12; 3 poèmes de Léo Latil, op.2,
1910–16; A la Toussaint (de Grand Maison), 1911; Poèmes de Francis
Jammes, set 3, op.6, 1912; 7 poèmes de La connaissance de l’est
(Claudel), op.7, 1912–13; Alissa (song cycle, A. Gide), op.9, S, pf, 1913,
rev. 1930; 3 poèmes de Lucile de Chateaubriand, op.10, 1913; 3 poèmes
romantiques, set 1, op.11, 1913–14, set 2, op.19, 1914; 4 poèmes de Léo
Latil, op.20, 1914; Le château (Lunel), op.21, 1914; Poème de Gitanjali
(Tagore), op.22, 1914; Notre Dame de Sarrance (Jammes), op.29, 1v,
1915; 4 poèmes pour baryton (Claudel), op.26, 1915–17
D’un cahier inédit du journal d'Eugène de Guérin, op.27, 1915; L’arbre
exotique (C. Gosse), op.28, 1915; 2 poèmes d’amour (Tagore), op.30,
1915; 2 poèmes de Coventry Patmore (trans. Claudel), op.31, 1915;
Poèmes juifs, op.34, 1916; Child Poems (Tagore), op.36, 1916; 3 poèmes
(C. Rossetti, A. Meynell), 1v, pf/small orch, 1916; Chanson bas (S.
Mallarmé), op.44, 1917; Dans les rues de Rio (2 versos cariocas de Paul
Claudel), op.44a, 1917; 2 poèmes de Rimbaud, op.45, 1917; Poèmes de
Francis Jammes, op.50, 1918; 2 petits airs (Mallarmé), op.51, 1918;
Machines agricoles, op.56, 1v, 7 insts, 1919; Poèmes de Francis
Thompson (trans. Claudel), op.54, 1919
Ps cxxix (trans. Claudel), op.53/2, Bar, orch, 1919; Les soirées de
Pétrograd (Chalupt), op.55, 1919; 3 poèmes de Jean Cocteau, op.59, 1920;
Catalogue de fleurs (L. Daudet), op.60, 1v, pf/7 insts, 1920; Feuilles de
température (P. Morand), op.65, 1920; Cocktail (Larsen), op.69, 1v, 3 cl,
1920; Poème du journal intime de Léo Latil, op.73, 1921; 4 poèmes de
Catulle, op.80, 1v, vn, 1923; 6 chants populaires hébraïques, op.86, 1v,
pf/orch, 1925; Pièce de circonstance (Cocteau), op.90, 1926; Prières
journalières à l’usage des juifs du Comtat Venaissin, op.96, 1927; Vocalise,
op.105, 1928; Quatrain (Jammes), op.106, 1929; A Flower Given to my
Child (J. Joyce), 1930; Le funeste retour (anon.), op.123, 1933
Liturgie comtadine, op.125, 1v, pf/small orch, 1933; 2 chansons (G.
Flaubert), op.128d, 1933; 3 chansons de négresse (Supervielle), op.148b,
1935–6; 6 chansons de théâtre (various), op.151b, 1936; 3 chansons de
troubadour (Valmy-Baisse), op.152b, 1936; Cantate nuptial (after Bible:
Song of Solomon), op.168, 1v, orch, 1937; 5 chansons (C. Vildrac), op.167,
1937; Chanson du capitaine (Java de la femme) (J.-R. Bloch), op.173b,
1937; Rondeau (P. Corneille), op.178, 1937; Holem tsuadi – Gam hayom
(Palestinian folksong), op.179, 1937; Quatrain (Mallarmé), op.180, 1937;
Cantate de l’enfant et de la mère (M. Carême), op.185, spkr, 5 insts, 1938
Couronne de gloire (Hebrew, trans. M. Venture and Lunel), op.211, 1v,
pf/(str qt, fl, tpt), 1940; Le voyage d’été (C. Paliard), op.216, 1940; 4
chansons de Ronsard, op.223, 1v, pf/orch, 1940; 5 prières (Latin texts,
adapted Claudel), op.231c, 1v, org/pf, 1942; Rêves (anon. 20th-century),
op.233, 1942; Cain et Abel (Bible: Genesis), op.241, reciter, orch, 1944; La
libération des Antilles (Hoppenot), op.246, 1944; Printemps lointain
(Jammes), op.253, 1944; Chants de misère (Paliard), op.265, 1946; 3
poèmes (Supervielle), op.276, 1947; Ballade nocturne (L. de Vilmorin),
op.296, 1949
Les temps faciles (Marsan), op.305, 1950; Petites légendes (Carême),
op.319, 1952; Fontaines et sources (Jammes), op.352, 1v, pf/orch, 1956;
Tristesses (Jammes), op.355, 1956; Ecoutez mes enfants, op.359, 1v, org,
1957; Neige sur la fleuve (Tsang Yuang), op.391, 1v, 7 insts, 1961; Suite
de quatrains (Jammes), op.398, reciter, 8 insts, 1962; Préparatif à la mort
en allégorie maritime (A. d’Aubigné), op.403, 1963; Adieu (cant., A.
Rimbaud), op.410, 1v, fl, va, hp, 1964; L’amour chanté (various), op.409,
1964; Cantate de psaumes (trans. Claudel), op.425, Bar, orch, 1967 [incl.
Pss cxxix and cxxxvi, op.53]
Milhaud, Darius: Works
chamber
Str qts: no.1, op.5, 1912; no.2, op.16, 1914–15; no.3 (Latil), op.32, 1v, str
qt, 1916; no.4, op.46, 1918; no.5, op.64, 1920; no.6, op.77, 1922; no.7,
op.87, 1925; no.8, op.121, 1932; no.9, op.140, 1935; no.10, op.218, 1940;
no.11, op.232, 1942; no.12, op.252, 1945; no.13, op.268, 1946; nos.14–15,
op.291, 1948–9 [playable separately or together as octet]; no.16, op.303,
1950; no.17, op.307, 1950; no.18, op.308, 1950
Other works for 4 or more insts: Sonata, op.47, fl, ob, cl, pf, 1918; La
cheminée du roi René, suite, op.205, wind qnt, 1939; La reine de Saba,
op.207, str qt, 1939; L’apothéose de Molière, suite, op.286, fl, ob, cl, bn,
hpd, str, 1948; Paris, op.284, 4 pf, 1948, orchd; Les rêves de Jacob, dance
suite, op.294, ob, str trio, db, 1949; Qnt no.1, op.312, pf qnt, 1951; Qnt
no.2, op.316, str qt, db, 1952; Qnt no.3, op.325, va, str qt, 1953; Qnt no.4,
op.350, vc, str qt, 1956; Divertissement, op.299b, wind qnt, 1958 [after film
score Gauguin, op.299]; Str Sextet, op.368, 2 vn, 2 va, 2 vc, 1958; Concert
de chambre, op.389, pf, wind qnt, str qnt, 1961; Str Septet, op.408, 2 vn, 2
va, 2 vc, db, 1964; Pf Qt, op.417, 1966; Pf Trio, op.428, 1968; Stanford
Serenade, op.430, chamber orch, 1969; Hommage à Igor Stravinsky,
op.435, str qt, 1971; Etudes, op.442, str qt, 1973; Wind Qnt, op.443, 1973
Trio: Pastorale, op.147, ob, cl, bn, 1935; Suite, op.157b, cl, vn, pf, 1936;
Suite d’après Corrette, op.161, ob, cl, bn, 1937 [after incid music Jules
César]; Sonatine à 3, op.221b, str trio, 1940; Str Trio, op.274, 1947; Pf Trio,
op.428, 1968
Duo: Sonata no.1, op.3, vn, pf, 1911; Sonata, op.15, 2 vn, pf, 1914; Le
printemps, op.18, vn, pf, 1914; Sonata no.2, op.40, vn, pf, 1917; Sonatina,
op.76, fl, pf, 1922; Impromptu, op.91, vn, pf, 1926; 3 caprices de Paganini,
op.97, vn, pf, 1927; Sonatina, op.100, cl, pf, 1927; Scaramouche, op.165b,
2 pf, 1937 [after incid music Le médécin volant]; Sonatina, op.221, 2 vn,
1940; Sonatina, op.226, vn, va, 1941; Les songes, op.237, 2 pf, 1943; 4
visages, op.238, va, pf, 1943; Sonata no.1, op.240, va, pf, 1944; Sonata
no.2, op.244, va, pf, 1944; Le bal martiniquais, op.249, 2 pf, 1944, orchd;
Elégie, op.251, va, pf, 1945; Danses de Jacaremirim, op.256, vn, pf, 1945;
Sonata, op.257, vn, hpd, 1945; Duo, op.258, 2 vn, 1945; Farandoleurs,
op.262, vn, pf, 1946; Carnaval à la Nouvelle-Orléans, op.275, 2 pf, 1947;
Kentuckiana, op.287, 2 pf, 1948, orchd; Sonatina, op.324, vn, vc, 1953;
Caprice, Danse, Eglogue, op.335, cl/sax/fl, pf, 1954; Sonatina, op.337, ob,
pf, 1954; Duo concertante, op.351, cl, pf, 1956; Sonata, op.377, vc, pf,
1959; Sonatina, op.378, va, pf, 1959; 6 danses en 3 mouvements, op.433,
1969–70, also for solo pf
Milhaud, Darius: Works
solo instrumental
Pf: Suite, op.8, 1913; Mazurka, 1914 [pubd in Album des Six, 1920];
Variations sur un thème de Cliquet, op.23, 1915; Printemps [I], op.25,
1915–19; Sonata no.1, op.33, 1916; Printemps [II], op.66, 1920; Saudades
do Brasil, op.67, 1920–21, arr. orch; Caramel Mou, op.68, 1920, arr. 1v,
jazz band; 3 rag caprices, op.78, 1922, orchd; Choral, op.111, 1930;
L’automne, op.115, 1932; L’album de Madame Bovary, op.128b, 1933; 3
valses, op.128c, 1933; 4 romances sans paroles, op.129, 1933; Promenade
(Le tour de l’exposition), 1933, rev. 1937; Choral (Hommage à Paderewski),
1941; 4 Sketches, op.227, 1941, arr. orch/wind qnt; La libertadora, op.236,
1943, also for 2 pf; La muse ménagère, op.245, 1945, orchd; Méditation,
op.277, 1947; Sonata no.2, op.293, 1949; Jeu, op.302, c1950 [pubd in
album Les contemporains]; Le candélabre à sept branches, op.315, 1951;
Hymne de glorification, op.331, 1953–4; La couronne de Marguerite (Valse
en forme de rondo), op.353, 1956, orchd; Sonatina, op.354, 1956; Le globe
trotter, op.358, 1956, orchd; Les charmes de la vie, op.360, 1957, orchd
Org: Sonata, op.112, 1931; Pastorale, op.229, 1941; 9 Preludes, op.231b,
1942 [after incid music L’annonce faite à Marie, op.231; Petite suite,
op.348, 1955
Other solo inst: Exercice musical, op.134, pipeau, 1934; Ségoviana,
op.366, gui, 1957; Sonatina pastorale, op.383, vn, 1960; Sonata, op.437,
hp, 1971
Milhaud, Darius: Works
children’s works
A propos de bottes (Chalupt), op.118, vv, pf/(vns, vcs), 1932; Un petit peu
de musique, op.119 (Lunel), vv, pf/(vns, vcs), 1932; Un petit peu d’exercice,
op.133, vv, pf/(vns, vcs), 1934; Récréation (J. Kriéger), op.195, 1v, pf,
1938; Sornettes (F. Mistral), op.214, 2vv, 1940; Cours de solfège; Papillon,
papillonette, op.217, vv, pf, 1940; Touches noirs, touches blanches, op.222,
pf, 1941; Acceuil amical, op.326, pf, 1944–8; Une journée, op.269, pf, 1946;
L’enfant aime, op.289, 1948; Service pour la veille du sabbat, op.345, vv,
org, 1955
Milhaud, Darius: Works
electro-acoustic
Etude poétique (C. Roy), op.333, 1954
Milhaud, Darius: Works
arrangements
G. Auric: Adieu New York, pf 4 hands
F. Poulenc: Finale from Sonata, pf 4 hands, orch
E. Satie: 5 grimaces, pf; Gymnopédie, vn, pf; Jack-in-the-Box, orch;
Relâche: Entr’acte, pf 4 hands; Suite after 3 morceaux en forme de poire,
vn, pf

Principal publishers: Associated, Durand, Elkan-Vogel, Eschig, Heugel,

Leeds, Salabert, Universal
Milhaud, Darius
WRITINGS
Etudes (Paris, 1927)
Notes sans musique (Paris, 1949, 3/1973 as Ma vie heureuse;
Eng. trans., 1952/R) [autobiography]
ed. J. Drake: Notes sur la musique: essais et chroniques (Paris,
1982)
Milhaud, Darius
BIBLIOGRAPHY
G. Augsbourg: La vie de Darius Milhaud en images (Paris, 1935)
P. Collaer: Darius Milhaud (Antwerp, 1947, 2/1982; Eng. trans.,
1988) [incl. catalogue]
G. Beck: Darius Milhaud (Paris, 1949, 2/1956)
Entretiens avec Claude Rostand (Paris, 1952, 2/1992)
J. Petit, ed.: Correspondance Paul Claudel–Darius Milhaud,
Cahiers Paul Claudel, iii (Paris, 1961)
J. Roy: Darius Milhaud (Paris, 1968)
Cahiers Renaud-Barrault, no.88 (1975) [Claudel–Milhaud issue]
N.J. Schneider: ‘Zwischen Polytonalität und Geräuschmusik: Les
choéphores von Darius Milhaud’, Melos, xlix/4 (1987), 2–32
J. Drake: The Operas of Darius Milhaud (New York, 1989)
H. Ehrler: Untersuchungen zur Klaviermusik von Francis Poulenc,
Arthur Honegger und Darius Milhaud (Tutzing, 1990)
H.M. Rosen: The Influence of Judaic Liturgical Music in Selected
Secular Works of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco and Darius
Milhaud (diss., U. of California, San Diego,1991)
F. Bloch: Darius Milhaud 1892–1974 (Paris, 1992) [discography]
P. Caizergues and J. Mas, eds.: Jean Cocteau – Darius Milhaud:
Correspondance (n.p., 1992)
A. Lunel: Mon ami Darius Milhaud (Aix-en-Provence, 1992)
J. Rosteck: ‘Die lapidare Schönheit des Alltags: Darius Milhauds
erste Oper La brebis égarée’, NZM, Jg.153, no.5 (1992), 20–
26
Honegger – Milhaud: musique et ésthetique: Paris 1992
P. Huynh, ed.: Milhaud, musicien Françaix: zum 100. Geburtstag
von Darius Milhau-zum 80. Geburtstag von Jean Françaix
(Berlin, 1992)
M. Duchesneau: ‘La musique de chambre de Darius Milhaud’,
Canadian University Music Review, xiii (1993), 15–39
H. Malcomess: Die opéras minutes von Darius Milhaud (Bonn,
1993)
J. Rosteck: ‘Das “nette Spiel” der Polytonalität: zur
Wahlverwandschaft zwischen Darius Milhaud und Paul
Hindemith’, Mf, xlvi (1993), 268–84
T. Hirsbrunner: ‘Paul Hindemith und Darius Milhaud:
Gemeinsamkeiten und Kontraste’,Hindemith-Jahrbuch, xxiii
(1994), 124–43
W. Labhart: ‘Die jüdische Musik im Schaffen von Darius Milhaud’,
Kontexte: Musica iudaica: Prague 1994, 35–9
J. Rosteck: ‘Umrisse einer Theorie der Polytonalität bei Darius
Milhaud’,International Journal of Musicology, iii (1994), 235–90
S. Leopold: ‘Darius Milhauds Streichquartette’, Studien zur
Musikgeschichte: eine Festschrift für Ludwig Finscher, ed. A.
Laubenthal and K. Kusan-Windweh (Kassel, 1995), 727–36
J. Rosteck: Darius Milhauds Claudel-Opern: Christophe Colomb
und L’Orestie d’Eschyle(Laaber, 1995)
B.L. Kelly: ‘Milhaud’s Alissa Manuscripts’, JRMA, cxxi (1996),
229–45
R. Nichols: Conversations with Madeleine Milhaud (London, 1996)
D. Mawer: Darius Milhaud: Modality and Structure in Music of the
1920s (Aldershot, 1997)
M. Chimènes and C. Massip, eds.: Portrait(s) de Darius Milhaud
(Paris, 1998)
F. Langlois: Darius Milhaud [forthcoming]