Darius Milhaud and the Debate on Polytonality in the French Press of the 1920s
Identifieur interne : 000451 ( Istex/Corpus ); précédent : 000450; suivant : 000452Darius Milhaud and the Debate on Polytonality in the French Press of the 1920s
Auteurs : Franc Ois De Me DicisSource :
- Music and Letters [ 0027-4224 ] ; 2005-11.
English descriptors
- Teeft :
- Alfredo casella, Allegro appassionato, American musicological society, Amis musiciens, Arthur honegger, Atonal, Atonal composition, Atonality, Auric, Avec, Barbara kelly, Benjamin boretz, Boche, Casella, Charles koechlin, Cocteau, Collet, Comoedia, Compositional, Compositional style, Compositional technique, Concerts colonne, Courrier, Darius, Darius milhaud, Deborah mawer, Debussy, Different keys, Direct opposition, Early experiments, Enchanting vagueness, English translation, Feuilles libres, Fifth string quartet, First world, Francis poulenc, French composers, French nationalism, French press, Georges auric, Georges migot, Germaine tailleferre, Grand soir, Groupe, Henri collet, Honegger, Ibid, Individual members, Jean bernier, Jean cocteau, Jean deroux, Jean marnold, Jens rosteck, Jeremy drake, Jewish composer, Kelly, Koechlin, Lesser extent, Lettre ouverte, Leur, Louis durey, Louis vuillemin, Lunaire, Maurice ravel, Maurice touz, Michel faure, Migot, Mile vuillermoz, Milhaud, Modern music, More attention, More information, Musical press, Musicale, Musique, Musique polytonale, National roots, Nationalist, Nouvelle revue, Paul collaer, Paul landormy, Peuvent avoir, Pierrot, Pierrot lunaire, Pitch organization, Polytonal, Polytonal music, Polytonale, Polytonalit, Polytonality, Polytonie, Poulenc, Programme, Racist attacks, Ravel, Revue, Revue musicale, Richard strauss, Sacre, Salle gaveau, Satie, Schoenberg, Schoenbergian atonality, Schola cantorum, Second article, Seminal articles, Style boche, Suite symphonique, Temp, Theoretical terms, Tonality, Viennese atonality, Viola sonata, Vuillermoz, Wagnerian chromaticism, Young composers.
Abstract
The concept of polytonality occupies a prominent place in two 1923 articles by Darius Milhaud. Considerable attention has been devoted to his theory of polytonality in so far as it applies to his music (Rosteck 1992 and 1994, Cox 1993, Mawer 1997), but except for the work of Barbara Kelly (2003) the wider cultural context of its meaning has escaped close scrutiny. To grasp the significance of these two essays more clearly, we must determine how they relate to an important press debate on polytonality and atonality between 1920 and 1923. Fuelled by Henri Collet’s tagging of the Groupe des Six in 1920, as well as the recognition of Schoenberg’s music and legitimization of his atonal writing in France, the controversy raises the subjects of polytonality, atonality, nationalism (sometimes degenerating into racism), and the aesthetic clash of the impressionists, or established composers, with the young avant-garde, or Les Six. As a term, polytonality suffered from gross distortion. Best viewed as a technique, usually employed only locally and by a minority of composers, in the debate it became an idiom, such as tonality or atonality, rich enough to inspire a ‘school’, in this case Les Six, or even the entire French style. As a Jewish composer vulnerable to racist attacks, and as the main exponent of polytonality, Milhaud skilfully turned the issues of the debate to his advantage. He portrays Viennese atonality as the natural outcome of Wagnerian chromaticism, and polytonality as the extension of French diatonic modality. His construct appeals to both nationalist pride and ethnic tolerance, and his evolutionary principle positions polytonality as inevitable for nothing less than the whole French musical avant-garde.
Url:
DOI: 10.1093/ml/gci106
Links to Exploration step
ISTEX:EDBF936BCA64702C323E5B81FE682BCF12BCA5D2Le document en format XML
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Considerable attention has been devoted to his theory of polytonality in so far as it applies to his music (Rosteck 1992 and 1994, Cox 1993, Mawer 1997), but except for the work of Barbara Kelly (2003) the wider cultural context of its meaning has escaped close scrutiny. To grasp the significance of these two essays more clearly, we must determine how they relate to an important press debate on polytonality and atonality between 1920 and 1923. Fuelled by Henri Collet’s tagging of the Groupe des Six in 1920, as well as the recognition of Schoenberg’s music and legitimization of his atonal writing in France, the controversy raises the subjects of polytonality, atonality, nationalism (sometimes degenerating into racism), and the aesthetic clash of the impressionists, or established composers, with the young avant-garde, or Les Six. As a term, polytonality suffered from gross distortion. Best viewed as a technique, usually employed only locally and by a minority of composers, in the debate it became an idiom, such as tonality or atonality, rich enough to inspire a ‘school’, in this case Les Six, or even the entire French style. As a Jewish composer vulnerable to racist attacks, and as the main exponent of polytonality, Milhaud skilfully turned the issues of the debate to his advantage. He portrays Viennese atonality as the natural outcome of Wagnerian chromaticism, and polytonality as the extension of French diatonic modality. His construct appeals to both nationalist pride and ethnic tolerance, and his evolutionary principle positions polytonality as inevitable for nothing less than the whole French musical avant-garde.</div></front></TEI><istex><corpusName>oup</corpusName><keywords><teeft><json:string>polytonality</json:string><json:string>koechlin</json:string><json:string>vuillermoz</json:string><json:string>atonality</json:string><json:string>groupe</json:string><json:string>darius 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Best viewed as a technique, usually employed only locally and by a minority of composers, in the debate it became an idiom, such as tonality or atonality, rich enough to inspire a ‘school’, in this case Les Six, or even the entire French style. As a Jewish composer vulnerable to racist attacks, and as the main exponent of polytonality, Milhaud skilfully turned the issues of the debate to his advantage. He portrays Viennese atonality as the natural outcome of Wagnerian chromaticism, and polytonality as the extension of French diatonic modality. 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Robert</json:string><json:string>Steven Huebner</json:string><json:string>Flint de Médicis</json:string><json:string>Jane Fulcher</json:string><json:string>Louis Vuillemin</json:string><json:string>Arthur Honegger</json:string><json:string>Lili Boulanger</json:string><json:string>Germaine Tailleferre</json:string><json:string>Maurice Ravel</json:string><json:string>Poulenc</json:string><json:string>Henri Gauthier-Villars</json:string><json:string>Carlo Caballero</json:string><json:string>Benjamin Boretz</json:string><json:string>David</json:string><json:string>Harry White</json:string><json:string>Milhaud</json:string></persName><placeName><json:string>Paris</json:string><json:string>United States</json:string><json:string>Brazil</json:string><json:string>Braga</json:string><json:string>Carpentras</json:string><json:string>Madison</json:string><json:string>American</json:string><json:string>Vienna</json:string><json:string>Rome</json:string><json:string>York</json:string><json:string>Vichy</json:string><json:string>France</json:string><json:string>Italy</json:string></placeName><ref_url></ref_url><ref_bibl><json:string>April and July 1921</json:string><json:string>La Calade, 1992</json:string><json:string>Strasburg, 1982</json:string><json:string>Paris, 1994</json:string><json:string>Rome and Milan, 1931</json:string><json:string>University of Rochester, 1970</json:string><json:string>Liège, 1997</json:string><json:string>Aldershot, 2003</json:string><json:string>Paris, 1982</json:string><json:string>Stanford, 1962</json:string><json:string>Paris, 1976</json:string><json:string>Paris, 1987</json:string><json:string>January 1922</json:string><json:string>Paris, 1998</json:string><json:string>May 1920</json:string><json:string>Houston 2003</json:string><json:string>Liège, 1996</json:string><json:string>Paris, 1925</json:string><json:string>Halifax 2003</json:string><json:string>July 1922</json:string><json:string>Paris, 1997</json:string><json:string>Montreal 2004</json:string><json:string>London, 1989</json:string><json:string>Cork, 2001</json:string><json:string>July 1921</json:string><json:string>Florence, 1997</json:string><json:string>New York, 1989</json:string><json:string>Florence, 1941</json:string><json:string>Berlin, 1992</json:string><json:string>Paris, 1923</json:string><json:string>May 1923</json:string><json:string>L’Héroïque pastorale (Paris, 1922</json:string><json:string>New York, 1972</json:string><json:string>New York, 1955</json:string><json:string>Paris and London, 1922</json:string><json:string>Paris, 1973</json:string><json:string>Geneva, 1980</json:string><json:string>Aldershot, 1997</json:string><json:string>Paris, 1995</json:string><json:string>Paris, 1978</json:string><json:string>Geneva, 1985</json:string><json:string>Paris, 1922</json:string><json:string>May 1922</json:string></ref_bibl><bibl></bibl></unitex></namedEntities><ark><json:string>ark:/67375/HXZ-Z24PFFB8-6</json:string></ark><categories><wos></wos><scienceMetrix><json:string>arts & humanities</json:string><json:string>visual & performing arts</json:string><json:string>music</json:string></scienceMetrix><scopus><json:string>1 - Social Sciences</json:string><json:string>2 - Arts and Humanities</json:string><json:string>3 - Music</json:string></scopus><inist><json:string>sciences humaines et sociales</json:string></inist></categories><publicationDate>2005</publicationDate><copyrightDate>2005</copyrightDate><doi><json:string>10.1093/ml/gci106</json:string></doi><id>EDBF936BCA64702C323E5B81FE682BCF12BCA5D2</id><score>1</score><fulltext><json:item><extension>pdf</extension><original>true</original><mimetype>application/pdf</mimetype><uri>https://api.istex.fr/document/EDBF936BCA64702C323E5B81FE682BCF12BCA5D2/fulltext/pdf</uri></json:item><json:item><extension>zip</extension><original>false</original><mimetype>application/zip</mimetype><uri>https://api.istex.fr/document/EDBF936BCA64702C323E5B81FE682BCF12BCA5D2/fulltext/zip</uri></json:item><istex:fulltextTEI uri="https://api.istex.fr/document/EDBF936BCA64702C323E5B81FE682BCF12BCA5D2/fulltext/tei"><teiHeader><fileDesc><titleStmt><title level="a" type="main" xml:lang="en">Darius Milhaud and the Debate on Polytonality in the French Press of the 1920s</title><respStmt><resp>Références bibliographiques récupérées via GROBID</resp><name resp="ISTEX-API">ISTEX-API (INIST-CNRS)</name></respStmt></titleStmt><publicationStmt><authority>ISTEX</authority><publisher scheme="https://publisher-list.data.istex.fr">Oxford University Press</publisher><availability><licence><p>© The Author (2005). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.</p></licence><p scheme="https://loaded-corpus.data.istex.fr/ark:/67375/XBH-GTWS0RDP-M">oup</p></availability><date>2005</date></publicationStmt><notesStmt><note type="research-article" scheme="https://content-type.data.istex.fr/ark:/67375/XTP-1JC4F85T-7">research-article</note><note type="journal" scheme="https://publication-type.data.istex.fr/ark:/67375/JMC-0GLKJH51-B">journal</note></notesStmt><sourceDesc><biblStruct type="inbook"><analytic><title level="a" type="main" xml:lang="en">Darius Milhaud and the Debate on Polytonality in the French Press of the 1920s</title><author xml:id="author-0000"><persName><forename type="first">François</forename><surname>de Médicis</surname></persName></author><idno type="istex">EDBF936BCA64702C323E5B81FE682BCF12BCA5D2</idno><idno type="ark">ark:/67375/HXZ-Z24PFFB8-6</idno><idno type="DOI">10.1093/ml/gci106</idno><idno type="local">106</idno></analytic><monogr><title level="j">Music and Letters</title><title level="j" type="abbrev">Music and Letters</title><idno type="pISSN">0027-4224</idno><idno type="eISSN">1477-4631</idno><idno type="publisher-id">musicj</idno><idno type="PublisherID-hwp">musicj</idno><imprint><publisher>Oxford University Press</publisher><date type="published" when="2005-11"></date><biblScope unit="volume">86</biblScope><biblScope unit="issue">4</biblScope><biblScope unit="page" from="573">573</biblScope><biblScope unit="page" to="591">591</biblScope></imprint></monogr></biblStruct></sourceDesc></fileDesc><profileDesc><creation><date>2005</date></creation><langUsage><language ident="en">en</language></langUsage><abstract xml:lang="en"><p>The concept of polytonality occupies a prominent place in two 1923 articles by Darius Milhaud. Considerable attention has been devoted to his theory of polytonality in so far as it applies to his music (Rosteck 1992 and 1994, Cox 1993, Mawer 1997), but except for the work of Barbara Kelly (2003) the wider cultural context of its meaning has escaped close scrutiny. To grasp the significance of these two essays more clearly, we must determine how they relate to an important press debate on polytonality and atonality between 1920 and 1923. Fuelled by Henri Collet’s tagging of the Groupe des Six in 1920, as well as the recognition of Schoenberg’s music and legitimization of his atonal writing in France, the controversy raises the subjects of polytonality, atonality, nationalism (sometimes degenerating into racism), and the aesthetic clash of the impressionists, or established composers, with the young avant-garde, or Les Six. As a term, polytonality suffered from gross distortion. Best viewed as a technique, usually employed only locally and by a minority of composers, in the debate it became an idiom, such as tonality or atonality, rich enough to inspire a ‘school’, in this case Les Six, or even the entire French style. As a Jewish composer vulnerable to racist attacks, and as the main exponent of polytonality, Milhaud skilfully turned the issues of the debate to his advantage. He portrays Viennese atonality as the natural outcome of Wagnerian chromaticism, and polytonality as the extension of French diatonic modality. His construct appeals to both nationalist pride and ethnic tolerance, and his evolutionary principle positions polytonality as inevitable for nothing less than the whole French musical avant-garde.</p></abstract></profileDesc><revisionDesc><change when="2005-11">Published</change><change xml:id="refBibs-istex" who="#ISTEX-API" when="2017-10-6">References added</change></revisionDesc></teiHeader></istex:fulltextTEI><json:item><extension>txt</extension><original>false</original><mimetype>text/plain</mimetype><uri>https://api.istex.fr/document/EDBF936BCA64702C323E5B81FE682BCF12BCA5D2/fulltext/txt</uri></json:item></fulltext><metadata><istex:metadataXml wicri:clean="corpus oup, element #text not found" wicri:toSee="no header"><istex:xmlDeclaration>version="1.0" encoding="US-ASCII"</istex:xmlDeclaration><istex:docType PUBLIC="-//NLM//DTD Journal Publishing DTD v2.3 20070202//EN" URI="journalpublishing.dtd" name="istex:docType"></istex:docType><istex:document><article xml:lang="en" article-type="research-article">
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<p>The concept of polytonality occupies a prominent place in two 1923 articles by Darius Milhaud. Considerable attention has been devoted to his theory of polytonality in so far as it applies to his music (Rosteck 1992 and 1994, Cox 1993, Mawer 1997), but except for the work of Barbara Kelly (2003) the wider cultural context of its meaning has escaped close scrutiny. To grasp the significance of these two essays more clearly, we must determine how they relate to an important press debate on polytonality and atonality between 1920 and 1923.</p>
<p>Fuelled by Henri Collet’s tagging of the Groupe des Six in 1920, as well as the recognition of Schoenberg’s music and legitimization of his atonal writing in France, the controversy raises the subjects of polytonality, atonality, nationalism (sometimes degenerating into racism), and the aesthetic clash of the impressionists, or established composers, with the young avant-garde, or Les Six. As a term, polytonality suffered from gross distortion. Best viewed as a technique, usually employed only locally and by a minority of composers, in the debate it became an idiom, such as tonality or atonality, rich enough to inspire a ‘school’, in this case Les Six, or even the entire French style.</p>
<p>As a Jewish composer vulnerable to racist attacks, and as the main exponent of polytonality, Milhaud skilfully turned the issues of the debate to his advantage. He portrays Viennese atonality as the natural outcome of Wagnerian chromaticism, and polytonality as the extension of French diatonic modality. His construct appeals to both nationalist pride and ethnic tolerance, and his evolutionary principle positions polytonality as inevitable for nothing less than the whole French musical avant-garde.</p>
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<p>I<sc>n the early</sc> 1920s, Darius Milhaud participated actively in the development and dissemination of the innovative musical idiom of polytonality, and to a lesser extent in the promotion of atonality. This emerges not only in his compositions but also through his performing and journalistic activities. In 1923 he published two seminal articles on the subject of polytonality: ‘Polytonalité et atonalité’ and ‘The Evolution of Modern Music in Paris and Vienna’.<xref rid="FN1"><sup>1</sup></xref> Much attention has been devoted to Milhaud’s theory of polytonality in so far as it applies to his music: a dissertation by Virginia Cox, articles by Jens Rosteck, and a book by Deborah Mawer have already dealt with this question in some depth.<xref rid="FN2"><sup>2</sup></xref> But except for the recent book by Barbara Kelly,<xref rid="FN3"><sup>3</sup></xref> the wider cultural context of Milhaud’s theories has escaped serious scholarly attention. Despite its significant contribution, however, her book deals mainly with Milhaud’s ties to French musical tradition. She eloquently outlines the development of polytonal writing in the composer’s output as well as its relationship to the style of his predecessors and contemporaries. She also interprets his writings with respect to the formation of early twentieth-century French musical identity, the position he assigns to himself in his own self-fashioned historical narrative, and his deep attachment to his Jewish heritage. In this article, I shed new light on the performance and reception of Milhaud’s music and provide a closer look at his journalism of the early 1920s, by examining them in parallel with an important and voluminous press debate surrounding polytonality that took place concurrently. I demonstrate how his professional activities (as an individual and as part of the Groupe des Six) influenced the evolution of the debate, and how he reacted in turn to this controversy in two significant 1923 articles.</p>
<sec id="SEC1">
<title>THE DEBATE ON POLYTONALITY AND ITS MAIN ISSUES</title>
<p>The earliest writings on polytonality to frame the concept in theoretical terms date from 1923 and 1925 and originate with composers who had some stake in developing it as a compositional technique: Charles Koechlin (1867–1950), Alfredo Casella (1883–1947), and Darius Milhaud (1892–1974).<xref rid="FN4"><sup>4</sup></xref> Koechlin’s investigations into polytonality date from the early 1900s, while those of the younger Casella and Milhaud emerge in the 1910s. Milhaud later suggested that the daring harmonies of Stravinsky’s <italic>Le Sacre du printemps</italic>, which partly motivated the scandal of the work’s premiere in 1913, significantly stimulated compositional reflection and research on polytonality.<xref rid="FN5"><sup>5</sup></xref> But the word ‘polytonalité’ and its variant ‘polytonie’ actually appear in the press some time before these more theoretical discussions. The idea that different keys might be simultaneously combined in a work turns up in conservative critical discourse denouncing new developments in extended tonality as aberrations that would ultimately lead to anarchy and chaos. As early as 1870, a critic for the New York <italic>Sun</italic> invoked the idea of polytonality when he wondered aloud why Liszt’s spiritual affinity for the demonic in the Dante Symphony ‘did not inspire him to compose for each class of instruments in a separate key. The effect of demoniac confusion and horror at which he aimed would then certainly have been attained, and his audience sent howling with anguish out of the house.’<xref rid="FN6"><sup>6</sup></xref></p>
<p>Yet when French critics writing in the early twentieth century refer to the superimposition of keys, or actually use the term ‘polytonality’, such comments are not always intended as pejorative and should not necessarily be taken as a sign of anxiety about innovative works. They are sometimes offered in a positive vein or arise as attempts to make objective stylistic descriptions. With this in mind, Debussy’s reaction in 1903 to a concert devoted to the works of Richard Strauss should be viewed as highly perceptive, though not entirely devoid of irony. He notes that Strauss ‘superimposes the most distantly related keys in the most cold-blooded manner, for he is not concerned with what he has “abused” but only with what “new life” he has gained’.<xref rid="FN7"><sup>7</sup></xref> As I have already suggested, the critical reception of the premiere of <italic>Le Sacre</italic> included numerous descriptions of ‘polytonal’ writing and, to a lesser extent, atonal composition. Amid copious references to the scrambling of multiple keys, an article in <italic>Le Matin</italic> declared the work ‘resolutely polyrhythmic and polytonal’.<xref rid="FN8"><sup>8</sup></xref> Less than a year after <italic>Le Sacre</italic>, Alfredo Casella’s <italic>Notte di maggio</italic>, premiered at the prominent Concerts Colonne, was received by Émile Vuillermoz as a reformulation of Stravinsky’s innovations, which channelled all the elements of the Russian composer’s harmonic revolution into a more accessible form. For Vuillermoz, Casella’s work seemed ‘an example of poly-harmonic music—for this is how far we have come—and an absolutely exquisite one’.<xref rid="FN9"><sup>9</sup></xref> By the early 1920s, the use of the term had become widespread and gave rise to an active critical debate. But because polytonality was not discussed in theoretical terms prior to 1923, the debate reveals little musical consistency about pitch organization and harmonic idiom. Nonetheless, it is very revealing of its time, inasmuch as polytonality was used to project aesthetic, political, and nationalist agendas.<xref rid="FN10"><sup>10</sup></xref></p>
<p>The extended debate on polytonality was triggered by two articles of 1920 by Henri Collet, the composer–critic famous for baptizing ‘Le Groupe des Six’.<xref rid="FN11"><sup>11</sup></xref> The first of them was formulated as a review of <italic>Ma Vie musicale</italic> by Rimsky-Korsakov, as well as of Jean Cocteau’s <italic>Le Coq et l’arlequin</italic>. Written in the wake of his fruitful collaboration with Satie for the ballet <italic>Parade</italic> (1917), Cocteau’s book sets out an aesthetic programme for contemporary French music. A group of young composers had already gathered around Cocteau and Satie at about the time of its publication, and lent credence to its artistic dicta, though with a degree of commitment or understanding that has sometimes been called into question.<xref rid="FN12"><sup>12</sup></xref> In this article, Collet designated his young protégés ‘Le Groupe des Six’ by analogy with the Russian Five, underscoring the nationalist aspirations of the two groups. In his second article, Collet devoted more attention to the individual achievements of each member of Les Six. In an effort to establish the stylistic commonalities within the group, he seized on the notion of polytonality or ‘polytonie’ (to use his precise term), and linked the emergence of this compositional means to two larger issues: the rift between the new musical avant-garde and established composers, and French nationalism.</p>
<p>Collet’s articles positioned Les Six as a group of composers driven by nationalist ambitions, as the instigators of a stylistic revolution that resolutely broke with ‘impressionism’ and the teachings of the Schola Cantorum. Polytonality figures as a characteristic feature of all members of Les Six—an important point to bear in mind—and is explicitly tied to the expression of nationalist ideologies through the assumption that polytonal writing marks a return to the simplicity and clarity deemed essentially French. When Collet asks ‘What is after all the musical aesthetic of Les Six?’ he quickly answers: ‘They take the complexities of polytonality as a point of departure eventually to arrive at simplicity.’<xref rid="FN13"><sup>13</sup></xref> Later he adds that</p>
<p>
<disp-quote>
<p>polytonality, bereft of the enchanting vagueness of early experiments in the style, may, in its present, denuded state sound somewhat crude . . . Ears hypnotized by <italic>Debussyste</italic> charms must become accustomed to it. At last, melody may escape its psalmodic past without sacrificing pure French prosody. Les Six know their language.<xref rid="FN14"><sup>14</sup></xref></p>
</disp-quote>
</p>
<p>In the ensuing debate in the music periodicals, the majority of commentators used the term ‘polytonality’ as if it were self-explanatory. Exceptions to this were writings by critics such as Jean Deroux and Maurice Touzé, who pointed to its semantic flux.<xref rid="FN15"><sup>15</sup></xref> For example, Deroux reports in 1921 that ‘for the past several months much has been written about polytonal music (which appears variously as “polytonie” and “polytonalité”). But at the same time, a precise definition of the term has yet to be offered.’<xref rid="FN16"><sup>16</sup></xref> A critical shift in the reception of Schoenberg’s music in France during the early 1920s and the increased use of the term ‘atonality’ in the same period brought even greater terminological confusion to polytonality. For although a limited number of Schoenberg’s works had been performed in Paris since 1910, including the <italic>Klavierstücke</italic> Opp. 11 and 19 and <italic>Das Buch der hängenden Gärten</italic>, his music attracted almost no attention in the press. But as Marie-Claire Mussat has shown, attitudes in the French press towards Schoenberg changed radically in the 1920s: for progressives, he became an important composer whose ‘atonal’ works constituted a legitimate form of artistic expression.<xref rid="FN17"><sup>17</sup></xref> Milhaud was closely and actively involved with this change in attitude: he was the pianist in <italic>Das Buch der hängenden Gärten</italic> in 1921, and conducted the first French performances of <italic>Pierrot lunaire</italic> in 1921 and 1922.<xref rid="FN18"><sup>18</sup></xref> In the winter of 1922, Milhaud travelled with Francis Poulenc to Vienna, where he gave a private performance of <italic>Pierrot</italic> for Schoenberg, who presented him with scores of several of his works. At home in Paris, Milhaud dedicated his Fifth String Quartet to Schoenberg, a piece that is arguably his most rigorous and daring effort in polytonal writing.</p>
<p>Confusion over atonality and polytonality became so pronounced within the debate that these terms were at times used interchangeably, as catch-alls to describe all manner of adventurous works. This is clear in Jean Bernier’s review of <italic>Pierrot lunaire</italic>, where readers learnt that ‘tonality, it is understood, no longer exists, since this music is constantly polytonal and polyphonic’.<xref rid="FN19"><sup>19</sup></xref> Enlightened composer–critics such as Paul Le Flem were no less guilty of this kind of terminological conflation, and even comments by Koechlin, who had some experience of polytonality, are not without contradictions.<xref rid="FN20"><sup>20</sup></xref> In his 1917 article for the <italic>Courrier musical</italic>, Koechlin situates Schoenberg categorically within the atonal clan, whom he views as directly opposed to polytonality. Nonetheless, in various publications from the early 1920s, including the article ‘Polytonie’ inserted in a programme for the Concerts Colonne and in his series entitled ‘Étude sur les notes de passage’, Koechlin actually links Schoenberg with polytonality. In his 1925 article for the Lavignac <italic>Encyclopédie</italic> he plays both sides: when he describes atonality he illustrates his points with a number of excerpts from Schoenberg (pp. 738–46), and in the passage on polytonal counterpoint he writes: ‘[this style] has proved itself worthy, notably with Schoenberg’s <italic>Pierrot Lunaire</italic>’ (p. 706). It is likely that the ambiguity between polytonality and atonality that we find in Koechlin derives in part from his broad theoretical understanding of polytonal writing. For him, polytonality results from chromatic additions to a diatonic collection, which leads him to identify embryonic forms of it in purely tonal works as surprising as the overture to Mozart’s <italic>Don Giovanni</italic>, in which a chromatic passing note is placed against a triad (a D♯ over a D major triad).<xref rid="FN21"><sup>21</sup></xref> By extension, a chromatic passage completely devoid of polarity or recognizable tonality but replete with common-practice chords could qualify as polytonal.</p>
<p>Between 1920 and 1923, the use of the term polytonality in the musical press increased exponentially. As may be expected, it occurs prominently in articles devoted to Les Six such as André Coeuroy’s ‘Le Grand Soir de la musique’, or in studies dealing with individual members such as Henry Prunières’s examination of Milhaud for the <italic>Nouvelle revue française</italic> (<italic>NRF</italic>).<xref rid="FN22"><sup>22</sup></xref> But the term also appears in connection with composers outside the group. For instance, four articles in the <italic>Revue musicale</italic> between April and July 1921 devoted to composers as varying in compositional style as Ravel, Szymanowski, Stravinsky, and Prokofiev all feature discussions of polytonality.<xref rid="FN23"><sup>23</sup></xref> Even Saint-Saëns, who died in the midst of this debate, was posthumously positioned as a practitioner of this language thanks to the zeal of one hagiographer anxious to establish the pervasive avant-gardism of the composer’s late works.<xref rid="FN24"><sup>24</sup></xref></p>
</sec>
<sec id="SEC2">
<title>THE RIFT BETWEEN THE AVANT-GARDE AND THE MUSICAL ESTABLISHMENT</title>
<p>In an artistic community dominated by an established generation of composers whose music was frankly repudiated by Les Six and their supporters, the debate about polytonality was also one about the legitimacy of the young avant-garde. As part of his campaign in favour of these young composers, Cocteau defined their revolution both as a reaction against impressionist tendencies and as part of a return to the traditional French values of clarity and simplicity exemplified in Satie’s <italic>Parade</italic>. Such attacks, aimed at nationally acclaimed composers including the recently deceased Debussy and a middle-aged Ravel, prompted critical indignation.<xref rid="FN25"><sup>25</sup></xref> Still, it is important to bear in mind that opinions expressed publicly by members of Les Six and their supporters did not always represent the group as a whole, and that printed disclaimers and the distancing of individual members often induced critical confusion as to the official stance of the group. For instance, while individual members often appeared to condemn <italic>Debussysme</italic> as a whole, they maintained a fervent level of admiration for Debussy himself.<xref rid="FN26"><sup>26</sup></xref> Moreover, if Ravel was sometimes the target of criticism in the periodical <italic>Le Coq</italic> and elsewhere, and Milhaud was never able to bestow unreserved admiration upon him, we know that Louis Durey paid his respects to him in a 1921 article for <italic>The Chesterian</italic> and that Germaine Tailleferre even studied with him.<xref rid="FN27"><sup>27</sup></xref></p>
<p>Cocteau played an important role in promoting Les Six, and the attention they received as a result of his press campaign owes much to his genius for formula and flair for publicity. He contributed relentlessly to periodicals such as <italic>Le Mot</italic>, <italic>Paris-Midi</italic>, and <italic>Le Coq</italic>, and sent open letters to a variety of journals ranging in focus and readership from <italic>Comoedia</italic> to <italic>Le Temps</italic>. He often crossed swords with esteemed intellectuals and music critics including Jean Marnold from the <italic>Mercure de France</italic>, André Gide at the <italic>NRF</italic>, Jean Bernier in <italic>Le Crapouillot</italic>, Dominique Braga in <italic>Le Monde nouveau</italic>, Paul Souday at <italic>Le Temps</italic>, and the often virulent Émile Vuillermoz, who contributed regularly to <italic>Le Temps</italic> and other periodicals. Yet nowhere in this massive onslaught does Cocteau write of polytonality. It is Collet who proposes that there is a relationship between this style of writing, inherent in the music of Les Six, and Cocteau’s aim, the return to simplicity.</p>
<p>Collet’s amalgam of polytonality, Les Six, and simplicity was further disseminated by critics favourable to the group. In a lengthy 1921 article on the decline of impressionism, Paul Landormy draws on Collet’s idea and deploys it in a broad historical narrative that includes not only Les Six, but also <italic>Scholiste</italic> composers and impressionists, extending beyond music to include literature and visual art.<xref rid="FN28"><sup>28</sup></xref> Landormy asserts that the rejection of the vague and the imprecise, and the increased valuation of melody over harmony, is not exclusive to Les Six but rooted in works by Ravel, Albert Roussel, Déodat de Séverac, and Florent Schmitt. Séverac’s music ‘has no grounding in the pastel effects of impressionism. Here the horizontal triumphs over the vertical, the melodic over the harmonic, in preparation for the reversal of method that would soon be the work of our young musicians.’<xref rid="FN29"><sup>29</sup></xref> And if the simple, unadorned style of Les Six had ties to the past, its youthful composers stood apart because their revolution in musical language would usher in polytonality:</p>
<p>
<disp-quote>
<p>Les Six are harmonic revolutionaries, for after the <italic>Debussyste</italic> revolution, which already had such a pronounced effect on harmony, they are anxious to complete their own. . . . From now on, all the pitches in a chord will not necessarily be taken from the same key. Not only will single pitches be superimposed, but various keys as well.<xref rid="FN30"><sup>30</sup></xref></p>
</disp-quote>
</p>
<p>Adversaries of Les Six, or those who held polytonal writing in contempt, adopt various strategies in their discussions of polytonality, but generally tend to minimize the revolutionary character of the body of works championed by Cocteau. In defence of the music of Ravel, for instance, Alexis Roland-Manuel calls into question the very existence of polytonality. He observes that even if one were to concede its existence, it would still be possible to find examples of it in Ravel’s music.<xref rid="FN31"><sup>31</sup></xref></p>
<p>The most rabid detractor of Les Six was without a doubt the influential critic Émile Vuillermoz. A fixture in the musical press, he had previously deployed all the resources of his sumptuous style to defend innovative music produced prior to the First World War with a sure-handed ability to discern quality. Musically trained in direct opposition to the conservative tendencies and aesthetics of the Schola Cantorum and other <italic>Franckistes</italic> at the Société nationale de musique, he helped found the Société musicale indépendante (S.M.I.), and took up the cause of Debussy and Ravel as well as Stravinsky’s <italic>Le Sacre</italic>. After the war, he remained attached to the aesthetic grounding of his friends at the S.M.I. (Ravel, Koechlin, and Casella) and frequently displayed a condescending, often churlish attitude towards works produced by the emerging generation of post-war composers.<xref rid="FN32"><sup>32</sup></xref> Vuillermoz’s hostility towards Les Six was quite transparent and was perceived as excessive partisanship by Georges Jean-Aubry, among others. In his review of Vuillermoz’s <italic>Musiques d’aujourd’hui</italic> (a collection of articles published in 1923), Jean-Aubry’s initial praise of Vuillermoz’s elegant style of writing as well as his defence of new music gives way to censure. He deplores the ‘slightly harsh attitude assumed by M. Vuillermoz towards an active and sometimes obtrusive party of young French composers, an attitude which occasionally induces him to exaggerate the merits of those among the young people who keep aloof from it’.<xref rid="FN33"><sup>33</sup></xref></p>
<p>Vuillermoz’s campaign tactics against Les Six did not include an explicit calling into question of polytonality, as Roland-Manuel’s did. Instead, Vuillermoz worked to darken the group’s reputation and discredit it in the public eye by using a number of critical strategies, usually with some reference to polytonality. For instance, he praises Koechlin’s application of polytonality as rooted in a poetic intention, and ‘natural’ in appearance, in order to denounce the group’s use of this same technique as arbitrary, with a concomitant forced and artificial character. As a point of proof, Vuillermoz examines Koechlin’s ‘Le Chant du chevrier’ (from <italic>Paysages et marines</italic> for piano), where bitonality projects two distinct tonal planes, to suggest a melody heard from afar.<xref rid="FN34"><sup>34</sup></xref> Distancing the work of Koechlin from Les Six is more malicious than it may appear, for it is an indirect attack on the strong personal ties that bound Milhaud to Koechlin, and their common interest in polytonality. Koechlin, who had worked alongside Vuillermoz to found the S.M.I., was a mentor to Milhaud, who in turn had great sympathy and admiration for his older colleague. In the summer that followed the premiere of <italic>Le Sacre</italic>, Koechlin and Milhaud analysed the work together at the latter’s family estate in Provence.<xref rid="FN35"><sup>35</sup></xref> Milhaud also took part in the premieres of Koechlin’s Viola Sonata and some pieces from <italic>Paysages et marines</italic> for piano.<xref rid="FN36"><sup>36</sup></xref> In turn, when Milhaud’s <italic>Deuxième Suite symphonique</italic> was premiered by the Concerts Colonne in 1920, Koechlin wrote the aforementioned short manifesto on polytonality that was inserted in the programme. Moreoever, it was Milhaud who sent the young Francis Poulenc to study with Koechlin between 1921 and 1923, and later in 1925.<xref rid="FN37"><sup>37</sup></xref></p>
<p>In another article, Vuillermoz attempted to divert public attention from the group by championing Georges Migot (1891–1976), a contemporary of Les Six. Migot’s injury in combat during the First World War gave him war-hero status in the eyes of the French public. Moreover, as a multi-talented artist, Migot produced poetry and paintings, in addition to musical compositions that had been recognized with prestigious awards between 1918 and 1921. These included the Lili Boulanger, Lépaulle, Halphen, and Florence Blumenthal prizes, the last of which was given in recognition of the composer’s lifetime achievement, even though he was only 30 years old at the time. Vuillermoz took up Migot’s cause from the moment his earliest works were published, among them the piano quintet <italic>Les Agrestides</italic> and the Piano Trio, which both won awards.<xref rid="FN38"><sup>38</sup></xref> The critic compares the young composer’s struggle for notice, or notoriety, to the savage battle waged around Ankela on the rock of counsel in Kipling’s <italic>Jungle Book</italic>. He pits Migot’s seriousness and tangible achievements against the frivolity of Les Six, whom he finds long on words but short on substantial works.</p>
<p>Vuillermoz’s critical attacks challenged the press supporters of Les Six and mobilized other parties within the musical community who were already ill disposed to works of the group. Léon Vallas, for one, adopted Vuillermoz’s tactic of elevating Migot to the detriment of Les Six. In a short monograph on the composer, Vallas set him up as a serious, superior, and single-minded artist in direct opposition to the group, whom he cast as superficial:</p>
<p>
<disp-quote>
<p>As for the celebrated Groupe des Six, Migot has completely resisted their—often quite diverse—influences. Might he not, with some humour, set himself up as an analogous Groupe du Un, and become his very own Cocteau? He has in fact accomplished this through calm unity of thought, perfect logic, and a consistently serious attitude. With Migot we find neither salon dilettantism, nor fashion, nor caprice, but rather an individual with a solid background in the history of music, arts, and literature, possessed of precision matched by a penetrating sensibility and implacable reason.<xref rid="FN39"><sup>39</sup></xref></p>
</disp-quote>
</p>
<p>Migot became increasingly hostile and critical towards Les Six and polytonality between 1920 and 1923, very likely under the influence of the attention that he and his colleagues received in the press. Although his early theoretical writings make no direct mention of the group, Migot initially appeared to regard polytonality favourably, writing in 1920 that his generation had reacted to the previous one by conceiving of ‘a “tonal” music that is, however, polytonal or polymelodic’.<xref rid="FN40"><sup>40</sup></xref> Once cast as a counterweight to the frivolous activities of Les Six, Migot developed the idea of the <italic>polyplanaire</italic> or ‘polyplanal’, in which polytonality is subsumed as a simple technique within a broader compositional style, and argued the impossibility of combining more than two distinct keys.<xref rid="FN41"><sup>41</sup></xref> He also advocated intellectual diligence and emotional compositional depth in his concert reviews, in direct opposition to the aesthetic of musical humour he associated with Les Six.<xref rid="FN42"><sup>42</sup></xref> But such activities appear to have had little intimidating effect on the group. In a review from 1923, Milhaud takes Migot’s protector Vuillermoz to task for his failure to appreciate Roussel’s Second Symphony: ‘It is true that for M. Vuillermoz, M. Migot, who isn’t fooling anyone, is a great musician. But who cares? M. Roussel’s symphony was an absolute triumph the other evening.’<xref rid="FN43"><sup>43</sup></xref></p>
<p>In an article dating from December 1921, Vuillermoz redoubled his efforts to disparage Les Six. He accomplished this in part by refusing to acknowledge the historical grounding of the group’s stylistic trademark of polytonality, and sharply censured what he perceived as their pretentious claims to exclusivity with respect to this compositional technique. We learn from Vuillermoz that polytonality was not developed by Les Six but that it originated in the works of composers such as Strauss, Stravinsky, Koechlin, and Casella.<xref rid="FN44"><sup>44</sup></xref> More devastating for Les Six was Vuillermoz’s attempt to detach Honegger from the group and expose the artificiality of their association. He did this by underlining stylistic differences that forcefully dissociate Honegger’s very successful oratorio <italic>Le Roi David</italic> (premiered on 11 June 1921) from the official style espoused by the group, as defined by their promoter, Jean Cocteau. Vuillermoz claimed that, even though <italic>Le Roi David</italic> is highly personal, it was part of a tradition proceeding through Bach, Debussy, Ravel, and the primitivist Stravinsky. Honegger may use polytonality, ‘but never in an arbitrary manner, or in such a way as to attach him to a particular school. He produces wonderful effects in the descriptions of the crowds, in the processional entries where themes maintain their tonal independence amidst surrounding movement.’ Honegger thus ‘betrays the “cause” of his associates. If the latter are sincere, the excommunication of brother Honegger from the congregation of the “six” is only a matter of days away.’<xref rid="FN45"><sup>45</sup></xref></p>
<p>Beyond Migot, Vuillermoz’s attempt to exclude Honegger from the group continued to generate the most significant repercussions. His opinions spawned sympathetic writings from André Marot and Henri Gauthier-Villars (Willy), and blunt replies from Cocteau, Georges Auric, and Satie.<xref rid="FN46"><sup>46</sup></xref> Cocteau turned temporarily on Honegger in a public unveiling of Vuillermoz’s tactic. He denounced the latter’s attempts to divide the group through the ‘positioning’ of support for its most conservative member, warning that ‘He among you who is being “positioned” against the others still engages at times in practices that are on the way out.’<xref rid="FN47"><sup>47</sup></xref> Cocteau subsequently published ‘Deux Post-scriptum’ in which he softened his tone with respect to Honegger, reminding readers that despite their differences there was still enough common ground between them to support fruitful collaborations, proof of this being the songs and the projected opera <italic>Antigone</italic>.<xref rid="FN48"><sup>48</sup></xref> Thus Milhaud and Honegger attempted to calm the debate and reaffirm the ties that bound Honegger to the rest of the group, emphasizing the essentially amicable nature of these common ties.<xref rid="FN49"><sup>49</sup></xref></p>
<p>Amid Vuillermoz’s campaign to dismantle the group, Collet vacillated under fire in January 1922 with an article entitled ‘The Twilight of Les Six’. Here Collet writes that</p>
<p>
<disp-quote>
<p>The foremost musical critic of our time, whose studies are a testimony to his impeccable taste, precise understanding of technique, and the innate gift of writing, recently published an article on the occasion of the premiere of Honegger’s <italic>Roi David</italic>, which constitutes a definitive condemnation, without appeal, of what has become collectively known as the ‘Groupe des Six’.<xref rid="FN50"><sup>50</sup></xref></p>
</disp-quote>
</p>
<p>He distances himself somewhat from Les Six, in what may have appeared to them as a capitulation, by asking:</p>
<p>
<disp-quote>
<p>where does the irritation provoked by Les Six, with the exception of Honegger, come from? From their incredible success, but also from their lack of tact. They could have contented themselves with success. They chose notoriety. Milhaud might simply have had his works performed, but he preferred to write, to engage in aggressive music criticism, of a brand even more disagreeable than that of Debussy, who had some advantage over him in the form of an official position, as a Prix de Rome winner which, whatever one might wish to say, proves mastery of his art . . . at least for those who have studied at the Conservatoire. Milhaud’s unwise criticisms have only earned him public hostility and the dislike of a number of reputable musicians. And this is very dangerous for him, who composes too much, and can’t seem to watch his pen.<xref rid="FN51"><sup>51</sup></xref></p>
</disp-quote>
</p>
<p>After Cocteau’s reply to Vuillermoz, and with the publication of ‘Étude en Sixte’, Collet soon placed himself in the middle ground between the poet and the critic of <italic>Le Temps</italic>, preserving his role as the one who discovered the group. Here, he acknowledges Honegger’s genius (in the traditionalist vein), and vaunts ‘the truly new perfection’ of Les Six’s collaborative works with Cocteau (<italic>Le Boeuf sur le toit, Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel</italic>). But Collet also says that further evaluation of the group’s importance requires distance:</p>
<p>
<disp-quote>
<p>If it is possible at this stage to say that Honegger’s work is that of a ‘living man and posthumous artist’, and if I have no hesitation in saying the same of Georges Auric who has provided such faithful musical renditions of the innovative poetry of Jean Cocteau, then I must also admit that a certain distance is necessary to give a definitive judgement of Darius Milhaud’s highly varied output, or other attempts by members of his group.<xref rid="FN52"><sup>52</sup></xref></p>
</disp-quote>
</p>
<p>The end of the article alludes to Vuillermoz’s attempt to negate Les Six as pioneers of polytonality (although Collet does not use the word itself) and to claim that they merely followed the lead of Strauss, Koechlin, Stravinsky, and Casella. Collet concludes that even if polytonal writing did not originate with Les Six, their work is part of a renewal that he was the first to identify: ‘In spite of the purely innovative techniques of Richard Strauss, Koechlin, Stravinsky, and A. Casella, the appearance of the “Groupe des Six” marks a period in our modern music that I had the honour of first observing.’<xref rid="FN53"><sup>53</sup></xref></p>
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<title>NATIONALISM</title>
<p>The adoption of a nationalist position through the affirmation of an essentially French identity is another important aspect of the debate on polytonality. Thus to appreciate the controversy to the full, it is also necessary to understand the nationalist current in French music criticism of the period. During the First World War, nationalist sentiments intensified to the point where, in 1916, the Ligue pour la défense de la musique française put forward a motion to ban the performance of German works that were not yet in the public domain.<xref rid="FN54"><sup>54</sup></xref> Nationalist zeal continued throughout the 1920s, though not without the censure of enlightened intellectuals such as Romain Rolland, who preached the value of internationalism and cosmopolitanism, and spawned a moderate, ‘tolerant’ form of nationalism, which appears to have prevailed throughout the decade.<xref rid="FN55"><sup>55</sup></xref> In music we see this in Georges Jean-Aubry’s <italic>La Musique et les nations</italic>, which urges composers to remain faithful to their national roots in order to create ‘lasting’ works.<xref rid="FN56"><sup>56</sup></xref> Yet Jean-Aubry also reasons that composers from nations other than France should strive to express their own sensibility, and that French composers would do well to study works by non-French composers, as long as they adapt any foreign models to French national traditions. During the late 1910s and early 1920s, nationalism also occupied a significant place in Cocteau’s aesthetic discourse, though it is a sentiment that changed and evolved over the years. The kind of tempered, non-exclusive form of nationalism found in his 1920 <italic>Le Coq</italic> articles bears a striking resemblance to the form of nationalism that Milhaud would later adopt in his writings of 1923.</p>
<p>In <italic>Le Coq et l’arlequin</italic>, discussions of major figures of the musical avant-garde are frequently cool, and framed in nationalist terms. The eponymous cockerel refers to a traditional symbol of France and incarnates Cocteau’s ideal of the purely Gallic. By opposition, the harlequin with his billowing costume represents the amorphous nature of hybrid works, the result of foreign influences gone awry. In Cocteau’s eyes, even the work of Debussy, with its debt to Musorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, fails to escape such influence—what Cocteau stigmatizes, with his usual wit, as ‘Debussy played in the French manner, but with a Russian pedal’.<xref rid="FN57"><sup>57</sup></xref> Only the work of Satie is singled out for unreserved praise. Contemporaries such as Jean Bernier, Jean Marnold, and Paul Landormy read <italic>Le Coq</italic> as the expression of an ultra-protectionist attitude.<xref rid="FN58"><sup>58</sup></xref> Passing references to positive foreign influences in <italic>Le Coq et l’arlequin</italic> are too transitory to mitigate the forceful tone of an exclusive nationalism. American music, for instance, is glossed over thus: ‘what sweeps away impressionism, for example, is an American dance I once saw at the Casino de Paris’.<xref rid="FN59"><sup>59</sup></xref> And although Cocteau mentions the salutary influence of Schoenberg further on, he immediately afterwards writes him off as a ‘blackboard musician’.<xref rid="FN60"><sup>60</sup></xref></p>
<p>In opposition to the exclusive nationalist tone that permeates <italic>Le Coq et l’arlequin</italic>, the articles that Cocteau wrote in 1920 for the periodical <italic>Le Coq</italic> betray a much more tempered nationalism. The group’s declaration, ‘Arnold Schoenberg, Les Six salute you’, in the inaugural issue was recognized by a number of journalists as a contradiction of Cocteau’s earlier position. This led him to explain himself in the following issue with an article entitled ‘Point sur l’I’, which defined nationalism as respectful of other cultures, an opinion very close to Jean-Aubry’s described above. Cocteau tells his readers: ‘This assertion of admiration for Schoenberg demonstrates the quality of our nationalism. EACH TO HIS OWN, TO THE BEST OF HIS ABILITY, for the international artist lacks an Esperanto. For my part, I am fully prepared to shake the hand of the young German who is fed up with Wagner.’<xref rid="FN61"><sup>61</sup></xref> This shows the extent to which, despite the overblown language of <italic>Le Coq et l’arlequin</italic>, Cocteau and Les Six are far from provincial in their attitudes. Ample proof lies in their fascination with and/or adoption of a variety of foreign stylistic innovations from American jazz and music hall, Brazilian popular music, and Schoenbergian atonality. Moreover, this attitude towards Schoenberg would later be revealed as strikingly similar to Milhaud’s, as expressed in his articles of 1923.</p>
<p>Other segments of French society held much more extreme nationalist positions, including organized groups who sought to propagate xenophobia. As Jane Fulcher has shown, organizations such as Action française used artistic productions as forums for the dissemination of their own xenophonic ideals, giving voice to their opinions in periodicals such as the <italic>Revue critique des idées et des livres</italic> and attracting sympathy from highly visible musicians such as Vincent d’Indy.<xref rid="FN62"><sup>62</sup></xref> Inspired by Wagner’s anti-Semitic tirades, d’Indy published similar ideas in various periodicals, from the extreme right-wing <italic>L’Occident</italic> to the more moderate <italic>Revue musicale</italic>. One of the more celebrated examples dates from 1923, when d’Indy declares Wagner a hero for liberating France from the ‘Italo-Judaic-eclectic yoke’.<xref rid="FN63"><sup>63</sup></xref></p>
<p>Occasionally, polytonal music was singled out as the target of racist, and sometimes more specifically anti-Semitic, attacks. The involvement of polytonality in nationalist discourse is illustrated by two examples that also enable a better assessment of the singularity of Collet’s and Milhaud’s opinions, as well as a more nuanced evaluation of Collet’s influence in the debate. The first example is a brief altercation between d’Indy and Koechlin in 1917.<xref rid="FN64"><sup>64</sup></xref> Following an abortive attempt to merge the Société nationale and the Société musicale indépendante, d’Indy gave free voice to his ire, denouncing a variety of avant-garde compositional styles associated with members of the S.M.I., including <italic>Debussysme</italic>, polytonal writing, and atonality. He begins in a conciliatory manner, affirming that musicians of all schools are universally devoted to the cult of beauty. He compares the variety of modern stylistic trends to differences in clothing styles, clearly signifying with his choice of metaphor that they are not all cut from the same cloth and thus not all endowed with the same quality. For d’Indy, the polytonal practitioner ‘has not the least hesitation in exhibiting himself in the pyjamas of two superimposed keys (<italic>style boche</italic>)’. The atonal composer ‘proudly dons a brilliant jacket when he relinquishes all form and all tonality’.<xref rid="FN65"><sup>65</sup></xref> Among other issues, Koechlin took offence at ‘the epithet “<italic>style Boche</italic>” applied to “clothing made from superimposed keys” ’. He cites a number of non-Germans who had used polytonality, such as the Hungarians Bartók and Kodály, as well as the French composer Alfred Bruneau, and goes on to say that ‘the superimposition of two keys is not in and of itself <italic>Boche</italic>. It is possible to create effects that are compatible with our national qualities. And it would be a shame to discredit these means a priori by dismissing them as <italic>Boche</italic>.’<xref rid="FN66"><sup>66</sup></xref> In short, as early as 1917, the argument about polytonality was already underpinned by a pronounced nationalist tone and had become a sticking point in the conflict between progressive and conservative composers. Thus Collet’s articles of 1920 stand in high relief because they were based on a new premiss: polytonality, now associated with the avant-garde of Les Six, became a positive attribute of French culture. That is, it is neither a negative derivative of German art, as d’Indy would have had it, nor an ethnically neutral device, as the internationlist Koechlin proposes.</p>
<p>My second example of the interaction between discussions of polytonality and nationalism is the resurfacing in 1923 of the idea that polytonal writing stemmed from a nefarious German influence, now reinforced by the confusion between this technique and Schoenbergian atonality, and compounded by anti-Semitic sentiment. On New Year’s Day, Louis Vuillemin published an article in the <italic>Courrier musical</italic> using the French premiere of <italic>Pierrot lunaire</italic> as a launching pad for a virulent anti-Semitic and racist attack on the Concerts Wiéner. This article is hardly a review since it identifies neither the performers nor the works given at the concert, but the references were clear and explicit enough for Ravel and other composers to respond with an indignant letter of protest in support of Jean Wiéner, who also wrote a letter to the editor.<xref rid="FN67"><sup>67</sup></xref> The concert involved highly visible Jewish musicians: Milhaud, Schoenberg, and the pianist and concert organizer Wiéner. In previous events, Wiéner had showcased jazz and pieces by foreign avant-garde composers such as Stravinsky and Alois Hába. Vuillemin’s article, bearing the insulting title ‘Concerts métèques’, is replete with commonplace anti-Semitic trappings, including an international plot to corrupt French taste, financing from the occult (referring implicitly to Jewish banks), and negative physical stereotypes of Jewish near-sightedness.<xref rid="FN68"><sup>68</sup></xref> Vuillemin’s response to the objections of Ravel and other French composers was equally hostile, and included the following passage equating polytonality with a foreign weapon used in prisoner-of-war camps:</p>
<p>
<disp-quote>
<p>As for the astonishing attitude of [Ravel and his co-signataries], I see only one explanation: they have been intoxicated by gas! . . . And I hope that these pioneers will not ultimately find themselves prisoners! . . . That would serve them right! They would be packed off to a ‘bitonal’ penitentiary where they would be forgotten until the end of the war.<xref rid="FN69"><sup>69</sup></xref></p>
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<sec id="SEC4">
<title>MILHAUD’S 1923 PRESS CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE DEBATE ON POLYTONALITY</title>
<p>The picture I have drawn of musical life in France during the 1920s is vital to any understanding of the particular position occupied by Darius Milhaud. As a Jewish composer, Milhaud was vulnerable to racist attacks from right-wing nationalists.<xref rid="FN70"><sup>70</sup></xref> But as the principal exponent of ‘polytonal’ writing, he seems also to have positioned himself wilfully in the line of fire. For it was a battle that he had, of his own volition, helped to instigate. Milhaud served as an active agent in the debate, not only by composing polytonal works but also by contributing articles to the press—he was the most prolific writer of the Groupe des Six.<xref rid="FN71"><sup>71</sup></xref> His patently sincere devotion to the exploration of polytonal resources, and the rigour of his compositions in this manner notwithstanding, Milhaud exercised a keen sense of self-promotion and publicity in shaping the reception of his works, and in bringing polytonality to the fore in his press articles. He was, after all, working at a time when a robust <italic>succès de scandale</italic> could boost a career (famous precedents include <italic>Pelléas et Mélisande</italic>, <italic>Le Sacre du printemps</italic>, and <italic>Parade</italic>), and he did not hesitate to provoke his readers, audiences, and critics.</p>
<p>Two daring polytonal works by Milhaud resulted in notable scandals, and fuelled the quarrel over polytonality: the <italic>Suite symphonique no. 2</italic> (after <italic>Protée</italic>) in 1920, and the <italic>Cinq Études</italic> for piano and orchestra in 1921.<xref rid="FN72"><sup>72</sup></xref> At the premiere of the suite, the audience was so disruptive that the conductor, Gabriel Pierné, stopped the performance in order to instruct them to contain their opinions until the end of the work. Two days after this concert performance, the programme was revised to include the subtitle ‘Polytonality’ and a short manifesto signed by Koechlin, another well-known partisan of polytonal composition.<xref rid="FN73"><sup>73</sup></xref> As a whole, the two performances resulted in a scandal on the scale of the ones that had followed <italic>Le Sacre</italic> and <italic>Pierrot lunaire</italic>.<xref rid="FN74"><sup>74</sup></xref> While it may be difficult from our perspective to imagine a reaction of this magnitude, the vast press coverage of this concert is extremely unusual in the history of premieres. Milhaud’s work received far more attention than an interlude from Honegger’s <italic>La Mort de Sainte Alméenne</italic>, which was in the programme. Koechlin’s manifesto had its effect, and a number of critics who had not mentioned polytonality in their initial reviews scrambled to cover their tracks in subsequent commentaries, where they duly introduced the term.<xref rid="FN75"><sup>75</sup></xref> The octogenarian Saint-Saëns published a letter to Pierné in <italic>Le Ménestrel</italic>, criticizing polytonality and arguing that ‘several instruments playing in different keys never made music, only cacophony’.<xref rid="FN76"><sup>76</sup></xref> The scandal wreacked such havoc that, according to Koechlin, it delayed Pierné’s election to the Institut.<xref rid="FN77"><sup>77</sup></xref></p>
<p>Bearing in mind that Milhaud had a vested interest in polytonality and an acute sense of publicity, it seems plausible that he was the anonymous source for a crucial point in Collet’s second article, when the latter makes a connection between the new simplicity of Les Six and their polytonal style. If this is indeed the case, Milhaud actually instigated the press controversy surrounding polytonality. Although this hypothesis has no basis in hard evidence, if we look closely at Collet’s text and the work of Les Six during this period, for a number of reasons Milhaud emerges as Collet’s most probable informant. Through a process of elimination, we may exclude Cocteau, since, as noted earlier, he never invoked the notion of polytonality in his journalistic crusade for Les Six. Auric and Poulenc, though we know that they were fairly ahead of their time, were both only 21 at the outset of the debate. And if Milhaud was not the only individual firmly committed to polytonal composition in the group, he was the most advanced user of it, and the only one to have undertaken an active, intensive, and systematic exploration of it. In sum, no other member of Les Six had such an intimate knowledge of polytonality when the group met Collet in 1920.</p>
<p>Still, the most compelling evidence is Collet’s description of the evolution of polytonal writing among Les Six, a manner that according to Collet began with ‘polytonic complexity’ but eventually resulted in ‘simplicity’, or in a style that disengaged itself from ‘the enchanting vagueness of its initial stages’ to arrive at its ‘present denuded state’. To what music does Collet refer here? It is quite possible to conceive of an evolutionary path from the rich and shimmering polytonality of <italic>Le Sacre</italic> ending in the simple, unadorned works of Les Six. The composer who would have been best able to speak of this transformation was surely Milhaud, the only member of the group whose output may be said to have traced the same path. In the mid-1910s, Milhaud’s early experiments with ‘harmonic’ polytonality reached their most extreme in the dense textures of <italic>Les Choéphores</italic>, which is full of superimposed triads and common-practice chords.<xref rid="FN78"><sup>78</sup></xref> Endeavours in what could be called ‘contrapuntal’ polytonality, in which voices in specific diatonic keys are layered, began with transitional works such as <italic>Le Retour de l’enfant prodigue</italic> and <italic>Les Euménides</italic> and culminated in the thin, transparent textures of the first two chamber symphonies Opp. 43 and 49, the Sonata for piano and three woodwind instruments Op. 47, and the song cycle <italic>Machines agricoles</italic>. Works in this new style began to appear at the end of Milhaud’s stay in Brazil and on his return to Paris, just before the celebrated encounter between Les Six and Collet.<xref rid="FN79"><sup>79</sup></xref></p>
<p>In 1923 Milhaud published the two major articles mentioned at the outset of this essay in which polytonality occupies an important place: ‘Polytonalité et atonalité’, and ‘The Evolution of Modern Music in Paris and Vienna’. By this time, several members of Les Six had lost interest in polytonal writing. Tailleferre is particularly blunt in this respect, writing to Poulenc in August of 1923, ‘I have followed your excellent advice and no longer compose <italic>polytonie</italic>’.<xref rid="FN80"><sup>80</sup></xref> Milhaud’s articles deftly synthesize the main arguments of the debate and establish a forceful, original position in the clash between the older, established generation of composers and the post-war avant-garde. Amid the confused formulations of his colleagues and contemporaries, Milhaud provides readers with clear descriptions of polytonality and atonality that clarify the relationship of these compositional devices to tonality. Moreover, these concepts are also sifted through the rhetoric of a tolerant, non-exclusive form of nationalism that would have rallied support from the majority of his readership.</p>
<p>Milhaud’s writings betray a clear awareness of tensions between the young avant-garde and the established generation of composers, and he presents atonality and polytonality as new resources developed as part of contemporary musical trends. He insists that these idioms in no way violate fundamental musical principles. Instead they represent the culmination of various traditions, for ‘each time we speak of newness, of revolution for a musician, we may be sure that any rich new element that is introduced is underpinned by a solid tradition’.<xref rid="FN81"><sup>81</sup></xref> For Milhaud, this tradition is grounded in the national roots of the composer. ‘we do not invent tradition, we experience it, we work within it. It results not only from the individual tastes of the musician, his personal predilections, and life experiences that may have an influence on his work, but above all from his race’.<xref rid="FN82"><sup>82</sup></xref></p>
<p>Milhaud’s conception of tradition stems from a vision of history as teleological and evolutionary, which allows him to view the relationship between atonality and polytonality as deriving from different tonal traditions, and which, in turn, allows him to maintain a non-exclusive nationalist stance. Polytonality and atonality are treated as the natural extensions of Latinate and Teutonic national traditions respectively. On one hand, polytonality continues the modal diatonicism of Debussy (since it is based on diatonic melodies and triadic harmonies). On the other, Schoenbergian atonality furthers Wagnerian chromaticism. By underscoring the importance of Schoenberg even as he places him in a parallel, but independent, line of development of Latinate culture, Milhaud recalls Cocteau’s effacement with respect to nationalism discussed above, ‘each to his own, as much as possible’. Milhaud’s view departs radically from Koechlin’s, for whom polytonality was a procedure devoid of any nationalist sensibility or association. But Milhaud may well have influenced Casella’s thinking on the issue. The latter maintained a strong interest in Viennese atonality and Stravinskian polytonality during the 1910s, and ostensibly flirted with both styles from 1914 until he abandoned atonal composition entirely in 1918.<xref rid="FN83"><sup>83</sup></xref> If Casella’s first non-theoretical articles on polytonality predate Milhaud’s,<xref rid="FN84"><sup>84</sup></xref> it is only after the publication of ‘Polytonalité et atonalité’ that he expresses his disavowal of atonality in cultural terms, dismissing it as poorly suited to the Latin sensibility.<xref rid="FN85"><sup>85</sup></xref> A striking detail highlights the similarities between the discourses of Milhaud and Casella: their invoking of the idea of the Latin, not the French or the Italian, sensibility. For when Milhaud refers to the use of polytonality outside France, he must have been thinking of Italy, where Casella and his young entourage vaunted its virtues.<xref rid="FN86"><sup>86</sup></xref></p>
<p>According to Milhaud, however, polytonality and atonality are not valid modes of expression simply by their nature or essence. They gain legitimacy only when they arise from an authentic melodic inspiration. In fact, the value of a work in Milhaud’s estimation rests entirely with its melody:</p>
<p>
<disp-quote>
<p>What determines the polytonal or atonal nature of a work is much less the method used in writing than the essential melody on which it is based, and which originates only in the heart of the musician. It is an absolute, organic necessity for the initial melody that will check these procedures from becoming embroiled in a system that would otherwise be still-born.<xref rid="FN87"><sup>87</sup></xref></p>
</disp-quote>
</p>
<p>But ultimately this reasoning is circular because this melodic sense is in turn intimately linked to a national tradition. In Milhaud’s words, ‘only melody allows us to work with our imagination while bringing us closer to our tradition’.<xref rid="FN88"><sup>88</sup></xref></p>
<p>In sum, even before the notion of polytonality was established in theoretical terms, the term had been used in the French press for nearly two decades with various intended meanings until two seminal articles by Henri Collet ignited the debate surrounding this compositional technique. Two important aspects fuelled the debate: the conflict between the established and the younger generation of composers, and the expression of a French national identity in music. The brief survey provided here demonstrates how quickly and how widely arguments and disputes could develop within a period of less than three years in the context of great cultural and musical experimentation and productivity. Returned to their original context, the ideological stakes at play in Milhaud’s influential texts on polytonality become much more readily apparent. His argument has its faults, a major one being his treatment of polytonality as an idiom on the same scale as tonality and atonality. To date there is no consensus in the musicological and music theoretical communities as to the exact nature of polytonality.<xref rid="FN89"><sup>89</sup></xref> Yet on the whole, we appear to have reduced it to a short-lived compositional style, the platform of a few composers, mainly Milhaud and Koechlin, in France. According to Serge Gut, ‘in retrospect, we see that fascination with polytonality was short-lived, between 1910 and 1930. In our own time it has been reduced to an occasional compositional technique.’<xref rid="FN90"><sup>90</sup></xref> Even within Milhaud’s oeuvre, polytonality is often an intermittent procedure, and works that are continuously polytonal, such as the Fifth String Quartet, are very rare. Nonetheless, this fault forces us to come to grips with the extent to which ideological debates may hold sway over aesthetic arguments. Milhaud’s critical ingenuity is certainly to be admired, because he managed to find a place for himself between national extremists and moderates while handily exploiting an evolutionary view of history to erect his compositional interests as nothing less than the foundation for the post-war generation of the French musical avant-garde.</p>
</sec>
<sec>
<title></title>
<p>
<fn xml:lang="en">
<p>Preliminary versions of this article were presented at the annual meetings of the Canadian University Music Society (Halifax 2003) and the American Musicological Society (Houston 2003) as well as the symposium ‘Musique française 1900–1945: Perspectives multidisciplinaires sur la modernité’ held jointly by the Observatoire International de la Création Musicale and the Université de Montréal (Montreal 2004).</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN1" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>1</sup>
</label>
<p>The first of these was originally published as ‘Polytonalité et atonalité’, in <italic>Revue musicale</italic>, 4/4 (1923), 29–44; it was reprinted in Darius Milhaud, <italic>Notes sur la musique: Essais et chroniques</italic>, comp. and ed. Jeremy Drake (Paris, 1982), 173–88. The genesis and dissemination of ‘The Evolution of Modern Music in Paris and Vienna’ is fairly complex. In <italic>Tradition and Style in the Works of Darius Milhaud 1912–1939</italic> (Aldershot, 2003), Barbara L. Kelly suggests that the text may be a reworking of a lecture that Milhaud gave at Harvard University during his first North American tour in 1922. It was originally published in English in two American journals: the <italic>North American Review</italic>, 35 (Apr. 1923), 544–5 and the <italic>Franco-American Musical Society Bulletin</italic>, 1 (Sept. 1923), 9 (See Ronald V. Wiecki, ‘A Chronicle of Pro Musica in the United States (1920–1944); with a Biographical Sketch of its Founder, E. Robert Schmitz’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin at Madison, 1992), 147–48). Milhaud later published these ideas in French in an article entitled ‘La Musique française depuis la guerre’, in his book <italic>Études</italic> (Paris, 1927). Jeremy Drake has translated the original version of the article into French, but his text is based in part on the French version that appears in <italic>Études</italic>. See Milhaud, <italic>Notes sur la musique</italic>, 193–205.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN2" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>2</sup>
</label>
<p>Virginia Cox, ‘Simultaneous Diatonic Harmonic Contexts in Early Twentieth-Century Music’ (Ph.D. diss., West Virginia University, 1993); Jens Rosteck, ‘Auf der Suche nach dem besonderen Glanz: Darius Milhauds lebenslange Reise zur Polytonalität’, in <italic>Milhaud ‘Musicien Françaix’: Zum 100. Geburtstag von Darius Milhaud—Zum 80. Geburtstag von Jean Françaix</italic> (Berlin, 1992), 22–27; id., ‘Umrisse einer Theorie der Polytonalität bei Darius Milhaud’, <italic>International Journal of Musicology</italic>, 3 (1994), 235–90; Deborah Mawer, <italic>Darius Milhaud: Modality and Structure in Music of the 1920s</italic> (Aldershot, 1997).</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN3" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>3</sup>
</label>
<p>Kelly, <italic>Tradition and Style</italic>.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN4" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>4</sup>
</label>
<p>Darius Milhaud, ‘Polytonalité et atonalité’. Alfredo Casella, ‘Problemi sonori odierni’, <italic>La prora</italic> (Feb. 1924), 5–18. This article subsequently appeared in English translation as ‘Tone-Problems of Today’, <italic>Musical Quarterly</italic>, 10 (1924), 159–71; then the Italian original was reproduced in a collection of Casella’s articles, <italic>21 + 26</italic> (Rome and Milan, 1931), 61–83. Charles Koechlin, ‘Évolution de l’harmonie: Période contemporaine, depuis Bizet et César Franck jusqu’à nos jours’, in <italic>Encyclopédie de la musique et dictionnaire du Conservatoire</italic>, ii/1, ed. Albert Lavignac and Lionel de La Laurencie (Paris, 1925), 591–760.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN5" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>5</sup>
</label>
<p>Darius Milhaud, <italic>Entretiens avec Claude Rostand</italic> (2nd edn., Paris, 1992), 48–9.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN6" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>6</sup>
</label>
<p>Cited in Nicolas Slonimsky, <italic>Lexicon of Musical Invective: Critical Assaults on Composers since Beethoven’s Time</italic> (2nd edn., Seattle and London, 1965), 112.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN7" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>7</sup>
</label>
<p>‘Il superpose les tonalités les plus éperdument éloignées avec un sang-froid absolu qui ne se soucie nullement de ce qu’elles peuvent avoir de “déchirant”, mais seulement de ce qu’il leur demande de “vivant”.’ Published in <italic>Gil Blas</italic>, 30 Mar. 1903, and repr. in Claude Debussy, <italic>Monsieur Croche et autres écrits</italic> (2nd edn., Paris, 1987), 138.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN8" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>8</sup>
</label>
<p>‘Résolument polyrythmique et polytonale’. A. D., ‘Théâtre des Champs-Élysées: 1<sup>ère</sup>Représentation du <italic>Sacre du Printemps’</italic>, <italic>Le Matin</italic>, 30/10685 (30 May 1913), 3. An abundant selection of reviews that followed the premiere of <italic>Le Sacre</italic> has been reprinted in François Lesure (ed.), <italic>Igor Stravinsky, Le Sacre du Printemps, dossier de presse</italic> (Geneva, 1980). The most complete collection of these reviews is found in Truman C. Bullard, ‘The First Performance of Igor Stravinsky’s Sacre du Printemps with Reviews of Sacre, 1913 in English Translation and Original French Texts of Reviews’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Rochester, 1970).</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN9" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>9</sup>
</label>
<p>‘Un spécimen de musique poly-harmonique—car nous en sommes là!—absolument exquis’. Émile Vuillermoz, ‘La Musique au Concert’, <italic>Comoedia</italic>, 30 Mar. 1914, p. 2. This article was reprinted under the title ‘La Musique “poly-harmonique” et <italic>La Nuit de mai</italic>, d’Alfred Casella’, <italic>Poème et Drame: Atlas international des arts modernes</italic>, 2/7 (Jan.–Mar. 1914), 11–15.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN10" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>10</sup>
</label>
<p>Barbara Kelly touches on the 1920s debate on polytonality in ch. 6 of <italic>Tradition and Style</italic>, 142–68. She cites many articles written within the context of the controversy, but she is primarily interested in the theoretical stakes of polytonality (fundamentals of polytonal writing, perceptive limits) and treats them within a synchronic perspective, showing how the issues of these debates have been perpetuated in recent arguments on polytonal writing.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN11" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>11</sup>
</label>
<p>‘Un livre de Rimski et un livre de Cocteau. Les cinq Russes, les six Français et Érik Satie’, <italic>Comoedia</italic>, 16 Jan. 1920, p. 2; and ‘Les Six français: Darius Milhaud, Louis Durey, Georges Auric, Arthur Honegger, Francis Poulenc et Germaine Tailleferre’, <italic>Comoedia</italic>, 23 Jan. 1920, p. 2. Both articles are reprinted in Jean Roy, <italic>Le Groupe des Six</italic> (Paris, 1994), 192–8 and 198–203. Already in the 1920s, Collet boasted that he had coined the name ‘Les Six’. See Henri Collet, <italic>Comoedia</italic>, 12 Aug. 1921, p. 2.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN12" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>12</sup>
</label>
<p>Much ink has flowed over the founding of the group to establish the extent to which their association was arbitrary or justified, and to demonstrate the extent to which Collet was either manipulated or worked on his own initiative to perpetuate the idea of Les Six. Undoubtedly the most daring thesis has been advanced by Michel Faure, who maintains that the whole idea was cleverly orchestrated by Cocteau and Les Six, who used Collet as a puppet: Faure also argues that the publication of <italic>Le Coq et l’arlequin</italic> was delayed in order to coincide with the naming of the group. See Michel Faure, <italic>Du Néoclassicisme musical dans la France du premier XX<sup>e</sup>siècle</italic> (Paris, 1997), 113–40. For the most sophisticated and best-documented interpretation of this issue see Éveline Hurard-Viltard, <italic>Le Groupe des Six. Ou le matin d’un jour de fête</italic> (Paris, 1987), 11–15.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN13" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>13</sup>
</label>
<p>‘Quelle est en somme l’esthétique musicale des Six ? Ils partent de la complexité <italic>polytonique</italic> pour trouver la simplicité.’ See Roy, <italic>Le Groupe des Six</italic>, 201.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN14" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>14</sup>
</label>
<p>‘La polytonie, destituée de ce flou ensorceleur de sa période de recherche, peut, dans sa nudité actuelle, sembler parfois un peu fruste. . . . Il faudra [que les oreilles qu’hypnotise le debussysme] s’habituent. Enfin la mélodie s’évade des psalmodies antérieures sans que la déclamation cesse d’être conforme à la pure prosodie française. Les Six savent leur langue.’ Ibid.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN15" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>15</sup>
</label>
<p>Jean Deroux, ‘La Musique polytonale’, <italic>Revue musicale</italic>, 11 (Oct. 1921), 251–7; Maurice Touzé, ‘La Tonalité chromatique’, <italic>Revue musicale</italic>, 9 (1 July 1922), 57–65. Even after the publication of Milhaud’s theoretical article on polytonality in a 1923 issue of the <italic>Revue musicale</italic>, Albert Febvre-Longeray continued to complain that the term was ill-defined. See his ‘Du “Système” polytonal’, <italic>Le Courrier musical</italic>, 25/8 (15 Apr. 1923), 141–4.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN16" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>16</sup>
</label>
<p>‘Depuis quelques mois, on a beaucoup écrit sur la musique <italic>polytonale</italic> (que l’on désigne sous les noms de <italic>polytonie</italic> ou <italic>polytonalité</italic>). Et cependant, il ne semble pas qu’on en ait encore donné de définition précise.’ Déroux, ‘La Musique polytonale’, 251.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN17" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>17</sup>
</label>
<p>Marie-Claire Mussat, ‘La Réception de Schönberg en France avant la Seconde Guerre mondiale’, <italic>Revue de musicologie</italic>, 87/1 (2001), 145–86; works by Schoenberg performed in Paris during the 1910s are listed on pp. 146–7, and his reputation during the 1920s is discussed on pp. 168–71.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN18" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>18</sup>
</label>
<p>Milhaud accompanied Marya Freund in a performance of <italic>Das Buch</italic> on 29 Nov. 1921 at the inaugural concert of the Concerts de la Revue musicale (organized by Henri Prunières). He also conducted a premiere of excerpts from <italic>Pierrot lunaire</italic> on 15 Dec. 1921, and the first French performance of the complete work on 16 Jan. 1922, both at the Concerts Wiéner. See Mussat, ‘La Réception de Schönberg en France’, 153–5.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN19" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>19</sup>
</label>
<p>‘La tonalité, bien entendu, n’existe plus, la musique est constamment polytonale et polyphonique.’ Jean Bernier, ‘Les Concerts’, <italic>Le Théâtre et Comoedia illustré</italic>, 2 (Feb. 1922), 39.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN20" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>20</sup>
</label>
<p>Paul Le Flem, ‘La Musique au concert’, <italic>Comoedia</italic>, 19 (Dec. 1921), 4; Charles Koechlin, ‘Esthétique’, <italic>Courrier musical</italic>, 19 (15 Feb. 1917), 79–80; id., ‘Polytonie’, <italic>Programme des Concerts Colonne</italic>, 30–1 Oct. 1920, p. 7; see also Koechlin’s series of articles ‘Étude sur les notes de passage’, published in <italic>Le Monde musical</italic> between Nov. 1920 and Mar. 1921 and reprinted as a book under the same title in 1922.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN21" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>21</sup>
</label>
<p>In the Lavignac article, the Mozart passage is transposed into the key of C (p. 699). To complicate matters even more, during the 1920s Schoenberg distanced himself from the term ‘atonality’. In a notice inserted in the 1921 edition of <italic>Harmonielehre</italic>, he clearly dissociates himself from partisans of ‘atonality’. For Schoenberg, the term is nonsensical, because in German ‘Ton’ means ‘sound’ or ‘notes’; ‘atonal’ thus refers to the negation of notes or sound, and not merely the elimination of tonality. See his <italic>Theory of Harmony</italic> (London and Boston, 1986), 432.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN22" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>22</sup>
</label>
<p>André Coeuroy, ‘Le Grand Soir de la musique’, <italic>Revue du mois</italic>, 10 Nov. 1920, pp. 354–66; Henry Prunières, ‘Darius Milhaud’, <italic>Nouvelle Revue française</italic>, 14/80 (May 1920), 762–7.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN23" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>23</sup>
</label>
<p>Alexis Roland-Manuel, ‘Maurice Ravel’, <italic>Revue musicale</italic>, 6 (Apr. 1921), 1–21; Alexandre Tansman, ‘Karol Szymanowski’, ibid. 7 (May 1922), 97–110; Ernest Ansermet, ‘L’Œuvre d’Igor Strawinsky’, ibid. 9 (July 1921), 1–27; Boris de Schloezer, ‘Serge Prokofieff’, ibid. 50–60.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN24" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>24</sup>
</label>
<p>Maurice Reuschel, ‘Saint-Saëns, la polytonie et la polymodie’, <italic>Comoedia</italic>, 16 Jan. 1922, p. 4.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN25" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>25</sup>
</label>
<p>On the attitude of Les Six towards Debussy, Ravel, and other established French composers, see Kelly, <italic>Tradition and Style</italic>, 5–7 and Hurard-Viltard, <italic>Le Groupe des Six</italic>, 101–37.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN26" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>26</sup>
</label>
<p>Confusion reigned in Vuillermoz’s review of the 1923 premiere of Milhaud’s opera <italic>La Brebis égarée</italic>, a youthful work written much earlier. It is possible that his confusion was entirely deliberate. He makes ironic comments on the <italic>Debussyste</italic> qualities of a work composed by such a hardened adversary of Debussy: ‘In fact, we know that M. Darius Milhaud is one of the most enthusiastic detractors of Debussy and impressionistic ideals . . . However, <italic>La Brebis égarée</italic> constitutes the most naive, the most avid, and let us not hesitate to say, the most servile homage yet to be offered, not to Debussy, but to <italic>Debussysme</italic> [On sait en effet que M. Darius Milhaud est un des détracteurs les plus acharnés de Debussy et de l’idéal d’art impressionniste . . . Or, la partition de la <italic>Brebis égarée</italic> constitue l’hommage le plus naïf, le plus empressé et, disons le mot, le plus servile qui ait jamais été offert, non pas à Debussy, mais au debussysme].’ Émile Vuillermoz, ‘La Brebis égarée’, <italic>Revue musicale</italic>, 5/3 (1924), 57–8.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN27" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>27</sup>
</label>
<p>Louis Durey, ‘Maurice Ravel’, <italic>The Chesterian</italic>, 14 (Apr. 1921), 422–6. Hurard-Viltard mentions Ravel’s teaching of Tailleferre in <italic>Le Groupe des Six</italic>, 109.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN28" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>28</sup>
</label>
<p>Paul Landormy, ‘Le Déclin de l’Impressionnisme’, <italic>Revue musicale</italic>, 2/4 (1921), 97–113.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN29" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>29</sup>
</label>
<p>‘Ce ne sont plus du tout les effets de demi-teinte de l’impressionnisme, et voilà en même temps “l’horizontalisme” qui reprend le dessus sur le “vertical”, la mélodie sur l’harmonie. Nouvelle préparation à ce renversement de méthode qui sera l’œuvre de nos tout jeunes musiciens.’ Ibid. 103–4.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN30" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>30</sup>
</label>
<p>‘Les “Six” sont des révolutionnaires en harmonie et, après la révolution debussyste si grave déjà au point de vue harmonique, ils veulent accomplir la leur. . . . Désormais toutes les notes d’un accord ne seront plus nécessairement empruntées à une même gamme. On superposera non plus seulement des sons mais des tonalités diverses.’ Ibid. 111–12.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN31" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>31</sup>
</label>
<p>Roland-Manuel, ‘Maurice Ravel’.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN32" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>32</sup>
</label>
<p>Francis Poulenc, who obviously had little reason to like Vuillermoz, explains the critic’s attitude as stemming from a generation gap as well as aesthetic incomprehension: ‘<italic>Mavra</italic> has confirmed what <italic>Parade</italic> allowed us to see, that is, that there exists a “pre-war critic” who appears not to have developed the ability to judge contemporary music . . . At the time of the <italic>Sacre</italic> Vuillermoz’s opinion was law—but this is no longer the case, Monsieur Vuillermoz having himself provided, on several occasions over the past two years, proof [that perceptive commentators belong] to the <italic>past</italic> [Mavra a confirmé ce que ‘Parade’ nous laissait entrevoir, c’est-dire qu’il existe une ‘critique d’avant-guerre’ mais qu’il ne semble pas encore s’en former une, apte à juger la musique actuelle. . . . À l’époque du <italic>Sacre</italic> l’opinion d’un Vuillermoz faisait loi—Il n’en est plus de même aujourd’hui, M. Vuillermoz ayant donné, à maintes reprises, depuis deux ans, la preuve [que les commentateurs compréhensifs appartiennent] au <italic>passé</italic>].’ In ‘La Musique. A propos de “Mavra” de Igor Strawinsky’, <italic>Feuilles libres</italic>, 27 (June–July 1922), 222–4.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN33" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>33</sup>
</label>
<p>Georges Jean-Aubry, ‘Musiques d’aujourd’hui’, <italic>The Chesterian</italic>, 31 (May 1923), 197. According to Jean-Aubry, the talents of certain young individuals were exaggerated by Vuillermoz. These very likely included Désiré-Émile Inghelbrecht and Georges Migot. Barbara Kelly discusses the relationship between Vuillermoz and Milhaud in <italic>Tradition and Style</italic>, 7–9.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN34" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>34</sup>
</label>
<p>Émile Vuillermoz, <italic>Le Temps</italic> (14 Jan. 1921).</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN35" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>35</sup>
</label>
<p>Darius Milhaud, <italic>Ma Vie heureuse</italic> (Paris, 1973), 54.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN36" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>36</sup>
</label>
<p>Robert Orledge mentions Milhaud’s role in the premiere of the Viola Sonata Op. 53 (on 27 May 1915), and briefly discusses the relationship between the two composers in his book <italic>Charles Koechlin (1867–1950): His Life and Works</italic> (London, 1989), 17 and 348. Milhaud performed excerpts from Koechlin’s <italic>Paysages et marines</italic> at a concert of the S.M.I. held on 23 May 1919. See Michel Duchesneau, <italic>L’Avant-garde musicale à Paris de 1871 à 1939</italic> (Liège, 1997), 312.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN37" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>37</sup>
</label>
<p>See Orledge, <italic>Charles Koechlin</italic>, 19 n. 16.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN38" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>38</sup>
</label>
<p>Émile Vuillermoz, <italic>Le Temps</italic> (25 Feb. 1921), 4. For biographical information on Migot, see Claire Latham (ed.), <italic>Georges Migot: The Man and his Work</italic> (Strasburg, 1982).</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN39" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>39</sup>
</label>
<p>‘Au fameux Groupe des Six, dont il ne suit point du tout les tendances, d’ailleurs divergentes, Georges Migot, non sans humour, ne pouvait-il être tenté d’opposer le Groupe du Un, et de devenir son propre Cocteau ? Il le fit et le fut avec une tranquille unité de pensée, une sÛre logique, un sérieux constant. Chez lui, ni improvisation salonnière, ni snobisme, ni boutade; une étude approfondie de l’histoire de la musique, des arts, de la littérature, une observation exacte poursuivie avec un sens pénétrant, et puis des déductions implacables.’ Léon Vallas, <italic>Georges Migot</italic> (Paris, 1923), 8.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN40" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>40</sup>
</label>
<p>‘[Une] musique “tonale” mais polytonalement ou polymélodiquement’. Georges Migot, ‘Appogiatures: Sur la possibilité de rapports entre deux polytonalités’, <italic>L’Esprit nouveau</italic>, 3 (Dec. 1920), 308–9.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN41" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>41</sup>
</label>
<p>Georges Migot, <italic>Appogiatures résolues et non résolues (Premier cahier)</italic> (Paris, 1922), 24–7, and esp. the first note on p. 25. This ‘polyplanal’ conception resurfaces in the prefatory manifesto to the vocal score of his stage work <italic>Hagoromo</italic> (Paris, 1922).</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN42" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>42</sup>
</label>
<p>See e.g. articles written for <italic>Comoedia</italic>, 18 and 25 Dec. 1922. In the first, Migot analyses the so-called humour of Milhaud’s Fifth String Quartet (which is actually one of the composer’s most daring attempts at polytonal writing and, as mentioned above, was dedicated to Schoenberg!).</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN43" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>43</sup>
</label>
<p>‘Il est vrai que pour M. Vuillermoz, M. Migot, qui ne trompe plus personne, est un grand musicien. Qu’importe? La <italic>Symphonie</italic> de M. Roussel a triomphé l’autre soir.’ <italic>Courrier musical</italic>, 17 (1923), 340–1, cited in Milhaud, <italic>Notes sur la musique</italic>, 77.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN44" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>44</sup>
</label>
<p>Émile Vuillermoz, <italic>Le Temps</italic>, 30 Dec. 1921.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN45" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>45</sup>
</label>
<p>‘Bien entendu, le compositeur n’hésite pas davantage à se servir de l’écriture polytonale lorsqu’il en voit l’utilité. Mais l’emploi qu’il en fait n’est jamais arbitraire et ne révèle aucun sectarisme d’école. Il en tire des effets extrêmement heureux dans des descriptions de foules, dans des entrées de cortèges où les thèmes gardent leur indépendance tonale au milieu du mouvement général . . . Il trahit “la cause” de ses coassosciés. Si ces derniers sont sincères, l’expulsion du frère Honegger hors de la congrégation des “six” n’est plus qu’une question de jours.’ Ibid.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN46" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>46</sup>
</label>
<p>André Marot, ‘Le Mouvement musical contemporain: Le Groupe des Six (1918 à 1922)’, <italic>Le Carnet-Critique</italic>, 23 (1 June 1922), 70–5; Willy, ‘A bâtons rompus’, <italic>Comoedia</italic>, 26 June 1922, p. 4; Jean Cocteau, ‘Lettre ouverte à mes amis Musiciens’, <italic>Comoedia</italic>, 10 Jan. 1922, p. 1; Érik Satie, ‘Les “Six” ’, <italic>Feuilles libres</italic>, 4/1 (Feb. 1922), 42–5; Georges Auric, ‘La Musique: Quelques maîtres contemporains’, <italic>Les Écrits nouveaux</italic>, Mar. 1922, pp. 70–9.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN47" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>47</sup>
</label>
<p>‘Celui de vous qu’on “organise” contre les autres participe encore quelquefois d’un ordre de choses à l’agonie.’ Cocteau, ‘Lettre ouverte’, 1.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN48" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>48</sup>
</label>
<p>Jean Cocteau, ‘Deux Post-scriptum’, <italic>Feuilles libres</italic>, 4/1 (Feb. 1922), 46–8.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN49" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>49</sup>
</label>
<p>Darius Milhaud, ‘Petit Historique nécessaire’, <italic>Courrier musical</italic>, 24/2 (1922), 30; Arthur Honegger, ‘Petit Historique nécessaire (suite et fin)’, ibid. 24/3 (1922), 58.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN50" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>50</sup>
</label>
<p>‘Le premier critique musical de ce temps, dont les études révèlent à la fois un goÛt perspicace, une connaissance précise de la technique et les dons innés de l’écrivain, vient de publier, à l’occasion du <italic>Roi David</italic>, d’Honegger, un article qui constitue un “éreintement” définitif, sans appel, de ce qu’on entend communément par le “Groupe des Six”.’ <italic>Comoedia</italic>, 9 Jan. 1922, 4.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN51" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>51</sup>
</label>
<p>‘D’où [vient] cette irritation que provoquent les “Six”, à l’exception d’Honegger? De leur réussite foudroyante, mais aussi de leur maladresse. Ils pouvaient se contenter du succès, ils ont voulu la publicité. Un Milhaud n’avait qu’à se faire jouer, il a préféré écrire, faire de la critique musicale plus agressive, plus désagréable que celle même de Debussy qui avait sur lui l’avantage d’une position officielle, de ce Grand Prix de Rome qui, quoi qu’on en dise, prouve la maîtrise . . . du moins pour ceux qui ont fréquenté le Conservatoire. Les critiques imprudentes de Milhaud lui ont valu l’hostilité du public et la haine de nombre de musiciens réputés. Et cela est fort dangereux pour lui, qui produit trop, et ne surveille pas assez sa plume . . . ’. <italic>Comoedia</italic>, 16 Jan. 1922, p. 4.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN52" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>52</sup>
</label>
<p>‘Si l’on peut déjà répondre que l’œuvre d’Honegger est d’un “homme vivant et d’un artiste posthume”, si je ne crains pas d’en dire autant de celles d’un Georges Auric qui traduit si fidèlement la poésie neuve de Jean Cocteau, j’admets, par contre, qu’un certain recul soit demandé pour juger en définitive de la production multiforme de Darius Milhaud, ou des essais des autres co-associés.’</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN53" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>53</sup>
</label>
<p>‘En dépit des nouveautés purement techniques de Richard Strauss, Koechlin, Strawinsky ou A. Casella, l’apparition du “Groupe des Six” marque dans notre musique moderne une date que je m’honore d’avoir été le premier à signaler.’</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN54" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>54</sup>
</label>
<p>On different types of nationalist sentiment affecting French musical culture between 1870 and 1914, see Annegret Fauser, ‘Gendering the Nations: The Ideologies of French Discourse on Music (1870–1914)’, in Harry White and Michael Murphy (eds.), <italic>Musical Constructions of Nationalism: Essays on the History and Ideology of European Musical Culture 1800–1945</italic> (Cork, 2001), 72–103.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN55" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>55</sup>
</label>
<p>An interpretation of a more inclusive type of French nationalism, or patriotism, prevalent among composers during the First World War is found in Carlo Caballero, ‘Patriotism or Nationalism: Fauré and the Great War’, <italic>Journal of the American Musicological Society</italic>, 52 (1999), 593–625.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN56" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>56</sup>
</label>
<p>Georges Jean-Aubry, <italic>La Musique et les nations</italic> (Paris and London, 1922).</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN57" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>57</sup>
</label>
<p>‘Debussy a joué en français, mais il a mis la pédale russe.’ Jean Cocteau, <italic>Le Coq et l’arlequin</italic>, in id., <italic>Romans, poésies, œuvres diverses</italic> (Paris, 1995), 446.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN58" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>58</sup>
</label>
<p>Jean Bernier, ‘Mise au point’, <italic>Le Crapouillot</italic>, 15 Feb. 1920, p. 12; Jean Marnold, <italic>Le Mercure de France</italic>, 139/524 (15 Apr. 1920), 495–502; Jean Marnold, <italic>Le Mercure de France</italic>, 139/525 (1 May 1920), 782–91; Paul Landormy, ‘Le Coq et l’Arlequin’, <italic>La Victoire</italic>, 24 Aug. 1920, p. 2.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN59" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>59</sup>
</label>
<p>‘Ce qui balaye la musique impressionniste c’est, par exemple, une certaine danse américaine que j’ai vue au Casino de Paris.’ Cocteau, <italic>Le Coq et l’arlequin</italic>, 433.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN60" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>60</sup>
</label>
<p>Ibid. 434.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN61" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>61</sup>
</label>
<p>‘Ce témoignage d’admiration [À Schoenberg] montre la qualité de notre nationalisme. CHACUN CHEZ SOI, LE MIEUX POSSIBLE. À l’artiste international, il manque un espéranto. Pour ma part, je ne refuse pas la main au jeune allemand excédé de Wagner.’ Jean Cocteau, <italic>Le Coq</italic>, 2 (1920).</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN62" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>62</sup>
</label>
<p>Jane F. Fulcher, ‘The Preparation for Vichy: Anti-Semitism in French Musical Culture between the Two World Wars’, <italic>Musical Quarterly</italic>, 79 (1995), 458–75. See also Eugen Weber, <italic>Action Française: Royalism and Reaction in Twentieth-Century France</italic> (Stanford, 1962) and François Huguenin, <italic>A l’École de l’Action Française: Un siècle de vie intellectuelle</italic> (Paris, 1998).</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN63" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>63</sup>
</label>
<p>‘du joug italo-judaïco-éclectique’. Geneviève Perreau, ‘Wagner jugé par les musiciens français d’aujourd’hui’, <italic>Revue musicale</italic> (1 Oct. 1923), 175–8; cited in Fulcher, ‘The Preparation for Vichy’, 468.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN64" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>64</sup>
</label>
<p>See Vincent d’Indy, ‘Esthétique’, <italic>Courrier musical</italic>, 19 (15 Jan. 1917), 25–6; and Charles Koechlin, ‘Esthétique’, ibid. (15 Feb. 1917), 79–80.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN65" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>65</sup>
</label>
<p>‘[L’adepte de l’écriture polytonale] ne craindra pas de s’exhiber en pijama à deux tonalités superposées (style boche), . . . [l’atonaliste] arborera fièrement un veston brillant par l’absence de toute forme et de toute tonalité.’ D’Indy, ‘Esthétique’, 25–6.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN66" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>66</sup>
</label>
<p>‘contre l’épithète: “style Boche” appliquée au “vêtement fait de tonalités superposées” . . . La superposition de deux tonalités n’a en soi rien de Boche. On peut en tirer des effets musicaux compatibles avec nos qualités nationales. Et il serait regrettable de jeter a priori le discrédit sur ces moyens, en les traitant de Boches.’ Koechlin, ‘Esthétique’, 79–80.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN67" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>67</sup>
</label>
<p>Louis Vuillemin, ‘Concerts métèques . . . ’, <italic>Courrier musical</italic>, 50 (Jan. 1923). Vuillemin’s article and the responses to it are reproduced in Jean Wiéner, <italic>Allegro appassionato</italic> (Paris, 1978), 66–8. The title of Vuillemin’s regular column in the <italic>Courrier musical</italic>, ‘Notes sans mesures’, indicates his frank, direct style, but the racist tone of his writings was surprising and not at all representative of the other columns. He was also a composer, and the author of monographs on Louis Aubert and Gabriel Fauré, as well as a memoir on his war experiences (<italic>L’Héroïque pastorale</italic> (Paris, 1922)), for which he won over four of the jurists for the Fémina–Vie Heureuse competition. At the time of the scandal surrounding the performance of Milhaud’s Second Symphonic Suite at the Concerts Colonne in 1920, he appeared receptive to polytonality and quite favourable to the composer, saying ‘that he is gifted, that he has talent, a sure power of expression, an innate sense of colour and movement’, though he displays a ‘tendency to exaggerate’, and a lack of stability and taste (qu’il est doué, qu’il a du talent, une puissance d’évocation certaine, un sens inné de la couleur et du mouvement . . . tendance à l’exagération). Louis Vuillemin, <italic>La Lanterne</italic>, 26 Oct. 1920, p. 2.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN68" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>68</sup>
</label>
<p>This theory of a Jewish plot to foment anarchy was put forward by Max d’Ollone in <italic>Le Monde musical</italic>, and was later refuted in Koechlin’s review of the <italic>Pierrot lunaire</italic> concert. Koechlin maintains that while great innovators in philosophical thought and cultural undertakings may indeed be Jewish (Schoenberg and Milhaud in music, Einstein in science, Bergson in philosophy), there are also an equal number of non-Jews engaged in this pursuit (Stravinsky and Poulenc in music, Poincaré in science), and that not all notable Jews were necessarily revolutionary (Mendelssohn, Halévy, and Meyerbeer). He poses the question ‘Surely, chaos, anarchy, and the rejection of all existing music may be in danger, but frankly, are we really there yet? [Assurément, le chaos, l’anarchie, l’oubli de toute musique existante pourrait être un danger; mais, franchement, en sommes-nous là?]’. He goes on to demonstrate the futility of this idea, and celebrates contemporary mastery of compositional technique evident in the major works of the innovative composers of his day. See Koechlin’s article published in <italic>Le Monde musical</italic>, 13 Feb. 1922, reproduced in François Lesure (ed.), <italic>Dossier de Presse de Pierrot lunaire</italic> (Geneva, 1985), 111–15; the quotation is from p. 114.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN69" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>69</sup>
</label>
<p>‘Je ne vois à l’étonnante attitude [de Ravel et de ses co-signataires] qu’une explication: [ils] sont intoxiqués par les gaz! . . . Et je ne souhaite pas [à ces] pionniers de se laisser faire finalement prisonniers! . . . Du coup, leur compte serait bon! Envoyés dans un camp de “bitonalité par représailles” ils y demeureraient oubliés jusqu’à l’issue des hostilités . . . ’. Cited in Wiéner, <italic>Allegro appassionato</italic>, 68.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN70" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>70</sup>
</label>
<p>Milhaud was profoundly attached to the Jewish religion, though he maintained an open attitude towards other confessions of faith. A number of his mature works are rooted in Jewish themes, including the <italic>Poèmes juifs</italic>, <italic>Chants populaires hébraïques</italic>, <italic>Liturgie comtadine</italic>, and the operas <italic>Esther de Carpentras</italic> and <italic>David</italic>. It has been argued that his vision of Judaism arose from the particularly favourable conditions Jews enjoyed in his native region of Comtat-Venaissin. For more information on this topic, see Jeremy Drake, <italic>The Operas of Darius Milhaud</italic> (New York, 1989), 18–19; Kelly, <italic>Tradition and Style</italic>, 27–34; and Armand Lunel, <italic>Mon ami Darius Milhaud</italic> (La Calade, 1992).</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN71" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>71</sup>
</label>
<p>For a survey of his journalistic output, see Jeremy Drake’s introduction to Milhaud, <italic>Notes sur la musique</italic>, 9–15, as well as the list of articles supplied in the Appendix, 214–31.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN72" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>72</sup>
</label>
<p>The journalist Marcel Rieu recounts that Milhaud ‘had been prepared for anything since the day when, at the Salle Gaveau, during a performance of the [<italic>Études pour</italic>] <italic>Piano et Orchestre</italic> a policeman was sent to protect him from vehement detractors of his music [s’attend à tout depuis le jour où, salle Gaveau, pendant l’exécution [des Études pour] <italic>Piano et Orchestre</italic>, on lui dépêcha un agent de police pour protéger sa personne contre les véhéments détracteurs de sa musique]’. Marcel Rieu, ‘Les Avants-premières: “L’Homme et son désir” au Théâtre des Champs-Elysées’, <italic>Comoedia</italic>, 6 June 1921, pp. 1–2.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN73" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>73</sup>
</label>
<p>Charles Koechlin, ‘Polytonie’, <italic>Programme des Concerts Colonne</italic>, 30–1 Oct. 1920, p. 7.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN74" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>74</sup>
</label>
<p>This was in the opinion of Wiéner; see <italic>Allegro appassionato</italic>, 48.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN75" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>75</sup>
</label>
<p>Compare for example the two reviews of Nadia Boulanger: <italic>Monde musical</italic>, 31/19–20 (15 and 30 Oct. 1920), 304–5 and 31/23–4 (15 and 31 Dec. 1920), 358–62, or those of Robert Dezarnaux: <italic>La Liberté</italic>, 26 Oct. 1920, p. 2, and 3 Nov. 1920, p. 2.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN76" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>76</sup>
</label>
<p>‘Plusieurs instruments jouant dans des tons différents n’ont jamais fait de la musique, mais du charivari.’ Cited in Milhaud, <italic>Ma Vie heureuse</italic>, 92.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN77" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>77</sup>
</label>
<p>Koechlin, ‘Évolution de l’harmonie’, 697.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN78" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>78</sup>
</label>
<p>Kelly, <italic>Tradition and Style</italic>, 67–8.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN79" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>79</sup>
</label>
<p>On the development of polytonal writing in Milhaud, see Drake, <italic>The Operas of Darius Milhaud</italic>, 31, 63–4, and 78–114; and Kelly, <italic>Tradition and Style</italic>, 64–72 and 147–68.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN80" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>80</sup>
</label>
<p>‘Je suis tes bons conseils et je ne fais plus de polytonie.’ In Francis Poulenc, <italic>Correspondance, 1910–1963</italic>, ed. Myriam Chimènes (Paris, 1994), 138. In July 1922, Poulenc wrote to Paul Collaer that ‘<italic>Mavra</italic> [by Stravinsky] proved to me that there is some good in the triad. Once again, Satie was right. Believe me, <italic>polytonie</italic> is a dead end that will go out of fashion within five years, unless it is the means of expression for some type of genius, like Darius. I will not speak of atonality. It’s shit [Mavra [de Stravinsky] m’a prouvé que l’accord parfait a du bon. Une fois de plus, Satie a eu raison. Croyez-moi, la polytonie est une impasse dont on sentira la caducité d’ici 5 ans, à moins que ce ne soit le moyen d’expression d’un type de génie, comme Darius. Je ne parle pas de l’atonalité: c’est de la merde].’ Paul Collaer, <italic>Correspondance avec des amis musiciens</italic>, ed. Robert Wangermée (Liège, 1996), 103.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN81" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>81</sup>
</label>
<p>‘Chaque fois qu’on parle pour un musicien de nouveauté, de révolution, nous pouvons être sÛrs que tout élément riche et neuf introduit s’appuie sur une tradition solide.’ ‘The Evolution’, in Milhaud, <italic>Notes sur la musique</italic>, 194.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN82" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>82</sup>
</label>
<p>‘On ne s’invente pas une tradition, on la subit, et on la travaille. Elle dépend non seulement des goÛts du musicien, de ses tendances intimes, des influences que peuvent avoir sur son œuvre les conséquences de sa vie, de ses préférences musicales, mais surtout de sa race.’ Ibid.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN83" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>83</sup>
</label>
<p>Alfredo Casella, <italic>Music in my Time</italic> (Norman, Okla., 1955), 106. His memoirs were originally published in Italian under the title <italic>I segreti della giara</italic> (Florence, 1941).</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN84" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>84</sup>
</label>
<p>Alfredo Casella, ‘Ce qu’est la musique polyharmonique’, <italic>Montjoie!</italic>, June 1914; reproduced in Roberto Calabretto (ed.), <italic>Alfredo Casella: Gli anni di Parigi</italic> (Florence, 1997), 213–15. Alfredo Casella, ‘L’evoluzione armonica moderna’, <italic>La riforma musicale</italic> (7 Feb. 1915), 1; and id., ‘Why I write as I do’, <italic>Musical Courier</italic>, 84/9 (Mar. 1922), 34–5.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN85" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>85</sup>
</label>
<p>Casella, <italic>Music in my Time</italic>, 106.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN86" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>86</sup>
</label>
<p>Milhaud and Casella first became acquainted in Paris prior to Casella’s return to Italy in 1915. They later met in Rome in March of 1921 shortly before the publication of their respective theoretical articles on polytonality. In one of his chronicles, Milhaud recalls that he and Georges Auric gave the premiere of Casella’s <italic>Pagine di guerra</italic> for piano duet, and was given the manuscript as an expression of the composer’s gratitude. See Milhaud, <italic>Notes sur la musique</italic>, 76.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN87" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>87</sup>
</label>
<p>‘Ce qui déterminera le caractère polytonal ou atonal d’une œuvre, ce sera bien moins le procédé d’écriture que la mélodie essentielle qui en sera la source, et qui vient du “cœur” seul du musicien. C’est une nécessité absolue, organique, de la mélodie initiale qui empêchera ces procédés de se figer en un système autrement mort-né.’ ‘Polytonalité et atonalité’, in Milhaud, <italic>Notes sur la musique</italic>, 44. Melody for Milhaud is linked to a number of important issues: the aesthetic of Les Six, nationalist agendas, the composer’s preference for counterpoint, and the influence of André Gédalge’s teaching. For more information on this subject, see Kelly, <italic>Tradition and Style</italic>, 115–19 and 154–5 and Hurard-Viltard, <italic>Le Groupe des Six</italic>, 47 and 141–5.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN88" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>88</sup>
</label>
<p>‘[Seule la mélodie] nous permet de travailler avec notre imagination tout en nous rapprochant de la tradition qui est la nôtre.’ ‘L’Évolution de la musique’, 205.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN89" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>89</sup>
</label>
<p>A number of theorists have called the viability of polytonality into question: Allen Forte, <italic>Contemporary Tone-Structures</italic> (New York, 1955); Arthur Berger, ‘Problems of Pitch Organization in Stravinsky’, <italic>Perspectives of New Music</italic>, 2 (1963), 11–43, repr. in Benjamin Boretz and Edward T. Cone (eds.), <italic>Perspectives on Schoenberg and Stravinsky</italic> (New York, 1972), 123–54; Benjamin Boretz, ‘Metavariations: Part IV, Analytic Fallout’, <italic>Perspectives of New Music</italic>, 11 (1972), 149; Pieter van den Toorn, ‘Some Characteristics of Stravinsky’s Diatonic Music’, <italic>Perspectives of New Music</italic>, 14 (1975), 104–38. Barbara Kelly has given an account of these theoretical questionings in <italic>Tradition and Style</italic>, 142–68.</p>
</fn>
<fn id="FN90" xml:lang="en">
<label>
<sup>90</sup>
</label>
<p>‘Avec le recul du temps, on constate que le grand engouement pour la polytonalité a été de courte durée, en gros de 1910 à 1930. De nos jours, elle n’est plus qu’un moyen occasionnel d’écriture.’ Cited in the article ‘Polytonalité’, in Marc Honegger (ed.), <italic>Dictionnaire de la musique. Science de la musique</italic> (Paris, 1976), 821</p>
</fn>
</p>
</sec>
</body>
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<ack>
<p>I am profoundly indebted to Steven Huebner, Catrina Flint de Médicis, and Louise Hirbour for reading earlier versions of this article and for offering their invaluable advice and assistance.</p>
</ack>
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</article>
</istex:document></istex:metadataXml><mods version="3.6"><titleInfo lang="en"><title>Darius Milhaud and the Debate on Polytonality in the French Press of the 1920s</title></titleInfo><titleInfo type="alternative" lang="en" contentType="CDATA"><title>Darius Milhaud and the Debate on Polytonality in the French Press of the 1920s</title></titleInfo><name type="personal"><namePart type="given">François</namePart><namePart type="family">de Médicis</namePart></name><typeOfResource>text</typeOfResource><genre type="research-article" displayLabel="research-article" authority="ISTEX" authorityURI="https://content-type.data.istex.fr" valueURI="https://content-type.data.istex.fr/ark:/67375/XTP-1JC4F85T-7">research-article</genre><originInfo><publisher>Oxford University Press</publisher><dateIssued encoding="w3cdtf">2005-11</dateIssued><copyrightDate encoding="w3cdtf">2005</copyrightDate></originInfo><language><languageTerm type="code" authority="iso639-2b">eng</languageTerm><languageTerm type="code" authority="rfc3066">en</languageTerm></language><abstract lang="en">The concept of polytonality occupies a prominent place in two 1923 articles by Darius Milhaud. Considerable attention has been devoted to his theory of polytonality in so far as it applies to his music (Rosteck 1992 and 1994, Cox 1993, Mawer 1997), but except for the work of Barbara Kelly (2003) the wider cultural context of its meaning has escaped close scrutiny. To grasp the significance of these two essays more clearly, we must determine how they relate to an important press debate on polytonality and atonality between 1920 and 1923. Fuelled by Henri Collet’s tagging of the Groupe des Six in 1920, as well as the recognition of Schoenberg’s music and legitimization of his atonal writing in France, the controversy raises the subjects of polytonality, atonality, nationalism (sometimes degenerating into racism), and the aesthetic clash of the impressionists, or established composers, with the young avant-garde, or Les Six. As a term, polytonality suffered from gross distortion. Best viewed as a technique, usually employed only locally and by a minority of composers, in the debate it became an idiom, such as tonality or atonality, rich enough to inspire a ‘school’, in this case Les Six, or even the entire French style. As a Jewish composer vulnerable to racist attacks, and as the main exponent of polytonality, Milhaud skilfully turned the issues of the debate to his advantage. He portrays Viennese atonality as the natural outcome of Wagnerian chromaticism, and polytonality as the extension of French diatonic modality. His construct appeals to both nationalist pride and ethnic tolerance, and his evolutionary principle positions polytonality as inevitable for nothing less than the whole French musical avant-garde.</abstract><relatedItem type="host"><titleInfo><title>Music and Letters</title></titleInfo><titleInfo type="abbreviated"><title>Music and Letters</title></titleInfo><genre type="journal" authority="ISTEX" authorityURI="https://publication-type.data.istex.fr" valueURI="https://publication-type.data.istex.fr/ark:/67375/JMC-0GLKJH51-B">journal</genre><identifier type="ISSN">0027-4224</identifier><identifier type="eISSN">1477-4631</identifier><identifier type="PublisherID">musicj</identifier><identifier type="PublisherID-hwp">musicj</identifier><part><date>2005</date><detail type="volume"><caption>vol.</caption><number>86</number></detail><detail type="issue"><caption>no.</caption><number>4</number></detail><extent unit="pages"><start>573</start><end>591</end></extent></part></relatedItem><identifier type="istex">EDBF936BCA64702C323E5B81FE682BCF12BCA5D2</identifier><identifier type="DOI">10.1093/ml/gci106</identifier><identifier type="local">106</identifier><accessCondition type="use and reproduction" contentType="copyright">© The Author (2005). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.</accessCondition><recordInfo><recordContentSource authority="ISTEX" authorityURI="https://loaded-corpus.data.istex.fr" valueURI="https://loaded-corpus.data.istex.fr/ark:/67375/XBH-GTWS0RDP-M">oup</recordContentSource><recordOrigin>© The Author (2005). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.</recordOrigin></recordInfo></mods><json:item><extension>json</extension><original>false</original><mimetype>application/json</mimetype><uri>https://api.istex.fr/document/EDBF936BCA64702C323E5B81FE682BCF12BCA5D2/metadata/json</uri></json:item></metadata><covers><json:item><extension>tiff</extension><original>true</original><mimetype>image/tiff</mimetype><uri>https://api.istex.fr/document/EDBF936BCA64702C323E5B81FE682BCF12BCA5D2/covers/tiff</uri></json:item></covers><serie></serie></istex></record>Pour manipuler ce document sous Unix (Dilib)
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