CHAPTER 2

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Aesthetic

Sources and influences of a new French Style

As we anticipated in Chapter 1, one of the principal aims of the Group of the Six was to recreate and develop a new French style.

This was a consequence of the tendency of conforming the European music ideals which took place in the Romantic and Impressionist period.

The opposition of Satie and Cocteau against Debussynian and Wagnerian music and aesthetic

was transmitted to Poulenc, Milhaud and Auric, and encouraged them to look for other sources of inspiration.

One of the most important sources of inspiration for the young composers was Cocteau's manifesto 'The Cock and the Harlequin', of 1918.

In the Dedication to Auric he invites the young composers to 'escape from Germany'¹. With it, he tried to spur the musicians to stop wearing a mask (like the Harlequin) - thus hiding their personality - and to not be afraid of admiring and standing up for their ideals.

Cocteau begins his book with the definition for the word simplicity. He gives great importance to this concept and tries to underline the fundamental differences from the standard interpretation of the time. It should not be used as a synonym for poverty or retrogression, instead refinement and progression should be extrapolated.²

Illustrating this new idea of French music, the pamphlet refers to everyday elements and the simplicity of life

'With us, there is a house, a lamp, a plate of soup, a fire, wine and pipes at the back of every important work of art.'³

Cocteau highlights this concept in opposition to the music 'in which one can swim in' of Wagner and Debussy. Set against the hypnotic and mendacious 'long-drawn-out works' of Wagner he proposes a return to melody and melodic line within a 'short, simple, truthful work'.

Cocteau uses Satie as a model. It stands to reason that the writer's ideas of the new French style came from a careful listening to Satie's music. On many occasions Cocteau used the term 'classical' to refer to Satie's works.

'Satie's classicism and his respect for the “Schola Cantorum” '.⁴

In this way he connects the simplicity of Satie to the principles of eighteenth-century classicism.

Cocteau went even further: he found a classical input and reference even in the entertainment of circus and music-halls:

'What I was going to look for at the circus and at the music-hall, it was not as people have so often claimed, the charm of clowns and negroes, but a lesson in equilibrium. A school of hard work, of discreet force, of useful grace, an elevated school which separated me from inattentive minds.'⁵

He even praised Jazz and American music for its noise, cataclysm and crudity which he believed had the potential to wake people out of the reverie:

'Impressionist music is outdone, for example, by a certain American dance which I saw at the Casino de Paris.'⁶

For Cocteau, Satie's ballet, Parade, conjured up feelings of nostalgia largely due to its setting in a Parisian fairground and his use of archetypal circus and music-hall characters. These nostalgic elements were no doubt important to Cocteau, reminding him of his childhood and creating a melancholic association with the past. With the use of sounds from the popular realm in Parade, Satie was able to mix 'the racket of a cheap music-hall with the dreams of children and the poetry and murmur of the ocean.'⁷

In order to better understand the discussion about everyday music influences, it is pertinent to shortly introduce the popular entertainment that saturated Paris at the time.⁸ These entertainments were largely defined by the varying social casts existing in Paris.

Cabaret Artistique:

The Cabaret Artistique finds its origin in the Cafès of the mid-eighteen-century.

One of the first Cabaret Artistique that became famous was the Chat Noir, opened in 1881 by Rodolphe Salis. The place was characterised by a noisy and informal atmosphere, with decorations that were reminiscent of the style of Louis XIII. Initially, the Cabaret Artistique presented an entertainment which mixed music and songs together with theatre, but gradually they expanded and diversified. Comedy and lyrical plays, old French songs, comedies, dramas, shadow-puppets theatre and outdoor events such as the Vachalcade were all performed on Cabaret Artistique's programs, common threads included ironic tones, eccentric humour, parody and aphoristic sayings.

The Cabaret Artistique became a fashionable place to go out at night in Paris, merging intellectuals, aristocrats and wealthy professionals from France and abroad.

Satie, in particular, was familiar with this environment. Since 1891 he had worked as a pianist at the Chat Noir and in other Cabaret Artistique.⁹ He even wrote the music for a small shadow-puppet opera, Noël, which was performed several times at the Auberge de Clou in 1981.

Cafè-Concert:

The Cafè-Concert comes from the Musicos of mid-eighteen-century, which were places where people went to eat and drink while background music accompanied the evening. They first evolved in the Caffè-Chantant, summer-time outdoor cafès located at the Champs-Elise, and then, with the increased popularity of these places, they opened in a permanent location, under the name Cafè-Concert.

The clientele was mostly from the middle class, which was reflected in the absence of artistic claim and was instead saturated in a coarse and down to earth humour. The atmosphere was very informal, noisy and smoky. There was no entrance fee, though costumers had to order new drinks at every change of program.

The performance characters were numerable: the Dieurs (with his declamatory style, vocal nuances and use of body gesture), the Soldier (naïve, whimsical, dressed in a comic way), the Gommeuse (lustful and seducing singing woman), and also patriotic songs and comic sketches.

The performers were a mix of amateurs and professionals, and we can actually see a certain exchange between the Cafè-Concert and more established institutions like the Opera and Theatre.

Many professional performers played in both the institutions: Caffè-Concerts hosted several classical singers, usually performing under another name, and try-outs for important performances took place in this Cafè.

A big change happened in 1867: before that date a regulation had banned all performances of plays in costume outside the Operas and Theatres. After 1867 the regulation changed and Cafè-Concerts started to stage dressed performances. This marked the beginning of Music-Halls.

Music-Hall:

The Music-Hall overlapped for several decades with the Cafè-Concerts. One of the main differences was the location itself: the Music-Hall had more decorated and refined interiors, creating an elegant environment which made it appear similar to a proper theatre. The stage was bigger, and was thus able to host a more varied program. Genres were appropriated from other institutions, including Cabaret, Circus and Fair in order to offer a greater assorted mix of entertainment that could please many different audiences.

The most popular act was the Revue à grand spectacle. Initially, it was a succession of scenes inspired by social, artistic and political events of the time. Later these everyday topics became more of a starting point for a series of dances, comic and dramatic sketches, songs and circus numbers. The Revue à grand spectacle was characterised by two narrative figures that linked and commented on the scenes: the Commère and the Compère. We can see in Les Mariés de la tour Eiffel how Cocteau was familiar with this kind of spectacle. He uses two speaking figures that not only comment and narrate the scenes, but also speak for the characters of the ballet. The use of this form can be seen as 'a kind of secret marriage between ancient tragedy and the revue de fin d'année, chorus and music-hall number'.¹⁰ In the Revue, the music played a central role, and the orchestra was used to open, link, and close the spectacle. The Conductor had to supervise the cooperation of authors and choreographers as well as compose and arrange the music. Among classical and popular French music, we find the use of American bands and syncopated tunes to accompany dances, singers and stars.

The Circus:

Circuses were usually located in vast indoor amphitheatres. The most popular Circuses in Paris were the Nouveau Cirque, the Cirque Médrano and the Cirque de Paris. The average audience was very mixed, ranging from people of the lower class to the aristocracy. From 1900 on, the theatrical genre was introduced alongside traditional acts like acrobats, animal tamers, clowns and musical entertainment.

The inspirations from American culture were strongly present, both in the themes and in the music.

For example, in the spectacle Les Indiens Sioux, performed in 1900 at the Nouveau Cirque, we can find a mix of American topics and American marches and cakewalks played on the clarinet.

In relation with Cocteau and Les Mariés de la tour Eiffel, it's curious to see that the topic of one of the most famous pantomime acts of the time, La Noce à Chocolat, was about funny events and sketches which occurred during a wedding.

The Fair (or Fete Foraine):

The Faire was an annual event which featured the most various entertainment, including: spectacle, games, lottery, and the sale of foods and goods. This mixture of entertainment attracted people from every social class who met and mixed in the fairground. It was an outdoor event, with booths along the avenues, entertainers performing their shows in stalls or temporary theatres, and with a noisy crowd of visitors who could walk around the Faire and stop wherever they pleased.

Most of the spectacles were identical to circus performances; the Fete Foraine even had its own main circus, located in a tent on a prominent part of the fairgrounds. Typical of this circus was the Parade, a daily afternoon event formed by clowns, dancers, acrobats, animal tamers and equestrians which marched around the fairground accompanied by a brass band in order to publicise the evening events. Satie was certainly aware and influenced by these events when he wrote his ballet Parade.

Among the games was present the Jou de massacre, where players have to knock down some marionettes representing assorted members of a wedding party. It inspired Cocteau during a scene of Les Mariés de la tour Eiffel, Fugue du Massacre (music by Darious Milhaud), where the child of the bride and groom tossed bullets and "massacre the wedding party".

Cocteau also got inspiration for his scenario for Milhaud's ballet Le Boeuf sur le toit from another popular performance that was a staple of the Fair, the magic act of the decapitation, in which the performer cut off his head and present it on a plate to his spectators.

The Fete Foraine was a big source of inspiration for Milhaud as well. The union of different sounds, from the players to the booth-keeper to the crowd and the merry-go-round, recreated in a microcosm the simultaneity of urban life in Paris. Milhaud tried to recreate it using polytonal language in his ballet Le Boeuf sur le toit.

The Cinema:

From 1898, the Music-Hall included films in their list of attractions. The first films regarded everyday scenes, with a genre called “documentary”. This early topic might have influenced Cocteau choice of settings for several works, for example Parade, Le Boeuf sur le toit and Le Train bleu. The use of orchestras to provide musical accompaniment was very common, and also very important, as we can understand from the detailed description of the music accompanying a film from the Franco-Russian and Spanish celebration, appeared on Le Figaro on 1^st July 1902.

After the first world war, American comics, films and series became very popular.

Charlie Chaplin's films reached the pinnacle of success among the Parisian audience. Milhaud's delight with Chaplin is reflected in his edition of Le Boeuf sur le toit of 1919, which was originally entitled Cinéma fantasie, and intended to be an accompaniment for a Chaplin silent film.

Milhaud, Auric, Poulenc and Cocteau also visited other popular entertainment venues, such as classical theatres and operas, dancing halls, suburban cabaret and ordinary bars, however the six institutions described above where the most frequented and admired by the composers.

From 1919 that the young composers found themselves sharing a common interest in the world of popular Parisian entertainment. It began with the commencement of weekly Saturday meetings involving composers, musicians, poets and painters. These meetings initially took place at Milhaud's home, then at the Gaya, and finally moved to Le Boeuf sul le toit.

Even though the source of inspiration was shared, each composer developed and emphasised different aspects and characteristics.

Poulenc found the source of his interest in popular music from his childhood and summers spent in Nogent-sur-Marne. In a statement written for the Bulletin de la Phonothèque Nationale in 1963 Poulenc describes the influence street life and music had on his artworks and affirms that 'All my first compositions, and indeed everything one considers my amorous side, my erotic side, comes from Nogent-sur-Marne, and from this kind of stale smell of fried potatoes, of dinghies, and of the blare of distant sounds of a band.'

When he was a child, he loved the popular tunes by Vincent Scotto and Henri Christiné which were performed on the accordion or by small orchestras in bals-musettes (dance halls) and at popular guinguetters (suburban taverns). From 1914 he started attending Cabarets, Music-Hall, Cafè-Concerts and Theatres with such fervour that from the age of 15 to the age of 30 he frequented these institutions non-stop. In this way he was able to get in touch with popular Parisian entertainment, being particularly fascinated by singers and songwriters. He was inspired by songs by Jeanne Bloch and Maurice Chevalier, and he preferred the tours de chants as they performed at modest establishments. He admired the free use of the text, the use of prosody and the unique, choppy setting of the words. He used these techniques in his early works.

For Poulenc, these popular amusements spoke of a wistful and melancholy character which was able to transmit sadness and nostalgia beneath a surface of gaiety.

For Poulenc the classical tradition shared equal footing with popular songs of the day. Ever since his childhood, he had been a lover of baroque music. He held the works of Couperin in high regard, and proposed a return to Seventeenth-century ideals of simplicity, counterpoint, melody and precision. Popular tunes became a huge inspiration and heralded a returning to a classical simplicity in music. In a short article entitled 'Popular Accent' published on Le Coq Parisien, n.4, in November 1920, Poulenc stated that 'A vulgar tune is good if it works. I love Roméo, Faust, Manon and even songs of Mayol. Refinement nearly always makes modern French composers lose their popular accent. When refinement and this accent combine in a country (as they do with the Russians), then that country finally posses its own music.'

He applauded Satie for the clear and robust character found in his music that was 'as frankly French as Stravinsky's is Slavic'. Also the Satie's balled Parade is upheld as a model for its use of popular sounds that challenge the academic and the sublime. Poulenc celebrated the dancing of a one-step in the ballet and the unprecedented manner in which music-hall entertainment 'invaded art with a

capital A'.¹¹ Clearly Poulenc finds (within French popular music) the tool to counteract the German/romantic “refinement”, which is characterised by his dense and chromatic writing.

Auric and Poulenc both supported popular simplicity. The down to earth character customary of popular entertainment was interpreted as a tool to divert French artists from the refined Wagnerian world and Debussyism. From the article 'Après la pluie le beau temps':

'Why begrudge us the Circus, the Music-Hall, the Fair of Monmartre? … We needed this raw, crisp uproar of sound. Too bad if it disperses the heavy seductions of Debussyism a bit too explosively.'¹²

His ideal of simplicity led him to eschew the idea of composers as a “Genius”. He railed against composers and artists who displayed an outward appearance of seriousness and intelligence. His ideal artist resembled an acrobat who merely must land on his feet to be successful.

Auric, together with Milhaud, even performed Cinéma-Fantasie, a concert piece written by Milhaud in imitation of the musical accompaniments of Charlie Chaplin films, in a symphonic competition sponsored by Vincent d'Indy and Alfred Bruneau. Their aim was to poke fun at the sponsors and disrupt the serious tone of the competition.

The use of popular tunes to mock the established artistic environment is a direct influence of a clown's performance in the Circus of the time. Milhaud describes in Études the Pompoff clowns' sketch called 'The Cello Parody', in which they constructed a makeshift cello and made a parody of a classical musician performing Romantic melodies. The purpose was to ridicule both the prolix, effusive character of nineteen-century melodies and the performance style of passionate musicians who 'let their heart overflow on the first string of their Stradivarius' that people were accustomed to encountering in concert halls.¹³

Auric and Milhaud also shared an interest in American music and Jazz. Auric applauded Satie for being the first to include jazz music and the circus' simplicity in his work which counteracted the 'clouds and sirens' of Debussyism.¹⁴

Together with popular French music, Auric also identified American music and Jazz bands as important to the development of the new French style. He praised Jazz's counterpoint of noises, rhythms and shouts which were superimposed on simple everyday dance tunes.¹⁵

However, it's clear that Auric considered jazz and American music as a partial contributor to the birth of the new French style. He suggested that the American influence in the 1910's was essential to wake up French composers from their stupor, and to give them an alternative to Debussynian and Wagnerian seduction.

'Now that they are awake they should say goodbye to New York and hello to Paris again.'¹⁶

Conversely Milhaud never dismissed the importance of over-sea's influence. He was strongly fascinated by popular entertainment, both American and French, and also had a strong interest in popular tunes and rhythms from South America. Milhaud recognised how 'diversity' and 'simultaneity' were fundamental aspect of his formative experiences.

Fundamental for Milhaud was his travel in 1917, in which he accompanied the French diplomat and poet Paul Claudel to Brazil. He arrived in Rio de Janeiro on the 1^st of February, in the middle of Carnival. He was amazed by the joyful atmosphere, the dancing crowd and the music that was performed there. In particular, he was fascinated by the tone quality of local instruments such as the Violau (a guitar) and the Choucalha (or Chocalho, a percussion instrument) and by the syncopated rhythm of popular dance tunes. He describes it in Notes without Music:

'There was an imperceptible pause in the syncopation, a careless catch in the breath, a slight hiatus which I found very difficult to grasp. So I bought a lot of maxixes and tangos, and I tried to play them [on the piano] with their syncopated rhythms that run from one hand to the other.'¹⁷

In 1918 he went to Washington DC, also for diplomatic reasons. He didn't mention anything about the music that he found in his first travel in the US. However, in his way to Washington he stopped in Puerto Rico, and he was impressed by the assortment of music of different nationalities that he could listen there. American, Spanish and Cuban music were all performed in the same street or square, generating a fascinating cloud of sounds, rhythms and timbers.

In 1919 Milhaud went back to Paris. There he attended with particular interest to the Cirque Médrano, where clowns were performing the demystifying sketch that we mention before. He also showed great interest in 'blues' or 'rags' music performed by M. Andolfi in the bar L'Ours and by the drummers M. Buddy with the 'Syncopated Orchestra'.¹⁸

In 1920 took place the first encounter with Billy Arnold and his 'Novelty Jazz Band'^Audio. He was impressed by their varied timbers, syncopated rhythms and precision:

'The new music was extremely subtle in its use of timbre … The constant use of syncopation in the melody was of such contrapuntal freedom that it gave the impression of unregulated improvisation, whereas in actual fact it was elaborately rehearsed daily, down to the last detail.'¹⁹

It's interesting to see how in the same passage Milhaud sees this music as a 'refreshing contrast to the crude sounds' of the bals-musette orchestras in Paris.

Due largely to the growing interest in French music in America, the pianist Robert Swchmitz invited Milhaud to return to the US in 1922 to perform and conduct his music. Milhaud took the chance to look in the origin of early jazz and 'find out all I could about negro music'.²⁰ This interest astonished the American reporters, because American composers never gave any attention to jazz. His first introduction to black music happened in New York. Through the works and arrangements of Harry T. Burleigh he got to know the tender and sad mood of black spirituals. He was probably the first European composer that gets in touch with the Harlem Blues.

Between 1910'-20' took place the so called 'Harlem Renaissance', in which black and African culture of jazz and blues stars finally to be recognised and accepted also by the white social environment. Milhaud attended to the Capitol, and also to the first 'black' musical in the United States, the 'Shuffle Along'. Milhaud gave particular attention to the melodic lines of the Harlem blues and jazz.

'Against the beat of the drums the melodic lines criss-crossed in a breathless pattern of broken and twisted patterns … With despairing pathos and dramatic feeling, [a negress] sang over and over again, to the point of exhaustion, the same refrain to which the constantly changing melodic pattern of the orchestra wove a kaleidoscope background.'²¹

Of course Milhaud wasn't the only one sharing his interest in American and jazz music. During the Saturday's evenings American music was performed by the pianist and composer Jean Wiéner.

Wiéner was the pianist of the Gaya, and usually performed on Saturday's evenings together with the American saxophonist and banjo player, Vance Lowry.

Wiéner introduced at the Gaya American dance tunes and music from Gershwin and Youmans. His open minded approach to concert-programming and his conviction that 'classical music' should be presented aside popular artist was particularly admired by Milhaud. For example a program for an evening at the Gaya organized by Wiéner on December 1921 proposed the Milhaud's sonata for piano and winds op.47, a piano performance of The Rite of Spring by Pleyela and the American dance band Billy Arnold's.

Milhaud's distaste for the established classical music environment, for the impassioned playing style that characterised performances of romantic repertoire and for the long melodies of nineteenth-century music was offset by his love for eighteenth-century ideals of structure, balance and proportion.

Surprisingly, he found the real French tradition in the music of Rameau, and he often refers favourably to the 'simple clear art' introduced by Mozart and Scarlatti.²²

Furthermore, Milhaud proposed that American popular music and Parisian music-hall entertainment held up a mirror to the 18^th Century traditions of the past; traditions that to some extent, Rameau and Bach would have condoned in their music. He admired the simple gesture, balance and lightness of popular Parisian music, but at the same time admired the busy, syncopated nature of the American Foxtrot and Ragtime; he admired both styles for their odd similarity to the rhythmically strict and structured nature of much of J.S. Bach's output.