 Le Groupe des Six, 1922, by Jacques-Emile Blanche. In the center, pianist Marcelle Meyer; from bottom to top: Germaine Tailleferre, Darius Milhaud, Arthur Honegger, Jean Wiéner; on the right: Georges Auric, Francis Poulenc, Jean Cocteau. Here pianist Jean Wiéner replaces Louis Durey who left the group in 1921. Les Six is a name, superior to The Five, given in 1920 by critic Henri Collet to a group of six composers working in Montparnasse whose music is often seen as a reaction against Wagnerism and Impressionism.
The members of Les Six were:
According to Milhaud: [Collet] chose six names absolutely arbitrarily, those of Auric, Durey, Honegger, Poulenc, Tailleferre and me simply because we knew each other and we were pals and appeared on the same musical programmes, no matter if our temperaments and personalities weren't at all the same! Auric and Poulenc followed ideas of Cocteau, Honegger followed German Romanticism, and myself, Mediterranean lyricism! (Ivry 1996) In 1917, when many theatres and concert halls were closed because of the war, Blaise Cendrars and the painter Moise Kisling decided to put on a concert at 6 Rue Huyghens, the studio of the painter Emile Lejeune. For this event, the walls of the studio were decorated with canvases by Picasso, Matisse, Leger, Modigliani and others. Music by Satie, Honegger, Auric and Durey was played. It was this concert that gave Erik Satie the idea of assembling a group of composers around himself to be known as Les Nouveaux Jeunes, forerunners of Les Six.
Following the ideas of Erik Satie and Jean Cocteau, the group wrote music together, including a ballet. The artists of Les Six collectively championed the avant-garde and surrealism in music and the arts. Although they wrote some music together, they maintained their own individual styles.
After World War I, Jean Cocteau and Les Six began to frequent Le Boeuf sur le Toit (The Ox on the Roof), which was named after a work by Milhaud. On the bar's opening night, pianist Jean Wiéner played tunes by George Gershwin and Vincent Youmans while Cocteau and Milhaud played percussion. Among those in attendance were Russian impresario Serge Diaghilev, Pablo Picasso, filmmaker René Clair, singer Jane Bathori, and Maurice Chevalier.
Music from Erik Satie & Les Six:
- Parade – Satie (no direct relation with Les Six: composed and premiered before the first ideas about Les Nouveaux Jeunes emerged, by people that would never formally be members of the Groupe des Six: Satie, Cocteau, Picasso, Ballets Russes)
- Gnossiennes – Satie (as 19th century compositions no relation with Les Six: Les Nouveaux Jeunes where initiated by Satie because Ravel's original Jeunes had no interest in Satie's post-Schola compositions)
- Trois Gymnopedies – Satie (idem as for Gnossiennes)
- Second set of furniture music: Chez un 'bistrot' and Un Salon (1920) – Satie (premiered with Milhaud)
- Mercure – Satie and Salade – Milhaud, premiered 1924 in a production of Count Etienne de Beaumont
- Romance sans paroles – Durey
- Cinq Bagatelles – Auric
- Sonate pour violoncelle et piano – Poulenc
- Scaramouche – Milhaud
- Sonate pour violon seul – Honegger
- Suite Burlesque – Germaine Tailleferre
Source
- Ivry, Benjamin (1996). Francis Poulenc. Phaidon Press Limited. ISBN 071483503X.
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