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Milhaud's Alissa Manuscripts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Barbara L. Kelly
Barbara L. Kelly*
Affiliation:
Keele University
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Extract

In 1913 Milhaud set passages of André Gide's La porte étroite as a song-cycle, Alissa. However, he subsequently left the youthful work unpublished, although it was performed by Jane Bathori and Milhaud at the Sorbonne on 11 February 1920. 18 years after its composition he returned to it, and the revised score was published in 1931 as op. 9. It was rare for him to revise earlier works (and, indeed, he seldom made sketches for any compositions). However, he did return to some other works from the same period, the First String Quartet, op. 5 (1912), and the Suite for Piano, op. 8 (1913), simply indicating sections to be cut from the published score of the quartet, and removing a movement from the suite. That Milhaud chose to intervene more extensively in Alissa indicates his attachment to the work and reveals, within the context of one work, the process of compositional growth more generally discernible in his output between these dates.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 121 , Issue 2 , 1996 , pp. 229 - 245
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 1996

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References

I am grateful to Mme Madeleine Milihaud for permitting me to consult the original 1913 manuscript of Alissa, which is in her possession.Google Scholar

1 Milhaud also made changes to his Piano Sonata, op. 33 (1916).Google Scholar

2 Milhaud elaborates on this in his article ‘L'évolution de la musique à Paris et à Vienne’ (1923), Notes sur la musique, ed. Jeremy Drake (Paris, 1982), 193–205 (p. 197), objecting to Impressionism ‘où la complication inutile, la recherche de la sonorité rare au détriment de la pureté mélodique et l'éparpillement des forces de l'orchestre appelaient une réaction’ (‘where pointless complication, the search for rare sonorities at the expense of melodic purity and the fragmentation of the orchestral forces called for a reaction‘).Google Scholar

3 Milhaud used the term ‘robust’ about the French music of his generation in ‘Claude Debussy’ (unpublished typescript, n.d.), 14, and admired this quality in Paul Claudel in Ma vie heureuse (Paris, 1987), 33. For a further discussion of this issue in French music see Barbara L. Kelly, ‘Milhaud and the French Musical Tradition with Reference to his Works 1912–31’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Liverpool, 1994), ch. 3.Google Scholar

4 For a discussion of Milhaud's ideas on setting prosody, see Milhaud, Darius, ‘Les mystères de la prosodie’, Entretiens avec Claude Rostand (Paris, 1952; repr. 1992), 101–6.Google Scholar

5 ‘Leave the nuptial bed, take the purple robe … Tender deity’ (L'aurore); ‘Chaste goddess! goddess so pure’ (A la lune); ‘Daughter of the sky, pleasing innocence … beautiful innocence!… but look! the dangers surround you … will you try to escape the dangers which threaten you?’ (L'innocence).Google Scholar

6 ‘The whole thing set to music’. Armand Lunel, Mon ami Darius Milhaud, ed. Georges Jessula (Aix-en-Provence, 1992), 39.Google Scholar

7 See Milhaud, , Ma vie heureuse, 29, 33 and 35.Google Scholar

8 ‘Alissa tells me’; ‘As if to protest against it, my heart beating quickly, I tell her with sudden courage …‘.Google Scholar

9 ‘I would like to die now, quickly, before realizing once more that I am alone.’ In conversation with the author, June 1993.Google Scholar

10 I am grateful to Oliver Neighbour for sending me a reproduction of this manuscript, which is in his possession.Google Scholar

11 Milhaud, Darius, ‘La musique française depuis la guerre’, Etudes (Paris, 1927), 7–26 (p. 11).Google Scholar

12 ‘Why do you have the note D♯ 17 times on the first page? You do not know how to construct a melody’. Milhaud, Ma vie heureuse, 32.Google Scholar

13 In conversation with the author, May 1992.Google Scholar

14 Milhaud, ‘Claude Debussy’, 14.Google Scholar

15 The most striking example of this tendency is seen in Milhaud's Sixth Chamber Symphony (1923), which is scored for wordless vocal quartet, oboe and cello. Machines agricoles is written for chamber ensemble and a voice, which is by no means the dominant line.Google Scholar

16 Milhaud wrote several funeral marches, for example in the Fourth String Quartet (1918) and Les malheurs d'Orphée (1924).Google Scholar

17 See Drake, Jeremy, The Operas of Darius Milhaud (New York, 1989), for a discussion of Milhaud's rhythmic sketchings in these operas.Google Scholar

18 See Grayson, David, ‘Claude Debussy Addresses the English-Speaking World’, Cahiers Debussy, 16 (1992), 23–47.Google Scholar

19 Charles Koechlin, unpublished letter to Romain Rolland of 8 January 1939, collection of Madeleine Li-Koechlin, L'Hay-les-Roses, France, trans. Robert Orledge.Google Scholar