Allegro appassionato by Jean Wiéner (review)

The memoirs of French composer-pianist Jean Wiéner (1896–1982) entitled Allegro appassionato, no doubt to suggest the brilliance and passion with which he immersed himself in his many and diverse musical activities, bring the atmosphere and personalities of the Parisian musical milieu during the years of Les Années Folles and beyond vividly to life. The writing style creates the impression that the reader is seated with the composer hearing him speak—such is Wiéner’s direct, very personal, and often highly entertaining approach to the telling of his life story, which unfolds as a single, uninterrupted flow from beginning to end. Yet, within his witty and characteristically modest understatements there is also a deep seriousness; the composer was writing in his autumn years, wishing to set the record straight. Pulling no punches in his swipes against Boulez in the final sections of his text (especially pp. 300–6), Wiéner appears more than a little irked that critics praised his younger contemporary for supposedly introducing music of the Second Viennese School to France after the Second World War. Not surprisingly, Wiéner devotes considerable space in his memoirs to an explanation of how, and why, he and his lifelong friend Darius Milhaud (only recently deceased when Wiéner was writing) organized the first Paris performances of Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire, as well as other works by the composer, and by Webern, in 1921 and 1922. Heaving a heavy literary sigh through an ironically loaded and typically French ellipsis, Wiéner simply remarks that these historic events took place ‘je suppose avant la naissance de Pierre Boulez . . ...’ (p. 306).

The first two ‘Concerts Jean Wiéner’ at the Salle des Agriculteurs in December 1921 featured substantial extracts from Pierrot lunaire (with soprano Marya Freund, Wiéner in the ensemble at the piano, and Milhaud conducting), and were combined with works by Stravinsky, Milhaud, Satie, Poulenc, and American jazz composer Billy Arnold. Such unusual and innovative programming epitomized Wiéner’s idea of ‘Concerts salades’, a deceptively jovial term for his commendably serious objective to juxtapose new music from outside France with works by French composers. Anticipating the spirit of sincerity, generosity, and artistic consciousness more usually associated with the composers of La Jeune France more than a decade later, Wiéner and Milhaud sought to keep Parisian audiences informed of wider contemporary developments. The first Paris performance of the complete Pierrot lunaire took place in the third ‘Concert Jean Wiéner’ at the Salle Gaveau on 12 January 1922. This was followed by yet another performance of the complete work in March the same year, and yet further performances when the concert series moved to the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. Wiéner and Milhaud demonstrated unequivocally the need for repeated hearings of new music they considered important.

Parisian critics, however, were not entirely ready for what Wiéner understatedly describes as the ‘shock produced by the revelation of Schoenberg’ (p. 80). The performances shook the musical milieu to the core and stimulated a vitriolic attack in the Parisian musical press led notably by Louis Vuillemin, who condemned the promotion of foreign (and Jewish) music as unpatriotic in barely veiled anti-Semitic rants. Although publicly resisted by the likes of Ravel, Roussel, Roland-Manuel, Paul le Flem, and others, the whole debacle became known as the ‘Affaire des poisons’ in pointed reference to the sensational witchcraft-murder trials at the time of Louis XIV. These complex issues have been examined in broader context by Barbara L. Kelly in her recent study, Music and Ultra-Modernism in France: A Fragile Consensus, 1913–1939 (Woodbridge, 2013). In his memoirs, Wiéner preserves a distance from the affair by avoiding the expression of his own views, aiming instead to let the facts speak for themselves by simply presenting the evidence. He not only includes flyers for his complete series of ‘Concerts Jean Wiéner’ among his many illustrations, but devotes more than fifty pages (pp. 81–133) to reproducing a selection...