French Composers of Today

French Composers of Today - Norman Demuth When, in 1935, the French composers Yves Baudrier (b. 1906), Andre Jolivet (b. 1905), Daniel Lesur (b. 1908), and Olivier Messiaen (b. 1908), banded themselves into a coterie known as "La Jeune France," they deliberately acknowledged the continuity of the French Tradition and confirmed their belief in Hector Berlioz as the founder of, and authority for, modern French musical philosophy. It was under this banner that the great Hector fought his many battles; true, he fought them mainly on his own behalf, but he was, nevertheless, concerned also with establishing a standard of judgment and a natio!,a1 sense of cultural values. The panorama of French music displays a striking picture of continuity and a refusal to be swayed by alien aesthetics. Paris, the Mecca of operatic composers for so many years, has harboured many notable figures, the pilgrimage from abroad dating from the Italian invasion initiated by Cardinal Mazarin. Taking a little from this composer and a little from that, the French have never lost sight of their individual esprit. French music has thus grown out of itself. It has invariably been a step ahead of any other culture and if at times such a step has proved sterile, it has always had enough virility to set tongues wagging and make argument rife. Sterility having been proven, malters have quickly moved on to some other revelation. This has been effected quite naturally and may be said to have resulted from the passion for voluble and extremely active coteries. Contemporary jargon provides commentators with useful catchphrases , not the least so being references to the "Gallic Goilt" and the "French Temperament." These form a convenient way of avoiding issues. We may say briefly that the "Gallic Goilt" in music implies a feline quality of melody, an instinct for clarity, a vivid use of the imagination, an"innate feeling for elegance, and a tendency to place the emphasis on sound rather than on line. The "French Temperament" includes a strong vein of excitability, a sensitivity to things creative, a feeling for beauty FRENCH COMPOSERS OF TODAY 457 and logic, and an instinct to act on the spur of the moment-I would add a love of argument, although this is not reflected in the music. Sensitivity, however, has emphasized sentimentality, and the general view of French music is that it is fundamentally effeminate. This is but one of the misunderstandings and instances of single-pointedness of view under which French music and the French temperament labour. Marianne, however, has long since assumed some of the amazonian qualities of her sister, Britannia, and the situation is now radically different from what it undeniably was during the last century. French music today is invariably elegant, but it can also be extremely masculine, and to see it as effeminate is to acknowledge but one side of the picture. People remember Sedan, but forget Verdun. When Debussy produced his "Prelude ill'Apres-Midi d'un Faune" in 1894, he diverted attention from the neo-classicism of the time, as exemplified in the works of Camille Saint-Saens, and from the effeminate lyricism of Gounod and Massenet. From the moment the significance of Debussy's "Prelude" (and, later, Preludes for Piano) was appreciated and realized it has been the custom to describe nearly every French composer of the twentieth century as an "Impressionist." I say "nearly" advisedly, for the great Franck Tradition steadily pursued its symphonic path undeterred and untempted by the opposing easy delights. Yet impressionism was no new thing. Berlioz may be credited with the first example in the "Fantaisie sur 'La Tempete,'" which later formed part of the hotch-potch known as "Lelia, au La retour ala vie" (1832), and in the "Queen Mab Scherzo" in "Romeo et Juliette" (1865). The next reflection is not quite so positive, but Cesar Franck's "Les Eolides" (1876) is certaiuly impressionistic by reason of its semitonalism . Franck, however, had an innate sense of symphonic continuity, and this led him to line rather than sound; Berlioz' works belong to the latter aesthetic. Each of the four works to which I have referred has its own literary context and, therefore, literary and extra...