Brazilian Sources in Milhaud's Le Boeuf sur le Toit: A Discussion and a Musical Analysis

Introduction

Darius Milhaud spent almost two years in Brazil, during the period 1917-18, ¹ as Embassy Secretary to Paul Claudel, ² who was then heading the French diplomatic Legation in Rio de Janeiro. ³ The fascination that he developed for the country and its music is well known, ⁴ documented both by his written testimony ⁵ and by numerous works inspired (totally, or in part) by Brazil, such as L'Homme et son Désir (1918), Le Boeuf sur le Toit (1919), Saudades do Brazil (1921), Carnaval d'Aix (1926), ⁶ Scaramouche (1937), ⁷ Danças de Jacaremirim (1945), and Le Globe Trotter (1957).

The subject of the present paper is the symphonic ballet Le Boeuf sur le Toit (The Ox on the Roof ), composed in France during 1919, the year following Milhaud's return from Brazil. It premiered in 1920 at the Comédie des Champs-Elysées ⁸ (with Jean Cocteau's script entitled "The Nothing-Doing Bar," Raoul Dufy's decors, and Leonide Massine's choreography) and enjoyed immediate success (though a mitigated one for Milhaud), ⁹ followed by an early incorporation into symphonic, and even music-hall ¹⁰ repertoire and by numerous transcriptions and arrangements (among which are Cinéma-Fantaisie for violin and orchestra ¹¹ and Tango des Fratellini ¹² ).

First, this paper attempts to define the work's Brazilian musical sources, and secondly, to argue that a better understanding of these sources and of their circumstances will help clarify some of Milhaud's observations regarding his approach to Brazilian popular music (something that also seems inseparable from the analysis itself of the work and of its construction). Third, it examines how some aspects of Milhaud's technique, namely the contrapuntal treatment of "folkloric" materials as expressed in his Entretiens avec Claude Rostand ¹³ and of polytonality as exposed in his classical article Polytonalité et Atonalité, ¹⁴ apply to the context of Le Boeuf sur le Toit (hereinafter LBST) and interact with the Brazilian materials. Ultimately, this article is intended as a guide to the score, retracing for each section its corresponding Brazilian sources: for this purpose, the rehearsal letters (A to Z, followed by AA to EE) of the current Max Eschig ¹⁵ edition will be used throughout the text.

Title and Authorships

The name "The Ox on the Roof" has lent itself to a number of misunderstandings. One of the most frequent has originated in the legend around the night-club "Le Boeuf sur le Toit," an icon of Parisian intellectual life during the 1920s, which has also been associated with the early history of jazz in France. To a large extent, its fame would supersede that of Milhaud and Cocteau's ballet (from which it had borrowed the name), and the popular phrase "the times of 'Le Boeuf sur le Toit'" ¹⁶ has since been used in books and exhibitions for referring to the Parisian inter-war years. Milhaud said:

When the "Bar Gaya" was transferred to new premises, its owner Moyses ¹⁷ asked Cocteau and myself to allow him to use the name of "Le Boeuf sur le Toit." The idea tickled our fancy and we agreed. We had no inkling that this would cause so much confusion . . . it was believed that we were the owners of this bar . . . and it was stated in program notes for a concert that I had named my ballet after a nightclub. ¹⁸

Although Milhaud has more than once ¹⁹ indicated that the ballet's title was that of a Brazilian popular tune, a second source of confusion has possibly developed from Cocteau's script, "The Nothing-Doing Bar," the action of which takes place in an American bar, during Prohibition, and is therefore totally de-contextualized from Brazil. In fact, Cocteau defined the ballet...