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32-410: The members were Georges Auric (1899–1983), Louis Durey (1888–1979), Arthur Honegger (1892–1955), Darius Milhaud (1892–1974), Francis Poulenc (1899–1963), and Germaine Tailleferre (1892–1983). In 1917, when many theatres and concert halls were closed because of World War I , Blaise Cendrars and the painter Moïse Kisling decided to put on concerts at 6 rue Huyghens  [ fr ] ,

64-462: A collaboration between ten French composers. In 1952 he participated in yet another collaboration, the set of orchestral variations La Guirlande de Campra . Les Six , though an informal and short-lived group, became known for its reaction against the musical establishment of the time and the promotion of absurdism and satire; the group rebelled similarly against Wagner as it did against Debussy. The music of these composers, including Auric, represented

96-748: A large number of films over the years, including films produced in France, England, and America. Among his most popular scores is the score for Moulin Rouge . The song from that movie, "Where Is Your Heart?", became very popular. In 1962, he gave up writing for motion pictures when he became director of the Opéra National de Paris and then chairman of SACEM , the French Performing Rights Society. Auric continued to write classical chamber music, especially for winds, right up to his death. Music criticism

128-559: A long and distinguished career as a film composer. Georges Auric began his musical career at a young age, performing a piano recital at the Société musicale indépendante at the age of 14. Several songs that he had written were then performed in the following year by Société Nationale de Musique . Along with his early successes professionally, Auric studied music at the Paris Conservatoire , as well as composition with Vincent d'Indy at

160-462: A reaction against the musical establishment and the use of referential material. Because of this and his association with Cocteau and Satie, Auric was grouped into Les Six by music critic Henri Collet , and was friends with the artist Jean Hugo . His participation led to writing settings of poetry and other texts as songs and musicals. Along with the other five composers, he contributed a piece to L'Album des Six . In 1921, Cocteau asked him to write

192-399: A suite of songs for baritone or bass and piano on words of Louise Lévêque de Vilmorin in commemoration of the centenary of the death of Frédéric Chopin. In 1952, Auric, Honegger, Poulenc, Tailleferre and three other composers collaborated on an orchestral work called La Guirlande de Campra . In 1956, Auric, Milhaud, Poulenc and five other composers created an orchestral suite in honour of

224-437: A wider audience by writing in more genres; third, to write music aimed at a younger audience; and fourth, to express his political views more directly in his music. The films that Auric chose to score in his career as a film composer were influenced by these new-found beliefs, as well as by old associations. He collaborated with Jean Cocteau, his longtime associate from the days of Les Six, on eleven films. He composed music for

256-763: Is in the French Misplaced Pages article on Georges Auric (in French) . [REDACTED] Media related to Georges Auric at Wikimedia Commons Les mari%C3%A9s de la tour Eiffel Les mariés de la tour Eiffel ( The Wedding Party on the Eiffel Tower ) is a ballet to a libretto by Jean Cocteau , choreography by Jean Börlin , set by Irène Lagut  [ fr ] , costumes by Jean Hugo , and music by five members of Les Six : Georges Auric , Arthur Honegger , Darius Milhaud , Francis Poulenc and Germaine Tailleferre . The score calls for two narrators. The ballet

288-506: The Nouveaux jeunes less than a year after starting the group, was the "gift from heaven" that made it all come true for Cocteau: his 1918 publication, Le Coq et l'Arlequin , is said to have kicked it off. After World War I , Jean Cocteau and Les Six began to frequent a bar known as "La Gaya" which became Le Bœuf sur le toit (The Ox on the Roof) when the establishment moved to larger quarters. As

320-528: The Schola Cantorum de Paris and Albert Roussel . Having gained recognition as a child prodigy both in composition and piano performance, he became a protégé of Erik Satie during the following decade. During the 1910s and 20s, he was a significant contributor of avant-garde music in Paris and was significantly influenced by Cocteau and the other composers of Les Six . Auric's early compositions were marked by

352-577: The ballet are: Between the music, there are narrated and acted scenes. The score was unpublished until the first full recording of the work in 1966, which was supervised by Darius Milhaud . Les Mariés was performed by the Delft student music company " Krashna Musika " in Delft , the Netherlands , on 2 May 1975, as part of the Student Music Festival "Muzikaal Totaal", conceived by Guus Ranke. It

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384-469: The ballet is somewhat nonsensical: When asked what the ballet was about, Cocteau replied: "Sunday vacuity; human beastliness, ready-made expressions, disassociation of ideas from flesh and bone, ferocity of childhood, the miraculous poetry of everyday life." On 29 July 1923, in a letter, Francis Poulenc described the work as "toujours de la merde ... hormis l'Ouverture d' Auric " ("yet more shit ... apart from Auric's Overture"). The musical sections of

416-476: The famous ballet by Milhaud had been conceived at the old premises, the new bar took on the name of Milhaud's ballet . On the renamed 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 impresario Serge Diaghilev , artist Pablo Picasso , filmmaker René Clair , singer Jane Bathori , and actor and singer Maurice Chevalier . Another frequent guest

448-451: The group also participated. Auric and Poulenc were involved in all six of these collaborations, Milhaud in five, Honegger and Tailleferre in three, but Durey in only one. In 1920 the group published an album of piano pieces together, known as L'Album des Six . This was the only work in which all six composers collaborated. In 1921, five of the members jointly composed the music for Cocteau's ballet Les mariés de la tour Eiffel , which

480-472: The music for his ballet, Les Mariés de la tour Eiffel . He found himself short of time, so he asked his fellow composers of Les Six to contribute some music. All except Louis Durey agreed. During this time, he wrote his one-act opera Sous le masque (1927) (an earlier opera, La Reine de coeur (1919), is lost). It was also in 1927 that he contributed the Rondeau for the children's ballet L'Éventail de Jeanne ,

512-407: The music of Les Six, especially in their actual collaborations. However, Les Six soon drew apart, with Auric and others taking different approaches to their art. Following his early successes as an avant-garde composer, Auric went through a transitional period during the 1930s. He began writing for film in 1930 and composed the music for À Nous la Liberté in 1931, which was well received; there

544-591: The other hand had a deep-seated scorn for Satie , whom Auric, Milhaud and I adored. But, that is only one reading of how the Groupe des Six originated. Other authors, like Ornella Volta , stressed the manoeuvrings of Jean Cocteau to become the leader of an avant-garde group devoted to music, like the cubist and surrealist groups which had sprung up in visual arts and literature shortly before, with Pablo Picasso , Guillaume Apollinaire , and André Breton as their key representatives. The fact that Satie had abandoned

576-545: The pianist Marguerite Long , called Variations sur le nom de Marguerite Long Georges Auric Georges Auric ( French: [ʒɔʁʒ ɔʁik] ; 15 February 1899 – 23 July 1983) was a French composer, born in Lodève , Hérault , France. He was considered one of Les Six , a group of artists informally associated with Jean Cocteau and Erik Satie . Before he turned 20 he had orchestrated and written incidental music for several ballets and stage productions. He also had

608-407: The public. It was through this group that Auric met many other far left artists and thinkers. These ideals transferred into Auric's concert music as well as his choices in which movies he scored. In 1930, Auric married the painter Eleanore Vilter, who died in 1982. Auric died in Paris on 23 July 1983 at the age of 84, and was interred at Montparnasse Cemetery , beside his wife. A more complete list

640-528: 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! And according to Poulenc: The diversity of our music, of our tastes and distastes, precluded any common aesthetic. What could be more different than the music of Honegger and Auric? Milhaud admired Magnard , I did not; neither of us liked Florent Schmitt , whom Honegger respected; Arthur [Honegger] on

672-676: The score to Cocteau's Le Sang d'un poète . However, he abandoned the elitist and highly referential attitudes of his earlier years by 1935 in favour of a populist approach. He became associated with leftist groups and publications, including the Association des Ecrivains et des Artistes Révolutionnaires (AEAR), the Maison de la Culture , and the Fédération Musicale Populaire. He adopted four strategies to composing; first, to participate in groups with other leftist artists; second, to reach

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704-415: The specific cultural scene of Paris at the time and rejected the international styles brought by Russian and German music, as well as the impressionism and symbolism of Debussy. Auric's later development as a populist composer was prefigured by many of the techniques and ideals of Les Six, especially the use of popular music and situations. Music of the circus or the dance hall played a significant role in

736-618: The studio of the painter Émile Lejeune (1885–1964). For the first of these events, the walls of the studio were decorated with canvases by Picasso , Matisse , Léger , Modigliani , and others. Music by Erik Satie , Honegger, Auric, and Durey was played. This concert gave Satie the idea of assembling a group of composers around himself to be known as Les nouveaux jeunes , forerunners of Les Six . 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

768-440: Was another major facet of Auric's career. His criticism was focused on promoting the ideals of Les Six and Cocteau, known as esprit nouveau . Specifically, his criticism focused on the perceived pretentiousness of Debussy, Wagner, Saint-Saëns, and Massenet, as well as the music of those who followed their styles. Cocteau, Les Six, and Auric found the music of those composers to be divorced from reality and instead preferred music that

800-593: Was first performed in Paris in 1921. The ballet had its genesis in a commission to Jean Cocteau and Georges Auric , from Rolf de Maré of the Ballets suédois . Cocteau's original title for his scenario was The Wedding Party Massacre . It has been suggested that Raymond Radiguet , the young writer close to Cocteau at the time, made some contribution to the libretto. Running short of time, Auric asked his fellow members of Les Six to also contribute music, and all of them did except Louis Durey , who pleaded illness. It

832-413: Was general approval of Auric's score for the film. While he was beginning a successful career as a film composer, his music went through a period of stagnation and change. His Piano Sonata (1931) was poorly received and was followed by a period of five years in which he wrote very little, including his first three film scores. His association with Cocteau continued through this period with his composition of

864-523: Was grounded in populism. While Auric criticized Satie in the 1920s for joining the French Communist Party , he became associated with several leftist groups and contributed to the communist newspapers Marianne and Paris-Soir in the 1930s. The Association des Ecrivains et des Artistes Révolutionnaires (AEAR) was dedicated to bringing together Soviet and French communist artists to discuss their goals and approaches for disseminating their ideas to

896-450: Was in the repertoire of the Ballets suédois throughout the 1920s. In 1927, Auric, Milhaud and Poulenc, along with seven other composers who were not part of Les Six, jointly composed the children's ballet L'éventail de Jeanne . In 1949, Auric, Milhaud and Poulenc, along with three other composers, jointly wrote Mouvements du coeur: Un hommage à la mémoire de Frédéric Chopin , 1810–1849 ,

928-543: Was produced by the Ballets suédois , the rival to the Ballets Russes. Cocteau had originally proposed the project to Auric, but as Auric did not finish rapidly enough to fit into the rehearsal schedule, he then divided the work up among the other members of Les Six. Durey, who was not in Paris at the time, chose not to participate. The première was the occasion of a public scandal rivalling that of Le sacre du printemps in 1913. In spite of this, Les mariés de la tour Eiffel

960-674: Was repeated on 23 May 1975, in theatre "De Junushof" in Wageningen , The Netherlands . Both performances were in Dutch. The Wageningen edition was recorded, and can be obtained via Krashna Musika / KRAK from June 2020 on. The ballet has also been recorded more recently by the Philharmonia Orchestra under Geoffrey Simon . In 1987, Marius Constant arranged the music for an ensemble of fifteen instruments: wind quintet, string quintet, trumpet, trombone, harp and two percussion. This version of

992-614: Was staged by the Ballets suédois at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris on 18 June 1921, the principal dancers being C. Ari, J. Figoni, and K. Vahlander. The orchestra was conducted by Désiré-Émile Inghelbrecht . The narrators were Jean Cocteau and Pierre Bertin . It had a brief moment of fame and even scandal, but then fell into oblivion, although it was given in New York City in 1923. A new production opened there in 1988. The story of

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1024-445: Was the young American composer Virgil Thomson whose compositions in subsequent years were influenced by members of Les Six. Although the group did not exist to work on compositions collaboratively , there were six occasions, spread over 36 years, on which at least some members of the group did work together on the same project. On only one of these occasions was the entire Groupe des Six involved; in some others, composers from outside

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