Six (group of composers)

The group included Louis Duray (oldest), Darius Millau , Arthur Onegger , Georges Oric (youngest), Francis Pulenck and Germain Tyfer . The name of the group was given to Colle by analogy with the “five” ( French Les cinq ), as it was customary to call the composers of the Mighty Handful in France: Colle's article was called “Russian Five, French Six and Mr. Satie ” ( French Les cinq russes, les six français et M. Satie ).

The meaning of the analogy was that the Six composers, like the Russian composers half a century earlier, declared their intention to defend the national specificity of the musical language against foreign influences - in this case, against late Wagnerianism and Schoenberg atonality . Composers of different creative orientations were united by a desire for novelty and simplicity at the same time, as well as a militant rejection of musical impressionism .

In his aversion to all kinds of nebulae: vagueness, embellishment, decoration, modern tricks, often augmented by technology, the finest means of which he knew very well, Sati consciously refused everything in order to be able to cut from a single piece of wood , to remain simple, clean and clear .

- Henri Colle , “ Five Great Russians , Six French and Eric Satie”, January 16, 1920 ^[1]

The composer Eric Satie was not without reason considered the senior comrade and ideological inspirer of the Six, and earlier, in 1918 , it was Satie who intended to create a group of composers under his leadership, which was called “New Young” ( French Les Nouveaux Jeunes ). So, back in June 1917 (almost four years before the manifesto of the Six), a joint concert was held under the auspices of Eric Satie in Paris, which included a suite from the ballet Parade (Satie), the piano trio of Georges Orique and Louis Bells Dureya . In various combinations of names and compositions, such concerts took place regularly. However, then various personal circumstances and conflicts prevented this, and the role of the ideological inspirer of young composers passed to Jean Cocteau , who, according to some experts, inspired the article by Colle ^[2] . At the same time, almost all members of the Six group have repeatedly in their lives declared some conventionality of this association, made for purely advertising and newspaper purposes. So, “by pure chance” Jacques Iber , Jean Wiener and were not “counted” into the group. ^[3]

Here is what thirty years later (in 1949 ) one of the main participants of the Six wrote about this, Darius Millau :

... Henri Colllet completely randomly chose six names: Orik, Dureya, Honegger, Pulenok, Thayer and my own, simply because we knew each other, were good companions and appeared in the same concert programs - without thinking about that we have completely different temperaments and no similarities in nature! While Orik and Pulenk generally shared Cocteau's ideas, Onegger gravitated toward German romanticism, and I gravitated to Mediterranean lyrics. I resolutely rejected any commonality of aesthetic theories and considered them as a limitation, as unreasonable links, a brake that fetters the imagination of the artist, who must find his own (and sometimes even opposite) means of expression for each of his new works. However, the deed was done and it became useless to resist! Kolle's article became so widely known that the Six group was created and I entered it regardless of whether I wanted it or not. And since this has already taken place, we decided to give “Concerts of the Six” ... ^[4]

- Milhaud D. "Notes sans Musique"

Quite in the same spirit, another bright member of the group, Francis Pulenk , expressed his opinion:

A few more words about the Six ... This group, when it emerged during the war, had no goals other than a purely friendly, and not at all ideological, unification. Then, little by little, we also developed common ideas that bound us tightly, such as, for example, rejection of everything vague ( anti-impressionism ), a return to melody and counterpoint , to clarity, simplicity and so on ... ^[5]

- Poulenc Fr. "Entretiens avec Claude Rostand"

But the most independent and independent of its participants, Arthur Onegger, formulates his attitude to the “general principles” and the ideology of the Six most resolutely and before everyone else. He always stood somewhat apart from his Six friends, both in creative manner and in character, and his personal relationship with Eric Sati was distinguished by emphasized detachment and distance. Back in 1924, he expressed in his article answering the review in The Times just a few words, fully reflecting his attitude to the group of which he himself was a member:

... our group is not an association of like-minded people, but friends, so Cocteau's "Rooster and Harlequin" was never our common banner. We did not have and there is no single aesthetics!

At first, from the music of the older generation, members of the Six recognize the value of the creative heritage of only two composers - Igor Stravinsky , whom they call only Tsar Igor or Great Igor) and Erica Sati , with whom most they formed their own special, often very complex and even conflicting relationships. Sati is called the "Arkan wise man" or "vicious teacher." First, his “surreal ballet” Parade (1917), accompanied by Guillaume Apollinaire ’s historical program article, “The New Spirit” , was a biting manifesto of primitivism that provoked a grandiose scandal, and then the Socrates cantata (1918), one of the first examples of neoclassicism , these two works as a whole determined the range of directions of creativity of members of the Six. Another of the hobbies that influenced the young composers of the group was American jazz , which entered France after 1918 (the only member of the Six who escaped this influence was Durey ).

Since the Six felt free from their doctrine and was filled with enthusiastic reverence for those against whom they presented themselves as an aesthetic opponent, then it did not constitute any group. Indeed, in addition to her desire, every group has a certain general tendency: for us, it consisted of transitions from drum to flute and from flute to drum, in restoring the avant-garde role of purely French features in music. “ The Sacred Spring ” grew into a powerful tree, pushing our shrubbery away, and we were about to declare ourselves defeated, when Stravinsky himself soon joined our circle of receptions and inexplicably in his works even felt the influence of Eric Sati. ^[one]

- Jean Cocteau , “for the jubilee concert of the Six in 1953 ”

However, for almost a decade, Jean Cocteau , practically independently of the Six members, continued to actively produce the ideology of this half-imagined group. Almost verbatim repeating Sati's legendary thesis about the utilitarian meaning of music, which " ... should be invisible, like wallpaper, and comfortable, like furniture in a room, " Cocteau exclaims: " Music is not always a gondola ... sometimes it has to become a chair ." And this is not just shocking , but the ideological thesis according to which music should go down to everyday life as opposed to the old generation’s laconic and sublime attitude to the purpose of art. “ We need musical bread! ”- requires Cocteau. And Darius Millau repeats his words almost literally in his Etudes: “ Bread instead of pineapples ! ", As if directly responding to the exquisite revelations of Igor Severyanin .

Joint actions of the Six were not numerous. In 1921 , they published The Album of the Six ( French: L'Album des six ), a collection of six pieces for piano solo, which included works by all six composers. In the same year, five out of six composers (except Durey, who had left Paris at that time) wrote the music of the ballet “The Newlyweds on the Eiffel Tower ” ( French Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel ) based on Cocteau's libretto : two pieces were written by Orik (including overture), Tyfer and Pulenk, three - Millau, one (Mourning March) - Onegger. The ballet was staged at the Champs Elysees by the troupe Ballets suédois on June 18, 1921; The text was read by Jean Cocteau and Pierre Bertin.

Subsequently, the authors of Six worked individually and met together only thirty years later.

• Rene Dumenil . Modern French composers of the Six group / Per. with fr. I. Zubkova; Ed. and entry. Art. M. Druskin . - L .: Music, 1964.
• Filenko G. E. Sati // Questions of the theory and aesthetics of music, c. 5. - L., 1967.
• Filenko G. " French music of the first half of the XX century." Essays. L., Music, 1983.
• Schneerson G. French Music of the 20th Century, 2nd ed. - M., 1970.

• French music