“The complete Milhaud? Won’t you be holed up in a bunker for six months?” said a friend when I mentioned this project.
If people know one thing about Darius Milhaud, it is that he was one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His catalogue includes 443 opus numbers, composed between 1910 and 1973. On September 4, which is both Milhaud’s and my birthday, I asked BlueSky and X followers to suggest their favorite Milhaud pieces. This project snowballed from there. Over the next four months, I listened to a large proportion of Milhaud’s output. When there was no accessible recording, I consulted the score. In total, I heard or read 345 pieces—almost 80% of his output. (Some works with opus numbers are unpublished and almost all of those are unavailable; many, but not all, are film, theater or radio scores. When pieces exist in multiple arrangements, I consulted only one version, usually the original.) In the end, I did spend some time in the British Library, but none in a bunker.
Milhaud was born in 1892 and he considered his roots key to his musical personality: “I am a Frenchman from Provence, and, by religion, a Jew.” He spent formative years working in Brazil and as a member of the composer collective Les Six, collaborating with writers and artists. He married his first cousin Madeleine, a vivacious actress and writer who lived to the age of 105; they had a son, Daniel, an artist. Darius Milhaud titled his autobiography Ma vie heureuse (My Happy Life), and it seems that everyone liked him—even Erik Satie, most unusually, never fell out with him.
At the same time, much about Milhaud’s life was far from idyllic. He had severe rheumatoid arthritis and used a wheelchair from the 1930s until his death in 1974. His close childhood friend, Léo Latil, was killed during World War I. From 1940, he spent much time in the United States, fleeing the Nazi occupation of Paris and teaching for many years at Mills College. (The Californian climate relieved some of his physical pain.) While Milhaud personally escaped the Holocaust, over 20 members of his family were murdered. Surely his happy disposition reflected his determination that absolutely nothing could quash his spirit; that despite everything, he was alive and productive. It was only after listening to one of his last works, “Ani maamin,” a setting of Elie Wiesel, that I grasped the extent to which Milhaud was underpinned by a faith that remained unshakeable through the direst of circumstances.
If you only know “Le Boeuf sur le Toit” and “Scaramouche,” you’ll find that Milhaud’s output is a great deal more varied than these most famous pieces, inspired by his time working in Brazil. I’ve termed one typical Milhaud style “happily prolix”: It’s lively, upbeat and somewhat rambling. In the 1910s and 1920s, Milhaud was considered an avant-garde figure because of his use of polytonality, meaning chords from two or more keys played simultaneously. Milhaud found polytonal chords “more subtly sweet and more violently potent” than regular tonal harmony, and he explored polytonality with characteristic thoroughness. In practice, however, it’s not possible to hear more than one tonal center at a time, and his polytonal passages range from agreeably crunchy to indigestible note pileups.
Milhaud’s output is hugely varied as well as just huge. But I must take issue with the received idea that Milhaud should have composed less and been more self-critical. There are very few truly awful pieces here. More to the point, being prolific was how he was: suggesting he should have been unlike his true self—more perfectionist, more mid-range, more boringly “normal”— fails to acknowledge his essential nature. For almost every instrument and standard ensemble (and several weird ensembles), there’s at least one good piece that would be a fine addition to a concert program. Most of all, Milhaud’s humanity and generosity shine through his extensive catalogue. Channeling the composer, I’ll say: I’m really happy I did this project.
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