Darius Milhaud (French: [daʁjys mijo]; Provençal: [miˈjawt]; September 4, 1892 – June 22, 1974) was a French composer, conductor, and teacher. He was a member of a group called Les Six, also known as The Group of Six, and one of the most productive composers of the 20th century. His music was influenced by jazz and Brazilian music and often used a technique called polytonality, which involves using multiple musical keys at the same time. Milhaud is considered one of the most important modernist composers. He taught many future jazz and classical composers, including Burt Bacharach, Dave Brubeck, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, György Kurtág, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Iannis Xenakis, among others.

Life and career

Darius Milhaud was born in Marseille, France, to Sophie (Allatini) and Gad Gabriel Milhaud. He grew up in Aix-en-Provence, which he considered his true ancestral city. His family was Jewish and had lived in the quiet region of Comtat Venaissin in Provence for many years, with roots there since at least the 15th century. On his father’s side, Milhaud’s Jewish background was not Ashkenazi or Sephardi, but specifically Provençal, tracing back to Jewish people who lived in that part of France as early as the first centuries of the Common Era. His mother had Sephardi ancestry through her father, who was from an Italian Sephardi family.

Milhaud began his career as a violinist and later became a composer. He studied at the Paris Conservatory, where he met fellow composer Arthur Honegger and pianist Germaine Tailleferre. He learned composition from Charles-Marie Widor and studied harmony and counterpoint with André Gedalge. He also studied privately with Vincent d’Indy. From 1917 to 1919, he worked as a secretary for Paul Claudel, a French poet and dramatist who was the French ambassador to Brazil. Milhaud and Claudel collaborated for many years, writing music for Claudel’s poems and plays. In Brazil, they created the ballet L’Homme et son désir.

After returning to France, Milhaud composed music influenced by Brazilian popular music, including songs by pianist Ernesto Nazareth. His work Le Bœuf sur le toit includes melodies by Nazareth and other Brazilian composers and reflects the sounds of Carnaval. One melody in the piece is a Carnaval tune called “The Bull on the Roof” (in Portuguese, Le boeuf sur le toit; in English, The Ox on the Roof). He also created Saudades do Brasil, a set of 12 dances inspired by neighborhoods in Rio de Janeiro. Soon after the piano version was written, he arranged the suite for orchestra.

Milhaud was also influenced by European music. He dedicated his Fifth String Quartet (1920) to Arnold Schoenberg. In 1921, he conducted the first performances in France and Britain of Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire. During a trip to the United States in 1922, Milhaud heard jazz for the first time on the streets of Harlem, which greatly influenced his music. The next year, he completed La création du monde (The Creation of the World), a ballet that uses jazz styles and ideas.

In 1925, Milhaud married his cousin Madeleine, an actress and reciter. In 1930, their son Daniel, a painter and sculptor, was born.

When Nazi Germany invaded France in 1940, the Milhauds left the country and moved to the United States. Milhaud’s Jewish heritage made it impossible for him to return to France until it was liberated. He taught at Mills College in Oakland, California, where he composed the opera Bolivar (1943) and worked with musicians like Henri Temianka and the Paganini Quartet. In 1949, the Budapest Quartet performed his 14th String Quartet, and the Paganini Quartet performed his 15th String Quartet. Both groups then played the pieces together as an octet. In 1950, these works were performed at the Aspen Music Festival by the Paganini and Juilliard String Quartets.

On June 13, 1945, Milhaud’s Suite Française—which includes movements for Normandy, Brittany, Île de France, Alsace-Lorraine, and Provence—had its world premiere at the Naumburg Orchestral Concerts in Central Park, New York.

Jazz pianist Dave Brubeck became one of Milhaud’s most famous students after studying at Mills College in the late 1940s. In a 2010 interview, Brubeck said he went to Mills specifically to study with Milhaud, who loved jazz and used it in his compositions. Brubeck named his first son Darius after Milhaud.

In 1947, Milhaud helped found the Music Academy of the West summer conservatory, where songwriter Burt Bacharach was a student. Milhaud advised Bacharach to write music that people could remember and whistle, saying, “Don’t ever feel discomfited by a melody.”

From 1947 to 1971, Milhaud taught at Mills College and the Paris Conservatoire, alternating years between the two. Poor health, which caused him to use a wheelchair in his later years (starting in the 1930s), led him to retire. He also taught at the Aspen Music Festival and School. His students included William Bolcom, Steve Reich, Michiko Toyama, Katharine Mulky Warne, and Regina Hansen Willman. Milhaud died in Geneva at the age of 81 and was buried in the Saint-Pierre Cemetery in Aix-en-Provence.

Works

Darius Milhaud was a very productive composer who wrote music for many different types of performances. His list of musical works ended at number 443.

Archival collections

• The Darius Milhaud Collection is located at Mills College in California.
• Documents related to the Darius Milhaud Society, created by Milhaud’s student Katharine Mulky Warne, are stored at Cleveland State University.
• Another Darius Milhaud Collection is housed at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts in New York City.
• The Seymour Fromer Collection at the Western Jewish History Center of the Judah L. Magnes Museum in Berkeley, California, includes librettos for Milhaud’s opera David, a program from its American premiere at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, and copies of newspaper articles from the B'nai B'rith Messenger of Los Angeles about this event (1956).

Selected filmography

• The Beloved Vagabond (1915)
• L'Inhumaine (1924)
• Land Without Bread (1933)
• Tartarin of Tarascon (1934)
• Madame Bovary (1934)
• The Beloved Vagabond (1936)
• The Citadel of Silence (1937)
• Rasputin (1938)
• Mollenard (1938)
• The Mayor's Dilemma (1939)
• Espoir: Sierra de Teruel (1945)
• The Private Affairs of Bel Ami (1947)
• Dreams That Money Can Buy (1947)
• Dieu a choisi Paris [fr] (1969)

Legacy

In his book Guide to Twentieth Century Music, critic Mark Morris wrote that Milhaud's work is "one of the unassessed quantities of 20th century music." As one of the most productive composers of the time, creating around 450 works, the quality of his music is clearly uneven. This has led to a reputation for being simple or unimpressive, which may have hidden the parts of his work that are inspiring and interesting. However, many of his pieces, such as the second Viola Concerto, do not have modern professional recordings. This might be because of his large and varied body of work. A school near Paris, called Lycée intercommunal Darius-Milhaud, is named after him.