Les Six – The French Composers and Their Mentors Jean Cocteau and Erik Satie

Edited by Robert Shapiro

Les Six were a group of young French composers consisting of Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc and Germaine Tailleferre, brought together by Erik Satie and Jean Cocteau at the end of the First World War, who achieved international fame in the 1920s. A unique collaboration that has never been matched in classical music, with Cocteau as their spokesman, Les Six were a phenomenon born out of the shock of the German invasion of France in 1914 – an avant-garde riposte to the impressionism of composers such as Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel and the romanticism of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss.
The individual members were already respected in Parisian musical circles as Les Nouveaux Jeunes before they became Les Six, but they soon found themselves moving in an artistic milieu that included Sergei Diaghilev, René Clair, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Fernand Léger and the writers Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Raymond Radiguet, Paul Claudel, Maurice Sachs and Paul Morand. Many fruitful collaborations arose out of these associations, and Satie would perform with them in concerts. Les Six continued to perform together intermittently during the 1920s and later, and most carried on to have long and distinguished musical careers, including the only woman of the group, Tailleferre.
Anchored by Robert Shapiro’s encyclopaedic knowledge, and enhanced by contributions from key commentators – Fréderic Robert, Jean Roy, Keith Waters and Ornella Volta – as well as the inclusion of rare photographs, memorabilia and valuable appendices, this is the first book in English to examine comprehensively the legacy of the group. It provides a unique portrait of artistic Paris in the 1920s and the subsequent careers of Les Six and those associated with them.

Foreword by James Harding

ROBERT SHAPIRO is a writer and researcher who specializes in the composers known as Les Six. He has published Germaine Tailleferre: A Bio-Bibliography and contributed articles on Milhaud and Satie for the anthology Music of the Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde: A Biocritical Sourcebook. He has also produced recordings of Germaine Tailleferre’s chamber music and songs and is preparing a volume on the correspondence of Georges Auric.