jean cocteau introduces les six
1953

It seems to me that the privilege of the group called Groupe des Six was that it was a grouping not so much of an aesthetic as of a friendly nature. No shadow ever troubled our mutual understanding. This came about because our understanding was based more on feelings than on opinions. If there is a certain general tendency, it might have been toward 'life-saving' the melodic line, then somewhat drowned in the masterpiece of harmony. Each worked according to his own fancy, and nobody had to obey ukases. Six artists liked one another, and in me they found a seventh. And there's the entire doctrine of this group.

After so many years - it had its origin in 1916 - it now presents itself intact, despite the cortege of the dead who accompany it. I must salute the Groupe des Six as an example of a free bond, of a solid bloc, formed of contrasts and of a single fidelity of heart. It is only fitting, furthermore, to salute Erik Satie. He was not one of the group, but his melodic line, so pure, so discriminate, so noble, was always our school. We were all unbearable - and it was right to be, for only the spirit of contradiction saves one from routinism; and, if the role of youth were not to rear up against whatever exists (even if it admires it), it's part would be limited to obeying and to being cannon-fodder.

At that period - do not forget what period I am talking about, that we are no longer, as with Dumas's titles, merely Twenty Years After, alas but late sequels like The Vicompte de Bragelonne - at that period, I repeat, our role as contradictors was not easy, for we faced two colossi armed with charm, Debussy and Ravel, and a colossus armed with thunderbolts, Stravinsky. Stravinsky, indeed, with his Rite of Spring, was to render our little fortress almost untenable, for if the Groupe des Six was free, its doctrine, full of admiring respect for those whom it proposed to fight against, made it nonetheless a Group, and a group has willy-nilly a common tendency. Ours was to go from the drum to the flute, and from the flute to the drum, and to reshape certain French qualities whose rings, as it were, were worn, and were leaking too much oil.

The Rite of Spring set up against our young shrubs the strength of a growing tree, and we should have had to admit that we were beaten, had Stravinsky not, sometime later, come over to our methods, and had not even the influence of Erik Satie become mysteriously perceptible in his work. The young musicians of 1953 therefore owe it to themselves to contradict a new kind of counter-charm. It is understandable that they take their stand on Schonberg, and find in him an arm against works which fear his science of numbers.

The post-1914 unbearables, apart from myself who in Le Coq et l'Arlequin, spoke out for them, were then, as the present programme bears witness, Auric, Poulenc, Milhaud, Honegger, Durey, and Germaine Tailleferre. For this group had its flower, in a woman, in a girl, a musician. Strange as it may seem (since every woman is sensitive and good at figures), although there are many composers with feminine souls - Chopin remains the best example - there is, so to speak, no real woman composer. I salute Germaine as a charming exception; and I add, now in 1953, Elsa Baréne.

Louis Durey withdrew very soon; sober and modest, he had no taste for the musical struggle. His soul, then disposed to aid the others, was withdrawn too much into itself. Georges Auric, right up to the amazing music for my film, Le Sang d'un Počte - to use the expression of the midi - 'pitched his voice high' (parlait pointu). His pen scorched and tore the page; it has now found its signature and its speech. Poulenc was, and remains, a well-spring. This spring has become a river, but the coolness of its running water never lets one forget that it comes from the depths.

Darius Milhaud and Arthur Honegger brought us their powerful aid; neither of these two indefatigables ever drew back, even when ill, from any great enterprise. Darius, a rhinoceros-horn switch in his hand, whipped with it columns of Greece and the lianas of the virgin forest. It was he who brought back from Brazil the rhythms of Le Boeuf sur le Toit. This title, which seemed ridiculous and subversive, was only a Brazilian sign, no stranger than any other, such as Cheval vert or Chien qui fume. As for Arthur, he felt his genius drawn towards a less tropical lyricism, one closer to the artisan concept of cathedrals or factories. In his work, machinism alternates with the gargoyle, the retable, the spire, and the stained-glass window.

So you see, our knot was the result of a thread, or shall I say of a melodic line, so diverse that you find its meaning only in friendship, and it is in friendship first of all that this ensemble glories.

Jean Cocteau (1953)

Go to Les Six catalogue
Go to shopping/mailorder
Return to LTM homepage