Composer: Darius Milhaud (1892 - 1974)
Piece: La Création du Monde (1922 - 1923)
Conductor: Michael Tilson Thomas
Orchestra: New World Jazz + New World Symphony
Program Notes Courtesy of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.
La Création du monde was commissioned by the Ballets Suédois, the Swedish successors to Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. They were influential in the early 1920s, staging five Paris seasons and touring constantly. Encounters between the high arts and jazz culture were very much the flavor of the times. This piece reflects both that preoccupation, and a centuries-old French penchant for exotica. Milhaud was a bit of a magpie, very susceptible to all kinds of influences, but it was a different type of exotica that drew him. His was the Paris of Le jazz hot, Josephine Baker, Picasso’s paintings and sculptures inspired by African masks. In 1920, African (and Afro-American) chic was sweeping the city and this ballet may have been Ballets Suédois’ calculated attempt to tap into it.
As for Milhaud, he can be cleared of any charges of such cynicism. When he first heard an American jazz band, the story goes, he was so captivated that he took off to New York to spend time in clubs and bars, visit Harlem and generally hang out with jazz musicians. Returning to France, he began to write in what he called a “jazz idiom.” Milhaud did not venture deeply into the real language of jazz, choosing instead freely to color his music with bluesy turns of harmony and melody, stomping rhythms and swinging climaxes. Jazz influences surface in plenty of his works, but this ballet was the first major opportunity to express his new passion. Even the instrumental line-up draws on his memories of New York: “In some of the shows,” Milhaud recalled, “the singers were accompanied by flute, clarinet, trumpets, trombone, a complicated percussion section played by just one man, piano and string quartet.”
In the end, the La Création du monde was more a chic succes de scandale than a true success. The costumes designed by Fernand Léger (who also created the set) worked magnificently visually, but were hell to dance in — heavy and inflexible, they made it difficult to move freely. The costumes and sets survive in museums and galleries, and the music has taken its place in the concert hall. The choreography is revived occasionally out of curiosity.
