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Henri Dutilleux and Maurice Ohana: Victims of an ExclusionZone?.

Caroline Rae

TEMPO / Volume 212 / Issue 212 / April 2000, pp 22 - 30DOI: 10.1017/S0040298200007580, Published online: 23 November 2009

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0040298200007580

How to cite this article:Caroline Rae (2000). Henri Dutilleux and Maurice Ohana: Victims of an Exclusion Zone?. . TEMPO, 212,pp 22-30 doi:10.1017/S0040298200007580

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Caroline Rae

Henri Dutilleux and Maurice Ohana: Victimsof an Exclusion Zone?

Until recently, the music of Henri Dutilleux andMaurice Ohana was largely overlooked inBritain, despite both composers having achievedwidespread recognition beyond our shores. InFrance they have ranked among the leadingcomposers of their generation since at least the1960s and have received many of the highestofficial accolades. In Britain, the view of Frenchmusic since 1945 has often been synonymouswith the music of Olivier Messiaen and PierreBoulez, to the virtual exclusion of others whosework has long been honoured not only inFrance and elsewhere in Europe but in thewider international arena. These 'others' includeDutilleux and Ohana. Developing an innovativeand forward-looking approach, independentfrom the preoccupations of their contemporarieswho congregated at Darmstadt, both Dutilleuxand Ohana were excluded from representationat the concerts of the Domaine musical. As aresult, their music was neglected in Britainthroughout the years when the programmingpolicies of Boulez and Sir William Glock wereat their most influential. Undoubtedly, Boulez isone of the most phenomenal figures in music ofthe last 50 or so years and the position of hiserstwhile teacher Messiaen is secure as one ofthe giants of the 20th century. Yet, howeversignificant their respective contribution, Boulezand Messiaen represent only one facet of Frenchmusic since 1945.

Dutilleux and Ohana established their com-positional presence during the years immediatelyfollowing the end of the Second World War.Both had achieved a measure of success evenprior to the outbreak of hostilities, albeit inslightly different musical fields. As the crowningglory of his years at the Paris Conservatoire,Dutilleux was awarded the Prix de Rome in 1938,at his third attempt, for his cantata L 'anne.au duroi. He departed for Rome in February 1939,planning to remain in Italy for four years, butreturned after only four months due to the tensepolitical climate. During the 1930s Ohana was

' Both composers settled in Hans in the early 1930s, Ohana in1932 and Dutilleux in 1933.

known more as a concert pianist than as a com-poser and by 1939 had given recitals at the SallesGaveau and Chopin, performed concertos withthe orchestras of the Concerts Lamoureux andPasdeloup, and completed several Europeantours. (In 1947 he gave recitals in London at theWigmore Hall as well as for the BBC HomeService.) Indicating the path of his subsequentcompositional development, his recital program-mes reflected a cultural alignment independentof the Austro-German tradition and typicallycomprised works by Scarlatti, Chopin, Debussy,Ravel and the Spaniards, Falla, Albeniz andGranados. During the same period he wasdrawn increasingly to composition and in 1937enrolled at the Schola Cantorum where he stud-ied with Daniel-Lesur. Ohana's first orchestralwork, Les fetes nocturnes, was performed in Paristhe following year.'

At the outbreak of war Dutilleux was mobi-lized. Although he expected his unit to be sentto North Africa, the French defeat resulted inhis demobilization by the autumn of 1940.4

Consequently Dutilleux spent most of the waryears in Paris where, even despite the austeritiesof the Occupation, he was able to continue towork, compose and receive a few concert per-formances, including some broadcasts. Ohana'swar years were very different and necessitatedhis absence from Paris. When he returned toParis after demobilization in 1946 he was forcedto carve out his position anew. Technically aBritish citizen (his father's family originatedfrom Gibraltar), Ohana served with the BritishArmy and saw active service in North Africa,Madagascar, Greece and Italy. Finding himselfin liberated Rome in the summer of 1944, hetook advantage of periods of military inactivityto enrol in Alfredo Casella's piano class at theAccademia Santa Cecilia. Beginning to composeagain, his first important works Enterrar y collar,

Henri Dutilleux: Mystere et memoire des sons — entretiens avecClaude Glaymann (Paris, 1997) p. 42.

The score is no longer extant. Ohana destroyed nearly allworks composed before 1944.

1 Dutilleux, op.cit., p.43.

http://journals.cambridge.org


Henri Dutilleux and Maurice Ohana: Victims of an Exclusion Zone? 23

Henri Dutilleux (photo: Centre Acantlies, courtesy of U.M.P.)

based on the eighteenth of Goya's etchings'Disasters of War', and the Sonatine monodique,both for solo piano, date from this period. It wasalso at this time that Ohana became aquaintedwith Andre Gide who recorded their first meet-ing in his Journal on 17 December 1945. Ohanacollaborated with Gide on the Notes sur Chopin(Paris, 1948).

By the end of the war, Dutilleux notonlyheld an appointment at French Radio (firstChef de Chant, then controller of Productionsd'Illustrations Musicales) but had received severalcommissions, including from the Conservatoirefor the well-known series of test pieces for windinstruments. He had completed works for theOrchestre Pasdeloup and the Societe desConcerts du Conservatoire, in addition to anumber of incidental music scores for radio, filmand stage, as well as various songs. AlthoughDutilleux has frequently indicated his music ofthis period to be uncharacteristic of his laterwork, discouraging performances of any workpre-dating the Piano Sonata, his compositionalpreoccupations of the time reveal an instinctiveattraction for modal colour, jazz-like harmonies,the use of recurrent pivot-notes and variationtechniques. (Dutilleux has nevertheless allowed anumber of his works predating the Piano Sonatato remain in public circulation.) As Dutilleuxhimself has said: 'Fundamentally, I am not anatonal composer'.' Clearly, he was not naturallydrawn to the new serialism of the post-war years,considering it too dogmatic and authoritarian, yetit is possible that he may have experimented with

Roger Nichols: 'Dutilleux at 75', BBC Radio 3, 1991.

some primitive serial devices, perhaps as a meansof confirming his compositional interests to lieelsewhere. That Dutilleux attended some of thelectures of Rene Leibowitz during the immediatepost-war years may not be insignificant in thisrespect, although he has since emphasized thathis interest was the result of natural curiosity, hisposition being quite different from that ofMessiaen's students.' (Dutilleux acknowledgesjust as much the importance of Milhaud andJean Wiener in introducing Schoenberg toParisian audiences.7) In the third song of Troissonnets de Jean Cassou ('Jai reve que je vousportais entre mes bras') which he composed duringthe late 1940s, the vocal line presents all 12notes of the chromatic scale underlaid by theAlexandrine verse structure of the text." Themelodic line barely disguises its tonal implica-tions and the song as a whole is not serial.(Dutilleux employed a similar, although lessprimitive, device in the central movement ofhis orchestral work Metaboles and there aresuggested quasi-serial sections in the SecondSymphony.) Dutilleux has indicated that hemight have been attracted by the compositionaldiscipline of serialist technique as he alwaysenjoyed the rigours of fugue and counterpoint,but could never accept the basic principle ofabolishing all hierarchy between the differentdegrees of the chromatic scale."

Dutilleux: op.cit., p.67-68.

ibid.

* Caroline Potter: Henri Dutilleux his Life and Works (London,1997) p.42.

Dutilleux: op.cit., p.47-48.



24 Henri Dulilkux and Maurice Ohana: Victims of an Exclusion Zone?

When Ohana resettled in Paris after the warhis reputation rested chiefly on his pianisticachievements; his compositional portfolio com-prised less than a dozen pieces (many of whichhe later withdrew or destroyed). As a result ofthe opportunity for personal reassessment thathis war service provided, Ohana decided todevote himself to composition and graduallywind-down his pianistic activities. With a musicallanguage based on a combination of his Spanishand African roots and a reassessment of techniquesdrawn from the Medieval and Renaissance vocalrepertoire, Ohana, like Dutilleux, was not natu-rally drawn to the new serialism of his youngercontemporaries; music stemming from theAustro-German tradition had long felt remoteboth culturally and aesthetically. In re-establishinghis musical career Ohana received much practicalhelp from his former teacher Daniel-Lesur who,like Dutilleux, held an important position atFrench Radio.'" Still, Ohana needed to find ameans of both announcing his presence as acomposer and confirming his independencefrom predominant compositional trends of hiscontemporaries. To this end Ohana was themotivating force in bringing together a groupof like-minded composers who, in 1947, beganto promote concerts of their music under thename Le Groupe musical le Zodiaque. Initiallycomprising only three composers, Ohana as rep-resentative and spokesman, Alain Bermat andPierre-de-la-Forest-Divonne (all pupils ofDaniel-Lesur, the latter also a former Messiaenpupil), they were joined in 1948 by StanislawSkrowaczewski, then studying with NadiaBoulanger, and the young Argentinian Sergio deCastro, a former pupil of Falla. (De Castro washesitating between the vocations of composer,painter and poet and subsequently becameknown for his work as painter and writer. Hewas a life-long friend of Ohana and is also oneof Dutilleux's admired contemporary painters,as well as a friend.)"

Unified as much by their diversity as by theirsimilarity of purpose, the Zodiaque composerssaw themselves as crusading knights defendingfreedom of musical expression from what theyconsidered to be the tyranny of serialism. Theirfierce repudiation of post-Webernian serialismwas restated by Ohana some years later: 'Mereacademic sterility, but as intimidating and terri-fying as the propaganda systems of the Nazis...

Ohana and Daniel-Lesur also maintained a two-piano duoduring this period.

" The covers for many of Ohana's CD recordings reproducepaintings of Sergio de Castro.

These systems destroy more in music than theycreate — they remove all the art of risk.'13 Theiconoclastic rejection not only of serialism but ofall aesthetic dogma was primarily a rejection ofGermanic musical thinking (not for the firsttime in France); while the political structure ofthe Third Reich had been defeated militarily,Ohana in particular feared that Austro-Germanictraditions were conquering culturally. Such avigorous opposition to contemporary trendsmay also have been in part associated with thecultural origins of the Group Zodiaque members,their aversion to serialism being one of geo-graphy as well as of musical taste. WhileSkrowaczewski is Polish and thus has a traditionof kinship with France (not to mention a certainacrimony over then recent German actions inPoland), the remaining four members belonged toLatinate cultures. They considered the music ofLatinate and Mediterranean countries to be underthreat of annihilation by the all-conqueringpowers of Teutonic musical thinking. (It isinteresting to note that a similar fear of Teutonicdomination had also been expressed by theSpanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca.)

Existing initially more as a compositionalprotest group, the Zodiaque composers were atpains to avoid creating their own dogma and onlygradually developed more positive aims. Theyadvocated an organic musical language that shouldemerge spontaneously from the material itselfwithout recourse to elaborate pre-compositionalsystems, looked towards plainchant, much of theMedieval and Renaissance vocal repertories andset about a reassessment of their respective folk-music traditions. They aimed, in so doing, torestore what they considered to represent a naturaland true line of development from their mostancient, cultural roots. Many of these objectivesmay reflect the teaching of the Schola Cantorumwhich, from its beginnings, had promoted thestudy of folk music as well as the early contra-puntal masters. In the Cours de composition evenD'Indy, renowned for his rigid academicism,had argued that musical form should be a conse-quence of musical material rather than a super-imposed scheme. The ideals of the Zodiaquecomposers also have certain parallels with thoseof La jeune France, whose aesthetic was morethan tinged with a certain nationalist resonance.Certainly the influence of Daniel-Lesur was

Interview with Pierre Ancelin 1964: cited in Caroline Rae'Maurice Ohana: iconoclast or individualist?' Tlw MusicalTimes, February 1991, p.70.

F. Garcia Lorca: Deep Song and Other Prose, tr. and ed.C. Maurer (London. 1980).




more than spectral; he had been the teacher ofthree of the five Zodiaque group members, wasimmersed in plainchant and folk song and feltill at ease with the serialism of the SecondViennese School.The title of the Groupe Zodiaque, as esoteric

in French as in English, refers to the division ofthe heavens into 12 equal parts, these includingall the positions of the sun known to ancientman. (Presumably any implied, dodecaphonicallusion was intended to be ironic!) The fourcategories to which the 12 signs of the zodiacbelong (earth, water, sun and air) correspondwith the four compositionally active membersof the group. (Sergio de Castro's commitmentsas a painter and writer placed him more as asympathetic associate.) As the Zodiaque composersintended their compositional point of departureto stem from what they considered to be theprimary elements of music — folk-song andplainchant — they chose a name which couldsuggest not only the primary forces of nature butthe archetypal beliefs of ancient man.

The Groupe Zodiaque mounted seven chamberand orchestral concerts between October 1947and March 1950, several of which were broadcaston French radio. A review in the Paris Spectacleof a concert in January 1948 records 'remarkable'performances of music by this 'interesting newgroup', citing a work of Ohana's for 'its dialogueof percussive effects'." Their most importantorchestral concert took place at the Salle Gaveauon 29 April 1949 and included works byRameau and Roussel as well as by the Zodiaquemembers (with the exception of de Castro)."Conducted by Andre Girard, the event was wellattended by the press (including the New YorkHerald) and enthusiastic reviews were receivedfrom Marcel Landowski, Maurice Imbert andMarc Pincherie. The inclusion of two works notcomposed by the members of the group onceagain suggests the spectral influence of bothDaniel-Lesur and the Schola Cantorum. Not onlyhad Roussel been Lesur's predecessor at Scholabut he had also been a pupil of D'Indy, who waslargely responsible for pioneering the Rameaurevival in France. As Rameau had featured inconcert programmes during the Occupation, it ispossible that his inclusion in the Zodiaque pro-gramme may have been intended as a clarion-callto rekindle French nationalist pride in the face of

' Newspaper cuttings from Ohana's personal archive.

It is interesting to note that the inaugural concert of LaJeune France on 3 June 1936, also at the Salle Gaveau, alsoincluded a work composed by a non-group member:Germaine Tailleferre's Ballade for piano and orchestra.

Maurice Ohana (photo: Guy Vivien)

Austro-German serialism. By 1950 the GroupeZodiaque began to disintegrate; while Skrowacze-ski, de Castro and Ohana succeeded in establishingthemselves, Bermat and Forest-Divonne graduallyabandoned their compositional careers.

The presence of Daniel-Lesur in a seniorposition on the music staff at French Radioalmost certainly helped promote the music ofthe Zodiaque composers. The pluralist atmosphereprevalent at the time, especially at the recentlyliberated French radio where the influence ofHenry Barraud, Pierre Capdeville, Roland-Manuel, Desormiere and Rosenthal was keenlyfelt, resulted not only in the enthusiastic promo-tion of new music by the younger generation ofFrench composers, but also a flood of broadcastsof music which had been suppressed under theOccupation. In addition to music by Schoenberg,Berg and Milhaud, this included musicbyStravinsky, Dukas, Prokoviev, Bartok and ofcourse Mendelssohn.'" Keen to promote its new-found cultural and aesthetic freedom, the pluralistpolicies at the radio resulted in commissionsfrom such diverse figures as Ohana, Prey, Nigg,Malec, Philippot, Delerue, Jarre, Petit, Constant,'as well as Boulez, the latter for the first versionof Soleil des eaux." (Desormiere conducted both

Dutilleux: op.cit., p.48.

ibid. p.68.

Noted in Potter: 1997 p.188 andjameux: 1991 p.257.



26 Henri Dulilleux and Maurice Ohana: Victims of an Exclusion Zone?

Soleil des eaux and Le Visage nuptial.) Dutilleuxwas directly responsible for many of thesecommissions.

Dutilleux was sympathetic to the aims of theZodiaque composers, although he did not wishto join them, inclined always to preserve hisindependence from any group or manifesto."The meeting of Dutilleux and Ohana was engin-eered by Daniel-Lesur who introduced themat his Paris home in 1948, feeling they wouldhave much in common. A warm friendship wasengendered and they remained in contact until-Ohana's death in 1992. (Dutilleux attendedOhana's private cremation service at PereLachaise cemetery.) Dutilleux commissionedseveral works from Ohana during his time at theradio and in 1962. Ohana's Tombeau de ClaudeDebussy, for soprano, zither, piano and orchestra(a French radio commission to commemorate theDebussy centenary), was dedicated to Dutilleux.The pianist Genevieve Joy, Dutilleux's wife,performed and recorded Ohana's early pianomusic and commissioned him to write a newpiece, Soron-Ngo, for the twenty-fifth anniver-sary of her celebrated two-piano duo withJacqueline Robin in 1970. The other composerscommissioned were: Milhaud, Jolivet, Mihalovici,Auric, Daniel-Lesur, Petit, Constant, Louvierand, of course, Dutilleux.2" In his last publishedinterview Ohana affirmed his admiration for thework of Dutilleux:

I saw the work of my friend Henri Dutilleux growover the years and found within it a steadfast presencewhich encouraged me to pursue my own work withincreasing exactitude... his music continues to send mesignals, like two ships would exchange passing in thenight, at the same time enigmatic and comforting.2'

In 1993 Dutilleux contributed to a memorialpublication about Ohana and wrote:

....The unusual structure of his [Ohana's] music inter-ested me from the time of his earliest works. In the1950s... our exchanges of ideas were fruitful, despitesome minor differences of opinion... We shared acommon admiration for music of the Medieval period,Gregorian chant and for the great harmonists andcolourists Chopin, Debussy and a few others (the listwas very short for him). His music, with its vitalangularity and brilliant colours, bathed in light some-times bright and dazzling, sometimes coolly moonlit,blossomed magnificently in his vocal and choral

Dutilleux in conversation with the author in Paris, March1998.

* Dutilleux: op.cit., p.54.

" Maurice Ohana: 'Anonyme XXe siecle' (entretien avecJean Christophe Marti) Opera d'aitjourd'hui, Avant-SceneOpera no.3 (1991) [special Ohana edition] p. 15. Translationby the present author.

works and I am envious that he was able to adapt hispersonal style so well to the requirements of the humanvoice. I have in mind pages of his Office des Oracles,Lys de Madrigaux and the startling discoveries of thefinal section of La Celestine."

Despite the relative success of the Zodiaqueconcerts and the exposure accorded the music ofOhana, it was the premiere in 1950 of his settingfor baritone, female chorus, harpsichord andorchestra of Federico Garcia Lorca's monumentalpoem Llanto por Ignacio Sanchez Mejias whichfirmly established his compositional presence. In1954 a commission from the NorddeutscherRundfunk, which resulted in Cantigas for chorusand ensemble, made his music known inGermany. Since that time Ohana's music has beenwidely performed throughout western Europeand regularly available on commercial recordings.The success of Dutilleux's First Symphony fol-lowing its broadcast premiere in 1951 (conduct-ed by Desormiere and the Orchestre de la RTF)and its championing by Charles Munch duringthe following years, undoubtedly led to theKoussevitsky Foundation commission of 1955which resulted in the Second Symphony (pre-miered by Munch and the Boston SymphonyOrchestra in 1959)." The long association withthe United States which ensued enabledDutilleux to side-step any frustration that mayhave been developing as a result of Boulez'sfailure to commission him to write for the thennewly-founded Concerts du Domaine musical.Ohana's music took longer to become known inthe US; it only became more widely known, asin Britain, during the 1980s. He received hisfirst and only American commission in the late1980s for the ballet Sundown Dances which waspremiered at the Kennedy Center in May 1991.

Many parallels can be drawn between thecareers, as well as the music, of Dutilleux andOhana, despite the disparity in the quantity oftheir respective outputs. Ohana was extraordi-narily prolific, preferring to move on to a newwork rather than spend too long on correctionand revision. Dutilleux, on the other hand, iswell-known for the long gestation that many ofhis works have required, as well as for his fastid-iousness in correction and revision. During the1950s both continued to write incidental music,an important vehicle for stylistic experimentation,

Henri Dutilleux in Le Monde de la Musique, Cahier no.2,'Maurice Ohana, le musicien du soleil' (1994) p. 18.Translation by the present author.

'' The Boston Symphony under Leonard Bernstein gave thefirst performance of Messiaen's Turangaltla-Symplwnie inDecember 1949, with Yvonne Loriod and Ginette Martenot.




particularly in the case of Ohana who was ableto investigate the use of third-tone micro-intervals prior to incorporating them into hisconcert works, and both composed a numberscores for the ballet. Dutilleux's scores for habelle and Le loup of 1953 were choreographed byRoland Petit, while Ohana collaborated withMaurice Bejart on Les representations de Tanit (1951)and Promethee (1956). (Ohana's third ballet ofthe 1950s, Etudes choregraphiques, was a jointcommission from the Norddeutscher Rundfunkand the Hamburg Ballet but was later revised forLes percussions de Strasbourg with choreographyby Manuel Parres.) Both provided scores forJean-Louis Barrault's theatre company;Dutilleux's just before they left the Comediefrancaise (|olivet conducted), Ohana's someyears later after the appointment of Boulez, whoconducted Soiree des proverbes in January 1954 atthe Theatre Marigny. Both composed stringquartets for the Quatour Parrenin; Ohana's Cinqsequences was premiered by them in November1964, Dutilleux's Ainsi la nuit in January 1977.Both received commissions from Rostropovitch:Dutilleux for Tout un monde lointain.... (1967-70),Trois strophes sur le nom de Sadler (1976-82) andTimbres, espace, mouvement (1976-78/1990);Ohana for Syrtes (1970) and the Second CelloConcerto 'In dark and blue' (1990), premiered inMay 1991 with Seiji Osawa conducting. By thelate 1950s Dutilleux and Ohana were attractingthe attention of musical commentators, theirmusic being discussed by Claude Rostand, JeanRoy, Bernard Gavoty, Daniel-Lesur, AntoineGolea, Claude Chameray, Frederick Goldbeckand Rollo Myers, and numerous interviews werepublished. It is significant, however, that neitherDutilleux nor Ohana was discussed in Hodeir'sinfluential study of 20th-century music, SinceDebussy, which has much in common with themore Boulezian aesthetic. More recently, bothhave been the subject of studies by Francis Bayer(a composer known in France who was a studentof Dutilleux and Ohana), as well as many articlesand interviews. During the 1980s, two specialeditions of the Revue musicale were devoted toOhana"' and two monographs discussing the musicof Dutilleux were published in France." Furtherstudies of their work have been published inEnglish during the 1990s."'"

One of the most significant parallels betweenDutilleux and Ohana was their respective exclu-

Double numero 351-353 'Maurice Ohana Essais etudes etdocuments' (1982) and a Triple numero 391-393 'MauriceOhana miroirs de l'oeuvre' (1986).

Daniel Humbert: Henri Dulilleux VOeuvre et le style musical

(Paris 1985), Pierrette Mari: Henri Dittikux (Paris, 1988).

sion from representation at the Domaine musical.Their resultant estrangement from Boulezaffected the promotion of their music in Britain,particularly during the 1960s and 1970s.Although Dutilleux now describes his relation-ship with 'Monsieur Boulez' as 'much morecordial'," it is interesting to note that no com-mission was forthcoming when the EnsembleIntercontemporain was founded in 1977. WhenBoulez finally offered a commission in the early1990s the project was eventually abandoned asDutilleux did not wish to write for a soloistfrom the Ensemble Intercontemporain.2" Apartfrom the Jean-Louis Barrault theatre companycommission in 1954, Ohana received no com-mission from Boulez. Neither in the 1960s and1970s, nor in more recent years, has Boulez chosento conduct the music of Dutilleux or Ohana.Likewise, Boulez does not conduct the music ofLutoslawski, perhaps as a result of disagreementsat the time of the premiere of the 'Direct'movement of the Second Symphony in 1966.(Lutoslawski's Second Symphony received itscomplete premiere a year later with the composerconducting).

The dangers of promoting too narrow a viewof contemporary music were recognized in Francesooner than in Britain. The composer and con-ductor Marius Constant, who co-founded thespecialist music programme France-Musique atFrench radio in 1954, the same year Boulez found-ed the Concerts du Domaine musical, consideredit unhealthy to allow a single musical aesthetic tobe viewed as entirely representative. Constant —another stylistically independent figure - laterwrote: 'In the 1960s, not to be serialist was likehaving some shameful disease.'29 In 1963 hefounded the Ensemble Ars nova, specifically tocounteract the influence of the Domaine musical.With Constant as their artistic and musicaldirector, they became the official new group atFrench radio, reviving its tradition of pluralismin music broadcasting. They broadcast a widespectrum of new music, including the non-serialas well as the serial, and provided an importantplatform for disseminating the music of composersof the 'other' French avant-garde which wouldotherwise have found difficulty in reaching a

Monograph on Dutilleux by Caroline Potter (London,

1997). Various articles on Ohana by Caroline Rae, who is

also the author of a monograph on Ohana (London, 2000).

Dutilleux in conversation with the author in Paris, March1998.

' Caroline Potter: op.cit., p.22.

' 'Portrait — Marius Constant', Salabert-Actuel no.5 (Paris, 1987)p.l 1-12. Translation by the present author.



28 Henri Dutilleux and Maurice Ohana: Victims of an Exclusion Zone?

BBC Broadcasts of Music by Selected French Composers 1945-69(all networks)

Includes broadcasts of live concerts, recorded concerts, commercial recordings and repeat broadcasts

BoulezConstantDutilleuxJolivetDaniel-LesurMessiaenOhana

1945-49004044

( 1 )

1950-54031

142

250

1955-59216162164

1960-64204260865

1965-69665691

2312

wider audience. During the 1960s, Ars novapremiered a number of Ohana's most innovativeworks, including Signes (1965) for flute, zithers,piano and percussion, and the chamber operaSyllabaire pour Phedre (1967). Constant also con-ducted the premiere of Ohana's First CelloConcerto, Anneau du Tamarit with Alain Meunierand the Orchestre des Concerts Colonne inDecember 1977.

In Britain the broadcasting climate during the1960s and 1970s was rather different. With SirWilliam Glock at the BBC as both Controller ofMusic and Director of the Proms, contemporarymusic was certainly promoted — but accordingto a supposed canon which posterity has shownnot to be entirely representative. In 1972 FrancisRouth drew attention to the dangers of presentingtoo narrow a view of contemporary music.Although he was considering the problem fromthe perspective of contemporary British music,his ungloved criticisms of the BBC monopolyin 'Cause for Concern' could apply equally tothe European composers, similarly excluded atthe time:

The BBC Music Departmenc has not kept pace withthe enormously increased range of contemporarymusic... an extreme instance of this limitationoccurred in the 1960s when the newly appointedHead of Music, William Glock, exercised the powervested in his position to promote particular composersof the scrialist and avant-garde school. Those whowere not of this persuasion were disregarded, andtheir works were not broadcast.... A trend was thus setwhich was undesirable because it was lopsided andunrepresentative."

Although Glock was frequently critical of whathe considered a middle-of-the-road approach toprogramming at the BBC Music Departmentprior to his appointment, examination of the

F. Routh: 'Cause for Concern', Contemporary British Musk

(London, 1972), p.372.

(brackets indicate appearance as a performer)

broadcasting archives of the period reveal thatnew music, including that of the French, was notignored under the direction of his predecessors.3'From 1945 to 1949 there were 12 separatebroadcasts to works by Dutilleux, Messiaen andDaniel-Lesur on the Third Programme andHome Service, in addition to 14 broadcasts ofsix works by Lili Boulanger during the period1945 to 1951. (There were also two broadcastsof a work by Nadia Boulanger). Still relativelyfew if compared with broadcasts of music byarguably more popular French composers; therewere approximately 500 broadcasts of works byPoulenc and more than 2000 of works by Ravelover the same period. Even prior to Clock'sappointment, broadcasts of Messiaen during the1950s totalled 41, no doubt largely as a result ofthe influence and enthusiasm of Felix Aprahamian,who was instrumental in first introducingMessiaen's music to England during the 1930s.'2

During the 1950s, broadcasts of music by otherliving French composers included 30 works byJolivet, seven by Dutilleux, four of Ohana,Constant and Daniel-Lesur and two of Boulez.There were even two broadcasts of Symphonicpour tin homme seul by Schaeffer and Henri aswell as at least one of an unspecified work byGiacinto Scelsi. (See table above.)

The Dutilleux broadcasts of the 1950s includ-ed the British premiere of the First Symphony in1955 (only four years after its French premiereby the French radio orchestra under Desormiere),as well as the symphonic fragments from theballet Le hup. Those of Ohana's included theLlanto por Ignacio Sanchez Mejias and Cantigas, bothof which had only recently been premiered in

The files of composers, performers and broadcast schedules1945-69 at the BBC Written Archive Centre, Caversham,Reading.

" Bien Cher Felix: Letters from Olivier Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod

to Felix Aprahamian ed. & tr. Nigel Simeone (Cambridge, 1998).




Paris and Hamburg, respectively. Similarly per-ceptive programming included the first Britishbroadcasts in 1951 of Messiaen's Quatuor pour lafin du temps and Cinq rechants, as well as twobroadcasts of the British premiere of theTurangalila-Symphonie in 1953." The two Boulezbroadcasts were in March 1957 and representedthe first British broadcasts of Structures I andMarteau sans maitre, fresh from the Domainemusical. It is almost certain that Glock had aninput into this promotion, given that the sameyear Boulez appeared in two concerts for the ICAwhile Glock was chairman, the programmeincluding Webern, Stockhausen and Nono. It istrue that Proms programmes of the 1950s pro-moted little contemporary music compared withthose of the following decade, although therewere Prom premieres of new works by Panufnik(another casualty of the 1960s and 1970s) as wellas by Jolivet, Milhaud, Martinu, Ibert, Gerhardand Petrassi.

Following Clock's appointment as Controllerof Music in 1959, the influence of his collabo-ration with Boulez is reflected in the virtualexplosion of coverage that the music ofMessiaen and Boulez received, both on the air-waves and in the concert-hall. While suchchampioning is certainly only to be praised, theeffect of absorbing the Boulezian aesthetic,which was continued well after dock 's retire-ment in the 1970s, resulted in the comparativeneglect of the music of Dutilleux, Ohana andothers. Although there were several broadcastsof their music during the 1960s, including thepremiere of Ohana's guitar concerto Troisgraphiques in 1961, with the LSO and NarcisoYepes under Anthony Bernard, and a broadcastrecording of Dutilleux's Second Symphony in1965, the tendency to repeat broadcasts of theirearlier works would not have aided awareness oftheir musical style as it developed and matured.The broadcasts of music by Boulez andMessiaen during the 1960s were not only farmore numerous but included repeat broadcastsof their most recent works. That the majority ofDutilleux's broadcasts were restricted to theSonatine for flute and piano, the Piano Sonata,the Sarabande et cortege for bassoon and piano andLe loup would only have aided the impressionthat he was rather more conservative in his

Messiaen first visited London in 1938 to perform La Nativitede Seigneur at St Alban the Martyr, Holborn. He visited againin December 1945 when he and Yvonne Loriod performedVisions de VAmen for an invited audience at the home of FelixAprahamian. (N. Simeone op.cit.).J W. Glock: 'With Boulez at the BBC, Pierre Boulez ASymposium (1986) p.233.

compositional approach than was actually thecase. Dutilleux has long discouraged the perfor-mance of these works precisely because they arenot indicative of the mature style which crystal-lized in Metaboles of 1964.

The influence of Glock and Boulez naturallyextended to the Proms. Boulez was first repre-sented on 29 August 1961 with a perfomiance byHeather Harper and the New Music Ensembleunder John Carewe of the second of theImprovisations sur Mallanne 'Une dentelk s'abolit'.''The same season also included the Proms pre-miere of Le Marteau sans maitre. Messiaen wasfirst heard at the Proms on 24 August 1962 withCinq rechants and Oiseaux exotiques, the latterperformed by the BBCSO under John Carewewith Aloys Kontarsky as the soloist."

The music of Dutilleux was not heard at theProms until 1989, 28 years after his youngerFrench contemporary Boulez had first been rep-resented. On 25 August that year Metaboles wasperformed by the Orchestre de Radio Franceunder Marek Janowski, 24 years after the workhad been premiered by the Cleveland Orchestraand Georges Szell (January 1965). ThatDutilleux had been a featured composer at theHuddersfield and Aldeburgh festivals during the1980s had certainly increased awareness of hismusic, although long overdue. During the1990s, the Proms administrators worked hard torectify the omission from their programmes ofone of France's leading living composers: Mysterede I'instant and the Second Symphony were per-formed in 1991; Tout un monde lointain in 1992;the violin concerto L'Arbre des songcs and thestring quartet Ainsi la nuit in 1996; and TheShadows of Time in 1998 less than a year after itsworld premiere in Boston under Seiji Ozawa.Although pluralism may now be the middlename of contemporary music editors and Promsprogrammers at the BBC, for which they shouldbe congratulated, neither Constant nor Ohanahave as yet been represented. During the 1980sBritish performances and broadcasts of Ohana'smusic in other contexts have, however,increased. His music continues to be regularlyperformed in France and since his death in 1992new recordings continue to be released and aninternational prize, 'le Prix Maurice Ohana',awarded biennially to composers and pianists,has been established in his memory. As Constantis now in his middle seventies and sadly Ohanais no longer with us, the music of these two

The work had already received its UK premiere at Dartingtontwo years before.

The Kontarsky brothers first performed at the Proms 1960.



30 Henri Dutilleux and Maurice Ohana: Victims of an Exclusion Zone?

composers is perhaps less newsworthy for Britishaudiences than that of their younger contempo-raries, among whom Tristan Murail, GerardGrisey, Maurice Delaistier and Francois Bayle arenot entirely unfamiliar, although the music ofAlain Louvier, Pascal Dusapin, Hugues Dufourt,

Philippe Manoury, Edith Canat de Chizy, FelixIbarrondo and others still largely remains to bediscovered. One hopes that Dutilleux, now in hiseighty-fifth year, will continue, health permitting,to compose for many years.

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