André Jolivet
Encyclopedia
André Jolivet was a French composer. Known for his devotion to French culture and music
al thought, Jolivet's music draws on his interest in acoustics
and atonality
as well as both ancient and modern influences in music, particularly on instruments used in ancient times. He composed in a wide variety of forms for many different types of ensembles.
Born in Paris
to artistic parents (one a painter
, one a pianist
), Jolivet was encouraged by them to become a teacher
, going to teachers' college and teaching primary school in Paris (taking three years in between to serve in the military
). However, he eventually chose to instead follow his own artistic ambitions and take up first cello
and then composition. He first studied with Paul Le Flem
, who gave him a firm grounding in classical forms of harmony and counterpoint. After hearing his first concert of Arnold Schoenberg
he became interested in atonal music, and then on Le Flem's recommendation became the only European student of Edgard Varèse
, who passed on his knowledge of musical acoustics
, atonal music, sound mass
es, and orchestration
. In 1936 Jolivet founded the group La jeune France
along with composers Olivier Messiaen
, Daniel-Lesur
and Yves Baudrier, who were attempting to re-establish a more human and less abstract form of composition. La jeune France developed from the avant-garde chamber music society La spirale, formed by Jolivet, Messiaen, and Lesur the previous year.
Jolivet's aesthetic ideals underwent many changes throughout his career. His initial desire as an adolescent was to write music for the theatre, which inspired his first compositions, including music for a ballet. Claude Debussy
, Paul Dukas
and Maurice Ravel
were to be his next influences after hearing a concert of their work in 1919; he composed several piano pieces while training to become a teacher before going to study with Le Flem. Schoenberg and Varèse were strongly evident in his first period of maturity as a composer, during which his style drew heavily upon atonality and modernistic ideas. Mana (1933), the beginning of his "magic period", was a work in six parts for piano, with each part named after one of the six objects Varèse left with him before moving to the United States. Jolivet's intent as a composer throughout his career was to "give back to music its original, ancient meaning, when it was the magical, incantatory expression of the religious beliefs of human groups." Mana, even as one of his first mature works, is a reflection of this; Jolivet considered the sculptures as fetish objects. His further writing continues to seek the original meanings of music and its capacity for emotional, ritual, and celebratory expression.
In 1945 he published a paper declaring that "true French music owes nothing to Stravinsky
", though both composers drew heavily upon themes of ancient music in their work; Jolivet and La jeune France rejected neoclassicism in favor of a less academic and more spiritual style of composition. Later, during World War II
, Jolivet shifted away from atonality and toward a more tonal and lyrical style of composition. After a few years of working in this more simplistic style, during which time he wrote the comic opera Dolorès, ou Le miracle de la femme laide (1942) and the ballet Guignol et Pandore (1943), he arrived at a compromise between this and his earlier more experimental work. The First Piano Sonata, written in 1945, shows elements of both these styles.
Finally realizing his youthful ambition to write for the theatre, Jolivet became the musical director of the Comédie Française in 1945, a post he held until 1959. While there he composed for plays by Molière
, Racine
, Sophocles
, Shakespeare and Claudel
, scoring 14 works in total. He also continued to compose for the concert hall, often inspired by his frequent travels around the world, adapting texts and music from Egypt, the Middle East, Africa and Asia into his distinctly French style.
During the 1950s and 1960s, Jolivet wrote several concerto
s for a variety of instruments including trumpet
, piano
, flute
, harp
, bassoon
, percussion
, cello
, and violin
. These works, while highly regarded, all demand virtuosic technical skill from the performers. Jolivet is also one of the few composers to write for the Ondes Martenot
, an early electronic instrument, completing a concerto for it in 1947, 19 years after the instrument's invention. Jolivet founded the Centre Français d'Humanisme Musical at Aix-en-Provence
in 1959, and in 1961 went to teach composition at the Paris Conservatoire. He died in Paris
in 1974 aged 69, leaving unfinished his opera Le soldat inconnu.
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
al thought, Jolivet's music draws on his interest in acoustics
Acoustics
Acoustics is the interdisciplinary science that deals with the study of all mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids including vibration, sound, ultrasound and infrasound. A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician while someone working in the field of acoustics...
and atonality
Atonality
Atonality in its broadest sense describes music that lacks a tonal center, or key. Atonality in this sense usually describes compositions written from about 1908 to the present day where a hierarchy of pitches focusing on a single, central tone is not used, and the notes of the chromatic scale...
as well as both ancient and modern influences in music, particularly on instruments used in ancient times. He composed in a wide variety of forms for many different types of ensembles.
Life and career
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
to artistic parents (one a painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
, one a pianist
Pianist
A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...
), Jolivet was encouraged by them to become a teacher
Teacher
A teacher or schoolteacher is a person who provides education for pupils and students . The role of teacher is often formal and ongoing, carried out at a school or other place of formal education. In many countries, a person who wishes to become a teacher must first obtain specified professional...
, going to teachers' college and teaching primary school in Paris (taking three years in between to serve in the military
Military
A military is an organization authorized by its greater society to use lethal force, usually including use of weapons, in defending its country by combating actual or perceived threats. The military may have additional functions of use to its greater society, such as advancing a political agenda e.g...
). However, he eventually chose to instead follow his own artistic ambitions and take up first cello
Cello
The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...
and then composition. He first studied with Paul Le Flem
Paul Le Flem
Paul Le Flem was a French composer and music critic. Born in Brittany and living most of his life in Lezardrieux, Le Flem studied at the Schola Cantorum under Vincent d'Indy and Albert Roussel, later teaching at the same establishment, where his pupils included Erik Satie and André Jolivet...
, who gave him a firm grounding in classical forms of harmony and counterpoint. After hearing his first concert of Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
he became interested in atonal music, and then on Le Flem's recommendation became the only European student of Edgard Varèse
Edgard Varèse
Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse, , whose name was also spelled Edgar Varèse , was an innovative French-born composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States....
, who passed on his knowledge of musical acoustics
Musical acoustics
Musical acoustics or music acoustics is the branch of acoustics concerned with researching and describing the physics of music – how sounds employed as music work...
, atonal music, sound mass
Sound mass
In contrast to more traditional musical textures, sound mass composition "minimizes the importance of individual pitches in preference for texture, timbre, and dynamics as primary shapers of gesture and impact." Developed from the modernist tone clusters and spread to orchestral writing by the late...
es, and orchestration
Orchestration
Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra or of adapting for orchestra music composed for another medium...
. In 1936 Jolivet founded the group La jeune France
La Jeune France
La jeune France was the name of two related French societies in the 1930s and 1940s.- Musical organization :Jeune France was founded in 1936 by André Jolivet along with composers Olivier Messiaen, Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur, Pierre Schaeffer and Yves Baudrier, who were attempting to re-establish a...
along with composers Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex ; harmonically and melodically it is based on modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from his early compositions and improvisations...
, Daniel-Lesur
Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur
Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur, known often simply as Daniel-Lesur was a French organist and composer. His mother, Alice Lesur, was an accomplished composer in her own right; some of her music was even published....
and Yves Baudrier, who were attempting to re-establish a more human and less abstract form of composition. La jeune France developed from the avant-garde chamber music society La spirale, formed by Jolivet, Messiaen, and Lesur the previous year.
Jolivet's aesthetic ideals underwent many changes throughout his career. His initial desire as an adolescent was to write music for the theatre, which inspired his first compositions, including music for a ballet. Claude Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...
, Paul Dukas
Paul Dukas
Paul Abraham Dukas was a French composer, critic, scholar and teacher. A studious man, of retiring personality, he was intensely self-critical, and he abandoned and destroyed many of his compositions...
and Maurice Ravel
Maurice Ravel
Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...
were to be his next influences after hearing a concert of their work in 1919; he composed several piano pieces while training to become a teacher before going to study with Le Flem. Schoenberg and Varèse were strongly evident in his first period of maturity as a composer, during which his style drew heavily upon atonality and modernistic ideas. Mana (1933), the beginning of his "magic period", was a work in six parts for piano, with each part named after one of the six objects Varèse left with him before moving to the United States. Jolivet's intent as a composer throughout his career was to "give back to music its original, ancient meaning, when it was the magical, incantatory expression of the religious beliefs of human groups." Mana, even as one of his first mature works, is a reflection of this; Jolivet considered the sculptures as fetish objects. His further writing continues to seek the original meanings of music and its capacity for emotional, ritual, and celebratory expression.
In 1945 he published a paper declaring that "true French music owes nothing to Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
", though both composers drew heavily upon themes of ancient music in their work; Jolivet and La jeune France rejected neoclassicism in favor of a less academic and more spiritual style of composition. Later, during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Jolivet shifted away from atonality and toward a more tonal and lyrical style of composition. After a few years of working in this more simplistic style, during which time he wrote the comic opera Dolorès, ou Le miracle de la femme laide (1942) and the ballet Guignol et Pandore (1943), he arrived at a compromise between this and his earlier more experimental work. The First Piano Sonata, written in 1945, shows elements of both these styles.
Finally realizing his youthful ambition to write for the theatre, Jolivet became the musical director of the Comédie Française in 1945, a post he held until 1959. While there he composed for plays by Molière
Molière
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...
, Racine
Jean Racine
Jean Racine , baptismal name Jean-Baptiste Racine , was a French dramatist, one of the "Big Three" of 17th-century France , and one of the most important literary figures in the Western tradition...
, Sophocles
Sophocles
Sophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides...
, Shakespeare and Claudel
Paul Claudel
Paul Claudel was a French poet, dramatist and diplomat, and the younger brother of the sculptor Camille Claudel. He was most famous for his verse dramas, which often convey his devout Catholicism.-Life:...
, scoring 14 works in total. He also continued to compose for the concert hall, often inspired by his frequent travels around the world, adapting texts and music from Egypt, the Middle East, Africa and Asia into his distinctly French style.
During the 1950s and 1960s, Jolivet wrote several concerto
Concerto
A concerto is a musical work usually composed in three parts or movements, in which one solo instrument is accompanied by an orchestra.The etymology is uncertain, but the word seems to have originated from the conjunction of the two Latin words...
s for a variety of instruments including trumpet
Trumpet
The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...
, piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
, flute
Flute
The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
, harp
Harp
The harp is a multi-stringed instrument which has the plane of its strings positioned perpendicularly to the soundboard. Organologically, it is in the general category of chordophones and has its own sub category . All harps have a neck, resonator and strings...
, bassoon
Bassoon
The bassoon is a woodwind instrument in the double reed family that typically plays music written in the bass and tenor registers, and occasionally higher. Appearing in its modern form in the 19th century, the bassoon figures prominently in orchestral, concert band and chamber music literature...
, percussion
Percussion instrument
A percussion instrument is any object which produces a sound when hit with an implement or when it is shaken, rubbed, scraped, or otherwise acted upon in a way that sets the object into vibration...
, cello
Cello
The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...
, and violin
Violin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
. These works, while highly regarded, all demand virtuosic technical skill from the performers. Jolivet is also one of the few composers to write for the Ondes Martenot
Ondes Martenot
The ondes Martenot , also known as the ondium Martenot, Martenot and ondes musicales, is an early electronic musical instrument invented in 1928 by Maurice Martenot. The original design was similar in sound to the theremin...
, an early electronic instrument, completing a concerto for it in 1947, 19 years after the instrument's invention. Jolivet founded the Centre Français d'Humanisme Musical at Aix-en-Provence
Aix-en-Provence
Aix , or Aix-en-Provence to distinguish it from other cities built over hot springs, is a city-commune in southern France, some north of Marseille. It is in the region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, in the département of Bouches-du-Rhône, of which it is a subprefecture. The population of Aix is...
in 1959, and in 1961 went to teach composition at the Paris Conservatoire. He died in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
in 1974 aged 69, leaving unfinished his opera Le soldat inconnu.
Private life
Jolivet married twice, firstly violinist Martine Barbillion in 1929. She bore him a daughter, Francoise-Martine (1930 - 2004). He remarried in 1933 Hilda Ghuighui (also spelt Guigue) (1906 - 1996) , who bore him three children, Pierre-Alain (1935 - 2005), Christine (b. 1940), and Merri (b. 1943).Selected works
- Chamber music :
- 12 Inventions for wind quintet, trumpet, trombone, and string quintet
- 2 Sonatas for piano (1945, 1957)
- Andante and adagio for strings
- Chant de Linos, for flute, violin, viola, cello, and harp (1944)
- Chant d'oppression for viola and piano (1935)
- Cinq danses rituelles (1939)
- Cinq églogues for viola solo (1967)
- Cinq incantations, for flute (1936)
- Cosmogonie
- Cérémonial, homage to Varèse for six percussion instruments
- Hymne à l'univers, organ
- Mana, six pieces for piano (1935)
- Mandala, organ
- Pastorales de Noël, for flute, bassoon, and harp (1943)
- String Quartet (1934)
- Rhapsodie à sept, for seven winds and strings
- Sérénade, for two guitars (dedicated to the duo of Ida PrestiIda PrestiIda Presti, was a French classical guitarist. She has been called ‘the greatest guitarist of the 20th century, and possibly of all time.’-Biography:...
and Alexandre LagoyaAlexandre LagoyaAlexandre Lagoya was a classical guitarist. His early career included boxing and guitar, and as he cites on the sleeve of his 1981 Columbia album, his parents hoped he would outgrow his predilection for both....
) - Sonata for flute
- Sonatine for flute and piano (1961)
- Sonatine for flute and cello
- Sonatine for flute and clarinet
- Sonatine for oboe and bassoon
- Suite Delphique, for 12 instruments
- Suite en concert for flute and four percussion instruments
- Suite en concert for cello (1965)
- Suite; Tombeau de Robert de Visée, for guitar
- Deux études de concert for guitar (1965)
- Concertos:
- Concerto for Ondes Martenot and orchestra (1947)
- Concertino for trumpet, piano, and orchestra (1948)
- Concerto for flute and strings (1950)
- Concerto for piano (1951)
- Concerto for harp and chamber orchestra (1952)
- Concerto for bassoon, strings, harp, and piano (1954)
- Concerto for trumpet (1954)
- Concerto for cello n°1 (1962)
- Concerto for flute and percussion (1965)
- Concerto for cello n°2 (1966)
- Concerto for violin (1972)
- Orchestral music:
- 3 Symphonies (1954, 1959, 1964)
- Cinq danses rituelles (orchestral version, 1939)
- Cosmogonie (orchestral version, 1938)
- Danse incantatoire (1936)
- Suite delphique, for strings, harp, Ondes Martenot, and percussion (1943)
- Symphony for strings (1961)
- Vocal music :
- Songs
- Les trois complaintes du soldat, for voice and orchestra (1940)
- Poèmes pour l'enfant, for voice and eleven instruments (1937)
- Songe à nouveau rêvé, concerto for soprano and orchestra
- Suite liturgique pour voice, oboe, cello, and harp (1942)
- Épithalame, for 12-part choir (1953)
- Sacred music :
- La vérité de Jean, oratorio
- Mass Uxor tua
- Messe pour le jour de la paix
- Ballets :
- Ariadne
- Ballet des étoiles
- Guignol et Pandore
- L'inconnue
- Les quatre vérités
- Marines
- Operas :
- Antigone
- Bogomil (unfinished)
- Dolorès ou Le miracle de la femme laide (1942)