This week's selection for The Gaggle Music Club is Darius Milhaud’s "La création du monde." Composed in 1923, the ballet in one act, is based on African creation myths, and is a pivotal work of early 20th-century music. It synthesizes African myth, jazz idioms and classical form.

Darius Milhaud (1892–1974) was born in Aix-en-Provence, France, into a Provençal Jewish family. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire, where he came under the influence of Charles-Marie Widor, Vincent d’Indy and Paul Dukas, but soon forged his own style, emphasizing polytonality (simultaneous use of multiple keys) and rhythmic energy.

Milhaud was a central figure in the composer collective Les Six, along with Francis Poulenc, Arthur Honegger, Georges Auric, Louis Durey, and Germaine Tailleferre. Les Six were not bound by a formal manifesto. They did not compose in the same style or even collaborate extensively. They objected to what they deemed to be Wagner’s heaviness and Debussy and Ravel’s dreamy impressionism. Instead, they championed the wit and clarity of French classicism, the neoclassical spirit of Erik Satie and the avant-garde energy of Jean Cocteau.

A crucial turning point for Milhaud came during the years 1917-19, when he served as secretary to French poet-diplomat Paul Claudel in Brazil. Milhaud used the opportunity to absorb samba rhythms and Brazilian folk music. In 1922, Milhaud traveled to New York City, where he encountered live jazz in Harlem.

In 1923, Milhaud was commissioned to compose a ballet score by Rolf de Maré, director of the Ballets Suédois (a rival to Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes). The scenario, written by Blaise Cendrars, drew on African creation myths, a rare and bold source for ballet in the 1920s. The work sought to elevate jazz by weaving it into a high-art classical ballet that dealt with myth, ritual and cosmology.

The composition was scored for a small jazz-inflected ensemble: strings, woodwinds (including alto saxophone), brass, piano and percussion. This ensemble reproduced the sounds of the Harlem jazz bands Milhaud heard in 1922, yet within a European classical framework.

La création du monde was among the first major classical works to take jazz seriously. Milhaud superimposes different tonal centers, and his use of counterpoint and rhythm recalls Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du soldat, but with a more lyrical and sultry feel. The work constitutes a successful fusion of international musical idioms: African myth, American jazz and European formalism.

Though Milhaud wrote more than 400 works, including 12 symphonies, operas and chamber music, La création remains his best-known and most frequently performed composition.

In this performance from 2020, Christian Erny conducts the Orchestra of Europe.

Their loosely shared aim was to move beyond Wagnerian heaviness and Debussyan impressionism, favoring clarity, wit, and neoclassicism.