The group, led by Elsa Barraine, published a manifesto in September 1941 in L'Université libre, the clandestine magazine created by Jacques Decour ("We refuse to betray", the musicians declared).
Barraine, Auric, Désormière and others used this medium to counter German and Vichy propaganda (notably in Comœdia or on Radio-Paris), denounce collaborators, encourage musicians to join the Resistance, and praise the successes achieved here and there, such as (more or less confidential) concerts featuring works by banned composers.
The group had no more than thirty members, including : Francis Poulenc, Georges Auric, Arthur Honegger (his attitude appearing ambiguous, he was disbarred in 1943[2]), Irène Joachim, Roland-Manuel, Claude Delvincourt (flanked by organist Marie-Louise Boëllmann [fr],[3] Henri Dutilleux and Jacques Chailley, he created the Orchestre des Cadets du Conservatoire to rescue young musicians from the Service du travail obligatoire), Manuel Rosenthal, Charles Munch and Paul Paray.
Arma's À la jeunesse (Les Chants du silence, premiered after the war) takes up a text by Romain Rolland encouraging young people to fight and succeed where their elders had failed.
In "La Rose et le réséda", set to music by Auric in 1943, Aragon called on the French to transcend their divisions to resist the common enemy.
[5]" The same kind of stimulating allusion appears in Prière du Prophète Jérémie (Two prayers for unhappy times, music by Manuel Rosenthal, 1942): "Our inheritance has passed to strangers, our homes to outsiders."
",[9] in November 1942; Hymne à la justice [fr] by Albéric Magnard, who tried to resist the Germans in 1914 and was killed (17 October 1943); Jacques Ibert's Ouverture de fête (more or less banned by Vichy), premiered in January 1942.
Honegger wrote an enthusiastic review of it in Comoedia[10]); when he was not allowed to play A Midsummer Night's Dream, he replaced it with Patrie, symphonic overture, by Bizet (Le Bail, p. 178).
Stéphane Guégan points out in Les arts sous l'Occupation that "Diving into culture is a form of resistance that ultimately contributed to the liberation of minds and of the country".