Henri Sauguet

This is manifest in the pieces he later wrote for organ and various combinations of instruments: Oraisons, with four saxophones (1976); Ne moriatur in aeternum, with trumpet (1979); Church Sonata, with string quintet (1985).

[1] When Henri Collet dubbed a group of Paris-based composers Les Six, Sauguet started writing to one of its members, Darius Milhaud.

This included performances of works by 'Les Six' (Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Germaine Tailleferre, Darius Milhaud and Francis Poulenc), together with "Erik Satie et la jeune musique française".

Among compositions by all three local exponents of 'the young French music' were Sauguet's four-handed Danse nègre and his Pastorale pour piano.

He wrote a piano suite called Trois Françaises (Three Frenchwomen) which so impressed Milhaud that he encouraged Sauguest to move to Paris.

In 1927 Diaghilev's company produced the ballet La Chatte (The Cat) with music by Sauguet, which premiered in Monte Carlo on April 30.

He used his reputation during this time to help his Jewish friends but lost the oldest-established among them, Max Jacob, who died in the Drancy internment camp.

He founded the Composers Union, also devoting his time to Una Voce, an organization that works to preserve Latin and traditional chant in the Roman Catholic liturgy.

Sauguet's personal partnership with a set designer and decorator of French theatre, Jacques Dupont, endured until the latter's death in 1978.