Arthur Honegger
Arthur Honegger (French: [aʁtyʁ ɔnɛɡɛʁ]; 10 March 1892 – 27 November 1955) was a Swiss composer who was born in France and lived a large part of his life in Paris.
In 1911, he enrolled in the Paris Conservatoire from 1911 to 1918 (except for a brief period during the winter of 1914–1915, when he was mobilised in Switzerland), studying with Charles-Marie Widor, Lucien Capet, André Gédalge and Vincent d'Indy.
Still in 1921, René Morax commissioned Honegger to write Le Roi David: he completed his score in two months, and on 11 June the 'dramatic psalm' (written as incidental music) was triumphantly received.
On 13 March 1924, Honegger shot to fame when the French version re-orchestrated for large orchestra of Le Roi David was performed in Paris under the baton of Robert Siohan.
In 1932 Les Cris du monde, an oratorio on a text by René Bizet (1887–1947) inspired (loosely) by John Keats' sonnet 'To Solitude', expressed Honegger's great pessimism : it was a warning against "everything that contributes to the loss of the soul and the death of the individual"[19] including pollution, noise, mass culture, etc.
The lyrics were by Paul Vaillant-Couturier, a journalist at L'Humanité who tried to alert people to the realities of Hitler's regime and founded the first Maison de la culture [fr] (which included the Fédération musicale populaire) in France.
Honegger took a clear stand against the Nazi regime in the June 1939 issue of the magazine Clarté:[27] "He who creates cannot reconcile his dignity as an artist with the enslavement that fascism imposes".
[28] In 1931 Honegger, like many musicians and intellectuals, had already expressed his support for the manifesto for peace published in Notre temps[29] which concluded with: "It is therefore important that this country [France], made so rich by its past achievements, should dare to proclaim that the new Europe and a Franco-German entente, which is its keystone, can only arise from agreements freely entered into by their pacified populations.
In March 1940, in Basel, Sacher premiered the sacred oratorio La Danse des morts, whose libretto was by Paul Claudel (and based on the Bible), and it was a great success.
The oratorio, written to the glory of the patron saint of Switzerland, Nicholas of Flüe, based on the work of Denis de Rougemont, was inspired by the euphoria triggered (initially) by the Munich agreements – which stirred the composer's pacifist feelings.
Some time later, Honegger joined the Front National des Musiciens, a resistance organisation founded within the Communist Party: he later considered that he had been co-opted because he wrote in Comœdia, to defend French music.
[43] Apart from this symphony, he also wrote a Morceau de concours pour violon et piano (a competition piece) in June, in time for the Conservatoire exams (but good enough to have been recorded): he was a member of the boards of examiners of the Conservatoire and the École Normale de Musique de Paris – although he started teaching (at the ENM) only in 1946; a short piece for cello solo, Paduana in July, a "truly superb piece" for Halbreich";[44] he also set to music a poem by painter Henri Martin (1860–1943), Ô temps, suspends ton vol (the title echoes a line from 'Le Lac', a famous poem by Lamartine) for voice and piano;[45] and, in December, the last of the Quatre Chansons pour voix grave (which became the first).
Honegger again returned to ballet music by composing two tableaux (I and IV) of the ballet Chota Roustaveli on Nikolai Evreinov's libretto based on the poem by the great Georgian poet Shota Rustaveli (c. 1160 – after c. 1220), The Knight in the Panther's Skin, with Alexander Tcherepnin (act II) and Tibor Harsányi (act III), with a rhythmic base provided by Serge Lifar (Monte-Carlo, May 1946).
He composed several pieces of incidental music (Prométhée for Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound; Hamlet for a performance of the play in André Gide's new translation) and a score for Christian-Jaque's Un revenant.
He also wrote a score for four ondes Martenot for Sortilèges, a ballet based on a storyline by Leyla Bedir Khan, first performed in summer 1946 at the Comédie des Champs-Elysées, but it is unfortunately lost.
It is "a kind of Pastoral Symphony that pays tribute both to the beautiful city of Basel, bathed by the Rhine and where life is good, and to the friendship that bound the Swiss composer to the patron and conductor Paul Sacher".
At the end of the second movement, the solo horn quotes Franz Abt's setting of Basel-born Johann Peter Hebel's poem "Z'Basel, a mim Rhi", and two minutes before the end of the third movement Honegger describes a carnival march: this is an evocation of Guggenmusik, typical brass bands of German-speaking Switzerland using the piccolo and the Basel drum, before a phrase full of nostalgia followed by a brief mocking farewell.
Honegger was then invited by Serge Koussevitzky at the beginning of July to give summer courses at the Tanglewood Music Center, following which he planned to go on tour throughout the US, then to Mexico and South America, where he was well-known thanks to Jane Bathori, who had made Le roi David and Judith known.
In the spring of 1948, Honegger wrote Prélude, Fugue, Postlude, a suite after Amphion, premiered in November by Ansermet, then left for his first water cure at Bagnoles-de-l'Orne where he worked a little.
The event was once again hailed by Le Monde: "Jeanne au bûcher, in the stage version and in French, achieved in December 1950 one of the greatest, most spontaneous successes ever seen at this theatre".
[58] At the suggestion of Henri Büsser, Florent Schmitt and J.-G. Domergue, he was elected foreign associate member of the music section of the Académie des Beaux-Arts on 3 April 1952.
[60] After a long stay in Switzerland, he managed to return to Paris in June 1954, when "Jeanne d'Arc au Bûcher" was about to be revived at the Opéra, directed by Roberto Rossellini and starring Ingrid Bergman: this was the version filmed [fr] in 1956.
The urn passed between a hedge of Republican Guards presenting arms (although he remained a Swiss national and never took French citizenship[62]), and was then taken to Saint-Vincent Cemetery, in the Montmartre district, where it is now placed under a simple tombstone.
[63] The Paris Opéra paid tribute to him on 18 December 1955 with the Symphonie n°3 conducted by Louis Fourestier, followed by Jeanne au Bûcher, with Claude Nollier, creator of the role.
Many of Honegger's works were championed by his longtime friend Georges Tzipine, who conducted the premiere recordings of some of them (Cris du Monde, Nicolas de Flüe).
The principal elements of Honegger's style are Bachian counterpoint,[67] driving rhythms, melodic amplitude, highly coloristic harmonies, an impressionistic use of orchestral sonorities, and a concern for formal architecture.
"The work of composer Arthur Honegger stands out for its great diversity, ranging from tonality to atonality, without forgetting polytonality, using all registers, and respecting both the achievements of the past and the contributions of his contemporaries… he is not classifiable in any school.".
All his life he feared the danger of cultural habits, of different forms of collective consciousness (Cris du monde, 1931, the subject of which is "the revolt of the individual against the crowd that crushes him" according to Honegger, Plans [fr], December 1931).
3, 1945, which, according to the composer, "musically depicts the struggle in the heart of man between abandonment to the blind forces that enslave him and the instinct for happiness, the love of peace, the feeling of divine refuge".
He thus explored different genres and techniques, taking an equal interest in Claude Debussy's or Gabriel Fauré's harmony,[72] Igor Stravinsky's rhythm, Beethovenian form,[73] Arnold Schoenberg's genius – excluding serialism – in Le Dit des Jeux du Monde.
