Darius Milhaud and the Debate on Polytonality in the French Press of the 1920s

Abstract

The concept of polytonality occupies a prominent place in two 1923 articles by Darius Milhaud. Considerable attention has been devoted to his theory of polytonality in so far as it applies to his music (Rosteck 1992 and 1994, Cox 1993, Mawer 1997), but except for the work of Barbara Kelly (2003) the wider cultural context of its meaning has escaped close scrutiny. To grasp the significance of these two essays more clearly, we must determine how they relate to an important press debate on polytonality and atonality between 1920 and 1923. Fuelled by Henri Collet’s tagging of the Groupe des Six in 1920, as well as the recognition of Schoenberg’s music and legitimization of his atonal writing in France, the controversy raises the subjects of polytonality, atonality, nationalism (sometimes degenerating into racism), and the aesthetic clash of the impressionists, or established composers, with the young avant-garde, or Les Six. As a term, polytonality suffered from gross distortion. Best viewed as a technique, usually employed only locally and by a minority of composers, in the debate it became an idiom, such as tonality or atonality, rich enough to inspire a ‘school’, in this case Les Six, or even the entire French style. As a Jewish composer vulnerable to racist attacks, and as the main exponent of polytonality, Milhaud skilfully turned the issues of the debate to his advantage. He portrays Viennese atonality as the natural outcome of Wagnerian chromaticism, and polytonality as the extension of French diatonic modality. His construct appeals to both nationalist pride and ethnic tolerance, and his evolutionary principle positions polytonality as inevitable for nothing less than the whole French musical avant-garde.