''L'Album des Six'' (original title: "Album des 6") is a suite of six piano pieces published in 1920 by

Eugène Demets Eugène Louis Demets (6 April 1858 – 25 April 1923) was one of the most prestigious music publishers in early 20th-century Paris. Life Demets was born in Passy, west of Paris. Originally an orchestral musician, Demets set up his music publishing ...

, and written by the members of the group of French composers known as ''

Les Six "Les Six" () is a name given to a group of six composers, five of them French and one Swiss, who lived and worked in Montparnasse. The name, inspired by Mily Balakirev's '' The Five'', originates in two 1920 articles by critic Henri Collet in ' ...

''.

Background

This publication occurred in the same year as ''Les Six'' was first named as a recognisable group in French music. The journalist

Henri Collet Henri Collet (; 5 November 1885 – 23 November 1951) was a French composer and music critic who lived in Paris. Biography Born in Paris, Collet first studied at the Conservatory of Music at Bordeaux before going to Madrid to study Spanish liter ...

supplied that name in an article in the arts journal ''Comoedia'' published on 16 January 1920,ltmrecordings
/ref> which followed a joint concert by the six composers on 8 January. The group was only ever a very loose association, and did not exist in order to create compositions

collaboratively Collaboration (from Latin ''com-'' "with" + ''laborare'' "to labor", "to work") is the process of two or more people, entities or organizations working together to complete a task or achieve a goal. Collaboration is similar to cooperation. Most ...

. However, there were six occasions on which more than one member was involved in joint compositional projects (sometimes along with composers from outside the group of Les Six). ''L'Album des Six'' was the first of these occasions, and it was the only time that all six composers were involved in the same publication. However, most of the individual pieces had already been written prior to the group being identified by Collet in 1920 (most in 1919; Milhaud's piece as early as 1914), and they were simply collected and published under a joint title. Indeed, it has been suggested that the title of the album was a major factor in Collet's naming of the group.IDEALS
/ref>Maurice Hinson, ''The Pianist's Bookshelf''
/ref>

Structure

The pieces of ''L'Album des Six'' and their composers are: *

Georges Auric Georges Auric (; 15 February 1899 – 23 July 1983) was a French composer, born in Lodève, Hérault, France. He was considered one of ''Les Six'', a group of artists informally associated with Jean Cocteau and Erik Satie. Before he turned 20 he ...

: ''Prélude'' (22 December 1919; dedicated to General Clapier) *

Louis Durey Louis Edmond Durey (; 27 May 18883 July 1979)Randel, Don Michael (1996)The Harvard biographical dictionary of music, p. 232. Harvard University Press. . was a French composer. Life Louis Durey was born in Paris, the son of a local businessman. It ...

: ''Romance sans paroles'', Op. 21 (August 1919; dedicated to

Ricardo Viñes Ricardo Viñes y Roda (, ca, Ricard Viñes i Roda, ; 5 February 1875 – 29 April 1943) was a Spanish pianist. He gave the premieres of works by Ravel, Debussy, Satie, Falla and Albéniz. He was the piano teacher of the composer Francis Pou ...

) *

Arthur Honegger Arthur Honegger (; 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. A member of Les Six, his best known work is probably ''Antigone'', composed between 1924 and 1927 t ...

: ''Sarabande'', H 26 (January 1920) *

Darius Milhaud Darius Milhaud (; 4 September 1892 – 22 June 1974) was a French composer, conductor, and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—also known as ''The Group of Six''—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions ...

: ''Mazurka'' (1914) * Francis Poulenc: ''Valse'', FP 17 (July 1919; dedicated to Micheline Soulé) * Germaine Tailleferre: ''Pastorale'' (4 September 1919; dedicated to Milhaud). The suite takes about 11 minutes to play. Five of the pieces take less than two minutes each. The longest, Durey's ''Romance sans paroles'', requires a little over three minutes. Poulenc was the only one of the six composers to have left a major corpus of piano music; he also orchestrated his ''Valse in C'' in 1932.

References

External links

* * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Album des six, L Les Six 1914 compositions 1919 compositions 1920 compositions Compositions by Arthur Honegger Compositions by Darius Milhaud Compositions by Francis Poulenc Compositions by Georges Auric Compositions by Germaine Tailleferre Compositions by Louis Durey Compositions for solo piano Suites (music)