Les Six

Six young Parisians after the war turned against romanticism and Wagner, bringing the everyday into the concert hall.

Related

ModernPiano

In Paris after the First World War, a critic packaged six young composers under one name. They did not share a style but shared an attitude: against Wagnerian scale and romantic self-expression, in favour of clarity, lightness and the everyday.

Time and place

Paris around 1920. Milhaud, Poulenc, Honegger, Auric, Durey and Tailleferre were grouped together in a single article by the critic Collet. They appeared in the same salons and concerts and even wrote a collective piece.

What happened

Post-war Paris turned to small ensembles, jazz rhythm and the spirit of the circus and the bar. Les Six borrowed popular dances, marches and street tunes, writing short, clear, plain-spoken music. Satie was treated as a spiritual precursor. Within a few years the members diverged and the label came to describe a mood of the early twenties rather than a school.

What changed

The border between serious music and popular entertainment was deliberately loosened. French neoclassicism gained a light version in which a composer could use ballroom rhythm and circus colour in a concert piece without first proving depth. That attitude fed later film scoring, light music and crossover writing.

Listen for the turn

In Poulenc's improvisations, the light accent and uncomplicated harmony; in Milhaud's Brazilian pieces, dance rhythm in concert dress; in Honegger's set, the serious pole inside the same group. The turn is not technical novelty but permission for music to be light.

Related

See the modern period page, the neoclassicism entry, and the piano instrument page.

Sources

• The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., entry "Les Six" — dates and membership checked, not quoted
• Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music — narrative checked, not quoted

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.