Jean Cocteau and the Group of Six
Jean Cocteau and the Group of Six

Summary/Abstract: The beginning of the twentieth century is marked, in art, by the interweaving of several aesthetic directions such as symbolism, neoclassicism, Dadaism, futurism. Having no affinities with Debussy's music and rejecting the German-Slavic influences of Wagner and Stravinsky, Jean Cocteau pleads for "a music of France", for a pure song to oppose the contaminations he considers "harmful". This avant-garde aesthetic finds its formulation in Rooster and Harlequin, notes on music published in 1918. In the spirit of new artistic directions, Cocteau combines poetry, music, theater, painting and choreography in a form of musical performance, which opposes established genres. Thus, the poet becomes the animator and source of inspiration of a group of young musicians gathered around the tutelary figure of Erik Satie - the organizer, impresario and self-proclaimed theorist of the Group of Six, composed of Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc - already established - Germaine Tailleferre, talented and "discreet", Georges Auric, an early genius and Louis Durey, today, almost forgotten.

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