Darius Milhaud

At 81 years old, Darius Milhaud physical status not available right now. We will update Darius Milhaud's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Life and career

Milhaud was born in Marseille, the son of Sophie (Allatini) and Gad Gabriel Milhaud. His father was from an Ashkenazi Jewish family from Aix-en-Provence, and his mother was from a Sephardi Jewish family from Italy. Milhaud began as a violinist, but then switched to composition. Milhaud spent time in Paris at the Paris Conservatory, where he met Arthur Honegger and Germaine Tailleferre, two of his fellow students. He studied composition under Charles Widor, harmony, and counterpoint with André Gedalge. He also worked privately with Vincent d'Indy. He served as secretary to Paul Claudel, the French ambassador to Brazil and with whom Milhaud collaborated for many years, setting music for several of Claudel's poems and performances from 1917 to 1919. L'Homme et son désir teamed up with a ballet in Brazil.

Milhaud created works influenced by Brazilian popular music he had encountered, including compositions of Brazilian pianist and composer Ernesto Nazareth, who had returned to France. Le bûf sur le toit includes melodies by Nazareth and other popular Brazilian composers of the time, as well as Carnaval's sounds. Among the melodies is, in fact, the Bull on the Roof, a Carnaval tune that he translates to French 'Le boeuf sur le toit', also known in English as 'The Ox on the Roof.' He also produced Saudades do Brasil, a series of twelve dances eliciting twelve communities in Rio de Janeiro. He orchestrated the suite shortly after the initial piano version was released.

Contemporary European influences were also important. Milhaud dedicated his Fifth String Quartet (1920) to Arnold Schoenberg, and the following year, both the French and British premieres of Pierrot lunaire were staged. Milhaud heard "authentic" jazz for the first time on the streets of Harlem, which had a huge effect on his musical outlook, while on a trip to the United States in 1922. He finished his La création du Monde (The Creation of the World), a jazz-inspired design and idioms used in six continuous dance scenes throughout the year.

Milhaud married Madeleine (1902–2008), an actress and reciter, in 1925. She gave birth to Daniel Milhaud, the painter and sculptor, in 1930, the couple's only child.

In 1940, the Milhauds were forced to leave France and emigrate to the United States (because of his Jewish roots, it was impossible for Milhaud to return to France before liberation). He obtained a teaching position at Mills College in Oakland, California, where he composed the opera Bolivar (1943) and collaborated with Henri Temianka and the Paganini Quartet. The Budapest Quartet performed the composer's 14th String Quartet, followed by the Paganini Quartet's appearance of his 15th; then the two ensembles performed the two pieces together as an octet. These same pieces were performed by the Paganini and Juilliard String Quartets at Aspen Music Festival in Colorado this year.

When Brubeck's music studies at Mills College in the late 1940s, jazz pianist Dave Brubeck became one of Milhaud's most popular students. In a February 2010 interview with JazzWax, Brubeck said he attended Mills, a women's college (men were allowed in graduate programs), specifically to study Milhaud. "Milhaud was a highly gifted classical composer and educator who incorporated jazz into his work." Howard, my older brother, was his assistant, and he had attended all of his classes." Darius, Brubeck's first son, was named.

Milhaud was one of the founders of the West summer conservatory, where Burt Bacharach, a well-known songwriter, was one of his students. "Don't be afraid of writing something people can recall and whistle," Milhaud told Bacharach. Don't ever feel discomfited by a melody."

He taught alternate years at Mills and the Paris Conservatoire from 1947 to 1971, before ill health, which led him to the use of a wheelchair in his later years (beginning in the 1930s), compelled him to leave. He also served on the faculty of Aspen Music Festival and School. William Bolcom, Steve Reich, Katharine Mulky Warne, and Regina Hansen Willman were among his classmates, as well as Brubeck. He died in Geneva at the age of 81 and was buried in Aix-en-Provence's Saint-Pierre Cemetery.

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