Darius Milhaud

Darius Milhaud (1892-1974), French composer and teacher, born in Aix-en-Provence, and educated at the Paris Conservatoire. In Paris, he became a member of the group of six young French composers later known as Les Six. In 1940 Milhaud went to the United States and became professor of composition at Mills College in Oakland, California, where his pupils included the jazz musician Dave Brubeck. He left that post in 1947 to become honorary professor of composition at the Paris Conservatoire, where his pupils included Xenakis and Stockhausen. Milhaud's style ranges from the conservative to the modern; his work is noted for the use of polytonality, or simultaneous use of several keys, and melodic and rhythmic patterns derived from jazz. He composed more than ten operas, ballets, symphonies, chamber music works, and music for films and the theatre. Among the best known of his more than 400 compositions are the ballets Le boeuf sur le toit (1920) and La création du monde (1923), the opera Christophe Colomb (1930), and the orchestral piece Suite provençale (1937). Milhaud wrote an autobiography, Notes Without Music (1949; trans. 1952).