Louis Durey (1888-1979), French composer, born in Paris. He was a member of the short-lived grouping of composers known as Les Six (the others being Georges Auric, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, and Germaine Tailleferre), who promoted an anti-Romantic French aesthetic influenced by Erik Satie and the writer Jean Cocteau. Durey did not have a serious interest in composition until after 1907, when a performance of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande made an enormous impression on him and led him to attend the Schola Cantorum in Paris, where he studied until 1914. His early song cycle L’Offrande Lyrique (1914) is imbued with the expressionist influence of the Schoenberg song cycle Das Buch der Hängenden Gärten (1908; The Book of the Hanging Gardens), a work that Durey had studied, while early piano pieces owe more to the impressionist influence of Debussy. His other works include vocal settings of the poets Apollinaire and Rilke, and several chamber-music pieces.

Durey was only connected with Les Six for a year, dissociating himself from the group in 1921. Although he initially shared the other members’ interest in Satie and Stravinsky, he became preoccupied with the belief that music could express political, in particular communist, ideals. From 1937 to 1956 he was secretary-general of the Fédération Musicale Populaire, and held the same role in the Association Française des Musiciens Progressistes. After 1945 he was largely concerned with providing “mass appeal” in his music, arranging popular songs and writing songs and marches of a simpler nature.