Milhaud: Pacem in terris – A Choral Symphony (Florence Kopleff, Louis Quilico, University of Utah Choruses); L’Homme et son désir (Blanche Christensen, Myrene Nixon, Ronald Christensen, Pym Chartand). Utah Symphony Orchestra, Maurice Abravanel.
European edition Vanguard 08 9070 71 (1992) barcode 3351479070719:
North-American edition Vanguard OVC 8067 (1993) 0723918806723:
Recorded under the supervision of the conductor, May 1965 (Pacem in terris), c. 1965 (L’Homme et son désir)
Great interpretations of late and early Milhaud
Originally posted on Amazon.com, 21 March 2013
There may be something of a paradox to have a Jewish composer, Darius Milhaud, set to music a Catholic papal encyclical, John XXIII’s Pacem in Terris/Peace on Earth (delivered on April 2, 1963), and have it premiered by a famous Protestant conductor, Charles Munch (for the inauguration of the French Radio’s new auditorium, on 20 December 1963, the second part of a program which began with – what else? – Beethoven’s Consecration of the House-Overture and 7th Symphony). Or maybe it is a case of what they call ecumenism. It is not told if the singers at the premiere were muslims – in fact, they weren’t: they were Johanna Peters and the same Louis Quilico who recorded it here, shortly after the American premiere given by the same forces in the presence of the composer, on December 5, 1964. An audio archive remains of the 1963 premiere under Munch, and (post-script from 27 December 2013) it has just ben aired on the French public radio, and there is also, or was some film footage of the same event: small excerpts were used in the tribute to Milhaud aired by the French TV upon his death in 1964 and can be seen on the website of INA, the French archive for all public audiovisual programs. But INA also makes available, on streaming and download, the concert given on 8 November 1967 with the same soloists as on the premiere, but now conducted by Milhaud himself on the occasion of his 75th birthday (it took some sleuth job to establish that Milhaud conducted it, the INA website attributes it to Stéphane Caillat, and to November 30, which I suppose was when it was aired on the public radio. But I’ve found contemporary announcements of the November 8 concert duly crediting Milhaud). (And a post-script from July 2024 upon repost: INA has done a dismal job at (not) maintaining their archive available online. None of this is available anymore).
So Milhaud wrote a grandiose, 50-minute long choral symphony with soprano and baritone, on what would appear to be not the easiest and most inspiring text, here used in its Latin original. Much of it looks like canonic prescriptions, like:
“This too, must be listed among the rights of a human being, to honor God according to the sincere dicates of his own conscience, and therefore the right to practice his religion privately and publicly…”
or
“…Every human being has the right to freedom of movement and of residence within confines of his own country; and when there are just reasons for it, the right to emigrate to other countries and take up residence there…”
Quite topical still when the United States’ immigration policy is being reassessed, but stuff for a Cantata? I wonder why Copland or Schuman never thought of setting the American Constitution to music – well, no, I know why: it would have been as sexy as using the phone book as a libretto for an opera. But hey, they could have used live cannons and rifle shooting, as in Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, for the Second Amendment!
Kidding apart, it is a tribute to Milhaud that on this not very inviting text, although not shying from the grandiose, he managed to escape grandiloquence. Some of it reminds me of the epic moments in the symphonies of Roy Harris or Aaron Copland. There’s also a beautiful (but short) moment for a cappella chorus that recalls the best of the English choral tradition (track 2 at 9:34). The rest is pure Milhaud, with his vaguely grating polytonal harmonies, and there are fine moments of chamber-like woodwind dialoguing that are reminiscent of Stravinsky. Also reminiscent of Stravinsky – but the late, Webern-inspired Stravinsky of the Requiem Canticles or In Memoriam Dylan Thomas – is the stark third movement. Milhaud uses throughout a very simple architecture of alternating the “verses” between chorus and soloists, the latter sometimes singing in duet. But diversity comes even more from the variety of moods and atmospheres evoked by the music.
Ultimately I don’t think the text is so important. If Milhaud really let himself be inspired by the… what? meaning? emotions? emerging from the encyclical, kudos to him, not only for perceiving them but for writing music that has a true dramatic architecture. The text being in Latin, you can of course follow what is being sung using the English translation (provided in the booklet, bravo, at least of my Dutch-originated European edition) as we do when listening to an opera in a foreign language. But very rapidly I found it more tempting to just listen to the music and Latin text and imagine my own private opera. Because of the Latin, Pacem in terris doesn’t sound so far from Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex.
It isn’t likely that Pacem in terris will ever get a new recording, but it doesn’t really need one: made in the presence of the composer, in great stereo and with vivid sonic presence and fullness (an incomparable advantage over both the premiere 1963 performance under Munch and the 1967 revival conducted by Milhaud, which both come in uningratiating mono), this one by Maurice Abravanel and the Utah Symphony Orchestra and choral forces is authoritative, Louis Quilico sounds great in full stereo and the substitution of Florence Kopleff to Paris’ Roberta Peters was a fortunate one.
There are a few typos in the translation provided in the booklet, and this one captured my attention:
“Now, among the rights of a person must be included the one by which a man may enter a political community where he hopes he can more fittingly provide a furore for himself and his dependents”. Well, welcome to Irak and Afganistan, you’ll find no better furore than there! The official Vatican translation (well… I’m not sure it is the official Vatican, but it is the website www.Vatican.va, so it looks genuine to me) says here, “And among man’s personal rights we must include his right to enter a country in which he hopes to be able to provide more fittingly for himself and his dependents”, and the Latin word translated into “furore” in the booklet and apparently NOT translated at all in the “official” translation seems to be “necessariis”, the necessities.
It’s great to be a Pope. You can dream, and let your dreams be known. “Nations are reciprocally subjects of rights and duties, this means that their relationships also must be harmonized in truth, in justice, in a working solidarity and in liberty. Hear, therefore, ye kings and comprehend; learn ye judges of the regions of the earth. Lend your ears, you who rule multitudes and take pleasure in disturbances among nations.” Or this one, my favorite: “We think it is most opportune that, as far as possible, employment should seek the worker, not visa versa”. Well, I’ve tried to apply the Pope’s prescription, but it’s never worked for me. I guess it has to do with the fine print proviso, “as far as possible”.
Maurice Abravanel is chiefly remembered today, I think, for his complete cycles of Mahler and Sibelius symphonies recorded with the Utah Symphony for Vanguard, although these were never considered to belong to the top drawer, on a par with those of Bernstein (in both), Solti and Haitink (in Mahler) or Colin Davis (in Sibelius), as much on account of the conductor’s conception as because of what was deemed a lesser orchestra than the New York Philharmonic, the London Symphony or the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. But Abravanel had an extensive discography that reached into modern music from the first half of the 20th Century, Varèse, Honegger’s Judith (see my review – link will open a new tab), King David and Pacific 231, Milhaud, Satie, Copland, Vaughan Williams, Ernest Bloch, Prokofiev (and, with the Third Symphony, not the easiest Prokofiev – this one hasn’t been reissued on CD to the best of my knowledge). And I wish his LP of Bach orchestral transcriptions by Schoenberg, Stravinsky and Webern had been reissued on CD (link to the entry on Discogs.com). Based on some of those recordings and on this Pacem in terris, Abravanel’s Utah Symphony was NOT a lesser orchestra.
Jump back 45 years to Milhaud’s “L’Homme et son Désir”. In 1917 Milhaud was 24 and the private secretary of the famous poet, playwright and diplomat Paul Claudel, then France’s ambassador in Brazil. Milhaud had already written the incidental music to Claudel’s Agamemnon (1913-14) and Choéphores (1913-15 – that’s the Electra-Orestes story) after Aeschylus, of which the third pendant, Les Euménides, was completed only in 1924. “L’Homme et son Désir” was meant to be a chamber-ballet on an scenario by Claudel, written for Nijinsky, on tour in Brazil with the Ballets Russes, but whose mental illness prevented him from performing it. “Chamber”-ballet in that the scoring calls for a chamber orchestra comprised of 20 performers, divided in five different groups meant to be disposed on different planes (hence the ballet’s subtitle “plastic poem”): four singers (singing wordless vocalises), oboe-trumpet-harp and double-bass, flutes-clarinets, four percussionists and string quartet. To these five groups Milhaud applies his typical polytonal and polyrhythmic processes. I don’t always warm up to the humor of Milhaud, I sense (as in some of the tone poems of Strauss) something contrived in it that I find very artificial, and Milhaud’s polytonality can be grating on the ear. But I’ve enjoyed “L’Homme et son Désir”, a fine example of Milhaud’s early modernism and in which the sultry and boisterous Brazilian atmospheres that also inspired “La Création du Monde” can be heard.
Abravanel’s “L’Homme et son désir” was recorded in circa 1965 (the entry on Discogs.com of the European CD edition claims 1968, but that is not possible, since it was the original pairing of LP Vanguard VRS-1156 / VSD-71156, released in 1966, with Varèse’s Amériques and Honegger’s Pacific 231, reviewed in the High Fidelity issue of August – eternal thanks to worldradiohistory.com for making these available online). It is very similar in approach to the composer’s slightly later recording from 1968 with the Luxemburg Philharmonic Orchestra (on VoxBox CDX 5109, barcode 047163510922, with Milhaud’s 6 Little Symphonies, Boeuf sur le toit and other pieces), but usually a touch more animated, and with some instrumental details (as the solo viola at 2:06) coming out better from the dense texture (but the harp not as clearly delineated). In general the percussion (including whistles) sounds closer and more vivid (and with great stereo separation, which you can hear from top), and generates incredible excitement in the passage for percussion alone from 4:57 to 6:18, to make Varèse’s Ionisation sound tame in comparison. In general Abravanel is, through his greater instrumental vividness and some of his more animated tempo choices, marginally more exciting than Milhaud.
Pacem in terris is probably not a Milhaud for the casual listener, the amateur of Boeuf sur le toit, La Création du Monde or Saudades do Brasil, although L’Homme et son Désir might be. But if you are, like me, an amateur of the more demanding Milhaud of Les Choéphores or of the Stravinsky of Oedipus Rex and Requiem Canticles, Pacem in terris may come to you, as it did to me, as a very pleasant and unexpected surprise. TT is 66:45. On my European edition, 08 9070 71, L’Homme et son Désir gets only one cue, and here the booklet is wanting for not even giving the titles of the ballet’s various episodes. But, on the American issue, OVC 8067, each of its eight sections gets cued (more serviceable to the listner… and also much better for making money on downloads). For those who’d have the Dutch issue, here is how it goes:
00:00 1. Le Drame Continue Quelque Chose (The Drama Continues Something)
01:12 2. Apparition de la Lune (Appearance of the Moon)
01:59 3. L’Homme Endormi (The Man Asleep)
04:14 4. L’Homme qui dort debout (The Man Who Sleeps Standing)
04:57 5. Toutes les Choses de la Foret (All the Things of the Forest)
09:56 6. Danse de la Passion
12:50 7. Reapparition de la Femme (Reappearance of the Woman)
16:01 8. La Lune a Disparu (The Moon has Disappeared)