[1892-1974]

Darius Milhaud - La Création du monde op.81b

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Year
1923
Time
17'
Instr.
2Fl. Ob. 2Klar. Sax. Fag. Hrn. 2Trp. Trb. Timp.Perc. Pno. 2Vl. Vc. Cb.
Edition
Eschig
This composition has been played by the Ebony Band

In 1923, when Milhaud was commissioned by the Ballet Suédois to write music to a script by Blaise Cendrars telling a story of creation from African mythology, he seized the opportunity to demonstrate his fondness for jazz. This authentic (and for many people of the time primitive) art form in a black culture, was the ideal music for Milhaud’s setting of this African story. With an instrumentation derived from the black operettas which he had seen in New York, the dansers wore animal costumes and masks (designed by Fernand Legér) in the style of African ceremonial dansers.

La Création was first performed on 25 October 1923 in the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, in a double bill with Cole Porter’s Within the Quota.