Having abandoned his violin studies for composition, he came into close contact with Paris's cultural environment from a young age. He spent some time in Brazil as an embassy attaché (hence his predilection for the popular music of that country), and in 1918, he came into contact with Cocteau and Satie, becoming part of the "Groupe des Six." After 1920, we find him touring Europe and attending numerous contemporary music festivals. However, at the beginning of the Second World War, he moved to the United States to teach in Oakland, California. In 1947, he returned to Paris, where he taught at the Conservatory, and from 1948, he directed the music section of that radio station.
Highly prominent from a young age among the advanced groups of European contemporary music, he was soon considered an enfant terrible of music, comparable to Honegger, Antheil, and Hindemith. His production, born under the banner of the "Groupe des Six," was soon influenced by a wide range of diverse influences, including neoclassicism, jazz, and polytonalism. Still, he managed, at least during the happiest period of his compositional activity, to blend them into a coherent and personal style, which saw him for several years among the leading figures of contemporary musical events.
In his youth, he preferred complex rhythms, bitonal and polytonal harmonic superimpositions, a very dense counterpoint combined with a free sense of form and an ironic and pungent attitude, where, however, the melodic need always prevailed, a sense of lyricism typically.
Mediterranean and "French." Lately, Milhaud has abandoned the aggressiveness of the first period, following an evolution comparable to that of Hindemith.
Milhaud's production is immense: he is the author of numerous theatrical works, over fifteen ballets, stage and choral music, pieces for voices and instruments, and a substantial body of chamber music, including approximately twenty quartets and many pieces for piano.
Symphonie n.1 op.210 (1939)
Like other contemporary musicians, Milhaud approached the classical form of the Symphony only in full maturity. This also applies to Honegger and Hindemith, who, like Milhaud, threw themselves into the search for new forms and modes of expression in their youth, only feeling the call of classicism later. Milhaud himself states that this Symphony is conceived following the example of Mozart, in the sense of the clarity of the formal structure and, above all of the tireless melodic research, which remains - here as in almost all of the French composer's production - one of the fundamental elements of his style. There is. Therefore, there is a lack of dramatic contrasts, and the expressive climate of the work is relatively naturalistic, at times almost rustic, only occasionally strengthened by some vigorous episodes, such as the fugato of the second movement.
Here is the order of succession of the four movements: "Pastorale" ('Moderatamente animato'), "Molto vivo," "Molto moderato" (with a chorale character) and "Finale" ('Animato').
