Jolivet, Andr

(b Paris, 8 Aug 1905; d Paris, 20 Dec 1974). French composer. His father, a painter, and his mother, a
pianist, encouraged him to become a teacher, despite his obvious early musical talent; from the age of 14 he
took cello lessons with Louis Feuillard, set his own poem to music at 13 and at 15 designed and composed
music for a ballet. The music of Debussy, Dukas and Ravel made a lasting impression on him at the
Pasdeloup concerts in 1919. In 1920 the Abb Thodas, matre de chapelle of Notre Dame de Clignancourt,
Paris, accepted him as a chorister, teaching him harmony and organ. He left school that year and trained as
a teacher, taking up various posts in Paris from 1927. Some early piano compositions date from this period,
including Romance barbare (1920) and Sarabande sur le nom d'Eric Satie (1925). In 1928 he started
lessons with Paul Le Flem, director of the Chanteurs de St Gervais, whose rigorous training in
counterpoint, harmony and classical forms often drew on 15th- and 16th-century polyphonists.

Jolivet's first significant exposure to atonal music occurred in December 1927 at the Socit Musicale
Indpendante's Schoenberg concerts at the Salle Pleyel, where he heard Pierrot lunaire sung by Marya
Freund, piano pieces performed by Eduard Steuermann and the Suite op.29. In 1929 Varse's Amriques
had a profound impact on him; Jolivet was struck by the large orchestral forces, dominated by percussion.
Le Flem, responding to Jolivet's enthusiasm, introduced him to Varse, who accepted him as his only
European student. Varse's impact is evident in Jolivet's experimentation with sound-masses, acoustics,
orchestration and atonal (though non-serial) methods.

Jolivet's first important compositions date from 1930, with works such as Air pour bercer, Suite for string
trio and Trois temps. Varse returned to the USA in 1933 leaving Jolivet six objects: a puppet, a magic
bird, a statue of a Balinese princess, and a goat, cow and winged horse sculpted by Calder, which Jolivet
regarded as fetish objects. In 1935 he composed Mana for piano, naming a movement after each object.
Contrast is created between the rhythmically free portrayal of the puppet, the short halting phrases of the
bird, the rhythmic momentum of the Balinese princess, and the long flexible lines evoking the cow.
Movements 3, 4 and 5 are unified by the tritone; the opening of the fifth movement is based on two
transpositions of the octatonic scale. Mana began Jolivet's so-called magic period. Cinq incantations for
solo flute (1936) and Cinq danses rituelles (1939) are concerned with the life-cycle and with harvest. While
the former work contains shifting and flexible rhythms, repeated phrases and single notes, the latter is
characterized by syncopation and heavily dotted rhythms. Jolivet exploits the dissonant effect of the
repeated diminished octaves and minor seconds in the final section of the nuptial dance. By focussing on
ritual, incantation and initiation practices, Jolivet sought inspiration from African and East Asian traditions.

Messiaen, a jury member of the Socit Nationale, helped to get Jolivet's Trois temps pour piano (1930)
performed by the society in 1931. In a review of Mana, Messiaen noted the novelty of its idiom and the
singularity of its aesthetic, which, in his view, seemed to express the new aspirations. They both shared
an interest in spiritual concerns and a desire to widen the emotional range of music. In 1935 Jolivet,
Messiaen and Daniel-Lesur founded La spirale, an avant-garde chamber music society. Then in 1936,
with Yves Baudrier, they formed the group known as La jeune France, their first concert taking place on 3
June 1936, conducted by Dsormire. They became known as the quatre petits frres spiritualistes
because they promoted spiritual values and human qualities in a mechanical and impersonal world. They
also rejected Stravinsky's neo-classicism, Satie, Les Six and central European experiments. The group's
activities were curtailed by World War II. In 1940 Messiaen was interned and Jolivet was mobilized at
Fontainebleau. Here he wrote a Messe pour le jour de la paix for voice, organ and tambourine (1940).
Another important war-inspired work was the Trois complaintes du soldat for voice and piano or orchestra
(1940).

In 1945 Jolivet published an article in Noir et Blanc entitled Assez Stravinsky, in which he declared that
true French music owes nothing to Stravinsky. Poulenc replied, defending Stravinsky, with an article in
Le Figaro, Vive Stravinsky. In 1946 Jolivet responded to an enquiry on musical aesthetics and technique
(Magie exprimentale in Contrepoints), in which he reaffirmed his musical aims, including his desire to
rediscover music's original ancient meaning. He also outlined his preoccupation with acoustics,
particularly his use of doubled basses in preference to the artificial twelve-note system; by selecting two
bass notes, he was able to exploit the harmonies that were available from both harmonic series.

Jolivet simplified his style during the war, abandoning atonality in favour of lyricism and striving for a
music for evasion and relaxation. Examples include the comic opera Dolors, ou Le miracle de la femme
laide (1942) and the ballet Guignol et Pandore (1943) on which he collaborated with Serge Lifar. In this
farce, the director, who controls the human characters, is himself a puppet. The music is tonal, modal and
simple, with repetitive rhythms and pentatonic glissandos, and tritones in the execution scene. The chamber
works Chant de Linos (1944) and Hopi Snake Dance (1948) reveal his continuing preoccupation with
ritual; the former exploits the flute's technical capabilities and reveals the influence of Le Flem's teaching in
the contrapuntal independence of the lines. From about 1945 Jolivet achieved a fusion between his new-
found accessibility and his earlier experimentation. Serge Gut has identified this synthesis in the First Piano
Sonata (1945), written in memory of Bartk. Elements of virtuosity, dissonance and rhythmic drive feature
in Fantaisie-Caprice for flute and piano (1953), Srnade for two guitars (1956) and the numerous
concertos, including two for cello (1962 and 1966) and one for violin (1972).

Between 1945 and 1959 Jolivet was musical director of the Comdie Franaise. He composed 14 scores for
plays by Molire, Racine, Sophocles, Shakespeare and Claudel. He had the opportunity to travel widely, to
the Middle East and East Asia and to Africa; his visit to Egypt rekindled his interest in ritual in works such
as Epithalame for a 12-voice vocal orchestra (1953), based on sacred Egyptian, Hindu, Chinese and
Greek texts, and the second movement of his First Symphony (1953). The Concerto for Piano and
Orchestra (194950) was the result of a commission from Radio France for a work of colonial inspiration
and was awarded the Grand Prix de la Ville de Paris; by drawing on musical elements from Africa, East
Asia and Polynesia, Jolivet was continuing the tradition of French exoticism established by Bizet, Chabrier,
Debussy, Ravel and Messiaen.

Jolivet's interest in French culture is evident from his oratorio La vrit de Jeanne (1956). Based on a 15th-
century text rehabilitating Joan of Arc, it was performed in Domrmy for her 500th anniversary. His
orchestral work Les amants magnifiques (1961) also involved a homage to France's past in Molire and
Lully. Jolivet employs Baroque dance figures, ground bass and harpsichord, but reveals his individuality in
emphasizing percussion, block writing, glissandos and harmonics. Jolivet founded the Centre Franais
d'Humanisme Musical at Aix-en-Provence in 1959 and taught composition at the Paris Conservatoire from
1961. His last commission, to write an opera, Le soldat inconnu for the Palais Garnier, was incomplete at
his death.

Writings
Assez de Stravinsky, Noir et Blanc (4 April, 1945)

Andr Jolivet, ou la magie exprimentale, Contrepoints, no.1 (1946), 337

Rameau, 16831764, Les musiciens clbres (Paris, 1946), 11215

Ludwig van Beethoven (Paris, 1955)

Bibliography
La Jeune France: M. Andr Jolivet, M. Yves Baudrier, M. Olivier Messiaen, M. Daniel-Lesur, Revue

internationale de musique, no.4 (1938), 76174

G. Michel: Andr Jolivet: essai sur un systme esthtique musical, ReM, no.204 (1946), 826

J.-J. Brothier: La Jeune France: Yves Baudrier, A. Jolivet, Daniel-Lesur, Olivier Messiaen (Paris, 1955)

Zodiaque, no.33 (1957) [Jolivet issue]

S. Desmarquez: Andr Jolivet (Paris, 1958)

M. Cadieu: A Conversation with Andr Jolivet, Tempo, no.59 (1961), 24

A. Gola: Die zwei Welten Andr Jolivets, NZM, cxxvi (1965), 41215

B. Schiffer: Andr Jolivet (19051974), Tempo, no.112 (1975), 1316

S. Gut: La groupe Jeune France (Paris, 1977)

H. Jolivet: Avec Andr Jolivet (Paris, 1978)

Zodiaque, no.119 (1979) [Jolivet issue]

K. Kemler: Is there Magic in Jolivet's Music?, MR, xliv (1983), 12135

J. Martin and K. McNerney: Carpentier and Jolivet: Magic Music in Los Pasos Perdidos, Hispanic

Review, lii (1984), 4918

Barbara L. Kelly

http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/14433.