Born Sept. 4, 1892, in Aix-en-Provence; died June 22, 1974, in Geneva. French composer, conductor, music critic, and teacher. Member of the Institute of France from 1956.
Milhaud was a member of the creative group known as “Les Six.” In the 1920’s he performed as a conductor. (In 1926 he appeared in the USSR.) He began participating in the work of the National Music Federation in 1936. While France was occupied by the fascist Germans (1940–44), he lived in the USA. In 1945 he became a professor at the Paris Conservatory. He also taught at music schools in the USA.
In many of his works Milhaud drew on themes from the history of the national liberation struggle (for example, the opera Bolivar [1943], which is about the national hero of Latin America, and the cantata The Fiery Castle [1954], which is dedicated to the memory of the victims of fascist concentration camps). His compositions include the operas The Misfortunes of Orpheus (1924), The Poor Sailor (1926), Christopher Columbus (1928), and Fiesta (1958) and the ballets The Nothing-Doing Bar (Le Boeufsur le toit, 1919) and The Blue Train (1924). He also composed 12 symphonies, 18 string quartets, and music for films, and he produced adaptations of French, Brazilian, Negro, and Jewish songs. Milhaud wrote a number of articles and books, including an autobiography (excerpts in Russian translation under the title “Notes Without Music” in Sovetskaia muzyka, 1963, nos. 2, 3).