Life

Louis Durey was born in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, the son of a local businessman. It was not until he was nineteen years old that he chose to pursue a musical career after hearing a performance of a Claude Debussy

Claude Debussy

Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...

 work. As a composer he was primarily self-taught. From the beginning, choral music was of great importance in Durey’s productivity. The first work to gain recognition in the music world was for a piano duet titled Carillons. At a 1918 concert this work attracted the interest of Maurice Ravel

Maurice Ravel

Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...

, who recommended him to his publisher.

Durey communicated with his colleague, Darius Milhaud

Darius Milhaud

Darius Milhaud was a French composer and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—also known as The Group of Six—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions are influenced by jazz and make use of polytonality...

, and asked him to contribute a piano piece that would bring together the six composers who, in 1920 were dubbed Les six

Les Six

Les six is a name, inspired by The Five, given in 1920 by critic Henri Collet in an article titled "" to a group of six composers working in Montparnasse whose music is often seen as a reaction against the musical style of Richard Wagner and impressionist music.-Members:Formally, the Groupe des...

. Despite the acclaim they received, Durey did not participate in the group's 1921 collaborative work Les mariés de la tour Eiffel

Les mariés de la tour Eiffel

Les mariés de la tour Eiffel is a ballet to a libretto by Jean Cocteau, choreography by Jean Börlin, set by Irène Lagut, costumes by Jean Hugo, and music by five members of Les six – Georges Auric, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc and Germaine Tailleferre. The score calls for two...

, a decision which was a source of great irritation to Jean Cocteau

Jean Cocteau

Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...

.

After the Les six period, Durey continued with his career. Never feeling the need to belong to the musical establishment, he voiced his growing left-wing ideals that put him in an artistic isolation that lasted for the rest of his life.

Following the break with Cocteau, Durey withdrew to the south of France to work at the home he owned in St Tropez. In addition to chamber music, at Saint-Tropez he wrote his only opera, L'occasion. In 1929, he married Anne Grangeon and moved back to Paris the following year. In the mid-thirties he joined the Communist Party

Communist party

A political party described as a Communist party includes those that advocate the application of the social principles of communism through a communist form of government...

 and became active in the newly formed Fédération Musicale Populaire. During the years of the Nazi

Nazism

Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...

 occupation of World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, he worked with the French Resistance

French Resistance

The French Resistance is the name used to denote the collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during World War II...

 as a prominent member of the Front National des Musiciens

Front National des Musiciens

The Front National des Musiciens was an organization of musicians in Nazi occupied France that was part of the French Resistance. Active from the Spring of 1941 through the Autumn of 1944, the group's most prominent members were composers Elsa Barraine and Louis Durey, and conductor Roger Désormière....

 and wrote anti-Fascist

Fascism

Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...

 songs. After the war he embraced hard-line communism and his uncompromising political attitudes hindered his career. Needing to earn a living, in 1950 he accepted the post of music critic for a communist newspaper in Paris.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s he continued to compose but produced nothing of significance. His work on Vietnam

Vietnam

Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...

ese themes in the 1960s, based on his disgust with the turmoil France had left in Vietnam (formerly French Indochina

French Indochina

French Indochina was part of the French colonial empire in southeast Asia. A federation of the three Vietnamese regions, Tonkin , Annam , and Cochinchina , as well as Cambodia, was formed in 1887....

) and the ensuing American-run war, seemed at that time in Paris to be a voice in the wilderness.

Probably the least remembered of Les six, Louis Durey died at Saint-Tropez

Saint-Tropez

Saint-Tropez is a town, 104 km to the east of Marseille, in the Var department of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region of southeastern France. It is also the principal town in the canton of Saint-Tropez....

, Var, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur

Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur

Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur or PACA is one of the 27 regions of France.It is made up of:* the former French province of Provence* the former papal territory of Avignon, known as Comtat Venaissin...

, France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

in 1979.

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