Great piece, Pacific 231, but is it characteristic Honegger?

Not really. For one thing there is a lot of The Rite of Spring in Pacific 231 whereas Stravinsky was not a big influence on the rest of his music. For another thing, although he followed it up with another highly coloured and brilliantly scored “mouvement symphonique,”Rugby, five years later, he felt he couldn’t go on in this sensationalist kind of way.

Why not? He could have made fortune.

He was just too serious a composer, and the older he got the more serious he got. Actually, he did make money out of an operetta called Les aventures du roi Pausole which ran for four hundred performances at the Bouffes-parisiens in the early 1930s. But, for a composer with the technique to do just about anything, that was too easy. Besides, by this time he had already written the first of what, for want of a better word, one might call his “oratorios,” Le roi David, and it was this kind of thing - including Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher in 1935 and culminating in Une cantate de Noël in 1953 - that interested him above all. He was also very serious about the five symphonies he wrote between 1930 and 1951.

But wasn’t he one of the notoriously unserious “Les Six”?

Yes, but that was largely a matter of historical accident. Although he wrote one or two authentic naughty- boy pieces in the 1920s, he never really belonged to the group. The difference between him and the other five was that, although he was born and brought up in Le Havre, he was not French. He was the son of German-speaking Swiss parents and he insisted on retaining his Swiss citizenship in spite of spending most of his life in Paris. It was the Calvinist ethic and a boyhood encounter with the music of J.S. Bach - together with his professional training at the Paris Conservatoire and his admiration for Fauré - that made him the composer he was.

So he was a pretty dull sort of person?

Towards the end of his life he was not so much dull as profoundly pessimistic. He suffered a severe heart attack in 1947 and over the remaining eight years, as he saw the world become subject to the nuclear menace of the Cold War and music fall under the threat of total serialism, he convinced himself that civilisation was coming to an end. In his prime, however - not very tall and rather plump but good-looking nevertheless and always well turned out - he was an entertaining companion, a keen Bugatti driver and a considerable bon viveur. He kept two apartments in Montmartre, one for himself and - so that they wouldn’t get in the way of his work - one for his wife and daughter. He also had a son by a previous liaison.

But how could he afford the life-style?

As well as having the knack of getting his serious works commissioned by rich Swiss patrons, not least Paul Sacher, he travelled incessantly as a conductor of his own music and he wrote scores for literally dozens of films. If he had lived a little less well and worked a little less hard he might well have survived that much longer. Moderation, however, was not one of his virtues.

Was it worth the sacrifice?

There is no music of greater integrity than Honegger’s at its best and none more masterful in technique. The problem is that, since it has so comprehensively fallen out of favour in this country and is only slowly coming back, we don’t have much opportunity to enjoy it.

Gerald Larner©

further reading

Halbreich, H: Arthur Honnegger (Fayard 1992) - in French

Honegger, A: I am a Composer (Faber 1966)

Spratt, G.K: The Music of Arthur Honegger (Cork 1987)

further listening

Pacific 231 (with Rugby, Mouvement symphonique No.3, Pastorale d’été, Symphony No.1) - Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra/Charles Dutoit (Erato 2292-45242-2)