In 1920, an influential article hailed a group of young French composers as “Les Six,” placing them in the same revered class as the “Russian Five” from a previous generation, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov among them. Honegger was less of a trickster than his five Satie-influenced peers, which included Darius Milhaud and Francis Poulenc, and his sincerity came through in Pastorale d’été (Summer Pastoral) from that same breakout year. In the score, an epigraph by the influential French poet Arthur Rimbaud sets the mood for this short tone poem: “J’ai embrasse l’aube d’ete.” (“I have embraced the summer dawn.”) The opening passage and other long stretches maintain a static harmony built on the mixolydian mode, defined by its lowered seventh tone compared to a major scale. This prolonged vamp is undeniably bluesy, conveying the same languid calm that would mark the cool jazz of later decades.

Aaron Grad ©2019