Cortege Hollandais

In post-World War I Paris, music, like politics, nearly foundered in a sea of talk. Talkiest was a group called "The Six." "The Six" talked more than they composed, got the Left Bank dizzy with conversation. As the years passed the one woman member of "The Six," GermaineTailleferre,got married; another member, Louis Durey, gave up both composing and talking. But two of them actually got around to a large batch of serious composing. One of these was a Swiss, Arthur Honegger--famed for his symphonic imitation of a train (Pacific 231)--the other was Darius Milhaud who, in 1921, scandalized Paris by setting florists' catalogues to music. These two climbed to a place as the most important French composers of their generation.

Two months ago, when Hitler's Blitzkrieg rolled into Paris, one lesser, but still active member of "The Six" (Francis Poulenc) was in the French Army, another (Georges Auric) was sticking it out in Southern France, and Swiss Citizen Honegger had fled to Switzerland. Milhaud. who had been vacationing in Provence, packed up what belongings he could carry and started for the U. S. where Califor nia's Mills College had offered him a job next fall lecturing on musical composition.

Last month fat, stubby-haired Milhaud and his pretty actress wife Madeleine arrived in Manhattan. With him, Composer Milhaud brought a new Cortege Funebre, which he had dashed off as a dirge for

The Netherlands, while Hitler's troops were staging their invasion. Last week Columbia Broadcasting System broadcast his Cortege over WABC, and U. S. critics, who had not been hearing much Milhaud lately, found that Darius Milhaud could still turn a phrase of hard-bitten counterpoint as expertly as any of his contemporaries. A massive, close-knit dead march, the Cortege Funebre was imposingly militant rather than sad, made The Netherlands' fall ring with the relentless finality of doom.

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