The ox in the concert hall jazz identity and La cre?ation du monde /

by Gonzalez-Appling, Julio Moreno.

Dr. Robert Fallon, Advisor Darius Milhaud heard jazz for the first time in a London dance hall in 1919, and resolved to incorporate jazz into a chamber work. In America during the late 1910s, jazz was not yet a recognized genre, but rather was still a composite of several contributing styles. In Europe, however, ragtime, the blues, and American dance band music had fascinated modernist composers since the turn of the century. During his 1922 trip to the United States, Milhaud took every opportunity available to him to hear as much jazz as possible and found an outlet for his studies in the ballet La Création du monde, which premiered in Paris in 1923. The ballet opened to mixed reviews and French critics had little to say of Milhaud’s score. Ten years later, La Création received its American premiere and was hailed by American modernists as a precursor to the jazz works of Aaron Copland and superior to George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue (1924). Milhaud’s La Création du monde has often been categorized as one of many modernist forays into jazz. Milhaud employed a distinctly different approach to jazz, however, than his contemporaries. He sought not only to imitate jazz gestures, but to understand jazz culturally. This thesis examines how Darius Milhaud’s respect for folk music and personal commitment to culture led to La Création du monde, a work demonstrating a more comprehensive grasp of the jazz idiom than any of his European contemporaries. iii This thesis is dedicated to my grandfather, Fred Appling. “If it were easy, everyone would do it.” iv