SIX, LES

(French: The Six), group of early 20th-century French composers whose music represents a strong reaction against the heavy German Romanticism of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss, as well as against the lush Impressionism of Claude Debussy. Les Six were Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, Arthur Honegger, Georges Auric, Louis Durey, and Germaine Tailleferre. The French critic Henri Collet originated the label Les Six in his article The Russian Five, the French Six, and M. Erik Satie (Comoedia, January 1920). Collet wished to draw a parallel between the well-known, highly nationalistic group of five late 19th-century Russian composers (Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, Modest Mussorgsky, Aleksandr Borodin, Mily Balakirev, and Csar Cui) and the similar group of later French composers, who drew much of their inspiration from the music of Erik Satie and the poetry of Jean Cocteau. The artificiality of Collet's assemblage has often been remarked on by critics, and certainly each of the six composers developed along lines best suited to his own tastes and abilities. Yet it is impossible to ignore such distinctive elements as dry sonorities, sophisticated moods, and jazz rhythms that tend to identify the music of these composers as forming a discrete school.