A famous lithograph from 1920, showing Raoul Dufy’s design sketch for “The Ox on the Roof” ballet, set in a bar by the same name in New York City. After the ballet’s success, a real nightclub bar by this name was opened in Paris in 1921 — and still flourishes today.
ting that I had written the opera Les Choéphores, the public and the press decided that I was a joker, I, who had always regarded all things comic with horror and had aspired, when writing Le Bœuf sur le Toit, only to put together an amusing unpretentious entertainment, with the memory of the Brazilian rhythms that had so enchanted me and never — God forbid — never made me laugh!” A bewitching two-beat pulse is sustained throughout the work, with the tempo relaxed a little from time to time. The syncopation, which thrilled Milhaud during the Rio carnival, is present throughout, supported by a one-person percussion section (which Stravinsky had featured in The Soldier’s Tale and which was soon to become standard in dance bands everywhere). The orchestration is witty and deft. Milhaud made a number of arrangements, including one for two pianos and another, titled Cinéma-Fantaisie, for violin and piano. Cocteau and Milhaud allowed the name Le Bœuf sur le Toit to be used as the name of a Parisian bar, which everyone assumed was owned and run by them. It was even said that the ballet had been named after the bar. In the spirit of Cocteau’s war on Wagnerism, Impressionism, and all other isms, Milhaud went on to learn about (“discover”) American jazz, which provided the impulse for his other popular stage work, La Création du Monde of 1923. But his dedication to serious composition never waned, and his pile of accumulated works included sonatas, quartets, symphonies, and operas — many of them unplayed and unheard — alongside the more entertaining works which the public has always preferred. yet not even this dichotomy of neglected popularity could, apparently, make him unhappy.
—Hugh Macdonald © 2017 Blossom Festival 2017
July 15: About the Music
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