SoNA
Symphony of Northwest Arkansas
Defying Expectations February 17, 2024 Walton Arts Center Paul Haas, conductor
Le Boeuf sur le toit (1919–20)
eventually amassing over 400 opus
Darius Milhaud
in the lot. Nor did composition absorb
b September 4, 1892 in Marseille, France
all of his time: from 1940 through 1971
d June 22, 1974 in Geneva, Switzerland
he trained a battalion of musicians at
numbers without a single unfinished piece
Oakland’s Mills College. Milhaud’s original impetus for his droll Provençal-turned-global-citizen Darius
Brazilian-infused Le Boeuf sur le toit was
Milhaud combined astounding prolificity
as background music for any of Charlie
with a richly eclectic imagination. He got
Chaplin’s silent films. What that odd
started before the First World War and
title—literally “the ox on the roof”—actually
kept up the pace well into the 1970s,
means is anybody’s guess. Milhaud