Andre Jolivet: String Quartet Andante For String Orchestra

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10/3/2017 Andre Jolivet -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia

Andre Jolivet
André Jolivet, (born Aug. 8, 1905, Paris, France—died Dec. 19/20, 1974, Paris), French
composer noted for his sophisticated, expressive experiments with rhythm and new
sonorities.

Interested in drama, painting, and literature as a young man, Jolivet soon turned to music
and studied seriously with the avant-garde composer Edgard Varèse, among others. His
succinct early works (String Quartet and Andante for String Orchestra, both 1934)
demonstrate his familiarity with the techniques of Béla Bartók, Arnold Schoenberg, and
Alban Berg. In 1935 Jolivet helped found a contemporary chamber-music organization, La
Spirale, later to become La Jeune France (the name originated with Hector Berlioz),
dedicated to fostering modern nationalistic music. During his service in the French Army
during World War II, Jolivet grew interested in primitive religion and magic—in uences that
may be detected in his style.

In 1945 he was named music director of the Comédie-Française; thereafter he developed an


expressive melodic style exempli ed in the virtuoso Concertino for Trumpet, Strings, and
Piano (1948) and the spontaneous but symmetrical Flute Concerto of 1949. Opposition to the
Neoclassicism of the 1930s led him to experiments with the Ondes Martenot, an electronic
instrument (Concerto, 1948), and with complex and enormous orchestrations (Concerto for
Piano and Orchestra, 1951), in which the movements evoke sounds of Africa, East Asia, and
Polynesia.

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