ABSTRACT
Andre Jolivet has long been recognised among the leading composers of the twentieth century. Despite widespread international recognition and the entry of many of his works into the repertoire, Jolivet is perhaps the least understood of his contemporaries and a figure about whom there has been more to discover. The musical content of his works of the war years and beyond, however, demonstrates otherwise. Born in Montmartre and primarily resident in Paris throughout his lifetime, Jolivet established himself as a composer during the early 1930s. Establishing himself at the forefront of musical innovation during the interwar years, Jolivet developed a language combining the austerity of atonality and total chromaticism with elements of modality while forging new processes of rhythmic organisation and expressions of the incantatory that proved decisive influences on both Messiaen and Boulez. The diversification of Jolivet's musical style dates from the war years when a series of different strands of compositional thinking began to emerge.
