ABSTRACT
Darius Milhaud's interest in chamber forces predated his return to Paris, as his early chamber symphonies reveal. In their reviews of Les Malheurs d'Orphee, Francis Poulenc, Andre George, Paul Collaer and Paul Landormy all emphasized Milhaud's concision with respect to dramatic structure, emotional expressiveness and instrumentation, describing it as a new and fruitful approach to musical theatre. It is equally significant to see the polytonality that Milhaud uses occasionally, intimately intertwined with the lyrical and poetic elements, whilst his recognized artistic personality reappears with an evident clarity of melodic patterns that are entirely French in character. Milhaud's successful melodic invention in Esther, Le Pauvre Matelot and Les Malheurs is partly due to his decision to present and develop the characters in short and discrete 'airs'. The former work, Milhaud approaches Stravinsky's sound most closely at the moment when the sailor and his wife first speak to each other. Parallels can be drawn between Milhaud's and Charles Gounod's melodic writing.
