Lost Milhaud Score is Discovered and Premiered in Wales

Found in the home of the score dedicatee’s granddaughter, the piece was recently premiered by the Cardiff University School of Music 

Cardiff University School of Music’s Professor Caroline Rae and PhD student James Brookmyre have discovered a previously unknown manuscript by the French composer Darius Milhaud.  

Milhaud is remembered primarily as a member of the French composer group Les Six, which also comprised Francois Poulenc, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Georges Auric, and Germaine Tailleferre. 

Professor Rae, who is also a pianist and internationally-renowned specialist on 20th-century French music, found the Milhaud manuscript in Brecon at the home of Laetitia Jack, granddaughter of stage designer Audrey Parr (1892-1940). 

The work was written as a birthday gift for Parr by Milhaud and poet Jean Cocteau in November 1920. Milhaud set Cocteau’s surreal poem to music for soprano and seven instruments.

The world premiere of the work took place at the University Concert Hall with performers drawn from the Cardiff University School of Music, Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, and the Bodman String Quartet. 

Musicians included Clair Rowden (soprano), Gabbi Alberti (flute), James Brookmyre (clarinet), Jaroslaw Augustyniak (bassoon), Robert Fokkens (violin), Charles Bodman-Whittaker (viola), Claudine Cassidy (cello), and Jordan Williams (double bass).

The score’s discovery comes during an uncertain time for the Cardiff University School of Music as it approaches the end of a 90-day consultation period around proposals for a reduction of 400 academic staff, and the stoppage of music-related subjects. Final plans for approval are set to be considered by the University Council in June 2025.

“It’s not every day an unknown work by a major French composer is discovered, let alone in Wales,” said Professor Rae. “This wonderful piece is a real gem and shows Milhaud at his most inventive and experimental. It sheds new light on Milhaud’s stylistic development while demonstrating a real affection for Audrey Parr, a forgotten figure of the interwar French avant-garde who undertook several collaborations with Milhaud and Claudel and was also the dedicatee of music by Poulenc. The discovery is a real coup for Cardiff University and I’m very grateful to Laetitia Jack, the manuscript owner, for giving us permission to give the world premiere.”

“We were amazed and very excited to find the manuscript after it had been lost for about 40 years,” Jack added. “We thought that we would never manage to get a group of musicians to ever play it, and so we’re incredibly grateful to Caroline Rae and James Brookmyre for taking it on. It sounds wonderful. I can't believe it. We’re just so very excited and very happy, and I’m glad that this piece was composed for my granny.”