Front National des Musiciens


Known by several names, including 'Comité de Front national des musiciens', the Front national des musiciens was an organisation of musicians in Nazi-occupied France that was part of the French Resistance set up at the instigation of the French Communist Party, in May 1941. Active until the autumn of 1944, the group's most prominent members were composers Elsa Barraine and Louis Durey, and conductor Roger Désormière.

Origins

Elsa Barraine, Roger Désormière and Louis Durey met in the autumn of 1940. The group, led by Elsa Barraine, published a manifesto in September 1941 in L'Université libre, the clandestine magazine created by Jacques Decour. From April 1942, the group published its own clandestine journal, Musiciens d'aujourd'hui and then, from September 1943, a second journal, Le Musicien Patriote. Barraine, Auric, Désormière and others used this medium to counter German and Vichy propaganda, denounce collaborators, encourage musicians to join the Resistance, and praise the successes achieved here and there, such as concerts featuring works by banned composers. They also publicised the latest actions of the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans.

Aims

Their aims were defined in underground publications: Musiciens d'aujourd'hui and Musiciens français.
Musicians should resist by refusing all collaboration with German media and events and make things difficult for the Vichy government. They should refuse forced labour and help those in hiding, including FTP fighters. They should form Front national committees in orchestras and institutions; contribute to underground newspapers; support the Resistance financially or join its ranks. They should use concerts to inspire patriotism. Finally, they should organize for mass demonstrations, like on November 11 and prepare for armed struggle by forming militia groups to join the national insurrection.

Members and supporters

The group had no more than thirty members, including : Francis Poulenc, Georges Auric, Arthur Honegger, Irène Joachim, Roland-Manuel, Claude Delvincourt, Manuel Rosenthal, Charles Munch and Paul Paray.
Friends of several FNM members, Lily Pastré and Marguerite Fournier offered hospitality to many musicians in distress.

Actions

The musicians' resistance took many forms: Désormière helped musicians in times of adversity, for example by publishing under his own name scores by Jean Wiéner for films by Louis Daquin, Paul Grimault, Robert Vernay. He was careful to keep French composers in the programmes of his concerts and recordings. This was likely to be all the more important as "ever have we seen greater crowds in Parisian concert halls than since the beginning of the events which, normally, should have half paralysed musical activity."
Another form of resistance consisted in giving concerts featuring banned works, as part of the launched by Gaston Gallimard from 1943, for example. It could also involve praising French musical heritage, by defending Debussy as a representative of the French school, while others would have liked to turn him into a Wagnerian.
While some composers stopped composing, others practised musical smuggling: playing fragments of patriotic airs inserted into other works in front of the Germans. Poulenc inserted a passage from a patriotic song, ', in the score of Animaux modèles "premiered at the Paris Opéra on 8 August 1942 before an audience of German officers, with choreography by Serge Lifar" ; Auric quoted a few notes from la Marseillaise at the end of his setting of Aragon's poem . Similarly, an instrumentalist at the Opéra Garnier played a few notes of la Marseillaise during a performance of Carmen.
In the minds of FNM members, setting poems to music was a way of highlighting the richness of French literature, as well as publicising texts by banned authors, some of whom had been published clandestinely and to tackle provocative or subversive themes: Poulenc sang of peace in 1938, following the Munich crisis, in Priez pour paix ; Jean Françaix slipped a eulogy of peace into the second part of his Cantate pour le tricentenaire de Maximilien de Béthune Duc de Sully ; Paul Arma sang of freedom in his setting of Jean Bruller's 'Fuero', and Dutilleux did the same with Cassou's 'La Geôle', as did Poulenc with Éluard's 'Liberté'.
Some works were veritable calls to resistance: in May 1944, Barraine composed ', which Éluard had dedicated to the memory of a resistance fighter, Georges Dudach, shot at the Fort Mont-Valérien on May 23, 1942 by the Germans. In this poem, Eluard evokes the millions of comrades ready to rise up to avenge him. The work could not be played until the end of the war.
Arma's À la jeunesse takes up a text by Romain Rolland encouraging young people to fight and succeed where their elders had failed. In "La Rose et le réséda", set to music by Auric in 1943, Aragon called on the French to transcend their divisions to resist the common enemy.
Auric also set to music Le petit bois by Jules Supervielle in which the said wood refuses to disappear: "Mon Dieu comme il est difficile / D'être un petit bois disparu / Lorsqu'on avait tant de racines / Comment faire pour n'être plus."
The same kind of stimulating allusion appears in Prière du Prophète Jérémie : "Our inheritance has passed to strangers, our homes to outsiders." The text is indeed taken from the Book of Lamentations by the biblical prophet Jeremiah.
Two poems by Maurice Fombeure set to music by Poulenc also contain allusions: a threat to enemies at the end of the poem Le Mendiant and a reference to the Cross of Lorraine in Chanson du clair tamis. K. Le Bail quotes Musiciens d'Aujourd'hui, which evokes the galvanising power of a reference to the greatness of France: "The fact of playing as a supplement to a programme a piece whose content glorifies France can galvanise..." and gives as an example Pierre Bernac who sang "as an encore to his recital at the Salle Gaveau the melody 'C' by Poulenc on the poem by Aragon.
Swiss Composer Arthur Honegger is a special case as he was suspected of collaboration. The fact remains that he composed the music for the films '' and Un seul amour directed by a member of the Resistance, filmmaker Pierre Blanchar. One might also think of his second symphony, marked by the tragedy of the occupation, whose finale nevertheless offers a glimmer of hope.
K. Le Bail also mentions Charles Munch's decision to play by Albert Roussel, the last line of which reads "Nous sourirons quand il faudra mourir!", in November 1942; by Albéric Magnard, who tried to resist the Germans in 1914 and was killed ; Jacques Ibert's Ouverture de fête ; when he was not allowed to play A Midsummer Night's Dream, he replaced it with Patrie, symphonic overture, by Bizet.
Stéphane Guégan points out in Les arts sous l'Occupation that "Diving into culture is a form of resistance that ultimately contributed to the liberation of minds and of the country".

Other works

Works not mentioned above include:
  • Auric, Six poèmes de Paul Éluard and Quatre Chants de la France malheureuse.
  • Poulenc, the cantata Figure humaine on eight poems by Éluard ; Un soir de neige and two works on poems by Aragon, C and Fêtes galantes.
  • Henri Dutilleux, La Geôle. Dutilleux joined the Front national des Musiciens in 1942 : it was thus that he was able to discover Jean Cassou's : La Geôle was premiered on 9 November 1944 by Gérard Souzay with Manuel Rosenthal conducting the Orchestre national de France. It should also be remembered that Dutilleux refused to play for Radio-Paris.
  • Arma, Chants du Silence, eleven melodies composed between 1942 and 1945 including: Depuis toujours, Confiance, Chant du désespéré.
  • Henri Sauguet, Force et faiblesse ; Bêtes et méchants ; Chant funèbre pour nouveaux héros.
  • Claude Arrieu, Cantate des sept poèmes d'amour en guerre on poems by Paul Éluard

The "Concerts de la Pléiade"

There is a detailed article on this subject :
These were concerts launched in 1943 by Gaston Gallimard, based on an idea by Denise Tual who organised them with the help of André Schaeffner. This undertaking was long described as an act of artistic resistance.
The first five concerts, given at the Galerie Charpentier, were private. The first took place on 8 February 1943. The first public performance took place at the salle Gaveau. Later, the concerts were held at the. The concerts continued until 1947.
The programmes consisted mainly of French works, some early, some recent and some previously unpublished.
In Belgium, Paul Collaer organised a similar kind of concerts for the 'Société privée de musique de chambre' between 1942 and 1944.

Other musicians in the Resistance

At the opéra Garnier, other Resistance groups were formed: the musicians' group and the machinists' group led by Jean Rieussec and Eugène Germain, members of the [General Confederation of Labour (France)|Confédération générale du travail|CGT]. This group was very active, distributing leaflets, helping Jews, Service du Travail Obligatoire draft dodgers and prisoners' families, recording songs calling for struggle and taking part in the fight for the Liberation of Paris.
Other people close to the music world resisted in other structures. This was the case, for example, of, printer and music publisher, member of the, who launched an underground newspaper, , from October 1940 until he was arrested a year later.