Jacques-Louis Monod


Jacques-Louis Monod was a French composer, pianist and conductor of 20th century and contemporary music, particularly in the advancement of the music of Charles Ives, Edgard Varèse, Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern and uptown music; and was active primarily in New York City and London during the second half of the twentieth century.

Biography

Paris 1940s: early years

Monod was born in Asnières, a northwestern suburb of Paris, to an affluent family of privilege and of French Protestant affiliation with ancestral roots in French-speaking Switzerland His musical prowess was detected early when he enrolled in 1933 at the Paris Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique as a child prodigy at the age of six, below the official minimum age of nine. Monod attended the Paris Conservatoire intermittently but remained registered for nearly 20 years, obtaining his Doctorat in 1952. Monod's teachers at the Conservatoire were Yves Nat and Olivier Messiaen; including master classes under the visiting conductor, Herbert von Karajan; he also studied with his godfather, Paul-Silva Hérard, the organist at Paris's St. Ambroise Church.
A decisive turning point for Monod occurred in 1944 at the age of 17, when he took private lessons in composition and theory for five years, subsequently remaining a lifelong supporter and president of an association promoting the music of the French composer and conductor René Leibowitz, a Webern disciple and émigré from Warsaw, Poland. Leibowitz, who was an outsider among the French musical establishment, and a major catalyst in the promotion of Schoenberg's music and in the subsequent development of serial music in Paris after WW II, became Monod's principal teacher and mentor within a circle of devoted pupils, including Jean Prodromidès, Antoine Duhamel, Pierre Chan, Michel Philippot, Serge Nigg, André Casanova, Claude Helffer, and for a brief period, Pierre Boulez.
Monod's debut as a pianist took place in Paris at a concert organized by Leibowitz for Schoenberg's 75th birthday. His performance in the European premiere of Schoenberg's Phantasy for Violin and Piano Accompaniment, Op. 47, missed being the world premiere by only a few hours.

New York City 1950s

Pianist and the Dial recordings

Soon after Leibowitz's earliest travels to the United States, Monod followed, accompanying Leibowitz to New York City in 1950. Whereas, the noted pianist Charles Rosen claims to have heard Monod perform Milton Babbitt's The Widow's Lament in Springtime as early as 1945 or 1946 at Princeton – and yet the work was not composed until 1951.
At a time when the musics of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern were least performed in America, Monod was among their earliest champions. He spent much of the 1950s as a pianist, performing works of the Second Viennese School for piano and voice, similar to the careers of pianists E. Steuermann; P. Stadlen; C. Helffer; Paul Jacobs; the Viennese pianist, Karl Steiner; and the American pianist, L. Stein. Under the direction of Leibowitz, Monod performed and recorded the piano part of Berg's Chamber Concerto and Schoenberg's Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte, Op. 41; and more importantly, Monod also performed on historic recordings of chamber music by Webern for the Dial Records label in the early 1950s, including the earliest recordings of Webern's Symphony, Op. 21, conducted by Leibowitz with the Paris Chamber Orchestra; the Concerto for nine instruments, Op. 24; the Variations for Piano, Op. 27, performed by Monod; the Four Songs, Op. 12, performed by the American virtuosic soprano Bethany Beardslee with Monod on piano; and the Quartet for tenor saxophone, clarinet, violin, and piano, Op. 22.
On 18 December 1950, Monod performed in a special concert of Alban Berg's chamber music at Juilliard, featuring the American premiere of Berg's Two Songs with Beardslee. The duo also performed Berg's Seven Early Songs and Four Songs, Op. 2.
Monod also promoted other musics in addition to the music of the Second Viennese School on 24 January 1954, the Three Japanese Lyrics, composed by Igor Stravinsky in 1912–13, received their Carnegie Hall premiere in Carnegie Recital Hall with Beardslee, soprano; the pianist Russell Sherman; and a chamber ensemble conducted by Monod. Also evident during Monod's residency in the USA was his extraordinary analytical ability: while attending a Columbia graduate 20th-century-music seminar taught by the Varèse disciple Chou Wen-chung, Monod's cogent analysis of Varèse's Ionisation led to his teaching the remainder of the course. Monod's studies at Columbia University during the 1950s would eventually lead by the early 1970s to an Associate Professorship position at Columbia's music department, wherein Monod with the former Schoenberg pupil and specialist in medieval music theory, Patricia Carpenter, were instrumental in establishing the department's undergraduate and graduate core curricula.

Conductor of Webern and influence on New York serialism

Beginning in the early 1950s and concurrently at the International Summer Course for New Music in Darmstadt, Germany wherein the music of Anton Webern was performed and promoted among the "new" avant-garde, Monod instead focused not on the emerging European avant-garde movement with the music of Webern as their model, but on the significance of Webern's music following the death of Schoenberg with growing interest among the northeast American academia. Monod directed American premieres of many works of Webern, assisting Richard Franko Goldman in directing the first all-Webern concert in the USA, which took place in New York City on 8 May 1951, and included the world premiere of Webern's Five Canons on Latin Texts. On 16 March 1952, Monod gave the world premieres of Webern's Three Traditional Rhymes, Op. 17, and the Three Songs on Poems of Hildegard Jone, Op. 25, all with his then wife, Bethany Beardslee, with whom for years, they gave critically acclaimed concerts of new music with the Camera Concerts under Monod's directorship. Further, Beardslee wrote in her autobiography of another all-Webern concert given on December 28, 1952 at Kaufmann Concert Hall, located at New York City's 92nd Street Y on Lexington Avenue with Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft present.
Hermann Scherchen premiered Edgard Varèse's Déserts in Paris on 20 January 1954; while Monod gave its American premiere at Town Hall in December 1955, with Varèse controlling the Ampex tape recorder. In 1956, Monod received an Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for his creative work in music.

London 1960s

Many of Schoenberg's and Webern's disciples had relocated to Great Britain during the 1930s as a result of the rise of National Socialism. In 1960–67, "during his seven years as the conductor for the BBC Third Program, he presented a live concert broadcast of new music every Tuesday throughout the concert season. Each program was different and was broadcast internationally to a wide listening audience... has conducted major orchestras and chamber ensembles in Europe, Scandinavia, and North and Central America". A notable performance took place on Tuesday evening, 21 December 1965 with Monod conducting the British premiere of Kurt Weill's school opera composed in 1930, Der Jasager, based on a libretto by Bertolt Brecht and after a Japanese Noh-play, as reported by David Drew.

New York City 1970s–1990s

In 1975 he founded, and for 20 years served as president of the Guild of Composers, a New York-based group that produced concerts of "uptown" contemporary music. At the Guild of Composers concerts, which often took place at Columbia University's Miller Theater, performances included the music of Elliott Carter, Arthur Berger, Claudio Spies, Mario Davidovsky, Seymour Shifrin, Earl Kim, Donald Martino, George Edwards, Robert Helps, David Lewin, Fred Lerdahl; and Milton Babbitt, who composed an earlier work, Du, dedicated to Monod and Ms. Beardslee. From 1995 until 2000, concerts of the Guild of Composers were directed by the Monod protégé, the Princeton- and Columbia-educated American composer and conductor, Daniel Plante.
Monod was a major proponent in New York City of "non-experimental" serialism, promoting the music of American composers primarily from the Northeast academic elite, Columbia-Princeton "axis" at the Guild of Composers concerts. The music performed for 25 years at the Guild of Composers concerts exemplified an ideological view that contemporary American music remains very much a part of the Western polyphonic tradition.
Throughout much of the 1970s and 1980s, Monod also continued to perform the music of Schoenberg in New York City, leading the music critic Allan Kozinn to write an article published in the New York Times acknowledging Monod as the "Guardian of the Schoenberg Flame", wherein Monod is quoted to have stated the following concerning his conducting demands:
His promotion of Schoenberg include a notable performance in the early 1980s of Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire, Op. 21, with commentary by George Perle.

Death

Monod died on 21 September 2020 in Toulouse, France at the age of 93.

Music

List of compositions

Monod's music is published by the Jerona Music Corporation and Schott Music Publishing.
A partial list of Monod's compositions include works from the series, Cantus Contra Cantum:
  • Organ Piece
  • Chamber Aria
  • Cantus Contra Cantum I for Soprano and Chamber Orchestra
  • Cantus Contra Cantum II for Violin and Cello
  • Cantus Contra Cantum III for Chorus
  • Cantus Contra Cantum IV for Mixed Chorus and Sackbuts or Trombones
  • Cantus Contra Cantum V for Orchestra
  • Cantus Contra Cantum VI for Mixed Choir and Chamber Orchestra
  • ''2 Elegies''