Jacques-Louis Monod
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Jacques-Louis Monod (February 25, 1927 - ) is an influential Franco-American composer, pianist and conductor of 20th century and Contemporary music.
[edit] Biography
Born in Asnières (now Asnières-sur-Seine) in northwestern Paris to an upper-class family of French Huguenot descent, early indications of Monod’s musical prowess was apparent when he enrolled at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris under the official age of 9. His teachers at the Conservatoire included Yves Nat and Olivier Messiaen; including tutelage under his godfather, Paul-Silva Hérard, Organist at the St. Ambroise Church in Paris. While in Paris, Monod also took private lessons beginning in 1944 under the French composer and conductor, René Leibowitz, a Webern disciple and émigré from Warsaw, Poland, who soon became Monod’s principal teacher and mentor among a circle of devote pupils, including Jean Promodides, Antoine Duhamel, Pierre Chan, Michel Phillipot, Serge Nigg, André Casanova, Claude Hellfer and for a brief period, Pierre Boulez. Along with Boulez - who was a former but distant classmate of Monod’s at the Consevatoire - Monod was part of the early cadre of post-WWII proponents of the New Modernism in Paris (ca. 1945-51), promoting initially the music of Schoenberg; and later, the serial music of Webern.
Upon Leibowitz’s earliest travels to the United States (first to visit Schoenberg in Los Angeles), Monod arrived in the USA in 1951, accompanying Leibowitz to New York City, where he met Milton Babbitt; and to attend Columbia and the Juilliard School, while performing as a pianist (n.b. Monod had also accompanied Leibowitz to the earliest composition seminars in Darmstadt at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, where he first met Stockhausen). Evident in Monod's initial studies in the USA were his prodigious display of musical strengths: while attending a graduate seminar at Columbia on 20th century music, Monod's cogent analysis of Varèse's Ionisation led to his teaching the course.
During his early years in New York, Monod performed and recorded the piano part of Berg's Chamber Concerto, Schoenberg's Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte; and with Leibowitz, performed on historic recordings of chamber music of Berg and Webern for the Dial label (n.b. the record company was founded by Ross Russell, who also produced historic jazz recordings of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis). Among the earliest performers in America of the music of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern, Monod’s New York performance of Schoenberg's Phantasy for Violin and Piano Accompaniment, Op. 47 missed being the world premiere by only a few hours. He also gave American premieres of many of the works of Anton Webern, including directing the first all-Webern concerts in New York City with world premieres of Webern’s Five Canons on Latin Texts, Op. 16 on May 8, 1951; the Three Traditional Rhymes, Op. 17 and Three Songs on Poems of Hildegard Jone, Op. 25 on March 16, 1952, all with his then-wife, the soprano Bethany Beardslee, with whom for years, they performed critically-acclaimed concerts of new music under his directorship with the Camera Concerts. As Hermann Scherchen (with an introduction by Boulez) was premiering Edgard Varèse’s Déserts in Paris on January 20, 1954, Monod later gave its American premiere (1955).
Further, during the height of serial music development in Great Britain and under the influence of Sir William Glock and Hans Keller, Monod served as conductor of contemporary music for the BBC Third Programme from 1960 to 1966, giving dozens of premieres, including several by Roberto Gerhard, Peter Maxwell Davies, Luigi Dallapiccola, and Luigi Nono, whom he befriended during Monod’s London premiere of Nono’s, Polifonica-Monodica-Ritmica. Monod also coached contemporary music for various ensembles in London, including a notable performance with the Melos Ensemble of Schoenberg's chamber music; which was the first time the pianist and Schoenberg amanuensis-editor Leonard Stein had encountered Monod's masterly interpretations of Schoenberg's music.
Monod has taught at the New England Conservatory of Music, Harvard University, Princeton University, the Sorbonne, the Juilliard School, and, for many years, at Columbia University. In 1975, he founded, and for 25 years served as president of, the Guild of Composers, a New York group which produced concerts of contemporary music. At the Guild of Composers concerts, Monod performed the music of Elliott Carter, Mario Davidovsky, Seymour Shifrin, Donald Martino and Milton Babbitt, who composed an earlier work, Du, for Monod and Bethany Beardslee. Along with Babbitt and his adherents, Monod has been a major proponent in New York City of advanced, non-experimental serialism, promoting the music of composers from the so-called Princeton-Columbia "axis" (and to a lesser degree, Harvard). Notable performances in the early 1980's include Monod's interpretation of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21 with a commentary from George Perle. Monod was also an uncompromising and demanding pedagogue, who sought a level of rigorous perfectionism from his students, many occupying various professional positions in the USA and abroad in the areas of conducting, composition and theory.
Monod’s own music is based upon historical precedents of Webern’s music and represents the advanced French school of post-WWII serialism, combined with subtle lyricism. Unlike the music of his compatriots, such as the music of Boulez, which has received international interest with frequent performances, Monod's music has yet to be fully recognized. His doctoral dissertation, completed in 1975, is comprised of a detailed exposition of a seminal work, Cantus Contra Cantum II for Violin and Cello, which remains a tour de force in rhythmic and serial complexity. During the summer of 1977, when Paris was all the rage for the newly designed Centre Georges Pompidou and IRCAM, Monod returned to Paris to direct an advanced composition seminar at Reid Hall, which was attended primarily by Columbia and Harvard students, and included the guest instructors and Schoenberg disciples, Max Deutsch and Richard Hoffmann, and a Varèse pupil, Marc Wilkinson. Later during the 1980’s, Monod taught at the Sorbonne; and in the 1990’s, he taught advanced theory and conducting at the Juilliard School.
Delivering exacting and rigorously prepared performances, Monod has had a galvanizing effect for many years upon the American, British and French contemporary music scenes. Though retired from academia and performing, he continues to compose and write on music.
[edit] Works
His list of compositions includes works from the series Cantus Contra Cantum:
- Cantus Contra Cantum I for Soprano and Chamber Orchestra
- Cantus Contra Cantum II for Violin and Cello
- Cantus Contra Cantum III for Chorus (a Piano reduction exists)
- 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
- Chamber Aria (or, Passacaglia)
He has also done considerable and notable work in music theory: although an apartment fire in the early 1980's nearly destroyed his manuscripts, Monod was able to continue his magnum opus study of the fourth of Arnold Schoenberg's Sechs Kleine Klavierstücke, Op. 19. In addition, Monod has edited numerous works for publication, including works by Charles Ives and Schoenberg's String Trio, Op. 45; A Survivor from Warsaw, Op. 46; and Three Songs, Op. 48, for the publisher Boelke Bomart.
His father, Pierre Monod, was a noted surgeon. His cousin, Jacques Lucien Monod, was a nobel prize winning biologist.
