Divertissement (Ibert)

In the decade after the First World War, Jacques Ibert established himself as a leading French composer, winning France's top musical prize, the Prix de Rome and becoming known to a large public for compositions such as La Ballade de la geôle de Reading (a symphonic poem based on Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol) and Escales (Ports of Call, an orchestral representation of a Mediterranean sea voyage).^[1] In 1929 he composed incidental music for a revival of Eugène Labiche's 1851 stage comedy Un Chapeau de paille d'Italie (The Italian Straw Hat) at the Théatre d'Amsterdam.^[2] The following year he arranged the score into a six-movement divertissement for small orchestra. The premiere was given at the Salle Pleyel by the Orchestre symphonique de Paris on 30 November 1930, conducted by Vladimir Golschmann.^[3]

The music critic of Le Figaro wrote after the premiere:

This little entertainment … may be only a pochade,^{[n 1]} but composed with what talent, with what naturalness! ... All [the six movements] are equally full of wit, parody and rhythmic invention combined for our pleasure with the talent of an infallible juggler of timbres, using only a few instruments, but combining them with a truly dazzling fantasy. Unexpected encounters, hilarious quotations, allusions that make people laugh, pepper this little work. richer in musical pleasure than many more ambitious scores.^[3]

The suite is scored for flute (doubling piccolo), clarinet, bassoon (doubling contrabassoon), French horn, trumpet, trombone, timpani, snare drum, wood block, cymbals, bass drum, tambourine, tam-tam, whistle, piano (doubling celesta) and strings. The home key of all six movements is C major.

I Introduction Allegro vivo = 92

II Cortège Moderato molto = 69 – Animato subito = 126 – Allegro moderato = 112 – Animato subito = 126

III Nocturne Lento = 63

IV Valse Animato assai = 96 – Tempo di Valze . = 60 – Poco più animato . = 72– Vivo molto = 144

V Parade Tempo di marcia = 120

VI Finale Quasi cadenza = 100–112 – Vivo (Tempo di galop) = 168

Ibert was a friend of two of the members of Les six – Darius Milhaud and Arthur Honegger, but his music generally had little in common with theirs or that of their fellow group members.^[1] The musical scholar Roger Nichols writes that in Divertissement, Ibert comes closer than usual to their style:^[5]

The "Introduction" gives some of the flavour of the whole: jaunty melodic tags, brilliant orchestration, rhythms that tease and entertain. But in "Cortège" and "Nocturne" we also find touches of the poetic Ibert, albeit, in "Cortège", with interruptions, including some from a well-known wedding march.^{[n 2]} The "Valse" perhaps looks back to the "noble and sentimental" examples by his friend Ravel, though with splendidly vulgar brass additions, while in "Parade" the vulgarity extends to the tunes. In the "Finale", after an attempt to destroy the piano, a whistle reminds us that Labiche's crazy play ends up in a police station.^[5]

The composer Michael Ippolito comments that in between the frivolity Ibert offers "a delicately crafted Nocturne that seduces us with atmosphere and sonority, showing an incredible ear for orchestral colour, especially considering the small ensemble".^[6]

According to the conductor Richard Auldon Clark, Divertissement is "undoubtedly Ibert's best-known composition",^[7] and it has received many recordings.

Source: WorldCat and Naxos Music Library