My Happy Life - An Autobiography

Darius Milhaud, born in Provence in 1892, was one of the major composers of the twentieth century and also one of its most prodigious. Over 450 of his works have been catalogued (and listed in this volume), including operas, large and small, eighteen string quartets, twelve symphonies and thirty concertos, as well as such popular classics as Le Boeuf sur le toit, La Creation du monde, Suite provencal and the Suite francaise. In My Happy Life, completed in 1972, two years before the composer's death, Milhaud tells the full story of his own personal life and artistic development. A secretary to the playwright Paul Claudel, a close friend of Satie, Cocteau and Igor Stravinsky, Darius Milhaud was also a member, along with Georges Auric and Arthur Honneger, of the scandalous group of young French composers known simply as 'les Six.'

While often regarded during his lifetime as an open-minded musician of wide tastes whose music spanned many styles from avant-garde to jazz, he is revealed here as a thinker of note and a graceful writer. He depicts with great generosity of feeling the revolution that modern music has undergone this century and his own role in it, giving a clear account of his attitude towards his work and that of his fellow composers.