26 Aug 2010

Unlocking the Mystery of Honegger

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/arts/music/29chant.html?_r=1&ref=music

By Leslie Sprout [NY Times, 26 August 2010]

Arthur Honegger’s “Chant de LibĂ©ration” was not a piece I intended to consult during a research trip to Paris in June 2009. Like others who knew of it, I thought the score was lost. Honegger had composed this song for baritone, chorus and orchestra in secret during the German occupation of France. Its only known trace was a tantalizing description of its October 1944 premiere in liberated Paris: a “triumph” by a “musician of the Resistance,” the music critic Maurice Brillant wrote.