Although born in Montmartre, André Jollivi lived mainly in Paris throughout his life. His position as a composer was established by his string quartet at the first National Music Congress in France in the early 2030s, whose musical style is neither an academic school nor a religious school, but is deeply influenced by unconventional music and the world art world, as evidenced by his many later contacts with Varez.
From the beginning of his search for his creative path, he developed an exceptionally independent mind, Jollivy began his school teaching career after obtaining his qualification as a teacher at the Higher Pedagogical Normale, and then continued his musical studies, he was also attracted to the visual arts, so much so that throughout the 20s he struggled with whether to choose to become a composer or study painting, after which Jollivy met his first mentor: the Montmartre cubist artist Georges Valmir.
While studying painting with Valmir, Valmir introduced him to the cellist Louis Ferrard to learn cello playing, during which time Jollivy finally decided to shine in the future as a composer. After the First World War, Jollivi returned to his hometown, met his mentor Valmir again, and through Walmir introduced him to Paul Le Flem, then artistic director of the Opéra Saint-Gervais, during which time Ferrem provided him with intensive training in the basics of music composition.
Ferrem then introduced Jollvi to a mentor who would influence his life: the composer Edgar Varez, as Varez's only student in Europe, Jollivi absorbed a series of experiences in the unity of sound, sound quality and acoustic treatment, which is why Varez later recommended Jollvi's works to Pierre Boulez.
Like many 20th-century French composers, Jollvi rejected simple classifications of music. After the 30s, Jollvi's composition style began to diversify, especially influenced by the experience of the two world wars, when a series of different compositional ideas began to emerge, especially in the study of large percussion ensembles, sound quality and the expression of musical language, as well as the adaptation of different extended tones to traditional musical forms and the study of musical lyricism.
"So he began to write in a more tone-based musical language, developing a musical language that combined atonal austere chromatic systems with a new musical emotional expression structure", which appeared abundantly in Jollvi's early (1930-1935) works. Following the premiere of five preludes to Jollvi's orchestral works in 1944, he found his new purpose: to reconnect his creative style with that of the 30s.
Jollivy has repeatedly published articles affirming his ideals, declaring that the raison d'être of his composition is to restore the ancient, primitive and sacred meaning of music, because its language is the most sacred thing that expresses human society, and his subsequent Hondes Matteno concerto also interprets his musical philosophy well.
The concerto he composed not only returned to his pre-war atonal austere musical language expression in style, but also opened the door to his later composition: it led him to the path of composing large-scale concertos for various instruments, which occupied almost the end of his life.
While some of these works apply a distinctly neoclassical light-hearted musical style, many more, such as the Piano Concerto (1950), Percussion Concerto (1958), Cello No. 2 (1966), Violin Concerto (1972), etc., show Jollvi's most radical and intense side, in which Jollvi reveals a new musical style in Cello Concerto No. 2, which culminates in his violin concerto, And continued until the end of his life.
As a result of his work at the Comédie-Française, Jollivy had a relatively in-depth knowledge of other traditional instruments in addition to his unfamiliarity with the organ, as he later said "because the opera house does not have a pipe". While working at the Comedi Theatre, Jollivy had a soft spot for trumpets, as the background music of many plays required the trumpet, an instrument with powerful acoustics, which undoubtedly provided him with a wealth of experience and foundation for his first trumpet concerto in 1948.
After World War II, electronic music was on the rise in the music scene of the time, but even though his mentor Varez was an expert in the field, Jollvi was not attracted to it. His interest in electronic music ended abruptly only in his first concerto, the Sono de Ondes Matno, but this work proves that Jollvi is a composer dedicated to the creation of traditional instruments, as he seeks to express the stylistic characteristics of electronic music with traditional instruments in this work. In light of this, many established soloists invited Jollvi to compose compositions for their solo instruments, and Jollivy even composed concertos for harp and classical guitar.
Jollivy often conveyed his creative philosophy to his students: to understand what constitutes the characteristics of this instrument, so that the player can more reasonably express this property in his creation. He recommends choosing instruments that really appeal to them when composing music, rather than just creating for the sake of creation.
He also emphasized the connection between the quality of the composition and the degree of participation of the performers, saying that the performers should feel an intimate and even happy emotion from the score, and the content expressed by each note should be intended to present the most intuitive and engaging feelings of the performers. As a result, Jollvi's work hardly uses the row-allegro structure favored by the early school, and his solo works all have superb cadenzas.
Take his first trumpet concerto as an example, which contains almost all the techniques that young players must master, from triplets to double spitting and three spitting to wonderful slippery tongue interpretations, from passionate performances to calm silence like water, from tight chromatic scale crawls to strong contrasts of high-span tones, etc., these scores put forward substantial technical and musical requirements for the performers, and are carnivals of the players' own abilities, which are also in line with the public's main impression of modern works: dazzling skills.
Although André Jollvi was famous at the time, leaving behind a wide range of works and many remains, but in the present, people, especially Westerners, know very little about him. On the one hand, his work is extremely complex from an analytical point of view, and the few books that deal with him or study his work are interpreted only in a few fragments rather than in the whole piece, because most of Jollvi's works are composed using the same Schoenberg patch, which cannot be explained by a rule, which will be briefly introduced later in the harmonic analysis of this first trumpet concerto.
On the other hand, it has a lot to do with Jollvi's frequent visits to the Soviet Union in the later period, as we all know, the West has spared no effort to suppress since the emergence of communism, and many well-known Western figures have been closely associated with the Comintern, and even the works and deeds left behind have been taken out of this experience before being known to the public, such as the famous scientist Einstein wrote in his later anthologies on why.
The famous literary scholar Hemingway even participated in the International Column, participated in the defense of Madrid, and wrote the famous "The Fifth Column" and "For Whom the Bell Tolls"; Others such as Camus, George Orwell, comedy master Chaplin and even star Marilyn Monroe are so-called "left" people in the West. Returning to Jollvi, he frequently visited the Soviet Union almost once a year in the late period, and even participated in the May Storm in France in 1968, and it was reasonable to be "banned", but he couldn't help but sigh that there were really comrades everywhere, and the charm of communism was visible.
Analysis of works
During his lifetime, André Jollivy wrote operas, oratorios, symphonies, concertos and many other musical compositions. With the passage of time, his creative style has also changed, "which can be roughly divided into three stages, namely the atonal experimental stage, the return to the traditional stage, the atonal experimental stage and the integration of traditional composition techniques, and the formal creation of this first work and the beginning of the third stage."
The Trumpet Concerto No. 1 is one of Jollvi's seven solo works and encompasses a variety of themes such as heroism, wit, violence, lyricism, dynamism, and more.
20th-century music is often considered a specific historical category because it is colorful, diverse, complex and unconventional. Its transformation is mainly manifested in the emergence of new styles and concepts of music, the continuous expansion and enrichment of musical language, the emergence of new genres and new styles, the continuous refresh of new musical concepts and aesthetic tastes, and the most important thing is that with the development of modern science and technology, it is gradually applied to music creation, becoming a possible way of expression and expression for music.
No previous era has been as groundbreaking and creative as music since the 20th century. Therefore, André Jollivy's "Trumpet Concerto No. 1" has the characteristics of atypicality and atonality in composition and composition, and the division of music structure can only be based on materials, and its creative thinking is also unique.
Unconventional compositional thinking
The idea that Jollivy does not follow narrow rules in his thinking is the basic composition philosophy of Jollvi's Concerto No. 1, that is, he will use a certain aspect of theory to compose but will not strictly follow this rule, which is one of the characteristics that distinguishes Andrea Jollivy from other modern or modernist composers. This is explained by the large and small harmonies that are still used in his works, which seems to contradict modern modernism or modernist style, but it is interesting that this is a deeper interpretation of modern modernism or modernism.
Because the purpose of composers at that time was to free their music from the minor and minor system that had developed to the limit, so as to pursue some kind of musical "freedom" and "breakthrough", but this deliberate way of avoiding the minor and minor system and using other strict new rules made their music broaden the method of creation, but made their creation fall into another "limit" and "unfreedom".
Therefore, Jollvi was very opposed to this approach, believing that the free use of the minor and minor key system and the lack of strict adherence to certain composition rules were better able to interpret modernist music. If most modern modernist or modernist composers followed some kind of mathematical logic or theorical logic of composition, Andrea Jollivy followed a philosophical logic. This philosophical logic reflects its pursuit of "freedom", the core of which is that the more unconstrained by rules, the more "free", its style cannot be explained by a certain rule, but it can be unified with philosophical thinking, which will be embodied in the subsequent analysis of materials and curved structures.
Themed music material
André Jollivy's "Concerto No. 1" consists of an introduction, an epilogue and six thematic parts, in which the material between each part is only very weakly related from the point of view of composition (interval, key tone, rhythm, etc.), and in general, the characteristics of each part are similar to the characteristics of Schoenberg's "patch" technique, maintaining a subtle connection.
The introductory section (1-26) consists of four parts, namely (1-3), (4-11), (12-18), and (19-26). The four sections have distinct stylistic differences. From the material, there are occasional double sixteenth notes that emphasize weak ones, but in general there is no obvious core motivation, and the aural feeling is more like a simple emotional catharsis to introduce the theme.
Theme I (27-88) is a three-stage pattern of variation and reproduction. It is composed of three parts: presentation segment (27-45), contrast middle section (46-60), and change reproduction (61-88). The concerto expands on the three themes in the introduction, including the two syncopated rhythms of the first rest, divided into normal octave syncopation rhythm and octave note syncopated rhythm followed by two sixteenth notes, and the concentrated appearance of sixteenth notes.
In terms of rhythm, although the time signature is 2/4 beat, the emphasis is on weak beats and weak notes, which have certain waltz rhythmic characteristics (incomplete). In addition to emphasizing the characteristics of weak beats and weak notes, the trumpet solo part is independent of the concerto part, and its rhythm is built on 2/4 beats, occasionally changing in the middle of the contrast, and its central note is D.