This week’s theme: French composers from the generation before Les Six (Poulenc, Milhaud, Honegger, et al), and we are fondly calling our composers Les Cinq Plus. Like Les Six, our composers did not have a great deal in common, and the way they all have been grouped is an historical accident — artists who happened to inhabit a particular locale at a given time. A few of these composers shared some characteristic traits, but they were incidental, and the artists didn’t even care much for each other. Unlike Les Six, Les Cinq Plus grew up listening to the art songs of the 1800s, and each in their way, carried this romantic torch forward. Chabrier, Massenet, Duparc, Chausson, Dukas, and perhaps Satie as “L’Autre.”
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