Throughout classical music history, “omnibus” compositions have been rather rare – and for the most part, they’ve been forgotten shortly after their celebrated premieres.

Perhaps the earliest one of these interesting concoctions that has at least remained on the fringes of the repertoire is Hexameron — a morceau de concert put together in the late 1830s under the aegis of Franz Liszt — to which some of the leading composers of the day contributed.

Hexameron consists of a theme, variations and finale – with the theme coming from Vincenzo Bellini’s opera The Puritans.  The musicians who contributed variations to Hexameron included Frédéric Chopin, Karl Czerny, Henri Herz, Johann Pixis and Sigismund Thalberg, in addition to Liszt.

Originally written for piano, Liszt also created a version of Hexameron for piano and orchestra.  Having listened to that rendition, my conclusion is that the music is … interesting enough to hear once or twice.

Happily enough, a later collaboration – this time in Paris of the 1920s – resulted in a work that is much meatier musically.  It’s titled L’Eventail de Jeanne (Jeanne’s Fan), and it was first mounted as a ballet in 1927.

The roster of composers who contributed music to this ballet reads like a “Who’s Who” of the Parisian classical music scene of the time:  Maurice Ravel, Albert Roussel, Jacques Ibert, Georges Auric, Darius Milhaud, Pierre-Octave Ferroud, Alexis Roland-Manuel, Francis Poulenc, Marcel Delannoy … and Florent Schmitt.

What brought these ten composers together to create this work? The answer lies in the “Jeanne” of the ballet’s title.  This is one Jeanne Dubost, a popular Parisian hostess and patroness of the arts.

In the chronicles of the Paris salon, Mme. Dubost ranks right up there with the other famed ladies who opened their homes to the arts community – women like Pauline Viardot and Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac (and heiress to the Singer sewing machine fortune).

In some respects, Jeanne Dubost was perhaps more interesting than many of the other celebrated Parisian hostesses in that her political views were an eyebrow-raising mix of socialism and libertarianism.  In addition to the various artistes whom she invited to her salon on the Avenue d’lena, she was famous for opening her home to left-leaning politicians like Paul Boncour, Aristide Briant and Paul Painlevé.

A contemporaneous description of the fascinating Jeanne Dubost is provided by Magdaleine Marx in an article appearing in the October 1927 issue of Current History magazine. Marx writes:

“A member of the Socialist Party for many years, [Mme. Dubost] works in the League for Interscholastic Exchange, of which she is the president, to facilitate the exchange of students between France and Germany in order to create bonds that will last a lifetime between the youth of these countries. Then too, she has her ‘village’ … a model colony which has its vacation camp, community house, popular theatre, maternity center and women’s education center, located at Draveil.

And she has a salon — one of those in direct line from that of Julie de Lespinasse and Mme. du Deffand, where in a great light room … nationally known figures meet men like Bourdelle, Paul Valéry, Meyerhold [and] Lenormand.

Listening to the music of Maurice Ravel, Florent Schmitt, Darius Milhaud, Honegger or Roussel, one sees one by one the profiles of Rakovsky, the Russian ambassador, the strained features of Paul Boncour, [and] the bulldog head of Paul Painlevé. When the last chords have died into silence, little groups form, ideas mingle, great projects are mapped out. What an indefatigable Deputy Mme. Dubost would make! With what satisfaction she would become the champion of all efforts toward improving the life of women and the relations between the nations!”

An amusing story recounts how during one of Mme. Dubost’s soirées featuring a Native American chieftain as the guest of honor, the chief proceeded to regale the other guests with a series of (presumably authentic) blood-curdling war-cries.  This was followed by a stately and dramatic presentation of an enormous eagle’s feather to the hostess.

In addition to her highly active social activities and entertaining, Mme. Dubost also ran a children’s ballet company and was active in several important music societies.  And here’s where our ten Parisian composers come into the picture.

Popular legend has it that Mme. Dubost presented leaves from her fan to these composers, asking each of them to compose a short dance number for her pupils.

The reality is a tad less flamboyant:  In order to thank their hostess for her pleasant gatherings of artists and politicians, Ravel, Roussel and Schmitt decided – along with their junior compatriots Auric, Delannoy, Ferroud, Ibert, Milhaud, Poulenc and Roland-Manuel – to surprise Mme. Dubost with a suite of dances performed at her home by the young dancers of her school.

The “fan” title was chosen for its symbolism – with each movement of the ballet “unfolding” before the audience like the leaves of Jeanne’s fan.

So on June 16, 1927, the Dubost salon was the venue for a new “cooperative” ballet – L’Eventail de Jeanne – mounted in a production that featured scenery and costumes by the celebrated designer Marie Laurencin, famous for her charming costumes and highly effective mirror effects.  The chamber-sized orchestra accompanying the dancers was conducted by Roger Desormière.

A correspondent for Musical America magazine was present at the performance, and the following review appeared in the July 16, 1927 issue of the publication:

“Ten eminent French composers wrote together for Mme. Dubost, whose musical salon is well-known in Paris …

The music is written for an orchestra of twelve instruments and includes a Fanfare by Maurice Ravel, a Finale by Florent Schmitt and eight danses …

Those dances are short pieces of a ballet character. The greatest success was the Fanfare of Ravel … Many of the dances had to be repeated, but on the whole they did not offer great interest from a musical point of view. The Finale of Florent Schmitt was the only piece which had an important musical development and construction.

The little ballerinas showed much technique and skill, and rendered with grace and charm the different dances. It was a very pleasant spectacle.”

Thoroughly enchanted by this “juvenile entertainment,” theatre director Jacques Rouché decided to bring the ballet to the stage of the Paris Opéra.  That production, which was mounted in March 1929, again featured Mme. Laurencin’s costumes along with new choreography by Yvonne Frank and Alice Bourgat. The sets were commissioned from Pierre Legrain and René Moulaert.

Budding ballerina Tamara Toumanova – then all of 10 years old – was featured in the ballet’s starring role; this was Mlle. Toumanova’s Parisian début before she went on to become an international ballet star. Among the other young dancers in the production were Odette Joyeux, Yvette Chauviré, and Marcelle Bourgat.

Music critic Émile Vuillermoz was present at the Paris Opera premiere and wrote his observations about the staging in the April 6, 1929 issue of The Christian Science Monitor:

“The gallant title describes an interesting experiment. This fan was unfolded for the first time in one of those Parisian drawing rooms that are the most generously open to music and musicians. The fan, as you see, had ten sections, of which each had been worked by a different composer.

This collective work fraternally assembled, before the same bench, apprentices, workers and master workers. Some had been chosen for their talent, others for their notoriety. Thus was formed the singular work that the Opéra has just accepted and presented to the public …

Let us underline with sympathy this proof of an enlightened taste in social circles. This is a precedent to keep; if the great ladies of today made a habit of encouraging presents of this sort — a sonata for their New Year’s gift, a symphony for their birthday — the crisis of musical patronage would have come to an end and music would find serious advantages. The welcome given at the Opéra by subscribers to L’Eventail de Jeanne leaves one no doubt on this account …

All these composers, even the greatest, have adopted in this entertainment a rather easy tone of humor which has brought them strangely closer to each other. It is indeed in the instrumentation that they have tried to mark their amiable, graceful characteristics and their detached tone — and one observed with astonishment that the number of these comic formulas was singularly limited. Those who, in my opinion, best solved the question — from the musical point of view as from the choreographic — are those who have sought, in the parodic rhythm of a polka or in borrowings from amusingly distorted childish folklore, the exact atmosphere that was suited to the graceful diversions of the little company of the dance academy.

For it was the future stars of the house who were here honored. Some of them showed extremely interesting gifts, and one applauded quite particularly the precocious virtuosity and delicious grace of Mlle. Odette Joyeux. A décor of amusing simplicity by MM. Legrain and Moulaert showed off the costumes designed by Mme. Marie Laurencin with the gracious, tender imagination that one associates with her work. The choreography had been ingeniously conceived by Mlles. Yvonne Franck and Bourgat, and M. Szyfer conducted with much authority and precision the faceted score which contains charming details and which was very sympathetically received.”

What gives L’Eventail de Jeanne its staying power?  More than the story, it’s the quality of the music – a series of ten tableaux that unfolds as follows:

1.    Fanfare  (Maurice Ravel)
2.    Marche  (Pierre-Octave Ferroud)
3.    Valse  (Jacques Ibert)
4.    Canarie  (Alexis Roland-Manuel)
5.    Bourrée  (Marcel Delannoy)
6.    Sarabande  (Albert Roussel)
7.    Polka  (Darius Milhaud)
8.    Pastourelle  (Francis Poulenc)
9.    Rondeau  (Georges Auric)
10.  Kermesse-Valse  (Florent Schmitt)

The set of pieces is very effective when performed as a group, as it was done most recently by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio-France conducted by Kazushi Ono (in February 2007).

Several of the numbers have gone on to enjoy a certain measure of fame wholly apart from the ballet, too – most noticeably Poulenc’s Pastourelle and Milhaud’s Polka.

And with several of the composers’ contributions, one can hear distinct echoes of other compositions they wrote – for instance, Ibert’s Valse (shades of Divertissement) and Roussel’s Sarabande (similar in style and flavor to the same-named movement from his Suite in F Major).

And what about Florent Schmitt’s musical contribution?  The Kermesse-Valse is the longest and most substantial number in the entire ballet, coming as it does at the conclusion of the work in a carefree danse-générale.

In creating this music, Schmitt turned to a “carnival waltz” he had sketched out for piano back in 1903 (in London of all places).  The work is very much on the same plane as the waltz-like numbers that comprise Schmitt’s four-hand piano scores Reflets d’Allemagne and Trois Rapsodies.

In a move that also seems wholly fitting to the composer, the Kermesse-Valse calls for much larger orchestral forces than any of the preceding numbers in the ballet – and it likely stretched the capabilities of the musicians performing at Mme. Dubost’s salon in the 1927 premiere.

In fact, we know from a report in the July 10, 1927 issue of the Parisian magazine Le Correspondant that, despite being intended as the final number in the ballet, the Kermesse-Valse was actually performed first, as an overture:

“The assembly of famous Parisians — musicians, artists and scholars — easily took on the appearance of college students on vacation, but it was because everyone was in such a jolly mood. We started with the final by Florent Schmitt. It is a very beautiful piece with a full-bodied, delicious orchestration … and nervous rhythms that enchanted with their supple vigor. Indeed, this finale became a remarkable opening.”

There’s no denying that Schmitt’s highly colorful music makes a grand curtain-opener — or brings L’Eventail de Jeanne to a rousing and highly satisfying conclusion — take your pick.

The complete ballet has been recorded twice:  first by Geoffrey Simon and the Philharmonia Orchestra in 1984 (on the Chandos label) and shortly thereafter by Pierre Stoll and the Rhineland-Palatinate Philharmonic Orchestra (on the Cybelia label). The Simon/Philharmonia recording has been uploaded to YouTube in its entirety.  It’s a captivating, polished performance that sounds as good today as when it was first released some 30 years ago.

What have been the fortunes of Florent Schmitt’s Kermesse-Valse since making its first appearance in the “omnibus” ballet?  Certainly, it has not achieved the same degree of fame independent of the ballet as has been the case of Poulenc’s Pastourelle.

But the work was published as Schmitt’s Opus 80, and it had its first concert hall performance in April 1936 by the Colonne Concerts Orchestra directed by Paul Paray – the conductor who premiered more of Schmitt’s compositions than anyone else.

Listening to the charms and excitement of the Kermesse-Valse gives us a tempting foretaste of what Reflets d’Allemagne and Trois Rapsodies must surely sound like in Schmitt’s own orchestrations of these scores, which he prepared at roughly the same time.

Those works still await their first recordings – at least in the post 78-rpm era.  Here’s hoping some of today’s most ardent Schmitt advocates – perhaps Leon Botstein, Stéphane Denève, JoAnn Falletta, Fabien Gabel, Jacques Mercier or Jean-Luc Tingaud – will choose to take them up soon.

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Update (10/14/16):  NAXOS Classics has just released the third commercial recording of L’Eventail de Jeanne — and the first one made with a French orchestra.  It features the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire conducted by John Axelrod.  The generously filled recording also includes the complete Ma Mère l’oye ballet of Maurice Ravel — a fitting diskmate.  Generous audio samples can be heard here, courtesy of the Presto Classical online classical music retailer.