Cendrars, the sunny side of music

The music composed based on Cendrars’s texts, as an accompaniment to his poems, or as a tribute to his universe, is bountiful and varied. Some of it is famous, like the ballet La Création du monde by Milhaud. The rapper Ekoué took on Pâques à New York, but many occasional works—some of them electroacoustic—have not (alas!) come down to us as recordings. In 2003, Garrett List transposed the musicality of Au coeur du monde into a true contemporary cantata.