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INTRODUCTION
IN DECEMBER OF 1903, French poet Leon-Paul Fargue invited a young composer, Maurice Delage, to 39 de la rue Dulong, the home of artist Paul Sordes, where Delage was introduced to Paris literati. Each Saturday night, this group would meet to share artistic ideas and discuss current musical performances that they had attended together. They often played new Russian music that an up and coming composer, Maurice Ravel, would bring along, and discussed musical innovations long into the night.
The group would later label themselves "Les Apaches" (the Apaches).1 "This name was given us one Sunday when we were walking up the rue de Rome, after a concert, by a news vendor of the newspaper, L'Intransigeant, who was innocently bullying us with 'Beware the Apaches'!"2 Liking the sound of the name, the group decided to adopt it, and from then on the artists who met at Paul Sordes's called themselves "Les Apaches." They even adopted the main theme from Borodin's B Minor Symphony as a musical calling card.
The Apaches' musical gatherings often would continue long into the night, annoying neighboring tenants. The young Delage, of independent means, solved this problem in 1904 by renting a small, wooden pavilion-a remnant of the Exposition universelle of 1900-on the rue de Civry in Auteuil that would function as a club house for these French bohemians. "The garden cottage of Maurice Delage . . . [had] spare, simple furnishings, its wood and cardboard partitions, and its two pianos."3 Delage's cottage fulfilled the needs of the group; thanks to Delage, the survival of the group was no longer in peril. The Apaches would meet there regularly in an environment that encouraged independent and innovative thought. Delage's home functioned as a catalyst to the development of the group; other artists joined the Apaches, among them the poet Tristan Klingsor, critics Michel Calvocoressi and Émile Vuillermoz, as well as composers Manuel de Falla, Déodat de Séverac, and, in 1909, Igor Stravinsky. Thus, from the humble beginnings of Delage's cottage on the outskirts of Paris, a wealth of talent was given the opportunity to foment and burgeon, significantly affecting the arts from France that we know today.
Who was Maurice Delage? And did he like others in the group go...