Sept haï-kaïs (French: [sɛt aikai],^{[lower-alpha 1]} "Seven haikais") is a song cycle of mélodies by the French composer Maurice Delage for soprano and chamber ensemble of flute, oboe, B♭ clarinet, piano, and string quartet. Delage composed the work in 1924 based on classical Japanese tanka and haiku poems he translated into French.

The work was first performed on 16 February 1925 by the mezzo-soprano Jane Bathori at a concert conducted by Darius Milhaud at the Société musicale indépendante (SMI). The SMI was a concert society founded in 1909 by Maurice Ravel and others friends of Delage's to free themselves of the restrictions of the program music of the Société Nationale de Musique (SNM).

Sept haï-kaïs is shorter and more complex than Delage's Quatre poèmes hindous ("Four Hindu Poems", 1914), and less known than Stravinsky's Trois poésies de la lyrique japonaise [fr] ("Three Japanese Lyrics", 1913), whose lyrics were also translated by Delage. Sept haï-kaïs bridges the music of Japan and modern French music, and is considered the masterwork of Delage's mature period.

Like many Western artists at the beginning of the 20th century, Maurice Delage (1879–1961) displayed a pronounced taste for the arts of Japan (Japonism).^[1] The young composer, benefiting from his father's financial aid,^[2] undertook a voyage to India and Japan at the end of 1911, where he stayed for 1912. He related hardly any of his memories of the time except to his closest friends. In his biography of Delage, Philippe Rodriguez laments the composer had "never said nor written anything about his trip to Japan; at least, nothing that remains".^{[lower-alpha 2][3]}

Amongst Delage's most favoured friends, the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky soon took to the same enthusiasm for Japanese culture, putting the composition of The Rite of Spring (1913) tentatively aside to set the Trois poésies de la lyrique japonaise [fr] ("Three Japanese Lyrics") to music, which Delage had translated for him.^[4] Stravinsky dedicated the first poem, "Akahito", to Delage, and Delage dedicated the last of his Quatre poèmes hindous, "Jeypur", to Stravinsky.^[5]

The interest in Japanese classical music (gagaku) led Delage to organize a concert when in 1925 the shamisen virtuoso Sakichi Kineya IV [ja] visited Paris. Jirohachi Satsuma [ja], a wealthy patron of the arts, recalled: "Ravel and Delage thought to organize a welcoming party in honour of Sakichi and his wife, at the home of the pianist [Henri] Gil-Marchex. Sakichi played, dressed in a red coat, before a gold screen. Ravel and Delage were captivated by this concert."^{[lower-alpha 3][6]}

The seven mélodies form a sequence. At a concert in Geneva in April 1929, Delage took care to specify: "the author requests these seven short pieces not be interrupted; the tonal sequence is intentional".^{[lower-alpha 4][7]}

The première took place 16 February 1925 at a concert of the Société musicale indépendante (SMI) at the Salle Érard in Paris. The mélodies were performed by Jane Bathori and conducted by Darius Milhaud. Delage had gotten Bathori to agree to perform it late in the year before. In a letter to her dated 27 September 1924, he wrote: "My publisher had to send you my seven little things in the hope they would interest you. ... They are a bit basic for your great virtuosity, but that could tempt you to do something good with them".^{[lower-alpha 17][32]}

Despite the lukewarm reception at its première, the Sept haï-kaïs were performed in concert several times with growing success.^[33] In April 1929, the organizers of the 7th festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music presented the work in Geneva, performed by Madeleine Grey and conducted by Ernest Ansermet.^[34] Following the concert, Aloys Mooser praised the Sept haï-kaïs as "chiselled with a subtle, refined artistry. In a few lines, these little pieces create a singularly expressive atmosphere".^{[lower-alpha 18][35]}

More than two decades after their composer's death in 1961, Sept haï-kaïs had its first performance in Japan on 20 July 1985 at Sōgetsu Hall [ja] during the Tokyo Summer Festival, along with works by Ravel, Stravinsky, and Shostakovich.^[7]

The Sept haï-kaïs received limited success—music critics were for the most part taken aback by the brevity of the mélodies.^[32] Gustave Samazeuilh mentioned only "the very brief but very musical Japanese songs".^{[lower-alpha 19][36]} In an article for le Ménestrel, Paul Bertrand summed up the general public sentiment, seeing in the vocal cycle "a succession of sketches, often charming but very brief, so brief that no impression of any of them had the time to affirm itself".^{[lower-alpha 20][37]}

Amongst the first critics asked to evaluate the work, Alexis Roland-Manuel showed greater understanding. He acknowledged the attentive effort required of the listener was a small thing in light of the merits of the score: "It is known that the Japanese craftsman is the stingiest of his talent in the world. He does not break the silence except at long intervals and speaks but few words to us each time. But each of these words is full of meaning; but from each of their syllables the doors of the dream swing away for us."^{[lower-alpha 21][38]}

For his friends, it was evidence that the composer of Quatre poèmes hindous had devoted himself to the most concise poetry possible. Music critics had also to some extent reported on this trend toward increased refinement. From 1923, Paul Bertrand severely criticized Delage's mélodies: "M. Delage shows a slightly excessive discretion ... If, haunted by the spirit of Wagner, too many composers have tended to impose pretentious works of indigestible extent on their listeners, many others today narrow down their music too willingly by reducing it to the conception of a little picture, and even of a tiny mantlepiece trinket."^{[lower-alpha 22][39]}

An anonymous review in the Revue musicale in 1926 presented the work thus: "The string quartet, the flute, the clarinet, the oboe, aided by the piano, come together here for the most fantastic alchemy, a prodigy of sounds in which the magician Delage goes further in the fine poetry of timbres than any other enchanter. It is a very tiny, precious drop that he shows us: the music is reduced to the secret of its essence. But in a sunny drop of water is also where the rainbow is found.^{[lower-alpha 23][33]}

Following the Sept haï-kaïs, each of Delage's new works performed in concert were subject to similar critical attacks—according to Rodriguez, by "music critics, historiographers, people in Parisian salons who, all his life, ridiculed his "preciousness", his "trinkets", his breathlessness, all told, his timid artistic insufficiencies".^{[lower-alpha 24][40]} These criticisms, reducing Delage's music to only the Haï-kaïs, led to supportive responses from musicians and composers sensitive to their musical qualities. At the première in 1951 of Delage's In morte di un samouraï [ja], a work made up of six original haikais, René Dumesnil hailed the work: "Maurice Delage is a master; one asks only for a little justice for him."^{[lower-alpha 25][41]}

At a performance in 1957 conducted by Tony Aubin, the musicographer René Dumesnil commented: "the economy of means does not embarrass Delage more than the scale, and whatever the number of performers, it has the same sureness. Nothing unnecessary, but all that can best translate thought, feeling, or subtle impression to create in the mind of the listener the echo of an idea that music alone is capable of awakening—when written by a magician like him."^{[lower-alpha 26][42]}

In 1959, On the occasion of Delage's 80th birthday, Paul Le Flem declaimed "the artistic perfection that always gives way before the Apollonian pleasure of music: music and poetry, that which is not for surprising us. What puzzles some, which seems grossly unfair to me, is the conspiracy of silence that slowly weaves around this musician who knows the value of silence, shade, solitude." ^{[lower-alpha 27][43]}

Roland-Manuel, in the first article devoted to Delage, defined "the singular situation" of the composer of the Sept haï-kaïs^[24]—according to Rodriguez, "with a rare clairvoyance"^[44]—"When one penetrates the intimacy of the work, one is struck by the abundance of riches contained in tight box. One discovers the clever subtlety of a craftsman who softens the rebellious material and disciplines the forms in the manner of a sculptor of Japanese ivory."^{[lower-alpha 28][24]}

Rodriguez places the Sept haï-kaïs amongst the most advanced works of their era: "At the time when Falla wrote his ascetic El retablo de maese Pedro, when Schönberg signed his Five Piano Pieces opus 23, when Roussel also turned towards the Orient with Padmâvatî, the Haï-kaïs fit into this universe like seven brilliant stars in an amethyst sky",^{[lower-alpha 29]} and "well up from the depths of being, like an inner necessity".^{[lower-alpha 30][27]}

To the musicologist Jean Gallois, the Sept haï-kaïs are "indisputedly, inarguably a masterwork: these few pages remain amongst the musician's most celebrated",^{[lower-alpha 31][27]} and Delage has become "the musician of the haikais".^{[lower-alpha 32][44]} Andrieu tempered this judgement, saying the composer "does not often receive recognition except by an elite".^{[lower-alpha 33][17]}

• Maurice Delage, Sept haï-kaïs, éditions Jobert, Paris (1924, for the ensemble version)
• Maurice Delage, Sept haï-kaïs, éditions Jobert, Paris (1926, for the piano and vocal version)

• Sept haï-kaïs (1995) Darynn Zimmer (soprano), Solisti New York, conducted by Ramson Wilson, CD New Albion Records NA 078
• Sept haï-kaïs (1995) Felicity Lott (soprano), Kammer Ensemble de Paris [fr] conducted by Armin Jordan, Aria Music 592300
• Maurice Delage: Les Mélodies (1998) Sandrine Piau (soprano), Jean-Paul Fouchécourt (tenor), Jean-François Gardeil (baritone), Billy Eidi (piano), CD Timpani 1C1045
• Maurice Delage: Musique de chambre (1998) Lucienne van Deyck (mezzo-soprano), instrumental ensemble conducted by Robert Groslot [nl], CD Cyprès CYP2621