Francis Poulenc on Music Theory Print

La Courte Paille

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History of the work#

Composed in July–August 1960, the songs were premiered at the festival of Royaumont Abbey, in 1961, by soprano Colette Herzog and Jacques Février as the pianist.

Titles#

Le sommeil # Quelle aventure ! # La reine de cœur # Ba, be, bi, bo, bu # Les anges musiciens # Le carafon # Lune d’avril#

Origin of the poems#

Le sommeil, Ba, be, bi, bo, bu and Le carafon come from the collection of Maurice Carême La Cage aux grillons (1959). Quelle aventure ! , La reine de cœur, Les anges musiciens and Lune d’avril come from the collection Le Voleur d’étincelles (1960).

La Guirlande de Campra

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Adaptations#

In 1966, a ballet, La Guirlande de Campra, was choreographed by John Taras and presented by New York City Ballet.

La Voix humaine

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Cocteau’s play#

Cocteau finished writing La Voix humaine in 1928, and the monodrama was premiered two years later. Having been previously criticized for using mechanical effects in his plays, Cocteau sought to reduce his drama to the “simplest of forms”. Indeed, the one-act play involves a single character in a single room with a telephone. The character — an anonymous woman referred to only as “Elle” (“she” in French) — has been abandoned by her lover and reveals that she has attempted to commit suicide. The play consists of her last conversation with her lover.

Le bestiaire (Poulenc)

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Background#

The origin of Le bestiaire dates back to January 1919, when he was a soldier in L’Aube, in Pont-sur-Seine. It was at that time that Poulenc felt the need to write his first composition for voice. Adrienne Monnier, a bookseller and friend of Poulenc’s, gave him a collection of books, among which was a 1918 reissued edition of Apollinaire’s Le bestiaire with woodcuts by Raoul Dufy. Poulenc was struck by the book to a point he memorized a few passages and set a total of twelve poems on an old piano of a rural mansion in Pont-sur-Seine between the months of April and May 1919 (except for the last song, which was completed in February 1919). He intended his piece to be a tombeau in Apollinaire’s memory, who had died in November of the previous year. Poulenc later stated he was unhappy with La sirène musicale for losing an entire accurate copy of the original version and not printing it. Because both version were published virtually simultaneously, but the original version failed to have the same amount of circulation, some musicologists have wrongly classified the version for voice and instrumental ensemble as the arrangement. Right before the set was published, Poulenc learned that Louis Durey, another member of Les Six with whom Poulenc had barely any connection, also set Le bestiaire, but set every poem from the original collection by Apollinaire. The six settings Poulenc wrote were dedicated to Durey. None of the original autographs have been preserved, except for the last song in the cycle, La carpe, of which there are two copies made by the composer. Another copy of an unnamed song in Le bestiaire was sent to Georges Jean-Aubry along with a letter dated June 10, 1919. Even though the letter was preserved and is now located in New York, the manuscript is currently lost. Additionally, two of the unpublished songs for voice and piano, La serpent and La colombe, resurfaced in 1944 as miniatures copied out for a friend. They were categorized as Deux mélodies inédites du bestiaire, FP 15b. La puce was reworked into a standalone piece on November 9, 1960, as a homage for Raoul Dufy, who had died a few years prior. It was posthumously published in 1965, in Marcelle Oury’s anthology in tribute to Dufy’s memory, Lettres à mon peintre. The three remaining original unpublished songs, Le bœuf, La mouche, and La tortue, are now lost.

Le Gendarme incompris

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Suite#

Poulenc derived a suite for orchestra drawn from the incidental music, which was first performed in London on 11 July 1921, conducted by Ernest Ansermet). The work comprises 3 movements for double bass, cello, violin, clarinet, trumpet and trombone: * I. Ouverture * II. Madrigal * III. Final The duration is about 6:35 minutes

External links#

Le Gendarme incompris on YouYube
Le Gendarme incompris on data.bnf.fr
Le gendarme incompris (suite), FP 20b on IMSLP
Le Gendarme incompris
Poulenc: Le Gendarme Incompris - Comédie-bouffe en un acte mêlée de chants - Scène 2 - “Enfin cette ridicule comédie va cesser” on Amazon

Les Animaux modèles

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History#

The sections of the ballet are based on stories from Jean de La Fontaine’s Fables. These tales had inspired works by French composers from Lully to Gounod, Offenbach and Saint-Saëns. Its title was provided by the poet Paul Eluard, as he had done for several other works by Poulenc at his request. Poulenc began work on his ballet in 1940, completing a piano score in September 1941 and orchestrating it between October 1941 and June 1942. The commentator Gérald Hugon observes: Hugon comments that all these influences are absorbed by Poulenc and turned into his own style. The company for the premiere was headed by Serge Lifar (who also choreographed the work) and Yvette Chauviré. Paris was under Nazi occupation, and the many German officers in the audience failed to spot the composer’s defiant incorporation of the anti-German song “Vous n’aurez pas l’Alsace et la Lorraine” in his score. Poulenc later reduced the full score to a shorter orchestral suite.

Les Biches

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Background#

Sergei Diaghilev, proprietor of the Ballets Russes, contacted Poulenc in November 1921 with a proposed commission. The original plan was that Poulenc should write music for a ballet scenario with the title Les Demoiselles, written by the fashion designer Germaine Bongard. The following July it became clear that Bongard did not wish to go ahead; Poulenc wrote to his friend and fellow member of Les Six, Darius Milhaud, that instead “I will probably write a suite of dances without a libretto.” At about the same time he told Igor Stravinsky that after consulting Diaghilev and the designer, Marie Laurencin, “I have a clear conception of my ballet which will have no subject – simply dances and songs.” The titles of the numbers in the score indicate that Poulenc followed this plan, but he nonetheless retained two important features of Bongarďs proposed work: a choral element, with unseen singers giving a commentary on the action, and the “demoiselles”. He found what his biographer Carl B. Schmidt describes as “some slightly obscene eighteenth-century texts”, which he used in three of the numbers in the score. Poulenc struggled to find the right name for the ballet, and eventually had the idea of calling it Les Biches, echoing the title of the classic ballet Les Sylphides. By the middle of 1923 Poulenc had completed the first version of the score, after some help with details of orchestration from his teacher, Charles Koechlin. In late October, at Diaghilev’s request, he travelled to Monte Carlo to help supervise the production. Between November 1923 and the premiere in January 1924, Poulenc, together with Nijinska, oversaw, by his estimate, “at least 72 rehearsals or close to 250 hours of work”. Poulenc’s new celebrity after the success of the ballet was the unexpected cause of his estrangement from Erik Satie, of whom he had been a protégé: among the new friends Poulenc made was Louis Laloy, a writer whom Satie regarded with implacable enmity. Poulenc’s friend, Georges Auric, who had just enjoyed a similar triumph with a Diaghilev ballet, Les Fâcheux, was also repudiated by Satie for becoming a friend of Laloy.

Les Chemins de l'amour

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Genesis#

Composed in October 1940, the song is dedicated to the comedian and singer Yvonne Printemps, who sang it at the premiere of the play Léocadia on 1 December 1940. The song was somewhat successful, and Printemps recorded it. Max Eschig published the score in 1945.

Discography#

Yvonne Printemps and Marcel Cariven (conducting).
and Georges Delerue (conducting). Grand Prix du disque.
Felicity Lott (soprano) and Graham Johnson (piano) - Hyperion.
Jessye Norman (soprano) and Dalton Baldwin (piano) - Philips.
Véronique Gens (soprano) and Roger Vignoles (piano) - Erato.
Patricia Petibon (soprano), Christian-Pierre La Marca (cello), Amandine Savary (piano) - Sony.
Sophie Karthäuser (soprano), Eugène Asti (piano) - Harmonia Mundi
Mischa Maisky (cello), Daria Havora (piano) - Deutsche Grammophon

External links#

Yvonne Printemps - “Les chemins de l’amour” by Poulenc on YouTube
Léocadia, FP 106 (Poulenc, Francis) on IMSLP
French original lyrics and English translation
Two interprétations