Airs chantés

Air romantique

Air champêtre

Air grave

Air vif

Jean Moréas was not one of Poulenc’s favourite poets. “I detest Moréas,” Poulenc wrote, “and I chose these poems precisely because I found them suitable for mutilation.” The composer’s attention had been drawn to the Moréas poems by his publisher François Hepp, who adored them and who was probably taken aback when he saw their neo-classical pretensions so comprehensively sent up in the four songs Poulenc delivered to him in 1928. Even so he must have seen the funny side of the Air chantés when they so quickly, and so paradoxically, achieved wide-spread popularity. Certainly, Poulenc did Hepp the honour of the dedication of Air romantique which, breathtakingly clumsy though it is, cannot be dismissed as “indefensibly conventional” like Air champêtre or “the worst of all my songs” like Air grave. The piano postlude of Air grave is almost as absurd as the few bars of vocalise at the end of Air vif.

Gerald Larner©