Aubade: choreographic concerto for piano and 18 instruments

Poulenc’s Aubade, his “amphibian” as he called it, is a dual-purpose invention, designed to serve as both a ballet score and as a concerto for the concert hall. Commissioned by the Count and Countess de Noailles, it was first performed as a ballet – with a scenario by Poulenc himself and choreography by Bronislava Nijinska – during a lavish evening’s entertainment in the Noailles’ palatial home in the Place des États-Unis in Paris in June 1929. It was first performed as a concerto in the Salle Pleyel six months later. Poulenc himself was the soloist on both occasions.

Although Aubade is never staged these days, its origins as a ballet – about Diana, the virgin goddess of the hunt, her efforts to escape her life of chastity and the endeavours of her maiden companions to restrain her – are reflected in just about every aspect of its sound and content. It has a solo piano part of concerto proportions because Poulenc identified closely with his heroine and was eager to take a role parallel to that of the central character on the stage. The accompanying ensemble of 18 instruments – two each of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, and horns, one trumpet, timpani, and two each of violas, cellos and double basses – derives partly from the fact that the Noailles did not have the resources to accommodate a full orchestra. The structure of the work, which (in eight sections played without a break) has nothing in common with that of the conventional concerto, is determined entirely by the story and makes little sense without it. This is how Poulenc summarised his scenario (with his own indications of which sections relate to the events he describes):

A clearing in a wood at dawn (in the style of the painters of the School of Fontainebleau). Diana’s companions wake up one by one tortured by a sad presentiment (Récitatif). Diana, burning with a love that has robbed her of her purity, passes among them, her clothes in disorder (Rondeau). Her companions makes haste to dress her. She reluctantly submits (Presto). She presses to her heart a bow they give to her (Récitatif) and dances a sad and resigned variation (Andante). Discarding the bow, she gives in to despair. She takes flight into the woods but comes back almost immediately (Allegro feroce). Her companions surround her. Diana pleads with them to let her go. Suddenly, taking advantage of their distraction, she again bounds off into the forest. In their consternation the women look with incomprehension at the place where she disappeared and see only an arm waving a last farewell. Devastated, they sink to the ground and gradually fall asleep. It is morning (Conclusion).

If the guests at the first performance of Aubade were expecting a superficial entertainment – a witty treatment of a mythological theme, perhaps, in the satirical manner of the day – they would have been startled by the passion that inspires it. Certainly, in its clear allegiance to Stravinsky, it is a fashionably neo-classical score. But at the time he was working on it Poulenc himself was going through a severe emotional crisis, not unlike that of Diana in his scenario, and it clearly shows. The brass and piano fanfares in the Lento e pesante introduction are not only dramatic but also surprisingly vehement. The solo Toccata that follows is not only brilliant but also urgent in expression. The curtain rises on a Récitatif beginning with another vehement fanfare, this one including a sad little clarinet solo in the middle. The mood changes only with the charmingly innocent dance of Diana’s companions at the beginning of the Rondeau which, however, is interrupted by a deranged kind of polka as Diana makes her first entry and resumes only when she briefly leaves the stage.

A heavily portentous timpani solo at the end of the Rondeau is somewhat incongruously followed by a cheerful Presto as the companions bustle about dressing Diana. In the following Récitatif, given her huntress’s bow to remind her of her divine duties, she considers her position, mainly to the accompaniment of thoughtful woodwind solos. Then, after a recall of the vehement fanfare from the beginning of the work on piano and brass, she dances her variation, a melodiously tender Andante con moto very much in the manner of Mozart in the outer sections but emotionally intensified by a dramatic acceleration in the middle. In a desperate Allegro feroce she runs in and out of the forest. The tragic but measured Conclusion, beginning with a plaintive piano chorale, is based largely on material from the earlier fanfares transformed into expressive string and wind solos as Diana pleads with her companions and then, waving her last farewells on flute and piano, disappears.

Gerald Larner ©2007