Le travail du peintre (1956)

Pablo Picasso

Marc Chagall

Georges Braque

Juan Gris

Paul Klee

Joan Miró

Jacques Villon

Paul Eluard’s Voir, a volume of forty poems about painters, begins with Le Travail du peintre, a seven-part poem dedicated to Pablo Picasso. Intrigued by Elaurd’s paintings in words here, Poulenc chose part of the Picasso poem and six others – all about artists he admired – for a cycle of paintings in music. Some of his settings are inspired more by the character of the artist, it seems, than by his work: the imperious Pablo Picasso is surely one of those, while Marc Chagall is a waltz-time scherzo of “disparate objects passing in the sky.”

Georges Braque suggests that Poulenc saw the artist’s work as equivalent to a Chabrier song, charming and elaborately detailed at the same time. Juan Gris is a lyrical expression of affection for the man as much as for his work, whereas Paul Klee is as as economical and as angular as the paintings themselves and the serene Joan Miró appropriately radiant in colour. Although, according to the composer, the cycle would ideally have ended with a “joyful and sunny” Henri Matisse had the poet been prepared to supply him with one, the severe Jacques Villon setting, as robust in its way as Pablo Picasso at the beginning is an undeniably effective ending.

Le Travail du peintre was written in August 1957 and published with a cover by Picasso a year later.

Pablo Picasso

Marc Chagall

Georges Braque

Juan Gris

Paul Klee

Joan Miró

Jacques Villon

While Tel jour telle nuit remains unsurpassed among Poulenc’s Eluard cycles, Le travail du peintre comes near to equalling it. Announcing the completion of the new set of songs to his song-recital partner, the baritone Pierre Bernac, in August 1956 – “I have given birth without pain and without anaesthetic” – Poulenc expressed satisfaction with his work which, he said, “is that of a monsieur who knows what he is doing.” A month later, writing to Nadia Boulanger, he went so far as to declare Le travail du peintre as “important” as Tel jour telle nuit.

The two works had been connected in Poulenc’s mind ever since, a few months before the poet’s death in 1952, he he had discussed with Eluard his intention to set a selection of the portraits of artists in his 1948 collection Voir. Even if the composer hadn’t described one cycle as a “pendant” to the other, the connection between the two would be clear enough from the obviously deliberate similarity between the first of the Tel jour songs, Bonne journée, which is dedicated to Picasso, and Pablo Picasso, the first of the Travail du peintre songs. They are both in C major and, sharing much the same rhythmic identity, both draw their vocal line over a rocking accompaniment of even quavers. While acknowledging the similarity, Poulenc pointed out, however, that many years had passed in the meantime and that “C major no longer means peaceful happiness” for him. Sure enough, most of Pablo Picasso is to be sung and played fortissimo, responding to what the composer called the “imperative side” of Picasso’s painting. It is no accident that the authoritative openng motif is related to Mother Marie’s theme in the recently completed Dialogue des Carmelites.

If Poulenc sensed a certain arrogance behind the paintings of Picasso, in his waltz-time scherzo Marc Chagall he seems to have taken the Russian artist’s work and its ”disparate objects passing in the sky” at face value. The final image of “un visage aux lèvres de lune” is beautifully reflected in the duple rhythms in the vocal line very quietly set against the continuing triple time in the piano part. Georges Braque suggests that Poulenc saw the artist’s work as equivalent to a Chabrier song, charming and elaborately detailed at the same time. The textural and rhythmic similarities between Pable Picasso and Juan Gris highlight the differences in the composer’s attitudes towards the two painters: Gris is represented by a sustained expression of affection for the man as much as for his work.

Paul Klee, intended as a transition from Juan Gris to Joan Miró, “should go with a bang,” said Poulenc, whose setting of Eluard’s cryptic imagery is as economical and as angular as the paintings that inspired it. Joan Miró is an appropriately colourful outburst of joy interrupted by sober reflection which, in spite of a return to the opening tempo, prevails to the end.

According to the composer, the cycle would ideally have ended with a “joyful and sunny” Henri Matisse, had the poet been prepared to supply him with the text for such a song. Since Eluard didn’t share Poulenc’s enthusiasm for Matisse, it is the severe Jacques Villon, as robust in its way as Pablo Picasso, that ends the work – “lyrically and sombrely” according to Poulenc, even though, with a dynamic level varying between ff and f until the last few lines, it is more sombre than lyrical.

Although Le travail du peintre was “made to measure” for Bernac, it is dedicated to the American soprano Alice Esty, who had been persuaded to commission the cycle for a fee of $1,000. This gave Esty the rights to the first performance, which she duly gave (with the composer at the piano) at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris in April 1957. The “official first performance,” as they liked to think of it, was give by Bernac and Poulenc at the Edinburgh Festival five months later.