Montparnasse (1945)

Carte postale (1931)

Avant le cinéma (1931)

1904 (1931)

Poulenc maintained that he found his “true song style” with Guillaume Apollinaire. Although he scarcely knew him – the poet died in 1918, six months after their first meeting – he always remembered the sound of his voice and had little difficulty in setting his verse to music. Montparnasse is one of the few Apollinaire texts that gave him prolonged trouble. The poem was written in 1912, at about the time that Montparnasse was discovered by Picasso, Braque and Modigliani and the artistic community began its migration across the Seine from Montmartre. Poulenc was sensitive to the freshness of its inspiration and did not hurry his setting of it. The music for different parts of the poem came to him at different times between 1941 and 1943 after which he left it, as he said, to “macerate.” He completed it in a few days in 1945, having solved the problem of modulating between ideas which had occurred to him in different keys and which he would not, as a matter of principle, transpose – hence the extraordinary harmonic freedom of the song, which floats away at the end like Apollinaire’s “deux grands ballons.”

The other three Apollinaire setting in this group come from Quatre poèmes de Guillaume Apollinaire, all of them (like L’Anguille, which is omitted on this occasion) written in 1931 in the popular idiom of the day. An acrostic addressed by Apollinaire to “Linda,” as the first letter of each line indicates, Carte postale is set as a sentimental love song but with a graceful poise appropriate to the image of “Misia Sert at the piano, painted by Bonnard” which, according to the composer, the song should bring to mind. Avant le Cinéma is dedicated to another adornment of the artistic world, Olga Picasso, who no doubt appreciated this characteristically “cap over one ear” satire on good-taste pretentiousness. Poulenc particularly liked the “kaleidoscope of words” in 1904, a chaotic memory of carnival time in Strasbourg which he set in cheerful music-hall manner before being taken aback by the suddenly poignant last line.

Mazurka (1949)

Un poème (1946)

Le disparu (1946)

‘If my tomb were to bear the words, “Here lies Francis Poulenc, composer of Apollinaire and Éluard,” it seems to me that it would be my greatest claim to glory.’

Although Poulenc scarcely knew Apollinaire – the poet died in the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918 – he met him often enough for the sound of his voice to make a lasting impression. “I think that is an essential point for a composer who doesn’t want to betray a poet… The Apollinaire sound, like his work, was both melancholy and joyous at the same time.” That is surely one reason why he had little difficulty in setting his verse to music. A re-issue of Le Bestiaire stimulated him to write his first song cycle in 1918 and Apollinaire texts (most of them from the collection Il y a) continued to be a source of inspiration for the next 38 years, resulting in more than thirty mélodies (not to mention the comic opera based on his “drame surréal” Les mamelles de Tirésias). “It is with Apollinaire that I think I found my true song style,” the composer said.

Montparnasse, published with Hyde Park as one of Deux Mélodies de Guillaume Apollinaire, is a rare example of an Apollinaire setting that gave Poulenc prolonged trouble. The poem was written in 1912, at about the time that Montparnasse was discovered by Picasso, Braque and Modigliani and the artistic community began its migration across the river from Montmartre. Poulenc was sensitive to the freshness of the inspiration of the poem and did not hurry his setting of it. The music for different parts of the poem came to him at different times between 1941 and 1943 after which he left it, as he said, to “macerate.” He completed it in a few days in 1945, having solved the problem of modulating between ideas which had occurred to him in different keys and which he would not, as a matter of principle, transpose – hence the extraordinary harmonic freedom of the song, which floats away at the end like Apollinaire’s “deux grands ballons.”

Mazurka, the last of Poulenc’s thirteen setting of poems by Louise de Vilmorin, is his contribution to a composite work commissioned from a team of French composers (including also Sauguet, Auric, Françaix and Milhaud) by the singer Doda Conrad to mark the centenary of Chopin’s death in 1949. Of Vilmorin’s seven Chopinesque texts, Mazurka must have been one of the most awkward, not least because of the repetitions of “font, font, font” which, Poulenc complained, were turning his hair white until he found the trick of dealing with them. In the end he was pleased with the song: “The atmosphere,” he told the poet, “is very much like that of the ball in Le Grand Meaulnes, very quiet, melancholy and sensual.” While it has authentic Chopin-mazurka touches, particularly at the beginning, guests at the ball in Alain-Fournier’s novel might have been excused for confusing the rhythms with those of the slow waltz here and there.

“I have always liked the postage-stamp size of Un poème which suggests in so few words a great silence and a great emptiness.” Music doesn’t do silence and it is not best equipped for emptinessn either but – in so far as those two negative qualities noted by the composer in Apollinaire’s five short lines can be expressed by rootless harmonies and a parlando vocal line – it is done here. A pyrogene, incidentally, is a stoneware pot, once a regular item of café-table furniture, designed to hold matches standing on end – hence the surreal “red hair.”

Amongst the most moving of all Poulenc’s songs are those written during the Occupation or recalling that unhappy period in French history. The fact that Le Disparu by Robert Desnos, a poet who was active in the Resistance and arrested by the Gestapo, is set as a Piaf-style valse-musette should not be taken to mean that the song is anything but seriously intended. Indeed, as it gradually discards its popular-song features and its waltz-time rhythms, its tragic dimension becomes ever more apparent. According to Pierre Bernac, the baritone for whom Le Disparu was written, the brief mf (pp in one edition) in the otherwise quiet piano coda represents the crack of rifle shot.

Mazurka (1949)

Un poéme (1946)

Le disparu (1946)

‘If my tomb were to bear the words, “Here lies Francis Poulenc, composer of Apollinaire and Éluard,” it seems to me that it would be my greatest claim to glory.’

Although Poulenc scarcely knew Apollinaire – the poet died in the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918 – he met him often enough for the sound of his voice to make a lasting impression. “I think that is an essential point for a composer who doesn’t want to betray a poet… The Apollinaire sound, like his work, was both melancholy and joyous at the same time.” That is surely one reason why he had little difficulty in setting his verse to music. A re-issue of Le Bestiaire stimulated him to write his first song cycle in 1918 and Apollinaire texts (most of them from the collection Il y a) continued to be a source of inspiration for the next 38 years, resulting in more than thirty mélodies (not to mention the comic opera based on his “drame surréal” Les mamelles de Tirésias). “It is with Apollinaire that I think I found my true song style,” the composer said.

‘Montparnasse,’ published with ‘Hyde Park’ as one of Deux Mélodies de Guillaume Apollinaire, is a rare example of an Apollinaire setting that gave Poulenc prolonged trouble. The poem was written in 1912, at about the time that Montparnasse was discovered by Picasso, Braque and Modigliani and the artistic community began its migration across the river from Montmartre. Poulenc was sensitive to the freshness of the inspiration of the poem and did not hurry his setting of it. The music for different parts of the poem came to him at different times between 1941 and 1943 after which he left it, as he said, to “macerate.” He completed it in a few days in 1945, having solved the problem of modulating between ideas which had occurred to him in different keys and which he would not, as a matter of principle, transpose – hence the extraordinary harmonic freedom of the song, which floats away at the end like Apollinaire’s “deux grands ballons.”

‘Mazurka,’ the last of Poulenc’s thirteen setting of poems by Louise de Vilmorin, is his contribution to a composite work commissioned from a team of French composers (including also Sauguet, Auric, Françaix and Milhaud) by the singer Doda Conrad to mark the centenary of Chopin’s death in 1949. Of Vilmorin’s seven Chopinesque texts, ‘Mazurka’ must have been one of the most awkward, not least because of the repetitions of “font, font, font” which, Poulenc complained, were turning his hair white until he found the trick of dealing with them. In the end he was pleased with the song: “The atmosphere,” he told the poet, “is very much like that of the ball in Le Grand Meaulnes, very quiet, melancholy and sensual.” While it has authentic Chopin-mazurka touches, particularly at the beginning, guests at the ball in Alain-Fournier’s novel might have been excused for confusing the rhythms with those of the slow waltz here and there.

“I have always liked the postage-stamp size of ‘Un poème’ which suggests in so few words a great silence and a great emptiness.” Music doesn’t do silence and it is not best equipped for emptinessn either but – in so far as those two negative qualities noted by the composer in Apollinaire’s five short lines can be expressed by rootless harmonies and a parlando vocal line – it is done here. A pyrogene, incidentally, is a stoneware pot, once a regular item of café-table furniture, designed to hold matches standing on end – hence the surreal “red hair.”

Amongst the most moving of all Poulenc’s songs are those written during the Occupation or recalling that unhappy period in French history. The fact that ‘Le Disparu’ by Robert Desnos, a poet who was active in the Resistance and arrested by the Gestapo, is set as a valse-musette should not be taken to mean that the song is anything but seriously intended. Indeed, as it gradually discards its popular-song features and its waltz-time rhythms, its tragic dimension becomes ever more apparent. According to Pierre Bernac, the baritone for whom ‘Le Disparu’ was written, the brief mf (pp in one edition) in the otherwise quiet piano coda represents the crack of rifle shot.

Tel jour telle nuit (1936–37)

Bonne journée

Une ruine coquille vide

Le front comme un drapeau perdu

Une roulotte couverte en tuiles

A toutes brides

Une herbe pauvre

Je n’ai envie que de t’aimer

Figure de force brûlante et farouche

Nous avons fait la nuit

Poulenc knw Éluard far better than he knew Apollinaire: they were good friends almost from their first meeting in Adrienne Monnier’s avant-garde bookshop in rue de l’Oéon in 1916 until the poet’s death 36 years later. Even so, he had set dozens of poems by Apollinaire and two other friends, Cocteau and Jacob, before he found the inspiration to realise the music which, he said, “vibrates in all Éluard’s work.” He had heard him read his verse “with that warm voice, gentle and violent in turns, velvet and metallic” but he found the key to his prosody only when he came across a slim volume printed on pink paper À toute épreuve and wrote his Cinq poèmes de Paul Éluard in 1935.

In November of the following year the composer was “feeling completely happy,” he recalled, “strolling by the Bastille. I began to recite the poem from Les yeux fertiles, ‘Bonne journée.’ That evening the music came of itself.” Although the song wasn’t definitively written down until January 1937, that walk by the Bastille was the moment of conception of the composition of Poulenc’s Éluard masterpiece Tel jour tel nuit – a title supplied by Éluard in deference to a composer who fell that the visual title of the collection in which eight of the nine poems were published was inappropriate for a song cycle. Actually, it would have been more helpful if he had adopted Les yeux fertiles, since Éluard’s eyes, fertilised by his surrealist’s imagination, saw what we might see only in our dreams or in our fevered imagination – a fact which it is as well to remember when attempting to understand these frankly obscure texts.

Éluard dedicated ‘Bonne journée’ to Pablo Picasso after he had been to see the artitst’s first retrospective exhibition in Barcelona in 1936. Whether or not his vision was influenced by what he saw there, the serene mood of the poem is clear enough. It is beautifully captured in Poulenc’s melodious C-major setting with the voice poised over a rocking accompaniment of quavers that persists almost throughout, though not without the occasional doubling of the vocal line or counterpoint to it in the piano part. The B flat blue note added to the C octaves at the end of ‘Bonne journée’ leads naturally into the G minor (also with flattened 7th) of ‘Une ruine coquille vide.’ The clue to Éluard’s vision in this case is perhaps in the last line, which suggests a sleepless kind of delirium. Poulenc’s setting, marked “Très calme et irréel,” is scarcely delirious but it does achieve a kind of unreal weightlessness as it floats on the syncopated rhythmic figures in the pianist’s right hand and the regularly chiming crotchets in the left.

Poulenc’s treatment of ‘Le front comme un drapeau perdu’ calls to mind his description of the poet’s voice “gentle and violent” in turns, its initial A-minor violence suddenly appeased into B-flat-minor lyricism and transformed to a caressing A major by the end. There is no consolation in the sinister setting of ‘Une roulotte couverte en tuiles’ which, though anchored to a pedal D at the beginning and the end, makes little tonal sense, and even that is snatched away at the end. ‘À toutes brides’ and ‘Un herbe pauvre’ were clearly intended as pair. The demonic violin open-string sounds and stormy tumult of the first have “no other pretension,” according to the composer, “than to highlight the following song” – an appropriately pure, rhythmically plain, daringly simple progression from E minor to E major and back again.

“It was Éluard who showed me how to express love in musical terms,” Poulenc once confessed. His setting of ‘Je n’ai envie que de t’aimer’ – “this charming poem of happy love,” as the composer described it – is the first of two supreme examples in Tel jour, telle nuit, animated throughout by triplet rhythms in a piano part which also has time to define the melodic impulse of the supple vocal line. The other love song is approached by way of Figure de force brûlante et farouche, the initial violence of which is not dissipated by a long silence or an expressionless middle section but preserved to break out again, if in different terms, at the end. “This terrific climax is there,” said Poulenc, “to make one hear the kind of silence that is the opening of ‘Nous avons fait la nuit’.” Addressed to the his wife Nuch, Éluard’s ‘Nous avons fait la nuit’ moved Poulenc deeply and, happily, inspired him to set it in similar terms – melodic, harmonic and textural – to those of ‘Bonne journée.’ Having completed the cycle in this way, he adds a piano postlude as poetic and as effective in its way as Schumann’s in Dichterliebe.