Sonata for clarinet and bassoon (1922 revised 1945)

Poulenc’s earliest chamber works – the Sonatas for, respectively, two clarinets and clarinet and bassoon – are unambitious in that they are short and scored for only two instruments. It is not easy, however, to write for just two melody-only instruments, particularly for a composer as inexpert in counterpoint as Poulenc when he was working on the Sonata for Two Clarinets in 1918. But in 1921 he started having private lessons with Charles Koechlin and a year later he was confident enough to be able to tell his mentor that he had completed the Sonata for Clarinet and Bassoon:    “I am pleased with it. The counterpoint is sometimes quite amusing.”

It is true that he wasn’t aiming for anything much more than “entertainment” in these early sonatas but, reminiscent of the 18th-century divertissement though they are, he was clearly eager to keep up to date. That is clear enough from the echoes of Stravinsky’s Three Pieces for Clarinet and    “Soldier’s Tale” in the Sonata for Clarinet and Bassoon. There are suggestions here too of jazz and the bitonal harmonies characteristic of “Les Six” – the not very homogenous group of young Parisian composers recently identified by the critic Henri Collet.

In the Très rythmé first movement the melodic interest is confined to the clarinet, which opens the work by introducing the main theme. Not only syncopated across the bar lines but also subject to numerous changes of metre and frequent pauses for breath, the melodic line has a strong downward tendency sometimes reflected but also contradicted by the wide-ranging, highly coloured bassoon part. The same downward downward tendency characterises the lyrical melody of the Romance. In spite of the “très doux” specified in the tempo direction, the relationship between the two instruments is not always harmonious.

Poulenc has the wit half-way through the Très animé last movement to make an apparent start to a fugue, where the bassoon takes the lead. But it doesn’t last. The fugue, such as it is, gradually slows down, pauses and makes way for a recall of the melody of the Romance in its original tempo. After another pause the quick tempo returns and becomes ever quicker in the to the triple forte approach to the raucous closing bars.