Ralph Votapek - Ivory Classics

now gone. But in the 1960’s Poulenc was still there.
Born in 1899 in Paris, Poulenc wrote his first piano compositions
in early 1917. In 1919 the concert audiences heard his three
Mouvements Perpetuels and Poulenc became a household name
almost overnight. He then joined a group of French composers
(along with Milhaud, Durey, Auric, Honegger and Tailleferre)
called “The French Six.” In 1924 Sergei Diaghilev commissioned
Poulenc to write a score for the Ballet Russe, and the result was Les
Biches (“The Does”). The ballet was a great success. One critic
wrote: “The Poulenc score is exquisite... With its ironic and slightly
rakish twists, its thoroughly traditional elegance of thought, it goes
straight to the point, its one aim being to bring delight.”
Many works followed — the Concert Champetre, a Concerto for
Two Pianos and Orchestra, the Mass in G Major, songs, chamber
music and, of course, more piano pieces. During World War II,
Poulenc was an active member of the French Resistance movement.
Francis Poulenc
Works from these years include the poignant Violin Sonata dedicated
to the memory of Federico Garcia Lorca and the deeply moving,
tragic choral work, Figure Humaine. In 1957 he produced the opera Les Dialogues des Carmelites,
which received its American premiere at the San Francisco Opera on September 22, 1957. In 1959
he produced La Voix Humaine, and in 1961 the six-part Gloria for chorus and orchestra. Francis
Poulenc died suddenly at his home in Paris on January 30, 1963.
Critic Jay Harrison once stated that, “In many ways, Poulenc is Paris. He is gay like Paris, sad like
Paris. And he bustles constantly. His hands wave, his eyebrows arch, he twitches, grins, makes faces.
When his mouth talks, all of him talks too. If he is not Paris, he is at least French. Not even a deaf
man could doubt that.” And certainly that is also true of Poulenc’s music. Poulenc’s eight nocturnes
span about a decade (1929-1938). Although they are often played separately, Poulenc created a
“cycle” when he composed the eighth nocturne and titled it “Pour servir de Coda au Cycle” (“To serve
as the Coda for the Cycle”). Unlike Chopin’s or Faure’s, Poulenc’s nocturnes are not romantic tonepoems.
They are instead “night-scenes” and “sound-images” of public and private events.
The first Nocturne, in C major, acts as a prelude to the set. It is typically Poulenc — constructed
out of a touching, almost child-like melodic pattern, with some Stravinskian style touches and a weird
epilogue marked, “le double plus lent.” The second Nocturne is entitled “Bal de jeunes filles.”
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