Poulenc was born in Paris, where he lived most of his life, into a privileged family, surrounded by the

visual arts, literature, and music. His father did not allow him to attend the Conservatoire, he received
early exposure to such diverse composers as Mozart, Chopin, Schumann, Couperin, Debussy, Ravel,
Stravinsky, and Schoenberg through the influence of his mother. His beloved uncle was well cultured in
art as well as music, and by early adolescence, Poulenc was attending concerts and purchasing scores of
new music. He spent his childhood summers in the nearby village of Nogent-sur-Marne, as he fondly
recalled:

‘It was paradise to me, with its open-air dance halls, its French-fry vendors, and its bals musettes… The
bad-boy side of my music, you see, is not artificial as is often believed, because it is associated with my
very dear childhood memories.4 The popular waltzes and dance-hall tunes became for Poulenc
inextricably linked to these memories, and for the rest of his life, he was fond of using musical allusions
to these happy days to evoke a carefree or nostalgic mood. At the young age of 16, Poulenc spent a
great deal of time in a bookstore called Maison des Amis des Livres. Here a number of important avant-
garde poets gathered, including Léon-Paul Fargue, James Joyce, Max Jacob, Guillaume Apollinaire, Louis
Aragon, and Paul Éluard.

The young Poulenc’s literary taste was cultivated as he heard all these poets read their own poetry and
mingled with many of the poets whose poems he would later set to music. At this same bookstore, he
was present for an informal performance in 1919 of the first part of Erik Satie’s important vocal work,
Socrate. 7 Two years earlier, Poulenc had witnessed the premiere of Satie’s Parade, a ballet-
collaboration with Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso, Sergey Diaghilev, and the Ballets Russes. These
encounters proved to be profound for Poulenc by revealing to him an alternative aesthetic from those
of Wagner and Debussy;8 as he said, “everything I knew about Satie’s music—and I did know
everything—seemed to me to be tracing a new path for French music.”9

Poulenc’s earliest period , from 1918 to 1925, includes nine works for solo piano or voice and piano:
Trois mouvements perpétuels (FP 14, 1918), Valse from Album des Six (FP 17, 1919), the Suite in C (FP
19, 1920), Six Impromptus14 (FP 21, 1920–21), and Promenades, (FP 24, 1921) for piano; and Le
Bestiaire (FP 15, 1919), Cocardes (FP 16, 1919), and Poèmes de Ronsard (FP 38, 1924–25) for voice. Of
the vocal works, however, only the last was originally written with piano accompaniment; the original
versions of Le Bestiaire and Cocardes were for voice with instrumental ensembles, but Poulenc made
voice and piano arrangements at or about the same time.

Poulenc wrote his earliest surviving works under the influence of Satie’s aesthetic. In comparison to the
ambiguity and complexity of the more serious Debussy style, Poulenc’s early aesthetic was notable for
its simplicity, sometimes to the point of banality. It featured a reestablishment of a clear relationship
between melody and harmony, of which the melodies are predominantly diatonic, simple and fresh;
clear textures with uncomplicated rhythms; triadic harmony, often with extensions of the ninth,
eleventh, or thirteenth; and extensive use of octave doubling of the melody, or doubling of the vocal line
in the piano. However, like Satie’s music, this otherwise innocuous music was also occasionally
irreverent, employing effective use of surprise “wrong-note” dissonance, abrupt harmonic or metric
shifts, and the occasional tongue-in-cheek score indication such as “excessivement lent.”10
Because of Poulenc’s admittedly keyboard-centric method of composition and the idiomatic piano
writing, it is likely that these pieces were conceived and composed at the piano, even if eventually
intended for instrumental ensemble. The works from 1918 to 1920 all display similar characteristics and
use essentially the same techniques in writing for the piano in both genres. While Poulenc’s piano and
song styles would diverge in his second period, beginning in 1925, the characteristics inherited from
Satie would remain in Poulenc’s work for much of his career: Of all the group [Les Six], he was to remain
the most faithful to the ideal of simplicity and clarity favored by Satie; in addition, he would remain
faithful for a long time to the aesthetic of the anti-sublime characteristic of the 1920s. Until around
1936, he would produce works in this fauve vein with a perpetually renewed inventiveness.15 Even in
his maturity, Poulenc would still count the aesthetic of tunefulness, simplicity, and clarity, among his
guiding principles.

In addition to simplicity, another trait in evidence early in Poulenc’s career is the influence of Parisian
popular musical entertainment. During Poulenc’s childhood and adolescent years, popular music was
found in many different kinds of venues, including café-concerts, cabarets, circuses, revues, and music
halls. Poulenc himself was very fond of the street carnivals and bal-musettes from his summers in
Nogent-sur-Marne, and later in life, Poulenc employed allusions to popular styles in nostalgic songs
reminiscent of earlier days. In his early works, however, these allusions were simply part of an attempt
at an unsophisticated style.

For pieces that are light-hearted, or even humorous, Poulenc disliked intentionally ironic or humorous
treatments of them, insisting that those qualities should come through a serious treatment. He warned
that “to sing Le Bestiaire with irony and above all knowingly is a complete misinterpretation.”

As common technique Poulenc used is the doubling of a melody, either in octaves in the piano, or
between the piano and voice. This is a very common procedure throughout Le Bestiaire: in the first
song, “Le Dromadaire” (Example 10), and in the fourth, “Le Dauphin,”

Poulenc seems to avoid the use of key signatures, even when the music is in a clearly established key,
preferring to reiterate the persistent accidentals.

After these early works, the next pieces “attempt [a] greater depth and seriousness,”26 but suffer from
being too complicated and in a style that did not come naturally to Poulenc.

Cinq poèmes de Ronsard (FP 38, 1924–25) for voice. They are often unnecessarily complex harmonically
and employ what Daniel described as “contrived dissonance.

The first set of songs written after his study with Koechlin, and in fact the first since Cocardes in 1919,
were the Poèmes de Ronsard (1924–25). In these works, we can find much that hints at the changes
Poulenc’s style was to later undergo. For example, the relation of the voice and piano is more
independent and complementary, with the piano enjoying true introductions, interludes, and codas. The
pianist’s four introductory measures in the first song, “Attributs,” have the same function and very
similar mood as the first four measures of “Air Vif,” from Airs chantés (1927–28) The lyricism at “mais les
soucis et les pleurs” in “Attributs” and throughout “Le Tombeau” (Example 17) prefigures the lyricism of
some of his later writing, the latter even of “Tu vois le feu du soir” (1938) with its widely spaced bass
and melody, the vocal line doubled in the right hand, and gently syncopated accompanying chords. The
rich harmonies and certain harmonic progressions also hint at the mature Poulenc’s style

After Poulenc’s period of study with Koechlin and the unusually complex and difficult pieces of 1921–25,
he returned to a generally simpler aesthetic, in which his earlier selfconsciousness is replaced with a
greater self-assurance as a composer. Poulenc’s great facility for piano composition is demonstrated by
the sheer number of piano works he wrote between 1925 and 1936: he wrote more works in this period
alone than from all his other periods combined. It is during this time that his pianistic style began to
diverge from the style of the songs, and this is mostly due to the highly idiomatic nature of his solo piano
writing noted in Chapter 2. Both the piano accompaniments in the songs and the first piano works of
this period employ a great variety of textures and figurations with real musical interest, but later piano
works often descend into showy, but musically empty, pianistic patterns. The songs from this time do
not suffer this problem, however: with few exceptions, such as the intentionally banal Airs chantés,
these years show a more self-assured composer who is establishing techniques for dealing with a wide
variety of poetic moods and styles.

Shortly after this work, Poulenc composed the cycle Chansons gaillardes (FP 42, 1925–26), his first truly
successful songs originally for voice and piano.3 As is the case with his other most successful pieces, this
cycle represents a synthesis of experiments from earlier works. This set incorporates the clarity and
simplicity of Le Bestiaire; the pianistic facility and variety of “Caprice Italien;” and the lyricism,
fast/slow/fast ordering, and pianistic introductions, interludes, and postludes of the Ronsard songs.
Poulenc chose the text for the eight songs from two collections of anonymous poetry from the
eighteenth century.4 They range from mischievous to bawdy, and sometimes the text is quite innocent
on the surface, but hides a “scandalous double-meaning.”5 According to Bernac, Poulenc “detested
smutty stories but liked obscenity;”6 Poulenc himself explained that he chose the texts because he
“needs a little musical vulgarity just like a plant needs compost.”7 The songs capture a true spontaneity
of expression, ranging from whimsical, light-hearted songs to more serious ones. They are organized
according to a careful alternation of fast and slow tempos, indicative of Poulenc’s attention to the
overall effect of the piece through contrasts from one song to the next. This is the first set of songs that
employs extensive text repetition, a device clearly required in order to create larger forms, given the
rapid delivery of these relatively brief poems. Earlier song sets had either been limited in length by short
poems (such as Le Bestiaire), or achieved greater length using longer poems (such as Poèmes de
Ronsard). These are the first successful songs to achieve satisfactory length through text repetition, and
this is another sign of the composer’s greater maturity. Most impressive is how comfortable Poulenc
seems writing for the piano in a wide variety of tempos, moods, and modes of expression. For example,
in the faster songs, the piano has some quite difficult, at times virtuosic, writing, but the voice and
piano are well integrated: the piano
figurations in the brief introductions and interludes connect naturally with the vocal entrances,
and
the voice part no longer seems conceived as an afterthought, as it does in his earliest songs.
Poulenc felt the piano part was very well written,8 and it is clearly “far more intricate [and] well
constructed” than his earlier song efforts, yet still “idiomatically pianistic.”9
The most pianistic songs are the fast ones, particularly the virtuosic third song, “Madrigal.”
It is Poulenc’s first example of a patter song, a style he was to use in many later songs and
analogously in later piano works. The fifth song, “Couplets bachiques,” has the most brilliant
piano
figuration: virtuosic, but idiomatically written so that it lies well in the hand. The seventh, “La
belle
jeunesse,” is likewise pianistic.
The light-hearted spirit of the fast songs is enhanced by some metrical playfulness that shifts
what might otherwise be rather predictable antecedent-consequent phrasal pairs. For example, in
the first song, “La maîtresse volage,” the eight-measure piano introduction, with its pair of
balanced
phrases, establishes a context of four-measure phrasal pairs. The first antecedent vocal phrase
(“Ma maîtresse est volage, mon rival est heureux,” continues this pattern of four measures, but
the
consequent phrase (“s’il a son pucelage, c’est qu’elle en avait deux”) is shortened by one beat to
the
equivalent of three-and-a-half measures (Example 18). This metric shift underscores the punch
line
of the text by making the off-balance music match the bawdiness of the text.
Poulenc “floundered in the [song] genre during the ensuing four years (1927–30),”13 an
observation which can be partly explained by his deliberate choice of bad poetry for the Airs
chantés (FP 46, 1927–28). The poems, which he called, “suitable for mutilation,”14 are by Jean
Moréas, a nineteenth-century poet who wrote in a classical style. Poulenc wrote in his Journal
that
the third song, “Air Grave,” was “surely my worst mélodie” and that “this collection turned me
off
writing mélodies for a long time. In short: a bad decision.”15 Despite his opinion of the work, and
much to his chagrin, this set turned out to be quite popular. There are several possible reasons for
this: first, they stand nearly alone among his works written before 1931 in that they were written
for a soprano voice; second, the writing is outwardly quite vocal, along the lines of Chansons
gaillardes; and third, because “Poulenc, not having considered the words or the meaning of the
poem, has used his marvelous melodic gift.”16
The piano writing, though still pianistic, isn’t quite as successful as that of Chansons
gaillardes. Some awkwardness is evident in transitions between sections, and the voice and
piano are less consistently well integrated. In the first song, “Air romantique,” the nearly frantic
accompaniment (marked “extrêmement animé”) employs constant sixteenth-note motion that
creates a rhythmic foil for the more comfortable eighth-note motion of the voice. Poulenc
admonishes against the use of rubato in this song (“le tempo doit être implacable”17), even when
the
energy is relaxed somewhat in the middle section of the ternary form (“respecter strictement le
mouvement métronomique”). The second song, “Air champêtre,” is more bucolic, and uses
metric shifts in the piano
introduction and interlude (mm29–32) that contribute to a light-hearted atmosphere. The third,
“Air grave,” is unusually clumsy for Poulenc; here the presence of a piano countermelody
throughout only contributes to an awkward vocal line. Its progressive tonality—beginning in F
minor and moving to A minor in the piano coda—is also unusual for Poulenc.
However, the accompaniment of the fourth song is well written for the piano; it could stand
quite well on its own, due to its nearly incessant doubling of the voice. A careful use of contrasts
throughout also contributes to its success. One such contrast is that of texture in adjacent phrases
such as the legato, p phrase in mm48–51 that is followed by a staccato, mf, left hand figure in
mm51–54 (Example 22). Another contrast is found in the melodic contour of the piano
introduction: the melody boldly begins with a leap of a fifth then meanders for a measure, before
its strongly directed sixteenth-note descent (Example 23). He frequently used this technique of
contrasting melodic construction later, as well After this decidedly mixed set, Poulenc did not
write songs until 1931, apart from another unsuccessful attempt at setting classical poetry: the
Épitaphe
The three years prior to 1935 seem to have been a stagnant compositional period for
Poulenc. This is indicated by the abundance of facile piano works, the dearth of vocal works, and
the lack of any real stylistic innovation in any genre. However, a series of three events of
profound importance combined to rejuvenate his compositional development and spurred him to
new and renewed genres.
The first significant event was the formation of a recital-duo with baritone Pierre Bernac, the
inaugural concert of which was April 3, 1935.1 The two had partnered together for the premiere
of Chansons gaillardes in 1926, but did not collaborate again until the summer of 1934, when
they gave a concert of Debussy songs in Salzburg. Immediately after the concert, they decided to
form a recital partnership:
After the concert, we decided to collaborate in a regular fashion and to create, in short, a
team similar to those that perform violin-piano sonatas, with the same concern for balance
and stylistic preparation going into our interpretation of vocal music.2
This partnership lasted for the next twenty-five years, during which time Poulenc wrote about 90
songs especially for their recitals together.3 Poulenc said that it was through accompanying
Bernac that he learned about song writing, saying:
All of the evolution that took place in my mélodies was due to Bernac. Just as Viñes had
revealed to me certain secrets of pianistic writing, Bernac showed me the possibilities of
singing, and since singing is my greatest love, I need say no more as proof of my happiness
during these years of collaboration.4

The recitals became important times for Poulenc and Bernac to experiment with the ordering
of songs, both within recital groupings, and the flow of the entire recital. Through these trials
Poulenc came to learn how best to pair and group songs “in a manner calculated to show them
both
in the most favourable light. It is all a question of ‘the hanging,’ as essential in music as in
painting.”7 These issues were of utmost importance in the cycles, but also for some songs—
published separately or in pairs—that were intended since their conception to be grouped
together
in recital. It was through this process that Poulenc developed what he called “tremplin,” or
“springboard,” songs: generally fast, sometimes quite violent or troubled, songs that stood in the
greatest possible contrast to those preceding and following, which were often slower and lyrical.
The recital partnership with Bernac led directly to the second event of supreme importance
in Poulenc’s development: “Bernac’s vocal style prompted me to seek, quite naturally, a lyric
poet. I immediately thought of Paul Éluard.”8 Poulenc wrote his first Éluard settings, the Cinq
poèmes
d’Éluard, in 1935 for the duo’s inaugural recital, followed by Tel jour, telle nuit, in 1937.
Poulenc recalled his first encounter with the poetry of Éluard:
I actually admired Éluard since the day I met him, in 1917,9 at Adrienne Monnier’s
bookstore on the rue de l’Odéon. … I have to admit it: I had at once a weakness for
Éluard.10
Unlike Breton and Aragon, whom he met on the same occasion, Éluard held special interest for
Poulenc as “the only surrealist who could tolerate music.”11 Éluard had not yet developed his
surrealist techniques when Poulenc first met him, however, and the volumes from which Poulenc
drew the poems for his first sets, À toute épreuve, and Les Yeux fertiles, were not published until
1930 and 1936, respectively.12 It was this period that saw the event that would change the course
of Poulenc’s writing…when he found out one of musician friends had been killed in a car
accident. The most immediate
and significant musical result was a large body of religious choral music, beginning with his
Litanies à la vierge noire (FP 82, 1936), and spanning the entire last twenty-five years of his life.
Daniel asserts that it was his “renewed religious fervor” in the choral music of 1936 that paved
the
way for his mature Éluard settings.17
The style required by a cappella voices was quite different from his primarily melodicharmonic
interest seen in most of his works until this time. In writing for three, four, six, or eight
independent voices, Poulenc may have drawn on his early tutoring by Koechlin in his few
composition lessons, particularly some highly chromatic exercises in which he harmonized
chorale
tunes.

His first Éluard settings were the Cinq poèmes de Paul Éluard (FP 77, 1935). There is some
discrepancy in the literature about when Poulenc began these songs. Schmidt states: “In 1935
Poulenc came across A toute épreuve (1930), a small collection of poems printed on pink paper.
Encouraged by Auric, he chose five to set to music…”20 However, in July 1931, in the midst of a
renewed interest in mélodies, Poulenc mentioned a planned group of songs entitled, “5 Poèmes
d’Éluard,”21 but it is not known whether these were the same poems he later set. Since no further
mention of these projected settings was made again until 1935, we may surmise that Poulenc
may
have chosen the poems for the set in 1931, but did not proceed with their composition until the
planned recital with Bernac.
18

Poulenc felt that the poetry of Éluard required a new musical language from what he had
been accustomed. He wrote in his Journal:
Groping around in this work. Key turned in a lock. Attempt at giving the piano the
maximum with the minimum of means. Much thought in composing these mélodies to an
exhibition of drawings by Matisse for a book of Mallarmé, where one sees the same drawing
in pencil, full of hatching, of repetitions and the final attempt having retained nothing but the
most essential, in a single stroke of the pen… It’s the piano reduced to its essence, that’s
all… I have sought for years the musical key to the poetry of Éluard.22
The Matisse drawings to which Poulenc referred were on exhibit in 1933; in viewing these
drawings, he realized that his “accompaniments had grown increasingly complex and were in
competition with the vocal line. Matisse’s working method obviously struck a nerve with
Poulenc,
who realized that a less encumbered piano part for his mélodies was appropriate.”23
Taken as a whole, the set is considerably more chromatic and employs a wider range of
expression and figuration than the works from his second period. Still, evidence of Poulenc’s
attempt at an economy of musical material can be found, beginning with the first measures of the
first song, “Peut-il se reposer” (Example 56). The voice begins in unison with the bare piano
22

octaves, and in its second phrase establishes a brief canon with the piano’s single line. While this
texture is interrupted by a violent and dramatic middle section marked “Subito allegro molto,”
the
first section’s figuration and tempo return for the last four measures of the song. Poulenc wrote
that
he regretted burning the draft of this song; otherwise, he could show critics that the simple
texture
had evolved from a complex one, just as in the exhibit of Matisse drawings.24
The extreme violence of the second song, “Il la prend dans ses bras,” stands in strong
contrast to the relative peace of the first and third songs; it is his first true bridge song. Poulenc
called it “horribly difficult,”25 because of its highly sectional progressions of figurations and
sharp
contrasts of dynamics, but it paves the way for later settings of Éluard poems that consist of a
succession of images.
Poulenc considered the third and fourth songs, “Plume d’eau claire,” and “Rôdeuse au front
de verre,” the best of the set, saying that in these songs, “the musical key to the poetry of
Éluard…
truly grinds in the lock for the first time.”26 The third is only nine measures long; its near-
constant
sixteenth note motion and unified expression are the result of a single poetic image. The
melodies,
in both the voice and piano, are quite chromatic, but have a lyrical sweep that avoids harshness
(see
Example 57). For example, the ascending line at “Fraîcheur voilée de caresses” is chromatic, but
sweeps lyrically upward before resolving in a typical way with a 9-8 appoggiatura approached
from
below. Similarly, the piano writing is highly chromatic, but the bass note motion is quite
functional, consisting predominantly of resolutions by a fifth. The first three measures of the
vocal
line consist entirely of pitches of an octatonic scale, as do all of the notes of the piano part in the
third measure, apart from the use of the pitch G in the first beat. This usage is undoubtedly quite
accidental, since, with only few exceptions, Poulenc studiously avoided the use of serialism or
development based on pitch sets.27
In “Rôdeuse au front de verre,” the harmonies are quite static, generally changing at most
once per measure (see Example 55 in Chapter 4, above). There is pianistic support for the vocal
line throughout using countermelodies, creating “true chamber music with the piano and the
voice
as equal partners.”28 The use of seventh and ninth chords shows that Poulenc did not abandon
elements of his established style in his attempt at a new musical language. Rather, the rather
static
harmonies combine uniquely with suspended textures to create an intimate mood that simply
does
not exist in his piano works from the second period.29
The fifth song is evocative of a street at night in Paris, with its fast waltz-like 9/8 meter and
chanson-style accompanimental figures. It is therefore closer to some of the settings of
Apollinaire,
except for the more sweeping chromatic lines, such as at “pour dévêtir la nuit” (mm12–13). The
piano writing likewise goes beyond the language of Apollinaire in reaching a significant climax
(Example 58) with chordal writing that resembles that of Rachmaninoff. The final measures,
“Mon amour, ton amour, ton amour, ton amour,” use “wrong-note” dissonances with intervals of
minorninths;
Berry believes these no longer carry a mocking tone, and sees this as evidence of Poulenc’s
fully assimilated style.30 The present author, however, believes that these “wrong-note” intervals
convey a sarcastic tone to the repetition of “ton amour.” This is indicative that Poulenc is
continuing to draw upon earlier techniques for use alongside his newfound ones.
The Cinq Poèmes d’Éluard show the direction Poulenc was to follow with his later Éluard
settings, but the overall quality of the set is uneven. While some economies of musical material
were noted above, in other places, Poulenc does not seem to have restrained himself in terms of
texture, richness of figuration, or chromaticism. The lack of key signatures throughout, despite
its
strong chromaticism, testifies to the highly fluid harmonic language of the set. However, there
are
numerous examples of “circuitous melodic resolutions,” melodies that appear jagged or disjunct,
but are actually “quite lyrical because of the diatonic approach and resolution of the large
leaps.”31
While the second song does act as a bridge between the first and third, the ordering of the songs
is not as carefully designed as in later sets; one hears five disparate songs instead of a unified
whole.
Daniel writes:
These are difficult melodies: the struggle that Poulenc underwent to turn that key is evident.
Both the melodic lines and the accompaniments lack the simplicity and purity which we
associate with his mature songs; there is a great deal of disjunct writing and chromaticism.
… These mélodies give a hint of the depth, power, and sensitivity that Poulenc was seeking
in the song genre.32 Poulenc’s efforts in setting the poetry of Éluard finally came to fruition in the
masterful
cycle Tel jour, telle nuit (FP 86, 1937) and the several Éluard works that followed. These songs
display the truly mature Poulenc style with “their controlled lyricism, their balance between
voice
and piano, their clear yet varied moods, and their interpretation of the Éluard poems.”35 Bernac
called them “indisputably one of his greatest achievements in the domain of song,” while the
critic
Roland Manuel compared them favorably with Winterreise and Dichterliebe.36 Throughout,
musical decisions seem to be tied much more closely to the text than ever before.
The nine songs are carefully ordered to create a truly cyclical work, using more subtlety of
contrast than the simplistic slow/fast alternation in the Chansons gaillardes. Bernac writes:
Poulenc says, ‘In my opinion a song in a cycle must have a colour and a special
architecture.’ The value of each one depends on its place in the ensemble, on the song which
precedes it and that which follows. In fact some of the songs are intended only to form a
transition in order to heighten the effect of the following one. The first and the last are in the
same key and in the same tempo, establishing the atmosphere of calm and serenity which
imbues almost the whole of the cycle.37
34

The sixth song, “Une herbe pauvre,” is quiet and slow, with quarter-note rhythm throughout
in both voice and piano. The writing here, for the first time, seems influenced by his choral
writing
in several respects. The voicing of the chords in mm1–10 and mm17–24 carefully preserves
individual lines, even with the frequent voice crossings. They frequently lack strong bass
functionality, but instead employ “oscillating harmonies” seen commonly in his choral music,
93
including the first movement of Sept chansons, 40 written only nine months earlier. In Example
61,
three distinct harmonies are used in the pattern: 1, 2, 3, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 1. In
attempting to follow Matisse’s example in simplifying the piano writing, Poulenc looked to his
choral writing for its distillation and purity of sound. What makes Tel jour, telle nuit such a
remarkable work is the carefully-crafted unifying
elements of the cycle. Poulenc chose and ordered the poetry so that the expression of Éluard’s
wonderful and varied poetry of love is heightened and enhanced by the music; there is therefore
a
clear accumulation of meaning, both poetic and musical, as the work progresses. The contrasts
within and between songs support the overall conception of the cycle, showing that he had
learned
42 Bernac, Francis Poulenc, 105.
96
that even “poems of violence have their proper and effective place. It is by their very presence
that
the love songs are made most effective.”43
Keith Daniel asserts that Tel jour, telle nuit “represents the full development of Poulenc’s
vocabulary as a song writer. For the remainder of his career, Poulenc’s song style changed
little.”44
If his song style was to remain little changed, his piano style did not reflect this until three years
later, in 1940, when the first hints of this maturity would be seen in a solo piano work
Poulenc said he found it “very difficult to find gloriously feminine poetry,”46 and he was
very pleased to find it in the poetry of Louise de Vilmorin. Henri Hell, Poulenc’s first
biographer,
describes her poetry thusly:
Charm where veiled eroticism plays a part. Transparent, easy, readily precious and
capricious like embroidery: beneath the lightness of its style this audacious poetry is not
without seriousness. Its elegance barely disguises a melancholy which is never renounced.
And the shadow of death seems at times to caress her. This game of words that would be
called nonchalant and facile knows the essential truths: Desire, pleasure, melancholy and
love. The whole adorned with romantic grace.47
These qualities evoked from Poulenc a more “direct and emotional expression” compared to the
musical and textual complexity of his settings of Éluard and Apollinaire.48
Poulenc seems to have first encountered the poetry of Louise de Vilmorin at the home of his
friend, Marie-Blanche de Polignac. After reading the poem “Aux Officiers de la Garde Blanche,”
Poulenc wrote to Vilmorin and requested that she write additional poems for him to set to music;
she responded with the poems, “Le garçon de Liège” and “Eau-de-vie! Au delà!” The result was
Trois poèmes de Louise de Vilmorin (FP 91, 1937). The set is uneven, but the poetry, playful and
serious in turn, is enhanced by the variety and contrast of the music, from the unison piano
sixteenths of the first (reminiscent of “Le présent,” by another female poet, Marie Laurencin), to
the
fleeting lightness of the second, and the “almost medieval austerity”49 of the repeated sixteenths
and
bare octaves of the third (Example 64).
46 Two years after his first settings of Vilmorin, Poulenc set six of her poems in Fiançailles

pour rire (FP 101, 1939). This work is not a true cycle, but instead a carefully ordered set of
individual songs, where the mood of each piece is established and songs ordered for maximum
contrast and to enhance the poetry. Bernac notes that “these charming and elegant poems are not
comparable in richness and substance to the admirable poems of Éluard,” and that the musical
language of the set reflects this difference.66
In the almost frivolous first song, “La Dame André,” the poem questions whether André’s
new lady “has a heart for the tomorrows” or is just a passing fancy. Every poetic strophe ends
with
a question, and this is mirrored in the four measures of piano coda that end on an inconclusive
Athirteen
chord. The style of the second, “Dans l’herbe,” is the most serious of the set and closest to
his Éluard style. Its slow tempo and chromatically shifting harmonies are particularly
reminiscent
of his choral writing. The third song, “Il vole,” is marked “presto implacable,” “in the style of an
étude for piano,” and is another example of a breathless patter song, virtuosic for both singer and
pianist. It serves as a trampoline song into the following slow song, “Mon cadavre est doux
comme
un gant,” whose text is surrealistically beautiful despite the morbid sentiments (“My corpse is as
limp as a glove”) of a person “who is already detached from all human contingencies.”67 The
final
two songs are likewise paired for maximum contrast. In the fifth, “Violon,” languorous violin
double-stops and glissando effects are created in the right hand above a slow waltz-like bass,
evoking the image of a gypsy violinist late at night in a Hungarian restaurant (Example 70).68
Poulenc wrote that the pizzicato A minor ending of the fifth song (chord marked “arraché,” or
“ripped”) was necessary so that the Db major of “Fleurs” could create the “impression of a
harmony
that comes from afar.”69. Just as “Bleuet” was an expression of sadness over the events of the
war, Mélancolie was
likewise inspired by his recent demobilization and the occupation of Paris by the Germans that
led
him to seek refuge in Brive-la-Gaillarde, to the north of Paris.73 Schmidt further claims that
Poulenc, long insecure over his mostly self-taught compositional skills, felt particularly
depressed at
this point because the second war served as a reminder that the first world war had deprived him
of
his musical education.74 While Poulenc was never much of a nationalist, the quasi-programmatic
title was clearly a reflection of the miserable state of his country, tinged with nostalgia for her
Poulenc wrote a set of five songs to texts by Apollinaire in October and November of 1940
as a kind of celebration of his return to Noizay after his exile to the north of Paris. Banalités (FP
107) is clearly not a cycle, but once again shows Poulenc’s careful attention to the ordering of
movements within a larger work. There is a great variety within the set, which was again written
for Bernac: “each of these songs exploits a particular aspect of the singer’s voice and a particular
aspect of Apollinaire’s poetry.”77 Ironically, Poulenc had long before chosen the two most
difficult
poems of the set, “Fagnes de Wallonie” and “Sanglots,” and only more recently selected the
other
poems, which he called “delicious lines of doggerel.”78 The next song, “Hôtel,1:22” evokes
perfectly the lazy indolence of an afternoon hotel room, with
its rich, non-functional harmonies that seem to “float aimlessly in space.”79 The luxuriant
harmonies (Example 73) and softly colored tones are similar to those of “La Grenouillère;” the
tempos of the two songs are indicated “très calme et paresseux” and “très las et mélancolique,”
respectively. Neither song’s accompaniment contains any note value shorter than a quarter note,
but the tempo of “Hôtel” is intentionally slower than any other such piece to convey a sense of
complete laziness. The richness of harmony is further enhanced by the layered chordal sonorities
that encompass more than five octaves of the piano. This sensuous gem contrasts well with the
breathless, relentless energy of the following song. Of the final song, Poulenc wrote: “All that I
have written about ‘Tu vois le Feu du soir’ is
valid for ‘Sanglots.’”82 The harmonic language is fully that of Poulenc’s serious style, and the
expressive leaps in the vocal line at “Est mort d’amour” (mm60–63) and “Et rien sera libre”
(mm68–69) communicate strong emotion. What are unusual, however, are the indications
“Animer
un peu mais très progressivement” and “Animer encore un peu” which replace the usual
admonitions to maintain a strict tempo. This may have been necessitated by the difficult poem
that
is filled with parenthetical comments.
With its great variety of moods, careful ordering, and delicious gems (“Hôtel” and “Voyage
à Paris”), Banalités is justifiably one of his most popular sets. After the burst of song activity
between the writing of Tel jour, telle nuit and Banalités,
Poulenc’s production in all genres dropped off considerably. This was likely because concerts
were
a more reliable source of income than royalties,83 for during the German occupation of France,
publication of music all but ceased, while concerts continued nearly unabated. Thus, the entire
next
decade saw only as many songs written as in the previous three years.
The songs of this time are not stylistically much different from those discussed above; he
basically continued on the same path already struck; this can be seen in the many examples of
songs
that are similar in mood, texture, or harmony to earlier songs. Two other indications that his
compositional activity was at a lull are that there are a number of songs of lesser quality among
some truly great songs, and that he took the time to complete a couple of songs that he had
contemplated for several years.

The final cycle from his third period was much more successful than the single songs
discussed above. A final major work to the poetry of Apollinaire, Calligrammes (FP 140, 1948)
is
both the summation and culmination of all of his settings of the poet. It includes aspects of all his
earlier styles, here integrated into a mature whole. More than just a set of songs, this is a true
cycle
because of an overriding tonal architecture, carefully planned order and specifically indicated
pacing between songs, and a placid piano postlude to the last song, which concludes and
prolongs
the final sentiment in the same way as in Tel jour. Unique among the cycles is the tonal structure,
which Poulenc outlined in a letter to Bernac midway through its composition:
80

The final cycle from his third period was much more successful than the single songs
discussed above. A final major work to the poetry of Apollinaire, Calligrammes (FP 140, 1948)
is
both the summation and culmination of all of his settings of the poet. It includes aspects of all his
earlier styles, here integrated into a mature whole. More than just a set of songs, this is a true
cycle
because of an overriding tonal architecture, carefully planned order and specifically indicated
pacing between songs, and a placid piano postlude to the last song, which concludes and
prolongs
the final sentiment in the same way as in Tel jour. Unique among the cycles is the tonal structure,
which Poulenc outlined in a letter to Bernac midway through its composition:
The cycle takes its name from Apollinaire’s collection, entitled “Calligrammes: Poèmes de
la Paix et de la Guerre (1913-1916).”103 This collection is particularly interesting because a
number
of the poems in it are calligrammes (that is, ideograms): a poem or arrangement of words on the
page pictorially representing the subject. For example, the letters of “Il pleut” are written
vertically
in five lines down the page, intended to represent the falling rain. Of the seven poems used in
this
cycle, three are printed as ideograms: “Voyage,” “Aussi bien que les cigales,” and “Il pleut.”
This
must have had some import for Poulenc as he composed their settings, because he always
emphasized that he attached great importance to the layout of the poem on the page.104
Amusingly,
Bernac had the opposite opinion: “It must be confessed that this is a puerility that adds nothing to
the value of the poems but merely makes them more difficult to read.”105 Poulenc was always
sympathetic to Apollinaire’s Parisian poetry, but it seemed to hold especially nostalgic meaning
for
him as he approached his fiftieth birthday: “All of these poems from 1913 to 1915 have brought
back a flood of memories from my Nogentais past and from the time of the 1914 war. This is
why
they are dedicated to my childhood friends.”106
Stylistically, the cycle contains little that is innovative or new, but rather represents a
maturity and synthesis of all his earlier approaches to his Apollinaire settings. The gently
syncopated rhythm of “L’Espionne” is the same as that used in “Montparnasse” and some of his
Éluard settings, and his favorite, layered texture appears in the same song at mm13–16. However
the harmonic language is different, “more sensual here than lyric.”107 He was particularly proud
of
the prosody of “Mais la vois-tu cette mémoire / Les yeux bandés prête à mourir” (Example 80),
which was “regular but broken… one of my most exact prosodies.”108 To support and
compensate
for the halting, sequential vocal phrase, the harmonies travel the circle of fifths by minor-seventh
and half-diminished chords: Bb, Eb, G# (Ab), C#, F#, B, E. In 1950, Poulenc wrote, “I have
written so many mélodies, up to now, that I have lost my
taste for them and I will doubtless write fewer and fewer.”1 Indeed, in his final period from 1950
until his last mélodies in 1960, Poulenc wrote only three song cycles (La fraîcheur et le feu, FP
147,
1950; Le travail du peintre, FP 161, 1956; and La courte paille, FP 178, 1960) and a half-dozen
other individual songs. Nor did he evidently retain much interest in writing for solo piano,
writing
only one major piano work, the Thème varié (FP 151, 1951), his last three Improvisations, and a
third Novelette.
His final stylistic period is not marked by any great technical achievement, but rather by a
complete synthesis of all his earlier techniques and styles. The style of the mélodies does not
differ
much from the previous period, but is a continued distillation of the poetry into the most
economical
musical means: as Poulenc wrote about the Éluard cycle La Fraîcheur et le feu, “The piano is
economical in the extreme. There is nothing superfluous. I thought once again of Matisse.”2 The
cycles demonstrate a tendency toward greater organization, and there now appears a unity of
pianistic style between the mélodies and much of the piano writing in the solo works. In
particular,
the musical mood and piano texture of the thirteenth Improvisation closely mirrors the sparser
style
of his song accompaniments. Poulenc’s final cycle was La courte paille (FP 178, 1960), to texts
by Maurice Carême, were
written for Denise Duval, “or more exactly, for Denise Duval to sing to her little, six-year-old
boy.”34 They may be properly considered a cycle due to the careful alternation of slow and fast
tempos and the similarity between the first and last songs. He used the melody from the fifteenth
Improvisation in the third song, “La reine du coeur.” Poulenc noted: “These sketches, by turn
melancholy and mischievous, are unpretentious. They must be sung tenderly. That is the surest
way of touching a child’s heart.”35
Even if Poulenc had lived beyond 1963, it is doubtful that he would have written more
songs. Shortly before writing his final song cycle Poulenc wrote in his Journal: “I turn the pages
of
this Journal with some melancholy. The time for mélodies is over, at least for me. I believe I
have
drawn all that I could from Éluard, Apollinaire, Max Jacob, etc.”36 The first song, “Le

sommeil [Sleep],” is marked, très calme [very calm]. It is a lullaby depicting a mother rocking her crying

baby to sleep. The accompaniment depicts the rocking chair with an underlying syncopated bass line and

descending eight-note intervals.

La courte paille “Le sommeil” mm. 1-2

Toward the middle of the song, as the agitation grows, Poulenc adds more dissonance, blocked

chords, and modulates through minor keys. The tension is released at the end as Poulenc returns to the

initial melody in a lower tessitura. He ends the piece on a G7 chord, creating a question in the ending.

One of the great melodists of the twentieth century, Poulenc was largely self-taught as a
composer. In the early 1920s he belonged to the Paris-based group of composers Les Six who
led the neo-classical movement, rejecting the overstated emotion of Romanticism. Following the
death of a close friend in the 1930s, Poulenc rediscovered his Roman Catholic faith and
replaced the ironic nature of neo-classicism with a new-found spiritual depth. By his own
admission, Poulenc was no revolutionary, yet the transparent simplicity of much of his output,
particularly his vocal and chamber music, places it alongside the finest of the century.

Poulenc was an important composer of the neo-classical movement. His music, eclectic yet
strongly personal in style, is essentially diatonic and melodious, embroidered with 20th Century
dissonances. It has wit, elegance, depth of feeling, and a bitter-sweetness which derives from
the mixtures of gaiety and manic depression.