This is Poulenc’s last setting of the poetry of Paul Éluard, a song composed as a tribute to that great champion of French modern music, the singer Jane Bathori, on her eightieth birthday. In terms of its tonality (it begins in A minor) and style it recalls Juan Gris from Le travail du peintre, without attempting to match that song’s visionary level. It displays an ease in setting Éluard’s words that could only have been achieved after nearly a quarter of a century’s practice. The poem was chosen from À toute épreuve, the collection of poetry with which Poulenc had begun his musical association with the poet in 1935, a full circle that might have been the result of deliberate choice. As Poulenc wrote in JdmM: ‘I have taken all that I could from Éluard, Apollinaire, Max Jacob etc …’.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 2013