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Track(s) taken from CDH55448

Salve regina

composer
1941
author of text
Antiphon to the Virgin Mary from Trinity until Advent

Westminster Cathedral Choir, James O'Donnell (conductor)
Recording details: September 1993
Westminster Cathedral, London, United Kingdom
Produced by Mark Brown
Engineered by Antony Howell
Release date: March 1994
Total duration: 4 minutes 47 seconds

Cover artwork: Front photograph. Malcolm Crowthers
 

Other recordings available for download

Polyphony, Stephen Layton (conductor)
The Cambridge Singers, John Rutter (conductor)
Tenebrae, Nigel Short (conductor)
Eton College Chapel Choir, Ralph Allwood (conductor)
St John's College Choir Cambridge, Andrew Nethsingha (conductor)
Francis Poulenc, though brought up a Catholic, lost his faith as he entered adulthood. He returned to the Church in 1936, following a pilgrimage to the Black Virgin of Rocamadour; this was linked to the death of Pierre-Octave Ferroud, a fellow composer who was decapitated in a motoring accident. Poulenc described himself as ‘religious by deepest instinct and by heredity’; others, according to music critic Claude Rostrand, saw in him a divided personality—half monk, half delinquent (‘le moine et le voyou’). Rostrand’s comments were stimulated by what he saw as Poulenc’s tendency to flip between frivolous neoclassical idioms and more deeply engaged writing. Like most of Poulenc’s music for unaccompanied choir, Salve regina springs from the period of renewed faith that followed the crisis of 1936. It dates from 1941, a dark time for both France and Poulenc who, as a homosexual with sympathies for banned composers, was viewed with suspicion by the Nazis. Though the anthem’s mood suggests the ‘monk’, Poulenc’s music owes much to neoclassicism: most phrases consist of isolated blocks of sound, inspired almost certainly by the cellular approach pioneered in works like Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments (1920).

from notes by Martin Ennis © 2018

En 1941, pile entre les motets de Carême et Figure humaine, Poulenc composa Salve regina. D’un calme soutenu, il ne s’écarte jamais d’une simple texture à quatre parties et, chose peut-être la plus surprenante pour une œuvre si discrète, épuise les dix-neuf dernières mesure à entonner les seuls mots «dulcis Virgo Maria»—dans le style d’une complainte (faut-il voir dans cette expression de chagrin la peine qu’éprouva Poulenc pour son ami Ferroud, à Rocamadour?).

extrait des notes rédigées par Meurig Bowen © 2008
Français: Hypérion

1941, halbwegs zwischen den Fasten-Motetten und Figure humaine, komponierte Poulenc Salve regina. Salve regina besitzt eine anhaltende Ruhe, weicht nie von einen simplen vierstimmigen Satz ab, und—wohl am bemerkenswertesten in einem bewusst schlicht gehaltenen Werk—intoniert in den letzten 19 Takten nur die Worte „dulcis Virgo Maria“ dans le style d’une complainte (ein Ausdruck der Trauer und womöglich Poulencs anhaltender Schmerz über den Tod seines Freundes Ferroud am Schrein von Rocamadour?).

aus dem Begleittext von Meurig Bowen © 2008
Deutsch: Renate Wendel

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