Poulenc wanted to open this set of songs with something upbeat and rhythmical as he had already envisaged the contrasting and more serious mood of the closing Sanglots. He suddenly remembered, as he relates in JdmM, a poem which was ‘a little Maeterlinck in style, that Apollinaire had inserted in a strange and beautiful prose piece entitled Onirocritique. In June 1940, marching as a soldier on the road to Cahors [called-up for brief spell before the fall of France] I began to whistle, I do not know why, “Par les portes d’Orkenise”.’ (In the same Journal he informs us that Orkenise is a road in Autun leading to the Roman gate.) One imagines, with some amusement, Poulenc—hardly a born soldier—singing and marching in 3/4 rhythm. The song has a great vigour and determination—a real folksong flavour from a fairy-tale land with a fortified castle and city gates—which is why the composer referred to Maeterlinck, although this robust music is light years away from Debussy’s Pelléas style. The song is at the same time heartless and heartfelt, earthy and other-worldly, typical Apollinaire and typical Poulenc, the composer here at his most confident in guessing how to mirror that poet in musical terms. The slow closing of the city gates is described by the longer note-values of ‘Se fermèrent lentement’ underneath which a grinding bar of piano music is mechanically repeated three times, plus two further bars leading back to the tonic—as if a key inserted in a gigantic lock were slowly turning, and then clicking shut with a change of tonality. These splendid musical machinations are followed by the spirited coda drawn from the introduction.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 2013

from notes by Graham Johnson © 2013

from notes by Susan Youens © 2015

from notes by Graham Johnson © 1985

extrait des notes rédigées par Graham Johnson © 1985
Français: Hypérion

from notes by Graham Johnson © 2013

from notes by Graham Johnson © 2013

from notes by Susan Youens © 2015

from notes by Graham Johnson © 1985

extrait des notes rédigées par Graham Johnson © 1985
Français: Hypérion

This is one of Poulenc’s longest and most complex songs, with an uncharacteristically extended seven-bar prelude which perfectly depicts the image of ‘calmes étoiles’ and a pedal F sharp that continues for sixteen bars and returns in the song’s closing section. With ‘C’est la chanson des rêveurs’ the music quickens and moves into E flat minor for six bars while becoming less austere and more lyrical (the second of the two internal poems). At ‘Souviens-t’en cher orgueil’ (and for the next sixteen bars) the visionary style of the opening returns with its fantastic imagery of conquering sailors and of Thule and Ophir. The song then returns to more personal and intimate realms, and the somewhat slower tempo, of ‘De ce cœur il coulait du sang’ with occasional vehement interpolations of shards from the first lyric—all this makes the poem something of a seesaw or a jigsaw puzzle (the order of the poem’s lines as set by Poulenc is not definitive—another persuasive solution was offered by the literary scholar J W Chambers in 1953). The song ends movingly in the intimate and heartfelt sphere where Apollinaire’s ability to inspire this composer is unexcelled. It may be agreed that Éluard’s lofty poems (like Tu vois le feu du soir) are better suited to Poulenc’s pronouncements as sage or seer, but Sanglots, in daring to sing of the emotional fragility of the entire human race, is a masterpiece by any reckoning.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 2013