Banalités, FP107

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composer

Francis Poulenc (1899-1963)

October to November 1940

author of text

Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918)

Introduction
English

The title Banalités, given by Poulenc to his 1940 cycle of five Apollinaire poems, was taken from a collection of that name Apollinaire published in 1914, containing ‘Hôtel’ and ‘Voyage à Paris’. The composer found the remaining three poems in other collections. The resulting cycle therefore has a sense of movement about it, of twice gaining and finally leaving the comfort of the capital. In ‘Chanson d’Orkenise’, Poulenc had in mind the city of Autun, as he would in the Chansons villageoises written two years later. But this is not the city beautiful: the ‘vanupieds’ is cousin to the ‘mendiant’ of the later cycle, and the gates of the city close against him. After the smoky indolence of ‘Hôtel’ (surely Poulenc’s laziest song), we are fighting implacable winds on the desolate bogs of southern Belgium, even if the piano epilogue does give some comfort. Then ‘Voyage à Paris’, an even more boisterous version of ‘L’anguille’—Bernac and Poulenc liked to perform this song at the end of their exhausting concert tours, with home in sight. But finally … ‘Sanglots’. In later years Poulenc came to criticise some of the modulations as being ‘unexpected, and obviously so’. Do composers always know the value of their own music? Apollinaire’s language is, for once, enigmatic . But in some strange way Poulenc’s notes clarify it, if not always in detail, at least in its general thrust—melancholy, nostalgic, yet resigned, the regularly pulsing quavers assuring us that ‘my broken heart’ is indeed no different from ‘the heart of all men’. Then, on the phrase ‘la fin des temps’, Poulenc places a major chord. Writing in Paris in November 1940, was he saying that there would, eventually, be freedom, even if only in another world?

Recordings

Poulenc: The Complete Songs

Graham Johnson (piano)

CDA68021/44CDs for the price of 3

Graham Johnson is simply the greatest living authority on French song; an artist whose innate feeling for the music is combined with prodigious scholarship. Following his many wonderful recordings in Hyperion’s French Song Edition, Johnson turns t ...» More

Poulenc: The Complete Songs, Vol. 5

Malcolm Martineau (piano)

Studio Master: SIGCD333Download onlyStudio Master FLAC & ALAC downloads available

The fifth and final volume in the series includes fascinating early songs with accompaniments from instrumental ensembles every bit as diverse as Poulenc's inventiveness.» More

L'heure exquise

Alice Coote (mezzo-soprano), Graham Johnson (piano)

Studio Master: CDA67962Studio Master FLAC & ALAC downloads available

A French Songbook of distinction from the exquisite Alice Coote and Graham Johnson.» More

Poulenc: Voyage à Paris

Dame Felicity Lott (soprano), Graham Johnson (piano)

CDH55366

‘Highly desirable’ (BBC Record Review)
‘This record will enchant you. Best of the Month’ (Hi-Fi News)» More

Details

No 1: Chanson d'Orkenise Par les portes d’Orkenise

Ivan Ludlow (baritone), Graham Johnson (piano)

Track 26 on CDA68021/4 CD3 [1'35] 4CDs for the price of 3

Poulenc was very clear that he thought of this work as a set of songs, rather than a cycle. The composer put the words together for the set from two sources: poems (iii) and (v), long-time favourites, were taken from the main part of Il y a, that important posthumous collection (1925) of the poet’s works. Poulenc chanced on the texts for songs (ii) and (iv) in October 1940 as he nostalgically leafed through the literary reviews that he had collected in his adolescence: he alighted on Littérature for 8 October 1919 where five Apollinaire poems, (ii) and (iv) among them, were published under the title Banalités—so violà, now he had four poems to make a set and also a title. He now needed one more song with which to begin the cycle.

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.

Catherine Wyn-Rogers (mezzo-soprano), Malcolm Martineau (piano)

Track 21 on SIGCD333 [1'33] Download only

No 2: Hôtel Ma chambre a la forme d'une cage

Sarah-Jane Brandon (soprano), Graham Johnson (piano)

Track 27 on CDA68021/4 CD3 [1'52] 4CDs for the price of 3

Alice Coote (mezzo-soprano), Graham Johnson (piano)

Track 21 on CDA67962 [1'45]

Dame Felicity Lott (soprano), Graham Johnson (piano)

Track 6 on CDH55366 [1'52]

Catherine Wyn-Rogers (mezzo-soprano), Malcolm Martineau (piano)

Track 22 on SIGCD333 [1'49] Download only

No 3: Fagnes de Wallonie Tant de tristesses plénières

Ivan Ludlow (baritone), Graham Johnson (piano)

Track 28 on CDA68021/4 CD3 [1'35] 4CDs for the price of 3

Catherine Wyn-Rogers (mezzo-soprano), Malcolm Martineau (piano)

Track 23 on SIGCD333 [1'31] Download only

No 4: Voyage à Paris Ah! la charmante chose

Sarah-Jane Brandon (soprano), Graham Johnson (piano)

Track 29 on CDA68021/4 CD3 [0'56] 4CDs for the price of 3

Alice Coote (mezzo-soprano), Graham Johnson (piano)

Track 20 on CDA67962 [0'58]

Dame Felicity Lott (soprano), Graham Johnson (piano)

Track 1 on CDH55366 [0'50]

Catherine Wyn-Rogers (mezzo-soprano), Malcolm Martineau (piano)

Track 24 on SIGCD333 [1'00] Download only

No 5: Sanglots Notre amour est réglé par les calmes étoiles

Ivan Ludlow (baritone), Graham Johnson (piano)

Track 30 on CDA68021/4 CD3 [4'30] 4CDs for the price of 3

Notre amour est réglé par les calmes étoiles
Or nous savons qu’en nous beaucoup d’hommes respirent
Qui vinrent de très loin et sont un sous nos fronts
C’est la chanson des rêveurs
Qui s’étaient arraché le cœur
Et le portaient dans la main droite
Souviens-t’en cher orgueil de tous ces souvenirs
Des marins qui chantaient comme des conquérants
Des gouffres de Thulé des tendres cieux d’Ophir
Des malades maudits de cieux qui fuient leur ombre
Et du retour joyeux des heureux émigrants
De ce cœur il coulait du sang
Et le rêveur allait pensant
À sa blessure délicate
Tu ne briseras pas la chaîne de ces causes
Et douloureuse et nous disait
Qui sont les effets d’autres causes
Mon pauvre cœur mon cœur brisé
Pareil au cœur de tous les hommes
Voici voici nos mains que la vie fit esclaves
Est mort d’amour ou c’est tout comme
Est mort d’amour et le voici
Ainsi vont toutes choses
Arrachez donc le vôtre aussi
Et rien ne sera libre jusqu’à la fin des temps
Laissons tout aux morts
Et cachons nos sanglots

Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918)

The poem was written in 1917 and appeared in Il y a. Poulenc composed Sanglots in 1940. It is the most Éluard-like of Poulenc’s Apollinaire settings (although it was the populist Voyage à Paris that was actually dedicated to Éluard). Two poems are here woven together, or superimposed one on the other—the first written in expansive alexandrines, the second, more personal, less metaphorical, in octosyllables. It was with the poem’s dual shape in mind that Pierre Bernac used to teach this song, encouraging singers carefully to differentiate two kinds of declamation by obeying the subtle tempo markings and observing the terraced dynamics.

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.

Catherine Wyn-Rogers (mezzo-soprano), Malcolm Martineau (piano)

Track 25 on SIGCD333 [4'27] Download only

A sa blessure délicate
Tu ne briseras pas la chaîne de ces causes
Et douloureuse et nous disait
Qui sont les effets d’autres causes
Mon pauvre coeur mon coeur brisé
Pareil au coeur de tous les hommes
Voici voici nos mains que la vie fit esclaves
Est mort d’amour ou c’est tout comme
Est mort d’amour et le voici
Ainsi vont toutes choses, Arrachez donc le vôtre aussi
Et rien ne sera libre jusqu’à la fin des temps
Laissons tout aux morts
Et cachons nos sanglots

Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918)

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