Francis Poulenc: Articles and Interviews

Notes from the Heart

Nicolas Southon, Roger Nichols

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317133322
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Médias et arts de la scène
• Subtopic: Histoire et critiques de la musique

'He plays the piano well, ' wrote the society hostess Mme de Saint-Marceaux in her diary on 18 March 1927. 'His compositions are not devoid of talent but he's not a genius, and I'm afraid he thinks he is.' Intelligent though the lady was, she got this one spectacularly wrong. Poulenc has in fact outpaced his colleagues in Les Six by many a mile, as singers and instrumentalists all over the world will attest, and while he would never have accepted the title of 'genius', preferring 'artisan', a genius is increasingly what he appears to have been. Part of the answer lay in always being his own man, and this independence of spirit shows through in his writings and interviews just as brightly as in his music, whether it's boasting that he'd be happy never to hear The Mastersingers ever again, pointing out that what critics condemn as the 'formlessness' of French music is one of its delights, voicing his outrage at attempts to 'finish' the Unfinished Symphony, writing 'in praise of banality' - or remembering the affair of Debussy's hat. And in every case, his intelligence, humour and generosity of spirit help explain why he was so widely and deeply loved. This volume comprises selected articles from Francis Poulenc: J'écris ce qui me chante (Fayard, 2011) edited by Nicholas Southon. Many of these articles and interviews have not been available in English before and Roger Nichols's translation, capturing the very essence of Poulenc's lively writing style, makes more widely accessible this significant contribution to Poulenc scholarship.

PART I Articles

DOI: 10.4324/9781315583006-1

Article I Le Coq and Le Coq Parisien: May–November 1920

DOI: 10.4324/9781315583006-2

The magazine Le Coq was put together by the members of the group Les Six (Poulenc, Auric, Durey, Honegger, Milhaud and Tailleferre) and especially by Jean Cocteau, their theoretician and promoter. ¹ The idea behind it was launched on 6 March 1920 at a dinner paid for by François Bernouard, who went on to publish the periodical. Printed on poster paper folded into six and in a fantastical typography inspired by that of the Dadaist writings, the magazine looked like a tract. A notice, probably by Cocteau, defined it as follows: ‘Le Coq is not the manifesto of any school. It is a leaflet in which six composers of different tastes, joined in friendship, express themselves. That this friendship should find its energy in a shared tendency differently understood, goes without saying. These composers are joined by poets and painters who are in sympathy with them’ (Le Coq, no. 2). These included Satie, Max Jacob, Raymond Radiguet, Paul Morand, Lucien Daudet, Blaise Cendrars, Roger de la Fresnaye and Marie Laurencin. Le Coq lasted for only four numbers, the last two called Le Coq Parisien. It was an offshoot or a continuation of Cocteau’s little pamphlet Le Coq et l’Arlequin, published in 1918, a brilliant collection of aphorisms intended to defend the ballet Parade (with scenario by Cocteau and music by Satie) and appealing for a musical aesthetic that was French, clear and economical, and that turned its back on Romanticism, to which Debussyism and Impressionism were indebted. The passages below are those for which Poulenc was the signatory, or one of them:

***

Le Coq, no. 1, May 1920

M. Marnold goes on writing as the beard of the dead goes on growing; ² We shall never give you any works. ³

Francis Poulenc

By trying to separate us, people like Bernier and Braga only bring us closer to one another. The publicity they talk about, they’re the ones who are making it for us. As for Henri Collet, we barely know him. His articles were a surprise and we thank him for his clairvoyance. ⁴

Tailleferre, Durey. Auric, Honegger. Poulenc, Milhaud, Cocteau

Arnold Schönberg, the 6 composers salute you. ⁵

Le Coq, no. 2, June 1920

Auric’s Fox-Trot does not ape a fox-trot. ⁶ It is the portrait of a fox-trot. ⁷ It’s not for dancing, it’s for listening. It can be criticised from the point of view of photography, but as a portrait it is a perfect work. It should serve as an example to all those composers who are happy to deform a modern dance. Francis Poulenc.

Cocteau has never intended to become our theoretician. ⁸

F. Poulenc

‘Popular Accent’, Le Coq Parisien, no. 4, November 1920

A vulgar tune is good if it works. I love Roméo, Faust, Manon and even the songs of Mayol. ⁹

Refinement nearly always makes modern French composers lose their popular accent. When refinement and this accent combine in a country (as they do with the Russians) then that country finally possesses its own music.

Francis Poulenc

Notes

1. The ‘Groupe des Six’ was so called from a pair of articles by the critic Henri Collet in the periodical Comoedia on 16 and 23 January 1920, in which he wrote of the ‘six Frenchmen’ as a reference to the ‘five Russians’ (see note 4 below).
2. The music critic Jean Marnold (1859–1935) was a friend of Ravel, which gave Les Six an initial reason for confronting him. His reviews of their early works were not in fact hostile, but Poulenc detected in them ‘a mixture of incomprehension and sober advice’ (letter to Milhaud of 9 July 1919, Correspondance, p. 96) which, in his view, signalled Marnold’s opposition to short musical forms.
3. In the final number of the periodical appear these two sentences by Cocteau: ‘The Critics ask us for works. I ask them for ears.’
4. It is highly likely nonetheless that the two articles in which Collet wrote about the ‘six Frenchmen’ were suggested to him by Cocteau. At the end of September 1919 at the latest, Cocteau wrote to the critic: ‘Most of the music of our group is unpublished. The best thing would be to put you in contact with the composers […] Have you read Le Coq et l’Arlequin, a kind of undercover programme […]? A lot of new works will be given this winter. I’m delighted to know that Comoedia will notice them as it should’ (quoted in Jean Roy, Le Groupe des Six, Paris, Seuil, 1994, Solfèges, p. 7). We also know that Honegger met Collet on 8 January 1920 in Milhaud’s apartment.
5. This sentence is not signed, but Poulenc confirmed to Stéphane Audel at the end of his life that it came from Paul Morand (My Friends and Myself, p. 22).
6. Georges Auric’s ‘Fox-Trot’ for piano, Adieu New-York! is emblematic of Les Six’s aesthetic, as are Poulenc’s Cocardes.
7. [Almost certainly Poulenc here was quoting Diaghilev’s remark about Ravel’s La Valse, when the composer played it to him on two pianos with Marcelle Meyer the previous month, an occasion at which Poulenc was present. After giving signs of impatience during the performance (fiddling with his monocle, rattling his false teeth), the impresario finally pronounced: ‘Ravel, it is not a ballet. It is the portrait of a ballet.’ It is perhaps typical of Poulenc’s ironical turn of mind that he should change Diaghilev’s uncomplimentary use of the phrase into a complimentary one … RN.]
8. This phrase, like many of those published in Le Coq, or Le Coq Parisien, was undoubtedly spoken by Cocteau, who declared shortly afterwards: ‘I’ve never been your theoretician, Le Coq et l’Arlequin came before we met’ (‘Lettre ouverte à mes amis’, Comoedia, 10 January 1922, p. 1); this was not quite true, since the meetings of the ‘Nouveaux Jeunes’, from which Les Six emerged, were contemporary with the writing of Le Coq et l’Arlequin.
9. The singer Félix Mayol (1872–1941) was one of the last performers of the café-concert.

Article II ‘On Igor Stravinsky's “Mavra”’, Feuilles libres, no. 27, June–July 1922, section ‘La musique’, pp. 222–224

DOI: 10.4324/9781315583006-3

The numerous attacks Stravinsky’s opera buffa Mavra suffered after its premiere in June 1922 led Poulenc to write in its defence.¹

***

The ‘musical left’ smells decidedly musty. One thing is certain – Mavra has confirmed what Parade led us to suspect, that there exists a ‘pre-war critical attitude’, but that there is not yet in evidence one that is capable of judging the music of the present.

That is a pity, because the latest works of Stravinsky, like those of Satie, are in sore need of intelligent commentators to persuade the public to accept them, and then to explain them. At the time of The Rite of Spring, the opinion of someone like Vuillermoz provided the standard. The same does not apply today, since Vuillermoz has, for two years now, consistently given proof that he and his colleagues belong to the past. ²

So what does it matter if he finds that Stravinsky ‘lacks melody’?

What is more serious is to see that the younger critics, with the exception of M. Roland Manuel, are no longer listening to Stravinsky’s music. ³ M. Maurice Bex, for example, declares in the Revue hebdomadaire on 17 June that he can find nothing in Mavra except ‘a torrent of syncopations’, ‘organised disorder’ and ‘sudden leaps that are as nice to listen to as it is fun to watch a puppy playing around.’ ⁴

It is to be regretted that Monsieur Bex did not listen more carefully to this score which, on the contrary, is a splendid example of logic and precision.

Another critic finds ‘the orchestration heavy and vulgar’, as though the use of a wind band was not something deliberately chosen by the composer. ⁵

It is sad to see a work of Mavra’s artistic importance delivered up to the scalpels of writers on music from the Ecole normale supérieure, who are interested only in the planar or polytonal tics of MM. X and Y.

‘Composers are made up,’ Satie used to say, ‘of poseurs and poets. The former pull the wool over the eyes of the public and the critics.’ It did not need Mavra, my dear Stravinsky, to convince me that you are a true poet. But this marvellous work merely serves to increase the immense admiration I have felt for your music since the day when, in 1913, and still a boy, I was overwhelmed by The Rite of Spring. ⁶

Ten years have gone by since then and now the public acclaims this work that once it detested from the bottom of its heart. More than that, it demands from Stravinsky a new ‘Rite’, even ‘more modern’ and more polyphonic, not realizing that a masterpiece is a point on the line. But Stravinsky, like Picasso and all powerful artists, scorns to go on mining the same vein. He changes form and technique with every work; make no mistake, Mavra is the beginning of a new manner.

Many people think Mavra is a parody of the style of Rossini and Verdi. Nothing could be further from the truth. Music contains an ‘operatic form’ as it does a ‘sonata form’ or a ‘rondo form’. Everyone is free to make use of it. Stravinsky is merely reviving the Glinka–Tchaikovsky tradition, in the same way that one might hope our French composers would follow that of Gounod-Bizet.

There is no doubt that Glinka and Tchaikovsky are both great composers.

Why then reproach Stravinsky for taking them as a model?

Ultimately it is the harmony of Mavra that is under attack for its lack of originality. It is amusing on this front to observe that the composers of the post-Debussy generation, drunk on ‘rare harmonies’, have got into the habit of finding perfect cadences banal.

We have reached a period of levelling-out in which we see every chord as being on the same plane. Therefore it is in another area that we have to look for novelty.

In Mavra, Stravinsky has addressed all his efforts to the system of modulation. It is through the horizontal juxtaposition of distant keys that he has obtained a kind of music that is precise, springy and decidedly tonal (a rare quality these days). No critic has remarked on that. You can see, the ear drums are hardening.

So, you gentlemen with your red cards, think carefully before placing your bets – there’s still time: if not, we shall be obliged to arrange two rows of orchestra stalls for you at the Opéra, behind the season-ticket holders of the Jockey Club and the Union of Artists. ⁷

Notes

1. Stravinsky’s opera buffa Mavra, on a libretto by Boris Kochno after Pushkin’s The Little House at Kolomna, was given privately in a concert version at the Hôtel Continental on 27 May and publicly by Diaghilev’s troup at the Paris Opéra on 3 June 1922. Poulenc saw in Mavra an example of the neoclassical aesthetic he proceeded to follow.
2. The music critic Emile Vuillermoz (1878–1960) had been a composition pu...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface to the Translation
• Acknowledgements
• Translator’s Note
• Introduction
• Part I: Articles
• Part III: Contributions to Works by Others
• Part V: Lectures
• Part VI: Interviews
• Part VII: Interviews with Claude Rostand
• Index