Francis Poulenc: Articles and Interviews: Notes from the Heart.

Clifton, Keith E.

Francis Poulenc: Articles and Interviews: Notes from the Heart. Collected, introduced and annotated by Nicolas Southon. Translated by Roger Nichols. Burlington, Vt: Ashgate, 2014. [ix, 313 p. ISBN 978-1-4094-6622-2. $109.95]

Although letters often provide a window into a composer's musical tastes, artistic beliefs, personal relationships, and the creative process itself--consider the extant correspondence of Monteverdi, Mozart, or Beethoven--public writings are frequently given short shrift. Formal music criticism owes its origin to the 1830s and Schumann's contributions for Der Komet and the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik, with later composers including Hugo Wolf and Franz Liszt continuing the trend. French criticism also enjoys a distinguished legacy extending from Berlioz and Saint-Saens to Debussy, who wrote articles and reviews for several journals, revealing candid opinions on a variety of topics Cincluding an ambivalence toward Wagner, a trait he shares with Poulenc). (1)

Moving beyond the world-changing effects of World War I, Poulenc's articles, interviews, and lectures--more than 100 in total--have gone largely unrecognized outside of specialist circles, perhaps because they lack the incendiary tint of Boulez (a seminal writer in the post-Debussy generation), while reflecting an adherence to tonality in an era where such traditionalism was often viewed with suspicion. Since English versions of Poulenc's contributions often prove difficult to locate, Nicolas Southon's collection is a welcome and overdue addition to the growing literature on the composer. (2) Drawn from Southon's larger collection of Poulenc's writing, J'ecris ce qui me chante (hereafter J'ecris), the present volume provides a representative selection, roughly one third of the original tome, extending across Poulenc's creative life from the origins of Les Six around 1920 through a series of interviews given two years before his death in 1963. (3)

Organized into seven large sections, Francis Poulenc reveals the composer's determination to retain a unique compositional voice despite outside pressure, with many entries tempered by lively wit. One lecture from 1935 published in Conferencia shows Poulenc's profound musical debt to piano teacher Ricardo Vines, regret at never knowing Debussy, and disdain for the French penchant of blending jazz with concert music. Here and elsewhere, he is not above challenging the work of others, including Ravel and Milhaud, a personal friend and colleague. In the same lecture, his Janus-faced musical personality--trapped between the serious and the profane--is revealed when he quipped that "I need a certain musical vulgarity as a plant lives on compost" (p. 101).

But it's not all fun and games, especially when defending those he most admired. Risking his own reputation in 1922 by supporting Stravinsky's Mavra (a failure in the estimation of most critics), he noted how the work epitomized a "new manner" (p. 22), reviving the tradition of Glinka and Tchaikovsky. As Poulenc outlined in one of his best-known articles ("In Praise of Banality," 1935), artists should not resist drawing inspiration from what has come before, since "being afraid of what's been heard already is quite often proof of impotence" (p. 28).

Most readers would be surprised to learn of Poulenc's respect for serialism and musique concrete, compositional styles he avoided in his own work. In an interview with journalist Claude Rostand--one of eighteen recorded conversations taped between October 1953 and April 1954 and transcribed here in English for the first time--admiration for serial composers (especially Berg) is evident, "even if I think serial composition is closer to the German temperament than to ours" (p. 282). The same support extended to Olivier Messiaen, whose Trois petites Liturgies (1945) inspired fierce press diatribes over the appropriateness of combining spiritual texts with avant-garde music. Poulenc's 1946 article for Le Litteraire emerged as a key document defending the younger composer.

The most fascinating parts of the book concern Poulenc's views on his own compositions, including the ballet Les Biches with its flimsy plot, and an unequivocal disdain for keyboard pieces, including Mouvements perpetuels, today one of his most popular and frequently performed. For a compact discussion of selected songs and their poets, see "My Songs and Their Poets", pp. 105-111. (4) Interviews published in the journals Arts and La nouvelle Republique, respectively, on the origin of the monodrama La Voix humaine (1959) with text by Jean Cocteau, make for spirited reading. While attending a La Scala performance featuring Maria Callas, publisher Herve Dugardin suggested that Poulenc should write an opera for her. The composer, who admired Callas, was already planning an opera based on Cocteau's play and insisted that only Denise Duval, his preferred soprano, should sing the female lead. Following the shorter monodrama La Dame de Monte Carlo in 1961, he intended to collaborate with Cocteau on a "larger work for the theater" (p. 174), which regrettably never came to fruition.

Poulenc's reverence for Mozart, Schubert, Chopin, Ravel, and Stravinsky notwithstanding, it is equally instructive to read comments about composers who "have never touched my heart" (p. 96). Among these are Brahms, Wagner and, perhaps surprisingly, Faure. In an outspoken conversation from 1953 or 1954 with Rostand titled "Musical Likes and Dislikes," Poulenc reveals that he is "allergic" to Faure's music and that the Requiem--perhaps the most popular French choral work of the 19th century--is "one of the only things in music that I hate," without disclosing precisely why (p. 276). At the same time, Poulenc eloquently states his admiration for painters (Matisse, Picasso, Braque, and Klee above all) as well as the poets Apollinaire, Jacob, and Eluard, whose texts he set on multiple occasions.

Despite numerous merits and generally solid copyediting, a few quibbles deserve mention. The central series of plates--uncredited, with some reproduced in higher resolution in other sources--are not of the same standard as the rest of the monograph. Particularly egregious are poor-quality versions of well-known images featuring the composer with Denise Duval and a portrait of Les Six with Cocteau. For a book this pricey, I expected better. As in J'ecris, there is an index but no separate bibliography. Comparing this edition to Poulenc's French texts, it is apparent that the everreliable Roger Nichols has done a commendable job preserving the spirit of the composer's lively prose while providing annotations, footnotes, and valuable context. Even so, it would have been instructive to include brief selections from the original sources.

These concerns aside, Southon's splendid collection deserves a place in every academic music library and on the shelves of scholars, performers, and devotees of the composer. Since J'ecris is not widely available and is rather cumbersome to navigate, having these selections in English is a substantial boon for anyone interested in Poulenc's music. Too often residing in the shadow of his predecessors, Francis Poulenc has begun to receive the scholarly attention his rich and eclectic output deserves. As such, Southon and Nichols's important work both complements the existing literature and goes a long way toward a deeper understanding of this gifted composer in all his nuanced complexity.

Keith E. Clifton

Central Michigan University

(1.) These appeared primarily in La Revue blanche and Gil blas. For a reliable English edition, see Debussy on Music: The Critical Writings of the Great French Composer, collected and introduced by Francois Lesure, translated and edited by Richard Langham Smith (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977).

(2.) Selections from Poulenc's letters are available in Correspondance, 1910-1963, ed. Myriam Chimenes (Paris: Fayard, 1994) and Echo and Source: Selected Correspondance: 1915-1963, edited and translated by Sidney Buckland (London: Victor Gollancz, 1991).

(3.) Francis Poulenc, J'ecris ce qui me chante. Textes et entretiens reunis, presentes et annotes par Nicolas Southon (Paris: Fayard, 2011).

(4.) In Journal de mes Melodies (Paris: Editions Bernard Grasset, 1964), Poulenc provides valuable commentary on his many songs, sets, and cycles. An English edition is available as Diary of my Songs, translated by Winifred Radford (London: Victor Gollancz, 1985).