Academic literature on the topic 'Poulenc, Francis (1899-1963)'

Francis Poulenc has made a significant contribution to twentieth century repertoire for voice and piano. Many of his songs are published in collections under a single title. These collections are often referred to as cycles, but they do not always fall into the definition of a song cycle in the traditional sense. The goal of this paper is to disclose a cyclic nature on a structural level in the music of Banalités, using Tel jour telle nuit as a model for critical examination of both works. The introduction to the thesis addresses both the problem of defining a song cycle, and the implications such a definition has on categorizing the works Banalités and Tel jour telle nuit. Chapter One explores influences of composers, teachers and artistic movements on Poulenc's early life and outlines his significant compositional periods. In addition, this chapter cites specific works indicative of a maturation process in Poulenc's approach to vocal settings. Chapter Two investigates the poetic texts of Banalités and Tel jour telle nuit. Guillaume Apollinaire and Paul Eluard were integral figures in the developments of Surrealism and its formation as an artistic movement. The chapter analyses the linkage between the poems within each work, offering interpretive solutions. Chapter Three, which constitutes the main body of the paper, provides a detailed analysis of the general architecture and shape of each cycle in terms of formal structure, harmonic and melodic language, and text-music relationships. The analysis reveals that both cycles are highly integrated and unified through various devices, such as literal restatement of materials, intervallic relationships and stylistic resemblances at the levels of texture, tempo and tonal structure. Moreover, metric aspects of both poetry and music are shown to also contribute to that integration. In light of this investigation, unifying devices of both a covert and overt nature testify to the cyclic nature of Banalités and Tel jour telle nuit, yet point to the different type of cycle each work outlines. This conclusion helps the performers to convey the unity of the song cycles, thus doing justice to the sense in which Poulenc conceived the works.
Arts, Faculty of
Music, School of
Graduate

A partir de l'étude des ballets et des opéras de Francis Poulenc, cette thèse démontre l'importance de la production dramatique du compositeur (intérêt portés à l'ensemble des arts sollicités, recherche systématique d'un livret à mettre en musique compositions musicales parmi les plus abouties de son catalogue). Cette thèse commence par l'étude des ballets, occupant chronologiquement la première partie de la production de Poulenc, avant de s'intéresser au théâtre lyrique, que le compositeur abordera à partir des années quarante
This thesis, studying ballets and operas of Francis Poulenc, proves that the stage works constituted a very important part of Poulenc’s production. This thesis begins by studying ballets, first composed, and continues with opera's analysis

Notre projet a pour but de mettre en lumière les sources documentaires de Dialogues des Carmélites, la deuxième œuvre lyrique de Francis Poulenc (1899-1963). Le parcours vers la version « ultime » de cette œuvre fut si compliqué que le compositeur a laissé de nombreux documents à examiner. De plus, Poulenc a effectué plusieurs fois la révision de la musique, surtout pour la création milanaise de janvier 1957, mais aussi pour la création parisienne en juin de la même année. Dialogues des Carmélites est une œuvre dont les « versions définitives » ont été souvent rejetées par le compositeur lui-même. Nos analyses sont organisées autour des deux grands axes suivants : l’un est les recherches et les analyses des sources documentaires, l’autre est l’analyse de la musique à travers des partitions manuscrites et imprimées. Dans le premier chapitre, nous abordons l’aspect chronologique documentaire du sujet en montrant les sources intéressantes touchant notre compositeur. De nombreuses sources et leurs particularités, notamment les partitions et les listes de remaniement que nous traitons dans cette étude nous ont permis de cerner la chronologie de la composition de cet opéra. Dans le deuxième chapitre, nous examinons l’écriture musicale du compositeur et sa progression dans l’œuvre. Le dernier chapitre concerne principalement la réception de l’œuvre. Les critiques de la presse nous montrent la réaction internationale et française aux créations de l’œuvre, qui est accueillie par de nombreux spectateurs aujourd’hui encore dans le monde entier
Our project intends to bring to light the documentary sources for Dialogues des Carmélites, Francis Poulenc’s second opera. The road to the « definitive » version of this work was so complicated that the composer’s documents left to analyse are numerous. Furthermore, Poulenc himself often reviewed the music, particularly for the January 1957 Milanese creation, as well as for the June 1957 Parisian creation. Indeed, Dialogues des Carmélites is a work whose « definitive versions » have often been rejected by their composer. Our analyses are organised around two main axes: one pertains the researches and analyses of the documentary sources, the other concerns the study of the music through the handwritten and printed scores. In the first chapter, we tackle the chronological documentary aspect of the topic, showing the interesting sources concerning the composer. The abundance of these sources and their peculiarities, with particular reference to the scores and the reworking lists, will allow us to define the compositional chronology of this opera. In the second chapter, we examine the composer’s musical notation and its progression in Dialogues des Carmélites. Finally, the last chapter focuse mainly on the reception of the audiences. Press reviews will illustrate the international and French reactions to the various creations of the opera, a work still widely praised all over the world

Francis Poulenc's one-character opera La Voix humaine (1958), a setting of the homonymous play by Jean Cocteau, explores the psychological complexities of an unnamed woman as she experiences the end of a romantic relationship. During the forty-minute work, she sings in a declamatory manner into a telephone, which serves as a sign of the unrevealed man at the other end. Poulenc uses musical motives to underscore the woman's changing emotional states as she recalls her past relationship. The musical dramaturgy in this work resignifies Debussy's impressionist symbolism by collapsing devices used in Pelléas et Mélisande in a language that shifts between octatonicism, chromaticism, harmonic and melodic whole tone passages, and diatonicism. This late work recontextualizes elements in Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmélites (1953-56), and the end of the opera provides a theme for his Sonate pour Clarinet et Piano(1962), as Poulenc reflects on his youthful encounters with Cocteau, Erik Satie, and Les Six.

The opera bouffe Les mamelles de Tiresias (1944) by Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) stands at the crossroad between the composer's formative and mature works. The opera exhibits a number of harmonic features characteristics of Poulenc's eclectic, idiosyncratic style. This thesis attempts to address the lack of attention given this work in particular and Poulenc's output in general.
The thesis consists of two volumes. Volume I contains the introduction, three chapters and the conclusion. Volume 2 contains musical examples, analytical graphs and reproductions of Act 1, Scenes 1 and 2, and Act 2, Scenes 7 and 8 from the piano-vocal score of Les mamelles de Tiresias.
The first chapter of Volume 1 reviews two Ph.D. dissertations that examine Poulenc's harmonic language; and summarizes the more recent analyses by Vivan Wood, Pamela Poulin and Keith Daniels. Figures (the musical examples) for Chapter 1 are given in Volume 2.
Chapter 2 of Volume 1 examines the large-scale harmonic organization in pivotal scenes that are representative of the musical language in the opera.
Chapter 3 of Volume I extends Warren Werner's and Richard Bobbitt's approach to show how local events and large-scale harmonic motions can be viewed as leitmotives that symbolize key events in the drama. Figures (the musical examples) and Graphs (the analytical graphs) for Chapter 3 are given in Volume 2.
The conclusion reviews there observations of the study and makes some general remarks about Poulenc's harmonic language. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Though Poulenc marks choral compositions with metronomic indications, there are problems concerning tempo. The purpose of this paper is to determine guidelines for dealing with choral tempo. Chapter II relates biographical information pertinent to the study. Style Is examined In Chapter III, determining aspects that call tempo marks into question and influence tempo determination. In Chapter IV, the manner in which Poulenc uses tempo indications in the choral works is analysed and the relationship between form and tempo examined. Chapter V records Information bearing upon tempo from Poulenc's collaboration with conductors, as well as examining recordings of Poulenc's music in which he played or with which he expressed approval. Guidelines for determining tempo are stated in Chapter VI.

Intermittent du spectacle, le piano poulencquien déconcerte par son fol éclectisme. Pourquoi un tel morcellement ? Traumas primitifs, cyclothymie, libido perturbée constituent les indices d'une personnalité ambivalente. Le sujet résonnant, clive, tente de contenir les morceaux épars d'une unité menacée : entre articulation et désarticulation du langage tonal, sa psyché balance. Pour s'essayer et s'écouter, le musicien se colle au piano : chez lui, temps individuel et collectif croisent les doigts sur le clavier bien fantasmé du corps et de l'affectivité ballades entre les sautes d'humeurs d'un imaginaire et d'une histoire "en noir et blanc". Époques de chevauchement, de double comportement, de mouvement arrêté, Poulenc en fut le jouet-reflet : né d'un temps en pleine mutation, le musicien s'éveilla aux feux d'une création ivre de lumière, dans un monde trouble assoiffé de catastrophes inhumanitaires. Hanté par le souvenir des disparus, il tenta d'échapper à la chronicité de ses angoisses en pérennisant un art "intemporel" des correspondances. C'est dans l'éternel recommencement d'une histoire aliénante que le musicien joua anachroniquement à la métaphore du temps perdu-retrouvé : son piano interpelait expressivement un passé tout surpris de modernité ; de sautes d'humeurs en "fautes" de styles, le compositeur fit dans l'arrière-avant garde. Née d'une déchirure primitive conflictuelle, l'ambivalence poulencquienne trouva temporairement sa résolution dans l'expression ré-équilibrante de parcours musicaux archaïques. C'est parce que Poulenc, à son corps défendant, dit avoir "raté" sa production pianistique qu'elle révèle en négatif les ressorts les plus enfouis de son imaginaire. A la jonction du sensible et de l'intelligible, main dans la main, les couples ambivalents identité/altérité, intériorité/extériorité, individualité/supra-individualité s'équivoquent sur la scène imaginaire d'un entre-temps chorégraphique intériorisé, à jamais défait, toujours à refaire
Poulenc's intermittent piano disconcerts with its bewildering eclecticism. Why such a fragmentation? Primeval traumas, cyclothymia, a disturbed libido, are the signs of an ambivalent personality. The resonant, divided subject tries to contain the scattered pieces of a threatened unity: between the articulation and disarticulation of tonal language, his psyche wavers. To test himself and to listen to himself, the musician adheres to the piano: with him, individual time and collective time cross hands on the fantasized keyboard of the body and of affectivity which are wandering from the whims of his imagination and his/story "in black and white". Times of overlapping, of dual behaviour, of suspended movement, Poulenc is their plaything and reflection: born in times of great change, the musician awakened to the fires of a creation eager for light, in a shady world thirsting for inhuman catastrophes. Haunted by the memory of the departed, he tried to escape his chronic anxieties by perpetuating a "timeless" art of correspondences. In the eternal renewal of an alienating story, the musician played in an anachronistic way with the metaphor of time lost and found: his piano expressively referred to a past which was quite surprised at modernity; from whims to stylistic "mistakes", the composer dealt in the rear-avant-garde. Originating from a conflictual primeval split, Poulenc's ambivalence temporarily found its resolution in the stabilizing expression of archaic musical courses. Because Poulenc unwillingly says he has "failed" in his piano production, it reveals like a negative the most hidden workings of his imagination. At the meeting-point of the sensitive and the intelligible, hand in hand, the ambivalent pairs identity/otherness, inferiority/exteriority, individuality/ supra-individuality, become equivocal on the imaginary stage of an interiorized choreographic time-in-between which is forever undone and always to be done again

This thesis is a brief study of profane a capella works for mixed chorus by Francis Poulenc, the well known componist of the first half of twentieth century. On one hand the work descriebes his basic living moments important for his life and artistic work. On the other it analyze his profane works which was written for the mixed chorus a capella, i.e. without any instrumental accompaniment, reflecting mainly its musical form, harmonical structure and his technigue of composition.

A contribution to the study of the female lyrical monodrama. Pour femme seule de l'histoire de la musique. L'exemple reste unique -comme son personnage- jusqu'en 1958, date a laquelle francis poulenc ecrit la voix humaine. En 1983, charles chaynes compose erzsebet. En un siecle qui voit la naissance du genre, seuls trois monodrames lyriques sont crees. Cette mise en situation originale de la solitude lyrique est-elle le reflet d'une epoque ou celui d'une situation de detresse et d'abandon personnels du createur ? l'enfermement dramatique de l'heroine dans une foret ou dans une chambre de femme n'est-il pas la projection d'une situation vecue par tous sur une scene qui devient alors un lieu de parole, un lieu d'analyse, un lieu d'exorcisme ? par l'acte gratuit de parole, la femme exprime des constantes qui nous ont permis de degager un premier axe de travail litteraire : souffrance, nevrose, psychose, hysterie, schizophrenie, sang, du rapport maitre-esclave. . . Mais cette femme s'exprime avant tout par une voix qui chante : le deuxieme axe s'interesse a la "mise en opera" de cette souffrance et solitude communes. L'absence d'autres personnages impose au compositeur des choix musicaux particuliers qui donnent au monodrame toute sa specificite, celle d'etre un lieu d'experience et de liberte (atonalite, athematisme), un opera du mouvement interieur ou le contraste dynamique-attente est a l'ecoute exclusive de la sensibilite desesperee d'une femme, un opera "expressionniste". En conclusion, malgre la difficulte du pari de la solitude que d'autres tenteront peut-etre dans leur sillage, ces trois operas pour femme seule sont des
Oeuvres originales dont le succes est incontestable. Opera for a single female voice in the history of music. This work was to remain unique -as well as its characteruntil 1958 when francis poulenc wrote the human voice. Then, in 1983, charles chaynes composed erzsebet. Even though the genre originated in this century. Only three lyrical monodramas have been created. Could this original setting of lyrical solitude appear as the reflection of an age or the creator's personal sense of distress and loss ? isn't this dramatic confinement of the heroin in a forest or in a room. The projection of a situation experienced by all on a stage which then becomes a place for speech, for analysis, for exorcism ? when we nalyse the woman's gratuitous words, we find she expresses certain permanent features which, first of all, allow us to extract specific literary themes : suffering, neurosis, psychosis, hysteria, schizophrenia, blood, the relationship between master and slave. Yet, this woman expresses herself through song : and we can then examine how the musical setting conveys this solitude and suffering. The absence of other characters imposes to the composers certain particular choices which give the monodrama its specificity : it is a place for experiment and freedom (atonal music without themes) and an opera of internal movement depends exclusively on the desperate sensitivity of a woman. To conclude, in spite of all the difficulties of the genre, which can be seen as a forerunner, this 'expressionist" opera is undoubtedly a

Abstract To the average Englishman, Francis Poulenc’s music may have appeared that of the typical French composer: witty, daring, sentimental, naughty. In fact Francis was very easily depressed, shockable, unsure, and liable to panic. No one who saw it will ever forget his agony in a boat on Thorpeness Meare, and it was really his horror of the sea which finally stopped him from coming back to Aldeburgh in 1958 to play in Tiresias.1 He was always re-writing his music and he burnt his only String Quartet.Which is not to say that he had not a strong personality. He was not ashamed to admire and to borrow-Mozart, Chabrier, Stravinsky, Mussorgsky-but the result was very definitely Poulenc. He proudly called himself Latin, yet admitted that instinct was his guide. He put a high value on Sincerity: he was himself too innocent to be insincere. The two sides of his art (as represented by the Stabat Mater2 and Les Mamelles) were supposed to be very clearly and consciously juxtaposed; on the contrary it was one of his most adorable qualities that he was incapable of being anything but himself-a delightful friend and a lovable musician.