●★ Fransis Poulenc:Sonata for Clarinet & Piano ★●
● Allegro tristament
● Romenza(tres calrm)
● Allegro confuoco
((Plays by Fazil Say & Sabine Meyer))
(French Composer
1899-1963)
Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc (French
pronunciation: [fʀɑ̃sis ʒɑ̃ maʀsɛl pulɛ̃k];
January 7, 1899 – January 30, 1963) was a French
composer and a member of the French group Les
Six. He composed music in genres, including art
song, chamber
music, oratorio, opera,
ballet
music, and orchestral music. Critic Claude Rostand, in a July 1950 Paris-Presse article, described Poulenc as "half
monk, half delinquent" ("le moine et le voyou"), a tag that was to be attached
to his name for the rest of his career. [1] Poulenc was born in Paris
in 1899. His mother, an amateur pianist, taught him to play and music formed a
part of family life. He was a capable pianist[2] and the keyboard
dominated his early compositions. He borrowed from his own compositions as well
as those of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Camille Saint-Saëns. Later in his life, the loss of
close friends, coupled with a pilgrimage to the Black
Madonna of Rocamadour, led him to rediscover the Roman
Catholic faith and resulted in compositions of a more sombre, austere
tone. Poulenc was a member of Les
Six, a group of young French and Swiss composers (comprising himself
along with Milhaud, Auric, Durey, Honegger and Tailleferre) who had links with Erik
Satie, Jean
Hugo and Jean
Cocteau. He embraced the Dada
movement's techniques, creating melodies that would have challenged what was
considered appropriate for Parisian music halls. He was identified with this group before he undertook his first formal
musical training, with Charles
Koechlin in 1921.[3] Poulenc was a featured pianist in recordings, including some of his own songs
(with Pierre
Bernac, recorded in 1947; and Rose Dercourt) and the concerto for two pianos
(recorded in May 1957). He supervised the 1961 world premiere recording of his
Gloria, which was conducted by Georges Prêtre. His recordings were released by RCA
Victor and EMI. Poulenc's Perpetual Motion Nr. 1 (1918) is
used in Alfred
Hitchcock's Rope (1948). Among Poulenc's last series of major works is a series of works for wind
instruments and piano. He was particularly fond of woodwinds, and
planned a set of sonatas for all of them, yet only lived to complete four:
sonatas for flute, oboe, clarinet, and the Elégie for horn. Poulenc died of heart failure in Paris in 1963 and is buried at the Père Lachaise Cemetery. Some writers consider Poulenc one of the first openly gay
composers.[4] His first serious
relationship was with painter Richard Chanlaire, to whom he dedicated his Concert champêtre: "You have changed my life, you
are the sunshine of my thirty years, a reason for living and working."[1] He also once said,
"You know that I am as sincere in my faith, without any messianic screamings, as
I am in my Parisian sexuality."[5] However, Poulenc's
life was also one of inner struggle. Having been born and raised a Roman
Catholic, he struggled throughout his life between coming to terms with his
"unorthodox" sexual "appetites" and maintaining his religious convictions. [6][dubious ] Poulenc also had a number of relationships with women. He fathered a
daughter, Marie-Ange, although he never formally admitted that he was indeed her
father[citation needed]. Her mother, "Freddy" is the
dedicatee of two of his songs. He was also a very close friend of the singer Pierre Bernac, for whom he wrote many songs. The
now-published correspondence between the two men, however, strongly suggests
that they were never sex partners.[citation needed] Poulenc was profoundly affected by the death of friends. In 1923 he was
"unable to do anything" for two days after the death from typhoid fever of his
twenty-year-old friend, the novelist Raymond
Radiguet. However, two weeks later he had moved on, joking to Sergei
Diaghilev at the rehearsals he was unable to leave, about helping a
dancer "warm up".[1] Then in 1930 came
the death of the young woman he had hoped to marry, Raymonde Linossier. While
Poulenc admitted to having no sexual interest in Linossier, they had been
lifelong friends.[1] In 1936, Poulenc
was profoundly affected by the death of another composer, Pierre-Octave Ferroud,
who was decapitated in an automobile accident in Hungary. This led him to his
first visit to the shrine of the Black Virgin of Rocamadour. Here, before the statue of the Madonna with
a young child on her lap, Poulenc experienced a life-changing transformation.
Thereafter his work took on more religious themes, beginning with the
Litanies à la vierge noire (1936). In 1949, Poulenc experienced the death
of another friend, the artist Christian Bérard, for whom he composed his Stabat Mater (1950). Other sacred works from this
period include the Mass in G (1937), Gloria (1959), and Sept répons des ténèbres
(1961–2). Francis
Poulenc's Sonata for clarinet and piano dates from 1962 and is one of the last
pieces he completed. The piece is dedicated to the memory of an old friend, the
Swiss composer Arthur
Honegger, who like Poulenc had belonged to the group of "Les
Six." A typical performance takes about 13 minutes.[1][2] The sonata is in three movements: The structure differs somewhat from the fast-slow-fast pattern of a
traditional sonata in that the first movement is itself split into three
sections in the pattern fast-slow-fast. It bears the somewhat paradoxical
subtitle "Allegro tristamente": accordingly, the piece is always in motion, but
proceeds with a sense of grieving.[2] After a brief
fortissimo introduction consisting of angry spurts of figuration in the clarinet
punctuated by piano chords, the piano quiets to a murmur. The clarinet's lines
are built of a self-perpetuating series of arcs that leave a shape but not a
tune in our ears. At one point the clarinet seems stuck in a motivic rut, sadly
leaping up and down between octave B tones over a shifting harmonic background.
As the movement ends, the lingering memory is a fuzzy one of melancholy gestures
and moods.[citation needed] The second movement, "Romanza," is both clearer in its melodic makeup and
more cathartic, perhaps, in its emotional ｅxpression. The clarinet melody is
simple and somber throughout, but is elaborately embroidered in a few places, as
if losing composure. Two particularly poignant examples are the sixty-fourth
note runs near the beginning, and the trembling half-step figure that appears at
the beginning and end.[citation needed] The third movement, "Allegro con fuoco," energetically combines various
nimble, articulate, and rhapsodic themes, bookended by a delightfully clownish
tune—a mixture of serious and silly that well represents Poulenc's oeuvre as a
whole.[citation needed] The famous clarinetist Benny
Goodman, who commissioned the piece, was intended to premiere it with
the composer accompanying. Poulenc died suddenly of a heart attack on January
30, 1963 before it was published, and an editor was employed to ascertain the
identity of some notes, as well as provide missing dynamics and articulations.
The premiere was given at New York City's Carnegie
Hall by Benny Goodman and Leonard Bernstein on April 10, 1963. Harold C. Schonberg, music critic of the New York
Times had this to say: "Poulenc was not a 'big' composer, for his
emotional range was too restricted. But what he did, he did perfectly, and his
music shows remarkable finish, style and refinement.... The sonata...is typical
Poulenc. In the first movement, skittish thematic elements are broken up by a
broadly melodic middle section. The slow movement is one of those melting,
long-phrased and unabashed sentimental affairs that nobody but Poulenc could
carry off. Weakest of the three movements is the finale, which races along but
has little immediacy. Here Poulenc's inspiration seems to have run out."[1][2] The clarinet sonata is one of three that Poulenc wrote for solo woodwind and
piano, part of a planned set which he did not live to complete. A sonata for flute was composed in 1956, while one for oboe was
completed a few weeks after the one for clarinet. A sonata for bassoon was never
begun. Like the clarinet sonata, the oboe sonata is dedicated to the memory of a
lost friend: in this case, Sergei
Prokofiev. Poulenc modified his usual fast-slow-fast pattern of
movements to slow-fast-slow. The concluding lament is particularly suited to the
qualities of the oboe.[3] The flute sonata
shares with the clarinet/piano work a structure that features a more restrained
attitude in the first two movements, followed by a more playful finale.[citation needed] As scholar and biographer Keith Daniel observes, certain thematic materials
appear in all three works. The thirty-second note figure that opens the flute
sonata appears with some alteration in the first movement of the oboe sonata,
and in rough inversion during the second movement of the one for clarinet;
likewise, a motive consisting of a dotted note filled out by two shorter notes
appears in multiple places in all three sonatas. Finally, Daniel notes the
overall similarity of mood in the second movements of the flute and clarinet
sonatas.[citation needed] The Flute Sonata by Francis
Poulenc, or Sonata for Flute
and Piano, was written in 1957. It is dedicated to the
memory of Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, an American patron of
chamber music. Poulenc composed it for the flautist Jean-Pierre Rampal, and he and Rampal gave the première
in June 1957 at the Strasbourg Festival. It is now one of Poulenc's best
known works and is a prominent feature in 20th century flute repertoire. Sources indicate that Poulenc had had the idea to compose a flute sonata for a long time, which can be dated back
to the year 1952 in a letter to the baritone Pierre Bernac. Throughout the next few years, Poulenc
had intended to resume the work as stated in his letters to his publisher in 1953, 1955 and
1956. However, it is unknown whether this planned sonata is directly related to the
published sonata. In April 1956, Harold Spivacke, a spokeperson for the Coolidge
Foundation at the Library of Congress, wrote a letter to Poulenc offering
a commission for a piece of chamber
music for a festival going to take place in October 1956. Poulenc
declined the commission soon as he was just finishing the orchestration of his
new opera and the première in Milan
was too close. Spivacke again offered the commission in May, and this time
Poulenc responded in August when he noted that the opera was in order and he
could write something for him. He suggested the Sonata for Flute and Piano,
provided that he could reserve the première for the Strasbourg Festival in June
1957. Jean-Pierre Rampal learned about the sonata in a phone call from Poulenc. The
occasion was marked in his autobiography: "Jean-Pierre," said Poulenc: "you know you've always wanted me to write a
sonata for flute and piano? Well, I'm going to,' he said. 'And the best thing is
that the Americans will pay for it! I've been commissioned by the Coolidge
Foundation to write a chamber piece in memory of Elizabeth Coolidge. I
never knew her, so I think the piece is yours." Poulenc wrote the piece in Cannes
between December 1956 and March 1957, and the completed manuscript was mailed to
the Library of Congress on 7 June 1957. on 17 June 1957, an unofficial première
was given at the Strasbourg Festival by the composer and Rampal - with only one
audience member, Arthur
Rubinstein, who requested to hear it one day before the official
première as he was going to leave before it. On 16 January 1958, Poulenc played the work with Gareth
Morris in a broadcast on BBC. The
American première took place in the Coolidge Auditorium at the Library of
Congress on 14 February 1958. It was reported to be a rousing success. The sonata is in three movements: ■
Francis Poulenc ■
●
Biography
● Early
life
●
Career
●
Personal life
●
Works
●
Books
●★ Clarinet
Sonata (Poulenc) ★●
●
Structure
●
Premiere
● Poulenc's three woodwind sonatas
●★Flute
Sonata (Poulenc)★●
●
History
●
Music
●
References
