 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: ruben
Date: 2016-11-03 14:00
Question: Are the metronome markings for the Poulenc Sonata by Poulenc or by some editor. The last movement is usually played considerably faster than what is indicated-usually played at breakneck speed. The slow movement is often played slower than the metronome indication; somewhat like a dirge, which it isn't. Poulenc died shortly after composing this sonata and I'm not sure he ever heard it premiered.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: nellsonic
Date: 2016-11-04 06:36
This is something I've wondered about as well. How did the performance tradition for a movement that is marked at quarter = 144 become quarter = something in the 160's or even 170's? Poulenc was supposed to play the premiere in New York with Benny Goodman, who commissioned the piece. Unfortunately the composer died suddenly before he could review the proofs from the publisher, or indeed perform the premiere. Another member in the club of composers who pass on shortly after writing solo works for the clarinet.
Somebody here must know more than these basic facts and be able to shed light on how this all came to be.
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2016-11-04 07:07
I attended a master class with Jose Franch Ballester that partly covered the Poulenc. Ballester called attention to the fact that Poulenc dedicated the sonata in memoriam to his friend Arthur Honneger. Ballester considered the work deliberately oxymoronic as evidenced by the tempo marking "Allegro Tristamente," which literally indicates the paired opposites of "fast" and "sad" or fast sadness. So it is not out of the question to consider the slow movement at least elegaic, if not funereal, and to regard the fast sections as an attempt to banish the sorrow of losing a dear friend--sort of like "laughing to keep from crying." If the peice is going off in these two opposite directions, it is no surprise that the slow section might get slower than indicated and the fast, faster.
I don't have knowlege of the specific textual evolution of the piece or the source of any metronome marking in any given edition, but I think Ballester's view that it deals with an oxymoron of emotions following the death of a close friend is well taken.
Post Edited (2016-11-08 17:02)
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Author: ruben
Date: 2016-11-04 12:23
Dear Nellsonic and Seabreeze, Thank you for your interest in this topic. I was depending on you! "Oxymoronic" is a good word to describe this piece (an "Oxymoron" is not a moron that goes to Oxford University!). Another word that is quite fitting is "bathos"; not to be confused with "pathos". It is true that there are constant shifts between sadness and the burlesque in this piece. This was, I was told by an old-timer that knew him (Heni Sauguet), also a feature of Poulenc's personality. These days he would be diagnosed bi-polar, would be put on lithium and not compose anything.
Nellsonic; I know that Goodman premiered this sonata in the US. Did he ever play it again? I heard, here in Paris, André Boutard play it with Jacques Février, who was Poulenc's pianist so to speak: the best performance I've ever heard of it. Their tempi were pretty close to the metronome markings on the Chester edition. One last thing, Nellsonic: When a composer says he is dying to compose for the clarinet, I suppose he must be taken literally!
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: ruben
Date: 2016-11-04 18:39
Both Portal and Boutard played for Poulenc and knew him personally. Boutard sounds pretty "reedy" here, but that's what French clarinetists sounded like in those days, I would say until the advent and influence of Guy Deplus. That must have been the sound Poulenc associated with the clarinet, for it was the clarinet tone he had been brought up and always heard. Cahuzac's tone was the exception. Portal-a maverick figure- is still happily and with us and still playing in public; into his eighties. I wonder what Benny Goodman sounded like in this.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2016-11-04 19:00
Portal has gone into avant guarde and jazz and other things, and has appeared often on bass clarinet. On this recording I hear echoes of August Perier in Portal's playing, especially in the slow movement. Cahuzac was always Cahuzac: A = A.
Boutard has a lot of sprightly energy like coiled wire uncoiling, hard-driven and reedy.
Guy Duplus initiated a new wave in French clarinet playing when he lured players away from their treble-sounding Vandoren 2RVs and had them on the lower-partial-emphasizing, rounder-sounding Vandoren V360s and B40s.
Post Edited (2016-11-04 22:08)
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Author: ruben
Date: 2016-11-05 00:31
Seabreeze: I would like to know what Portal has to report on his experiences of playing for and with Poulenc. We live in the same neighborhood and the next time I see him in the street, I will harpoon him. It's true that he has moved into free jazz-whatever that means-and other things, but he still plays the standard Classical repertory. His playing is not to everybody's (orthodox) liking, but what cannot be denied is that it is very emotional and very imaginative.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: ruben
Date: 2016-11-08 10:42
If what I have read is to be believed, Boutard and Février worked on this sonata with Poulenc, before it was premiered (by Benny Goodman). This means that they got their ideas for interpretation from the horse's mouth. I find their recording is really in the spirit of the piece, though the clarinet tone is very, very reedy by today's standards.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: cigleris
Date: 2016-11-10 03:38
I discovered today that the Romanza was composed about 10 years before the rest of the Sonata. It had laid forgotten in the hope of being published someday until the commission for the Sonata came along.
Peter Cigleris
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Author: ruben
Date: 2016-11-10 13:57
Dear Peter,
Thank you for pointing that out. I knew that at one point, but had forgotten. All the more reason not to play this piece at a funereal tempo; it is called Romanza, after all, and isn't a dirge, as it was composed before Honneger's death.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: ruben
Date: 2016-11-11 00:46
Liquorice: I greatly enjoyed your writing on the Poulenc Sonata. It's always a pleasure to read your "threads", which have become too few and far between. -all of them always very scholarly, informative and pleasant.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2016-11-11 01:22
Peter Cigleris wrote:
>> I discovered today that the Romanza was composed about 10 years before the rest of the Sonata. It had laid forgotten in the hope of being published someday until the commission for the Sonata came along.>>
Source?
Tony
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Author: brycon
Date: 2016-11-11 02:08
Quote:
I didn't know that Peter. But I did know that, even more than a decade before the Sonata was composed, Poulenc had already used the theme from the 2nd movement in his Stabat Mater.
Maybe the Stabat Mater is what Peter has in mind?
Thanks for pointing it out, though. For me, the religious aspect makes for a more interesting reading of the piece than the dedication to Honegger. Poulenc's music is so rich with irony that a funereal slow movement doesn't make much sense (in the same way that Ravel's Tombeau, which bears similar dedications, isn't an overtly melancholic work). It's somewhat simplistic, after all, to reduce the creative process to sad composer=sad music.
In his collection of essays on Russian music, Taruskin recounts a more explicit example, in which Balakirev claimed his Second Overture on Russian Themes (1864, I think) depicted the coming political revolt. 25 years later, after the revolutionary fervor had died down, he then claimed the piece was a celebration of the Russian state! Taruskin's story illustrates the problems of authorial intention as well as musical meaning, which, as Balakirev's 180 demonstrates, is rather slippery.
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2016-11-11 10:40
Above, I originally wrote "Stabat Mater", but then saw my mistake and corrected it to "Gloria". So to be clear: The middle section of the first movement uses music from Poulenc's Stabat Mater and the theme from the slow movement is from his Gloria.
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2016-11-11 18:56
seabreeze -
Your link requires a sign-in and password. Is there another source?
Ken Shaw
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2016-11-11 21:30
On my(Chrome) server, the link pops right up. You can Google to "Poulenc: A Composer Who Deserves Greater Recognition."
The "part monk, part rascal" characterization originated with Poulenc's friend Claude Rostand.
Another direct link is Reference 11 towards the bottom of the very long Wikipedia article "Poulenc."
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2016-11-12 05:07
I wrote:Quote:
Peter Cigleris wrote:
"I discovered today that the Romanza was composed about 10 years before the rest of the Sonata. It had laid forgotten in the hope of being published someday until the commission for the Sonata came along."
Source? Surely not an unreasonable request? We'd all like to know how you came upon this information.
Tony
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Author: ruben
Date: 2016-11-12 16:08
Dear Tony Pay, I have e-mailed the Francis Poulenc Association here in Paris and asked for this information. If they deign to answer me, I will report my findings. Poulenc had two biographers, one of whom I knew: Jean Roy. Both are deceased. He may have, or have had, an English or German-speaking biographer too.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: ruben
Date: 2016-11-12 16:16
PS: I will also try hard to get Poulenc's heirs to make some incidental music by Poulenc to plays which have superb clarinet parts available. They can only be hired now, at a prohibitive price. As they are rather "bitty", somebody would have to turn them into proper suites.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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