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FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF MUSIC

FRANCIS POULENC AND THE FRANCO-AMERICAN CULTURAL ALLIANCE:

EMULATION AND INNOVATION IN THE 1949

By

Amy Dunning

A Thesis submitted to the College of Music in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Music

Degree Awarded: Summer Semester 2008

Copyright © 2008 Amy Dunning All Rights Reserved

The members of the Committee approve the thesis of Amy Dunning defended on July 7, 2008.

Denise Von Glahn Professor Directing Thesis

Douglass Seaton Committee Member

Joseph Kraus Committee Member

The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members.

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For my husband, Justin, who brings me joy

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am truly thankful for all of the people who have supported and assisted me in various ways. I am especially grateful to my thesis advisor, Dr. Denise Von Glahn, for her enthusiastic guidance and endless encouragement through every stage of this project. I thank Dr. Douglass Seaton for his insightful comments and ideas, and for helping me to think about issues from different perspectives. I am also very grateful to Dr. Joseph Kraus, who spent countless hours patiently assisting me with the analytical portion of this study; I learned so much from him. All three of my committee members are exemplary scholars, teachers, and mentors and I am fortunate to have benefited from their knowledge and wisdom. I would like to thank my colleague Sara Nodine, who seemed to appear in the library at just the right moments to offer a smile, a listening ear, words of encouragement, and a bit of humor to put things in perspective. I am also grateful for the assistance of Barbara Perkel at the Boston Symphony Archives. I owe so much to my parents, Kevin and Donna Bradley, for supporting and encouraging me in all of my endeavors, for teaching me the value of hard work, for loving me unconditionally, and for always being available to listen. Their expressions of pride and excitement have given me the confidence to pursue my dreams. I thank my sister, Lauren, for listening to me talk about my project and for always knowing how to make me laugh. Her engaging performances of piano works by Debussy and Gershwin have fueled my love for French and American music of the twentieth century. To my grandmother, Pearl Cosby, I attribute my passion for music and language. She continues to be my inspiration. This project would not have been possible without the enduring love, encouragement, and support I receive on a daily basis from my husband, Justin. He understands me in ways that even I do not, and I am so thankful for his patience and his vision. He helped me in innumerable ways throughout this process, including talking through ideas with me, reading drafts, providing emotional support, and helping me find the courage and strength to press onward. His confidence in me never wanes. I dedicate this project to him. Finally, I thank God for how richly I am blessed; he has filled my life with joy through family, friends, and music.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Tables ...... vi List of Music Examples ...... vii Abstract ...... viii

1. POULENC AND THE PARISIAN AVANT-GARDE ...... 1

2. THE PIANO CONCERTO: EMULATION AND INNOVATION ...... 13

3. A PARISIAN IN AMERICA: THE PIANO CONCERTO AND POULENC’S AMERICAN SUCCESS ...... 30

4. POULENC AND THE FRANCO-AMERICAN CULTURAL ALLIANCE ...... 47

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 60

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 65

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1. Ternary form diagram of Movement I based on the interpretations of Keith Daniel and Emmanuel Reibel ...... 15

Table 2.2. Durational diagram of Movement I in ternary form interpretation ...... 15

Table 2.3. Arch form diagram of Movement I ...... 15

Table 2.4. Quasi- form diagram of Movement I ...... 16

Table 2.5. Ternary form diagram of Movement II ...... 17

Table 2.6. Modified rondo form diagram of Movement III ...... 18

Table 2.7. Harmonic progression of opening theme, Movement I ...... 20

Table 2.8. Thematic statements and transitions in opening section of Movement I .... 21

Table 2.9. Phrase structure diagram of opening theme, Movement II, mm. 1-13 ...... 23

Table 2.10. Successive compression of opening phrase, Movement II ...... 23

Table 2.11. Design of the opening A section, third movement ...... 25

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LIST OF MUSIC EXAMPLES

Example 2.1. Opening theme (reduction), first movement, mm. 1-8, showing sentential phrase structure ...... 20

Example 2.2. Second movement, opening theme (reduction), mm. 1-13, showing hybrid phrase structure ...... 22

Example 2.3. Third movement, opening theme, mm. 1-8, showing its intimation of a continuous binary rondo theme and of a parallel period phrase structure. The half cadence in m. 8 negates formation of a period ...... 24

Example 3.1. Poulenc’s use of Stephen Foster’s “Old Folks at Home” in solo piano part, third movement, mm. 148-51 ...... 40

Example 3.2a. Melody of the French folk song, “À la Claire fontaine” ...... 41

Example 3.2b. Melody of Stephen Foster’s “Old Folks at Home” ...... 41

Example 3.3. “La Mattchiche” (: Hachette, ca. 1903), one arrangement of the maxixe that was popular in for decades. Gershwin used the idea from mm. 14b-18 in (1928) ...... 43

Example 3.4. The maxixe idea in An American in Paris, r. 11 ...... 44

Example 3.5. Poulenc’s quotation of Gershwin’s maxixe, third movement, mm. 200b-203 ...... 44

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ABSTRACT

Francis Poulenc’s 1949 Piano Concerto was written for his performance with the Boston Symphony Orchestra during his second American tour in 1950. It is an example of his distinctive musical language and compositional craftsmanship, as well as a thoughtful and creative interaction with his host audience through the incorporation of American tunes—Stephen Foster’s “Old Folks at Home” and a melodic/rhythmic idea from ’s An American in Paris. The Concerto synthesizes the exuberant style of Poulenc’s youthful years, the serene and expressive qualities of his mid-life maturity, and his overall neoclassic idiom. This study begins by examining aspects of Poulenc’s musical style exemplified in the Concerto as they were shaped by the Parisian avant-garde of the 1910s and 1920s, and by the composer’s maturing musical language in the 1930s and 1940s. An analysis of the Concerto’s formal procedures and musical syntax reveals some of the ways that Poulenc emulated and remade classical tradition through a balance of clarity and ambiguity. A discussion of the creation and reception of the Concerto within the context of the composer’s mid-century American tours shows how Poulenc captivated American audiences and further solidified his international reputation through his pianism, social decorum, and adeptness in synthesizing tradition with popular tunes and styles that acknowledged and engaged his patrons. This study highlights the Concerto’s significance as a product and reflection of the dynamic interaction between France and the United States. An illumination of the countries’ political connections and cultural exchanges, particularly as manifested in music, art, and fashion in the first half of the twentieth century, reveals Poulenc’s role as a musical diplomat and a commentator on the history of the Franco-American alliance.

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CHAPTER 1

POULENC AND THE PARISIAN AVANT-GARDE

Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) is widely recognized as a member of , the group of young Parisian composers active in the 1920s that was inspired by the ideas of and . Seeking to create a new French music characterized by clarity and accessibility and free from the domination of German Romanticism, they embraced eighteenth-century tonal traditions and genres and infused them with the musical panache associated with Parisian popular entertainment. Poulenc continued to incorporate many of the values from the 1920s within a maturing musical language throughout his life, producing a significant oeuvre that is clearly French neoclassic and distinctly his own. The 1949 Piano Concerto is one of five concerti that Poulenc composed, all for keyboard instruments.1 It synthesizes the exuberant style of his youthful years, which he never completely abandoned, the serene and expressive qualities of his mid-life maturity, and his overall neoclassic idiom. Furthermore, the Concerto was written for his performance with the Boston Symphony Orchestra during his second American tour and is a product and reflection of the Franco-American cultural alliance. This chapter examines aspects of Poulenc’s musical style exemplified in the Piano Concerto as they were shaped by the Parisian avant-garde of the 1910s and 1920s, as well as by the composer’s maturing musical language in the 1930s and 1940s. It identifies some of his primary models and influences, highlights his neoclassic idiom, and establishes a basis for the analytical discussion of emulation and innovation in the Concerto that occurs in the following chapter. The third chapter addresses the Concerto’s creation and reception within the context of Poulenc’s mid-century American tours, and its engagement with his host country through the incorporation of American tunes. This specific example of musical diplomacy leads to the broader topic of the final chapter,

1 Poulenc’s other concerti are Concert champêtre for and orchestra (1927), , a “concerto choréographique” for piano and eighteen instruments (1930), Concerto for Two and Orchestra (1932), and Concerto for Organ and Orchestra (1938). 1 which places Poulenc and his Concerto within the Franco-American cultural alliance that was a major force in shaping music and the arts in the twentieth century. The Parisian avant-garde of the first part of the twentieth century rebelled against ideological and aesthetic conventions established in the previous century. The destabilizing effects of World War I brought an end to the opulence of La Belle Époque and caused a renewal of nationalistic and democratic sentiments. Modern French artists and composers denounced the excessiveness and pretension of Romanticism and Impressionism and created new modes of expression based on objectivity, economy, accessibility, and everyday reality. In shedding foreign influence, particularly that of Germany, they desired to reclaim their true French heritage, culture, and values.2 One of the quintessential manifestations of avant-garde sensibilities was the neoclassic movement of the 1920s. Neoclassicism has had various meanings and practitioners in the twentieth century. In general it is characterized by a return to eighteenth-century values of clarity, balance, order, and restraint.3 Practitioners revived classic formal and thematic structures and functional , but reinvented them through modern or innovative processes, such as parody, distortion, and subtle ambiguity.4 Within an avant-garde paradigm that challenged the concept of a single acceptable style or model, composers had the freedom to choose their own pasts and develop their own styles through reinterpretation of the traditional elements.5 French neoclassicism has its roots in the music of Erik Satie, who had been composing within an anti-Romantic framework of simplicity and concision as early as his

2 Roger Shattuck, The Banquet Years: The Origins of the Avant-garde in France, 1885 to World War I (: Vintage Books, 1968) provides a rich and engaging description of the political, social, and artistic environment of turn-of-the-century Paris that provided the stimuli for the avant-garde.

3 Scott Messing, Neoclassicism in Music: From the Genesis of the Concept through the Schoenberg/Stravinsky Polemic (Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1988), xiv. In this book Messing traces the history of neoclassicism and the evolution of the term.

4 Arnold Whittall, “Neo-classicism,” in Grove Music Online, ed. Laura Macy, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/19723 (accessed 29 May 2008).

5 J. Peter Burkholder, “Brahms and Twentieth-Century Music,” 19th-Century Music 8/1 (Summer 1984), 76. 2 1888 Trois Gymnopédies, although his music was not taken seriously until the 1910s. While Debussy and Ravel contributed to new French sounds and displayed neoclassic elements in the pre-war years, Satie’s musical reaction to nineteenth-century German- based tradition was more radical and came to define the spirit of the avant-garde. He stripped the elements of the musical work to the bare minimum and created light, tuneful, and often humorous pieces that drew their inspiration from the streets of Montmartre and .6 His aim was “an emotive simplicity and a firmness of utterance enabling sonorities and rhythms to assert themselves clearly, unequivocal in design and accent, and contrived in a spirit of humility and renunciation.”7 Satie’s “realist” ballet Parade, with costumes and sets designed by and a scenario by Jean Cocteau, premiered in 1917 and defined what termed l’esprit nouveau.8 It demonstrated the composer’s embrace of brevity, simplicity, humor, and parody through the use of popular styles, mosaic construction, and unconventional instruments. One of the underlying aims of Satie’s music, as Roger Nichols has discerned, was to present “familiar objects in unfamiliar perspectives,” like the Cubist painters.9 The idea of using distortion and exaggeration to play with the expectations of classical elements thus became a primary feature of avant- garde neoclassicism. The following year Jean Cocteau published his pamphlet Le Coq et l’Arlequin (1918), in which he called for a new French music based on the musical style and aesthetic of Satie, observing that “Satie teaches what, in our age, is the greatest audacity, simplicity.”10 Cocteau warned against the “convolutions, dodges, and tricks” of the

6 Satie worked as a pianist in Montmartre cabarets and cafés until 1898.

7 Erik Satie, “Les Périmés,” in Les Feuilles Libres (March 1923). Translated in Rollo Hugh Myers, Erik Satie (London: Dennis Dobson, 1948), 130.

8 Messing, 77. Poet, writer, and critic Guillaume Apollinaire coined the term “l’esprit nouveau” in the program notes for the first production of Parade in 1917.

9 Roger Nichols, The Harlequin Years: Music in Paris 1917-1929 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 30.

10 Jean Cocteau, Cock and Harlequin, in A Call to Order, trans. Rollo H. Myers (London: Faber & Gwyer, 1926), 18. Included in Oliver Strunk and Leo Treitler, eds., Source Readings in Music History, rev. ed. (New York: Norton, 1998), 1290-94. 3 Wagnerian “fog” and the Debussian “mist,” and asserted that the stimulus for a modern French music, a “music on which one walks,” should be taken from everyday life and the music of the Parisian music hall, cabaret, and circus.11 What he called the “” of Satie was both classic and modern, drawing from the classic tradition in its clarity and directness, but avoiding the imitation of any tradition.12 This thrust Satie and l’esprit nouveau into the spotlight. Satie’s iconoclastic and parodistic musical style earned him the admiration of a group of young Parisian composers: Francis Poulenc, , , , , and . The group began meeting and performing together as Les Nouveaux Jeunes in 1917. Inspired by the musical language of Satie, especially after Parade, the group espoused his ideas and techniques in their own music. Cocteau took advantage of the attention garnered by this vanguard group and became their ardent spokesman. The group was dubbed Les Six by the critic in an article in the 16 January 1920 issue of Comoedia. The title of the article, “Les cinq russes, les six français et M. Satie,” drew an analogy with the Russian Five of the nineteenth century and thereby aptly identified their nationalistic aims to create a new French music free from foreign domination. Although the individual musical values and stylistic approaches of the six composers differed, especially after 1925, they were united by friendship and a common spirit, and the group as a whole represented (and continues to represent) a time, place, and aesthetic that greatly impacted life and music in both France and America in the twentieth century.13 In the midst of the Great War neoclassicism had strong political undertones. Wartime propaganda asserted that French culture was fundamentally classic and urged artists and composers to infuse their work with national values of clarity, balance, and

11 Ibid., 15-18, 33.

12 Messing, 77.

13 Chapter 4 of this thesis expands upon some of the ways the culture, music, and composers of Paris in the 1920s impacted those of America (and vice versa) throughout the first half of the twentieth century. 4 precision.14 Jane Fulcher states that French composers in the first part of the century were well aware of the nationalistic meanings and symbols the officials were promoting, and they reacted by either embracing or challenging them. Satie’s Parade, for instance, was a blatant satire of the model of the conservative French -ballet; it “ridiculed the myth of classical hierarchy, proportions, and order.”15 Les Six emulated Satie in parodying the conservative efforts of the nationalists. By infusing classical idioms with the raucous styles of the cabaret and music hall, they subtly undermined political efforts to promote conservative values of grace and order. At the same time, they made music realistic and meaningful for themselves and the Parisian public. They were acting as intellectuals by creatively responding to the politically charged milieu of the years surrounding the First World War.16 In the 1920s neoclassicism became more conservative, with a focus on emulation of tradition and nostalgia for the past. , another important figure in this movement, was also influenced by the clarity, economy, and lightness of Satie’s music. He cultivated his own brand of neoclassicism that had a significant impact on French and American composers throughout the twentieth century, especially through the pedagogy of .17 One of Stravinsky’s contributions was in moving neoclassicism beyond the and into larger-scale genres for chamber ensemble and symphony. Both Satie and Stravinsky challenged the notion that high art music must concern the noble and grandiose.18

14 Jane Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual: Music and Ideology in France, 1914-1940 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 20-21.

15 Ibid., 12.

16 Ibid., 14.

17 Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979), renowned twentieth-century pedagogue and conductor, taught several hundreds of students at the Ecole Normale de Musique, the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau, and at several institutions in the United States. She greatly admired the musical developments and neoclassic language of Stravinsky and used them as the primary models in her teaching throughout her life. She also promoted Stravinsky’s music in concerts that she conducted with major French and American .

18 Nichols, 31. 5 The young French composers were enamored of both Satie and Stravinsky; Poulenc, in particular, embraced both models and used their techniques to reinterpret traditional elements within an entertaining modern idiom that swerved from expectations. In his early years Poulenc emulated Satie by writing brief piano pieces that incorporated ostinati, simple diatonic melodies, repetitive chordal accompaniment, sparse textures and a carefree, flippant attitude. He then increasingly combined Satie’s ideas with those of Stravinsky’s neoclassicism, which utilized shifting rhythmic and metrical organization, embellishing dissonance, heightened intensity, and juxtaposition of contrasting musical elements, to remake eighteenth-century structural procedures.19 Francis Poulenc was the member of Les Six whose music throughout his career most reflected the techniques of Satie, the tenets of Cocteau, and the spirit of Les Six and the 1920s.20 Largely self-taught in composition, he did not receive the traditional training at the Schola Cantorum or the Paris Conservatoire as did most of his contemporaries, including Satie, Ravel, and the other members of Les Six. In fact, he was denied admittance to the Conservatoire because of his association with Satie, who was considered a reckless bohemian and an inferior composer by conservative art music establishments.21 As a result, from the start Poulenc was less dependent upon nineteenth- century models for his compositional techniques. The influence of Parisian popular entertainment in Poulenc’s music is evident in his use of simple, repetitive melodic/rhythmic ideas, musical figures distorted by exaggeration or contraction, a lilting style, and a fast-paced succession of tunes. An observation made by Larry Starr in reference to the music of American composer also provides perspective on the interpretation of Poulenc’s stylistic pastiche: “The constantly changing style is not simply a vehicle for the presentation of ideas, but is itself

19 Keith Daniel, Francis Poulenc: His Artistic Development and Musical Style (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1982), 96.

20 Robert Morgan, Twentieth-Century Music (New York: Norton, 1991), 162.

21 During Poulenc’s interview at the Conservatoire in 1917 composition teacher Paul Vidal noticed the dedication to Satie of Poulenc’s Rapsodie nègre, yelled at him, and made him leave. See Poulenc’s 26 September 1917 letter to his teacher Ricardo Viñes in Francis Poulenc, Correspondance: 1910-1963, edited by Myriam Chimènes (Paris: Fayard, 1994), 55. Also see Carl B. Schmidt, Entrancing Muse: A Documented Biography of Francis Poulenc (Hillsdale: Pendragon, 2001), 39-40, for further information surrounding this event. 6 the embodiment of profound and novel ideas about the character of musical experience and of experience itself.”22 Many twentieth-century composers embraced diversity, and in Poulenc’s case the succession of many different themes and styles in a single piece mirrors the constantly changing visual and aural stimulation of the shows at the Parisian music halls and circuses. While many of his contemporaries, particularly Satie, Milhaud, and Ravel, incorporated American popular musical styles such as jazz into their works, Poulenc drew almost exclusively from French sources. He claimed later in life that he did not like jazz and that it was distasteful in the concert hall, but to say that jazz had no part in the formation of his musical language would be misleading.23 One of the driving forces in the Parisian cafés, cabarets, and music halls that Poulenc frequented and from which he drew stylistic inspiration was American jazz music and musicians. That Poulenc avoided foreign influences and looked to French sources alone reflects his loyalty to Cocteau’s urgings and to the French neoclassic ideals. Stylistic and thematic borrowing, whether from seventeenth-century classical traditions or from twentieth-century popular trends, is one of the ways through which Poulenc acknowledged and refreshed the past. Throughout his career Poulenc unabashedly appropriated musical ideas from his own works and those of other composers and skillfully wove them into the fabric of his music. While this has led some critics to charge him with a lack of originality, borrowing preexisting musical material from predecessors, contemporaries, or oneself is, of course, a centuries-old, honored tradition that can be traced back to medieval practices; it was certainly common in the works of composers Poulenc emulated.24 Since borrowed material is inevitably

22 Larry Starr, “Juxtaposition and Sequence (I): A Walk On ‘Ann Street,’” in A Union of Diversities: Style in the Music of Charles Ives (New York: Schirmer Books, 1992), 28.

23 Daniel, 23.

24 Some contemporary reviewers, writers, composers, and musicians have criticized the musical borrowing of Poulenc and other twentieth-century neoclassicists. These critics often neglect to acknowledge the borrowing practices of the canonical composers of previous centuries. One example is the English composer and conductor Constant Lambert in his 1934 book Music Ho!: A Study of Music in Decline, a relevant portion of which is included in Oliver Strunk and Leo Treitler, eds., Source Readings in Music History, rev. ed. (New York: Norton, 1998), 1491- 94. claimed that Poulenc’s music lacks originality and innovation on account of his 7 reinterpreted or recontextualized, it can be a vehicle for demonstrating innovation, commenting on the past and the present, acknowledging influence, and even offering friendship. Poulenc held many composers in high esteem and sought to emulate them in his compositions. His mother had instilled in him an admiration for the music of Mozart, Chopin, and Schubert. This is most clearly displayed in his sensitivity to melodic lines and their clear accompaniment. He also acquired a love of poetry from his mother, as well as from his interaction with poets and intellectuals in the social gatherings of Paris, and cultivated a skill for setting the fluid French language to music. Lyricism is one of the most striking characteristics of his musical language. Poulenc’s musical aesthetic is based on enjoyment, which is one way it embodies the joie de vivre of the 1920s and emulates an eighteenth-century musical aesthetic. He expressed his view of the character of French music to the music historian Roland Gelatt: You will find sobriety and dolor in French music just as in German or Russian. But the French have a keener sense of proportion. We realize that somberness and good humor are not mutually exclusive. Our composers, too, write profound music, but when they do, it is leavened with that lightness of spirit without which life would be unendurable.25

borrowing, although he acknowledged Poulenc as a “strong artist” whose lack of originality became the “signature of unique glories.” See Ned Rorem, “Poulenc,” A Ned Rorem Reader (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001). David Wright has also recognized quotation as a characteristic of Poulenc’s compositional style that has been “used to fuel some of the most vociferous diatribes against him.” He suggests that Poulenc is not only “a better composer than he is sometimes represented,” but also “a prophet of the Postmodern,” for, in the context of the latter part of the twentieth century, quotation has gained more widespread credibility. See David Wright, Review of Francis Poulenc, by Wilfred Mellers, in Tempo, New Series, no. 189 (June 1994), 33-35. Poulenc’s Piano Concerto was criticized for its musical borrowings. Two of approximately a dozen newspaper critics who reviewed its first performances in the United States judged it as “trite” and “superficial,” particularly because of its “culled tidbits,” its “leftovers” of musical styles from the past. See Jerome D. Bohm, “Boston Symphony: Francis Poulenc Is Soloist for Own Concerto,” Brooklyn, N.Y. Eagle (14 January 1950), and Milton Berliner, “Munch Slipped—Literally Not Musically,” The Washington Daily (13 January 1950). Composers who frequently borrowed musical material and whose styles Poulenc emulated include Mozart, Schumann, Chopin, Chabrier, Debussy, Satie, Stravinsky, Ravel, and Gershwin.

25 Roland Gelatt, “A Vote for Francis Poulenc,” The Saturday Review of Literature (1950), 57. Cited in Sam Morgenstern, ed., Composers on Music: An Anthology of Composers’ Writings from Palestrina to Copland (New York: Pantheon, 1956), 515. 8 J. Peter Burkholder observes that “the source of modernism lies in music’s changing social function.”26 In the eighteenth century music had moved into concert halls and acquired the function of entertainment for the general public. Mozart was an especially masterful composer of music that could amuse his diverse audience, “from the unschooled listener to the connoisseur.”27 Like Mozart, Poulenc wrote music that was accessible and pleasing to a wide audience. He thereby emulated Mozart and an eighteenth-century goal that was revitalized within his own Parisian social environment. Although Poulenc, after being caught up by the ideas of Satie and Cocteau, denounced , he later claimed that it was Debussy who “without a doubt, awakened me to music” and who “has always remained the musician that I prefer after Mozart.”28 He was influenced not only by the composer’s harmonic innovations but also by his remaking of tradition. In an entry in his American journal in 1950 Poulenc acknowledged his high valuation of tradition, the music of Debussy, and sensuality. We come to the problem of tradition and must deplore the fact that tradition is such a precarious thing. It is really astonishing how, only thirty years after Debussy’s death, the exact meaning of his message has been lost. How many of his interpreters, themselves lacking in sensuality, betray Debussy!29

Around the mid-1930s Poulenc’s music began to take on a more serious, contemplative, even melancholy, tone. After the lighthearted Le Bal masqué and Concerto for Two Pianos (both 1932) he largely turned away from the explicit use of 1920s popular entertainment sources, although their character continued to inflect his work. Daniel has suggested that between 1932 and 1936 Poulenc went through a period of self-reflection and emerged a more mature composer.30 It was also during this period, and after the death of his friend Pierre-Octave Ferroud, that he returned to his Catholic

26 Burkholder, 77.

27 Ibid.

28 Francis Poulenc, Entretiens avec (Paris: René Julliard, 1954), 180.

29 Poulenc, “Feuilles Americaines,” La Table Ronde, no. 30 (1950): 68. English translation by Sam Morgenstern in Morgenstern, 515.

30 For a more thorough discussion of the evolution of Poulenc’s style, consult Daniel, especially 35-45. 9 faith. Poulenc’s father was a devout Catholic, and the composer proudly attributed part of his musical personality to this heritage. He began composing religious works, including Litanies à la vierge noire (1936), Mass in G (1937), and Quatre motets pour un temps de pènitence (1938-39), and his increased use of chorus and organ contributed to a more intense musical character than that of his earlier works. The decade of the 1930s was a period of stylistic evolution for Poulenc that resulted in a more expressive and intense musical temperament. After World War II it would be marked by greater depth, seriousness, religiosity, and stylistic synthesis.31 Poulenc referred to some of his works of the 1940s as representing a period of “second youth”; these were characterized by a return to the lightness and humor of his early years.32 Works of this decade included the opera Les Mamelles des Tirésias (1942), the (1947-48), and the Piano Concerto (1949). The Concerto remains true to Satie’s and Cocteau’s tenets of lightness, clarity, and tunefulness. Poulenc even called it a light Concerto, identifying his intention to amuse an audience and nostalgically return to a bygone era.33 Elements of Parisian popular entertainment styles are present in the Piano Concerto, particularly in the finale, but, compared with instances in his earlier works, they are balanced with smoother transitions, richer harmonies and textures, greater variety of stylistic combinations, and remarkable expressiveness. As a result, the Concerto reflects a mid-century musical language that Roger Nichols described as the coming of age of both Poulenc and the French music of the 1920s.34 Daniel has deemed the expressiveness of Poulenc’s works of the 1940s a “reconciliation” with a practice against which Poulenc reacted in the 1910s and 1920s.35 In the Concerto this neoromanticism is articulated through the prominent role of the

31 Daniel, 98.

32 Roger Nichols, “Francis Poulenc,” Chester Novello, http://www.chesternovello.com/ default .aspx?TabId=2431&State_2905=2&composerId_2905=1241 (accessed 12 January 2008).

33 Poulenc, 1954, 133. Translated in Schmidt, 350.

34 Nichols, 247.

35 Daniel, 154. 10 strings in the orchestra, a greater range of dynamics, expressive melodies, lush harmonies, and frequent modulations. The Concerto’s opening theme is a prime example of sentimental expressiveness. In fact, it closely resembles the opening of Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto, which received its own premiere in the United States during the Russian composer’s 1909 American tour. The values of emulation and innovation central to neoclassicism are clearly demonstrated in Poulenc’s Concerto. Its use of traditional genre, structure, and functional tonality will be discussed in greater depth in the following chapter. In addition, the borrowing of styles and ideas also serves to remake the past. Several of the musical ideas in the Piano Concerto are borrowed from the composer’s own earlier works. One of these is a theme in the first movement, beginning at measure 163, which is an almost exact quotation and elaboration of the theme at measures 9-13 in the song “Miel de Narbonne” from his 1919 cycle Cocardes for voice and chamber ensemble. Another is the opening theme of the second movement, which closely resembles the last musical selection in L’Histoire de Babar (1940-45). The Concerto also contains prototypes of melodic ideas Poulenc used in later works. Two of the prominent themes in his famous 1953 opera Dialogues des Carmélites make their first appearances in the Piano Concerto. The opening motive of the opera comes from measures 203-4 in the first movement of the Concerto, where it heralds the slow middle section. The Mother Marie motive in Dialogues is taken from the second movement of the Concerto, beginning at measure 52. Poulenc also chose one of the Concerto’s themes to develop as the main theme in his 1962 Sonata for and Piano, third movement. These self-borrowings not only reflect the emulative nature of his style, but also the sense of nostalgia that is characteristic of his musical language. The most striking quotations in the 1949 Concerto are of American tunes— Stephen Foster’s “Old Folks at Home” and a melodic/rhythmic idea from George Gershwin’s An American in Paris. This link with American musical culture will be discussed in further depth in Chapter 3. It is worth mentioning here that since Poulenc did not readily incorporate American musical styles, including jazz, into his works, even in the 1920s, his quotations of Foster and Gershwin in the final movement of the

11 Concerto are notable and indicate a deliberate and creative compositional choice to connect with his American audience. Poulenc’s overall neoclassic idiom thus incorporates emulation and innovation. The Piano Concerto of 1949 reflects the many influences of the Parisian avant-garde and the aesthetics that grew out of it. Writing in 1948, Honegger described Poulenc’s style at that point in his career: The influences of Chabrier, Stravinsky, and Satie, which he underwent at the beginning of his career, have been assimilated, as often happens when a true vigor exists, and are now so dissolved in the mixture of his own qualities that it is impossible to detect them, while at each moment a melodic shape or a harmonic progression causes to say: “That is very Poulenc.”36

He emulates the styles of his admired predecessors, but reinterprets them with a musical language that is distinctly his own. As a result, Poulenc like other neoclassicists, provides a gloss on the musical traditions he encompasses while simultaneously placing them within a modern context and imbuing them with new meaning that is personal, political, and artistic.

36 Arthur Honegger, Incantation aux fossiles (Lausanne: Editions d’Ouchy, 1948), 111. Translated in Daniel, 98. 12

CHAPTER 2

THE PIANO CONCERTO: EMULATION AND INNOVATION

Classicism is most often associated with clarity, transparency, and balance. That being the case, composers such as Poulenc who restore those values also obscure traditional boundaries, elements, and processes in such a way that ambiguity becomes an additional goal of neoclassicism. The coherence and simplicity of eighteenth-century structures and functional tonality provide a framework within which the modern musical aesthetic of ambiguity is applied. Joseph Straus explains that twentieth-century composers use traditional elements in order to “grapple with their musical heritage.”37 Through a variety of “misreadings” of traditional procedures they create ambiguity within clarity, demonstrate their preoccupation with the past and their concern for their own place in history, and essentially remake tradition.38 In other words, they deliberately “invoke the past in order to reinterpret it.”39 Poulenc establishes the Concerto’s connection to the classical tradition through its genre, title, forms, phrase structures, harmonies, rhythms, and textures. Having invoked tradition, he then undermines a listener’s expectations in a variety of ways. The following analytical discussion examines some of the ways that Poulenc employs traditional aspects of the classical concerto and reinvents its content, processes, functions, and values. It focuses on forms, phrase structures, melodic style, harmonic progressions, key schemes, and developmental procedures. The three movements of the Concerto are in the traditional fast-slow-fast arrangement (Allegretto, Andante con moto, and Presto giocoso), but their individual

37 Joseph N. Straus, Remaking the Past: Musical Modernism and the Influence of the Tonal Tradition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), 1.

38 Ibid., 1, 21.

39 Ibid., 1. 13 forms demonstrate Poulenc’s remaking of traditional design.40 The first movement begins with a lyrical main theme in the piano part accompanied by the orchestra. The absence of an orchestral ritornello immediately identifies the use of an alternate first- movement form and reveals the collaborative relationship of soloist and orchestra that characterizes this symphonic-style concerto.41 Instead of using ritornello-sonata form, Poulenc structures the first-movement material in a way that is open to various interpretations. In each case a diversion from traditional formal features keeps the structure ambiguous. It could be considered a ternary form, as Keith Daniel and Emmanuel Reibel have suggested, based on changes in tempo and mood, and the observation that Poulenc used ternary form frequently in his oeuvre (Table 2.1).42 The three sections are also articulated by key (C-sharp minor, F-sharp major, C-sharp minor).

40 The keys of the three movements are C-sharp minor, E-flat major, and F-sharp minor, respectively; the relationships between them are examined later in this chapter, in a discussion of the emulative and innovative nature of harmonic progressions and key relationships in the Concerto.

41 One of the foremost models of these approaches was Camille Saint-Saëns’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 22 (1868). It begins with a slow introduction by the solo piano that alters the classical ritornello-sonata form, and the lyrical primary theme that follows the introduction is presented by the piano rather than the orchestra. Saint-Saëns also contributed to the development of the concerto genre a more symphonic approach, which balanced the relationship between soloist and orchestra; the former often plays an accompanying role and the latter has greater prominence in thematic sections than in the classical concerto. See Michael Stegemann, Camille Saint-Saëns and the French from 1850 to 1920, translated by Ann C. Sherwin (Portland: Amadeus Press, 1984) for a discussion of the history of the French piano concerto. Throughout the first movement of Poulenc’s Concerto, the soloist and orchestra remain in a collaborative relationship, in which the piano is treated more like a part of the orchestra than an individual virtuosic entity in an adversarial or dialogical relationship with the orchestra. The two exceptions are the third thematic area and the Largo section. This dialogical texture is more in keeping with eighteenth-century classical style, whereas the symphonic texture reflects nineteenth-century contributions, such as that of Saint-Saëns.

42 Daniel, 151, and Emmanuel Reibel, Les de Poulenc (Paris: Zurfluh, 1999), 53. 14 Table 2.1. Ternary form diagram of Movement I based on the interpretations of Keith Daniel and Emmanuel Reibel. A B A’ Allegretto con moto Largo Allegretto Th1 Th2 Th3 Th2 Th4 Th5 Th1 Th3 Coda C#m Fm FM Em mod. F#m–E♭M C#m C#M C#M 1 60 83 146 163 213 251 280 304

Since the A section contains four thematic groups and the relative durations of the sections do not suggest the sort of symmetry characteristic of an ABA form (Table 2.2), this movement could also be interpreted as an arch form, ABCB’DA, with an added section (D) serving as a divergence from an otherwise straightforward structure (Table 2.3).

Table 2.2. Durational diagram of Movement I in ternary form interpretation (the times are approximate). A B A’ Allegretto con moto Largo Allegretto 6 minutes 2.5 minutes 1.5 minutes 212 measures 38 measures 68 measures

Table 2.3. Arch form diagram of Movement I. A B C B’ D A a a a a b b c c c c b b t b’ d d d’ d b a a c c Coda C#m Fm FM Em F#m–E♭M C#m–C#M C#M 1 60 83 146 213 251 304

Arch form was common in the twentieth-century and, considering Poulenc’s tendency to present a variety of themes in succession, is a reasonable option for organizing his music. In such an interpretation, the lyrical themes, which are so characteristic of his musical language, are allowed a more significant role in defining the form. Another possibility arises from the observation that sections A, C, and D assume a more substantial presence than the others within the movement due to their length, repetitious thematic treatment, harmonic stability, and balanced phrases. Not only are they the longest, but each presents four statements of its theme. The A and C themes contrast in style and key, are balanced in their phrase structures, and come to closure on authentic cadences. While the theme of the B section is certainly lyrical, it serves a transitional function due to its instability and modulatory activity. Although Daniel has

15 identified the melody at measure 163 as a consequential theme (Theme 4) of the A section in ternary form (refer to Table 2.1), it behaves like a transitional idea interjected within the B theme section, and is labeled as such (t) in the alternate diagrams in this study. Considering these elements, this movement resembles sonata-allegro form (Table 2.4), in which ABC functions as PTS. The developmental Section 3, beginning at measure 146, makes use of the transitional idea (b) but not the primary and secondary themes, and Poulenc, in typical fashion, introduces a new contrasting idea (d) at measure 213. He develops it by repetition, modulation, and changes in instrumentation, as in the previous thematic groups, and makes this section a distinct entity in the form. The intrusion of thematic group N, which greatly contrasts in tempo and mood, undermines structural clarity, disrupts the forward movement, and recalls the clever tactics of Haydn.

Table 2.4. Quasi-sonata form diagram of Movement I. Part I Part II Section 1 Section 2 Section 3 Section 4 P T S Development N P S Coda a a a a b b c c c c b b t b’ d d d’ d b a a c c C#m Fm FM Em F#m–E♭M C#m–C#M C#M 1 60 83 146 213 251 304

Section 4 resembles the recapitulation of a sonata form since both the primary (P) and secondary (S) themes return in the tonic key, though in an abbreviated version. The use of the major-mode tonic for the secondary theme in Section 4 connects it to its initial major-mode key and ends the movement with the buoyancy that Poulenc intended for this “light concerto.”43 A jaunty coda closes the movement and confirms the tonic, though not without a touch of harmonic ambiguity. In the first eight minutes the music moves through multiple themes, keys, styles, and moods. After the modulatory development section and the Largo section (N), with its hesitant repetitions of a slow chordal theme, a listener easily loses track of the formal structure and the primary and secondary themes and keys. When the opening thematic

43 Poulenc called this a “light concerto” in his interview with Claude Rostand. Refer to Chapter 3 of this document for the full quotation. 16 material returns at measure 251 it is has a refreshing and stabilizing effect that coincides with the intentions of a traditional sonata form. The second movement is a straightforward ternary form (ABA’), as might be expected, with sections articulated by musical character, key, and thematic material (Table 2.5). Poulenc modifies this slow movement form with some of the same procedures as in the first movement. He presents a variety of themes, develops them through their immediate repetition, and includes a sharp contrast in mood and style between the A and B sections.

Table 2.5. Ternary form diagram of Movement II. A B A’ Coda Andante con moto Subito più mosso Andante a a a a b c c d d d (d) d t a E♭M GM A♭M CM EM A♭M CM C♭m F#m Em G#m E♭M E♭M 1 33 40 46 84 94-101

The movement begins very calmly with a graceful, expansive melody and a gently pulsing chordal accompaniment. As Daniel has suggested, the style of the opening passage resembles Mozartian second-movement style.44 It also recalls the Largo section of the Concerto’s first movement with its meditative, nostalgic character. The start of the B section is marked by a sudden increase in tempo and intensity, and it is characterized overall by dramatic expressiveness and progression through thematic and motivic ideas that vary in style. The indication “tempo exact de l’allegretto” in the score instructs the musicians to revive the character of the Allegretto section of the first movement. A heavily accented three-note melodic/rhythmic motive initiates the melodic ideas and contrasts with the calm preceding section. This motive and its repetition function as a modulatory transition to a more lyrical theme at measure 40. Marked “gracieux,” it is characterized by lightness and elegance, a dotted rhythmic figure, and parallel thirds harmonization.45 The dotted rhythmic motive from this theme develops into a new theme, an ascending pattern of dotted rhythms, now in octaves. The

44 Daniel, 153.

45 Daniel has suggested the resemblance of this passage to the musical language of Ravel. Ibid.

17 music builds to a dramatic climax through rhythmic intensity, increasing dynamics, harmonic complexity, modulation, and an ascending sequence that avoids resolution. The tension gives way at measure 74 to a calm and sweetly expressive transitional idea that returns the music to the opening theme in the tonic key. While this movement is more straightforward in its structure than the first and third movements, the formal division between sections is obscured by the lack of thematic continuity in the middle section and the transitional nature of its musical ideas. The accented, ascending figure that initiates the B section is answered in measure 35 by a glistening, descending scalar passage in 3/4 time that spans over three octaves. This phrase is repeated a step lower in measures 36-37, but the scale, now in 2/4 time, descends only two octaves before it is interrupted by a two-measure transitional idea marked “à peine cédé” (barely given way), which itself is interrupted by the entrance of the graceful theme at measure 40. Poulenc creates ambiguity in this formal section through these sudden contrasts between and within phrases and through thematic interruption. The third movement is a rondo form that Poulenc remakes through the contraction and expansion of sectional and thematic returns (Table 2.6).

Table 2.6. Modified rondo form diagram of Movement III. I II I II II(exp) I A B A’ C A’’ B’ C’ C’’(exp) A B’’A’ Coda aaaa bbbb a cc d d d d a c b b d d e e f e e d a d g d d f f f h a a b c e a hhd F#m CM F#m E♭M B♭m G♭M AM E♭M F#m F#M 1 24 52 74 106 114 133 175 236 271

Section I is a rounded binary form that returns in a contracted version at m. 106 and then a more complete version at the end. Section II is fairly straightforward in its presentation and developed repetition of a single theme (d), but when it returns it provides amusing diversions from and additions to the structure that demonstrate Poulenc’s compositional creativity and the fluidity of his musical language. The insertion of an extra Section II in an expanded format provides a large-scale alteration to this classical rondo structure. The first clue that the finale will not be a typical rondo is its title Rondeau à la française. The introduction of new themes throughout the movement, particularly in the

18 two returns of the C section, reflects Poulenc’s compositional tendency toward a succession of tunes in a style reminiscent of the pastiche techniques of the Parisian music hall and cabaret. It serves to obscure the form, to entertain the listener in a characteristically French neoclassic fashion, and to provide a nostalgic souvenir of Paris. Although Poulenc’s modified forms lack independent development sections, he does apply traditional developmental processes to all of his themes through immediate repetition within their individual thematic sections. These developmental techniques include fragmentation, sequence, compression, expansion, omission, modulation, harmonic embellishment, and changes in scoring, texture, and dynamics. In forms such as the quasi-sonata first movement, where a traditional development section is expected, he simply introduces and develops a new theme. Phrase structure is another aspect of the Concerto that reflects emulation and innovation through a balance of clarity and ambiguity. The themes demonstrate elements of traditional period and sentence structures, but they are often altered or obscured. The opening themes of each movement illustrate the lyrical quality of his melodic style and provide examples of his various treatments of phrase structure, harmonic progression, and developmental procedures. The first movement opens with a lyrical theme that has a neoromantic expressive quality. The phrase is a balanced, eight-measure sentence comprised of a statement, repetition, and continuation that leads to an authentic cadence (Example 2.1). The continuation develops a motivic fragment of the theme through sequence, and also subdivides according to the sentential scheme (1+1+2), as is typical of many classical sentence structures. The tonic key, C-sharp minor, is clearly established by the outlining of the tonic chord in both the melody and accompaniment. The harmonic progression is traditional with the exception of an alternate consonant embellishing chord just before the V7-I cadence that provides closure to the phrase (Table 2.7). This ♭IV7 is an innovative replacement for a more traditional subdominant function. The juxtaposition in this phrase of an unconventional embellishing chord with the more traditional Neapolitan sixth in measure 4 further demonstrates Poulenc’s balance of the old and the new.

19

Example 2.1. Opening theme (reduction), first movement, mm. 1-8, showing sentential phrase structure.

Table 2.7. Harmonic progression of opening theme, Movement I. a a’ b (continuation) 6 7 6 7 7 C#m: i i i N V i ♭IV V i m. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

The theme is stated four times, changing keys and alternating the instrumentation of the melody between piano and orchestra, but otherwise remaining the same in melodic and harmonic configuration. Each statement is followed by a modulatory transition that sequences a melodic motive through a circle-of-fifths harmonic progression and leads into the next key by way of a dominant seventh or dominant chord (Table 2.8).

20 Table 2.8. Thematic statements and transitions in opening section of Movement I. mm. Key Harmonic Progression 1 a 1-8 C#m 1 7 7 7 7 9 t 9-13 mod. GM – Cm – FM – B♭m – E♭ Æ A♭m 2 a 14-21 A♭m 2 7 7 7 7 9 7 t 22-30 mod. DM – Gm – CM – Fm – B♭ Æ E♭m – C# Æ F#m 3 a 31-38 F#m 3 7 7 7 7 9 t 39-43 mod. CM – Fm - B♭M - E♭m – G# (enh.) Æ C#m 4 a 44-51 C#m 4 t 52-59 C#M/m C#M/m Æ F#m (B section)

Fifth relationships dominate not only the modulatory progressions but also the key relationships throughout this opening section. The tonal center of the section is C- sharp minor, the key of both the first and last statements of the theme, and the keys of the interior statements are in perfect fifth relationships above and below it, respectively: G- sharp minor (enharmonically respelled A-flat) and F-sharp minor. An additional fifth relationship is that between A-flat minor of a2 (arrived at through t1) and E-flat minor, which is arrived at in m. 27 of t2 but is followed by a C-sharp seventh chord that adjusts the goal upward by a minor third to F-sharp. Poulenc thus demonstrates his innovative and carefully crafted use of traditional harmonic elements, relationships, and phrase structure. In the recapitulation Poulenc switches the initial instrumentation, assigning the main theme to the orchestra and the arpeggiated accompaniment to the piano. Otherwise, the section proceeds just as at the beginning of the movement, but it is abbreviated after two statements and transitions. The transition leads from the dominant seventh into the secondary theme in the tonic (major mode). This thematic section is also shortened to two statements. In effect, Poulenc reiterates just enough to articulate the traditional structure and resolve the tension of the contrasting themes, thereby demonstrating the neoclassic value of concision. The stately and sentimental opening theme of the second movement (mm. 1-13) demonstrates a hybrid phrase structure in which an internal expansion is interpolated between two subphrases—a statement and its contrast—each of which demonstrates sentential (1+1+2) structure (Example 2.2 and Table 2.9). In the first subphrase (mm. 1- 4) the continuation (b) develops the initial motive; a four-measure expansion of the b idea follows (mm. 5-8). The contrast subphrase (mm. 9-12) resembles the first subphrase in 21 structure and contour, and it further develops the opening motive while bringing closure to the whole phrase. Another brief expansion occurs in measure 12, just before the cadence on the downbeat of measure 13, prolonging the dominant eleventh chord and allowing the tonic of the cadence to elide with the next statement of the theme. The expansions delay the cadential resolution, prolong the calm, meditative state, provide subtle expressive tension, and unbalance the otherwise symmetrical structure.

Example 2.2. Second movement, opening theme (reduction), mm. 1-13, showing hybrid phrase structure.

22 Table 2.9. Phrase structure diagram of opening theme, Movement II, mm. 1-13. Subphrase 2 (Contrast) Subphrase 1 Interpolation (develops subphrase 1) Cadence Stmt Rep Cont Internal expansion Stmt Rep Cont (Elision) Unit a a’ b b’ b’’ c c’ d a … 7 7 11 Harmony I IV ♭III V V I mm. 1 2 3-4 5-6 7-8 9 10 11-12 13…

Beginning at measure 13 the repetitions of the theme are subjected to successive compression (Table 2.10). The phrase length and melodic rhythm are contracted through fragmentation and a change in meter from 4/4 to 3/4. The harmonic goal in this section is A-flat major, the subdominant of the tonic key, E-flat major, but the method of successive compression by which this goal is reached is uncharacteristic of classical tradition. Thematic compression, lack of resolution, ascending modulation by enharmonic diminished-seventh pivot chords, restless accompaniment, and increasing dynamics function together to develop the motive, build tension, and reach a harmonic goal, all while remaining concise. The arrival at A-flat major (m. 27) brings resolution of the harmonic and dynamic tension as it also returns to the calm, pianissimo mood for the final, more complete statement of the phrase. Poulenc creates the illusion of full thematic recapitulation and strong sectional closure, however; this statement, while more complete than the previous five (ii-vi), is also shortened (to seven measures; the equivalent of mm. 7-12 of the theme is extracted) and an abrupt cadence on C major elides with the start of the next large section of the movement.

Table 2.10. Successive compression of opening phrase, Movement II. Phrase Statement Number of Measures Measures Key 9 i (plus 4 measures of 1-13 E♭M (full phrase stated first) internal expansion) ii 6 13-18 E♭M iii 3 18-20 GM iv 2 21-22 Dm v 2 23-24 Fm vi 2 25-26 A♭m

vii 7 27-33 A♭M

23 The opening theme of the third movement is also a hybrid. While it contains elements of both periodic and sentential phrase structures, Poulenc leaves it open to various interpretations, which contributes to the simultaneous clarity and ambiguity in this work. As previously discussed, the first section of this modified rondo form is a rounded binary form, in which the A section (mm. 1-25) elides with the B section. The following examination focuses upon the phrase structure of the A theme. The movement opens with a light, presto giocoso theme. The first eight measures could initially sound like the opening for a continuous binary rondo theme, which is characterized by a half cadence in the eighth measure, but authentic cadential closure does not occur in the ensuing section. Measures 1-8 resemble the antecedent and consequent phrases of a parallel period (statement, contrast; restatement, varied contrast), but the music swerves away from a resolution by using a half cadence in measure 8, which thereby prevents the formation of a traditional period (Example 2.3).

Example 2.3. Third movement, opening theme, mm. 1-8, showing its intimation of a continuous binary rondo theme and of a parallel period phrase structure. The half cadence in m. 8 negates formation of a period.

This passage could also be considered the statement and varied repetition of a sentence structure. The subsequent passage (mm. 9-14) demonstrates continuation processes, but

24 it does not resolve. Instead, it is interrupted after a half cadence by a return of the opening four measures. Another half cadence leads into a varied continuation (mm. 19- 24) that becomes a transition to the B theme in C major. This continuation-transition serves to modulate from the tonic F-sharp minor to A major and then C major (m. 21). Since the A theme is not allowed harmonic closure in F-sharp minor, ambiguity is achieved, and the fleeting duration of the A section, at only sixteen seconds, adds to the sense of pastiche. The thematic section as a whole (mm. 1-24) is in a rounded binary form, or song form (shown in Table 2.11; also refer to Table 2.6), that suggests periodic and sentential elements and successively avoids authentic cadences on the tonic, F-sharp minor. Traditional phrase structure and form are thus remade through ambiguity.

Table 2.11. Design of the opening A section, third movement. Period antecedent consequent Sentence statement repetition continuation Continuous rounded binary a repeat of a b a’ mod. trans. form Song form a a’ b a cont./trans. 6 6 9 9 F#m: i V i V V i V AM: ii V CM: ii I mm. 1-4 5-8 9-14 15-18 19-24

Key schemes and harmonic progressions also demonstrate emulation and innovation in the Concerto. Poulenc’s harmonic language is predominantly diatonic, with tertian and quintal structures, and, in keeping with classical tradition, the keys and harmonic progressions are important in defining formal structure and thematic function. As a result, deviations from these features illustrate his neoclassic idiom of obscuring and remaking tradition, as well as adding color to the harmonic and thematic material. In the overall formal structure of the Concerto, the key relationships between the movements are unusual—C-sharp minor, E-flat major, and F-sharp minor—and while C- sharp and F-sharp are closely related within common practice tonality, E-flat is distant from both. Closer inspection of the keys and modulatory progressions within the movements reveals that these keys are not arbitrary but rather serve to incorporate French

25 harmonic tradition, remake classical structure, create ambiguity, and link the keys of the individual movements within the overall structure. The tonic-to-subdominant relationship between the first and last movements is untraditional in eighteenth-century practice. Although their relationship could be considered a dominant-tonic one, and in that sense slightly closer to classical practice, it may be better understood in terms of modern French harmonic tradition. Quartal relationships figure prominently in the works of Debussy, Chabrier, and Satie, for instance, each of whom Poulenc greatly admired. The fourth relationship is mirrored on a smaller scale in the second movement of the Concerto, where the first and last statements of the opening theme are in E-flat major and A-flat major, respectively (mm. 1 and 27).46 Consideration of the French tradition also illuminates the overall key relationship of the three movements that is ambiguous in the context of classical tradition. C-sharp, E-flat, and F-sharp form the pentatonic trichord (0,2,5), which is most often associated with Debussy. Through quartal and pentatonic elements Poulenc emulates harmonic techniques of his French predecessors. A connection between the three keys in this Concerto is enhanced by the presence of that of the central movement, E-flat major, in the first and third movements. In the first movement the Largo section oscillates between the keys of F-sharp major and E-flat major, which are in a minor-third relationship, enharmonically respelled. The interval of a minor third between the keys of the last two movements illuminates one of the important modulatory relationships in the Concerto. Chains of thirds can be seen throughout the work, at times connecting keys that would traditionally be considered distant. E-flat major also defines the second section (m. 74) of the third movement rondo, and is reinforced in the expanded return of that section (m. 175). In essence, Poulenc unifies the Concerto’s three main keys by weaving them into the harmonic fabric of the individual movements. The last movement not only begins and ends in a different key from the first movement, it also contrasts in its melodic style and musical character. While this contradiction is one manifestation of Poulenc’s neoclassic style, as well as his avant-

46 It is also worth noting that the key of A-flat major is the enharmonic dominant of C- sharp, the key of the first movement. 26 garde aesthetic roots, there are several ways in which he ties together the first and last movements. First, they both begin in the minor mode and end in the parallel major. Second, the opening movement does, in fact, contain a theme reminiscent of the lively popular entertainment style exploited in the third movement: the secondary (S) theme (Mvt. I, mm. 83-93). It is light and playful in its rhythms, texture, tunefulness, and simple harmonies, although this is initially disguised by its presentation in the strings rather than the piano, woodwinds, or brass. The movements are also linked by the return in the third movement of the tonic key of the first movement (C-sharp major); its enharmonic reinterpretation as D-flat major provides a touch of visual ambiguity to amuse a performer or analyst, and likely the composer himself. This cyclic moment occurs near the end of the third movement for one of the most noteworthy tunes in the work, the quotation of Stephen Foster’s “Old Folks at Home” (mm. 148-59). Finally, the codas of the first and last movements are similar in structure and content. In both cases fanfare-like passages of octaves outlining the tonic chord are set against glistening arpeggiated backdrops, heralding the close of the movement. A two- measure diversion occurs just before the final cadential progression in both instances (mm. 315-16 in Mvt. I; mm. 282-83 in Mvt. III). This is followed by a scalar descent in the piano part to the tonic note accompanied by a chordal progression to the cadence point in the orchestra. Poulenc remakes the practice of unifying movements of a work by avoiding obvious motivic and harmonic parallels between them. Yet through subtle connections within seemingly incongruous movements he provides a degree of clarity within the ambiguity. In effect, he demonstrates his compositional craftsmanship and wit, and exhibits the French values of refinement and nuanced expression. In each of the movements the tonic key returns at the recapitulation of the opening material and the movement ends in the tonic key, although the mode changes from minor to major in the first and last movements, another common eighteenth-century practice. In most cases the returns of internal thematic sections are also in their original keys; when they are not, it is either a developmental technique or a way of obscuring the formal identifiers. These recapitulations of primary sections are often prepared by the traditional

27 dominant seventh or dominant ninth chord. In the first movement the V9 of C-sharp minor is elongated by a fermata just before the opening theme returns, and in the second and third movements the V7 of E-flat major and of F-sharp minor, respectively, lead to the final return of the opening theme. The root movements of many of the harmonies are functional in the traditional sense and serve cadential, prolongational, and sequential progressions, but Poulenc often spices up the harmonies with added dissonances and , elevenths, and thirteenths on tonic and dominant triads. The opening theme of the first movement provides an example of a harmonic progression that serves a traditional cadential function and contains two embellishing chords: one that was common in the eighteenth-century, a Neapolitan sixth chord, and one that reflects Poulenc’s modern, innovative language, an altered major-seventh chord (refer to Table 2.7). Harmonic ambiguity is often created by the superimposition of chords or modes, or by the omission of chord tones, particularly at the beginnings and endings of movements. The second movement begins with a B-flat7 chord with a superimposed Fm7 chord, which could be interpreted as a B-flat11, against an E-flat major pedal in the orchestra. In the coda, which traditionally serves to reinforce the tonic key, E-flat major and E-flat minor are juxtaposed in the pianist’s arpeggiated accompaniment. The final cadence that follows is authentic, but the tonic “chord” is missing its third, which obscures the feeling of resolution. Throughout the work Poulenc uses a variety of keys that are arrived at by frequent, rapid, and fluid modulations, which contribute to harmonic ambiguity and a neoromantic sensuousness. The most notable modulation patterns in the work are chains of third-relationships and fifth-relationships. Harmonic progressions in transitional passages are also often characterized by relationships of fifths. Measures 185-6 in the third movement contain a progression of seventh-chords through a series of descending fifths (G7 – C7 – F7 – B-flat7), which recalls similar instances in the transitions between the statements of the primary theme in the first movement (refer to Table 2.8). Poulenc’s harmonic language reflects the conservative structural values of eighteenth-century tonality, the fluid modulatory processes and expressive beauty of nineteenth-century harmonic practices, and the twentieth-century French aesthetics of

28 clarity and charm that are enhanced by ambiguity and subtle dissonance. Although he is not considered an innovator relative to some other twentieth-century composers, his harmonic language is innovative within a conservative tonal framework. In his words, I certainly know that I am not among the musicians who will have been harmonic innovators, like Igor, Ravel or Debussy, but I think there is a place for new music which is happy to use the chords of others. Wasn’t this the case with Mozart and Schubert?47

The Piano Concerto is a manifestation of Poulenc’s distinctive voice within the French neoclassic idiom. The forms, phrase structures, melodies, harmonies, and developmental techniques reflect their eighteenth-century heritage, but they repeatedly deviate from the expectations of a serious concerto. Poulenc makes ambiguity a goal and clarity an illusion. Balancing tradition and innovation, he emulates Mozart, Satie, and Debussy, revels in his freedom from rules, and creates a work that is rich in musical character and aesthetically and intellectually entertaining.

47 Poulenc, Correspondance, 1915-1963, compiled by Hélène de Wendel (Paris: Seuil, 1967), 128. 29

CHAPTER 3

A PARISIAN IN AMERICA: THE PIANO CONCERTO AND POULENC’S AMERICAN SUCCESS

Poulenc made five trips to the United States between 1948 and 1961 to perform as a soloist and accompanist and to attend premieres of his works.48 He was enthusiastically received from the beginning, as is evident in published reviews, written correspondence, commissions for new works, and requests for future performances. This chapter demonstrates how Poulenc captivated American audiences and further solidified his international reputation through his pianistic virtuosity, his congenial personality and social decorum, and his adeptness in synthesizing tradition with popular tunes and styles that acknowledged and engaged his American patrons. The 1949 Piano Concerto, written for his performance with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and premiered on his second American tour in 1950, is an example not only of Poulenc’s craftsmanship and distinctive musical language, but also of a thoughtful and creative interaction with an audience. Poulenc’s reputation as a composer and pianist was well established throughout Europe by the outset of the Second World War, due in large part to his concert tours as soloist and accompanist. He was widely acclaimed for his elegant, captivating music and pianistic skills. The British media, in particular, had played a substantial role in promoting the man and his music since his early years.49 His first publisher, Chester, was based in London, and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) had commissioned works and supported numerous concerts and radio broadcasts featuring Poulenc since the 1930s. British critics consistently praised his performances, and

48 Poulenc’s American debut was rather late in his career compared to those of many of his contemporaries, including Stravinsky, Ravel, Milhaud, Tailleferre, and Messiaen.

49 Chester issued Poulenc’s first four publications in 1919—Trois mouvements perpétuels (composed in 1917), Sonata for Piano Four Hands, Sonata for Two , and Rapsodie nègre. 30 Poulenc, always feeling welcomed and appreciated in England, referred to Londoners as his “most faithful public in Europe.”50 During the German occupation of France in World War II travel restrictions suspended Poulenc’s international touring career, which had been an important source of both recognition and income. At the end of the war he immediately reestablished ties with London by resuming regular concerts and appearances, the first of which was a performance of his 1932 Concerto for Two Pianos, in which he was assisted by .51 Both his music and his performance were praised just as they had been in the past: Time has not staled the easy wit and charm of a composition that seems to have flowed from the pen with the naturalness and inevitability that mark a work by Mozart. Here the elegance is that of the aristocratic Faubourg- Saint-Honoré. This concerto is certainly original, but it keeps on its feet and moves with grace and distinction. Poulenc and Britten are both excellent pianists; and aided by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Basil Cameron, they achieved a performance that must have pleased the composer as much as it did the audience.52

Further development of his career, however, would require a transatlantic voyage. The war had caused mass destruction and economic devastation throughout Europe, and concert venues and performance opportunities were difficult to secure. Europe could neither physically nor financially support the schedule Poulenc desired. The United States, now the most economically and politically stable country, had become the center of musical and artistic activity and influence, and many European composers, musicians, and other artists were living and working within the American borders. The first half of the twentieth century had also witnessed the development of distinctively American music and the rise of a multitude of both art and popular styles that thrived in the

50 Poulenc 1954, 104. Translated in Schmidt, 303n2.

51 The concert took place at the , London, and resulted in a lifelong friendship with Britten. Schmidt, 304.

52 Review of 6 January 1945 concert by music critic W. H. Haddon Squire in Christian Science Monitor (7 January 1945). Cited in Schmidt, 304. 31 democratic environment.53 An international career depended upon a successful engagement with this new economic and cultural world power. A web of personal connections and cultural exchanges between France and the United States was already in place and contributed to the positive reception that Poulenc enjoyed, as will be examined in the next chapter. There were, however, aspects of Poulenc’s performance choices, musicianship, self-presentation, personality, and compositions that secured his position in the American public’s affection. Poulenc arranged his first American tour with , hoping to establish himself as “the master of contemporary song.”54 Between October and December 1948 they traveled across North America, performing works for voice and piano by Poulenc, Lully, Gounod, Schumann, Schubert, Fauré, and Ravel.55 The following review in Musical America provides an example of the unanimous praise the duo received: The American debut of Francis Poulenc and Pierre Bernac lived up to the highest expectations. An audience including many noted musicians gathered to welcome the French composer and his colleague, and it was rewarded with an evening of superlative interpretations. Mr. Poulenc is not only one of the greatest song composers of our time: he is also one of our best accompanists. And Mr. Bernac needed only the first group of Lulli arias to prove himself an artist of the rarest sensitivity and refinement of style. Needless to say, the encores were plentiful.56

53 Distinctively American musical styles of the first half of the twentieth century include the ultra-modernist music of , , and Ruth Crawford, the nationalistic/populist art music of , William Grant Still, , and George Gershwin, and the popular music of jazz bands, Tin Pan Alley, and Broadway musicals.

54 8 September 1948 letter from Poulenc to in the BBC Written Archives Centre at Caversham, Reading, England. Cited in Schmidt, 338. Bernac and Poulenc began their collaboration in 1935 and became one of the century’s premier piano/vocal duos, comparable to and Benjamin Britten. Schmidt, 90.

55 Their concert schedule took them from the east coast (Boston and New York) to the west (Los Angeles, Carmel, San Francisco, Denver, and Salt Lake City), back to New York, then into Canada (Quebec, Montreal, and Toronto), finishing in and Pittsburgh before returning to Paris. See Schmidt, 492-98, for summaries of the tour schedules.

56 Review of 7 November 1948 concert, Town Hall, New York. Robert Sabin, “Pierre Bernac, Baritone, Francis Poulenc, Composer-Pianist, Town Hall, Nov. 7,” Musical America 68/14 (December 1, 1948), 10.

32 A review of the performance of Calligrammes, a he composed specifically for this trip, hailed the work not only as “one of Poulenc’s finest,” but also as a model of French song composition.57 That Poulenc presented himself to the American public as a composer-pianist is significant; it allowed him to prove himself as both a gifted creator and a sensitive musician, which strengthened the impact of his music and his visit. The opportunity to attend a performance of a composer interpreting his own music is noteworthy, especially when he has traveled across the ocean for a limited number of performances.58 A virtuoso pianist, Poulenc had performed throughout his career in salons and concert halls, premiering many of his own compositions. Pierre Bernac remarked that Poulenc had a marvelous touch with a fullness and a superb quality of tone which, when appropriate, could be suddenly percussive. Poulenc certainly played like a composer. His harmonic instinct, his feeling for breaths, and not only in his own music, was irreplaceable.59

The American critics praised his technical skill and musical sensitivity as a soloist and as an accompanist. “Mr. Poulenc showed himself an executant of virtuoso brilliancy” in a performance as soloist of his Concert champêtre (1932) with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulous.60 After a concert with Bernac at Town Hall, a New York Times reviewer noted Poulenc’s “technical proficiency,” his “clean and transparent” playing, his “flawless taste and refinement of style,” and “an uncommonly sympathetic merging of every detail.”61 A review in the Los Angeles Times echoed these sentiments: “Mr. Bernac is a superb artist, and in Mr. Poulenc he had an extraordinary accompanist,

57 Review of 20 November 1948 concert, Town Hall, New York. C. S. “Pierre Bernac, Baritone, Francis Poulenc, Pianist, Town Hall, Nov. 20.” Musical America 68/14 (December 1, 1948), 24.

58 Poulenc’s performing career places him within a long tradition of composer-pianists who performed their own works.

59 Pierre Bernac, Francis Poulenc: The Man and His Songs (New York: Norton, 1977), 44.

60 Review of 11 November 1948 concert. H. F. P., “Poulenc Concert Champetre With Composer as Soloist,” Musical America 68/14 (December 1, 1948), 8.

61 Review of 7 November 1948 Town Hall concert in 8 November edition of The New York Times, by Noel Straus. Cited in Schmidt, 341-42. 33 one who made the piano part of each song a sensitive and integral part of its structure in a way that one had almost forgotten existed.”62 Poulenc received overwhelmingly positive responses at sold-out concerts, and the musical success and financial potential thrilled him: [I am] quite overcome, as much by the warmth of the American central heating system as by such a success that it leaves me somewhat dumbfounded. The New York recital was an unbelievable triumph. Full house. As we came on stage applause for three minutes, bows, re-bows. ... At the end people were positively yelling. Pierre and I were delighted but somewhat stunned. Yesterday, unanimous praise from the press. The only topic of conversation that night was our concert and [Christian] Dior’s inauguration. When you make it here, you really make it! Yesterday, endless phone calls from recording companies, publishers, etc. The recording of the Concerto for Two Pianos, conducted by Mitropoulos, is selling by the hundreds. Clearly, the aim of our trip has been achieved. I can now earn whatever I like here—that much is certain.63

His musicianship and his music proved compatible with the American audience’s desires and expectations. Poulenc’s aesthetic was based on pleasure and spontaneity, and he composed much of his music with the intent to entertain and amuse his audiences. This was unusual within the context of other mid-century trends in art music, including , , and nascent indeterminacy, which favored highly calculated or unorthodox compositional means and musical elements, as well as theoretical rigor and philosophical or spiritual contemplation, all aimed at intellectually elite audiences. Many American newspapers and periodicals published in the years surrounding his tours, however, reveal a preference for the ease and spontaneity of Poulenc’s music and his desire to please his audiences. The Musical Quarterly claimed that he “will wholeheartedly be given preference by all those to whom Messiaen means ‘modernity,’ modernity meaning dissonance. [Poulenc] wants to please, and no modernistic nonsense and acerbity.”64 An article in Musical

62 Review of 1 December 1948 concert at Wilshire Ebell Theater, Los Angeles, in Los Angeles Times, by Albert Goldberg. Cited in Schmidt, 344.

63 10 November 1948 letter to Brigette Manceaux from Boston, in Francis Poulenc, “Echo and Source:” Selected Correspondence 1915-1963, edited and translated by Sidney Buckland (London: Victor Gollancz, 1991), 173.

34 America titled “Poulenc: ‘The Essence is Simplicity’” highlighted the “spontaneity of [his] melodic inspiration and the unforced quality of his music” based on his “practical attitude toward composing, untortured by metaphysical doubts or other preoccupations.”65 One reviewer likened him to Mozart in his “ability to give a twist to a cliché of harmony or melody, and make it as fresh as ever.”66 American audiences were clearly enthusiastic about the vitality and conservativeness that Poulenc and his music brought to the scene. Poulenc was equally delighted with his experiences in his host country. In a letter to his niece shortly after his arrival he wrote, “Everything is going marvelously. I am smitten by New York and divinely comfortable here,”67 and to a group of reporters in California he exclaimed, “J’adore Hollywood!”68 He felt warmly welcomed by many people, including the Metropolitan Opera soprano Lily Pons, who sent flowers to his hotel room and threw a cocktail party for him.69 He also remarked that “the young American music clique are all very nice to me.”70 The gracious and convivial reception accorded him by his hosts endeared America to him. Accounts of Poulenc frequently reference his charming personality and social skills, qualities that contributed to his professional success as he interacted with his audiences both inside and outside of the concert hall. Pierre Bernac wrote about Poulenc’s extraordinary presence, remarking that he was “one of those exceptional people with a personality so strong that it left an indelible impression on all who came in

64 Frederick Goldbeck, “Current Chronicle,” The Musical Quarterly 36/4 (Oct. 1950), 596.

65 Robert Sabin, “Poulenc: ‘The Essence is Simplicity,’” Musical America 68/14 (Nov. 15, 1949), 27.

66 Review of 7 November 1948 concert at Town Hall, New York. Robert Sabin, “Pierre Bernac, Baritone, Francis Poulenc, Composer-Pianist, Town Hall, Nov. 7,” Musical America 68/14 (December 1, 1948), 10, 18.

67 3 November 1948 letter to Brigitte Manceaux, Poulenc 1991, 172-73.

68 Schmidt, 345.

69 3 November 1948 letter to Brigitte Manceaux, Poulenc 1991, 172-73.

70 Ibid. 35 contact with him.”71 Having participated in Parisian society throughout his life, he was comfortable in social situations. He was a remarkable conversationalist, well versed in music, literature, and art, and had an engaging sense of humor. According to Bernac, His nature was fundamentally gay and happy. He loved to laugh, and he himself could be highly amusing. His conversation could be quite fascinating: the most brilliant, original, interesting and amusing that can be imagined, [making] many clever and irresistibly comic remarks. ... With his great intelligence and sensitivity he knew how to put [people] at their ease. In all social circles he had many faithful and affectionate friends.72

The composer valued his numerous friendships and devoted time and energy on a daily basis to maintaining them through correspondence and visits. During the American tours he visited his Parisian friends living in the United States, including , Darius Milhaud, Igor Stravinsky, and the fashion designer Christian Dior.73 He also developed new friendships with , the soprano Rose Dercourt, and the duo pianists Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale.74 Poulenc took advantage of social opportunities to advance his musical career. Carl Schmidt has observed that Poulenc had been a savvy self-promoter since his decision to become a composer in 1917, “court[ing] artists, writers, musicians, publishers, and wealthy patrons and patronesses of the arts.” 75 Top priority for Poulenc was always the human factor. Although many of the circles into which Poulenc was introduced were unconnected, he astutely detected areas that showed promise and might enable him to take advantage of the situation. Poulenc excelled at this game. Each successive meeting reinforced earlier contacts and fostered complicity.76

71 Bernac, 30.

72 Ibid., 33-34.

73 Wanda Landowska (1879-1959) was Polish, but lived in Paris from 1900 to 1940. When the Germans invaded the city she fled to the United States, where she enjoyed a successful performing and teaching career and settled in Connecticut. Similarly, Igor Stravinsky (1882- 1971) was Russian, but made Paris his home between 1920 and 1939, when he moved to the United States and resided in California and New York.

74 Schmidt, 340-41, 358-59.

75 Ibid., 57.

36 Essentially, Poulenc was a master of what today is called networking. This skill served him well throughout his career and in this American experience. After the success of the first tour Poulenc was eager to return to America and scheduled his second tour for the following year, January through March 1950.77 In addition to accompanying Bernac at many of the same venues across the country, Poulenc would premiere a new concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. According to the Orchestra’s archives, the work was not actually commissioned by them, although most secondary sources that discuss the piece use that term.78 Rather, Poulenc composed it upon the informal request of Charles Munch, who would be the new conductor that season.79 As Poulenc explained to Claude Rostand, “In 1950 for my second American tour with Pierre Bernac, Charles Munch had asked me to return to Boston to play a new concerto.”80 Poulenc was grateful for the opportunity to compose and perform the work and thanked Munch in a letter written from Cleveland a few weeks after its first performance.81 It had enabled him to complete a piece he had wanted to write for some time; he had, in fact, expressed his desire to compose a new concerto for piano as early as September 1945 in a letter to Bernac.82 He composed the work in France between May and October 1949 at his country estate, Noizay. Poulenc, Munch, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra performed the Concerto three times in January 1950: in Boston at Symphony Hall on 6 January, in

76 Myriam Chiménes, “Poulenc and His Patrons: Social Convergences,” in Francis Poulenc: Music, Art and Literature, edited by Sidney Buckland and Chiménes (Brookfield: Ashgate, 1999), 239.

77 Schmidt, 345.

78 Email correspondence with Barbara Perkel, Boston Symphony Orchestra Archives, 19 May 2008.

79 The two men had developed a friendship during Munch's years in Paris (1933-1949) where Munch had conducted some of Poulenc’s works.

80 Poulenc 1954, 133-34.

81 Letter dated 15 February 1950 in Poulenc 1994, 677.

82 He planned to work on it the following spring in order to be ready for the winter season of 1946. Poulenc 1991, 164.

37 Washington, D.C., at Constitution Hall on 12 January, and in New York City at on 14 January. The composer also performed the Concerto in Montreal on 2 February during a ten-day Canadian tour with Bernac. He had arranged a performance with his old conductor-friend Désiré Defauw, who had been the music director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra since 1941.83 Poulenc was pleased with the Concerto and confident in its potential to appeal to an American audience. He wrote to Bernac, “The is quite carefully done and varied, and the piano part brilliant—my forte.”84 In a follow-up letter he expressed his self-satisfaction and claimed, “the Andante is one in a thousand.”85 His feelings about the piece and his hope regarding its American reception are illuminated by a dream he related to a friend, the pianist Irène Aïtoff, before departing for the second tour: I had just played the first movement of my Concerto in Boston. Twenty American ladies could not prevent themselves from crying out in admiration. After the Andante we had to carry away on a stretcher about a hundred of them who passed out overcome by the voluptuous aspect of my music.86

Even considering the often-exaggerated nature of dreams, or the possibility that he embellished or fabricated the dream for dramatic effect, his anecdote reveals a desire to connect with his Boston audience through this work and earn their affection.87 On the other hand, he was concerned about the possibility of an unfavorable reception of the final movement due to its intentionally bawdy style associated with the music hall and cabaret of the 1920s and 1930s, as the remainder of the dream reveals. 88

83 Désiré Defauw, Belgian conductor and violinist who moved to the United States in 1940, was the second music director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, serving from 1941- 1953, and also the director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 1943 to 1947.

84 5 September 1949 postcard in Poulenc 1994, p. 663n3. Translated in Schmidt, 351.

85 19 September 1949 letter in Poulenc 1994, p. 663n3. Translated in Schmidt, 351.

86 Letter dating from late 1949 in Poulenc 1994, 669. Translated in Schmidt, 354.

87 Poulenc’s vulnerability and need for affirmation are well-documented. See Bernac, 33- 34, for a specific example.

88 See 5 September 1949 postcard in Poulenc 1994, 663n3, translated in Schmidt, 351. Also see his late-1949 letter in Poulenc 1994, 669, translated in Schmidt, 354. 38 After the Final, all the remaining women were shouting “down with Poulenc! Don’t fool around with a public like that. This French Rondo is the image of a true Parisian brothel.” As no men attended this concert it is impossible to defend the reputation of our brothels. Look in what state my Rondo puts me.89

Indeed, as Keith Daniels has observed, the exuberant Rondeau, with its popular “intrusions” and presto giocoso tempo, initially seems to contrast with the first two movements, in which a calm, “quasi-religious” mood reflects Poulenc’s maturity.90 As Poulenc suspected, the vulgarity and surface incongruity of the third movement have been the causes of the criticism the work has received since its premiere.91 However, this Piano Concerto is also a manifestation of Poulenc’s distinctive voice within the French neoclassic aesthetic. He deliberately juxtaposed classical tradition and popular culture as a way of playing with the expectations of a serious concerto and creating music that entertains and amuses a diverse audience. The first rehearsal with the Boston Symphony Orchestra went very well, and the response from the conductor and musicians reassured Poulenc of the allure of the work, including the final movement: The orchestration is excellent and [Charles Munch] is delighted, delighted. So am I. Naturally, the first movement changes the most (and for the better): the second subject is ravishing and the two orchestral tutti, soli, are quite perfect. The andante is as I had expected, the Finale very amusing. The whole bang lot is stunning. The orchestra was delighted. Thirty Frenchmen among them.92

The significance of the finale extends beyond mere aesthetic contrast and amusement, however; within this movement Poulenc engaged specifically with his American hosts. He expressed his intent in an interview with Claude Rostand: As opposed to the famous concertos of the past, which require great virtuosos, I decided to write a light concerto, a sort of souvenir of Paris for pianist-composer. I had no fear that such a thing would be poorly received, so that is why I interjected into the rondeau à la française the

89 Late-1949 letter in Poulenc 1994, 49-16. Translated in Schmidt, 354.

90 Daniel, 154.

91 Benjamin Ivry, Francis Poulenc (London: Phaidon, 1996), 152-53.

92 3 January 1950 letter from Poulenc to Brigitte Manceaux in Poulenc 1991, 178. 39 rhythm of the maxixe and a Negro spiritual derived from an old song sung by La Fayette’s sailors. I was amused and pleased by this handshake with a country that, right now, contains my most numerous and loyal audience.93

The “Negro spiritual” to which Poulenc refers is Stephen Foster’s “Old Folks at Home.”94 The melody of the first phrase, “Way down upon the Swanee River,” is incorporated prominently and seamlessly into the fabric of the movement, a rondo-like form with a succession of lyrical themes. Poulenc showcases the melody and states it five times, leaving little chance for it to be missed (Example 3.1).95

Example 3.1. Poulenc’s use of Stephen Foster's "Old Folks at Home" in solo piano part, third movement, mm. 148-51.96

First published in 1851, Foster’s song was written for performance in a popular entertainment venue, the minstrel show. It became associated with that distinctly American musical idiom and was used by composers, including Charles Ives, Antonín Dvořák, George Gershwin, and Aaron Copland, to evoke a sense of American culture or

93 Poulenc 1954, 133. Translated in Schmidt, 350.

94 Although “Old Folks at Home” is not a spiritual, it was written in imitation of that tradition and evokes that tradition, mostly with its text, which is sung from the perspective of an African-American, uses the vernacular, and references plantation life. Poulenc’s use of the term “spiritual,” as opposed to “chanson,” may reflect his contemporary perception of Foster’s song or of the African-American spiritual. It also could be a deliberate recognition of the African- American folk tradition from which the song was drawn.

95 statements of the Foster tune occur at mm. 148, 156, 166, 170, and 261.

96 Poulenc, Concerto pour piano et orchestre (Paris: Éditions Salabert, 1950), 47. 40 character.97 The song was extremely popular in America and Europe from its inception through the first several decades of the twentieth century; Parisians such as Poulenc would have likely heard the song performed in music halls during the 1910s and 1920s, as well as referenced in Irving Berlin’s “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” which was also popular in Paris during that time. The old French sailor song Poulenc had in mind is known in the twentieth century as “À la claire fontaine” (“By the Clear Fountain”). Its melody closely resembles Foster’s tune (Example 3.2), and the program notes for the Concerto’s 1950 premiere alerted the audience to this double allusion: “The composer did not forego the pleasure of inserting symbolically in this Rondeau a fragment of an old French song which strangely resembles a famous negro spiritual.”98

Example 3.2a. Melody of the French folk song, “À la claire fontaine.”99

Example 3.2b. Melody of Stephen Foster’s “Old Folks at Home.”100

97 William W. Austin, “Susanna,” “Jeanie,” and “The Old Folks at Home”: The Songs of Stephen C. Foster from His Time to Ours (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 33.

98 John N. Burk, Concert Bulletin of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Jan. 6 & 7, 1950, 592. I have not found documentation to support Poulenc’s statement in his interview with Rostand that the “spiritual” was derived from the French sailors’ tune. It is more likely that he was merely suggesting their coincidental similarity. Another curious matter is that the program annotator John Burk did not recognize in print either the source or the composer of the American tune, nor did he acknowledge it as a folk song rather than a spiritual.

99 Julien Tiersot, “À la claire fontaine,” in Songs of the People: Forty-Four French Folk- Songs and Variants (New York: Schirmer, 1910), 6. 41 A footnote in the bulletin provides further explanation of the French tune that Poulenc attributed to Lafayette’s sailors in his statement to Rostand: The theme (which the composer uses in the piano part, in the middle of the [last] movement) comes from a traditional song of France, traced back to the beginning of the eighteenth century, which made its way to French Canada, and there became a patriotic song of revolt in 1837. Having undergone many changes in text and notation, it is now called “A la claire fontaine.”101

By making a connection between the two countries’ folk tunes, as well as their mutual war hero Lafayette, Poulenc offered his hosts a musical “handshake,” a gesture of camaraderie. Since this tune was used for a patriotic song during the 1837 Canadian Rebellion, Poulenc also engaged with his Montreal audience.102 Poulenc further relates French and American musical cultures by incorporating the rhythm of the maxixe (pronounced ma-sheesh), a Brazilian urban dance in vogue in France and the United States around 1920, particularly in music halls and cabarets.103 Derived from the polka, it is characterized by duple meter, lilting syncopated rhythm, and buoyant melody.104 The piano arrangement by Charles Borel-Clerc, “La Mattchiche,” shown in Example 3.3, was published in 1905 and remained popular in France for several decades; the melodic/rhythmic idea in measures 14b-18 was used by Gershwin in his celebrated tone poem An American in Paris (Example 3.4).105

100 Stephen Foster, “Old Folks at Home” (New York: Firth, Pond & Co., 1851), 1.

101 Burk, 592.

102 Poulenc performed the Piano Concerto in Montreal on 2 February 1950. Schmidt, 496.

103 Richard Powers, “The Maxixe,” Stanford University Dance Catalog, http://dance.stanford.edu/syllabi/maxixe.htm (accessed 6 December 2007).

104 Gerard Béhague, “Maxixe,” Grove Music Online, ed. Laura Macy, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/18147 (accessed 6 December 2007).

105 Richard Taruskin, Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 1478. 42 7 14

15

Example 3.3. “La Mattchiche” (Paris: Hachette, ca. 1903), one arrangement of the maxixe that was popular in France for decades. Gershwin used the idea from mm. 14b-18 in An American in Paris (1928).106

106 Ibid., 1478. 43

Example 3.4. The maxixe idea in An American in Paris, r. 11.107

Gershwin wrote An American in Paris in 1928 as a souvenir of what he heard and saw during his visit to that city. While in Paris, he was lionized by audiences and leading composers, including Poulenc and Milhaud.108 Like Poulenc, he wrote music that synthesized popular idioms, including jazz and musical theater, with traditional forms. By 1949 Gershwin’s music had become identified as distinctly American. It is, indeed, Gershwin’s use of the maxixe that Poulenc quotes in the Piano Concerto. Although it is a brief passage, a two-measure idea stated twice, it is enough to be recognizable (Example 3.5).

Example 3.5. Poulenc’s quotation of Gershwin’s maxixe, third movement, mm. 200b-203.109

As Barbara Meister has suggested, Gershwin’s An American in Paris was, in a sense, a gesture that solidified the rapport between the French and American composers and

107 George Gershwin, An American in Paris (Miami: Warner Bros., 1930).

108 Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, vol. 4 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 588 and 602.

109 Poulenc 1949, 50. 44 audiences.110 Twenty years later the Parisian Poulenc visited America and incorporated some of Gershwin’s musical materials into his own musical souvenir, tipping his hat to the well-known American composer and reciprocating the companionable gesture. Poulenc’s synthesis of American and French musical ideas in this concerto, delivered through his personal compositional and pianistic voice, might easily be considered diplomatic. France and the United States had been allies in both World Wars, and Poulenc’s generation was keenly aware of the assistance the United States had given France in its struggles with Germany. During the German occupation of Paris in World War II, Poulenc had remained at his country estate and was frustrated and fearful about the fate of Paris and his friends.111 He expressed in a 1944 letter to Bernac his great relief on the day the Americans arrived and liberated his beloved city.112 Perhaps with this Concerto Poulenc was acknowledging both the political and artistic partnership of the two nations. The Piano Concerto accomplished what Poulenc had intended—it served as a musical handshake with his new audience through the incorporation of recognizable American and Parisian tunes and styles, and it simultaneously provided the “souvenir of Paris for pianist-composer.”113 Furthermore, the Concerto demonstrated Poulenc’s compositional prowess in synthesizing an array of styles within a distinctive musical language, adding a twist to a traditional genre, and creating music of simultaneous depth and buoyancy. Its favorable reception reflects the effectiveness of his music in pleasing the discriminating audiences in Boston, Washington, D.C., and New York. One review, in particular, provides an apt description of the Concerto’s impact: That supreme master of the light touch, Francis Poulenc, composed a new piano concerto last summer and introduced it to New York at this concert. It is a work of considerable length, and rich, sometimes massive, sonority, but it is essentially blithe in spirit. Mr. Poulenc is the most eclectic of contemporary masters. He pays his respects to Debussy, Ravel, Rachmaninoff, and Stravinsky in this concerto, yet the style, the flavor and

110 Barbara Meister, Music Musique (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 120.

111 Ivry, 129, and Schmidt, 294.

112 27 August 1944 letter from Poulenc to Pierre Bernac in Poulenc 1991, letter no. 169.

113 Poulenc 1991, 178. 45 the format of the work are unmistakably his own. It is a witty and beautiful musical discourse, enhanced by piquant orchestration. The first movement begins with a walking tune that is expertly worked out. As the development continues, the music gains in weight and complexity, threatening to become heroic at one point. Again in the slow movement, a passage in somber, richly colored chords looms up, only to be dispelled by the pervasive good humor and vivacity of the finale, a Rondeau à la Française. Mr. Poulenc played his concerto with delightful nonchalance and refinement of accent, and the audience was charmed.114

Poulenc thus captivated American audiences with his sensitive pianism, his charming personality, and his engaging music. The first two American tours secured his reputation in the New World and resulted in numerous commissions, performances, recordings, and relationships with American individuals and institutions over the subsequent thirteen years. He made three additional United States tours before his death in 1963, with recitals at many of the same venues. A memorial concert was held at Carnegie Hall on 10 April 1963, the day he was scheduled to perform during a sixth tour. Many musicians, including Benny Goodman, Leonard Bernstein, and the pianists Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale, with whom he had developed close friendships as a result of his American tours, performed.

114 Review of 14 January 1950 concert at Carnegie Hall, BSO, Charles Munch. Robert Sabin, “Poulenc Performs New Piano Concerto,” Musical America 70/2, (January 15, 1950), 57. Other reviews with similar positive responses to the Concerto include Cyrus Durgin, “Munch Conducts French Program at Symphony; Poulenc Piano Soloist,” Boston Globe (January 7, 1950), Warren Storey Smith, “Symphony Concert,” Boston Post (January 7, 1950), Alice Eversman, “Boston Symphony Gets Ovation Here; Poulenc Brings His New Piano ‘Concerto’” Washington Evening Star (January 13, 1950), and Paul Hume, “Poulenc Solo ‘New Music’ to Listeners,” Washington Post (January 13, 1950).

46

CHAPTER 4

POULENC AND THE FRANCO-AMERICAN CULTURAL ALLIANCE

Poulenc’s musical interaction with Americans through the Piano Concerto and his United States tours is historically significant as both a contribution to and a reflection of a Franco-American cultural alliance that was already established. An illumination of the countries’ alliance leads to an understanding of Poulenc’s role as a musical diplomat in a post-war mileau. This chapter examines aspects of cultural exchange and attraction between France and America. It begins with the foundations of their alliance, then focuses upon the 1910s and 1920s, the heyday of Erik Satie and Les Six and the formative years of Poulenc and French neoclassicism, and finally moves to the years between World War II and the Concerto’s premiere (1945-1950). The political alliance between France and America can be traced back to the founding of this nation when the Marquis de Lafayette and his soldiers voluntarily crossed the Atlantic and helped the colonists defeat the British to gain their independence.115 General Lafayette returned from the American Revolution to a France that had been inspired by the ideas of Thomas Paine and the American revolutionaries. Besides providing an opportunity for alliance, the American Revolution served as a model for the French Revolution (1789-1799) and contributed to the eventual establishment of a democratic form of government in France. Throughout the nineteenth century the two countries strengthened their ties in political, literary, and artistic spheres. French political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville, who traveled to America to observe its democratic systems and wrote several important works, including Democracy in America (1835), was an influential link between French

115 For discussions of the Marquis de Lafayette’s contributions to culture and politics in France and America, his impact on the formation of an American national identity, and his reputation and reception, see Russell M. Jones, “The Flowering of a Legend: Lafayette and the Americans, 1825-1834,” French Historical Studies 4/4 (Autumn, 1966): 384-410, and Lloyd Kramer, Lafayette in Two Worlds: Public Cultures and Personal Identities in an Age of Revolutions (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), especially the Introduction and Chapters 1, 2, and 6. 47 and American cultures and socio-political ideas.116 Increased technology, such as steamships and the transatlantic cable, provided opportunities for more widespread interaction, especially in the latter part of the century, and a Franco-American alliance blossomed. Memorial tributes to the countries’ alliances, mutual values, and heroes have been numerous. One instance occurred in 1886, when France presented the United States the Statue of Liberty in commemoration of their enduring friendship and mutual dedication to freedom.117 Another notable example took place on the Fourth of July 1900, in Paris, when a memorial statue of Lafayette was presented to France as a gift from the school children of the United States.118 Lafayette had gone down in historical memory as a hero and the founder of an enduring friendship between nations.119 The streets were filled with spirited crowds, festive decorations, and patriotic music provided by John Philip Sousa and his band.120 The American ambassador and French president gave speeches that emphasized the countries’ strong ties in the past, present, and future.

116 For further reading on Alexis de Tocqueville, his writings, and his legacy, refer to Cheryl B. Welch, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Tocqueville (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), especially the essays by James T. Schleifer, Françoise Mélonio, and Oliver Zunz, in Chapters 5, 13, and 14, respectively.

117 Although the French had the idea of gifting a statue for the centennial celebration of the United States Declaration of Independence, the physical and financial burden of the monument’s construction was actually a joint effort between the two countries. The statue was designed and constructed in Paris by French sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi and architect Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, and the base on which Lady Liberty stands was designed by American architect Richard Morris Hunt. Both countries held fundraisers to finance the construction. The statue was erected on October 1886, ten years after its intended completion date. National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, “Statue of Liberty: History and Culture,” http://www.nps.gov/stli/historyculture/index.htm (accessed 8 April 2008).

118 “Lafayette Statue Unveiled in Paris,” The New York Times (July 5, 1900), http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9E02E5DB163FE433A25756C0A9619C946197 D6CF&scp=19&sq=lafayette+statue&st=p (accessed 28 January 2008).

119 See the descriptive remarks about a 2007-2008 Lafayette exhibit at the New-York Historical Society: Edward Rothstein, “Early America’s Imported Hero,” The New York Times, 16 November 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/16/arts/design/16made.html (accessed 5 May 2008).

120 The music played by Sousa and his band included the “Marseillaise,” the “Star Spangled Banner,” “Hail to the Spirit of Liberty” (newly composed), and “Stars and Stripes Forever.” Ibid. 48 Their brotherhood of arms was reinforced in the twentieth century through the countries’ alliances in the World Wars. American troops helped defeat the Germans in World War I and liberated Paris from a long and oppressive German occupation in World War II, earning the gratitude of the French people.121 In addition to military assistance, civilian involvement in the aid of France during and after the wars reflects the countries’ amity. In the spirit of Lafayette, American volunteers, including college students, professionals, and average citizens, left their homes between 1916 and 1929 to participate in emergency relief and restoration efforts for the French people through charitably funded organizations such as the American Committee for Devastated France, the American Fund for French Wounded, and the American Society for the Relief of French War Orphans.122 Struggling French musicians and their families received financial assistance from the American Friends of Musicians, and requests for donations and participation were published in The New York Times.123 Americans again responded generously to devastated France during and after World War II through large organizations such as the Red Cross and civilian initiatives such as the 1947 Friendship Train.124 The political and humanitarian alliance had cultivated personal

121 For a more thorough summary of political relations between France and America from the seventeenth century through the first half of the twentieth century, see Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, “Relations between Two Peoples: The Singular Example of the United States and France, The Review of Politics 4/4 (October 1979): 483-500.

122 “History of the ACDF,” in the collection description for the Records of the American Committee for Devastated France, 1919-1926, in Princeton University Library, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, http://diglib.princeton.edu/ead/eadGetDoc.xq?id=/ead/mudd /publicpolicy/MC026.EAD.xml (accessed 29 March 2008).

123 “Organize to Aid French Musicians,” The New York Times (June 9, 1918), http://query.Nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9E01E4D9103BEE3ABC4153DFB0668383609 EDE (accessed 28 January 2008).

124 The Friendship Train was the result of a suggestion by Washington news correspondent Drew Pearson that Americans come to the aid of their European friends. Americans across the country donated food and supplies to fill seven hundred boxcars, which were then sent to France and Italy in December 1947. The French people responded in 1949, the year in which Poulenc composed the Piano Concerto, with the French Gratitude Train, a forty- nine-car train filled with gifts of personal items. Ames Historical Society, “French Friendship Train of 1947,” http://www.ameshistoricalsociety.org/exhibits/events/friendship_train.htm (accessed 19 April 2008). 49 friendships and an overall spirit of fraternity and goodwill between the French and American people. That these two countries were politically allied against Germany in both of the World Wars is significant. Anti-German sentiments were mirrored in music and the arts in the first half of the twentieth century, as many composers, musicians, artists, and lay people in France and America largely rejected German traditions, including Romanticism and expressionism, and the masters and values that accompanied them. Instead they looked to their own and to each other’s customs and sources for the basis of new ideals and styles. For this reason the term “alliance” may appropriately be applied to the countries’ cultural as well as political affiliations. Cultural exchanges between France and America manifested themselves in music, art, fashion, media, and other aspects of the modern lifestyle. While the allure of Paris had drawn Americans to its streets, cafés, and studios since the nineteenth century, in the twentieth century the French and Americans began looking to each other for artistic stimulation. In the first decades of the century, and especially after the World War I, American writers, artists, musicians, and members of the leisure class flocked to Paris to experience the rich cultural and artistic environment, to live the Bohemian lifestyle, to revel in the Parisian music halls and cabarets, or to participate in salon society. Early expatriates included the artist Mary Cassatt and the literary figure Gertrude Stein. They were joined in the twenties by Man Ray, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and e.e. cummings, to name a few, who created some of their most enduring works in the city. One of the most important Parisian salon hosts and patrons of French music in the 1910s through the 1930s was the American , heir to the sewing machine fortune, who, upon her marriage to Prince Edmond de Polignac, adopted the title Princesse de Polignac. She commissioned numerous works by Parisian neoclassic composers, including Satie, Ravel, Stravinsky, and Les Six. The Franco-American cultural alliance manifested itself in art and fashion as well. French modernist art was introduced to the American public on a grand scale in 1913 at the International Exhibition of Modern Art, commonly known as the Armory Show. It

50 created a sensation in New York and subsequently traveled to Boston and Chicago.125 By juxtaposing works of contemporary French and American artists, the show reflected and reinforced a shared artistic sensibility. Two years later the Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco reaffirmed the French and American affinity not only in art, but also in architecture, music, and fashion, this time on the west coast. France’s pavilion, which was a copy of the Palais de la Légion d’Honneur, and exhibitions were the largest and most ornate of those of all of the nations represented.126 The main musical attraction of the Fair was a festival honoring the aging conservative French Romantic composer Camille Saint-Saëns, who was present to conduct multiple concerts of his music, including a work he composed specifically for the occasion, titled “Hail California.”127 One of the most visited exhibits at the Fair was the French fashion display, in which new designs of top Parisian couturiers were modeled within dioramas depicting trendy French locales.128 As Mary Davis has observed, the exhibit conveyed “the importance of fashion as uniquely French,” and the status of France as the world’s leader in the luxury industries.129 Enchanted attendees could extend their experience by purchasing a special issue of the magazine Gazette du Bon Ton, titled The 1915 Mode, published in both New York and Paris.130 This collaboration between French magazine publisher Lucien Vogel and American Condé Nast began a relationship that resulted in greater exchange between the French and American fashion presses and reinforced the allure of French culture to Americans.131

125 Carol Oja, Making Music Modern: New York in the 1920s (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 45.

126 Mary E. Davis, Classic Chic: Music, Fashion, and Modernism, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 134.

127 Robert Stevenson, “Saint-Saëns at San Francisco,” Inter-American Music Review 10/1 (Fall-Winter 1988): 3-18.

128 Davis, 135.

129 Ibid.

130 Ibid., 137.

51 Popular fashion magazines played a key role in the dissemination of modern French culture to a large American readership. Condé Nast infused his magazines Vogue and Vanity Fair with French styles in both fashion and music that were based on simplicity, everyday practicality, and elegance.132 French haute couture had changed and blossomed in the first part of the century, particularly through the designers Paul Poiret and Coco Chanel. Declaring that “fashion must come up from the streets,” Chanel created a line of simple yet sophisticated clothing that combined the French values of elegance and restraint with the casual, sporty lifestyle that defined the spirit of the times.133 The economic prosperity of the 1920s increased the number of households with disposable incomes that fueled the fashion industry. The magazines promoted a transatlantic style based on the combination of French and American sensibilities to a large readership in both countries. Satie and Les Six were promoted by these magazines as the cornerstones of the transatlantic musical style. These composers jettisoned excessiveness in music and embraced simple, straightforward musical designs inspired by everyday life and the flair of Parisian popular entertainment. In addition, they represented the latest artistic trends, and their active participation in the Parisian social scene at chic nightclubs and cafés placed them in the center of Parisian fashionable culture lauded by the magazines.134 Vogue and Vanity Fair published numerous articles about these composers. An article by Paul Rosenfeld in a 1921 issue of Vanity Fair, titled “The Musician as Parodist of Life,” described the music of Les Six as marked by “gaily contemptuous irony and unpretentious charm.”135 A series of articles written by Satie himself was published in the magazine between 1921 and 1923, revealing his wit and his musical aesthetic, which mixed popular and traditional sources. In this series he also advocated the music of Les

131 Ibid.

132 Ibid.

133 Ibid., 153-58.

134 Ibid., 223.

135 Ibid., 148. 52 Six.136 As a result, Satie and Les Six came to symbolize Paris in the 1920s, even for Americans across the ocean. Periodicals devoted to music also extolled the French neoclassic composers. The popular periodical Musical America published numerous articles and reviews about French music and composers, such as “The Anatomy of French Music” and “Poulenc: The Essence Is Simplicity.”137 Beginning in the 1920s American composers, including Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, and Roy Harris, traveled to France to study with Nadia Boulanger at the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau.138 This institution was founded in 1921 through the efforts of American conductor Walter Damrosch, who had been in Paris training the military bands during the United States’ involvement in the war.139 Its aim was to introduce outstanding American music students to the French musical tradition. Boulanger instilled in her students the values of French neoclassicism, based primarily on the music of Igor Stravinsky, but also that of Satie and Les Six.140 The subsequent course of American music was greatly impacted by Boulanger’s teaching. Copland, for instance, returned to America and developed a musical style that merged the tenets of French neoclassicism with popular American sources and ideologies. His works of the thirties and forties, including Billy the Kid (1938), Fanfare for the Common Man (1942),

136 Ibid., 147.

137 Henry Barraud, “The Anatomy of French Music,” Musical America 68/14 (December 1, 1948), 6-7.

138 Copland studied with Boulanger between 1921 and 1924, Thomson in 1921, and Harris between 1926 and 1929.

139 Damrosch also headed the aid efforts of the American Friends of Musicians mentioned above.

140 Stravinsky’s work with the in Paris between 1910-1914 established him as a primary figure in French modernism and reinforced the Russian influence on French musical style. While he was idolized by Satie and the young French composers, the musical ideas of Satie also influenced his turn to neoclassicism in the 1920s. Stravinsky spent the war years in Switzerland and returned to Paris in 1920. He was active in the musical, artistic, intellectual, and social circles of Paris, and had an affair with Coco Chanel. He emigrated from France to the United States in 1939. 53 Rodeo (1942), and Appalachian Spring (1944), have endured as centerpieces of musical Americana. George Gershwin is another important representative of the interaction between France and America. He visited the French capitol in 1928 and memorialized his experience by composing the well-known symphonic tone poem An American in Paris. As mentioned in the previous chapter, he enjoyed considerable attention from Parisian audiences and composers during his trip, and like Les Six, he combined his country’s popular styles with traditional forms and created a recognizable national musical idiom. The young French and American composers interacted in Paris and thought highly of one another. Satie, for instance, found his American friends’ extroversion invigorating.141 They gathered along with artists and other intellectuals in bookshops, galleries, and private salons, where they exchanged creative ideas in discussions, performances, and readings. At night they congregated in the cafés, bars, and nightclubs, such as Le Chat Noir, Le Boeuf sur le Toit, and the Moulin Rouge, in which American jazz had become the rage.142 American jazz bands and performers, such as Josephine Baker, gained celebrity status in the Parisian music halls and nightclubs. French composers incorporated elements of American ragtime and jazz into their work as a way of revitalizing French music. John Philip Sousa had introduced ragtime in the form of cakewalk tunes to the Parisian public at the Universal Exposition of 1900. Debussy and Satie created their own interpretations of the cakewalk—Claude Debussy’s “Golliwogg’s Cakewalk” from Children’s Corner (1906) and Satie’s La Diva de l’Empire (1904) and “Le Pique-nique” from Sports et divertissements (1913).143 The modernist ballet Parade (1917), a collaboration between Léonide Massine, Jean Cocteau, Erik Satie, and Pablo Picasso, included several characterizations of American culture. The character of the American tourist was costumed as a New York skyscraper, and the Little American Girl’s costume and actions were based on Hollywood models that had

141 Robert Orledge, “Satie and America,” American Music 18/1 (Spring 2000): 80.

142 For expansions on this phenomenon Nancy Perloff, Art and the Everyday: Popular Entertainment and the Circle of Erik Satie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), and Elaine Brody, Paris: The Musical Kaleidoscope 1870-1925 (New York: George Braziller, 1987), especially Chapter 5. Also see Nichols, Chapter 5.

143 Davis, 82. 54 been imitated in Parisian music halls; for the American Girl’s showpiece Satie created an arrangement of “That Mysterious Rag” by Irving Berlin and Ted Snyder.144 The travels of French composers to the United States advanced their careers, increased cultural exposure and exchange, and cultivated new artistic values. One of the earliest influential French figures in American modernist music was Edgard Varèse, who emigrated from France to New York in 1915 and immediately began conducting performances of Debussy, Ravel, Satie, and Dukas. Although the music he primarily promoted and composed from the 1920s on is stylistically different that of the conservative-populist neoclassic composers, he played a significant role in shifting America’s cultural allegiance from Germany to France.145 Milhaud was the first of Les Six to visit America, where, in 1922, he heard jazz in Harlem. He was also the one whose compositions were most influenced by jazz. Germaine Tailleferre traveled to America in 1925 and Arthur Honegger in 1929. Many of the French composers made frequent visits, even settling in America for extended periods of time, and their music was often more successful in the United States than in their homeland. They were welcomed as celebrities: announcements, reports, interviews, and photos were published in newspapers and magazines, including Musical America, The New York Times, and Vanity Fair; they made appearances with music societies across the country; and they obtained teaching positions and performance and lecture opportunities.146 In 1925 Vanity Fair published an article titled “The Invasion of America by the Great Musicians: We Suddenly Find Ourselves the Custodians of the Musical Culture of the World.”147 Indeed, the influx of French composers and their music contributed to a rich, cosmopolitan artistic environment, particularly in New York. It also contributed to the reorientation of musical models. Attention shifted away from the emulation of nineteenth-century German masters, and modern composers and musicians in New York

144 Ibid., 120-23.

145 Oja, 30.

146 Oja, 291. Milhaud, for instance, taught at Mills College in Oakland, California, and at summer music programs in Aspen, Colorado.

147 Cited in Davis, 148. 55 and Paris became the focus. As French composers sought American recognition and musical styles, Americans came to a greater realization of the value of their national traditions and the status of their country in the global artistic market. As music critic Paul Rosenfeld wrote in 1924, “The port of New York lies on a single plane with all the world to-day. The sun is rising overhead, the sun which once shone brightly on Europe alone…has moved across the Atlantic.”148 A Franco-American musical affinity was also reflected and reinforced through the efforts of individuals and organizations. In 1920 the French pianist E. Robert Schmitz, who had moved to New York two years earlier, founded the Franco-American Musical Society with the aim to internationalize music through an exchange between France and the United States.149 The society’s membership grew rapidly, local chapters were established across the country, and it was renamed Pro-Musica in 1925 to reflect a broader scope in its effort to champion new music. From its inception the music of French composers, including Les Six and , was promoted through concerts and a quarterly publication of essays. Ravel’s first American appearance in 1928 was sponsored by Pro-Musica, as were concerts and lectures by Honegger, Milhaud, Tailleferre, Stravinsky, and Boulanger.150 The majority of the American composers featured on Pro-Musica’s concert programs were those whose style was based in French traditions, particularly neoclassicism; works rooted in German idioms and in high abstract modernism were infrequently represented.151 Pro-Musica Quarterly published articles on modern music in Paris, biographical sketches of French and Russian

148 Paul Rosenfeld, Port of New York: Essays on Fourteen American Moderns (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1924), 293. Quoted in Oja, 285.

149 Vivian Perlis, “Pro-Musica,” Grove Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline .com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/22411 (accessed 3 March 2008).

150 For a listing of the programs of Pro-Musica and other composer societies, see Oja, 367-406.

151 Oja, 181. Such American composers included Charles Tomlinson Griffes, Richard Hammond, Howard Hanson, Herbert Inch, Charles Martin Loeffler, and Bernard Rogers. High abstract modernists included Henry Cowell, Ruth Crawford, , , and Carl Ruggles. 56 composers, including Ravel, Milhaud, and Stravinsky, and essays on the history of French music.152 The music performed under the auspices of Pro-Musica received extensive publicity, and the rapid increase in the organization’s membership across the country suggests that the music it promoted appealed to the concert-going public.153 French and American neoclassicism was modern and cosmopolitan, but conservative and sophisticated at the same time. Traditional genres and functional tonality made the music accessible to a large audience, as did the incorporation of popular tunes and styles. Although the stock market crash in 1929 brought an end to the prosperity and joie de vivre of the Roaring Twenties, and significantly reduced the number of Americans who were residents in or travelers to France, a transatlantic style had been firmly established. Cultural exchanges continued through the thirties and forties. Boulanger’s studio remained active with American students, such as and David Diamond, while her students of the twenties were back in the United States disseminating the aesthetics of their French models. In addition, many European composers, including Stravinsky and Milhaud, now lived and worked in the United States. Major orchestras and concert halls featured works by American and French composers. Since the end of World War I the distinguished Boston Symphony Orchestra had been under the direction of the conductors (1919-1924) and Serge Koussevitzky (1924-1949), who championed modern French and American music of the neoclassic vein. Charles Munch (1949-1963), who conducted the premiere of Poulenc’s Concerto in 1950, had been in Paris between 1933 and 1949, directing French orchestras and developing friendships with the young composers, including Honegger and Poulenc, whose works he introduced to American audiences during his tenure in Boston.154

152 For a description of the FAMS Bulletin and Pro-Musica Quarterly and a list of the contents, with abstracts of each article, from its first publication in 1923 to its last in 1929, see Paula Elliot, “An Analytic Index to the Contents of Pro-Musica Quarterly, 1923-1929,” M.A. thesis, University of Idaho, 1990.

153 Oja, 180.

154 “History: BSO Biographies,” Boston Symphony Orchestra website, http://www.bso.org (accessed 26 November 2007). 57 The United States emerged from World War II in a stronger political and economic position than Europe and as a global center of musical and artistic activity and influence. Americans’ realization of their new role is evident in the planning of a festival of American music that was scheduled to take place in Paris in 1945. It aspired “to acquaint the French with musical developments in this country since 1939.”155 Although the festival was cancelled due to the unstable political and financial conditions in Europe, its conception demonstrates a shift in cultural power. French couture continued to be the basis of American style throughout the first half of the century. Vogue remained in the hands of chic Americans, and Coco Chanel and Christian Dior were the names of high fashion. Advertisements for local French boutiques and French luxuries, such as perfume, flanked the program notes in the Boston Symphony Concert Bulletins throughout the late-1940s. In fact, the notes for the premiere of Poulenc’s Piano Concerto in 1950 were surrounded by large advertisements for Chanel No. 5 and the Boston boutique La Maisonette, where the fashionable woman who appreciated sophisticated music could find “individually selected costumes for town and country.”156 Music and fashion still went hand in hand. Poulenc’s musical aesthetic of pleasure and his conservative tonal idiom were also compatible with other musical trends in the 1940s post-war environment. A perusal of the bulletins of major orchestras such as the Boston Symphony Orchestra reveals that in art music the concert-going public was enjoying the engaging populist works of Aaron Copland, works of French and American neoclassicists, and conservative works of the past. Music was also part of a flourishing entertainment industry in which swing, bop, folk, and a plethora of other popular styles filled the radio airways and jukeboxes.157 According to Jacqueline Foertsch, this was a “great era for listening (and, whenever

155 “American Music Festival Planned for Paris,” Musical America 65 (March 10, 1945): 3.

156 Concert Bulletin of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (Boston: The Orchestra, 1949- 50), 565, 584, and 595.

157 Jacqueline Foertsch, American Culture in the 1940s (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 2008), 96. 58 appropriate, dancing).”158 Enjoyable tonal music in and out of the concert hall appealed to a large number of people. By 1950 and the premiere of Poulenc’s Piano Concerto, the connections, exchanges, and cultural similarities between the two countries were wide-ranging. Essentially, when Poulenc came to America in 1948 and 1950, he entered an environment predisposed to respond positively to him and his music. Poulenc’s prominence in Les Six, the exuberant musical avant-garde, and the fashionable crowds of Paris combined with his conservative, accessible, and creative musical language and multiplied the impact of his charm for Americans. In the Piano Concerto, Poulenc infused a conservative genre, traditional structural elements, and a tonal musical language with a pastiche of lyrical melodies and vernacular styles. He synthesized the old and the new, sophistication and frivolity, high art and popular music. In this sense, he created a nostalgic souvenir of Paris in the twenties, a time of dynamic interaction between France and America. Poulenc’s thoughtful engagement with his American audience through incorporating the melodies by Foster and Gershwin was essentially a diplomatic gesture. By making a connection between the American folk tune of Foster and the French folk tune associated with Lafayette, Poulenc offered his hosts a musical “handshake,” a gesture of camaraderie, and provided a symbol of the history of their alliance.

158 Ibid. 59

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Amy Dunning received her Bachelor of Arts degree in piano performance from Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in 2003. After teaching piano lessons for three years at Forsyth Country Day School and her own private studio, she moved to Tallahassee to begin the Master’s program in historical musicology at Florida State University. Upon completion she will continue her studies at Florida State to pursue a Ph.D. in musicology.

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