“Above all do not analyse my music – love it!” Francis Poulenc’s own words, quoted by Pierre Bernac in his 1977 study Francis Poulenc, The Man and his Songs (Gollancz). Sidney Buckland and Myriam Chimènes have shrewdly brought together a collection of essays and articles – including two by Poulenc himself – which largely avoid a musicological approach, instead placing Poulenc’s work in a wider artistic and sociological context. The basic premise of this volume is that Poulenc was a man of refined artistic tastes, whose interest in paintings and literature informed much of his musical thinking. Thus there are chapters on Matisse and Dufy, Eluard, Bernanos (Dialogues des Carmélites) and Cocteau (La voix humaine), although, strangely, Apollinaire is only considered in the chapter “In search of a libretto”, which describes Poulenc’s quest for subjects suitable for operatic treatment. Poulenc’s own articles, “My ideal library” (including Les livres que je détesterais passéder) and “All my pleasure is in making new discoveries: Francis Poulenc visits American museums of art” are more than just lists and diary entries; like the Journal de mes mélodies (1964; published in English 1958, Gollancz), they give the unique flavour of this man’s thinking – energetic, emotional, colourful and capable of the most fascinating, unexpected connexions. Other chapters describe Poulenc’s relationships with his teacher, Charles Koechlin; a fellow composer, Benjamin Britten; the various patrons he cultivated during his career; and Raymonde Linossier, the young woman who was Poulenc’s muse during the 1920s and who was buried with the manuscript score of Les Biches in her arms. The series of radio programmes that Poulenc made between 1947 and 1949, “A batons rompus”, are discussed in a fascinating chapter by Lucie Kayas, who has recently edited the ‘transcripts’ – translations please! A study of four choral works with orchestra by the American Poulenc scholar Keith W. Daniel (author of Francis Poulenc: His Artistic Development and Musical Style, UMI Research Press, 1980) is perhaps the weakest in what is otherwise a stimulating and, incidentally, lavishly illustrated collection.

Marjorie Running Wharton’s chapter on Dufy and his connexion with Poulenc’s ‘Nogent’ music – in other words, that style by Poulenc which is most well-known, humorous, brightly-coloured and popular – draws some interesting comparisons between Poulenc’s use of tonal blocks and Dufy’s blocks of colour; I wondered if she might have gone further and compared Poulenc’s frequent instructions to his pianists to use plenty of pedal (“like the butter in the sauce” was his culinary simile) with Dufy’s blurring of outline and colour. Carl B Schmidt, another Poulenc scholar and author of The Music of Francis Poulenc: A Catalogue (Oxford, 1995), makes a slightly less-convincing case for the influence of Matisse on Poulenc’s compositional habits; after all, the paring away of inessentials is something for which every composer strives. The sense of a point being stretched beyond its natural limit in an attempt to fill a chapter even informs Sidney Buckland’s own dissertation on Eluard, “The coherence of opposites”. There is a certain sense of strain in her attempt to make the similarities (and differences) between poet and composer significant. Where these similarities (the chapter on Cocteau) or differences (Bernanos) are absorbed into a broader narrative, the chapters have a more natural flow. However, to have detailed biographical information – and some poetic commentary – on Paul Eluard in a Poulenc source is of great value and is, surprisingly, unique.

There are a number of problems with Keith W. Daniel’s chapter on Poulenc’s four choral works with orchestra. The first is that it follows hot on the heels of Robert Orledge’s masterly and meticulous account of Poulenc’s course of harmony lessons with Koechlin, and in the friendship that subsequently developed between these two very different personalities. Orledge wears his considerable scholarship lightly, describing Poulenc’s Bach chorale harmonisations in a succinct, though-provoking and readable style. Unfortunately, Daniel’s is of the musical guidebook variety, and his obvious affection for the music and desire to hear what interests him gets lost in his descriptions of the progress of the music, bar by bar and chord by chord. Worse, however, is when the going gets tough, chords are abandoned as “unanalysable”. Conversely, a chord which may be particularly worthy of note is explained away as “brilliantly spaced”, without much more detailed analysis as to why, exactly, the spacing is brilliant. The next problem is Daniel’s proposition that “[Scheresses and the Sept Réponds des ténèbres] could be considered failures in Poulenc’s œuvres in that they are seldom performed and seldom recorded [in comparison with the Stabat Mater andGloria]…I would like here to examine the reasons for this prevailing view and to reassess the notion of two successes and two failures.” Whilst the first two pieces are indeed rarely performed and seldom recorded, that in itself does not form a “prevailing view” of failure; neglect is a different matter – and one which might usefully have been studied in another essay on Poulenc reception: for such a much-recorded composer, his works rarely make the concert hall. To return to the choral works, I was also surprised to see no connexion between the opening of the Gloria and the Hymne for piano (Trois Pièces, 1928) which was in turn influenced by Stravinsky’s Hymne from the Sérénade en la of 1926. And there is no mention anywhere of Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, the final section of which surely underpins the last movement of the Gloria (as well as the opening of the Oboe Sonata).

My other quibble concerns the indexing: Poulenc’s own compositions are listed under the composer’s name, whereas one finds references to The Rite of Spring under Le Sacre du Printemps rather than ‘Stravinsky’. Poulenc’s mental state during the composition of Dialogues des Carmélites is indexed under ‘depression’ rather than ‘Poulenc’. It is perhaps not as complete as one would ideally wish – Roussel is given only one reference in the index, but can be found elsewhere in the book too.

This is, all in all, a valuable addition to Poulenc literature. Studies of this sort are important in helping us to ‘place’ a composer, particularly one who wore as many guises as Poulenc. It is unlikely that his music will yield the structural secrets of a Debussy, or provide material for decoding, as Boulez does. Unlike Messiaen, Poulenc found no need to provide a textbook to explain his musical language…so perhaps he was right to exhort us not to analyse his music. Much of this book will, however, deepen the affection and respect we feel for this most lovable of composers.

David Jones