Lenten Listening
April 6, 2022
[Reposted]
ERIC R. writes:
As we approach Holy Week, I offer a Lenten listening suggestion: Francis Poulenc’s Sept Repons de Teneabrea, for orchestra, soprano and choir. Composed in 1961 and first performed at Lincoln Center in New York in 1963, it is based on the Latin texts of the Responsories for Holy Week.
Born in Paris in 1899, Poulenc led a debauched life. And judging from my cursory internet research, there does not seem to be any change in his scandalous behavior, even up until his death. He was described by a critic as “part monk, part guttersnipe.” His father was devoutly Catholic and a highly successful businessman. His success allowed Poulenc the financial independence to compose. I find this interesting. Not only in that the strong faith of a father can instill a deep seated affection for religion, but that his wealth allowed for his son to compose for us! We need fathers to instill the faith in the family, because we need the faith. And we need the wealthy, because we need art and culture.
After the violent death of a friend in a car crash, Poulenc became more serious about life. He devoted a great deal of his musical output in service of pointedly Catholic works, especially his Stabat Mater and his famous opera, Dialogues of the Carmelites which is very Catholic and anti-Revolution. Although he did not seem to change his behavior, he put real sincerity into compositions that are unimpeachably Catholic. He writes:
I am religious by deep instinct and by heredity..I am a Catholic. That is my greatest freedom. My conception of religious music is essentially direct, often informal. I try to give an impression of fervor and especially of humility, which to me is the most beautiful aspect of prayer.
His approach to music is based on melody and diatonic tonality (in other words, it’s in a key!). But he employs modern harmonic language. Evelyn Waugh’s character Charles Ryder in Brideshead Revisited expressed disdain for the artificial, and almost (anti) religious dogmatism of modern art and modern artistic movements. In literature and music, the same forces were at work. In the 20th century there arose a style of composition called serialism, or dodecaphany, which sought to create a new method of composition based on an invented system of rules, as if music had never been written before! This style overwhelmed the universities, and Poulenc rejected it, writing:
[I]n 1945 we are speaking as if the aesthetic of twelve tones is the only possible salvation for contemporary music
Sept Repons is most certainly influenced by Stravinski. Poulenc greatly admired the Russian, and defended him against serialists, who dominated the academy and mocked Stravinsky for maintaining a diatonic musical language, when in academic circles, atonal music was in vogue. There are moments in Sept Repons that seem cut and pasted out of Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex. But it is absolutely gorgeous, especially the last response Ecce quomodo moritur.
Poulenc in his 20s
