Popular music influences in Francis Poulenc's melodies.

摘要

Francis Poulenc (1899--1963) loved Paris, poetry, and the human voice. He fused those three loves into his melodies, crafting those French art songs into works for which he is best known. Poulenc was born and raised near the city of his heart and his earliest memories center on the popular tunes he heard in cultural institutions such as the cabaret, music hall, and circus. It is not surprising, then, that the composer infused his music with that popular flavour. In doing so, Poulenc paid homage to his Parisian musical roots, intentionally keeping his music "French." In addition, by utilizing the popular elements he heard all around him when he was young, Poulenc lends a nostalgic air to his music. This paper discusses popular musical influences in Poulenc's melodies and examines selected songs from the composer's oeuvre. First, Poulenc's association with other young avant-garde French composers is presented in terms of how his musical aesthetic was developed. Next, the paper offers a brief history of the main cultural institutions that influenced Poulenc's musical writing: cabaret, music hall, and circus. Finally, selected songs are examined with regard to how they illustrate and incorporate popular elements associated with certain cultural institutions. The author believes that these chosen songs are the ones that best demonstrate popular music influences for the purpose of this paper. Through this study, the author hopes to show how Poulenc developed and retained his own compositional style by merging popular musical elements with the art song genre. In doing so, Poulenc reveals a sense of nostalgia for his musical past, which may be manifested in the fragmentary nature of the many juxtaposed contrasts of dynamics, register, articulation, and motives found throughout his songs. Those fragments can be viewed as memories or mental snapshots of early childhood experiences. His liberal use of the pedal may also be interpreted as a nostalgic device in that it blurs harmonies and melodic lines, alluding to the haziness one experiences when recalling long-ago events.