Poulenc, Emotion and History: A Benchmark of Our Age (for Valerie Tryon)

Poulenc was a real fresh scent in the breeze in England during my adolescence. My father was given the Novelette. It was just so
fresh and different. Later he learned the flute and we tried some of the Flute Sonata; and with someone else I tried the Clarinet
Sonata. John Russell (RCM) had a nice house out at Burghfield Common - and invited me for lunch one day; and while cooking
was in progress, sat me down at one of the two pianos (the other was a Bechstein upright) and had me sight-read the slow
movement of the Concerto for Two Pianos.

As an Oxford graduate student I simply dropped out - the only thing which kept me going was a BBC series on Poulenc's songs. I
got hold of 'Journal de Mes Mélodies'. I just loved how life just flowed for Francis; loved the way he was so nonchalant and
genial. I related, eventually, to his Catholicism, I really suffered for him to learn of his depressions; was bemused by his private
life; and adored the testimony of those two or three late sonatas and the majestic, searing Organ Concerto with its quite playable
cadenza.

When deeply depressed myself, I made a pilgrimage to Rocamadour. 1995. I kind of saluted him there. I found Rene Machaud's
more recent book on him and took that to a course with Kenneth van Barthold. He had studied with Nat - astonishing arm weight
stuff. He has a unique touch. Somehow different to the Matthay thing. To me that was a negative because in the wrong context
(mushy Broadwood upright and no real models of piano sound to work off, not like today) people would say - like my father ! -
don't bash the piano, don't drive it out of tune: I just paid to have it tuned! So I never learned of the grand and strong sound of the
piano early enough. It was always a wimpy little affair.

My paternal grandmother – the Chaminade one – had been trained in the Matthay method. The other grandmother (Hampstead
Conservatoire and Bliss) was a freer spirit musically, although she did not play all the 48, as Frances did! She liked the simpler
pieces of Chopin – whom my father *never* played – and, in Hampstead, encouraged me to play them to her! On a silvery little
upright with a wooden frame which also had to be played quietly, ‘or the neighbours would hear!’.

So I think the only time I ever really encountered a proper piano – I had, meanwhile - in disgust at examination mania, switched
to organ - was on the hallowed school Steinway, and nobody was ever allowed to play that! But for the House Music
Competition, it was let loose. And playing the Novelette on it with great confidence, I discovered that here at last was a sign that
music was a far grander and more meaningful thing than the sad bourgeios rituals I had generally experienced up to then, where
so little exposure to great music had happened!

One excellent and fabulously gifted boy at school - who later went to RNCM - also played the Liszt Sonata very fluently – that
too was a tremendous, fatidic sign. But I never heard of him again.

The lack of real music argument is not entirely true, firstly because of Radio Three; and second, because my father had a great
teacher,a pupil of Leonie Gombrich, Marjorie Hazlehurst. When I studied History of Art at Cambridge, I once met Sir Ernst, but
the had no idea of the connection, nor that he was a musician as well. Just as, later, I missed Richter at King's. No-one had ever
heard of him! Coming back to Poulenc, that Novelette is a bit stifling - after that you cannot really play anything at all for several
decades, if you have a good ear. At least, that has been my experience!
My ear was honed by listening to all that Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Mendelssohn (a bit), Ravel (Sonatine slow movement)
Haydn, Scarlatti - and maybe La plus que Lente - nothing else French or Russian even! – as my father had his limits; and the
Viennese school was the fare. The playing went on two hours every night when we were falling asleep.The fingerings of Marjoie
would still be extant there in storage along with the Hillier autobiograhy - the annoyed comments, underlinings, exhortations,
almost suicide notes in that stubby, impatient pencil! And of course for years until there was a rapprochement, it was forbidden
for me to play 'my father's pieces'!

Like the Bach moonlight raid on the brother's scores! Lately I have been dubbing Poulenc onto Chinese teaching materials, and
for this revisiting the F sharp minor concerto, which seems to fall apart completely with its empty, sententious theme - pseudo
declarative, almost Prokofievianly inauthentic, at about the 8-minute mark. You will know the place! And yet the opening! And
the stealthy reprise! And the idea of making a tragic 'F minor' piece happen in F sharp minor!

I also met - on an exchange visit to France at the age of 17 - some rather aristocratic people – grandparents of my mother’s
schoolfriend - who had lived under Poulenc when he resided at his very small Parisian flat - just facing the Bois de Boulogne - if
I am not mistaken? On this occasion, of course, the neighbours would hear! But it was somehow alright because he was Poulenc.

At his country property in the Touraine he would rise early, eat his rusks and jam and have coffee, and compose audibly, waking
his guests with new harmonic marvels! What a wonderful person! This property is fortunately again in the family’s hands, so far
as I can judge; and photos of it can be found in an art book which is in the Birmingham Public Library - that El Dorado for
musicians - and I did show it to Kenneth van Barthold back in 2003. Utterly sumptuous in every detail – Poulenc even had his
own Vouvray!

D’autres temps; d’autres moeurs! As much as I love Lucas Debarque, can he show us a new way? I fear not entirely – the culture
is itself fatally flattened. Only some quite unforeseeable change in the hearts of man can give us back the meaning and truth
which – while we have both lived – we have seen slip away. And of whichPoulenc’s music – properly and patiently understood –
remains, par excellence, the emotional benchmark and testimony.