Name: Nadine van Dyk

Student Number: 16379322

Degree: BMus (Hons)
Department: Stellenbosch University Music Department
Supervisor: Dr. M.D. Nell
Date: 13/08/2018
Contents

Chapter 2: Biographical Background ...................................................................................................................... 2

Chapter 3: Historical Background ........................................................................................................................... 5

Chapter 4: Toréador (1918) ..................................................................................................................................... 8

List of References. ................................................................................................................................................. 11

Chapter 2: Biographical Background
Francis Poulenc (1899-1963)

Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc was born on the 7th of January 1899 in Paris, France (Cummings, 2018). He was the
youngest of two children born to Émile Poulenc (1855-1917) and Jenny Royer (1864-1915) (Schmidt, 2001: 471).
He was born into a life of privilege- his father was one of the founders of Poulenc Frères (Poulenc Brothers), a
French pharmaceutical company that originated in 1900 (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1998). His
mother came from a family of artists, with Parisian roots dating back several centuries (Francis Poulenc, 2018).

To a great extent a self-taught composer, music formed part of Poulenc’s life from an early age (Nichols, 1992). His
mother, an amateur pianist, was his first piano teacher at the initial age of five (Schmidt, 2001: 471). According to
Robert Cummings (2018), in 1917 Poulenc became an overnight sensation in Paris at the age of eighteen when he
composed Rapsodie Nègre (Negro Rhapsody) for baritone and chamber ensemble. This work was dedicated to Erik
Satie (1866-1925). Poulenc served four years in the military from 1918-1921 and during this time he composed Trois
Mouvements Perpétuels (Three Perpetual Movements) (1918) (Cummings, 2018). The French music critic Henri
Collet (1885-1951) associated Poulenc with five other young French composers in 1920, calling them Les Six (The
Six) in his article “The Russian Five, the French Six, and M. Erik Satie” (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica,
2014). Members of this group were Darius Milhaud (1892-1974), Arthur Honegger (1892-1955), Georges Auric
(1899-1983), Louis Durey (1888-1979), Germaine Tailleferre (1892-1983) the only female composer of the group,
and of course Poulenc (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2014).

Together, under the guidance of the great French poet Jean Cocteau (1889-1963), the group became quite famous.
Cocteau was an artist, writer and film director, he was one of the most influential creative figures in the Parisian
avant-garde1 between World War I and World War II (Biography.com Editors, 2014). The music of Les Six
represented a strong reaction against Romanticism and Impressionism of the 19th century (Fancourt, 2018). The
group enjoyed composing music that mimicked and embraced the Parisian lifestyle. Each composer in the group
tried to recreate experiences from their youth within their music (Bernardini, 2017: 169). According to Denise
Bernardini (2017: 169), Poulenc tried to mimic the sound and style of cabaret through his music.

During the years of 1921-1924, Poulenc studied with the renowned French composer and teacher Charles Koechlin
(1867-1950) (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2014). Poulenc composed the ballet Les Biches (The House-
party) in 1923 as requested by Sergey Pavlovich Dyagilev (1872-1929), a Russian promoter of the arts (Cummings,
2018). The following year Dyagilev staged the ballet with great success. The public found the ballet to be an
intriguing mixture of lightheartedness, gaiety and sentimentality (Cummings, 2018). The late 1920’s and early
1930’s continued to be an exceedingly busy time for Poulenc. He composed many piano works and wrote two song

1
A group of artists, musicians, or writers working with new and experimental ideas and methods.
cycles Poèmes de Ronsard (Poems of Ronsard) and Chansons gaillardes (Ribald Songs) in 1924 and 1926 (The
Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2014). In 1935 he was an accompanist for the infamous French baritone Pierre
Bernac (1899-1979). It was the first of many recitals that they would do together over several years (Cummings,
2018). Bernac had a passion for singing modem French songs and toured throughout Europe and America
accompanied by Poulenc (Oron, 2002). Through working with Bernac, Poulenc experienced a deeper understanding
of the song as an art form (Cummings, 2018).

After the death of the French composer Pierre-Octave Ferroud (1900-1936), a close friend of Poulenc’s, he found
renowned faith in the Roman Catholic Church and wrote many religious works including Litanies à la Vierge Noire
(Litany to the Black Virgin) and Mass in G, both composed in 1936 (Cummings, 2018).

Poulenc’s account of his religious journey reads as follow (Southon & Nichols, 1995; 233):

A few days earlier I’d just heard of the tragic death of my colleague Pierre-Octave Ferroud. The
terrible decapitation of this composer who was so full of energy dumbfounded me. As I
meditated on the fragility of our human frame, I was drawn once more to the life of the spirit.

During the Second World War (1939-1945) Poulenc remained in a German-occupied France and participated in the
French resistance movement (Cummings, 2018). He composed works that had an antiwar or anti-Nazi nature to them
and used the texts of authors that were banned by the Germans, such as the works of the Spanish poet Federico
García Lorca (1898-1936) (Cummings, 2018). Poulenc was drawn to Lorca’s work because as a writer he refused to
hide his liberal political views, or his homosexuality. Lorca was executed by a firing squad at his country home in
Granada in 1936 (Poetry Foundation, 2018).

In 1941 Poulenc wrote the story and composed the music for his ballet Les Animaux modèles (The Modal Animals).
He based this story loosely around the fables of Jean De La Fontaine (1621-1695) (Cummings, 2018). According to
Gwyn Parry-Jones (2018) “… there is a serious purpose behind the fable, and the ballet is undoubtedly a parable of
wartime France, languishing under Nazi occupation at the time of composition”.

During the postwar years, Poulenc’s works became more urban and sophisticated. His love for wind instruments had
always been apparent in his works, but during the 1940’s there seems to be a mild rapprochement (Nichols, 1992).
He started to compose more works including string instruments, sonatas for violin and for cello with piano and
orchestral works such as the Piano Concerto (1949) and the Sinfonietta of 1947 (Nichols, 1992). According to Roger
Nichols (1992) “The Sinfonietta was commissioned by the BBC to celebrate the first anniversary of the Third
Programme, it is one of the least “eggheaded” of Poulenc’s pieces, as well as being his only purely symphonic
work.”
During the years of 1953-1956, Poulenc composed the opera Dialogues des carmélites (Dialogues of the Carmelites).
It is considered to be his most ambitious work and one of the greatest French operas of the twentieth-century
(Cummings, 2018). It is an opera in three acts and the libretto was written by Georges Bernanos (1888-1948). It
takes place in France during the French Revolution in the late eighteenth-century. The opera premiered at the Teatro
alla Scala in Milan Italy in January 1957 (Green, 2017). Poulenc finished composing his last opera La Voix Humaine
(The Human Voice) in 1958. It is a telephonic opera, in which the lone character is speaking to her lover over the
phone for the duration of the whole opera (Cummings, 2018). His last major work was the Sonata for Oboe and
Piano (1962), he dedicated it to Prokofiev, who was a close friend he had met in the 1920’s. Poulenc passed away
in his Parisian apartment on the 30th of January 1963; the cause of death was a heart attack (Maharidge, 2018).
Chapter 3: Historical Background
The origins of Parisian cabaret

The word cabaret initially referred to a wine cellar or a business where alcohol was served (Houchin, 1984: 05).
John Houchin wrote an article “The Origins of the “Cabaret Artistique””2 (1984) in which he underlines the fact
that cabaret was created by artists who rejected the official salon painting3 of the time, after witnessing the
transformation from the Third Empire to the Third Republic (Houchin, 1984: 05). The Third Republic was a system
of Government that France had embraced in 1871-1940 (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2017). Artists of the time
preferred to hold their art exhibitions in the cafés of the Latin Quarter of Paris (Houchin, 1984: 05). These cafés
housed different poets, painters, novelists and composers. They gathered to discuss various topics such as politics,
art, literature and social conditions (Houchin, 1984: 05).

One form of cabaret that developed was called café-chantant (singing café), which was an eighteenth-century
entertainment revelation (Houchin, 1984: 06). These were cafés where singers or musicians entertained the patrons.
The café-chantant developed in 1860, in a little wine cellar named Café des Aveugles (Café of the Blind).
Appropriately the café hired an orchestra of blind musicians to provide entertainment to the patrons during dinner
hours. The café owners eventually expanded on the idea of providing ‘dinner and a show’, they hired singers and
dancers to provide the nightly entertainment (Houchin, 1984: 06). This notion became so popular and profitable,
other cafés bought into the idea. The owners of Café des Aveugles changed its name to Café-Concert, which was a
more socially acceptable title. Even though the café had a new name the nightly entertainment program remained
the same (Houchin, 1984: 06).

Carol Gouspy (2003) wrote the following in her article “The representation of the singers at the café-concert: the
genres of the comic novelist and the singer”:

At the café-concert, the performers stage, in a burlesque fashion, the miseries of everyday life.
Moreover, their repertoire represents a print of the morals of the time. Creating a visual and
auditory show, genres serve as landmarks to the public.

The founding of Café-Concert contributes to the evolution of a new musical aesthetic, music as entertainment
and abolishing the boundaries between "light" art and "serious" art (Gouspy, 2003).

The café attracted the well-known singer Emma Valadon, who was better known as Thérésa (1837-1913). She was
known by the press for her luxurious lifestyle and consumer products such as soups, liqueurs and lemonades. Her

2
Although this was the most comprehensive article of all the sources that I have read, this information is also reflected in a later article
that was written by Rebecca Mullins (2013).
3
The name of the official art exhibitions organized by the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture and its successor the
Academy of Fine Arts.
presence on stage seemed to scandalize critics because of her lack of femininity. She made strong hand gestures, had
a lack of grace and her forced vocal effects disturbed the pre-established order of things. Never the less, she was
admired by all social classes and was surprisingly accepted by Paris high society. She received an invite to perform
before Napoleon III and his court at the Tuileries (Gouspy, 2003).

The first official cabaret shows were called cabaret artistique (artistic cabaret), which originated in the Montmartre
district of Paris France in the late nineteenth century. Cabaret artistique serves as a platform for artistic
experimentation, it builds an emotional relationship between the artist and the audience throughout the performance
(Houchin, 1984: 11). Le Chat Noir (The Black Cat) was a famous Parisian nightclub that opened in 1881 in
Montmartre. It was established by Rodolphe Salis (1851-1897) and various other progressive writers of the time
(Houchin, 1984: 07). Salis loved a spectacle and to create opportunities for artists to get exposure (Houchin, 1984:
11). It was a middle ground for the fin-de-siècle4 literary and avant-garde artists. Salis and the other writers
established the club as a reaction against the populist and censored Café-Concert (Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam,
2008). He took a different approach to the entertainment business by raising the entry fees of the club. He explained,
that the composers should be fairly compensated for the work that they present on stage. Le Chat Noir was a haven
for those seeking to speak out against the myopic bourgeois5 values and traditions (Houchin, 1984: 07).

The club attracted patrons such as the French composers Claude Debussy (1862-1918) and Èric Alfred Leslie Satie
(1866-1925), as well as the French writer Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) who was widely
known as the ‘Father of Modern Short Story’ writing (Houchin, 1984: 07). The little ballad La Belle au Bois Dormant
(Sleeping Beauty), was composed in 1881 by Debussy while he was visiting the club. It is based on the poem written
by Vincent Hyspa (1865-1938).

In the beginning, the club only met on Fridays and the audience consisted of fellow artists. Later in 1882, the club
also began to commission illustrations for its own in-house magazine, Le Chat Noir (Houchin, 1984: 07). The
magazine included stories with pictures, poems, sheet music and later included the schedules for upcoming
performances. The magazine created such a stir amongst fellow Parisians, patrons of Café-Concert began to demand
entry to Le Chat Noir. Salis allowed this request once he witnessed the vast amount of new members frequenting
the halls of Le Chat Noir (Houchin, 1984: 07). He changed the nightly program to include singers that were given
the opportunity to humiliate and ridicule the audience members. The club became so popular that the original venue,
which was an old post office, became too small. On the 10th of May 1884, Salis led a procession through the streets
of Montmartre to the renovated hotel Victor Massé, which became the new venue for Le Chat Noir (Houchin, 1984:
08).

4
The term refers to the end of a century. At the end of the 19 th century in Britain, the term did not just refer to a set of dates, but rather a
whole set of artistic, moral and social concerns.
5
Belonging to or characteristic of the middle class, typically with reference to its perceived materialistic values or conventional attitudes.
Different clubs in the Latin Quarter of Paris France gave artists the opportunity to riot against French traditions that
prohibited them from gaining any acclaim for their work (Houchin, 1984: 11). It was Salis however, that provided
artists and the audience the opportunity to engage with one another. Le Chat Noir continued its artistic output for
fifteen years after 1884, due in part to the successful leadership skills that Salis demonstrated. He never forced the
artists to present new material to the audience or the even write material that would gratify the audience’s taste. The
club was there to represent the artist’s desires rather than the patrons (Houchin, 1984: 11).
Chapter 4: Toréador (1918)

In 1918 Poulenc composed Toréador, a cabaret song that ironically ‘pokes fun at both cabaret and high art song’
(Bernardini, 2017: 170). The text is by Cocteau, who wrote in his manifesto that poets often use too many words
although sometimes simplicity is best. However, his text of Toréador is quite long and eloquent (Bernardini, 2017:
170). The poem is about a toréador that dies in Venice, in St Mark’s Square of a wound from a bull’s horn (Nichols
& Southon, 2014: 248). The poem depicts the vast amounts of cultural varieties that were present not only in the
French music halls, but also in many form of popular entertainment. The subtitle of the poem is Chanson Hispano-
Italienne (Hispano-Italian song) a slightly humorous indication on Cocteau’s part about the borrowing of foreign
settings by art song composers (Bernardini, 2017: 170). In an interview that Poulenc had with the French
musicologist Claude Rostand (1912-1970), he describes Toréador as “… a Hispano-Italian ditty…, which lampoons
the geography of the café concert songs of the time…” (Nichols & Southon, 2014: 248).

Poulenc later wrote in his Journal De Mes Melodies (Diary of my Songs) (Morançais, 2015):

Toreador, a caricature of the music hall song, can only speak to a limited elite. This is exactly
the type of song made to laugh, around a piano, some friends on the page. That said, I really
like Toreador. Long unpublished, I decided to publish it around 1932, on the advice of my dear
old friend Jacques-Emile Blanche.

The first section of the poem is by an infinite narrator that tells the tale of a dazzling young queen and a bullfighter.
Within this section there are two conflicts that take place: one between the toréador and the bull, the other is inside
of the torèador’s heart. The toréador is in love with Pépita, the queen of Venice but she does not necessarily return
his affections. This knowledge is killing him inside and while he is fighting a battle of love the bull is fighting for
its life. In a way the bull and the toreador are both fighting a losing battle (Bernardini, 2017: 170):

Pépita reine de Venise Pepita queen of Venice

Quand tu vas sous ton mirador When you go beneath your shutter
Tous les gondoliers se disent: All gondoliers call out:
Prends garde... Toréador! Watch out--Toreador!

Sur ton coeur personne ne règne No one rules your heart

Dans le grand palais ou tu dors In the grand palace where you sleep
Et près de toi la vieille duègne And near you the old duenna lies in waiting
Guette le Toréador. for the Toreador.

Toréador brave des braves Toreador, bravest of the brave

Lorsque sur la place Saint marc When in the Piazza San Marco
Le taureau en fureur qui bave The wild, slobbering bull
Tombe tué par ton poignard. Falls slain by your blade

Ce n'est pas l'orgueil qui caresse It is not pride that caresses

Ton coeur sous la baouta d'or Your heart beneath your golden cape
Car pour une jeune déesse It is for a young goddess
Tu brûles toréador. That your passion burns, toreador.
Refrain:

Belle Espagnole Lovely Spanish girl

Dans ta gondole In your gondola
Tu caracoles Dancing and prancing
Carmencita Carmencita
Sous ta mantille Under your mantilla
Oeil qui pétille Sparkling eyes
Bouche qui brille Shining mouth
C'est Pépita. That's Pepita

In the refrain the narrator goes on to describe Pépita’s beauty and her apt ability to seduce men of all kind. He even
goes as far as comparing her abilities to lure men to that of Georges Bizet’s (1838-1875) character Carmen from the
opera Carmen (1875). She knows how to her body to her best advantage. Unfortunately the toréador is so enamored
with her that he only sees her beauty and not the person she truly is. Pépita wants nothing to do with the toréador
and in the second verse his grief is revealed (Bernardini, 2017: 171):

C'est demain jour de Saint Escure Tomorrow is St. Escurio's Day,

Qu'aura lieu le combat à mort With its combat to the death
Le canal est plein de voitures The canal is full of sails
Fêtant le Toréador! Celebrating the Toreador

De Venise plus d'une belle More than one Venetian beauty

Palpite pour savoir ton sort Trembles to know your fate
Mais tu méprises leurs dentelles But you despise all their laces
Tu souffres Toréador. You suffer Toreador.

Car ne voyant pas apparaître. Since not seeing her appear

Caché derrière un oranger, Hidden behind an orange tree,
Pépita seule à sa fenêtre Pepita alone at her window
Tu médites de te venger, You think about vengeance.

Sous ton caftan passe ta dague Under your caftan slips your dagger
La jalousie au coeur te mord Jealousy gnaws at your heart
Et seul avec le bruit des vagues And alone with the noise of the waves
Tu pleures toréador. You weep toreador.

In the third verse the narrator lists all of the toréador’s accomplishments. He is in his own right a star and the arena
is filled with men and woman alike, all coming to see him. The bull enters the arena but the toréador is so obsessed
with Pépita that he becomes distracted, all he can think about is her, his rage and jealousy grows. He fails to notice
that the bull has gorged him and that he is dying. Pépita does not mourn for him but laughs at his misfortune. She is
not impressed with his fame, and the only thing that attracts her is power and wealth. She sits there with an ‘old
Doge’ a man of power and status (Bernardini, 2017: 171):

Que de cavaliers! que de monde! So many horsemen! so great a crowd!

Remplit l'arène jusqu'au bord Filling the arena to its limits
On vient de cent lieues à la ronde From a hundred leagues people keep coming
T'acclamer Toréador! To cheer you—Toreador!

C'est fait il entre dans l'arène And so he enters the arena

Avec plus de flegme qu'un lord. With more composure than a lord
Mais il peut avancer a peine But he can scarcely walk,
 Le pauvre Toréador. the poor Toreador.

Il ne reste à son rêve morne His gloomy dream contains no more

Que de mourir sous tous les yeux Than to die before the eyes of all
En sentant pénétrer des cornes As he feels the piercing of those horns
Dans son triste front soucieux Within his sad, troubled brow

Car Pépita se montre assise He sees Pepita sitting there,

Offrant son regard et son corps Offering her gaze and her body
Au plus vieux doge de Venise To the oldest doge of Venice
Et rit du toréador. Laughing at the toreador.

The poem is quite heartfelt and tragic but Poulenc sets the text with humor (Bernardini, 2017: 171). Toréador is
filled with lively characters and exuberant capriccio6 (Johnson & Stokes, 2002: 349). Poulenc wanted the audience
to understand that love can be foolish and to the casual bystander it can also be humorous. He gives the song a
humorous musical setting that is consistent with the cabaret style (Bernardini, 2017: 172). It has a waltz tempo and
accompaniment, as well as melody that stresses the weak beats. The strophic form and loose treatment of the tempo
all point to the cabaret style. He uses sudden stops and grace notes that gives the final “e” on the words at the end of
each line a more Spanish speaking style than French. He makes use of the Phrygian mode to build melodic phrases.
Also hinting at a more Spanish flavor (Bernardini, 2017: 171).

Poulenc greatly admired the cabaret singer Maurice Auguste Chevalier (1888-1972). Chevalier often created rubato
by elongating syllables or lagging behind the accompaniment. He would depart from the original beat but get back
in time several phrases later (Bernardini, 2017: 172) Poulenc acknowledged this inspiration from Chevalier and uses
this very style in the final nineteen bars by shortening the note values and reducing the accompaniment. This effect
makes it seem that the singer and the accompaniment are out of synchronization (Bernardini, 2017: 172). Cocteau
wanted Poulenc to write a prelude and a ‘circus piece’ to accompany the work. Poulenc agreed, but today Toréador
is all that remains (Bernardini, 2017: 170).

6
A music composition that is written in a free, irregular style and is often humorous in character.
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Journal of Singing, vol. 74, no. 2, pp.169-170.

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https://www.biography.com/people/jean-cocteau-9252166 [2018, April 10].

Cummings, R. 2018. All Music – Francis Poulenc. [Online]. Available:

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/mn0000188079/biography [2018, April 10].

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singer. Volume! [Online] 2(2). Available: https://journals.openedition.org/volume/2218#authors [2018, June
27].

Green, A. 2017. Dialogues des carmélites Synopsis. An Opera by Francis Poulenc in 3 Acts. [Online]. Available:
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http://www.jstor.org/stable/1145557 [2018, February 14].

Johnson, G. & Stokes, R. 2002. A French Song Companion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Maharidge, M.G. 2018. Francis Poulenc (1899-1963). [Online]. Available:

http://www.musicacademyonline.com/composer/biographies.php?bid=115 [2018, April 26].

Morançais, G. 2015. Poulenc Toreador. [Online]. Available:

http://www.jeancocteau-mediterranee.com/blog/poulenc-toredor.html [2018, March 12].

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http://www.musicsalesclassical.com/composer/long-bio/francis-poulenc [2018, March 26].

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Oron, A. 2002. Pierre Bernac (Baritone). [Online]. Available: http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Bernac-

Pierre.htm [2018, July 29].
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https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/federico-garcia-lorca [2018, July 29].

Schmidt, C.B. 2001. Entrancing Muse: A Documented Biography of Francis Poulenc (Lives in Music Series). New
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https://www.britannica.com/topic/Rhone-Poulenc-SA#ref162789 [2018, April 13].

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https://www.britannica.com/topic/Third-Republic-French-history [2018, April 13].

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https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/prints/person/42321/le-chat-noir. [2018, April 06].