- Date: 1941 -1945
- Composer: Francis Poulenc
- Period: Modern (1910-1949)
Review
This is a masterpiece of French art song, one of the greatest songs by one of history's greatest song composers.Francis Poulenc (1899 - 1963) preferred using poems of friends or acquaintances, but made a major exception when it came to the verses of Guillaume Apollinaire (1880 - 1918). He wrote three Apollinaire song cycles and also made an opera of Apollinaire's surrealist play Les mamelles de Tirésias.
Poulenc reveals in his valuable Journal de mes melodies (Diary of My Songs) that it took four years to write Montparnasse, a span he did not regret "...for it is probably one of my best songs."
The Apollinaire poem, written in 1912, is self-reflective, expressing the poet's doubts about his own poetic vision. He wonders if he will be like the potter plants in the lobby of his hotel in Montparnasse: pretty, but doomed to bear no fruit. Is he just a temporary tenant on the earth, who will float away leaving no trace, like balloons? He regards himself in the mirror of his room, and tells himself, "bearded angel you are really a lyric poet from Germany who wants to know Paris." (Apollinaire came to Paris from the Rhineland.)
The poem also reflects his uncertain sense of identity. (Apollinaire was actually born Wilhelm Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky in the Vatican to a Polish noblewoman whose father was commander of the Swiss Guards. Apollinaire's father remains unknown, though the poet never disputed rumors that he was sired by the Pope.)
Poulenc thought so highly of the song that he recorded in his Journal the places when the music for certain lines came to him. Noizay in 1941 and 1943, Paris in 1944, on a trip between the two places in 1943.
He felt ready to put all the fragments of Montparnasse before him and shape them into a perfected whole in February 1945. He pointed out that he felt compelled to keep the lines already written down in the same keys in which they occurred to him; Poulenc's task then was to link the sections, making necessary modulations of keys.
This description of his working method is astonishing. In common with all the greatest songs, Montparnasse creates the impression of an instant, spontaneous flow of music that inevitably progresses from beginning to end.
Pierre Bernac, the singer who was Poulenc's greatest song interpreter, speculates in his equally valuable guide to Poulenc's songs (Francis Poulenc: the Man and His Songs) points out that this is one of numerous of the composer's songs that resonate with Paris, but deepened by omission of musical "slang" elements that had always appeared in context with the city in earlier works. Now a kind of elegant, nonchalant calm becomes associated with the capital. Poulenc's own notes remark on "the oasis of tenderness created by the word Seine or...Paris" in his music, even in the bizarre surroundings of Les Mamelles.
Bernac advises that the song must be performed lyrically, without any irony, "very poetic, but above all not sad." ~ All Music Guide
