The critic Claude Rostand famously observed, “In Poulenc there is something of the monk and something of the rascal.”
We hear this in Francis Poulenc’s Sextet for Piano and Winds, composed between 1931 and 1932, and revised in 1939. Scored for piano, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and French horn, it is music filled with impish humor. At times, its comic voices, with their distinct personas, take on a satirical tone. As the work unfolds, we get glimpses of melancholy lurking beneath the surface.
“He always placed a great value on being regarded as light, charming, frivolous, and flip,” wrote Rostand of the composer. “He loved risqué jokes and a Rabelaisian way of life…It was a point of honor for him never to appear serious…Behind this spontaneity, this easy and ironic cutting up, was hidden much inner turmoil.”
Influenced by the surrealistic music of Erik Satie, Poulenc was a member of “Les Six,” a group of French composers who sought to move beyond the influence of Wagner and German Romanticism, as well as the Impressionism of Debussy and Ravel. Stripped of sentimentality, the resulting music exhibited a biting, witty Neoclassicism. It assimilated jazz, the music of the circus and the boulevard cafes, and the vaudeville strains of the Parisian music hall.
Poulenc wrote the Sextet as “an homage to the wind instruments I have loved from the moment I began composing.” The opening of the first movement (Allegro vivace) erupts with boisterous ascending scales. A raucous woodwind conversation includes gleeful taunts. It is propelled forward by an exhilarating piano ostinato, a kind of wild Machine Age motor. The movement is cast in ternary form (A-B-A). The middle section begins with a mournful, solitary statement by the bassoon. The music which follows is slow, songlike, and haunting. Some listeners hear an allusion to the popular song, Melancholy Baby, recorded in 1934 by the Jazz singer, Al Bowlly.
The second movement (Divertissement) begins as a serene parody of a slow movement from a Mozart piano concerto. The middle section takes a sudden comic turn, with a playful rapid march. The movement’s final bars drift off with a sense of mystery.
The final movement (Prestissimo) begins with “an Offenbachian gallop.” (Think the famous Can-Can from the operetta Orpheus in the Underworld). With a buffoonish statement in the horn, echoed by other wind instruments, the rollicking rondo is propelled forward. Dressed in ragtime garb, melodies from the previous movements return. The fun hits a brick wall with a shrieking parody of Neoclassical Stravinsky. Leaving behind the previous frivolity, the coda section is quiet and wistful. Its final moments deliver something akin to the magical, shimmering crescendo which closes Ravel’s “Mother Goose” Suite. A final jazzy chord brings the Sextet to a close.
I. Allegro vivace:
II. Divertissement (Andantino):
III. Finale (Prestissimo):
Recordings
- Poulenc: Sextet, FP 100, Ralf Gothóni, Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra Wind Quintet Naxos
Featured Image: An illustration from Les Ateliers de Martine, Paul Iribe