In 1936, shocked by the cruel death of a friend in a car accident, Francis Poulenc made a pilgrimage to the Black Madonna of Rocamadour in southwestern France. Rocamadour is a wonderful "power place": seven chapels and churches nestled against a steep rock face in a gorge above a tributary of the Dordogne River. Steps lead from the lower town to the churches, a group of massive buildings halfway up the cliff. The most important of these is the pilgrimage church of Notre Dame (rebuilt in its present form in 1479), which houses the cult image at the center of the site: a wooden black Madonna said to have been carved by Saint Amator (Amadour) and dating from the mid-12th century. In the dark crypt, the cosmopolitan Poulenc experienced a spiritual revelation that brought him back to religion (a faith that henceforth coexisted peacefully with his hedonism). As a result, he composed the "Litanies a la Vierge noir." The Stabat Mater would follow in 1950 and a beautiful Gloria in 1960.
Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) was the son of the industrialist Émile Poulenc and the amateur pianist Jenny Royer. His father was one of the founders of the Rhône-Poulenc pharmaceutical company. Francis received piano lessons from his mother at an early age. From the age of 15 to 16, he studied with the pianist Ricardo Viñes, a friend of Debussy and Ravel. In Paris, he befriended avant-garde writers such as Guillaume Apollinaire, Jean Cocteau, and Paul Éluard, whose poetry he set to music.
As a composer, Poulenc was virtually self-taught; he published his first compositions at the age of 18 without having received any compositional training. Around this time, he joined the Groupe des Six, six young French composers who opposed the heavy Romanticism and influence of Richard Wagner. Among the mentors of this group, which included Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, and Germaine Tailleferre, were Jean Cocteau and the slightly older, Dadaist composer Eric Satie. Although the group soon disbanded, and Honegger and Milhaud in particular became famous on their own merits, "Groupe des Six" is still the label given to Poulenc's music: cheerful, melodic, light-hearted, and humorous.
After 1936, as mentioned above, Poulenc's music found a new depth of seriousness when he visited Rocamadour. Poulenc himself explained: "A few days before, I'd just heard of the tragic death of my colleague... As I meditated on the fragility of our human form, I was drawn once more to the life of the spirit. Rocamadour had the effect of restoring me to the faith of my childhood. This sanctuary, undoubtedly the oldest in France... had everything to captivate me... On the same evening of this visit to Rocamadour, I began my Litanies à la Vierge noire for women's voices and organ. In this work I tried to convey the atmosphere of "peasant devotion" that had struck me so powerfully in that sublime chapel".
Other works that followed continued the composer's newfound seriousness.
But Poulenc had a particular problem to solve: how to write seriously - even sacred music -
without sacrificing his style? He came up with an amalgam of
16th-century choral style and Stravinsky, especially the Stravinsky of Oedipus Rex, a work that had an enormous influence on several French composers.
The Gloria, scored for soprano solo, large orchestra, and chorus, is one of Poulenc's most famous works. Poulenc later claimed that its idea began while he was working on his opera Dialogues des Carmélites, although it has been impossible to date his initial sketches with any certainty.
The music is dramatic and spans various moods, from light-hearted to mysterious, throughout its six movements. The first movement opens with a large chordal motif in the brass. The
chorus then enters, singing in an accented and declamatory manner. The final movement culminates in a triumphant "Amen."
Listen to: The Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, the Netherlands Radio Choir and soprano Elsa Benoit conducted by Peter Dijkstra in a registration of the Dutch television.
Choral Masterworks