Francis Poulenc: Articles and Interviews: Notes from the Heart by Nicolas Southon (review)

Abstract

COMPOSERS Francis Poulenc: Articles and Interviews: Notes from the Heart. Collected, introduced, and annotated by Nicolas Southon. Translated by Roger Nichols. Farnham, Surrey, Eng.: Ashgate, 2014. [ix, 313 p. ISBN 9781409466222 (hardcover); ISBN 9781409466239, 9781409466246 (ebook), $109.95.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliographic references, index.This volume appears on the heels of the fiftieth anniversary of Francis Poulenc's death (1899-1963), an occasion that was marked in 2013 with numerous concerts and productions on both sides of the Atlantic and academic conferences in Paris and in Keele, U.K. Despite Poulenc's popularity among performers and audiences- he is the most-performed composer of Jean Cocteau's group Les Six-Poulenc has yet to receive the level of musicological attention, in English or French, that has been bestowed upon his compatriots Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and Olivier Messiaen. Notes from the Heart, which is a considerably abridged translation of Nicolas Southon's collection J'ecris ce qui me chante (Paris: Fayard, 2011), fills an important gap in English primary sources on Poulenc. It contains over thirty of Poulenc's writings and interviews, most of them appearing in English translation for the first time, and the first complete English translation of the with Claude Rostand.This volume is divided into seven sections according to the type of source: Articles; Critical Articles and Reviews; Contributions to Works by Others; Response to a Survey; Lectures; Interviews; and Interviews with Claude Rostand. While this follows the general outline of J'ecris, the present volume contains less than a third of the writings contained in the original. Although the with Claude Rostand have been translated in their entirety, Notes from the Heart contains only a fraction of the material from the other categories. It omits altogether Poulenc's Moi et mes amis and Emmanuel Chabrier, both of which have been previously translated into English, and Poulenc's eighteen homages to individuals. Although readers looking for a general introduction to Poulenc through his writings may not regret the omissions, serious scholars of French music will find the selection unsatisfactory and will still have a need to turn to the original. The largest omission is the collection of eighteen homages. While some honor subjects of international significance, such as Bela Bartok, Benjamin Britten, and Jean Cocteau, Southon acknowledges in the Preface to the Translation that many of the individuals are unknown to the English-speaking (p. xiii). What a shame, then, that the English-speaking public was denied this opportunity to get to know them!Besides the absence of the homages, readers may question the selection of articles, critical articles, and reviews that appear in the translation. Indeed, considering the fact that Notes from the Heart already contains the eighteen interviews that make up the with Claude Rostand, one wonders if some of the fourteen other interviews included in this translation could not have been omitted in order to allow for a few more of Poulenc's writings. Among the omissions are several of the shorter articles that Poulenc wrote during the Second World War, not to mention Southon's introductions to these articles, which clarify the ideological context in which Poulenc published during the occupation. The new translation also omits many of the writings in which Poulenc discusses the music of particular composers such as Emmanuel Chabrier, Erik Satie, Sergey Prokofiev, and his fellow members of Les Six, Darius Milhaud and Georges Auric. These articles provide insight not only on Poulenc's impressions of these composers, but also document the personal relationships he had with many of the leading composers of his day, especially with his close friend Milhaud. Also missing from Notes from the Heart are Poulenc's reviews of sound recordings for the journal Arts phoniques in 1928-29, which constituted Poulenc's only regular column in any journal (Southon, J'ecris, p. …