Poulenc: Mouvements perpétuels
Poulenc’s Mouvements perpétuels finds an unlikely companion in Enescu’s Romanian Rhapsodies; like Enescu, Poulenc was only 19 when he wrote the short piano piece, and like Enescu, Poulenc also misjudged posterity’s opinion of what he thought to be a trivial work. In his maturity, Poulenc predicted, “if people are still listening to my music in 50 years’ time it will be for my Stabat Mater rather than the Mouvements perpétuels.” As it turns out, Poulenc is celebrated today for both sides of his musical persona — “half monk and half naughty boy,” as one critic described him — and the present work, lighthearted as it may be, remains one of the composer’s most popular. The piece has an overall circular quality dressed in the urban charm of the early-century salons of Erik Satie (Poulenc’s teacher) and the Paris intelligentsia — all clever irony and understated beauty. Full of innocence, the first movement’s untroubled theme drifts downward over a chugging accompaniment. Even as the theme is refracted through heavy chromaticism, Poulenc cautions the performer, incolore (“colorless”), permitting only a passing observation of the theme’s contortions. The second movement’s pairing of a pseudo-folk melody in counterpoint with a slinking chromatic accompaniment seems reminiscent of the dual influences of Poulenc’s parents: his father’s Catholic piety (suggested by the modal, chant-like melody) with his mother’s cosmopolitan, artistic background in the chromatic bass. After the second movement’s finishing wink, the third movement crashes onto the scene with a stomping first theme before more the expansive, floating subjects that follow. Like the preceding movements, this one feels open-ended, as Poulenc again dodges firm closure to avoid a hard stop to the feeling of constant motion.
© Graeme Steele Johnson for the Yale School of Music
Poulenc’s Mouvements perpétuels finds an unlikely companion in Enescu’s Romanian Rhapsodies; like Enescu, Poulenc was only 19 when he wrote the short piano piece, and like Enescu, Poulenc also misjudged posterity’s opinion of what he thought to be a trivial work. In his maturity, Poulenc predicted, “if people are still listening to my music in 50 years’ time it will be for my Stabat Mater rather than the Mouvements perpétuels.” As it turns out, Poulenc is celebrated today for both sides of his musical persona — “half monk and half naughty boy,” as one critic described him — and the present work, lighthearted as it may be, remains one of the composer’s most popular. The piece has an overall circular quality dressed in the urban charm of the early-century salons of Erik Satie (Poulenc’s teacher) and the Paris intelligentsia — all clever irony and understated beauty. Full of innocence, the first movement’s untroubled theme drifts downward over a chugging accompaniment. Even as the theme is refracted through heavy chromaticism, Poulenc cautions the performer, incolore (“colorless”), permitting only a passing observation of the theme’s contortions. The second movement’s pairing of a pseudo-folk melody in counterpoint with a slinking chromatic accompaniment seems reminiscent of the dual influences of Poulenc’s parents: his father’s Catholic piety (suggested by the modal, chant-like melody) with his mother’s cosmopolitan, artistic background in the chromatic bass. After the second movement’s finishing wink, the third movement crashes onto the scene with a stomping first theme before more the expansive, floating subjects that follow. Like the preceding movements, this one feels open-ended, as Poulenc again dodges firm closure to avoid a hard stop to the feeling of constant motion.
© Graeme Steele Johnson for the Yale School of Music