Fleurs (Francis Poulenc, Louise Vilmorin)

From Fiançailles pour rire (6 mélodies) 1939 for medium Voice to Poèmes de Louise Vilmorin:
1. the Dame d’André – 2. Dans l’herbe – 3. Il vole – 4. Mon cadavre est doux comme un gant – 5. Violon – 6. Fleurs

“Fleurs” (text by Louise Vilmorin – in French and English)

Fleurs promises, fleurs tenues dans tes bras,

Promised flowers, flowers held in your arms, 

Fleurs sorties des parenthèses d’un pas,

Flowers from a step’s parentheses,

Qui t’apportait ces fleurs l’hiver

Who brought you these flowers in winter

Saupoudrés du sable des mers?

Sprinkled with the sea’s sand?

Sable de tes baisers, fleurs des amours fanées

Sand of your kisses, flowers of faded loves

Les beaux yeux sont de cendre et dans la cheminée

Your lovely eyes are ashes and in the hearth

Un cœur enrubanné de plaintes Brûle avec ses images saintes.

A moan-beribboned heart Burns with its sacred images.

Fleurs promises, fleurs tenues dans tes bras,

Promised flowers, flowers held in your arms,

Qui t’apportait ces fleurs l’hiver

Who brought you these flowers in winter

Saupoudrés du sable des mers?

Sprinkled with the sea’s sand?

More about the Poet Louise de Vilmorin (1902-1969)

Marie Louise Lévêque de Vilmorin (4 April 1902-26 December 1969) was a French novelist, poet and journalist. Born in the family château at Verrières-le-Buisson, Essonne, a suburb southwest of Paris, she was heir to a great family fortune of the French seed company Vilmorin. Her material deals with love, death, and absence, and use fairy-tale elements, fantasy, ellipsis, lyricism and include – in addition to three volumes of poetry – Le Lit à colonnes (1941), Le Retour d’Érica (1946), Julietta (1951), Madame de (1951, filmed by Max Ophüls 1952), Histoire d’aimer (1955), Le Violon (1960), L’Heure Maliciôse (1967). Her wistful distilled lyrics celebrate Nature, recall childhood and lost love.

In 1935, Jean Cocteau wrote of Vilmorin:

 ~ ‘…une sorte de prodige: une femme qui invente des choses illustres … neuves, fraîches, comiques, poétiques, féroces, légères jusqu’à l’incroyable’.

~ “…a kind of miracle: a woman who invented famous things … new, fresh, comic, poetic, fierce, light up the incredible” [“Researching the Song: A Lexicon”, Emmans, Shirley & Lewis, Wilbur Watkins, Oxford University Press., New York 2006 P.469]

Poulenc and Vilmorin were close friends and Poulenc is said to have enjoyed the “unashamedly feminine nature of her poetry” [ibid, P.470] This is slightly ironic, since the Cycle was composed for Baritone Pierre Bernac. [Schmidt, Carl B., Entrancing muse: a documented biography of Francis Poulenc, Pendragon Press, New York, P.260] Poulenc recalled her reading the poems to him from her sickbed in a hotel. There was gentlemanly rivalry and camaraderie between Poulenc and Georges Auric, both who wanted to set Vilmorin poems to music and evidently discussed between them who would get which poems. It seems that Poulenc had jumped the gun a bit, pipping Auric to the post in an earlier set of songs. He wrote to his great teacher and mentor Nadia Boulanger, that he had sketched six songs, but that he had to give up on one of his favourite poems “La Jeune Sangue” that was earmarked for this cycle, in favour of Auric. [Ibid. P.260]

In the end it was soprano Genevieve Touraine – not Bernac – who sang the premiere only in 1942.

Poulenc and “Fleurs”

The accompaniment of the song is typical of that spiritual, devotional element that is so prominent in Poulenc’s work. While this is not a religious work at all, the accompaniment recalls the slow movement of the Cello Sonata (“Cavatine”) or even more directly the organ and choral writing of his “Stabat Mater” or even the “Litanies à la Vierge Noire” (“Litanies to the Black Madonna”) (1936) and the Mass in G (1937).

The Piano doesn’t merely double the vocal melody, but rather hugs it, embracing it and occasionally letting go while it carries the glorious melody on its own with the voice commenting on, rather than leading the proceedings.

Poulenc had been a military reservist in the 1st regiment of the military domiciled at Noizay since 1934. Bernac was called up to active service in September 1939 and on 19 November Poulenc was assigned a “Special Classification”. “The wait wore on his nerves and caused him to envision numerous morbid scenarios. He told Simone Girard that he would gladly sacrifice a leg or two if his hands were spared”. [Ibid. P261] He had even wrote his beloved Nadia Boulanger a letter in case he got killed in action.

It was a time of particular emotional upset for Poulenc. He had lived through World War I and was about to live through a second.

A few years earlier, in 1936, Poulenc was profoundly affected by the tragic death (in a car-accident) of another composer – one-time rival and later close friend – Pierre-Octave Ferroud (1900-1936). This led him to his first visit to the shrine of the Black Virgin of Rocamadour. Here, before the famous wooden statue of the Madonna with a young child on her lap, Poulenc experienced a life-changing transformation. Poulenc was deeply moved by his experience there. He wrote the opening measures of Litanies à la Vierge Noire (1936) in the Chapel of Our Lady of Roc-Amadour, and these notes marked a turning point in his compositional career as well as his return to the Catholic faith. Thereafter, he produced a sizable output of liturgical music or compositions based on religious themes.

Litanies à la Vierge Noire (1936) – Accentus Chamber Choir under the direction of Laurence Equilbey.

 

Nathalie Stutzmann (alto) & Inger Sodergren (piano): The complete “Fiancailles pour rire” (Poulenc)

The greatest recording of this song, in my opinion, is by much-loved, much-missed, soprano Arleen Augér on the album Love Songs: Arleen Augér sings Copland, Strauss, Poulenc. You can listen to the song HERE.

Read more about the Cult of the Black Virgin of Rocamadour HERE.

Buy a copy of Poulenc’s Song Cycle Fiançailles pour rire HERE.