Francis Poulenc and César Franck

By Judith Eckelmeyer

(GRACE WOODS MUSIC SESSION MARCH 10, 2025)

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Poulenc in the early 1920s

Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) was born and raised in Paris. He learned piano as a child from his mother and was introduced through her and her brother into a highly secular world of contemporary French literature and music. Poulenc’s father, whom he described as a “deeply religious but liberal” Catholic from the south of France, died in 1917, after which Francis moved in the spheres of his mother’s secular, cosmopolitan world.
 
As a teen, he studied the piano music of Debussy and Ravel, then met Georges Auric, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud—three of Les Six—and Eric Satie, their older friend and guide to the avant-garde. At the age of 18 he dedicated his first published work to Satie and became associated with the iconoclastic Six. Although he eventually studied composition formally, it was with private teachers rather than in a classically structured program; he famously progressed no further in counterpoint than Bach’s chorales in spite of having met and conversed with Schoenberg and his pupils in 1921 in Vienna. In this highly individualistic and open-ended development, Poulenc acquired the diversity of resources that would characterize his music: sensitivity to harmonic and tonal color, melodic freedom, and the “language” of popular music current in Parisian cafes and theaters.

Georges Auric

Arthur Honegger in 1928

Darius Milhaud (1923)

Poulenc’s world changed in 1936 when his friend, composer Pierre-Octave Ferroud, was killed in a car accident. In the wake of this tragedy Poulenc retired to Rocamadour, a pilgrimage town in the southern region from which his father had come. There, Poulenc returned to religious faith. His very first sacred choral piece, “Litanies to the Black Virgin” of 1936, is a setting for women’s and children’s voices of recitations honoring the Virgin who is represented by a blackened wood statue in the church of Notre Dame in Rocamadour. Other sacred choral works followed soon after and appear throughout the rest of his life. ​

Pierre-Octave Ferroud

Poulenc’s study of Bach’s chorales, however, did not acquaint him with the organ as either an instrument or a vehicle for composition. Consequently, when in 1934 he received a commission for an organ concerto from Winnaretta Eugénie Singer (of the Singer Sewing Machine family and fortune) Princesse de Polignac for one of her salons, he was stumped. (I totally sympathize with him!) 

Winnaretta Singer self-portrait c.1885

Deeply involved in the music and art of her time, and well acquainted with many major music figures such as Ravel, Stravinsky, members of Les Sixe and others as well as literary and dance luminaries of the day, the Princesse loved Bach’s music and was also schooled to some degree in performing on the organ, but her commission for an organ concerto was far afield from Poulenc’s compositional experience. So his first move was to examine the organ works of Bach and Bach’s esteemed older contemporary and model, Dietrich Buxtehude. ​​

The only surviving portrait of Buxtehude, playing a viol, from Musical Company by Johannes Voorhout (1674)

The model that worked for Poulenc’s compositional structure for the concerto was Buxtehude’s organ fantasias and toccatas, with their single extended movements in contrasting sections; Bach provided him with the key of G minor and the opening gesture for his concerto, which many commentators identify as being based on the Fantasie in G minor, BWV 542. In Poulenc’s opening, the powerful, dramatic sequence of chords and connecting flourishes, is more than arresting—it is almost shocking, a great cry of pain or despair. Was he thinking of his late friend Pierre-Octave?

Bach's Fantasia and fugue in G minor, performed by Leo van Doeselaar

There are so many factors to be considered when writing for organ, not the least of which is what the specific instrument and venue will be, and then what instrumental ensemble would be the best companion for the organ. Poulenc balanced the solo instrument with an unusual combination of strings and timpani. But it had to be left to the organist to select the registration for the performance. Remember, each organ is different, and it’s really up to the organist to make the selection of timbres and other sonic details for a performance on a particular instrument! 

Poulenc had a dickens of a time finding the soloist for the work. Finally he was able to get no less a figure than Maurice Duruflé for the private premiere at the Polignac mansion (with Nadia Boulanger conducting) on December 8, 1938, 

Duruflé c. 1962

Juliette Nadia Boulanger

The Polignac mansion, now the headquarters of the Fondation Singer-Polignac, is a private mansion near the Trocadero in Paris, France, that was the home of Winnaretta Singer, also known as the Princess Edmond de Polignac, and her foundation continues to operate from it.

and then also for the public premiere at the Salle Graveau in Paris in June 1939. Of course the solo instruments for the two porformances were vastly different, so Duruflé’s experience was immensely important for the registration (selection of stops/timbres) and tempos for each performance of the work, given that the various sections in the concerto were very different from each other.

View of the interior of the Salle Gaveau in 2013

I find this concerto intriguing, kaleidoscopic in its variety, and exciting in its alternation of energy and repose. Coming just as Poulenc began his turn to religious thought, he saw the work as “on the margins” of his sacred music.

Francis Poulenc: Konzert g-Moll für Orgel, Streicher und Pauken
​hr-Sinfonieorchester – Frankfurt Radio Symphony ∙ Iveta Apkalna, Orgel ∙ Andrés Orozco-Estrada, Dirigent ∙

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Speaking of religious thought in relation to organ music, two contemporary  19th century composers come to mind: Anton Bruckner (1824-1896) and César Franck (1822-1890). (Charles-Marie Widor runs just a bit later.) Franck’s life, like Bruckner’s, was greatly influenced by Wagner’s lush, chromatic style. Both were adept at performing—Franck excelling at improvisation—and deeply religious. But whereas Bruckner branched out into symphonic works, completing 8 and a portion of a 9th, Franck wrote only one, in D minor, in 1888.

Anton Bruckner wearing the badge of the Order of Franz Joseph

Franck, photographed by Pierre Petit, 1887

Like Hercule Poirot, Franck might take umbrage at being classified as French. Indeed, his training and career lay in Paris but he was born of Walloon parents in Liège, then a part of the Netherlands. Today, with the altered geography of northwest Europe, he is known as a Belgian. The nationality difference created a problem when the family moved to France in 1835; they were given citizenship after a stormy two year wait. They moved back to Belgium because César’s father wanted to train him as a virtuoso. Papa then became a reincarnation of Leopold Mozart hoping to make César famous enough to support the family. In 1830, Papa enrolled him at age 8 in the Liège Conservatory and in 1837 he entered the Paris Conservatoire. His father’s constant attempts to shape his career impeded him in a number of ways until he, like Wolfgang, sought to marry “outside his class” and finally liberated himself from the bullying. He began in earnest to pursue organ studies and eventually attained not only a professorship in organ at the Concervatoire but the prestigious life-time position of organist at Sainte-Clotilde.

Devoted as he was to composing for organ, Franck also wrote in other genres: chamber music, a violin sonata, oratorio, symphonic poem, symphonic vaariations, and symphony. Perhaps his best-known work is in the latter genre, the Symphony in D minor. This very late work reflects his having adopted a number of Richard Wagner’s stylistic features such as extreme chromaticism, and Franz Liszt’s modification of themes and cyclic structure, in which themes from the first part of a work reappear in later parts. ​

Cesar Franck: Sinfonie d-Moll  
hr-Sinfonieorchester – Frankfurt Radio Symphony ∙ Marc Minkowski, Dirigent 

Franck’s symphony is in three rather than the usual classical four movements. The opening theme, reminiscent of Liszt’s main theme in Les Préludes, sets a solemn mood which endures throughout the movement even with tempo changes. That theme returns at the end of the symphony, inverted. ​

​The second movement is famous for its ground-breaking English horn solo, which raised the hackles of more than one critic at the time. “Who ever heard of a cor anglais in a symphony? Just name a single symphony by Haydn or Beethoven introducing the cor anglaise”, Vincent d’Indy reported of one of Franck’s colleagues at the Conservatoire asking. Other aspects of Franck’s orchestration also generated comment, some for its “dullness” and some for being “too blatant”. It seems he just couldn’t win…. 
 
The finale, energetic with a triumphant flavor, should have made up for the critics’ perception of “dullness”, if any there was.

Judith Eckelmeyer ©2025