Clarinet Sonata (Poulenc)
Encyclopedia
Francis Poulenc
's Sonata for clarinet
and piano
(FP 184) dates from 1962 and is one of the last pieces he completed. The piece is dedicated to the memory of an old friend, the Swiss composer Arthur Honegger
, who like Poulenc had belonged to the group of "Les Six
." A typical performance takes about 13 minutes.
:
The structure differs somewhat from the fast-slow-fast pattern of a traditional sonata in that the first movement is itself split into three sections in the pattern fast-slow-fast. It bears the somewhat paradoxical subtitle "Allegro tristamente": accordingly, the piece is always in motion, but proceeds with a sense of grieving. After a brief fortissimo introduction consisting of angry spurts of figuration in the clarinet punctuated by piano chords, the piano quiets to a murmur. The clarinet's lines are built of a self-perpetuating series of arcs that leave a shape but not a tune in our ears. At one point the clarinet seems stuck in a motivic rut, sadly leaping up and down between octave B tones over a shifting harmonic background. As the movement ends, the lingering memory is a fuzzy one of melancholy gestures and moods.
The second movement, "Romanza," is both clearer in its melodic makeup and more cathartic, perhaps, in its emotional expression. The clarinet melody is simple and somber throughout, but is elaborately embroidered in a few places, as if losing composure. Two particularly poignant examples are the sixty-fourth note runs near the beginning, and the trembling half-step figure that appears at the beginning and end.
The third movement, "Allegro con fuoco," energetically combines various nimble, articulate, and rhapsodic themes, bookended by a delightfully clownish tune—a mixture of serious and silly that well represents Poulenc's oeuvre as a whole.
, who commissioned the piece, was intended to premiere it with the composer accompanying. Poulenc died suddenly of a heart attack on January 30, 1963 before it was published, and an editor was employed to ascertain the identity of some notes, as well as provide missing dynamics and articulations. The premiere was given at New York City's Carnegie Hall
by Benny Goodman and Leonard Bernstein
on April 10, 1963. Harold C. Schonberg
, music critic of the New York Times had this to say: "Poulenc was not a 'big' composer, for his emotional range was too restricted. But what he did, he did perfectly, and his music shows remarkable finish, style and refinement.... The sonata...is typical Poulenc. In the first movement, skittish thematic elements are broken up by a broadly melodic middle section. The slow movement is one of those melting, long-phrased and unabashed sentimental affairs that nobody but Poulenc could carry off. Weakest of the three movements is the finale, which races along but has little immediacy. Here Poulenc's inspiration seems to have run out."
and mix tonal harmony
with modal harmony
. Texturally, the works feature parallelism, imitation
, and melody with accompaniment. Both works are very brief and could perhaps have been titled sonatina
.
In 1918 (at age 19), Poulenc composed the Sonata for Two Clarinets (FP7), which features one player on B♭ clarinet and the other on A clarinet. The 5-minute piece is in three movements, marked:
One of Poulenc's earliest sonatas, he referred to it as an "entertainment" and later revised it in 1945. The work is brief, with two fast movements bookending a slow middle movement that features the first clarinet player in solo role with the second clarinet taking an accompaniment role with an ostinato
. Somewhat melodically sparse, the piece features repetition, sequences
, and shifting meters, recalling Eric Satie and Igor Stravinsky
and pointing the way forward for Poulenc's developing style.
In 1922, Poulenc composed the Sonata for Clarinet and Bassoon
(FP32), which he later revised in 1945. The 8-minute piece is in three movements, marked:
Slightly more developed than the Sonata for Two Clarinets, the piece follows same the fast-slow-fast pattern, but contains more melodic material. The work also reflects Poulenc's study of Bach
's counterpoint, with the bassoon sometimes taking the role of a quasi-basso continuo.
was composed in 1956, while one for oboe
was completed a few weeks after the one for clarinet. A sonata for bassoon was never begun.
Like the clarinet sonata, the oboe sonata is dedicated to the memory of a lost friend: in this case, Sergei Prokofiev
. Poulenc modified his usual fast-slow-fast pattern of movements to slow-fast-slow. The concluding lament is particularly suited to the qualities of the oboe. The flute sonata shares with the clarinet/piano work a structure that features a more restrained attitude in the first two movements, followed by a more playful finale.
As scholar and biographer Keith Daniel observes, certain thematic materials appear in all three works. The thirty-second note figure that opens the flute sonata appears with some alteration in the first movement of the oboe sonata, and in rough inversion during the second movement of the one for clarinet; likewise, a motive consisting of a dotted note filled out by two shorter notes appears in multiple places in all three sonatas. Finally, Daniel notes the overall similarity of mood in the second movements of the flute and clarinet sonatas.
).
Francis Poulenc
Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc was a French composer and a member of the French group Les six. He composed solo piano music, chamber music, oratorio, choral music, opera, ballet music, and orchestral music...
's Sonata for clarinet
Clarinet
The clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...
and piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
(FP 184) dates from 1962 and is one of the last pieces he completed. The piece is dedicated to the memory of an old friend, the Swiss composer Arthur Honegger
Arthur Honegger
Arthur Honegger was a Swiss composer, who was born in France and lived a large part of his life in Paris. He was a member of Les six. His most frequently performed work is probably the orchestral work Pacific 231, which is interpreted as imitating the sound of a steam locomotive.-Biography:Born...
, who like Poulenc had belonged to the group of "Les Six
Les Six
Les six is a name, inspired by The Five, given in 1920 by critic Henri Collet in an article titled "" to a group of six composers working in Montparnasse whose music is often seen as a reaction against the musical style of Richard Wagner and impressionist music.-Members:Formally, the Groupe des...
." A typical performance takes about 13 minutes.
Structure
The sonata is in three movementsMovement (music)
A movement is a self-contained part of a musical composition or musical form. While individual or selected movements from a composition are sometimes performed separately, a performance of the complete work requires all the movements to be performed in succession...
:
- 1. Allegro tristamente (Allegretto - Très calme - Tempo allegretto)
- 2. Romanza (Très calme)
- 3. Allegro con fuoco (Très animé)
The structure differs somewhat from the fast-slow-fast pattern of a traditional sonata in that the first movement is itself split into three sections in the pattern fast-slow-fast. It bears the somewhat paradoxical subtitle "Allegro tristamente": accordingly, the piece is always in motion, but proceeds with a sense of grieving. After a brief fortissimo introduction consisting of angry spurts of figuration in the clarinet punctuated by piano chords, the piano quiets to a murmur. The clarinet's lines are built of a self-perpetuating series of arcs that leave a shape but not a tune in our ears. At one point the clarinet seems stuck in a motivic rut, sadly leaping up and down between octave B tones over a shifting harmonic background. As the movement ends, the lingering memory is a fuzzy one of melancholy gestures and moods.
The second movement, "Romanza," is both clearer in its melodic makeup and more cathartic, perhaps, in its emotional expression. The clarinet melody is simple and somber throughout, but is elaborately embroidered in a few places, as if losing composure. Two particularly poignant examples are the sixty-fourth note runs near the beginning, and the trembling half-step figure that appears at the beginning and end.
The third movement, "Allegro con fuoco," energetically combines various nimble, articulate, and rhapsodic themes, bookended by a delightfully clownish tune—a mixture of serious and silly that well represents Poulenc's oeuvre as a whole.
Premiere
The famous clarinetist Benny GoodmanBenny Goodman
Benjamin David “Benny” Goodman was an American jazz and swing musician, clarinetist and bandleader; widely known as the "King of Swing".In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in America...
, who commissioned the piece, was intended to premiere it with the composer accompanying. Poulenc died suddenly of a heart attack on January 30, 1963 before it was published, and an editor was employed to ascertain the identity of some notes, as well as provide missing dynamics and articulations. The premiere was given at New York City's Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
by Benny Goodman and Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
on April 10, 1963. Harold C. Schonberg
Harold C. Schonberg
Harold Charles Schonberg was an American music critic and journalist, most notably for The New York Times. He was the first music critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism...
, music critic of the New York Times had this to say: "Poulenc was not a 'big' composer, for his emotional range was too restricted. But what he did, he did perfectly, and his music shows remarkable finish, style and refinement.... The sonata...is typical Poulenc. In the first movement, skittish thematic elements are broken up by a broadly melodic middle section. The slow movement is one of those melting, long-phrased and unabashed sentimental affairs that nobody but Poulenc could carry off. Weakest of the three movements is the finale, which races along but has little immediacy. Here Poulenc's inspiration seems to have run out."
Additional Clarinet Sonatas
Early in his career, Poulenc composed two other sonatas featuring the clarinet. These two works, Sonata for Two Clarinets and Sonata for Clarinet and Bassoon, are representative of an early style of experimentation for Poulenc. Both works make use of "wrong-note" dissonanceConsonance and dissonance
In music, a consonance is a harmony, chord, or interval considered stable, as opposed to a dissonance , which is considered to be unstable...
and mix tonal harmony
Tonality
Tonality is a system of music in which specific hierarchical pitch relationships are based on a key "center", or tonic. The term tonalité originated with Alexandre-Étienne Choron and was borrowed by François-Joseph Fétis in 1840...
with modal harmony
Musical mode
In the theory of Western music since the ninth century, mode generally refers to a type of scale. This usage, still the most common in recent years, reflects a tradition dating to the middle ages, itself inspired by the theory of ancient Greek music.The word encompasses several additional...
. Texturally, the works feature parallelism, imitation
Imitation (music)
In music, imitation is when a melody in a polyphonic texture is repeated shortly after its first appearance in a different voice, usually at a different pitch. The melody may vary through transposition, inversion, or otherwise, but retain its original character...
, and melody with accompaniment. Both works are very brief and could perhaps have been titled sonatina
Sonatina
A sonatina is literally a small sonata. As a musical term, sonatina has no single strict definition; it is rather a title applied by the composer to a piece that is in basic sonata form, but is shorter, lighter in character, or more elementary technically than a typical sonata...
.
In 1918 (at age 19), Poulenc composed the Sonata for Two Clarinets (FP7), which features one player on B♭ clarinet and the other on A clarinet. The 5-minute piece is in three movements, marked:
- Presto
- Andante: Très lent
- Vif: Vite avec joie
One of Poulenc's earliest sonatas, he referred to it as an "entertainment" and later revised it in 1945. The work is brief, with two fast movements bookending a slow middle movement that features the first clarinet player in solo role with the second clarinet taking an accompaniment role with an ostinato
Ostinato
In music, an ostinato is a motif or phrase, which is persistently repeated in the same musical voice. An ostinato is always a succession of equal sounds, wherein each note always has the same weight or stress. The repeating idea may be a rhythmic pattern, part of a tune, or a complete melody in...
. Somewhat melodically sparse, the piece features repetition, sequences
Sequence (music)
In music, a sequence is the immediate restatement of a motif or longer melodic passage at a higher or lower pitch in the same voice. It is one of the most common and simple methods of elaborating a melody in eighteenth and nineteenth century classical music...
, and shifting meters, recalling Eric Satie and Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
and pointing the way forward for Poulenc's developing style.
In 1922, Poulenc composed the Sonata for Clarinet and Bassoon
Bassoon
The bassoon is a woodwind instrument in the double reed family that typically plays music written in the bass and tenor registers, and occasionally higher. Appearing in its modern form in the 19th century, the bassoon figures prominently in orchestral, concert band and chamber music literature...
(FP32), which he later revised in 1945. The 8-minute piece is in three movements, marked:
- Allegro: Très rythme
- Romance: Andante très doux
- Final: Très animé
Slightly more developed than the Sonata for Two Clarinets, the piece follows same the fast-slow-fast pattern, but contains more melodic material. The work also reflects Poulenc's study of Bach
Bạch
Bạch is a Vietnamese surname. The name is transliterated as Bai in Chinese and Baek, in Korean.Bach is the anglicized variation of the surname Bạch.-Notable people with the surname Bạch:* Bạch Liêu...
's counterpoint, with the bassoon sometimes taking the role of a quasi-basso continuo.
Other Woodwind Sonatas
The clarinet sonata is one of three that Poulenc wrote for solo woodwind and piano, part of a planned set that he did not live to complete. A sonata for fluteFlute Sonata (Poulenc)
The Flute Sonata by Francis Poulenc, for flute and piano, was written in 1957. It is dedicated to the memory of Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, an American patron of chamber music. Poulenc composed it for the flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal, and he and Rampal gave the première in June 1957 at the...
was composed in 1956, while one for oboe
Oboe Sonata (Poulenc)
The Sonata for oboe and piano by Francis Poulenc dates from 1962. It is his opus number 185 and is dedicated to the memory of Sergei Prokofiev. According to many oboists, the last movement "Déploration" was the last piece he wrote before he died. It sits as a kind of obituary.The Oboe Sonata is...
was completed a few weeks after the one for clarinet. A sonata for bassoon was never begun.
Like the clarinet sonata, the oboe sonata is dedicated to the memory of a lost friend: in this case, Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century...
. Poulenc modified his usual fast-slow-fast pattern of movements to slow-fast-slow. The concluding lament is particularly suited to the qualities of the oboe. The flute sonata shares with the clarinet/piano work a structure that features a more restrained attitude in the first two movements, followed by a more playful finale.
As scholar and biographer Keith Daniel observes, certain thematic materials appear in all three works. The thirty-second note figure that opens the flute sonata appears with some alteration in the first movement of the oboe sonata, and in rough inversion during the second movement of the one for clarinet; likewise, a motive consisting of a dotted note filled out by two shorter notes appears in multiple places in all three sonatas. Finally, Daniel notes the overall similarity of mood in the second movements of the flute and clarinet sonatas.
Published Scores of Clarinet Sonata(s)
- Sonata for clarinet and piano. London: Chester Music, cat. no. CH61763, ed. Sachania.
- Sonata for clarinet and bassoon. London: Chester Music, cat. no. CH00219,
- Sonata for two clarinets. London: Chester Music, cat. no. CH00219,
Selected recording
Fredrik Fors, clarinet; Sveinung Bjelland, piano (Harmonia Mundi HMN911853; see recording details at Fredrik ForsFredrik Fors
Fredrik Fors is a Swedish, classical music clarinetist. His album in the Juventus Les Nouveaux Musiciens series has been described as "one of the finest recitals of its kind."- Early studies and career :...
).
Sources
- Daniel, Keith (1982). Francis Poulenc, His Artistic Development and Musical Style. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press. ISBN 9780835719094
- Sadie, S., & Tyrrell, J. (2001). The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. New York: Grove's Dictionaries. ISBN 1561592390