French Music for Wind Instruments
Francis Poulenc (1899-1963): Sextet for piano and wind quintet
Jacques Ibert (1890-1962): Trois pièces brèves
Darius Milhaud (1892-1974): La Cheminée du roi René
Jean Françaix (1912-1997): Wind Quintet No. 1
Since the early nineteenth century French composers
have shown a particular skill and deftness of touch in
handling wind instruments, following the pattern set at
the Paris Conservatoire by Anton Reicha (1770-1836),
with his preference for the textures of the quintet of
different wind instruments, as opposed to the traditional
doubling in sextets or octets.
Francis Poulenc only undertook formal musical
training in composition in 1921 from Charles Koechlin.
He had studied the piano with Ricardo Viñes and
explored the music of composers that he favoured,
Bach, Mozart, Satie and Stravinsky, and came to be
associated with the group of friends known as Les Six,
Honegger, Milhaud, Auric, Tailleferre and Durey,
associates of Jean Cocteau, diverse in talent but all
influenced to some extent by the eccentric and
innovative Erik Satie. Poulenc’s early chamber music
included a number of works for wind instruments, a
preference continued throughout his career, the only
exceptions being his violin sonata and cello sonata of
the 1940s. The Sextet for piano and wind quintet was
written in 1932 and first performed the following year.
It remained unpublished, and in 1939 Poulenc revised
it, completing the task as he awaited conscription. It had
its first performance in Paris in December 1940.
Poulenc’s own career as a performer had led, in 1935, to
a partnership with the singer Pierre Bernac, and he took
part in a recording of the Sextet during a tour of
America in 1960. In an earlier recording, in 1952, the
piano part had been played by the composer Jean
Françaix.
The Sextet opens with a vigorous flourish, propelled
forward by its own energy, leading to a passage of
lyrical melancholy introduced by the bassoon. There is
a return to the pace and panache of the opening, before
the movement comes to an end. The second movement,
marked Andantino, has the descriptive title
Divertissement, with a rapider section at its centre. The
outer sections have an unmistakably French air of
poignant lyricism, set off by the playful gaiety at its
heart. The mood changes at once as the final rondo
surges forward, the form allowing opportunities for the
cheerful display of each of the instruments, modified in
the last part of the movement.
A winner of the Prix de Rome at the Paris
Conservatoire, Jacques Ibert was for a number of years
director of the French Academy in Rome. Versatile and
prolific, he contributed as a composer to many genres of
music, operas, ballets, film scores, orchestral works,
songs and chamber music. In common with his
contemporary compatriots he was able to write
idiomatically and skilfully for wind instruments, a
facility demonstrated in his early Wind Quartet,
originally for two flutes, clarinet and bassoon, among
other works.
Ibert’s Trois pièces brèves (Three Short Pieces),
scored for wind quintet, were written in 1930. After a
brief introduction the oboe leads into a jig, with a
contrasting central section, resuming its dance rhythm
to hurry to a close. There is a characteristically
evocative opening to the Andante, a duet for flute and
clarinet, before the final muted sustained note of the
horn, and the last bars in which the other instruments
join. Six introductory bars lead to the Allegro
scherzando of the third piece, with its clarinet melody,
capped by the flute, which leads the way to a Vivo, the
two principal thematic elements returning in
recapitulation.
Born into a Jewish family in the southern French
city of Aix-en-Provence, Darius Milhaud trained at the
Paris Conservatoire, originally as a violinist, before
turning to composition. He enjoyed a close association
with the diplomat-poet Paul Claudel, accompanying
him to Brazil as secretary when the latter was appointed
minister at the French delegation in Rio de Janeiro.
Returning to Paris in 1918, he was one of Les Six, united
by friendship rather than by a doctrinaire approach to
composition. Milhaud spent the war years in America,
where he taught, combining his work there with
teaching at the Paris Conservatoire after the war, in
spite of increasing ill-health. He spent his final years in
Geneva, where he died in 1974. He was amazingly
prolific as a composer, with a long list of works for the
stage and for the cinema, symphonies, concertos,
chamber music, songs and choral music. His last work,
a Wind Quintet, is listed as Opus 443. His suite for wind
quintet, La Cheminée du roi René (The Chimney of
King René) was drawn from collaboration with Roger
Désormières and Honegger on the score for a film,
Cavalcade d’amour, which consisted of three episodes
of love at different periods of history, the Middle Ages,
1830 and 1930. Milhaud chose the first with scenes
evoking the cours d’amour of the fifteenth-century
King René, Count of Provence and titular King of
Naples, a ruler fondly remembered, who introduced the
muscatel grape to the region. His Cheminée was a
sheltered spot that he favoured, now one of the main
streets of Aix.
Milhaud reflects the style of Stravinsky’s neoclassical
Pulcinella in his suite, which opens with
Cortège, a procession. The flute, accompanied by the
clarinet, starts the lilting morning serenade, Aubade,
followed by Jongleurs with its oboe melody. La
Maousinglade is the name of the quarter where
Milhaud’s family lived, and Joutes sur l’arc (Jousts on
the Arc) recalls the jousts on the River Arc near Aix.
Chasse à Valabre (Hunting at Valabre) turns to the
King’s hunting-party by the castle of Valabre, the flute
now replaced by a piccolo. The suite ends, as night falls,
in the gentle nostalgia of Madrigal-Nocturne.
Jean Françaix represents a younger generation of
French composers. A piano pupil of Isidore Philippe at
the Paris Conservatoire, he studied composition
privately with Nadia Boulanger, whose support helped
the promotion of his music. He shares with Les Six wit,
facility and lightness of touch, coupled with assured
technique, all essentially French musical characteristics,
together with great versatility. His compositions include
operas, ballets, songs and choral works, orchestral
music and a wide variety of chamber music, in which
wind instruments play a large part. His Wind Quintet
No. 1 was written in 1948 and dedicated to the
Orchestre National de Paris Wind Quintet.
The Quintet opens with an Andante tranquillo
introduction, dominated by the angular melodic line of
the French horn, which provides the rapidly repeated
notes that bring in the spirited Allegro assai, with its
cascading chromatic runs and sharply marked melodies.
The second movement is in the form of a scherzo,
framing a trio section in which the clarinet assumes
initial prominence. The coda, after the return of the
scherzo, recalls elements of the trio. The third
movement is in the form of a theme and variations.
After a short introduction, the F sharp minor theme is
entrusted first to the oboe. The flute initially treats the
material in the first variation. The clarinet leads the
second version of the theme, now in F sharp major and
marked Andantino con moto, going on to provide a
running accompaniment to the poignant flute melodic
line of the following minor Lento variation. The lively
syncopations of the major key fourth variation lead to
the gentler minor Andante. The mood changes at once
with the rapid accompanying arpeggios of the flute and
clarinet to the oboe and horn melody in the Tempo di
marcia francese, interrupted by a bizarre treatment of
the principal motif of the movement, at first by the
bassoon, soon joined by the other instruments. The
music hurries forward to a final cuivré passage for the
horn alone, a falling third echoed by the instruments in
turn and a pianississimo concluding flourish.
Keith Anderson