Souvenirs

A previously unreleased piece by Francis Poulenc, published with permission from the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris and Benoît Seringe, secretary of the Association des amis de Francis Poulenc [Association of the Friends of Francis Poulenc].

Le Voyageur sans bagage [The Traveller Without Luggage], which had been premiered in 1937 with music by Darius Milhaud, was reprised on 1 April 1944 at the Théâtre de la Michodière; Francis Poulenc was asked to compose new stage music. The entire unpublished score lay undiscovered until Bérengère del’Épine, a librarian at the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris, announced the existence of a manuscript in the Association de la Régie Théâtrale collection. Poulenc finalised the score between 19 and 21 March 1944. It contains nine songs, all written for a small instrumental ensemble including Oboe, Clarinet, Cello and Piano. However, at the end of the manuscript, the composer echoes the second song – Lent [Slow] – and creates another version for Cello and Piano; curiously, the original version of the song has not been erased in the manuscript. Poulenc seems to suggest that we consider the piece for Cello and Piano, that we have published here, as a different piece of music. It was premiered on Wednesday 23 January 2013 by Marc Coppey, accompanied by Jean-François Heisser, in the organ auditorium of the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et Danse de Paris (CNSMDP), during the symposium for the fiftieth anniversary of Poulenc’s death. Given in a dramatic context, some elements allow us to get an idea of the character of the piece, which Benoît Seringe, Poulenc’s beneficiary, judiciously chose to name Souvenirs. The main character of Anouilh’s play, Gaston, is suffering from amnesia at the end of World