"Au Fond d'un Placard": Allusion, Narrative, and Queer Experience in Poulenc's Ier Nocturne - University ...
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“Au Fond d’un Placard”:
Allusion, Narrative, and
Queer Experience in
Poulenc’s Ier Nocturne
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CAMPBE LL SHIFLETT
I
n Evelyn Waugh’s 1945 novel Brideshead Revisited
Charles Ryder, finding himself unexpectedly returned to a place from his
past, looks back on his adolescence and his interactions with a noble
English family. Recognizing his reliance on fallible memory to recreate
these events for himself and his audience, Ryder admits that his narra-
197
tion cannot pretend to be entirely objective or accurate. Rather, his
muddled, diffuse account acknowledges how confusing memories can
be, how unreliable our recollections, and how strange the constellations
they form in retrospect. His reflections may not (indeed cannot) present
things exactly as they occurred, but they can grant access to his impres-
sions of events as he himself experiences them: slippery, indistinct,
imprecise, and interconnected.
This is particularly evident in Ryder’s depiction of his college years,
during which a budding relationship with wealthy Catholic aesthete
Sebastian Flyte forced him to confront new and unexpected desires, and
to question his identity. As elsewhere, his narration interleaves vignettes
and introspective commentaries, but here scenes consistently unfold out
of order, and Ryder’s reflections stress his distance from these formative
moments, even as he spins one memory into the next. This play of
confused recollection and estranged commentary, especially when
This paper is dedicated with gratitude to Patti Watters. Additional
thanks are owed to Michael Klein, Michael Puri, Simon Morrison,
Matthew J. Jones, and the anonymous readers of this journal for
their valuable advice on this project at various stages.
The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 37, Issue 2, pp. 197–230, ISSN 0277-9269, electronic ISSN 1533-8347. © 2020
by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission
to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Reprints and Permis-
sions web page, www.ucpress.edu/journals/reprints-permissions. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/
JM.2020.37.2.197t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y
linked to such a crucial, disorienting period in Ryder’s young-
adulthood, opens questions about memory and identity that become
central to Waugh’s novel—on the role of retrospection in cultivating
a sense of self, the lost innocence and simplicity of youth, the search for
social and sexual freedom, and the identification and exploration of
difference.
I first encountered this book as a teenager. Then a closeted kid
entering high school, I found it easy to relate to Charles, who also strug-
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gled with his new surroundings, unfamiliar desires, and sense of identity.
Because Waugh’s story resonated with me in a way no other work had
previously, Brideshead Revisited remained with me through college and
beyond. My memories of the text became sources of reassurance in times
of loneliness and confusion, helping me come to terms with myself and
with the uncertainties of my own queer adolescence, and served as mel-
ancholy mementos of my own formative moments and reminders of the
power and fallibility of memory. I began to understand myself through
my attachments to Waugh’s novel. I began to consider my difference, to
confront and reclaim my past, and to acknowledge the power and weak-
ness of my memory, not unlike Charles himself.
198 I mention all this not because my life is particularly interesting, but
to suggest the importance of memory and reference in queer identity-
formation and its role in the experience of difference more broadly.
Both Ryder’s diffuse, half-remembered narrative and my own use (and
scattered reuse) of his story demonstrate this, showing how reaching out
to and working through personal history are tools queer people use in
cultivating and comprehending our sense of identity and difference. The
network of associations that emerges from our respective turns backward
offers a chance to revisit and reclaim the past, to find meaning in this
history, and to remake and repair the present. Both examples also make
clear that doing so bears risk. Not only are these memories unreliable,
but they are often painful to recall, linked to moments of anxiety, exclu-
sion, even violence. Reflecting on experiences of difference requires
queer people to envision ourselves within personal and collective histo-
ries of injury, even as we look to these same histories for acknowledgment
and understanding.
Much like Charles Ryder, as a teenager I also took an interest in
a rich, Catholic aesthete of the 1920s, the composer Francis Poulenc,
whose music became a point of identification for me. And just as Charles
found something alluring and different in Sebastian, I found something
alluring and different in Poulenc’s works. To be sure, others have
noticed this difference, highlighting the music’s disruptive harmonic
syntax, its surrealist fusion of the ordinary and extraordinary, or its camps hi f l et t
sensibility, to name just a few examples.1 But I hold that the difference
of Poulenc’s music, while it certainly includes these things, ultimately
exceeds them. By considering a network of memories and references
surrounding Poulenc’s works, I add a feature to this list, his prodigious
use of self-allusion, and from there point to a larger sign of difference—
queerness.
My goal is not merely to propose the potential significance of indi-
vidual allusions but to bring Poulenc’s aesthetics of reference to the
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center of analysis and consider its queer implications. In the process,
I revisit two recurring themes in Poulenc criticism: that his music is in
some sense autobiographical (as in his commonly quoted remark, “my
music is my portrait”), and that his musical persona is in some sense
founded on retrospection (as when Jane Fulcher writes that for Poulenc
“the past was not a foreign object to appropriate, or a challenging tech-
nical construct, but rather a part of his own identity”).2 Though autobio-
graphical readings of Poulenc’s music, especially ones that focus on his
homosexuality, are common, and though Poulenc’s use of allusion to
earlier works for musical material is well documented, the intersection
of the two has been underacknowledged. Allusions are mentioned only
cursorily in reflections on the composer’s sexuality. When they do come 199
under scrutiny, as in Christopher Moore’s analysis of queer aesthetics in
two of Poulenc’s ballets from the 1920s, they are examined individually
and treated as barriers to interpretation rather than as interrelated ele-
ments implicated in a system of musical signification.3 Conversely, discus-
sions of Poulenc’s aesthetics of allusion, such as Daniel Albright’s profile
of the composer in Untwisting the Serpent, do not consider the autobio-
graphical connotations of his allusions or their relationship to sexuality,
even when such connections are highly suggestive.4
Like other writers, Moore and Albright focus their analyses on
Poulenc’s references to music by other composers; the composer’s self-
allusions rarely come under the same scrutiny. But self-allusions provide
1
I refer here, respectively, to Deborah Rifkin, “Making it Modern: Chromaticism and
Phrase Structure in Twentieth-Century Tonal Music,” Theory and Practice 31 (2006): 133–58;
David Heetderks, “From Uncanny to Marvelous: Poulenc’s Hexatonic Pole,” Theory and
Practice 40 (2015): 177–204; and Christopher Moore, “Camp in Francis Poulenc’s Early
Ballets,” Musical Quarterly 95 (2012): 299–342.
2
Jane F. Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual: Music and Ideology in France, 1914–1940
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 189.
3
See especially Moore, “Camp in Francis Poulenc’s Early Ballets,” 303.
4
Daniel Albright, Untwisting the Serpent: Modernism in Music, Literature, and Other Arts
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 289–310. Steven Huebner grants allusion’s
potential for an understanding of Poulenc’s sexuality, although like Moore he limits his
observations to isolated instances of allusive “dissimulations.” Huebner, “Francis Poulenc’s
‘Dialogues des Carmélites’: Faith, Ideology, Love,” Music & Letters 97 (2016): 277–315,
especially 309ff.t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y
an enticing starting point from which to explore sexual self-representation
in Poulenc’s music. Through an array of unique signifiers, self-allusion
invokes a more distinctive and personal history of desire than other
forms of reference, and the intimacy of self-reference generates a textual
erotics. Recognizing this, I consider Poulenc’s self-allusions as structural
components of his music that are implicated in a web of association
and signification, and I explore how the sexual implications of these
moments of self-reference suggest interpretations of the composer’s life,
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works, and artistic practice. In doing so I address a gap in Poulenc schol-
arship at the intersection of sexual autobiography and allusive aesthetics,
but I also propose an explanation for its persistence—that it is a result of
the semantic slippage of queerness.
I use queerness to explore this intersection because the disorienting
difference it denotes can describe both sexual minority and self-allusion.
Reclaimed by the communities against whom the term was once weap-
onized, queer has come to designate what Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
describes as an “open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances
and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning when the constituent
elements of anyone’s gender, of anyone’s sexuality aren’t made (or can’t
200 be made) to signify monolithically.” It describes the slippage of meaning
that occurs when a person’s gender or sexuality resists assimilation into
structures of power, challenging cultural norms, legal conventions, and
social expectations.5 For Poulenc, whose anxious affairs with men are
well attested, queerness can describe the misalignment of his homosex-
uality within the signifying systems of a heteronormative world. It names
the lack of fit, the uncertainty of meaning that results from the differ-
ence of his desires.
In recent decades writers and activists have expanded the scope of the
queer to include other facets of life in which a nonnormative gender or
sexuality might be implicated. Known as queering, this performative act
reclaims the term’s pejorative ascription of shameful difference as a way
of affirming difference and of creating space for queer people. Even
though this reconfiguration of the term has been productive, performa-
tive queering can nonetheless never fully escape its traumatic history of
use, since like all speech acts it derives its force not from intention but
5
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Tendencies (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993), 8. So
too does “queer” also overlap, exceed, etc., the terms gay or lesbian, which define particular
subject positions with comparatively stable and historically contextualized meanings. For
this reason I focus on queerness here rather than describe Poulenc or his music as gay.
Whether or not “gay” appropriately describes a homosexual identity of the 1920s, its precise
meaning could never be completely recovered. Even if it could, it would be impossible to
compare it with any analogous identity in the life of a listener today. The indeterminacy of
“queer” counterintuitively admits this comparison, naming a lapse in signification that
characterizes anyone whose sexuality cannot be reconciled to a dominant discourse.s hi f l et t
from repetition. As Judith Butler has explained, those who wish to reclaim
the term from its pejorative uses and co-opt queering for reparation or
critique must confront the acts of exclusion and violence that lurk in each
new utterance. Still, Butler offers a strategy for damping the echoes of this
injurious history, proposing that we recognize queer as a flexible, mobile
term that can be “never fully owned, but always and only redeployed,
twisted, queered from a prior usage and in the direction of urgent and
expanding political purposes.” Unsettling its meaning, she claims, can
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help queering continually evade its past, loosening its connections to
stigma, prejudice, and violence while offering hope for the future.6
Butler’s strategy has undoubtedly encouraged queer critics to
set their sights on a wider range of topics in the name of urgent and
expanding political purposes. But it is not her radical imperative to
continually redefine queerness that inspires me to consider Poulenc’s
self-reference from this perspective. Rather, it is her characterization of
“making-queer” as historical reenactment, for here the similarities
between queering and the mechanics of allusion begin to emerge. In
both, the force of their utterance derives from an appeal to the authority
of the past through performative reiteration and reference. Both dem-
onstrate how their attachments to history can simultaneously undermine 201
and empower their efforts, defining “at once the limits of agency and its
most enabling conditions.”7 And both, by connecting moments in a history
of use, propose networks of meaningful personal associations across time
in “acts of experimental self-perception and filiation.”8 By this logic, self-
allusion can seem especially queer. Even within the more retrospective
currents of modernism, it does not enjoy the same prominence or pres-
tige as allusions to other composers, and when used extensively, it can
come across as unproductive, infantile, even perverse—like musical
onanism. The historical association of these terms with homosexuality
is suggestive. Perhaps the same ideology that marginalizes queerness also
undervalues self-reference.
Poulenc’s Ier Nocturne for piano (1929/30) will serve as my focus,
a piece whose multiple self-allusions not only have inspired curious re-
marks from critics but also reference works that have been subjects of
extensive biographical research. Drawing on this body of commentary,
I first explore the nocturne’s allusive network by investigating Poulenc’s
6
Judith Butler, “Critically Queer,” GLQ 1 (1993): 17–32, at 19. This expansion of
queerness suggests too how the term might describe experiences of difference beyond
gender or sexuality. While I speak only of sexual difference here, I do not doubt that
compelling analyses of allusion could address differential experiences based in race, class,
disability, or other factors.
7
Butler, “Critically Queer,” 20 (emphasis in original).
8
Sedgwick, Tendencies, 9.t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y
programmatic and personal associations with its musical material. These
associations cluster around themes that encourage a hearing of the noc-
turne as a coming-out narrative, which I then attempt to reconstruct.
Finally, I consider the implications of this hearing, relating it to other
works of the 1920s that give accounts of queer men’s experiences through
memory and self-reference. Wherever possible I will qualify my hearing
with those of other listeners. My reliance on these voices stems from
a desire not only to access multiple perspectives on Poulenc’s work but
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also to position myself within a network of memories and citations similar
to the ones I describe. By channeling this referential strategy and other
markers of the nocturne’s queerness in my own writing, I hope to develop
a hearing of the work that is sensitive to its difference. I do this not only
because straightening out the nocturne’s kinks, correcting its disorienta-
tions, and fixing its meaning would fail to appreciate what makes Pou-
lenc’s work compelling, but also because it would be impossible—the
nocturne’s queerness cannot be made to signify monolithically. As
a result, if my own account appears at times diffuse and illogical and at
others interruptive and circuitous, at times repetitious and derivative and
at still others self-indulgent and excessive, it is because I must address
202 Poulenc’s nocturne as it addresses me. I must consider my own sense of
identity and difference, and must narrate the slow, fumbling, unsystem-
atic researches that led me to an understanding of my experiences as
I hear him doing the same. Like Charles Ryder (and, I will show, like
Poulenc), I cannot pretend to give clean, objective facts. My commentary
cannot fully describe its subject, nor can my recollections of this piece
adequately recreate it. I have only memories, however unreliable. If
others’ hearings have served me well, perhaps these too will be of use.
I. I went full of curiosity and the faint, unrecognized apprehension that here, at last,
I should find that low door in the wall, which others, I knew, had found before me,
which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden.9
Poulenc inherited a practice of musical allusion that matured in the
nineteenth century, when composers shifted from conventionalized sys-
tems of representation (e.g., topics) toward more idiosyncratic musical
symbols. Allusions became powerful, prized signifiers of public and pri-
vate meaning, and for that reason composers began combining multiple
allusions within a single work and engaging in layered allusive traditions.
But though their practice grew more complex, it remained, as Christo-
pher Reynolds describes it, “fundamentally a form of play.”10 In Motives
9
Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited (Boston: Little, Brown, 1945), 31.
10
Christopher Alan Reynolds, Motives for Allusion: Context and Content in Nineteenth-
Century Music (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 21.s hi f l et t
for Allusion Reynolds develops methods for interpreting these moments
of reference while acknowledging their fundamental playfulness, pro-
posing that through allusion composers comment on musical material
for specific segments of their audience, who respond to references dif-
ferently depending on their expectations of artistic originality, exposure
to source material, sensitivity to its alteration, and knowledge of a com-
poser’s goals. Far from claiming that an allusion, to be rightly called one,
must be generally recognizable, Reynolds acknowledges that allusion’s
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effect depends upon the individual listener’s experience and the com-
poser’s strategic deployment of allusion to conceal, reveal, confirm, or
alter musical meaning. His approach treats allusion as an intimate sub-
ject for analysis, suggesting in the extreme case its ability to connect
a composer with a single listener.
While I do not intend this study as a strict application of Reynolds’s
principles, I take to heart his notion of allusion as a form of play between
composer and audience, and the intimate view of allusive analysis his
method advocates. My hearing of Poulenc’s nocturne highlights one
such interaction, describing one listener’s orientation to the piece’s
self-allusions. But if my understanding of Poulenc’s references is distinc-
tive, I suspect it is not unique, as the route that leads me to it is well 203
traveled. Discussions of the piece consistently identify similar musical
material linking it to a small collection of works by Poulenc; on occasion
they even recall the original thematic significance of these passages.11
Still, their analyses do not fully consider the combined impact of such
moments on a listener’s understanding of the nocturne. I draw on this
research in the analysis that follows to supplement my interpretation,
hoping that in so doing I may better convey my admittedly idiosyncratic
experience of the work.12
Concert champêtre and Aubade
The nocturne’s allusions begin with the opening theme (ex. 1a), which
recalls a melody from Poulenc’s Concert champêtre for harpsichord and
orchestra, premiered on May 3, 1929 (ex. 1b). This melody, first heard
11
Examples abound in, among others, Franck Ferraty, Francis Poulenc à son piano:
Un clavier bien fantasmé (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2011); Benjamin Ivry, Francis Poulenc (Lon-
don: Phaidon, 1996); Hervé Lacombe, Francis Poulenc (Paris: Fayard, 2013); and Renaud
Machart, Poulenc (Paris: Seuil, 1995).
12
Of course, insofar as the research I cite corroborates my understanding of the
piece, it suggests the universality of my experience. My deference to these critics, coun-
terintuitively born of a desire to convey my own perspective as a listener, can begin to
illustrate the ambivalence that links allusive listening to queerness: both are beholden to
inconsistent claims that they be individual experiences and simultaneously relevant to all.t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y
example 1. Melodic excerpts from (a) Poulenc, Ier Nocturne, mm. 1–4
and (b) Poulenc, Concert champêtre, third movement, RH-17
(transposed for ease of comparison). Excerpt from Ier
Nocturne reproduced by permission of Hal Leonard LLC,
© 1932 (Renewed) by Heugel, Paris. Rights transferred to
Editions Musicales Alphonse Leduc, Paris. Excerpt from
Concert champêtrere produced by permission of Hal
Leonard Europe S.r.l. Italy, © by Editions Salabert
Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/jm/article-pdf/37/2/197/395973/jm.2020.37.2.197.pdf by guest on 25 June 2020
Paris, France. International Copyright Secured. All Rights
Reserved.
204
in the concerto’s opening movement (RH-25.15), develops into a central
element of the work’s finale: after appearing in a solo harpsichord state-
ment at RH-17, accented and marked Eclatant, it becomes the closing
theme of the final movement, marking the return of the tonic key at
RH-27. As critics today and at the time of its premiere have noted, by
overtaking the opening theme of the finale the Eclatant melody serves as
the rhetorical completion of the movement and the climax of the con-
certo.13 Its unexpected importance to the work makes its reappearance in
the nocturne even more striking.
This theme from Concert champêtre bore important associations for
the composer; he publicly linked the work’s brass fanfares, many of
which are settings of this closing theme, to his childhood memories of
the suburban countryside of the Bois de Vincennes in eastern Paris and
the military trumpeters garrisoned there.14 But the theme also appears
to have had a more private significance. One week after the premiere of
the Concert, Poulenc copied the theme in a letter to the painter and
13
Wilfrid Mellers, Francis Poulenc (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 25; and
Lucien Chevaillier, “Un entretien . . . avec Francis Poulenc,” in Le Guide du Concert et des
Théâtres Lyriques 30 (April 26, 1929): 855–57; translated as “An Interview with . . . Francis
Poulenc,” in Francis Poulenc: Articles and Interviews: Notes from the Heart, ed. Nicolas Southon,
trans. Roger Nichols (Burlington: Ashgate, 2014), 119–21, at 120.
14
“Interviews with Claude Rostand,” in Francis Poulenc: Articles and Interviews: Notes from
the Heart, ed. Nicolas Southon, trans. Roger Nichols (Burlington: Ashgate, 2014), 177–290,
at 217.s hi f l et t
gallerist Richard Chanlaire, with whom he had begun a romantic rela-
tionship earlier that year. In the letter, which accompanied a manuscript
reduction of the concerto gifted to Chanlaire, the composer writes how,
“during the long months of solitude” before meeting the painter, he
called out for a companion without yet knowing who—if anyone—would
answer. The fanfare theme from the Concert accompanies Poulenc’s
thanking Chanlaire “for having come at last.”15 This association of the
melody with Poulenc’s yearning has led Christopher Moore to name it the
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“Chanlaire theme,” which he claims marks “the realization of an erotic
dream” in that work.16
A passage later in the nocturne (ex. 2a) evokes the conclusion of
Poulenc’s ballet-cum-piano-concerto Aubade (ex. 2b), premiered on June
18, 1929. Although this allusion too is not exact, the corresponding sec-
tions of both pieces feature bell tones, overlapping rhythmic patterns,
and upward melodic leaps that resolve downward by half step—all of
which lend a melancholic mood to the two works. But whereas in Aubade
this section marks the return to the key and toccata-like texture of the
work’s opening, its reiteration in the nocturne unexpectedly replaces the
work’s principal theme just as the piece returns to its opening key. In this
way the section of the nocturne functions similarly to the finale of Concert 205
champêtre, avoiding the main theme at the point of the work’s rhetorical
completion. Yet this rejection of formal norms is not an ecstatic break-
through, as it was in the Concert. The introduction of this solemn new
theme represents instead a graceful and considered reorientation as the
nocturne leaves behind its rondo form to pursue a new course.
The passage’s formal function within the nocturne recalls the very
moment in the ballet that this music appears: the goddess Diane, con-
fused and upset over an unfamiliar love that threatens her purity, aban-
dons her friends and retreats into the forest as dawn approaches.
Although her future remains uncertain, critics have long considered the
music of this scene to represent Diane’s begrudging resolution of her
divided self as she confronts her conflicting duties and desires.17 Her
15
The letter has been bound into Francis Poulenc, “Concert champêtre pour cla-
vecin (ou piano) et orchestra,” score, 1929, Lambiotte Family/Francis Poulenc Archive, MS
623, Woodson Research Center, Rice University, Houston, TX. It is transcribed in Carl B.
Schmidt, The Music of Francis Poulenc (1899–1963): A Catalogue (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1995), 151–52. Schmidt, however, incorrectly identifies the musical excerpt as RH-27
(Allegro giocoso) in the third movement, when in fact it is the Eclatant passage at RH-17.
16
Christopher Moore, “Camp et ambiguı̈té formelle dans le Concert champêtre,” in Du
langage au style: Singularités de Francis Poulenc, ed. Lucie Kayas and Hervé Lacombe (Paris:
Société française de musicologie, 2016), 319–30, at 327. Unless indicated, all translations
are my own.
17
Laurence Davies, The Gallic Muse (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1967), 171; La-
combe, Francis Poulenc, 348–50; and Mellers, Francis Poulenc, 32. Mellers links this change in
Diane specifically to a transition from childhood to adulthood.t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y
example 2. Excerpts from (a) Poulenc, Ier Nocturne, mm. 66–67 and
(b) Poulenc, Aubade, “Conclusion,” RH-56. Excerpt from
Ier Nocturne reproduced by permission of Hal Leonard
LLC, © 1932 (Renewed) by Heugel, Paris. Rights
transferred to Editions Musicales Alphonse Leduc, Paris.
Excerpt from Aubade reproduced by permission of Hal
Leonard Europe S.r.l. – Italy. © by Editions Salabert –
Paris, France International Copyright Secured. All Rights
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Reserved.
206
anxious reflections lead her to accept a newly emerging self-image, grant-
ing her unexpected peace and calm. Several critics have extended these
programmatic associations to personal ones, claiming that this section
from Aubade reflects Poulenc’s own crisis of identity, his struggle to come
to terms with his homosexuality.18 Kevin Clifton has even done so with
specific reference to the musical language of this closing passage, argu-
ing that its overlapping metrical patterns and bell-like timbres channel
gamelan music, which evokes an exotic Other through which Poulenc
entertains a sexual fantasy. That this Other comes to define the end of
Aubade mirrors Poulenc’s “recognition of the alien within the self,” his
“coming to terms with his gay identity.”19
18
Christopher Moore’s study remains the definitive statement on Aubade’s autobio-
graphical implications: “Camp in Francis Poulenc’s Early Ballets,” 320ff. For an early
example, see James Harding, The Ox on the Roof: Scenes from Musical Life in Paris in the Twenties
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1972), 223.
19
Kevin Mark Clifton, “Poulenc’s Ambivalence: A Study in Tonality, Musical Style,
and Sexuality” (PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin, 2002), 125–26.s hi f l et t
While he did not publicly disclose his homosexuality, Poulenc did
openly place himself at the center of Aubade. As the soloist at the premiere
he doubled the role of Diane, who is represented by the piano through-
out the work; decades later he admitted that like his protagonist he
experienced intense anxiety while writing the ballet.20 Though he did
not specify its cause, this anxiety likely stemmed from his ongoing rela-
tionship with Richard Chanlaire, for like the fanfares of Concert champêtre,
Poulenc associated Aubade with the painter as well. After the work’s pre-
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miere Poulenc gave Chanlaire a cigarette case engraved with themes from
this section of the work and suggested the painter find a cover to protect it
from “profane glances.” In another letter to Chanlaire, Poulenc inscribed
motives from the ballet’s last movement on a heart-shaped staff.21 Pou-
lenc also copied the opening melody of the conclusion to Aubade in a note
accompanying an early sketch of the work, presented to Chanlaire on the
day of its premiere. He encourages the painter to take care of the
sketches, since they might make a touching memory should he find them
later “in the back of a closet” (au fond d’un placard).22
While these allusions’ shared associations with childhood naı̈veté,
emerging sexuality, and Richard Chanlaire (brother-in-law of the noc-
turne’s dedicatee, Suzette Chanlaire) may seem coincidental, themes of 207
lost innocence, sexual awakening, and queer desire are common con-
cerns of the pastoral mode that governs all three of these works from
1929. The idealized rusticity of the Concert, the secluded grove of Aubade,
and the otherworldly grace of the nocturne all originate in this artistic
tradition, which—far from escapist fiction or regressive fantasy—consid-
ers such complex issues from positions of relative safety and simplicity.23
One version of pastoral, for example, considers the simplicity of youth
in the face of adulthood’s complexity. Though told from an adult per-
spective, its subject, as Peter Marinelli explains, is childhood’s
“hedonistic and wanton innocence” before the emergence of sexuality.24
20
Francis Poulenc, “Francis Poulenc on His Ballets,” Ballet 2, no. 4 (September 1946):
57–58; reprinted in Francis Poulenc: Articles and Interviews: Notes from the Heart, ed. Nicolas
Southon, trans. Roger Nichols (Burlington: Ashgate, 2014), 39–41, at 40.
21
Lacombe, Francis Poulenc, 342 and 349.
22
Schmidt (Music of Francis Poulenc, 161) transcribes this letter but does not identify
the excerpt. The letter has been bound into Francis Poulenc, “Aubade: Concerto
choréographique pour piano et dix-huit instruments,” score, 1929, Lambiotte Family/
Francis Poulenc Archive, Rice University. The current usage of “closet” regarding queer
sexuality, it should be noted, is anachronistic to the 1920s, though queer people of the time
would surely have known its effects.
23
This understanding of the mode descends from William Empson, whose descrip-
tion of pastoral as “putting the complex into the simple” remains influential to this day. See
David James and Philip Tew, “Introduction: Reenvisioning Pastoral,” in New Versions of
Pastoral: Post-Romantic, Modern, and Contemporary Responses to the Tradition, ed. David James
and Philip Tew (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2009), 13–28.
24
Peter V. Marinelli, Pastoral (London: Methuen, 1971), 77–79.t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y
The “pastoral of childhood” thus provides an opportunity for disen-
chanted adults to reflect on their own idealized past and more broadly
on how childhood is mythologized—and by extension to interrogate the
myths of adulthood by reconsidering their own (sexual) experiences.
Poulenc’s nocturne, which foregrounds musical features common to
the composer’s recurring enfantine style and the pastorale topic, approxi-
mates musically what the pastoral of childhood accomplishes in litera-
ture.25 Through these stylized signifiers of childlike simplicity and
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natural plenitude, the piece constantly points toward an idealized past.
As critics’ evocative accounts of Poulenc’s enfantine style demonstrate,
this indexical power is both incredibly strong and incredibly disorient-
ing. Franck Ferraty describes the nocturne’s enfantine C-major key as
both innocent and sobering, at once recalling dusk and daybreak. Like-
wise, Hervé Lacombe finds that the nocturne evokes both a mother’s
soothing lullaby and the clear-headed freshness of 9:00 a.m.26 If on one
hand the nocturne evokes naı̈veté and innocence, on the other it chan-
nels conscience and experience. These seemingly paradoxical interpre-
tations of Poulenc’s enfantine piece reflect the underlying duality of its
pastoral of childhood. Through a combination of memory and fantasy,
208 the piece constructs a vision of innocent youth through which an adult
can reflect on pressing issues.
Sexuality’s thematic importance to the pastoral of childhood makes
it a prime candidate for the subject of these memories. Indeed, beyond
its threat to childhood innocence, sexuality has long been a concern of
the pastoral and especially so within the French fête galante tradition,
which originated in the erotically charged paintings of Antoine Watteau
and was revived in the poetry of Verlaine and the music of Debussy.27
Poulenc particularly appreciated this aspect of the genre, acknowledging
its importance to works like Les Biches (1924) and L’embarquement pour
Cythère (1951). Poulenc’s examples, however, foreground same-sex
desire even more than those of his predecessors. In Les Biches the loose
plot and ambiguous choreography conceal a subtext of sexual deviance
and gender bending at a private house party.28 Decades later Poulenc
25
Markers of the enfantine style in the nocturne include its steady eighth-note patter,
C-major key, and simple scalar melodies. Additional markers of enfantine simplicity (con-
sonant, diatonic harmony, parallel thirds and sixths, slow harmonic rhythm aided by pedal
points, and soft dynamics) are shared with the pastorale. For other perspectives on Poulenc’s
enfantine style, consult Ferraty, Francis Poulenc à son piano; Lacombe, Francis Poulenc; and
Mellers, Francis Poulenc. For more on signifiers of the musical pastoral, see Robert S. Hatten,
Musical Meaning in Beethoven: Markedness, Correlation, and Interpretation (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1994), especially 97–100.
26
Ferraty, Francis Poulenc à son piano, 151; and Lacombe, Francis Poulenc, 180 and 183.
27
For a detailed history of this tradition, consult Raymond Monelle, The Musical
Topic: Hunt, Military and Pastoral (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 261–64.
28
Moore, “Camp in Francis Poulenc’s Early Ballets,” 304–19.s hi f l et t
would compare L’embarquement pour Cythère, titled after a painting by
Watteau, to a young man’s kiss, writing that he hoped it would arouse
its performers.29
Poulenc’s appropriation of pastoral eroticism as a safe space for ex-
pressing queer sexuality is an extension of the mode’s common use as
a tool of recollection, reflection, and personal growth. The pastoral has
supported reflections on queerness throughout its history, offering a site
for queer people to contemplate and celebrate their desires without fear
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of judgment or punishment.30 Considering one’s queerness in the con-
text of a pastoral of childhood adds another layer to this reflection. The
mode’s juxtaposition of childhood innocence and adult experience con-
fronts the queer subject with the possibility that their sexual-minority
identity has its roots in an adolescent shift from supposedly “pre-sexual”
youth to libidinous adulthood. The pastoral of childhood’s speculative
return to the origins of one’s sexuality thus becomes that much more
marked for a person whose sexual identity is “other.”
The pastoral mode, queer sexuality, and childhood innocence then
delineate a densely interconnected field where themes of security, sim-
plicity, and sexual anxiety can be objects of reflection and of play. We
might easily begin to place the allusive network of Poulenc’s nocturne 209
within this field. Its enfantine style and pastoral associations conjure an
idealized, simplified space in which narratives of youthful innocence,
adolescent sexuality, and individual self-discovery can safely play out.
Given the homoromantic associations of the work’s allusions, we might
specify this space as one for reflecting on a queer sexual identity. But
before diving into such a reading, one more branch of the nocturne’s
allusive network remains to be considered.
“ Le contentement de soi” and Dialogues des carmélites
Not only does the nocturne refer to earlier compositions by Poulenc, but
the chromatic sequence that begins its coda (ex. 3) is also a source for
allusion in later works. It first reappears in “Le contentement de soi”
(“Self-content”), from Poulenc’s 1936 piano suite Les Soirées de Nazelles,
29
See his letter to pianists Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale in Francis Poulenc: Corre-
spondance 1910–1963, ed. Myriam Chimènes (Paris: Fayard, 1994), 985. For more on
L’embarquement at the intersection of childhood, pastoral, and queer sexuality, consult
Philip Purvis, “Poulenc’s (Sub)urban Camp: L’Embarquement pour Cythère,” in Music & Camp,
ed. Christopher Moore and Philip Purvis (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press,
2018), 181–99.
30
See Byrne R. S. Fone, “This Other Eden: Arcadia and the Homosexual Imagi-
nation,” Journal of Homosexuality 8 (1983): 13–34.t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y
example 3. Poulenc, Ier Nocturne (“Le double plus lent”), mm. 87–92,
with annotated harmonic analysis (the cell of the chromatic
sequence comprises one chromatic mediant relationship
emphasized by common tones in the melody and one
dominant-tonic relationship emphasized by phrasing and
scalar fill; each repetition of the cell is transposed by ic3).
Reproduced by permission of Hal Leonard LLC, © 1932
(Renewed) by Heugel, Paris. Rights transferred to
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Editions Musicales Alphonse Leduc, Paris. International
Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved.
210
as a contrasting idea to the diatonic principal theme (mm. 20ff).31 Trad-
ing the chorale texture of the source for a livelier contrapuntal one, the
sequence develops into an unexpected focal point of the movement,
occupying roughly one-third of the piece. Its prominence is even more
striking given its oddity, for the sequence occupies a liminal harmonic
space. While its local dominant-tonic progressions suggest fleeting dia-
tonic footholds, they suspend any sense of tonal gravity by tonicizing
pitches that equally divide the octave into minor thirds (and one aug-
mented second). Setting local cadences within this broader tonal
uncertainty (and setting that within the regularity and circularity of
a sequence), the passage confusingly blends the expectations of
directed progressions, the tonal disorientation of the equal divisions
of the octave, and the endless predictability of a symmetrical, sequential
interval cycle.
31
Though published in 1936, a preliminary outline of Les Soirées de Nazelles completed
in 1930 includes “Le contentement de soi” as the first variation, suggesting that Poulenc
had conceived of it around the time of the nocturne’s composition. See Carl B. Schmidt,
Entrancing Muse: A Documented Biography of Francis Poulenc (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press,
2001), 179.s hi f l et t
Poulenc composed the movements of Soirées as musical portraits,
so it is likely that this strange harmonic cycle serves some descriptive
function.32 If “Le contentement de soi” is indeed a picture of personal
satisfaction, the proliferation of these rambunctious, bewildering se-
quences would suggest that “self-content” involves accommodating dis-
orientation and uncertainty in light of convention and expectation.
While the harmonic sequence fleetingly entertains conventional goal-
directed progressions and hints at tonal orientations, it incorporates
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them into a comparatively unconventional and unfamiliar system, whose
paths are less recognizable and goals less clear. Given how long the
movement spends traversing these disorienting cycles, “Le contentement
de soi” would seem to value this musical difference over the more tradi-
tional style of the movement’s principal theme. Still, difference (musical
or otherwise) may not be valued universally, and as Davies implies with
his invocation of the demimonde in a description of this piece, the
movement’s delight in tonal disorientation pulls the work closer and
closer to the fringes of listener comprehension and social respectabil-
ity.33 Perhaps recognizing this, Poulenc recast the chromatic sequence
when it resurfaced in his opera Dialogues des carmélites (1956).
The return of this progression more than twenty-five years after the 211
nocturne and in a piece of such a sharply contrasting genre makes this
the most remarkable of the allusions seen so far. That the opera relies on
the sequence structurally and thematically, featuring it in each act, fur-
ther suggests that the chromatic chorale had a lasting significance for
Poulenc. Critics writing on the opera most often link its use of the
sequence to the transference of grace, the God-given gift of strength that
allows someone to perform seemingly impossible tasks, following Pou-
lenc’s admission that it is an important, even personally significant
theme in the work.34 Blanche’s transformation from timid young woman
to steadfast martyr is the opera’s principal example of this unexpected
strength, as God’s grace empowers her to die with the Carmelite nuns.
The chromatic sequence becomes linked with this transformation as
short segments accompany each step of her journey, from her opening
32
Otherwise, as Richard Cohn argues in a different context, such a prolonged
chromatic sequence “risks being perceived as mechanical, lacking invention”; Cohn,
Audacious Euphony: Chromaticism and the Triad’s Second Nature (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2012), 95.
33
Davies, Gallic Muse, 177. Poulenc indicated in later editions of Les Soirées de Nazelles
that “Le contentement de soi” could be omitted from performance, suggesting a hesitation
over its portrayal of self-satisfaction.
34
Among others, see Keith W. Daniel, Francis Poulenc: His Artistic Development and
Musical Style (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1982), 304; Lacombe, Francis Poulenc, 698;
and especially Huebner, “Francis Poulenc’s ‘Dialogues des Carmélites,’” 288ff. For Pou-
lenc’s discussion of grace in the opera, see his “Interviews with Claude Rostand,” 289.t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y
example 4. Poulenc, Dialogues des carmélites, RH-19.5, featuring
a truncated version of the same chromatic sequence
found in the nocturne’s coda, mm. 87–92 (ex. 3).
Reproduced by permission of Hal Leonard Europe S.r.l.
– Italy. Music by Francis Poulenc, Lyrics by Georges
Bernanos and Emmet Lavery. © by CASA RICORDI
S.r.l. – Milan, Italy. International Copyright Secured. All
Rights Reserved.
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212
description of how acts of courage resemble jumping neck-deep into
cold water (RH-19.5, reproduced as ex. 4) to the moment Constance
sees Blanche approaching the scaffold in the final scene (RH-72.3).
Insofar as this sequence is tied to Blanche’s experience of grace, it is
also tied to Poulenc himself, who identified with her deeply. His passion-
ate but troubled relationship with Lucien Roubert at the time of the
opera’s genesis, coupled with difficulties securing permissions to adapt
text for the work’s libretto, left Poulenc anxious, depressed, and para-
noid about his health. When Roubert himself fell ill in 1955, Poulenc
wrote to singer and friend Pierre Bernac that he felt haunted by Con-
stance’s assertion in the opera that “we do not die for ourselves alone,
but for one another,” insinuating that Roubert was dying so that he
himself might live. Indeed, Poulenc wrote to Simone Girard in Octobers hi f l et t
of that year that he finished recopying the vocal score of the work the day
Roubert died.35 Retelling this story in his history of the opera’s spiritual
context and stressing Poulenc’s identification with his heroine, Steven
Huebner foregrounds the scene of Constance recognizing Blanche’s
decision to follow her to the scaffold as evocative of this aspect of his
relationship with Roubert. The appearance of the “grace motive” at this
moment becomes particularly significant in this context, linked to Pou-
lenc’s resolve in the face of death.36
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The overall effect of Blanche’s spiritual journey and of the transfer-
ence of grace motive is one of unexpected resolution: Blanche finds the
power to manage her anxiety and follow her calling, while the sequence
establishes mesmerizing continuity through disunity and disorientation.
Each transforms difference and division into a newfound identity, accom-
plishing their seemingly impossible tasks with uncommon grace. In this
way Dialogues resembles “Le contentement de soi,” which likewise refer-
ences the strength and satisfaction that come from finding an identity in
a struggle with difference. That this meaning is associated with the chro-
matic sequence they share implies its relevance to the Ier Nocturne, the
work in which the sequence originated. For whether or not the composer
knowingly associated the passage with this meaning in the earlier work, by 213
revisiting the sequence in two later pieces Poulenc reconfigures its origi-
nal appearance in the nocturne such that, to listeners familiar with all
three works, the coda of the nocturne will speak in the voices of the two
later pieces.37 In this way the sequence itself assumes an identity through
allusive difference. From within the passage emerges a collage of voices
that point toward other places and times and involve different points of
view. The coda collects these voices in a single gesture, whose stylistic
oddity only reinforces its referential power.38 This combination of allusive
and stylistic markedness makes this section influential in structuring the
listener’s experience of the work. Hence, it is with the coda’s patchwork
of voices that a narrative interpretation of the nocturne’s references can
begin.
35
Francis Poulenc: Correspondance, 826 and 831, respectively. Perhaps coincidentally, it
is around this time in Poulenc’s life that Richard Chanlaire’s name begins to reappear in
his published letters. The painter apparently came to Poulenc’s aid during the time of
Carmélites, much of which was written in Tourettes-sur-Loup, where Chanlaire lived.
36
Huebner, “Francis Poulenc’s ‘Dialogues des Carmélites,’” 312–14.
37
As when Lacombe (Francis Poulenc, 474) ascribes the grace of Dialogues to the
nocturne.
38
Critics consistently describe the style of the passage as reminiscent of music from
other places and times. Ferraty (Francis Poulenc à son piano, 19) describes its resemblance at
once to the Classical style, to Schumann, and to Ravel. Daniel (Francis Poulenc, 166) suggests
as much with “unrelated.” Mellers (Francis Poulenc, 41) meanwhile settles simply for “weird.”t h e j ou r na l o f m u s i c o l o g y
II. “ Just the place to bury a crock of gold,” said Sebastian. “ I should like to bury
something precious in every place where I’ve been happy and then, when I was old
and ugly and miserable, I could come back and dig it up and remember.” 39
To assess the nocturne’s allusive network in narrative terms requires a re-
orientation on our part. Instead of considering the work’s references
paradigmatically as isolated incidents, we must also attend to their syntag-
matic interaction within the piece. The strangeness of the nocturne’s coda
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would suggest this section of the work as a window onto such a hearing
precisely because its markedness extends along both dimensions, involv-
ing allusive reference and stylistic oddity. Speaking from outside the noc-
turne, from other musical works and in a foreign musical language, the
coda’s chromatic sequence simulates a meta-musical subjectivity with the
ability to reflect upon, comment on, and even narrate the work.
The primary indication of such a narrative voice is the coda’s resem-
blance to a cadenza, a device commonly associated with meta-musical
commentary in its native genre, the concerto.40 In its lowest pitches the
arpeggiated chord that precedes the sequence (m. 84) resembles the
second-inversion triad that would traditionally introduce a performer’s
214 improvisation, and the chord’s prolonged duration, expanded register,
and unsettling, provocative dissonance (not to mention the weight of the
protracted silence that follows) seem likewise to demand a musical
response. Moreover, the alien chromatic sequence that emerges from
this silence (m. 87) is entirely appropriate to a cadenza; by introducing
a new texture, harmonic palette, dynamic level, tempo, and meter, it
recalls a cadenza’s improvisatory freedom, and it resembles a cadenza
in form by quickly tonicizing different keys before finally resolving to the
tonic. In combination these markers do more than simply differentiate
the passage from the remainder of the nocturne. The coda’s stylistic shift
signals the emergence of some new agency with the power to organize
musical elements according to a new logic and respond to the preceding
music from a higher level of discourse.
This discursive shift is important too because it signals the dissolu-
tion of the enfantine style. Trading simple stepwise melodies and undu-
lating accompaniments for wide-leaping upper voices and a staid chorale
texture, and abandoning the stable C-major tonic for a brief flirtation
with a disorienting new harmonic language, the coda replaces the child-
like voice of the opening with a strange, unfamiliar one. Because of its
apparent intrusion from outside the previous musical discourse and the
unexpected license of its new compositional logic, this new voice seems
39
Waugh, Brideshead Revisited, 24.
40
Here and below I am indebted to Robert Hatten’s discussion of “levels of dis-
course” in Musical Meaning in Beethoven, 174–202.s hi f l et t
to possess special knowledge, experience, and authority—qualities for-
eign to the enfantine naı̈veté of the opening. Drawing the work out of its
pastoral reverie, the passage presents a sobering reminder of a world
beyond the fantasy of childhood innocence. Such a narrative of disillu-
sionment is fitting for a pastoral of childhood, in which fantasies of
innocence conceal commentaries on adulthood told from an adult per-
spective. The intrusion of a voice of experience reveals just this conflict
of the mode at work, exposing the mature narrator whose account of
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childhood simplicity contains a meditation on something more complex.
The common themes implicated in the nocturne’s references—
childhood innocence, emerging sexuality, adult anxiety, and identity
in difference—clarify the work’s pastoral of childhood as a progression
from youthful naı̈veté to sexual anxiety, ultimately recognized as a retro-
spective fantasy concealing a reflection on adulthood. That the allusions
appear in order of their composition, overtaking each other within the
structure of the piece, reinforces this sense of temporal progression.
Their imprecise reference to their sources meanwhile might imply the
dulling effects of memory on the work’s deliberations, its subjects mis-
remembered, their intense emotions reined in as they might be in ret-
rospect or retelling. If we take seriously the nocturne’s focus on identity 215
in difference and its further intertextual associations with Richard Chan-
laire, we might further specify this narrative as a reflection on emerging
queer desire. It comes to resemble a musical “coming out,” a reflection
on the narrator’s struggle with sexual difference that accounts for queer-
ness through memory and reference.
Over a hazy (très estompé ), rocking accompaniment begins an unas-
suming melody. In its simplicity this opening phrase recalls a song from
a distant childhood. It beckons the listener toward this idealized past,
a place of youthful joy, offering the possibility of return and suggesting
the fulfillment and gratification that await there. As Marinelli might say,
the innocence of these measures—and of our experience of them—is
fundamentally hedonistic, pleasure without consequence. The work’s
anachronistic, neoclassic enfantine style seems blind to the future as its
steady patter of eighth notes pushes thoughtlessly onward. Yet the pas-
sage itself is a consequence of earlier hedonism, a musical memory of the
Concert champêtre and the “erotic dream” that inspired its breakthrough-
climax. There too the theme channels uncomplicated youth: the free-
dom of the suburban countryside, and childhood fantasies of military
trumpeters. But the work’s connection to the emergence of unfamiliar
queer desires threatens to unsettle the innocence of these joys by intro-
ducing adulthood’s conscience and shameful feelings of difference. The
first measures of the nocturne do not yet convey the anxiety of this
transition to maturity, instead continuing to suck on country pleasuresYou can also read
