Recording
- VII–IX: Je n’ai envie que de t’aimer; Figure de force brûlante et farouche; Nous avons fait la nuitPierre Bernac, baritone; Francis Poulenc, piano4:46
The last three songs of Poulenc’s nine-song Éluard cycle Tel jour telle nuit fill the third side of HMV DB 6383–6384. Pierre Bernac sings and the composer plays; the set was listed for sale as an import by March 1948.
Listening notes
- Songs 7–9 of nine
This side carries the last three of the nine songs. Poulenc composed the first and last songs of the cycle together, as a matching pair, in Lyon, after beginning the work at Noizay in December 1936.
- The dedicatees
Poulenc dedicated the songs of the cycle to eight people, among them Picasso, Nusch Éluard, Valentine Hugo, the baritone Pierre Bernac and the choral conductor Yvonne Gouverné.
- Song 9, the last of the cycle
The ninth song, “Nous avons fait la nuit”, closes the cycle. Graham Johnson calls the last song of the cycle a summing-up of what has gone before.
- “Je ris encore”
John Check singles out the phrase “Je ris encore” in this song, where a bold ascending leap on the second word captures the exhilaration of the phrase.
- Éluard’s four titles
In early January 1937, with the first performance a month away, Poulenc asked Éluard for a title. Éluard offered four; his own choice was Tout dire, and Poulenc took the second, Tel jour telle nuit.
- Piano postlude
After the last words, “toujours nouveau”, the piano plays a postlude in a new tonality. Check finds it Schubert-like in its breadth and says it sums up the cycle as a whole.
- The record in March 1948
The Gramophone Shop’s supplement for March 1948 listed this set, the cycle on three sides and Dans le jardin d’Anna on a fourth. It wrote that the performances “may be considered authentic, by virtue of the composer’s participation in the recording”.