Calligrammes
The song settings of Guillaume Apollinaire's ideographic Calligrammes demonstrate Francis Poulenc's exceptional ability to unite poetry and music, without compromising the integrity of either medium. The graphical notation of the poetry presents a formidable challenge to Poulenc, requiring that he convey both the visual implications and the spirit of cubism that are fundamental to their interpretation. By creating his own musical calligram, he succeeds in synthesizing his music with the visual elements of the poetry. After modulating through Poulenc's medium, the poignant symbolism of the poetry resonates with a greater intensity. Together with his profound connection to the poetry, Poulenc's, Calligrammes empower a reader's voice that would otherwise strain to convey the visual implications of the poetry. This analysis begins with an examination of the poetry and the implications of the ideograph; I will discuss the influences of cubism in Apollinaire's poetry, the ability of Calligrammes to capture the spirit of cubism, and the appeal of the poetry to Poulenc. Next, I provides an analysis of "Il Pluet (It rains)," "Aussi Bien que les Cigales (As Well as the Cicadas)," and "Voyage." The analysis will reveal that, alt
During the incipient throes of globalization, people struggled to process the inundation of information by juxtaposing the new and ambiguous with the preconceived and familiar. Lockerbie describe stimulating demands of poetic ideograph, "To be able to mirror such a multiple form of consciousness the work of art had to abandon linear and discursive structures, in which events are arranged successively, in favor of what Apollinaire called simultaneity: a type of structure that would give the impression of a full and instant awareness within one moment of space-time. Poulenc's vocal line does not follow natural rhythms of the French language; it follows the jerky ebb and flow of the ideograph. The graphic dimension compels upon us the voice that hesitancy, the groping forward, which is the whole mechanism of understanding. The seemingly simple shape of the ideograph, which is organized into neat and orderly fragments, obscures the maze that is concealed within. Poulenc guides the reader from the myopia of the absurd to the revelation of the absurd. As a result, a reader responds to an ideograph the same way he responds to the artwork of Picasso. " It is uncharacteristic of Poulenc to intentionally obscure the comprehensibility of the text, but he does in order to preserve the metric implications of Apollinaire's visual poetry. The tone of each song varies from pensive and nostalgic to the whimsical and lighthearted. Using falling figures in the piano, he captures the downward motion, allowing the visible aesthetic to become audible. The first three notes (telegraphe) and the last three notes (ses ailes partout) of the melodic line ascend in a similar fashion beginning with stepwise motion and ending with an interval leap. One such artist, Picasso, distorted his subjects, thus provoking a viewer to react to the ambiguity by freely associating the familiar with the discordant. In the words of the composer, "'Voyage' is certainly one of the two or three songs which I value the most. While Apollinaire used capital letters to emphasize the final line, Poulenc exhausted the dynamic extreme. A reader does not internalize the poetry in a rational way, but responds, instead, to certain words or shapes that appear on the page.
Common topics in this essay:
Aussi Bien,
Il Pluet,
Voyage Poulenc,
Apollinaire Cubism,
Kent Werner,
Apollinaire's Calligrammes,
LA PAIX,
World War,
Cigales Poulenc,
Picasso Instead,
vocal line,
il pluet,
que les,
aussi bien,
les cigales,
bien que,
bien que les,
aussi bien que,
que les cigales,
apollinaire's poetry,
adorable de la,
de la paix,
poulenc's music,
demands poetic,
cubist aesthetic,
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Acceptance Essays
