by Oliver Saint
Episode 24 - Theme: January
All tracks and albums featured will be added to the PGS Music for Mindfulness playlists on Spotify and Apple Music: please click on the accompanying links for further information.
On being tasked with finding a piece for the podcast, I landed eventually on the timely, seasonal theme of January. It is, at least within my own family, one of the least liked months of the year. It is a month of cold and wet often without respite (And if you’re in the south, not much snow of which to speak), darkness before coming home from school or work, and the warm sensation of nostalgia from the christmas and holiday season is worn off quickly and with quite the thud. There is, however, in my opinion, a sense of calm that can be found in January, with the lack of the hustle and bustle from man and nature alike, and this tranquillity, I believe, can be used in the search for mindfulness.
I wanted to select a piece by a composer born in January that I thought encapsulated the calmness of the early mornings of this month. My Capricorn in question is Francis Poulenc, a Frenchman born in 1899, who became one of the members of Les Six, a group of traditionalist 20th century French composers who desired to return to the beauty of classical music (with many modern twists), without the absolute need for solely raw expressions of emotions that was urged by Romantic composers. By the time of his death in 1963, Poulenc had created a huge range of works, as impressive in its breadth as in its depth. He established himself as a key composer through his composition of essential repertoire, whether it be the Organ Concerto for the Organ or the Flute Sonata for the Flute, the very Sonata from which we find our selected piece of music.
Having first written about his desire to write a flute sonata in 1952, in 1957 it was performed for the first time in Cannes by Jean Paul Rampal. It was part of a set of woodwind sonatas by Poulenc, along with the Oboe and Clarinet Sonatas, as well as the Bassoon Sonata, that remained unfinished at the point of his death in 1963. Out of the 3-movement sonata, the slow second movement definitely rings out as the most suitable and January-esque.
The second movement of the Sonata is a cantilena, traditionally a word used to describe a piece of vocal music with soaring yet smooth melodies. It is hauntingly set in the key of Bb minor, a key which crafts an image of stillness, yet suspense. The opening texture is very simple, with the piano melody playing a simple crochet arpeggio, which is harmonised by the flute playing the exact melody, just two crotchets later, in a canonic style. This haunting atmosphere is sustained even as the piano moves to light chordal figures accompanying the floating flute melody. The timbre of the flute changes drastically throughout the movement, shifting from the gliding heights of the top register to a richer, darker tone only found in the lower octave- a tone favoured by 20th century composers such as Poulenc and Débussy, one of Poulenc’s compositional idols. The piece is in a ternary ABA form, with the B section snapping the listener out of their daze with violent high-pitched ornaments, however this quickly gives way to the return of this arabesque-style flute melody. If you listen closely, you will spot allusions to the accompanying faster movements of this sonata, which often are used as transition sections between this ternary ABA structure.
When I think of the Second Movement of Poulenc’s Flute Sonata, I can vividly picture this wintry stillness that can be associated with the month of the composer’s birth. It’s this hanging stillness and tranquillity that gives this movement a calming atmosphere, and allows you to leave behind the excitement of the surrounding movements from three-movement Sonata, but also of your everyday life. These qualities make it ideal for mindfulness, and allows you just to pause on the worries of everything and be held, trance-like, within these moving melodies and gentle accompaniment.
Title: Poulenc- Flute Sonata: Second Movement (Cantilena)
Composer: Francis Poulenc
Performers: Francis Poulenc,
Emmanuel Pahud (Flute), Eric Le Sage (Piano)
Record label: Warner Music Group Company
Release date: 1997
Genre: Neoclassical (but debatable!)
Song Link (Spotify): https://open.spotify.com/track/0Fds5cnPkW2TVnjDsyIUhQ?si=2on2l6V4QQSupEUseL24fg
PGS Music Mindfulness playlist on Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3kxqgRUYZFiezgEZEmgVM6?si=dJPaau9KQLe2gNsgGQINnw
PGS Music for Mindfulness playlist on iTunes: https://music.apple.com/gb/playlist/pgs-music-for-mindfulness/pl.u-eVPxLT17p85
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