Francis Poulenc - Quatre motets pour un temps de pénitence, FP. 97 (1938-39) | Текст песни

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Francis Poulenc - Quatre Motets pour un Temps de Pénitence pour chœur, FP. 97 (1938-39)

I. Timor et Tremor
II. Vinea Mea Electa
III. Tenebrae Factae Sunt
IV. Tristis Est Anima Mea

\"While attending...the premiere of Milhaud's wonderful Cantates de la paix and Deux cités...the exact image of my Motets suddenly came to me...as vivid and as tragic as a painting by Mantegna.\" Completed in 1939, the Quatre motets pour un temps de pénitence are among Poulenc's most popular works. His setting of texts from the Holy Week offices demonstrates a balance of restraint and expression and a careful economy of texture that set it apart from much of his choral music. Poulenc uses his characteristic harmonic, melodic, and textural stylistic tools, but with an added measure of deliberation and dramatic control.
The dramatic trajectory traced by the text of the first motet, \"Timor et tremor,\" is followed and enhanced by the music. The setting is at first quite staid, with a pensive homophonic texture dominating the landscape. The departure coincides with the end of a dramatic crescendo at the phrase \"darkness engulfs me.\" More harmonic color is introduced in the next phrase, along with the first break from strict homophony. The supplicant text that follows is declaimed in a gentler tone, first with serenely static harmonies, then with reduced men's voices. The increasing desperation of the text finds resonance in the increasingly complex harmony.
Poulenc exercises a bit of poetic license in the second motet, creating a drastically different expressive shape. The first and last words in the text describe the loving care of the Lord: \"...With a hedge I shielded you, the stones I have cleared from around you\"; the middle of the text grows tense and accusatory: \"How have you turned bitter, crucifying me while setting Barabbas free?\" Poulenc brings the middle section back, harmonically altering the repeating music with painful dissonances and chromatic stress.
By carefully conserving his textural resources up to this point, Poulenc is free to devote them with greater dramatic effect to the text of \"Tenebrae factae sunt.\" A wide variety of vocal ensemble colors are employed to depict this text more vividly. Divisi altos and basses declaim in octaves against long sustained incantations of the evocative opening words. A particularly poignant effect is achieved at the phrase \"Deus meus, Deus meus, ut quid me dereliquisti?\" (\"My God, my God, oh why hast thou forsaken me?\"), where the texture is reduced suddenly to altos and sopranos only. Later, a descending chromatic solo by the tenors reverently describes Jesus bowing his head before surrendering his spirit. This kind of focused, intense textual treatment continues throughout the rest of the motet.
If the third motet is the most emotionally vivid, the fourth, \"Tristis est anima mea,\" is the most pictorial. The heretofore-conserved resource is figuration, which is employed here with precision. A wide variety of rhythmic and melodic gestures depict Jesus being taken in the Garden, while his disciples flee. Moreover, by putting this motet at the end of the cycle, Poulenc seems to be making the story not just a narrative one, but an allegorical one involving the listener as well. - Description by Jeremy Grimshaw

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