Amanda Holloway finds the best recordings of Poulenc’s Figure humaine, a spectacular choral hymn to freedom, written while France was under Nazi occupation
The first mention of a ‘cantata for unaccompanied double choir… on admirable poems by Éluard (currently censored)’ comes in a letter from Poulenc to his friend and patron Marie-Blanche de Polignac in July 1943.
Safely settled in Beaulieu-sur Dordogne with his companion Raymond Destouches, Poulenc was thinking about two projects: a violin concerto for Ginette Neveu and a string quartet. Lacking inspiration for either, he turned instead to Paul Éluard’s newest anti-war poems, Poésie et vérité 42, and in just six weeks wrote the 20-minute masterpiece Figure humaine without hesitation or revisions.
What inspired Poulenc to compose his Figure humaine?
According to Poulenc biographer Roger Nichols, he gave several accounts of how and why he chose to set Éluard’s poems. The most dramatic retelling is that during his stay in Beaulieu he was sent the poems under plain cover – such revolutionary texts could hardly be published under the Occupation – and was immediately inspired to set them to music so they could be premiered in Paris on the day of liberation.
However, Poulenc recalled that a Belgian music society had asked him to set a single poem, ‘Liberté’, and after agonising over the task, he conceived the idea of writing a cantata for which ‘Liberté’ would provide the finale. Later, he said the plan to write, clandestinely publish and unveil Figure humaine on the longed-for day of liberation had come to him during a pilgrimage to Rocamadour, a shrine not far from Beaulieu.
In any case, Poulenc saw Figure humaine as his contribution to the war effort, creating from Éluard’s impassioned poems to liberty a tribute to those who fought for France.
The liberation of Paris came earlier than he had anticipated, in 1944, before arrangements could be made for a performance there. The BBC had expressed interest in the unpublished score so Poulenc, who admired British choirs, agreed that the first performance could be given in London by the BBC Chorus, in an English translation, on 25 March 1945. A Belgian performance followed in December 1946 and the Parisian premiere had to wait until 22 May 1947.
A guide to the music of Figure humaine
Figure humaine is one of the most extraordinary and beautiful choral works of the 20th century. Poulenc used all his harmonic deftness to create a cantata whose text describes the misery of oppression and the terror of death while looking towards the hope of liberation.
It is divided into eight movements, scored for two six-part choirs with frequent divisi, and the music is often complex with vocal parts of breathtaking variety. ‘A very pure style with no bits of clever writing, variety coming just from the musical expression. It’s very difficult,’ wrote Poulenc to Marie-Blanche in 1943.
Poulenc imagined a choir of around 200 but for the world premiere, conducted by Leslie Woodgate, he accepted a reduction to 84, with seven singers to each part. The broadcast was scheduled for a Sunday, when some BBC Chorus members had church commitments, so members of the Variety Chorus – ‘hardly used to this kind of music’, as BBC producer Edward Lockspeiser remarked – were brought in.
The concert was attended by musical celebrities including Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears, violinist Ginette Neveu, soprano Maggie Teyte and conductor Adrian Boult. British audiences heard the broadcast but due to unexplained technical problems, it was not heard in France. Lockspeiser wrote later: ‘“Liberty”, the first poem in the book and the last in the cantata, assumed a significance comparable to the Marseillaise during the French Revolution.’ The RAF had contributed to the legend when in 1942 it had dropped copies of the poem over occupied France to boost civilian morale.
Figure humaine sets eight poems of varying lengths which pack a punch, plunging from peaceful snow scenes to nightmarish pursuits by big-jawed monsters. Even charming domestic details are woven through with horror, as in the second poem’s young housemaids who sing as they scrub blood off the stones.
Poulenc mirrors the mood and shape of Éluard’s text with skill and imagination, culminating in ‘Liberté’, with its long, slow build towards the ffff finale. Éluard lists everything in the world that he holds dear – his exercise books, his breakfast bread, his friends, his beloved dog with its clumsy paws – and imagines inscribing on each a single word. That word – ‘liberty’ – is withheld until the poem’s end. Poulenc creates extraordinary weight in the last 11 bars to mirror this revelation musically. Pitch and volume climb inexorably until all the voices converge on a brilliant E major chord covering four octaves, including a ringing top E from both choirs on the last syllable of ‘Liberté’.
Often critical of his own work, Poulenc never expressed misgivings about Figure humaine. After the performance by the Belgian Radio Choir in 1946, he wrote to the conductor, Paul Collaer, ‘Suddenly for 20 minutes I could believe I was a great composer! A very nice feeling!’
Best recordings of Poulenc’s Figure humaine
Mathieu Romano (conductor)
Ensemble Aedes
Aparté AP 201
Figure humaine makes enormous demands on the stamina, technique and musicianship of any choir, which may explain why it’s performed less often than Poulenc’s Gloria or Stabat mater. Of the dozen-plus recordings currently available, the majority feature nearer 40 rather than the 200 singers Poulenc envisaged.
Two French choirs and two British choirs stand out for their impressive technique and emotional impact, and of the four, Ensemble Aedes, directed by Mathieu Romano, go straight to the heart with their gutsy performance. The young French soloists do for choral works what the Il Giardino Armonico ensemble did for instrumental classics – namely, deliver them with fresh, uninhibited tone. They may be raw and approximate at times, but Poulenc wanted citizens on the barricades, not choristers.
The opening bars are crucial – the basses’ entrance must strike fear, or at the very least apprehension, into the heart. Their grumbling ‘De tous les printemps du monde’ recalls the dull thud of shells landing on the earth, and the venom of ‘le plus laid’, Poulenc’s ugliest dissonance sung with increasing emphasis by the choir, sends shivers down the spine.
By contrast the second song, ‘En chantant les servantes s’élancent’, with its mocking la-la-la-la underlay, is jaunty, crisp and clear. When the two choirs come together they make Poulenc’s polyphony blaze, never more so than in the seventh poem, ‘La menace sous le ciel rouge’, when the pianissimo passage builds into a fortissimo for both choirs on ‘des hommes indestructibles’ – ‘men will forever be immortal’. Romano doesn’t deliver the extreme tempo markings Poulenc suggests for the eighth movement, ‘Liberté’, but the changes of texture are heard quite clearly as phrases are passed between the two choirs or narrowed down to individual parts.
The French sopranos have a warm, mezzo-like roundness even when they’re floating their top notes, unlike the whiter-toned sopranos of Tenebrae. The fiendishly high E that ends the piece on the longed-for word ‘liberté’ is a test for every choir, and here two brave sopranos top the chord with a golden sheen rather than a piercing blow.
These bright voices respond instinctively to the colours in the text and the emotional impact of their final ffff phrase is overwhelming. The recording, made in RIFFX Studios near Paris in May 2018, emphasises the ebb and flow of the two choirs and the text is crystal clear.
Nigel Short (conductor)
Signum SIGCD197
Tenebrae give an accomplished performance, recorded in 2009, with a delicious pairing of Poulenc’s Mass in G, but it doesn’t deliver the visceral punch of Ensemble Aedes. The basses’ opening phrase is hearty rather than chilling, and the sopranos are cool and controlled: their intonation is astonishing and the text is clearly audible. Short adopts Poulenc’s extreme tempos with varying success: the third and seventh movements are electrifying but the eighth rather hurtles towards the climax. The acoustic in St Bartholomew the Great separates and clarifies the voices in an interesting fashion.
Laurence Equilbey (conductor)
Naïve V 4883
A leisurely rather than menacing opening from the basses and a lack of weight in the alto line in the first song suggest that the Accentus Chamber Choir, recorded in 2001, consists of a few soloists rather than a full ensemble. On the positive side, the text is articulated beautifully and the tuning is spot on. Words like ‘ridicule’ and ‘menace’ are spat out with satisfying vigour and their pronunciation gives this French choir the edge over non-Francophones. The rather distant recording emphasises the pure, floated soprano line over the lower voices.
John Eliot Gardiner (conductor)
Philips 446 1162
Recorded in the Guildhall in 1994, the Monteverdi Choir’s uninhibited, theatrical performance is refreshing if less polished and accurate than some recent, more technically accomplished recordings. The tuning may at times be wayward and individual voices stand out, but there’s an honesty to this account.
The Poulenc is sandwiched between Bach and Tavener, along with the choir’s more familiar repertoire of Monteverdi, Gabrieli, Schütz and Purcell.
And one to avoid…
Conductor Peter Dijkstra acknowledges that it’s a risk to record one of Poulenc’s most difficult choral works, particularly since there are many good versions already – but he can’t resist having a say of his own. In this 2010 recording, he sweeps the Swedish Radio Choir along in his enthusiasm and they rise to many of the challenges but this is not a must-have version. Dijkstra’s speeds sometimes drag and the clarity of the text is compromised by a distant-sounding, woolly sound.