Patricia Petibon / Chœur de l’Orchestre de Paris / Paavo Järvi POULENC Stabat Mater - Gloria - Litanies à la Vierge noire

“I have the faith of a country priest,” Francis Poulenc confessed a few days before his sudden death in January 1963. The “bad boy” of French music was also – from the time of the Litanies à la Vierge noire to the late Sept Répons des ténèbres – a masterly exponent of 20th-century sacred music. Poulenc drifted away from religion for a period of some 15 years, only to return to the fold in the wake of the death of the composer Pierre-Octave Ferroud, who was killed in a car crash on 17 August 1936. “The appalling way in which this musician, who was so full of vitality, was wrenched away from us left me utterly stupefied,” Poulenc later explained. “Thinking of how little our human husk weighs, I felt once again drawn to the spiritual life.” Five days after the tragic event, Poulenc visited the sanctuary at Rocamadour, “a place of extraordinary peace” that sheltered the statue of a black Madonna. Deeply impressed, he began work on his Litanies à la Vierge noire that same evening, completing the score within a week. In the opening, marked “calm”, the female chorus alternates with the instrumental part – an organ in the original version of the work. The lines are simple, almost archaic, the conjunct motifs repeated obsessively and studded with harsh dissonances. The score bears the words “humble and fervent”, admirably summing up the composer’s conception of religion throughout his entire life. “It is very special, humble and, I think, gripping,” Poulenc wrote to Nadia Boulanger, who conducted the first performance of the piece for the BBC in London on 17 November 1936. With this “miracle work”, as pure as it is poignant, Poulenc in a moment of great psychological distress expressed his dismay in the face of death and begged the Virgin to grant him the strength to believe in God once again – after all, Mary herself never gave up hope even when her son died on the Cross. In September 1947 Poulenc arranged the organ part for strings and timpani, producing the lesser-known version heard here. It was the death of another artist that inspired Poulenc to write his powerful Stabat Mater for soprano solo, mixed choir and orchestra. In this case the death was that of Christian Bérard, who died in February 1949 at the age of 46. A painter and stage designer, Bérard had worked for Marcel Achard, George Balanchine, Jean Cocteau, Jean Giraudoux, Louis Jouvet and others. Soon after his death, Poulenc wrote: “When Bébé died I was in London, thus missing those horrible days with the funeral arrangements. I can think of him as if he was off on a trip round the world. [...] Dear Bébé, I think of you as a sweet, invisible presence and not, thank God, as a ghost.” In writing a Stabat Mater, Poulenc hoped to commit his friend’s soul to Notre-Dame de Rocamadour. Once again, he felt that in invoking the sufferings of the Virgin at the time of her son’s crucifixion, he might be able to offer the best possible homage – even more so than with a requiem, which would have been too “bombastic” and would have “had the air of a funeral service”. (Excerpts from the booklet text accompanying the album)