ABSTRACT
Francis Poulenc’s 1937 Tel jour telle nuit, a cycle of nine songs setting poetry of Paul Éluard, is arguably his finest work for voice and piano. To date its analysis has proven difficult, owing to the obscurity of Éluard’s Surrealist poetry and Poulenc’s elusive, albeit tonal, musical language. This chapter identifies a large-scale scheme of binary oppositions in the poems—day/eyes/vision vs. night/heart/insight as reflected in the title—and discusses its musical unfolding through the cycle. Central to Tel jour is a narrative tension between the first-person poetic persona and the silent but implicit “voice of resistance” of his desired lover (modeled after Éluard’s wife Nusch). Close analysis of selected songs suggests that Poulenc gives voice to her resistance through marked changes in harmony, melody, expressive quality, tempo, and articulation. Score-based observation will be complemented by analysis of a selected recorded performance (including tempo, articulation, dynamics, and tone) to illuminate multiple personae and their interaction in creating a cyclic narrative.
