In 1953, interviewed by the musicologist and critic Claude Rostand on French state radio, Francis Poulenc spoke about his religiosity.
“My father, like most people from Aveyron, was deeply religious. He was, without being narrow-minded, very religious. In 1935, after the freshness of youth, I was searching within myself for a deeper mode of expression, and naturally, I turned to religious music after making a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Rocamadour. Litanies à la Vierge Noire were my first sacred composition.”
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Strictly speaking, it was in August 1936 that Poulenc drove the ninety kilometers from Uzerche — where he was dedicating that summer to composition — to Rocamadour, a town further south in the Occitanie region. There is a sanctuary that since the 12th century has been devoted to Our Lady of Rocamadour, the Black Virgin. In the chapel dedicated to her, a small female wooden figure of black color is displayed, an example of religious symbols ancestrally linked to fertility and the woman’s connection to the element Earth. Since the death of his father in 1917, Poulenc had kept away from any form of devotion. The unexpected death of Pierre-Octave Ferroud, his friend and fellow composer, coincided with this rapprochement.
The journey resulted in the composition of Litanies à la Vierge Noire, a work that calls upon the ethereal register of female voices in a three-part choir, accompanied by the solemnity of the organ. Thus, it lent a musical dimension to Catholic litanies — short, repetitive prayers in the form of invocations — and in 1947, the composer himself prepared a version replacing the organ with a string orchestra and timpani. At the same time, the piece expressed the political polarization between conservative rural traditions and the progressive social reforms promoted by the Popular Front coalition that took power in France that year. In the following years, he composed the Mass in G Major and the Four Motets for a Time of Penitence.
The resulting sound is reminiscent of French Renaissance polyphony. It is predominantly homophonic, fully integrating music and words. The harmonies are occasionally dissonant, but generally akin to the fauxbourdon — the “false drone” in which the main melody is replicated below by two other voices. Supplications are sung such as “Lord, have mercy on us,” “Holy Virgin, Queen and Patroness, pray for us,” or “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, forgive us.”
Rui Campos Leitão
Image: Statue of the Black Virgin displayed in the Chapel of Our Lady of Rocamadour / Photo by Thérèse Gaigé / Source: Wikimedia Commons