Les Biches - INSCRIBED TO HIS PUBLISHER

Paris: Au Ménestrel [...] Heugel. 1924. Piano and vocal score to the important French composer's ballet Les Biches, signed and inscribed by the composer on the half-title to the publisher, Jacques Heugel, and dated 1924. Poulenc has penned (translated from the French): "To monsieur Jacques Heugel with all my thanks for the lovely presentation of this score and my best wishes—Francis Poulenc, 1924." [PN] H. 28,730. 96 pp. Softcover. Stamped on the cover by Heugel Archives. Large tape repair to the spine, with tape exposed in the gutter; some edge wear and toning; overall very good. 9.75 x 12.25 inches (25 x 31.5 cm).

In 1924, the 25-year-old Poulenc was commissioned by Diaghilev to compose a piece based on Glazunov's "Les Sylphides." Instead, the young composer produced a work based on the paintings of Watteau depicting Louis XIV and various women in his "Parc aux Biches." (The word biche is usually translated as "doe," an adult female deer, but "does" was used as a slang for coquettish women.) Poulenc described his work as "a contemporary drawing room party suffused with an atmosphere of wantonness, which you sense if you are corrupted, but of which an innocent-minded girl would not be conscious." Diaghilev recognized the great potential of the ballet and produced it for the 1924 Ballet Russes season, bringing Poulenc into the forefront of French music. In "The Rest is Noise" (2007), Alex Ross notes that "Poulenc would write more substantial scores - he had the richest, most surprising career of any of Les Six - but Les Biches retains its nasty champagne kick after all these years." 

Jacques Heugel (1890–1979), the third generation to run the venerable Éditions Heugel, was responsible for bringing some of the most important French composers of the early twentieth century under the publisher's wing. The composers he brought to the publisher included Georges Auric, Reynaldo Hahn, Francis Poulenc, Franz Schmitt, Jacques Ibert, Darius Milhaud and André Jolivet. (15464)

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Printed Music

Classical Music

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