![]() Seeking to move on from the grand Wagnerian and Debussian responses on either side of the fin-de-siècle artistic crisis, Les Six aimed to inflect modern music away from “high art” and toward the quotidian styles of folk and popular song, jazz, music-hall, children’s songs and operetta airs. The piece itself represents a memorial of its own Poulenc christened it with the dedication “to the memory of Arthur Honegger,” one of Poulenc’s colleagues in the Montparnasse composer group Les Six, the artistic disciples of enfants terribles Erik Satie and Jean Cocteau. The King of Swing was slated to give the premiere of the Sonata at Carnegie Hall in April 1963 with the composer at the piano, but after a heart attack claimed Poulenc’s life in January that year, Leonard Bernstein joined Goodman for the memorializing performance instead. Written just months before his death, Poulenc’s Clarinet Sonata shares with Copland’s Clarinet Concerto, Bartók’s Contrasts and other landmark works a debt to Benny Goodman, who was responsible for many of the most important clarinet commissions of the 20th century. Like Mozart, Schubert, Brahms, Saint-Saëns, Debussy and Nielsen before him, Poulenc’s music for clarinet was some of his last. ![]()
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