“The Dawn is Behind Your Picture”: Musical Cubism and Surrealism in Francis Poulenc’s Le Travail du Peintre
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This dissertation demonstrates through intertextual analysis that the songs of Francis Poulenc’s 1956-57 song cycle Le Travail du Peintrecan be considered “surrealist” and “cubist” because of aesthetic, stylistic, thematic, and theoretical similarities found among the poetry, painting, and music of the song cycle. The seven poems of the song cycle are from surrealist poet Paul Eluard’s 1948 collection Voir, which includes poems about and paintings and drawings by cubist and surrealist painters Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Paul Klee, Joan Miró, and Jacques Villon.
Poulenc’s music forms an intertextual network with Eluard’s poetry and, through it, with the painters’ works. The song cycle serves as an intertext in which the cubist and surrealist artworks, poems, history and philosophies meet and is, therefore, an example of musical Cubism and Surrealism. The intertextuality of the song cycle creates a further interdisciplinary connection through its parallel with the dialogic nature of art, music, and literary history and, ultimately, with the kinetic nature of subjectivity itself.
Document number: ohiou1171910432
Permalink: http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1171910432
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