I’m writing about Poulenc’s Organ Concerto, which was commissioned by the Princesse de Polignac. The piece was premiered privately at her salon in late 1938, and then publicly at the Salle Gaveau in mid-1939. I was initially very worried about finding sources for this paper. After spending a little too long figuring out how to use the microfilm, I turned up nothing in the Guide du Concert. As I suspected, there was no review and no listing of the premiere at the Princesse’s salon. Then I checked to see if there was any advertisement or review about the public premiere in 1939. The whole Guide du Concert stopped the week before the public premiere, and it didn’t continue until a few years later. I’m guessing that World War 2 caused the gap in newspapers. (On a side note: my microfilm excursion was doubly disappointing. I was trying to do further research on my second paper, and I wanted to find concerts done at the Schola Cantorum around 1923 through 1925. I found nothing in those time periods. In his own research, Luke did find a couple of mentions of Schola concerts in 1920 and 1921 and kindly shared them with me.)
Luckily, I found a concert listing for the public premiere in L’Art Musical.1 Additionally, I found a review of the concert in La Republique2 and another on Gallica.3 I’ll need to translate all of them, but they look very promising. I know there are plenty of books about/mentioning Poulenc on reserve in the library. I’ll be looking at them soon.
Something that is both disappointing and illuminating is the lack of scholarly articles on Poulenc’s organ concerto. At least with what’s available on Catalyst, no one has written a journal article about the piece. This fact reveals that people might not view Poulenc’s organ concerto as a very important or pivotal piece. Maybe no one has really paid much attention to it. That’s pretty disappointing to me as an organist. I’m supposed to think that every organ concerto is great! It looks like my job is to make a case for its importance, or at least find an explanation for why it has been neglected.