Classical Music | Choral Music

Recorded on 04/27/2016, uploaded on 04/27/2016

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

The author and poet Jules Renard often mocked the characters in his own work, treating them in a particularly sarcastic, even cruel manner. This is particularly the case in his Histoiries naturelles, a collection of poems based on the 44-volume zoological treatise by the 18^th-century French naturalist Georges Louis Leclerc de Buffon. In this work, Renard elevates the animals by making them archetypes of human personalities, and in doing so rather animalize men. Published in 1895, it became quite popular, and eleven years later Maurice Ravel selected five of Renard’s poems to set to music under the same title. Ravel’s settings are witty and humorous, certainly taking their cue from the lighthearted nature of the poems themselves, and which was seemingly lost on the audience at its premiere performance in 1907. Nonetheless, the charm of Ravel’s picturesque settings has nonetheless made Histoires naturelles a favorite among the composer’s vocal music.

Concluding Histoires naturelles is the humorous and brusque “La pintade,” or “The Guinea-fowl.” Renard describes the bird’s torment of the other fowls, her cantankerous mood, and her incessant cries, feeling the other birds are mocking her because of “her size, bald head and low tail.” But, then, she disappears, giving the others a moment’s rest, while she lays an egg in the country. There is a touch of sympathy for the poor bird, however, in Renard’s text as he refers to her as his “beloved hunchback” and “a cunning prankster.” Humorous on its own, the text is made even more so by Ravel’s setting. Those familiar with the bird’s discordant call will recognize its imitation. The recitative-like quality of the vocal melody is certainly melodramatic, giving the text an even more humorous and sarcastic tone. Likewise, the angular rhythms and melodies of the piano accompaniment reflect the bird’s unfortunate awkwardness and aggression.      Joseph DuBose

La pintade (The Guinea Fowl)

It is the hunchback of my yard. 

She dreams only of calamities because of her hump.  

The hens say nothing to her. 

Abruptly, she rushes and attacks them.  

Then she lowers her head, leans forward, 

and with all the speed of her skinny legs, 

she strikes quickly with her hard beak,

right at the center of the back-side of a turkey.  

This showoff annoys her.  

Thus, with her bluish head,

plumage flaired, she rages from morning till night.

She fights for no reason, 

perhaps because she always imagines 

that she is being mocked for her size,

because of her bald head, and her low tail.

And she continually sounds a discordant cry

that pierces the air like a knife.

Sometimes she leaves the yard and disappears.

She gives the peaceful birds

a moment of respite.

But she comes back, more turbulent and more shrill.

And, frenetically, she sprawls out on the ground.

What is she doing? The sly bird played a trick.

She went to lay an egg in the countryside.  

I can find it if I so choose.

Translated by Stephen Lancaster

And she rolls around in the dust

like a hunchback.

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.