Quiz #20: Pencils Down. That Includes You At The Back As Well.
Another perfect summer day here in this corner of the universe. The temperature is a perfectly civilized 19 degrees which is making Miss Mussel’s heart nearly burst for joy. That special Southern Ontario brand of oppressive humidity and a jump of 10 degrees is coming at the weekend. Ugh.
Quite a few people wrote in this week with the correct answer but the person whose name was drawn first out of the Official OM Seed Corn Hat was: Ian Goh. Well done to you, sir.
The mystery piece was Poulenc’s Sonata for Violin and Piano Op 119.
Reader Philip sends in the following: “[The sonata] was composed, after much badgering on the part of Ginette Neveu, over 1942 and 1943. It was published in 1944, but Poulenc revised it in 1949 in light of Neveu’s performances and suggestions made by her, and it was republished the same year. Poulenc himself still thought it was a pretty dismal effort. It was dedicated to Federico Garcia Lorca, which accounts for the very vaguely Spanish parts.”
So there you have it.
A bit of a trick in the first batch of clues. Miss Mussel said the piece was published in the same year FDR was elected. Your choices were 1932, 1936, 1940 and 1944. The last one is correct.
The composers posse mentioned in the second batch of clues was none other than Les Six.
According to Darius Milhaud, “[Collet] chose six names absolutely arbitrarily, those of Auric, Durey, Honegger, Poulenc, Tailleferre and me simply because we knew each other and we were pals and appeared on the same musical programmes, no matter if our temperaments and personalities weren’t at all the same! Auric and Poulenc followed ideas of Cocteau, Honegger followed German Romanticism, and myself, Mediterranean lyricism! (Ivry 1996)”
