Ballet by Francis Poulenc
Les biches () ("The Hinds" or "The Does", or "The Darlings") is a one-act ballet to music by Francis Poulenc, choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska and premiered by the Ballets Russes on 6 January 1924 at the Salle Garnier in Monte Carlo. Nijinska danced the central role of the Hostess. The ballet has no story, and depicts the random interactions of a group of mainly young people in a house party on a summer afternoon.
The ballet was seen in Paris and London within a year of its premiere, and has been frequently revived there; it was not produced in New York until 1950. Nijinska directed revivals of the ballet for several companies in the four decades after its creation. "Les biches", with recreations of Marie Laurencin's original costumes and scenery, remains in the repertoire of the Paris Opera Ballet, the Royal Ballet and other companies. The music has been used for later ballets, although they have not followed Nijinska's in gaining a place in the regular repertoire.
The music for the original ballet contains three choral numbers. Poulenc made the choral parts optional when he revised the score in 1939–1940, and the work is usually given with wholly orchestral accompaniment. The composer extracted a five-movement suite from the score, for concert performance. The suite has been recorded for LP and CD from the 1950s onwards.
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Background.
Sergei Diaghilev, proprietor of the Ballets Russes, contacted Poulenc in November 1921 with a proposed commission. The original plan was that Poulenc should write music for a ballet scenario with the title "Les demoiselles", written by the fashion designer Germaine Bongard. The following July it became clear that Bongard did not wish to go ahead; Poulenc wrote to his friend and fellow member of "Les six", Darius Milhaud, that instead "I will probably write a suite of dances without a libretto." At about the same time he told Igor Stravinsky that after consulting Diaghilev and the designer, Marie Laurencin, "I have a clear conception of my ballet which will have no subject – simply dances and songs."
The titles of the numbers in the score indicate that Poulenc followed this plan, but he nonetheless retained two important features of Bongarďs proposed work: a choral element, with unseen singers giving a commentary on the action, and the "demoiselles". In an analysis published in "The Musical Quarterly" in 2012, Christopher Moore describes the former as reminiscent of Stravinsky's "Pulcinella", and the latter as "a corps de ballet of flirtatious young women". For the words, Poulenc spent a considerable amount of time in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, seeking out texts for the choral interjections. He found what his biographer Carl B. Schmidt describes as "some slightly obscene eighteenth-century texts", which he used in three of the numbers in the score.
Poulenc struggled to find the right name for the ballet, and eventually had the idea of calling it "Les biches", echoing the title of the classic ballet "Les Sylphides". His chosen title is, as he admitted, untranslatable into any other language. The word "biche" is usually translated as "doe," an adult female deer; it was also used as a slang term for a coquettish woman. Moore expands on the definition: "As has been often noted, the word "biches" is itself pregnant with double entendre, referring most obviously to does, but also, in the underworld of Parisian slang, to a woman (or ironically, a man) of deviant sexual proclivities."
By the middle of 1923 Poulenc had completed the first version of the score, after some help with details of orchestration from his teacher, Charles Koechlin. In late October, at Diaghilev's request, he travelled to Monte Carlo to help supervise the production. The composer was delighted with the work of the choreographer, Nijinska, which he described as "ravishing"; he wrote to Milhaud that she had truly understood his score. Between November 1923 and the premiere in January 1924, Poulenc, together with Nijinska, oversaw, by his estimate, "at least 72 rehearsals or close to 250 hours of work". "Les biches" was an immediate success, first in Monte Carlo in January 1924 and then in Paris in May, under the direction of André Messager and has remained one of Poulenc's best-known scores. Poulenc's new celebrity after the success of the ballet was the unexpected cause of his estrangement from Erik Satie, of whom he had been a protégé: among the new friends Poulenc made was Louis Laloy, a writer whom Satie regarded with implacable enmity. Poulenc's friend, Georges Auric, who had just enjoyed a similar triumph with a Diaghilev ballet, "Les Fâcheux", was also repudiated by Satie for becoming a friend of Laloy.
Music.
Poulenc revised the orchestration comprehensively in 1939–1940 (published 1947). He extracted a five-movement suite from the full ballet score (1948), omitting the overture and the three choral movements. The suite is dedicated to Misia Sert. The published score specifies the following instruments: woodwind: 1 piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 1 cor anglais, 2 clarinets, 1 bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 1 contrabassoon; brass: 4 French horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, 1 tuba; percussion: percussion bass drum, field drum, glockenspiel, snare drum, suspended cymbal, tambourine, tenor drum, triangle; celeste, glockenspiel; and strings.
The score of "Les biches" is sometimes described as neoclassical. The form of the piece – an overture followed by a number of unlinked movements – follows 18th-century musical practice, and Poulenc set out to follow classical precedent in his tonal and harmonic writing. He wrote to Milhaud:
 ;templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" / ;"Les Biches" will be very clear, sturdy and classical. The opening ensemble fluctuates between F major, dominant, sub-dominant, relative minor, etc ... just like the finales of classical symphonies; "Jeu" is in E, B, A, etc... and the final "Rondeau" is in D, A, G, etc. For the songs, I have some beautiful but slightly obscene texts (from the 18th century).
The analyst Gérald Hugon writes that other influences on the young composer's score are French eighteenth-century song (in the Rondeau), ragtime (in the Rag-Mazurka) and composers ranging from the classical era (Mozart and Schubert) to contemporaries such as Stravinsky and Prokofiev, via Tchaikovsky: Hugon quotes Claude Rostand's comment that according to Poulenc the Adagietto was inspired by a variation from "The Sleeping Beauty". Poulenc's biographer Henri Hell finds the score "irresistibly evoking the art of Domenico Scarlatti".
The complete ballet score comprises an overture followed by eight movements. The second (Chanson dansée), fourth (Jeu) and seventh (Petite chanson dansée) contain parts for unseen chorus. The published score stipulates a minimum of twelve singers (four sopranos, four tenors, four baritones), although it also seems to indicate that at the premiere there was only one voice to each part. When Poulenc revised the score he made the vocal parts optional.
Ouverture.
The overture begins quietly, in 4/8 time in C major with a slow duet, marked tranquillo, for flute and bass clarinet. After about one minute the rest of the orchestra enters, the key changes to E major and the tempo to allegro vivace. After several changes of time signature the overture ends with a reprise, at a faster tempo, of the opening theme. The playing time is about 3m 30s.
Rondeau.
After a three bar introduction marked "very slow", the Rondeau switches to an energetic allegro molto in F major. The movement is dominated by a theme for trumpet which recurs throughout. The central section, marked "très calme", is quieter and slower. The boisterous first theme returns to round off the movement.
Chanson dansée.
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Men's voices only.
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This movement is the first of the three choral sections in the original version of the ballet; it is for male voices with orchestral accompaniment. It begins quietly, with a theme marked "quieto", which in its five bars switches between 4/8 and 6/8 time. This is followed by a strongly rhythmic song for male voices, beginning in 2/4 time in D major, with a later interlude where the key switches to D-flat. The original theme returns to conclude the movement.
Adagietto.
The plaintive melancholy of the Adagietto finds Poulenc at his most affecting, in the view of the analyst Paul Horsley. It is dominated by a gentle oboe theme in its outer sections, and unlike much of the score it does not have frequent changes of key or time signatures. Milhaud wrote of this movement, "I know of no other music that touches me so intimately, so completely." In the 1950s Poulenc commented, "The 'Adagietto' must be played without romantic pathos. In this ballet nobody falls in love for life, they have sex! Let's just leave it there." The initial mood of wistful charm – "doucement mélancolique" according to the score – is briefly interrupted by a louder and more emphatic section for a few bars, before the music becomes calm again, leading to a quiet close.
Jeu.
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Key: 
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This is the first of the two choral movements for female and male voices. The words are those of a father hoping to marry off his four daughters, and the questions the daughters ask him about picking a husband. The movement is marked "presto", and switches throughout between 5/4, 4/4 3/4 and 2/4 time.
Rag-Mazurka.
The movement begins "presto" in 3/8 time, switches to 6/8 and then 9/8, with a later rapid succession of time signatures, including changes from 2/4 to 4/4 to 5/4 and 6/4 within seven bars. Towards the end of the movement the "perpetuum mobile" halts and is replaced with a conclusion marked "très calme". Horsley comments that although the movement reflects the fashion for jazz in 1920s Paris, "most listeners will hear more of Paris here than Scott Joplin". As for the mazurka of the outer sections, it is "a long way from Chopin’s piano works of this genre". At more than six minutes' duration this is the longest section of the ballet.
Andantino.
The conductor Norman Del Mar comments that despite the marking, this movement is closer to allegretto if taken at the composer's quite brisk metronome mark. The music, which refers back to the rondeau in its material, veers between what Del Mar calls "gentle ingenuousness" and "rumbustious moments". Towards the end of the movement the music becomes very loud, the brass predominating, but the closing bars, led by the woodwind are marked "très calme" before a final emphatic chord for the brass and lower strings.
Petite chanson dansée.
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In the second of the two choral sections for female and male voices the men woo the women offering laurels as a present; the women insist on bouquets of wallflowers before they will accept the men. The movement is marked "moderato non troppo". As in other movements, there are several changes of time signature, but 4/4 predominates.
Final.
The finale is marked presto, at minim=108, a tempo so fast that Del Mar judges it barely playable. It is, he says, "virtuoso writing and needs spectacular playing". A short section in the middle of the finale is more relaxed, but the tempo increases again and the initial theme returns at the same high speed as before to conclude the piece.
Ballet.
Like the music, the choreography of "Les biches" is neoclassical. In an article about "Les biches" written in 1930, Frederick Ashton wrote, "the whole ballet is new, and yet it is, at the same time, composed entirely of classical movement with a new expression." In "The International Encyclopedia of Dance" Gunhild Oberzaucher-Schüller writes that the "Les biches" was influenced by the legacy of the 19th-century choreographer Marius Petipa, given a modern twist by Nijinska:
 ;templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" / ;Taking the classical repertory of steps as her starting point but using an inventive port de bras, flexed arms, a new kind of pas de bourrée, variations of épaulements and pointe, and asynchronous movements of the torso and legs, she developed new possibilities for classical technique. The work was a triumph for Nijinska, who viewed it as a twentieth-century equivalent of "Les Sylphides".
While Nijinska was creating the choreography, she worked out her Hostess role on Ninette de Valois, who was in the corps. Lydia Sokolova later recalled that "when we did "Les biches", and she created the hostess for herself, she improvised mostly. That was the trouble with Bronia. If she suddenly felt she wanted to