Poulenc’s Stabat Mater – sacred, fervent and always on the verge of breaking into giggles

It’s funny what you see at orchestral concerts. See, that is, not just hear. If you weren’t in the hall during Poulenc’s Stabat Mater would you even realise that the tuba uses a mute in the final chord? Visually, it’s hard to miss – the thing’s huge, whether standing on the floor or being heaved into the instrument’s bell. The sound? A muffled, matte effect, quite unlike the usual nasal buzz of muted brass. But how droll of Poulenc, and how utterly in keeping with the raffish, trash-fabulous aesthetic of Gallic brass writing: a world where no symphony is complete without a pair of honking cornets à pistons.

And how perfect, too, for this Stabat Mater, a fervent choral work that sounds nonetheless as if it’s about to break into giggles. What me, Francis Poulenc, it seems to say – writing an impassioned meditation on the death of Christ? With my reputation? Poulenc was a witty, sensual party animal before his reconversion to Catholicism (it came in a split second in 1936, at the shrine of the Black Virgin of Rocamadour), and he saw no reason to change his style afterwards. He said that his soul craved ‘an austerity that smells of orange blossom or jasmine’.

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So there it is in the music of the Stabat Mater: a sweet, blowsy sort of perfume that keeps wafting across the tearful laments and the stylised processionals. The woodwinds sigh with longing, the brass flash a bit of thigh (blink and you miss it; they’re good boys really). Above it all, the chorus projects a fierce halo of sound.