A poem of remembrance for lost times, Guillaume Apollinaire's "La Grenouillère" is quite aptly set by Francis Poulenc in a haunting evocation of old-fashioned French musical Impressionism.

The mood of the song is dreamy, sad, nostalgic. In his Journal de mes melodies (Diary of My Songs) the great French art song composer Francis Poulenc (1899 - 1963) reveals that he had chosen the Apollinaire poem long before he wrote it.

The title is the name of a small island in the River Seine on the outskirts of Paris. It literally means "The Froggery." During the last years of the nineteenth century and before World War I it was a favorite spot for Sunday outings by boat, particularly by writers and painters. There was a restaurant there, where there was dancing as well as dining.

The poet regards this scene in later days, when it is no longer popular. He seems to be looking the scene over and comparing what it now looks like to the way Pierre-Auguste Renoir depicted it in his famous painting The Boatmen's Luncheon. Poulenc recognizes the existence of some irony in Apollinaire's reflections, but observes "...that with him irony is always veiled with tenderness and melancholy."

There is a lightly swaying rhythm in this tender song. Poulenc says that it comes from his own memories of dear childhood days in boats, in his case on the Marne. "It is the bumping together of the boats that motivates the rhythm from beginning to end of this tenderly affecting song," he says. The rhythm relates directly to the imagery of the opening of the poem: The empty boats bump against each other now, Sundays as well as work-days.

The song is a prime example of Poulenc's dictum about his songs that usually it is the heart, not the intellect, that rules his choices as to tone, mood, and texture. About this song in particular, one of Poulenc's best, he directs, "Do not sing it if you do not believe it, if you are going to introduce winks and a false knowing air." Here, he probably has in mind a line in the poem that he recognized as a trap for anyone wanting to compose a song to it: "les femmes à grosse poitrine et betes comme chou."

He says he worked hard to maintain a touching mood throughout the song and ensure against laughter at the quoted line, which means "the full-breasted women stupid as cabbages." Pierre Bernac, Poulenc's favorite singer, says that maintaining Poulenc's written triplets with "perfect equality" and avoiding any rise in loudness here is required to prevent the mood-breaking laughter Poulenc feared.

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