These two witty songs to texts by Max Jacob and one other by Apollinaire are the only interruptions to the longest dry period in the great song-writing career of Francis Poulenc (1899 - 1963). They appeared in spring of 1954, between the song cycles Le Fra îcheur et le Feu (1950) and Le Travail du pientre (1956).

During those years Poulenc was writing religious works and the full-length opera Les Dialogues des Carmélites. Then, as he says in his Journal de mes mélodies, "[a]ll of a sudden, in April and May 1954, I composed, I was going to say almost without knowing it, three songs." But this does not mean that he had not considered these texts before. He says that he had wanted to set Jouer du Bugle, the first of the two songs, to include in his cantata La bal masqué (1932) (which was also a setting of Max Jacob's poetry) but decided not to because it would be too similar to a song already included in it.

Perhaps the explanation for the sudden appearance of these songs on absurd texts lies in the lack of progress on Carmélites. For much of 1954 Poulenc was bogged down in the middle of Act II. Always a hypochondriac, Poulenc had convinced himself that he had cancer (in fact he didn't) and there was an argument over stage rights to the screenplay that was the basic for Carmélites, threatening to end the possibility of ever producing the opera.

Poulenc reverted to the familiar, breezy style of the 1920s and 1930s, particularly the boulevard style he associated with Paris. Parisiana is a bright aperitif of a set, its two songs total just two minutes and 15 seconds.

The first song, "Jouer le Bugle," is in four verses. The first three present static images about three ladies who play bugle in their bathroom late at night, about a silent blond bastard boy, about a mistreated bald child. The imagery is ironic and is sufficiently evident if the words are projected clearly. Therefore Pierre Bernac, Poulenc's greatest interpreter, cautions in his book about interpreting Poulenc's songs that Poulenc insisted the song be sung without irony, rather, "very poetically."

Bernac admits that Max Jacob was not a musical poet, and posed problems in word setting. The first three verses are objective, detached from what they describe. The final verse, with the subtitle "Signature," is, on the other hand, suddenly poetic and has an unexpected melodic richness.

The other song, "Vous n'écrivez plus?" (You Do Not Write Any Longer?) contradicts its wistful title. It is in fact a galloping fast patter song (marked at the impossible tempo of quarter note = 176; Bernac says 152 suffices), and also has an absurdist text. Bernac says that because of the Parisian atmosphere of the songs they can be sung with a Paris accent, but lightly and tastefully applied.

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