The clarinetist Benny Goodman, who commissioned the piece, was intended to premiere it with the composer accompanying. The clarinet melody in the second movement Romanza begins simply, but is elaborately embroidered in a few places. At one point the clarinet leaps up and down between octave B tones over a shifting harmonic background. The clarinet's lines are built of a self-perpetuating series of arcs. After a brief fortissimo introduction consisting of angry spurts of figuration in the clarinet punctuated by piano chords, the piano quiets to a murmur. It bears the somewhat paradoxical subtitle "Allegro tristamente": accordingly, the piece is always in motion, but proceeds with a sense of grieving. The structure differs somewhat from the fast-slow-fast pattern of a traditional sonata in that the first movement is itself split into three sections in the pattern fast-slow-fast. Allegro tristamente (Allegretto – Très calme – Tempo allegretto) 2. A typical performance takes 12–14 minutes. It is dedicated to the memory of Arthur Honegger, who like Poulenc had belonged to the group Les Six. The Sonate pour clarinette et piano ( Clarinet Sonata), FP 184, for clarinet in B-flat and piano by Francis Poulenc dates from 1962 and is one of the last pieces he completed.
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