Preparation

Rehearse at home!

If you wish to note-bash at home, this small program can be very helpful. It is called ‘Noteworthy’ and can be downloaded to your computer (Windows only, I’m afraid). Once installed on your computer, you can load in the music files for various popular choral works and listen selectively to your part as the orchestra plays the accompaniment. You can speed up or slow down the playing speed to help you learn the tricky bits.

Download link here.

Online Scores

Unfortunately, there are no ‘Noteworthy’ rehearsal files for the Boulanger Psalm or the Poulenc Sept Repons

If you have an account with John Fletcher Music you can find rehearsal files for the Poulenc but not the Boulanger

Several performances of both pieces are available on YouTube:

Poulenc:
https://youtu.be/uWf3nRD1UhY?si=Sf1IBc9IYP8s6HoR

Boulanger:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYj3nP6l6DA

About the composers

Both these composers are pioneers in their own way. Lili Boulanger was the first woman to win the Prix de Rome from the Paris Conservatoire and Francis Poulenc was an openly gay composer of church music. A tragic symmetry links these two works inasmuch as they were both composed within a year or so of their composers deaths – Poulenc at the age of 63 but Lili Boulanger at only twenty-two years old.

Read more about them here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Poulenc#

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lili_Boulanger#