Texture as Form in Lili Boulanger’s Clairières dans le ciel

Abstract “Au pied de mon lit,” the fifth song from Lili Boulanger’s cycle Clairières dans le ciel, is fewer than forty measures long, yet in that span it uses six distinct piano textures. Some of those textures underline shifts from one formal section to another; others happen in the middle of a section, or even the middle of a phrase. The changing accompanimental patterns, in other words, create their own form—a textural form, which is by turns aligned and at odds with the form created by harmony and melody. Texture, traditionally considered a “secondary” musical parameter, has often been seen as less essential than the “primary” parameters of melody, harmony, and rhythm; a song like “Au pied de mon lit,” however, shows that this secondary parameter can be of primary importance. My article explores the relationship between textural, harmonic-melodic, and poetic form in Clairières dans le ciel and outlines three textural strategies that Boulanger uses throughout the cycle: juxtaposition, transition, and suspension. An analysis of these songs allows us to deepen our understanding of Boulanger’s musical style and also to broaden our conception of form. Looking at her songs from different formal perspectives suggests that a single piece is not in a single form but instead in many forms at once, the number of forms dependent upon the number of parameters we attend to, the degree of correspondence or conflict among them, and the elements that captivate us most.