[100], In 1953, Poulenc was offered a commission by La Scala and the Milanese publisher Casa Ricordi for a ballet. [60], At the start of the decade, Poulenc returned to writing songs, after a two-year break from doing so.

"[168] Other composers have found more merit in Poulenc's work; Stravinsky wrote to him in 1931: "You are truly good, and that is what I find again and again in your music". He later explained: A few days earlier I'd just heard of the tragic death of my colleague ... As I meditated on the fragility of our human frame, I was drawn once more to the life of the spirit. I remember him playing me the records of Boulez's Le marteau sans maître with which he was already familiar when that work was much less well-known than it is today.

[52] Poulenc's new celebrity after the success of the ballet was the unexpected cause of his estrangement from Satie: among the new friends Poulenc made was Louis Laloy, a writer whom Satie regarded with implacable enmity. [138][n 24] The sonatas in this group are for violin and piano (1942–43) and for cello and piano (1948). [129], Poulenc, a highly accomplished pianist, usually composed at the piano and wrote many pieces for the instrument throughout his career. [2] He was a member of a pious Roman Catholic family from Espalion in the département of Aveyron. [163][164] Integral sets of the chamber music have been recorded by the Nash Ensemble (Hyperion), and a variety of young French musicians (Naxos).

[154], Poulenc's major works for choir and orchestra are the Stabat Mater (1950), the Gloria (1959–60), and Sept répons des ténèbres (Seven responsories for Tenebrae, 1961–62). "Les Dialogues de Poulenc: The Composer on his Opera", Hell, pp. Epitaphe, FP 55 (Poulenc, Francis) This work is likely not in the public domain in the US (due to first publication with the required notice after 1924, plus renewal or "restoration" under the GATT/TRIPS amendments), nor in the EU and those countries where the copyright term is life+70 years. [3][130] The vast majority of the piano works are, in the view of the writer Keith W Daniel, "what might be called 'miniatures'".

[169], In his last years Poulenc observed, "if people are still interested in my music in 50 years' time it will be for my Stabat Mater rather than the Mouvements perpétuels." [49], From the early 1920s Poulenc was well received abroad, particularly in Britain, both as a performer and a composer. [67] In the Gloria, Poulenc's faith expresses itself in an exuberant, joyful way, with intervals of prayerful calm and mystic feeling, and an ending of serene tranquillity. His compositions include songs, solo piano works, chamber music, choral pieces, operas, ballets, and orchestral concert music.

[56] Yet he was troubled, struggling to come to terms with his sexuality, which was predominantly homosexual. As she was not only well aware of his homosexuality but was also romantically attached elsewhere, she refused him, and their relationship became strained.

[n 20] The work was produced in February 1959 at the Opéra-Comique, under Cocteau's direction, with Duval as the tragic deserted woman speaking to her former lover by telephone. [56] He bought a large country house, Le Grand Coteau [fr], at Noizay, Indre-et-Loire, 140 miles (230 km) south-west of Paris, where he retreated to compose in peaceful surroundings. Quatre motets pour un temps de pénitence (Four Penitential Motets, 1938–39) and the song "Bleuet" (1939), an elegiac meditation on death, contrast with the song cycle Fiançailles pour rire (Light-Hearted Betrothal), which recaptures the spirit of Les biches, in the opinion of Hell.

"[132], Of the pieces cited with approval by Poulenc, the fifteen Improvisations were composed at intervals between 1932 and 1959.

Other chamber works from this period are the Rapsodie nègre, FP 3, from 1917 (mainly instrumental, with brief vocal episodes) and the Trio for oboe, bassoon and piano (1926).

Poulenc coming after Sacre [du Printemps]. [108][114], Poulenc's music is essentially diatonic. [74] With Bernac, he made his first tour of Britain in 1938. In addition to his work as a composer, Poulenc was an accomplished pianist. This work, Les biches, was an immediate success, first in Monte Carlo in January 1924 and then in Paris in May, under the direction of André Messager; it has remained one of Poulenc's best-known scores.

13 and 93; and Schmidt (2001), p. 451, Doctor, pp. He was particularly celebrated for his performing partnerships with the baritone Pierre Bernac (who also advised him in vocal writing) and the soprano Denise Duval. Hell notes that Poulenc reused some of the themes in his 1947 Sinfonietta. Content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License I condemn Napoli and the Soirées de Nazelles without reprieve. [82][83][n 14] He was a founder-member of the Front National (pour musique) which the Nazi authorities viewed with suspicion for its association with banned musicians such as Milhaud and Paul Hindemith.

[n 13] Under Nazi rule he was in a vulnerable position, as a known homosexual (Destouches narrowly avoided arrest and deportation), but in his music he made many gestures of defiance of the Germans. 4 Motets pour le temps de Noël, FP 152 (Poulenc, Francis) This work is likely not in the public domain in the US (due to first publication with the required notice after 1924, plus renewal or "restoration" under the GATT/TRIPS amendments), nor in the EU and those countries where the …

He was particularly fond of woodwinds, and planned a set of sonatas for all of them, yet only lived to complete four: sonatas for flute, oboe, clarinet, and the Elégie for horn. Poulenc was a featured pianist in several recordings, including some of his songs (with Pierre Bernac) (recorded in 1947) and the concerto for two pianos (recorded in May 1957). [27][n 5] Ravel was amused by the piece and commented on Poulenc's ability to invent his own folklore. IMSLP does not assume any sort of legal responsibility or liability for the consequences of downloading files that are not in the public domain in your country. [159] He played the piano part in recordings of his Babar the Elephant with Pierre Fresnay and Noël Coward as narrators. I am now twenty years older". [127] Honegger wrote, "The influences that have worked on him, Chabrier, Satie, Stravinsky, are now completely assimilated.

It is intended that this section will be expanded with additional articles. [162], Complete sets of Poulenc's solo piano music have been recorded by Gabriel Tacchino, who had been Poulenc's only piano student (released on the EMI label), Pascal Rogé (Decca), Paul Crossley (CBS), Eric Parkin (Chandos) and Olivier Cazal (Naxos).

[148] The first of the Deux poèmes de Louis Aragon (1943), titled simply "C", is described by Johnson as "a masterpiece known the world over; it is the most unusual, and perhaps the most moving, song about the ravages of war ever composed. [136], In Grove, Nichols divides the chamber works into three clearly differentiated periods. "[69] The Concerto for piano and orchestra (1949) initially caused some disappointment: many felt that it was not an advance on Poulenc's pre-war music, a view he came to share.

[45] Their 1921 ballet Les mariés de la tour Eiffel contains three sections by Milhaud, two apiece by Auric, Poulenc and Tailleferre, one by Honegger and none by Durey, who was already distancing himself from the group. & W. Chester. [135] Among the piano music not mentioned, favourably or harshly, by Poulenc, the best known pieces include the two Novelettes (1927–28), the set of six miniatures for children, Villageoises (1933), a piano version of the seven-movement Suite française (1935), and L'embarquement pour Cythère for two pianos (1953). [75] His music was also popular in America, seen by many as "the quintessence of French wit, elegance and high spirits".

282–283 and 455. [84] In 1943 he wrote a cantata for unaccompanied double choir intended for Belgium, Figure humaine, setting eight of Éluard's poems. This page was last edited on 25 October 2019, at 23:36.

The child was brought up without knowing who her father was (Poulenc was supposedly her "godfather") but he made generous provision for her, and she was the principal beneficiary of his will.

His fellow composer Pierre-Octave Ferroud was killed in a car crash so violent that he was decapitated, and almost immediately afterwards, while on holiday, Poulenc visited the sanctuary of Rocamadour.

[96], Shortly after the war, Poulenc had a brief affair with a woman, Fréderique ("Freddy") Lebedeff, with whom he had a daughter, Marie-Ange, in 1946.

[99] Professionally Poulenc was productive, writing a seven-song cycle setting poems by Éluard, La Fraîcheur et le feu (1950), and the Stabat Mater, in memory of the painter Christian Bérard, composed in 1950 and premiered the following year.

[n 3] Through him Poulenc became friendly with two composers who helped shape his early development: Georges Auric and Erik Satie. [44] When members of Les Six collaborated with each other, they contributed their own individual sections to the joint work.

[3] To the critic Ralph Thibodeau, the work may be considered as Poulenc's own requiem and is "the most avant-garde of his sacred compositions, the most emotionally demanding, and the most interesting musically, comparable only with his magnum opus sacrum, the opera, Dialogues des Carmélites. London: J. The London Philharmonic Orchestra gave a reception in the composer's honour;[88] he and Benjamin Britten were the soloists in a performance of Poulenc's Double Piano Concerto at the Royal Albert Hall;[89] with Bernac he gave recitals of French mélodies and piano works at the Wigmore Hall and the National Gallery, and recorded for the BBC.

Instrumental soloists include Britten, Jacques Février, Pierre Fournier, Emil Gilels, Yehudi Menuhin and Arthur Rubinstein. [3] It contains one of Poulenc's rare excursions into dodecaphony, with the brief employment of a twelve-note tone row.

Poulenc also made the acquaintance of Erik Satie, under whose tutelage he became one of a group of young composers known collectively as Les Six. It draws on a variety of stylistic sources: the first movement ends in a manner reminiscent of Balinese gamelan, and the slow movement begins in a Mozartian style, which Poulenc gradually fills out with his own characteristic personal touches. He decided that the theme would be a modern version of the classical French fête galante. [67] Poulenc was buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery, alongside his family.

Larner, Gerald.

[3] He encouraged his pupil to compose, and he later gave the premieres of three early Poulenc works.

The biographer Henri Hell comments that Viñes's influence on his pupil was profound, both as to pianistic technique and the style of Poulenc's keyboard works. It was not progress. [112] In 1961 Poulenc published a book about Chabrier, a 187-page study of which a reviewer wrote in the 1980s, "he writes with love and insight of a composer whose views he shared on matters like the primacy of melody and the essential seriousness of humour.

Biography: In.

"[124] At around the same time the writer Jessica Duchen described Poulenc as "a fizzing, bubbling mass of Gallic energy who can move you to both laughter and tears within seconds. [111] In May Poulenc's 60th birthday was marked, a few months late, by his last concert with Bernac before the latter's retirement from public performance.

[150] Poulenc's new-found religious theme continued with Quatre motets pour un temps de pénitence (1938–39), but among his most important choral works is the secular cantata Figure humaine (1943). [n 15] The leading female role was taken by Denise Duval, who became the composer's favourite soprano, frequent recital partner and dedicatee of some of his music.

[77], For most of the war, Poulenc was in Paris, giving recitals with Bernac, concentrating on French songs. Notes to Hyperion CD CDH55386. [3] The critic Claude Rostand later described Poulenc as "half monk and half naughty boy".

[3] Commentators including Hell, Schmidt and Poulenc himself have regarded it, and to some extent the cello sonata, as less effective than those for wind.