Francis Poulenc
(1899–1963)
Who Was
Francis Poulenc?
A Brief Introduction
Francis Poulenc was the musical poster boy for 1920s Paris. Smart, sophisticated, and modern, his music was in touch with popular song as much as it was with Stravinsky and Mozart. His harmony could slide with a sly, seductive nonchalance. From his midteens Poulenc was drawn to the literary and musical avant-garde and quickly found a place there for himself, composing mostly instrumental pieces and art songs to words by the poets he admired. In the 1930s, his compositions became more serious, and sacred music entered his repertoire. Songs, however, remained central, and as a pianist he formed partnerships, and toured internationally, with the baritone Pierre Bernac and the soprano Denise Duval.
Early Years: A Young Man in Paris
Born into an affluent family, Poulenc was expected to take over his father’s pharmaceutical company and therefore not allowed to study music formally. His mother, though, was musical and made it possible for him to take piano lessons. At 16, he became the pupil of the renowned virtuoso Ricardo Viñes, who introduced him to a musical avant-garde that included not only Ravel and Satie, but also Stravinsky, who was frequently in Paris and became Poulenc’s lodestar. Of the poets with whom the young Poulenc became acquainted at that time, Guillaume Apollinaire and Paul Éluard remained enduring favorites. His first professional performances came when he was 18, and his first publications, including the Sonata for Two Clarinets (1918), when he was 20.
Poulenc: Sonata for Two Clarinets
Gaining prominence in Paris, a city in search of novelty and fun after World War I, Poulenc was an obvious candidate for a journalist to identify in 1920 as a member of “Les Six”—a group of composers whose music spoke for the age. Jean Cocteau became their mentor, and although the Six soon went their separate ways, Poulenc and Cocteau remained friends. Both belonged to the circle of Russian impresario Serge Diaghilev, for whom Poulenc wrote a ballet score, Les Biches (1923), its title a slang term for coquettish women.
Gaining prominence in Paris, a city in search of novelty and fun after World War I, Poulenc was an obvious candidate for a journalist to identify in 1920 as a member of “Les Six”—a group of composers whose music spoke for the age.
Middle Period: Maturity
Keyboard music occupied much of Poulenc’s compositional activity throughout the next decade, which saw the harpsichord concerto Concert champêtre (1927–28) and the Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra (1932). The latter travels from shades of Bali in the first movement to Mozart in the last. In 1933, he composed the first in a series of fifteen Improvisations that took him almost to the end of his life.
A shock came in 1936, when his friend and fellow composer Pierre-Octave Ferroud died in an automobile accident. Poulenc, who was on vacation in the South of France, went to Rocamadour to pray at the shrine of the Black Virgin and there began his Litanies à la Vierge noire for women’s choir and organ (1936). Other sacred works soon followed, including the Mass for choir (1937) and Quatre Motets pour un temps de pénitence (Four Motets for Penitential Times) for four unaccompanied voices (1938–39).
That same year, Poulenc began giving recitals regularly with Pierre Bernac, resulting in one of the composer’s greatest set of songs, Tel jour, telle nuit (Such a Day, Such a Night, 1936–37).
Poulenc stayed in Paris throughout the Nazi occupation (1940–45), slipping messages of resistance into his music. His score for the ballet Les Animaux modèles (Model Animals, 1940–42), for instance, includes the tune of an anti-German song. The choral masterpiece Figure humaine (Human Figure, 1943), with its concluding call for freedom, could not be performed until after the city’s liberation. Other works simply had to wait for a performance opportunity. Among these are Poulenc’s first opera, the one-act Les Mamelles de Tirésias (The Breasts of Tiresias, 1944) after a surrealist play by Apollinaire, and his contribution to children’s music, L’Histoire de Babar (The Story of Babar) for narrator and piano (1940–45).
During this time, Poulenc had a discreet sequence of male lovers, who tended to remain his friends. However, soon after World War II, he had an affair with a woman and fathered a daughter.
Late Period: Larger Works and Sonatas
In 1948, Poulenc made the first of several US concert tours with Bernac and in January 1950 he was back to premiere the Piano Concerto (1949), commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Though characteristically frolicsome and breezy at times, the concerto stands with other late works, such as Dialogues des Carmélites (1953–56), in its large scale. This full-length opera depicts the events leading to the guillotining of a community of nuns during the bloodiest days of the French Revolution. Another one-act opera, for soprano Denise Duval, followed: La Voix humaine (The Human Voice, 1958), in which a woman converses on the phone with someone who is revealed to be a former lover. Poulenc then answered a second commission from the Boston Symphony Orchestra with the resplendent Gloria for soprano, chorus, and orchestra (1959).
Although dismayed by Stravinsky’s turn in the 1950s toward twelve-tone composition, Poulenc moved in a more dissonant direction with Sept Répons des Ténèbres (Seven Responsories for Tenebrae) for chorus and orchestra (1961–62). This was one of his last works, together with the piano-accompanied Sonata for Oboe (1962) and Sonata for Clarinet (1962).
Poulenc: Sonata for Clarinet and Piano
Legacy
Poulenc’s lasting reputation is largely as a composer of songs. He remains the outstanding composer of French art songs since Fauré, and his example has had a long influence, especially in the United States, where he and his music were welcomed in his later years. He also recorded much of his music for and with piano, including several albums of songs, and those of other French composers, accompanying Bernac and Duval.
He remains the outstanding composer of French art songs since Fauré, and his example has had a long influence, especially in the United States, where he and his music were welcomed in his later years.
Watching and Listening
Several recordings of Poulenc’s chamber works with clarinet, which altogether make a choice sampling of his music across the decades, can be found in the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Digital Archive. Earliest of these is the compact, bright, and folksy Sonata for Two Clarinets, which follows in the wake of Stravinsky. David Shifrin and Tommaso Lonquich give an appealing performance on two different types of clarinets.
Shifrin can also be heard with pianist Gloria Chien in the Clarinet Sonata, from the other end of Poulenc’s working life—a beautiful performance, with conversational attack in the fast passages and soft textures in the slow. In another performance of the Clarinet Sonata with Chien, Anthony McGill increases the tempo in the outer movements.
One of Poulenc’s most pleasing chamber pieces is the Sextet for winds and piano, which he composed in 1932 and revised in August 1939, just before the outbreak of war. Rich in ideas—all of which suit the instruments that introduce them and are altered to fit the instrument taking over—the music varies from energetic to sensitive.
