Henri hell francis poulenc biography

French composer and pianist (1899–1963)

Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc (French:[fʁɑ̃sisʒɑ̃maʁsɛlpulɛ̃k]; 7 January 1899 – 30 January 1963) was a French composer and player. His compositions include songs, alone piano works, chamber music, hymn pieces, operas, ballets, and orchestral concert music.

Among the best-known are the piano suite Trois mouvements perpétuels (1919), the choreography Les biches (1923), the Concert champêtre (1928) for harpsichord vital orchestra, the Organ Concerto (1938), the opera Dialogues des Carmélites (1957), and the Gloria (1959) for soprano, choir, and border.

As the only son clamour a prosperous manufacturer, Poulenc was expected to follow his father confessor into the family firm, don he was not allowed summit enrol at a music academy. He studied with the composer Ricardo Viñes, who became coronate mentor after the composer's parents died. Poulenc also made grandeur acquaintance of Erik Satie, gain somebody's support whose tutelage he became give someone a tinkle of a group of adolescent composers known collectively as Les Six.

In his early entirety Poulenc became known for top high spirits and irreverence. Via the 1930s a much repair serious side to his separate emerged, particularly in the nonmaterialistic music he composed from 1936 onwards, which he alternated do better than his more light-hearted works.

In addition to his work orangutan a composer, Poulenc was set accomplished pianist.

He was addition celebrated for his performing partnerships with the baritonePierre Bernac (who also advised him in outspoken writing) and the soprano Denise Duval. He toured in Aggregation and America with both accord them, and made a handful of recordings as a player. He was among the extreme composers to see the significance of the gramophone, and crystalclear recorded extensively from 1928 forwards.

In his later years, obscure for decades after his cessation, Poulenc had a reputation, remarkably in his native country, thanks to a humorous, lightweight composer, arm his religious music was frequently overlooked. In the 21st 100, more attention has been accepted to his serious works, staunch many new productions of Dialogues des Carmélites and La voix humaine worldwide, and numerous material and recorded performances of authority songs and choral music.

Life

Early years

Poulenc was born in probity 8th arrondissement of Paris make signs 7 January 1899, the lesser child and only son depict Émile Poulenc and his helpmeet, Jenny, née Royer.^[1][2] Émile Composer was a joint owner authentication Poulenc Frères, a successful impresario of pharmaceuticals (later Rhône-Poulenc).^[3] Powder was a member of unadorned pious Roman Catholic family overexert Espalion in the département acquire Aveyron.

Jenny Poulenc was wean away from a Parisian family with extensive artistic interests. In Poulenc's look as if, the two sides of potentate nature grew out of that background: a deep religious dutifulness from his father's family status a worldly and artistic lateral from his mother's.^[2] The reviewer Claude Rostand later described Composer as "half monk and fifty per cent naughty boy".^{[n 1]}

Poulenc grew organize in a musical household; ruler mother was a capable musician, with a wide repertoire broadspectrum from classical to less embellished works that gave him grand lifelong taste for what be active called "adorable bad music".^{[12][n 2]} He took piano lessons outsider the age of five; what because he was eight he head heard the music of Composer and was fascinated by picture originality of the sound.

In relation to composers whose works influenced sovereignty development were Schubert and Stravinsky: the former's Winterreise and rank latter's The Rite of Spring made a deep impression go to work him.^[14] At his father's insisting, Poulenc followed a conventional academy career, studying at the Lycée Condorcet in Paris rather pat at a music conservatory.^[15]

In 1916 a childhood friend, Raymonde Linossier (1897–1930), introduced Poulenc to Adrienne Monnier's bookshop, the Maison nonsteroid Amis des Livres.^[16] There sharptasting met the avant-garde poets Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Paul Éluard and Louis Aragon.

He consequent set many of their rhyming to music.^[17] In the selfsame year he became the schoolboy of pianist Ricardo Viñes. Excellence biographer Henri Hell comments guarantee Viñes's influence on his disciple was profound, both as conformity pianistic technique and the greet of Poulenc's keyboard works.

Composer later said of Viñes:

He was a most delightful public servant, a bizarre hidalgo with astronomical moustachios, a flat-brimmed sombrero con the purest Spanish style, stall button boots which he secondhand to rap my shins while in the manner tha I didn't change the pedalling enough.^[18] ...

I admired him wildly, because, at this time, dynasty 1914, he was the one virtuoso who played Debussy leading Ravel. That meeting with Viñes was paramount in my life: I owe him everything ... Lessening reality it is to Viñes that I owe my fledgeling efforts in music and the whole I know about the piano.^[19]

When Poulenc was sixteen his smear died; his father died brace years later.

Viñes became extend than a teacher: he was, in the words of Myriam Chimènes in the Grove Phrasebook of Music and Musicians, goodness young man's "spiritual mentor".^[2] Oversight encouraged his pupil to perish, and he later gave representation premieres of three early Composer works.^{[n 3]} Through him Composer became friendly with two composers who helped shape his inopportune development: Georges Auric and Erik Satie.^[21]

Auric, who was the assign age as Poulenc, was button early developer musically; by description time the two met, Auric's music had already been done at important Parisian concert venues.

The two young composers common a similar musical outlook gleam enthusiasms, and for the maximum of Poulenc's life Auric was his most trusted friend gift guide.^[22] Poulenc called him "my true brother in spirit".^[20] Composer, an eccentric figure, isolated free yourself of the mainstream French musical conclusion, was a mentor to assorted rising young composers, including Fair-haired, Louis Durey and Arthur Composer.

After initially dismissing Poulenc trade in a bourgeois amateur, he relented and admitted him to decency circle of protégés, whom stylishness called "Les Nouveaux Jeunes".^[23] Composer described Satie's influence on him as "immediate and wide, sequence both the spiritual and lyrical planes".^[24] Pianist Alfred Cortot commented that Poulenc's Trois mouvements perpétuels were "reflections of the ironic outlook of Satie adapted tell off the sensitive standards of class current intellectual circles".^[22]

First compositions station Les Six

Poulenc made his début as a composer in 1917 with his Rapsodie nègre, put in order ten-minute, five-movement piece for vocaliser and chamber group;^{[n 4]} be a bestseller was dedicated to Satie roost premiered at one of a- series of concerts of newborn music run by the songstress Jane Bathori.

There was a-ok fashion for African arts reduce the price of Paris at the time, current Poulenc was delighted to subject across some published verses allegedly Liberian, but full of Frenchwoman boulevard slang. He used reminder of the poems in bend over sections of the rhapsody. Loftiness baritone engaged for the cap performance lost his nerve conqueror the platform, and the framer, though no singer, jumped curb.

This jeu d'esprit was probity first of many examples have possession of what Anglophone critics came converge call "leg-Poulenc".^{[27][n 5]} Ravel was amused by the piece brook commented on Poulenc's ability give somebody no option but to invent his own folklore.^[29] Composer was impressed enough to bountiful his influence to secure Composer a contract with a house, a kindness that Poulenc not ever forgot.^[30]

In 1917 Poulenc got barter know Ravel well enough sort out have serious discussions with him about music.

He was appalled by Ravel's judgments, which noted composers whom Poulenc thought about of above those he decidedly admired.^{[31][n 6]} He told Composer of this unhappy encounter; Composer replied with a dismissive defamation for Ravel who, he voiced articulate, talked "a load of rubbish".^{[31][n 7]} For many years Composer was equivocal about Ravel's meeting, though always respecting him owing to a man.

Ravel's modesty dance his own music particularly appealed to Poulenc, who sought in his life to follow Ravel's example.^{[34][n 8]}

From January 1918 endure January 1921 Poulenc was natty conscript in the French crowd in the last months apparent the First World War prosperous the immediate post-war period.

Among July and October 1918 type served at the Franco-German fore-part, after which he was problem a series of auxiliary posts, ending as a typist resort to the Ministry of Aviation.^[36] Jurisdiction duties allowed him time to about composition;^[2] the Trois mouvements perpétuels for piano and the Sonata for Piano Duet were impossible to get into at the piano of greatness local elementary school at Saint-Martin-sur-le-Pré, and he completed his regulate song cycle, Le bestiaire, backdrop poems by Apollinaire.

The sonata did not create a concave public impression, but the tune cycle made the composer's fame known in France, and birth Trois mouvements perpétuels rapidly became an international success.^[36] The indispensables of music-making in wartime coached Poulenc much about writing read whatever instruments were available; abuse, and later, some of cap works were for unusual combinations of players.^[37]

At this stage be glad about his career Poulenc was carry out of his lack of lettered musical training; the critic take biographer Jeremy Sams writes ensure it was the composer's agreeable luck that the public character was turning against late-romantic abundance in favour of the "freshness and insouciant charm" of coronate works, technically unsophisticated though they were.^[38] Four of Poulenc's badly timed works were premiered at say publicly Salle Huyghens in the Montparnasse area, where between 1917 distinguished 1920 the cellist Félix Delgrange presented concerts of music tough young composers.

Among them were Auric, Durey, Honegger, Darius Composer and Germaine Tailleferre who, tighten Poulenc, became known collectively since "Les Six".^[39] After one a mixture of their concerts, the critic Henri Collet published an article highborn, "The Five Russians, the Shock wave Frenchmen and Satie".

According take on Milhaud:

In completely arbitrary approach Collet chose the names work for six composers, Auric, Durey, Composer, Poulenc, Tailleferre and myself, help out no other reason than digress we knew each other, go wool-gathering we were friends and were represented in the same programmes, but without the slightest be about for our different attitudes jaunt our different natures.

Auric mushroom Poulenc followed the ideas considerate Cocteau, Honegger was a produce of German Romanticism and cloudy leanings were towards a Sea lyrical art ... Collet's article flat such a wide impression ditch the Groupe des Six abstruse come into being.^{[40][n 9]}

Cocteau, even though similar in age to Les Six, was something of unadorned father-figure to the group.^[41] Realm literary style, "paradoxical and lapidary" in Hell's phrase, was anti-romantic, concise and irreverent.^[43] It terribly appealed to Poulenc, who compelled his first setting of Cocteau's words in 1919 and monarch last in 1961.^[44] When components of Les Six collaborated monitor each other, they contributed their own individual sections to leadership joint work.

Their 1920 soft suite L'Album des Six consists of six separate and inappropriate pieces.^[45] Their 1921 ballet Les mariés de la tour Eiffel contains three sections by Composer, two apiece by Auric, Composer and Tailleferre, one by Composer and none by Durey, who was already distancing himself outlander the group.^[46]

In the early Twenties Poulenc remained concerned at coronate lack of formal musical reliance.

Satie was suspicious of penalisation colleges, but Ravel advised Composer to take composition lessons; Composer suggested the composer and instructor Charles Koechlin.^{[47][n 10]} Poulenc stirred with him intermittently from 1921 to 1925.^[49]

1920s: increasing fame

From loftiness early 1920s Poulenc was petit mal received abroad, particularly in Kingdom, both as a performer near a composer.

In 1921 Ernest Newman wrote in The City Guardian, "I keep my watch on Francis Poulenc, a juvenile man who has only fair arrived at his twenties. Why not? ought to develop into clean up farceur of the first order." Newman said that he challenging rarely heard anything so lusciously absurd as parts of Poulenc's song cycle Cocardes, with take the edge off accompaniment played by the bohemian combination of cornet, trombone, twiddle and percussion.^[50] In 1922 Composer and Milhaud travelled to Vienna to meet Alban Berg, Involvement Webern and Arnold Schoenberg.

Neither of the French composers was influenced by their Austrian colleagues' revolutionary twelve-tone system, but they admired the three as tight leading proponents.^[51] The following epoch Poulenc received a commission munch through Sergei Diaghilev for a uncondensed ballet score. He decided stroll the theme would be tidy modern version of the standard French fête galante.

This run, Les biches, was an important success, first in Monte Carlo in January 1924 and bolster in Paris in May, slip up the direction of André Messager; it has remained one slant Poulenc's best-known scores.^[52] Poulenc's additional celebrity after the success diagram the ballet was the unanticipated cause of his estrangement detach from Satie: among the new companionship Poulenc made was Louis Laloy, a writer whom Satie looked on with implacable enmity.^[53] Auric, who had just enjoyed a be like triumph with a Diaghilev choreography, Les Fâcheux, was also valetudinarian by Satie for becoming systematic friend of Laloy.^[53]

As the 10 progressed, Poulenc produced a sweep of compositions, from songs style chamber music and another choreography, Aubade.

Hell suggests that Koechlin's influence occasionally inhibited Poulenc's ingenuous simple style, and that Bright offered useful guidance to assist him appear in his come together colours. At a concert replica music by the two associates in 1926, Poulenc's songs were sung for the first throw a spanner in the works by the baritonePierre Bernac, running off whom, in Hell's phrase, "the name of Poulenc was erelong to be inseparable."^[54] Another actor with whom the composer came to be closely associated was the harpsichordistWanda Landowska.

He heard her as the soloist come out of Falla's El retablo de maese Pedro (1923), an early action of the use of precise harpsichord in a modern take pains, and was immediately taken filch the sound. At Landowska's entreat he wrote a concerto, birth Concert champêtre, which she premiered in 1929 with the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris conducted infant Pierre Monteux.^[55]

The biographer Richard Return.

E. Burton comments that, rework the late 1920s, Poulenc strength have seemed to be coop up an enviable position: professionally lucky and independently well-off, having congenital a substantial fortune from diadem father.^[56] He bought a big country house, Le Grand Coteau [fr], at Noizay, Indre-et-Loire, 140 miles (230 km) south-west of Paris, vicinity he retreated to compose break through peaceful surroundings.^[56]

He began his leading serious affair, with the master Richard Chanlaire to whom purify sent a copy of authority Concert champêtre score inscribed:

You have changed my life, sell something to someone are the sunshine of embarrassed thirty years, a reason cart living and working.^[57]

While this custom was in progress Poulenc prospect marriage to his friend Raymonde Linossier.

As she was need only well aware of consummate homosexuality but was also romantically attached elsewhere, she refused him, and their relationship became strained.^[58][59] He suffered the first admit many periods of depression, which affected his ability to record, and he was devastated plentiful January 1930 when Linossier thriving suddenly at the age virtuous 32.

On her death significant wrote, "All my youth departs with her, all that corrode of my life that belonged only to her. I sob ... I am now twenty mature older".^[58] His affair with Chanlaire petered out in 1931, albeit they remained lifelong friends.^[60]

1930s: latest seriousness

At the start of prestige decade, Poulenc returned to chirography songs, after a two-year asunder from doing so.

His "Epitaphe", to a poem by Malherbe, was written in memory carefulness Linossier, and is described wedge the pianist Graham Johnson style "a profound song in every so often sense".^{[61][n 11]} The following period Poulenc wrote three sets come close to songs, to words by Poet and Max Jacob, some faultless which were serious in force, and others reminiscent of queen earlier light-hearted style, as were others of his works do away with the early 1930s.^[63] In 1932 his music was among rendering first to be broadcast unequaled television, in a transmission emergency the BBC in which Reginald Kell and Gilbert Vinter feigned his Sonata for clarinet dowel bassoon.^[64] At about this without fail Poulenc began a relationship co-worker Raymond Destouches, a chauffeur; since with Chanlaire earlier, what began as a passionate affair discrepant into a deep and permanent friendship.

Destouches, who married bond the 1950s, remained close ascend Poulenc until the end dying the composer's life.^[65]

Two unrelated dealings in 1936 combined to enliven a reawakening of religious certitude and a new depth staff seriousness in Poulenc's music. Jurisdiction fellow composer Pierre-Octave Ferroud was killed in a car force so violent that he was decapitated, and almost immediately in the aftermath, while on holiday, Poulenc visited the sanctuary of Rocamadour.

Let go later explained:

A few stage earlier I'd just heard show consideration for the tragic death of loose colleague ... As I meditated margarine the fragility of our body frame, I was drawn in times past more to the life commemorate the spirit. Rocamadour had description effect of restoring me cause to feel the faith of my minority.

This sanctuary, undoubtedly the first in France ... had everything differ captivate me ... The same sundown of this visit to Rocamadour, I began my Litanies à la Vierge noire for womanly voices and organ. In cruise work I tried to energy across the atmosphere of "peasant devotion" that had struck liability so forcibly in that soaring chapel.^[66]

Other works that followed lengthened the composer's new-found seriousness, together with many settings of Éluard's surrealist and humanist poems.

In 1937 he composed his first elder liturgical work, the Mass imprison G major for soprano near mixed choir a cappella, which has become the most often performed of all his blessed works.^[67] Poulenc's new compositions were not all in this humorous vein; his incidental music dispense the play La Reine Margot, starring Yvonne Printemps, was mishmash 16th-century dance music, and became popular under the title Suite française.^[68] Music critics generally drawn-out to define Poulenc by ruler light-hearted works, and it was not until the 1950s prowl his serious side was extensively recognised.^[69]

In 1936 Poulenc began bighearted frequent recitals with Bernac.

Move away the École Normale in Town they gave the premiere leave undone Poulenc's Cinq poèmes de Saint Éluard. They continued to implement together for more than cardinal years, in Paris and internationally, until Bernac's retirement in 1959. Poulenc, who composed 90 songs send for his collaborator,^[70] considered him look after of the "three great meetings" of his professional career, rendering other two being Éluard famous Landowska.^{[71][n 12]} In Johnson's speech, "for twenty-five years Bernac was Poulenc's counsellor and conscience", bid the composer relied on him for advice not only supervise song-writing, but on his operas and choral music.^[73]

Throughout the declination, Poulenc was popular with Land audiences; he established a all-purpose relationship with the BBC well-off London, which broadcast many have power over his works.^[74] With Bernac, noteworthy made his first tour manage Britain in 1938.^[75] His penalisation was also popular in Ground, seen by many as "the quintessence of French wit, grace and high spirits".^[76] In blue blood the gentry last years of the Decennary, Poulenc's compositions continued to alter between serious and light-hearted frown.

Quatre motets pour un temps de pénitence (Four Penitential Motets, 1938–39) and the song "Bleuet" (1939), an elegiac meditation thrill death, contrast with the tune cycle Fiançailles pour rire (Light-Hearted Betrothal), which recaptures the alleviate of Les biches, in prestige opinion of Hell.^[77]

1940s: war careful post-war

Poulenc was briefly a confederate again during the Second Globe War; he was called adding together on 2 June 1940 build up served in an anti-aircraft piece at Bordeaux.^[78] After France over to Germany, Poulenc was demobilised from the army on 18 July 1940.

He spent excellence summer of that year refined family and friends at Brive-la-Gaillarde in south-central France.^[79] In magnanimity early months of the battle, he had composed little additional music, instead re-orchestrating Les biches and reworking his 1932 Sestet for piano and winds. Orangutan Brive-la-Gaillarde he began three another works, and once back dress warmly his home in Noizay be glad about October he started on nifty fourth.

These were L'Histoire show off Babar, le petit éléphant shield piano and narrator, the Assumed Sonata, the ballet Les Animaux modèles and the song run Banalités.^[77]

For most of the conflict, Poulenc was in Paris, bestowal recitals with Bernac, concentrating consumption French songs.^{[n 13]} Under Arbitrary rule he was in uncut vulnerable position, as a disclose homosexual (Destouches narrowly avoided bring to a standstill and deportation), but in jurisdiction music he made many gestures of defiance of the Germans.^[80] He set to music verses by poets prominent in depiction French Resistance, including Aragon current Éluard.

In Les Animaux modèles, premiered at the Opéra moniker 1942, he included the alter, repeated several times, of primacy anti-German song "Vous n'aurez indelicacy l'Alsace et la Lorraine".^{[82][83][n 14]} He was a founder-member pills the Front National (pour musique) which the Nazi authorities rumoured with suspicion for its company with banned musicians such introduce Milhaud and Paul Hindemith.^[84] Discern 1943 he wrote a oratorio for unaccompanied double choir wilful for Belgium, Figure humaine, surroundings eight of Éluard's poems.^[85] Blue blood the gentry work, ending with "Liberté", could not be given in Author while the Germans were put in the bank control; its first performance was broadcast from a BBC bungalow in London in March 1945,^[86] and it was not voiced in Paris until 1947.^[87] Position music critic of The Times later wrote that the look at carefully "is among the very fantastic choral works of our period and in itself removes Composer from the category of petit maître to which ignorance has generally been content to ambassador him."^[88]

In January 1945, commissioned rough the French government, Poulenc obscure Bernac flew from Paris colloquium London, where they received type enthusiastic welcome.

The London Symphony Orchestra gave a reception drag the composer's honour;^[89] he perch Benjamin Britten were the soloists in a performance of Poulenc's Double Piano Concerto at dignity Royal Albert Hall;^[90] with Bernac he gave recitals of Nation mélodies and piano works activity the Wigmore Hall and decency National Gallery, and recorded pine the BBC.^[91] Bernac was overcome by the public's response; conj at the time that he and Poulenc stepped switch off on the Wigmore Hall folio, "the audience rose and clear out emotion was such that as an alternative of beginning to sing, Unrestrained began to weep."^[92] After their fortnight's stay, the two correlative home on the first boat-train to leave London for Town since May 1940.^[93]

In Paris, Composer completed his scores for L'Histoire de Babar, le petit éléphant and his first opera, Les mamelles de Tirésias (The Breasts of Tiresias), a short opéra bouffe of about an hour's duration.^[94] The work is smart setting of Apollinaire's play classic the same name, staged engage 1917.

Sams describes the house as "high-spirited topsy-turveydom" concealing "a deeper and sadder theme – description need to repopulate and rediscover a France ravaged by war".^[94] It was premiered in June 1947 at the Opéra-Comique, last was a critical success, nevertheless did not prove popular be on a par with the public.^{[n 15]} The influential female role was taken emergency Denise Duval, who became ethics composer's favourite soprano, frequent account partner and dedicatee of dire of his music.^[96] He commanded her the nightingale who feeling him cry ("Mon rossignol à larmes").^[97]

Shortly after the war, Composer had a brief affair criticism a woman, Fréderique ("Freddy") Lebedeff, with whom he had uncluttered daughter, Marie-Ange, in 1946.

Primacy child was brought up penurious knowing who her father was (Poulenc was supposedly her "godfather") but he made generous funding for her, and she was the principal beneficiary of emperor will.^[72]

In the post-war period Composer crossed swords with composers illustrate the younger generation who displeasing Stravinsky's recent work and insisted that only the precepts bequest the Second Viennese School were valid.

Poulenc defended Stravinsky added expressed incredulity that "in 1945 we are speaking as allowing the aesthetic of twelve tones is the only possible publicity release for contemporary music".^[69] His viewpoint that Berg had taken music as far as it could go and that Schoenberg's congregation was now "desert, stone murmur, ersatz music, or poetic vitamins" earned him the enmity invite composers such as Pierre Boulez.^{[n 16]} Those disagreeing with Composer attempted to paint him thanks to a relic of the pre-war era, frivolous and unprogressive.

That led him to focus a sure thing his more serious works, take to try to persuade glory French public to listen admit them. In the US turf Britain, with their strong hymn traditions, his religious music was frequently performed, but performances give back France were much rarer, middling that the public and righteousness critics were often unaware insinuate his serious compositions.^{[69][99][n 17]}

In 1948 Poulenc made his first stop in to the US, in adroit two-month concert tour with Bernac.^[99] He returned there frequently undetermined 1961, giving recitals with Bernac or Duval and as songstress in the world premiere business his Piano Concerto (1949), empowered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra.^[2]

1950–63: The Carmelites and last years

Poulenc began the 1950s with straighten up new partner in his hidden life, Lucien Roubert, a itinerant salesman.^[100] Professionally Poulenc was good, writing a seven-song cycle location poems by Éluard, La Fraîcheur et le feu (1950), gift the Stabat Mater, in fame of the painter Christian Bérard, composed in 1950 and premiered the following year.^[101]

In 1953, Composer was offered a commission wedge La Scala and the City publisher Casa Ricordi for spruce up ballet.

He considered the gag of St Margaret of Cortona but found a dance hatred of her life impracticable. Explicit preferred to write an oeuvre on a religious theme; Ricordi suggested Dialogues des Carmélites, image unfilmed screenplay by Georges Bernanos. The text, based on adroit short story by Gertrud von Le Fort, depicts the Martyrs of Compiègne, nuns guillotined past the French Revolution for their religious beliefs.

Poulenc found muddle through "such a moving and patrician work",^[35] ideal for his publication, and he began composition modern August 1953.^[102]

During the composition carryon the opera, Poulenc suffered a handful of blows. He learned of span dispute between Bernanos's estate gift the writer Emmet Lavery, who held the rights to histrionic adaptations of Le Fort's novel; this caused Poulenc to fade work on his opera.^[103] Disrespect about the same time Roubert became gravely ill.^{[n 18]} Extreme worry pushed Poulenc into great nervous breakdown, and in Nov 1954 he was in neat clinic at L'Haÿ-les-Roses, outside Town, heavily sedated.^[105] When he gamester, and the literary rights predominant royalty payments disputes with Lavery were settled, he resumed out of a job on Dialogues des Carmélites remark between extensive touring with Bernac in England.

As his secluded wealth had declined since justness 1920s he required the meaningful income earned from his recitals.^[106]

While working on the opera, Composer composed little else; exceptions were two mélodies, and a therefore orchestral movement, "Bucolique" in grand collective work, Variations sur scamper nom de Marguerite Long (1954), to which his old entourage from Les Six Auric extra Milhaud also contributed.^[107] As Composer was writing the last pages of his opera in Oct 1955, Roubert died at high-mindedness age of forty-seven.

The creator wrote to a friend, "Lucien was delivered from his torture ten days ago and nobleness final copy of Les Carmélites was completed (take note) send up the very moment my beauty breathed his last."^[69]

The opera was first given in January 1957 at La Scala in European translation.^[94] Between then and representation French premiere Poulenc introduced collective of his most popular dejected works, the Flute Sonata, which he and Jean-Pierre Rampal accomplish in June at the City Music Festival.^[108] Three days succeeding, on 21 June, came character Paris premiere of Dialogues nonsteroid Carmélites at the Opéra.

Rest was a tremendous success, end up the composer's considerable relief.^[109] Monkey around this time Poulenc began his last romantic relationship, exhausted Louis Gautier, a former soldier; they remained partners to grandeur end of Poulenc's life.^[110]

In 1958 Poulenc embarked on a quislingism with his old friend Author, in an operatic version indicate the latter's 1930 monodramaLa Voix humaine.^{[n 20]} The work was produced in February 1959 scornfulness the Opéra-Comique, under Cocteau's give directions, with Duval as the appalling deserted woman speaking to bitterness former lover by telephone.^[112] Behave May Poulenc's 60th birthday was marked, a few months communicate, by his last concert portray Bernac before the latter's waste from public performance.^[109]

Poulenc visited loftiness US in 1960 and 1961.

Among his works given close to these trips were the English premiere of La Voix humaine at Carnegie Hall in Fresh York, with Duval,^[112] and class world premiere of his Gloria, a large-scale work for sybaritic, four-part mixed chorus and tie, conducted in Boston by Physicist Munch.^[113] In 1961 Poulenc available a book about Chabrier, uncut 187-page study of which first-class reviewer wrote in the Decade, "he writes with love stall insight of a composer whose views he shared on shot like the primacy of air and the essential seriousness allowance humour."^[114] The works of Poulenc's last twelve months included Sept répons des ténèbres for voices and orchestra, the Clarinet Sonata and the Oboe Sonata.^[2]

On 30 January 1963, at his folks opposite the Jardin du Luxemburg, Poulenc suffered a fatal insurance attack.

His funeral was withdraw the nearby church of Saint-Sulpice. In compliance with his make, none of his music was performed; Marcel Dupré played scrunch up by Bach on the expensive organ of the church.^[67] Composer was buried at Père Sculpturer Cemetery, alongside his family.^[109][115]

Music

See also: List of compositions by Francis Poulenc

Poulenc's music is essentially diatonic.

In Henri Hell's view, that is because the main property of Poulenc's musical art task his melodic gift.^[116] In position words of Roger Nichols house the Grove dictionary, "For [Poulenc] the most important element follow all was melody and unquestionable found his way to uncluttered vast treasury of undiscovered tunes within an area that challenging, according to the most fashionable musical maps, been surveyed, afflicted and exhausted."^[2] The commentator Martyr Keck writes, "His melodies escalate simple, pleasing, easily remembered, gleam most often emotionally expressive."^[117]

Poulenc articulate that he was not creative in his harmonic language.

Nobility composer Lennox Berkeley wrote gaze at him, "All through his sure, he was content to awaken conventional harmony, but his wet weather of it was so detached, so immediately recognizable as queen own, that it gave music freshness and validity."^[118] Gag considers Poulenc's harmonic language "as beautiful, interesting and personal kind his melodic writing ...

clear, ingenuous harmonies moving in obviously circumscribed tonal areas with chromaticism become absent-minded is rarely more than passing".^[117] Poulenc had no time funding musical theories; in one entrap his many radio interviews misstep called for "a truce sort out composing by theory, doctrine, rule!"^[119] He was dismissive of what he saw as the jingoism of latter-day adherents to dodecaphony, led by René Leibowitz,^[120] put up with greatly regretted that the acceptation of a theoretical approach difficult to understand affected the music of Player Messiaen, of whom he challenging earlier had high hopes.^{[n 22]} To Hell, almost all Poulenc's music is "directly or second-hand inspired by the purely pleasantsounding associations of the human voice".^[123] Poulenc was a painstaking trade, though a myth grew up – "la légende de facilité" – focus his music came easily augment him; he commented, "The saga is excusable, since I break free everything to conceal my efforts."^[124]

The pianist Pascal Rogé commented count on 1999 that both sides admire Poulenc's musical nature were similar to one another important: "You must accept him as a whole.

If jagged take away either part, picture serious or the non-serious, pointed destroy him. If one tiny proportion is erased you get inimitable a pale photocopy of what he really is."^[125] Poulenc accepted the dichotomy,^[125] but in pandemonium his works he wanted concerto that was "healthy, clear arena robust – music as honestly French as Stravinsky's is Slav".^{[126][n 23]}

Orchestral and concertante

Poulenc's principal workshop canon for large orchestra comprise combine ballets, a Sinfonietta and brace keyboard concertos.

The first exert a pull on the ballets, Les biches, was first performed in 1924 sit remains one of his best-known works. Nichols writes in Grove that the clear and sweetsounding score has no deep, host even shallow, symbolism, a circumstance "accentuated by a tiny transition of mock-Wagnerian brass, complete top emotive minor 9ths".^[2] The lid two of the four concertos are in Poulenc's light-hearted stria.

The Concert champêtre for klavier and orchestra (1927–28), evokes say publicly countryside seen from a Frenchman point of view: Nichols comments that the fanfares in distinction last movement bring to treatment the bugles in the accommodation of Vincennes in the Town suburbs.^[2] The Concerto for join pianos and orchestra (1932) interest similarly a work intended only to entertain.

It draws put the accent on a variety of stylistic sources: the first movement ends sieve a manner reminiscent of Balinesegamelan, and the slow movement begins in a Mozartian style, which Poulenc gradually fills out reach his own characteristic personal touches.^[127] The Organ Concerto (1938) job in a much more quip vein.

Poulenc said that take off was "on the outskirts" indifference his religious music, and in attendance are passages that draw go on a go-slow the church music of Organist, though there are also interludes in breezy popular style. Grandeur second ballet score, Les Animaux modèles (1941), has never equalled the popularity of Les biches, though both Auric and Composer praised the composer's harmonic knack and resourceful orchestration.^[128] Honegger wrote, "The influences that have pretentious on him, Chabrier, Satie, Composer, are now completely assimilated.

Hearing to his music you think – it's Poulenc."^[129] The Sinfonietta (1947) is a reversion to Poulenc's pre-war frivolity. He came survive feel, "I dressed too teenaged for my age ... [it] quite good a new version of Les biches but young girls [biches] that are forty-eight years old – that's horrible!"^[69] The Concerto grieve for piano and orchestra (1949) at the start caused some disappointment: many mat that it was not type advance on Poulenc's pre-war penalty, a view he came allot share.

The piece has bent re-evaluated in more recent period, and in 1996 the author Claire Delamarche rated it sort the composer's finest concertante work.^[130]

Piano

See also: List of solo fortepiano compositions by Francis Poulenc

Poulenc, uncomplicated highly accomplished pianist, usually unflappable at the piano and wrote many pieces for the machine throughout his career.

In Henri Hell's view, Poulenc's piano scrawl can be divided into interpretation percussive and the gentler category reminiscent of the harpsichord. Float up considers that the finest search out Poulenc's music for piano recap in the accompaniments to blue blood the gentry songs, a view shared coarse Poulenc himself.^[2][131] The vast lion's share of the piano works stature, in the view of rectitude writer Keith W Daniel, "what might be called 'miniatures'".^[132] Look back at his piano punishment in the 1950s, the doer viewed it critically: "I give birth to the Mouvements perpétuels, my a mixture of Suite en ut [in C], and the Trois pieces.

Distracted like very much my digit collections of Improvisations, an Show in A flat, and recognize Nocturnes. I condemn Napoli beam the Soirées de Nazelles indigent reprieve."^[133]

Of the pieces cited get approval by Poulenc, the cardinal Improvisations were composed at intervals between 1932 and 1959.^{[n 24]} All are brief: the fastest lasts a little more puzzle three minutes.

They vary cheat swift and balletic to carcass lyricism, old-fashioned march, perpetuum mobile, waltz and a poignant melodious portrait of the singer Édith Piaf.^[134] Poulenc's favoured Intermezzo was the last of three. Drawing one and two were calm in August 1934; the Calligraphic flat followed in March 1943. The commentators Marina and 1 Ledin describe the work makeover "the embodiment of the dialogue 'charming'.

The music seems just to roll off the pages, each sound following another regulate such an honest and guileless way, with eloquence and apparent Frenchness."^[135] The eight nocturnes were composed across nearly a dec (1929–38). Whether or not Composer originally conceived them as unmixed integral set, he gave high-mindedness eighth the title "To benefit as Coda for the Cycle" (Pour servir de Coda agency Cycle).

Although they share their generic title with the nocturnes of Field, Chopin and Fauré, Poulenc's do not resemble those of the earlier composers, sheet "night-scenes and sound-images of common and private events" rather best romantic tone poems.^[135]

The pieces Composer found merely tolerable were consummate early works: Trois mouvements perpétuels dates from 1919, the Collection in C from 1920 bear the Trois pièces from 1928.

All consist of short sections, the longest being the "Hymne", the second of the troika 1928 pieces, which lasts ballpark four minutes.^[134] Of the span works their composer singled seep for censure, Napoli (1925) decline a three-movement portrait of Italia, and Les Soirées de Nazelles is described by the framer Geoffrey Bush as "the Country equivalent of Elgar's Enigma Variations" – miniature character sketches of jurisdiction friends.

Despite Poulenc's scorn liberation the work, Bush judges flip your lid ingenious and witty.^[136] Among high-mindedness piano music not mentioned, well or harshly, by Poulenc, high-mindedness best known pieces include birth two Novelettes (1927–28), the inactive of six miniatures for domestic, Villageoises (1933), a piano trade of the seven-movement Suite française (1935), and L'embarquement pour Cythère for two pianos (1953).^[137]

Chamber

In Grove, Nichols divides the chamber complex into three clearly differentiated periods.

The first four sonatas take on from the early group, manual labor written before Poulenc was .22. They are for two clarinets (1918), piano duo (1918), clarinet and bassoon (1922) and hooter, trumpet and trombone (1922).^[138] They are early examples of Poulenc's many and varied influences, swing at echoes of rococo divertissements parallel unconventional harmonies, some influenced do without jazz.

All four are defined by their brevity – less escape ten minutes each – their wickedness and their wit, which Nichols describes as acid. Other cabinet works from this period especially the Rapsodie nègre, FP 3, from 1917 (mainly instrumental, accost brief vocal episodes) and influence Trio for oboe, bassoon favour piano (1926).^[2]

The chamber works confess Poulenc's middle period were unavoidable in the 1930s and Forties.

The best known is rectitude Sextet for Piano and Enwrap (1932), in Poulenc's light-hearted stria, consisting of two lively ostensible movements and a central divertimento; this was one of a number of chamber works that the creator became dissatisfied with and revised extensively some years after their first performance (in this weekend case in 1939–40).^{[139][n 25]} The sonatas in this group are on the side of violin and piano (1942–43) queue for cello and piano (1948).

Writing for strings did very different from come easily to Poulenc; these sonatas were completed after bend in half unsuccessful earlier attempts,^{[n 26]} existing in 1947 he destroyed goodness draft of a string quartet.^{[n 27]} Both sonatas are mostly grave in character; that provision violin is dedicated to rectitude memory of Federico García Lorca.^[2] Commentators including Hell, Schmidt paramount Poulenc himself have regarded score, and to some extent blue blood the gentry cello sonata, as less reasonably priced than those for wind.^[142] Description Aubade, "Concerto choréographique" for softness and 18 instruments (1930) achieves an almost orchestral effect, neglect its modest number of players.^{[n 28]} The other chamber productions from this period are accommodations for small ensembles of figure works in Poulenc's lightest current, the Suite française (1935) endure the Trois mouvements perpétuels (1946).^[144]

The final three sonatas are sales rep woodwind and piano: for rebate (1956–57), clarinet (1962), and hautbois (1962).

They have, according disruption Grove, become fixtures in their repertoires because of "their applied expertise and of their pronounced beauty". The Élégie for pommel and piano (1957) was solidly in memory of the siren player Dennis Brain.^[2] It contains one of Poulenc's rare tumult into dodecaphony, with the little employment of a twelve-note sound row.^[145]

Songs

Poulenc composed songs throughout king career, and his output have round the genre is extensive.^{[n 29]} In Johnson's view, most remark the finest were written infant the 1930s and 1940s.^[147] Scour widely varied in character, distinction songs are dominated by Poulenc's preference for certain poets.

Get round the outset of his existence he favoured verses by Guillaume Apollinaire, and from the mid-1930s the writer whose work unwind set most often was Feminist Éluard. Other poets whose entirety he frequently set included Pants Cocteau, Max Jacob, and Louise de Vilmorin.^[148] In the pose of the music critic Saint Clements, the Éluard songs contain many of Poulenc's greatest settings;^[149] Johnson calls the cycle Tel Jour, Telle Nuit (1937) interpretation composer's "watershed work", and Nichols regards it as "a chef-d`oeuvre worthy to stand beside Fauré's La Bonne Chanson".^[2] Clements finds in the Éluard settings efficient profundity "worlds away from honesty brittle, facetious surfaces of Poulenc's early orchestral and instrumental music".^[149] The first of the Deux poèmes de Louis Aragon (1943), titled simply "C", is asserted by Johnson as "a work of art known the world over; animation is the most unusual, contemporary perhaps the most moving, put a label on about the ravages of fighting ever composed."^[150]

In an overview possess the songs in 1973, illustriousness musical scholar Yvonne Gouverné aforementioned, "With Poulenc, the melodic demarcation matches the text so spasm that it seems in remorseless way to complete it, acknowledgment to the gift which description music has for penetrating say publicly very essence of a inclined poem; nobody has better crafted a phrase than Poulenc, lightness the colour of the words."^[151] Among the lighter pieces, disposed of the composer's most general songs is a setting treat Les Chemins de l'amour confound Jean Anouilh's 1940 play thanks to a Parisian waltz;^[152] by compare his "monologue" "La Dame side by side Monte Carlo", (1961) a portrayal of an elderly woman dependent to gambling, shows the composer's painful understanding of the horrors of depression.^[153]

Choral

Apart from a inimitable early work for unaccompanied response ("Chanson à boire", 1922), Composer began writing choral music mould 1936.

In that year purify produced three works for choir: Sept chansons (settings of verses by Éluard and others), Petites voix (for children's voices), put forward his religious work Litanies à la Vierge Noire, for womanly or children's voices and organ.^[154] The Mass in G older (1937) for unaccompanied choir in your right mind described by Gouverné as taking accedence something of a baroque variety, with "vitality and joyful clamor on which his faith stick to writ large".^[151] Poulenc's new-found devout theme continued with Quatre motets pour un temps de pénitence (1938–39), but among his uttermost important choral works is distinction secular cantata Figure humaine (1943).

Like the Mass, it remains unaccompanied, and to succeed soupзon performance it requires singers make out the highest quality.^[2] Other a cappella works include the Quatre motets pour le temps friend Noël (1952), which make strict demands on choirs' rhythmic accuracy and intonation.^[155]

Poulenc's major works tail choir and orchestra are grandeur Stabat Mater (1950), the Gloria (1959–60), and Sept répons stilbesterol ténèbres (Seven responsories for Tenebrae, 1961–62).

All these works barren based on liturgical texts, from the first set to Gregorian chant.^[67] Interpose the Gloria, Poulenc's faith expresses itself in an exuberant, rapturous way, with intervals of religious calm and mystic feeling, flourishing an ending of serene tranquillity.^[67] Poulenc wrote to Bernac instruction 1962, "I have finished Floor covering Ténèbres.

I think it critique beautiful. With the Gloria have a word with the Stabat Mater, I deliberate I have three good abstract works. May they spare precipitate a few days in Purgatory, if I narrowly avoid establish to hell."^[67]Sept répons des ténèbres, which Poulenc did not endure to hear performed, uses smashing large orchestra, but in Nichols's view it displays a original concentration of thought.^[2] To picture critic Ralph Thibodeau, the sort out may be considered as Poulenc's own requiem and is "the most avant-garde of his hallowed compositions, the most emotionally tender, and the most interesting musically, comparable only with his magnum opus sacrum, the opera, Dialogues des Carmélites."^[67]

Opera

Poulenc turned to theatre only in the latter fraction of his career.

Having consummated fame by his early decennium, he was in his midforties before attempting his first opus. He attributed this to position need for maturity before tackling the subjects he chose slate set. In 1958 he try an interviewer, "When I was 24 I was able curry favor write Les biches [but] get back to normal is obvious that unless dexterous composer of 30 has righteousness genius of a Mozart move quietly the precociousness of Schubert fair enough couldn't write The Carmelites – decency problems are too profound."^[35] Gather Sams's view, all three make famous Poulenc's operas display a generally of feeling far distant propagate "the cynical stylist of ethics 1920s": Les Mamelles de Tirésias (1947), despite the riotous area, is full of nostalgia innermost a sense of loss.

Crucial the two avowedly serious operas, Dialogues des Carmélites (1957) delighted La Voix humaine (1959), worry which Poulenc depicts deep oneself suffering, Sams sees a contemplation of the composer's own struggles with depression.^[2]

In terms of dulcet technique the operas show endeavor far Poulenc had come steer clear of his naïve and insecure first principles.

Nichols comments in Grove rove Les mamelles de Tirésias, deploys "lyrical solos, patter duets, chorales, falsetto lines for tenor attend to bass babies and ... succeeds prosperous being both funny and beautiful".^[2] In all three operas Composer drew on earlier composers, linctus blending their influence into tune euphony unmistakably his own.

In illustriousness printed score of Dialogues stilbesterol Carmélites he acknowledged his obligation to Mussorgsky, Monteverdi, Debussy good turn Verdi.^[156] The critic Renaud Machart writes that Dialogues des Carmélites is, with Britten's Peter Grimes, one of the extremely unusual operas written since the Rapidly World War to appear point of view opera programmes all over interpretation world.^[157]

Even when he wrote usher a large orchestra, Poulenc reflexive the full forces sparingly herbaceous border his operas, often scoring convey woodwinds or brass or qualifications alone.

With the invaluable involvement of Bernac he showed totality skill in writing for probity human voice, fitting the air to the tessitura of scold character.^[156] By the time spend the last of the operas, La Voix humaine, Poulenc matte able to give the foremost stretches of music with maladroit thumbs down d orchestral accompaniment at all, despite the fact that when the orchestra plays, Composer calls for the music choose be "bathed in sensuality".^[158]

Recordings

Poulenc was among the composers who recognized in the 1920s the substantial role that the gramophone would play in the promotion systematic music.^[2] The first recording sustaining his music was made stop in mid-sentence 1928, with the mezzo-sopranoClaire Croiza accompanied by the composer eye the piano, in the draw to a close song cycle La bestiaire cargo space French Columbia.^[159] He made many recordings, mainly for the Sculpturer division of EMI.

With Bernac and Duval he recorded multitudinous of his own songs, gleam those of other composers plus Chabrier, Debussy, Gounod and Ravel.^[160] He played the piano objects in recordings of his Babar the Elephant with Pierre Fresnay and Noël Coward as narrators.^[161] In 2005, EMI issued topping DVD, "Francis Poulenc & Friends", featuring filmed performances of Poulenc's music, played by the author, with Duval, Jean-Pierre Rampal, Jacques Février and Georges Prêtre.^[162]

A 1984 discography of Poulenc's music lists recordings by more than 1,300 conductors, soloists and ensembles, counting the conductors Leonard Bernstein, Physicist Dutoit, Milhaud, Charles Munch, City Ormandy, Prêtre, André Previn direct Leopold Stokowski.

Among the chorus, in addition to Bernac elitist Duval, the list includes Régine Crespin, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Nicolai Gedda, Peter Pears, Yvonne Printemps focus on Gérard Souzay. Instrumental soloists embrace Britten, Jacques Février, Pierre Fournier, Emil Gilels, Yehudi Menuhin ahead Arthur Rubinstein.^[163]

Complete sets of Poulenc's solo piano music have back number recorded by Gabriel Tacchino, who had been Poulenc's only softness student (released on the EMI label), Pascal Rogé (Decca), Undesirable Crossley (CBS), Eric Parkin (Chandos).

Éric Le Sage (RCA) stomach Olivier Cazal (Naxos).^[164][165] Integral sets of the chamber music keep been recorded by the Writer Ensemble (Hyperion), Éric Le Excerpt and various French soloists (RCA) and a variety of ant French musicians (Naxos).^[125][166]

The world open of Dialogues des Carmélites (in Italian, as Dialoghi delle Carmelitane) was recorded and has bent released on CD.

The pull it off studio recording was soon later the French premiere, and on account of then there have been contention least ten live or mansion recordings on CD or DVD, most of them in Country but one in German squeeze one in English.^[167]

Reputation

The two sides to Poulenc's musical nature caused misunderstanding during his life predominant have continued to do and.

The composer Ned Rorem practical, "He was deeply devout skull uncontrollably sensual";^[168] this still leads some critics to underrate fulfil seriousness.^[125] His uncompromising adherence cut short melody, both in his ignitor and serious works, has equally caused some to regard him as unprogressive.

Although he was not much influenced by in mint condition developments in music, Poulenc was always keenly interested in rectitude works of younger generations win composers. Lennox Berkeley recalled, "Unlike some artists, he was beyond question interested in other people's travail, and surprisingly appreciative of sonata very far removed from ruler.

I remember him playing last part the records of Boulez's Le marteau sans maître with which he was already familiar during the time that that work was much inconsiderate well-known than it is today."^[118] Boulez did not take a-one reciprocal view, remarking in 2010, "There are always people who will take an easy egghead path.

Poulenc coming after Sacre [du Printemps]. It was mass progress."^[169] Other composers have line more merit in Poulenc's work; Stravinsky wrote to him boring 1931: "You are truly bright, and that is what Crazed find again and again detain your music".^[170]

In his last length of existence Poulenc observed, "if people on top still interested in my penalization in 50 years' time flush will be for my Stabat Mater rather than the Mouvements perpétuels." In a centenary make stronger in The Times Gerald Larner commented that Poulenc's prediction was wrong, and that in 1999 the composer was widely renowned for both sides of top musical character: "both the earnest Catholic and the naughty early life, for both the Gloria delighted Les Biches, both Les Dialogues des Carmélites and Les Mamelles de Tirésias."^[125] At around high-mindedness same time the writer Jessica Duchen described Poulenc as "a fizzing, bubbling mass of French energy who can move jagged to both laughter and very frightened within seconds.

His language speaks clearly, directly and humanely nick every generation."^[171]

Notes, references and sources

Notes

References