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Francis Poulenc (1899-1963)
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After receiving a classical education, the French composer Francis Poulenc studied with Ricardo Vines who introduced him to Satie and Auric. During the First World War he worked as a typist for the Admiralty in Paris and became one of the six French composers (with including Honegger, Auric, Tailleferre, Durey and Milhaud), known as Les Six, who rejected romaticism and impressionism. After the war he studied under Charles Koechlin. Initially light-hearted and ironic in style, the death of a close friend in 1935 brought a new depth to his work. The songs written after 1935, when he began accompanying the French baritone Pierre Bernac, are among his best works.
Poulenc won considerable success with his comic opera Les Mamelles de Tiresias, with a text by Apollinaire, written in 1944 and staged in Paris in 1947. The tragic opera Dialogue des Carmelites, with a libretto by Georges Bernanos dealing with the execution of Carmelite nuns during the French Revolution and based on Gertrud von le Fort's novel Die Letzte am Schafott (The Last on the Scaffold), has entered international repertoire. Other stage works, in addition to a number of scores of incidental music and film music, include the ballet Les Biches, first staged in Monte Carlo in 1924. Poulenc's orchestral music includes a suite from Les biches, a charming Concert champetre for harpsichord and small orchestra, as well as concertos for organ, for piano and for two pianos. Poulenc made a significant and idiomatic contribution to the art of French solo song, in addition to a number of choral works. His solo songs range from settings of Apollinaire and Cocteau to settings of Ronsard. His melodrama L'Histoire de Babar, for reciter and piano, tells the story of Babar the Elephant, the creation of Jean de Brunhoff, a simple tale for children. His church music, after his inner conversion to the Catholic religion of his childhood in 1935, is marked by a Mass setting of 1937, and, more notably, the moving Stabat mater of 1950. In 1959 came the Gloria, for solo soprano, chorus and orchestra, with a final more sombre Sept repons des tenebres in 1961. Poulenc's ability in the handling of woodwind instruments is exemplified in his sonatas for flute, for clarinet and for oboe and piano, in addition to an attractive Trio for oboe, bassoon and piano.The best known of all Poulenc's music was at one time the three Mouvements perpetuels of 1918. There is a piano duet sonata of the same year and a number of attractive short pieces, including a neo-classical Suite after Claude Gervaise and the elegant Promenades. [Adapted from Karadar]
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