Francis POULENC (1899-1963)
Born
into a family of musicians in Paris, France, Francis Poulenc began his education
in classical music under the tutelage of his mother. At the age of 15, he went
on to study with Ricardo Vines and was subsequently introduced to Satie, Casella,
Auric and others. Although he had no formal education in musical technique and
never studied counterpoint or orchestration, Poulenc had an instinctive
knowledge of form. During the First World War, his reputation as a composer
blossomed and he became known as one of the six French composers affectionately
known then as gLes Sixh, a group staunchly set against romanticism
and impressionism. (This group also
comprised names like Honegger, Milhaud, Auric, Duray and Tailleferre,
centering around Satie) He first gained notorious prominence as a composert when
the performance of his Rapsodie Negre in 1917, an early attempt at Gauguin-esque
exotica in which a baritone chants the Madagascan word gHo-no-lu-luh over
and over, was vitriolically attacked by the director of the Paris Conservatoire.
The
years immediately following the First World War saw the emergence of
gDadaismh, a nihilistic art movement based on irrationality and negation of
the accepted laws of aesthetics and cultural values by producing works marked by
nonsense, travesty, and incongruity. Although
most artists outgrew Dadaism by the early 1920s, Poulenc clung on to some of the
movement's anti-conventional techniques. His friendships with leading
avant-garde French poets of the time also led him to write numerous songs. In
this genre, 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. A virtuoistic
pianist, the keyboard dominated his early efforts at composing. Initially
light-hearted and ironic, his musical style gained new depth after the death of
a close friend in 1935. That same
year also witnessed Poulencfs conversion to Catholicism, which was marked by a
Mass setting written in 1937, and, more notably, the moving Stabat mater of
1950.
Around
the time of the Second World War, Poulenc won considerable success with his
comic opera Les Mamelles de Tirésias, set to a text by Apollinaire,
written during the later days of the Second World War and staged in Paris in
1947. The tragic opera Dialogue des Carmélites, 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 also entered international repertoire.
Other stage works, in addition to a number of scores of incidental music and
film music, include the ballet Les Biches, premiered in Monte Carlo in 1924. In
the realm of orchestral music, Poulenc's main contributions include a suite from
Les biches, a charming Concert champêtre for harpsichord and small
orchestra, as well as concertos for organ, for piano and for two pianos.
Poulenc's music presents an eclectic yet personal style, and is essentially
diatonic and melodious, embroidered with 20th century dissonances. It has wit,
elegance, depth of feeling, and a bitter-sweetness derived from his personality
of light-hearted gaiety and manic depression. To this day, his music remains a
prominent part of many musicians all over the world.
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