Francis Poulenc

Before he had any formal training as a composer, Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) was already famous as one of Les six, a group of young Parisian composers and pals who were linked to Jean Cocteau and Erik Satie, and who were regarded by their admirers as the antidote to the perceived excesses of both Germanic Romanticism and Gallic Impressionism. Of their group (the others being Honegger, Milhaud, and the virtually forgotten Auric, Durey, and Tailleferre), Poulenc’s music remains the most frequently performed. Although the musical influences of Stravinsky and the Parisian dance-hall are often present, Poulenc’s unpretentious style remains clearly his own, characterized by effortless melody, distinct rhythms, and novel yet gorgeous diatonic harmonies.

Besides making him one of the great choral composers of the 20th Century, his affinity for the human voice makes him Fauré’s successor in the realm of the French art song, and beginning in 1935 Poulenc had a very successful performance career accompanying French baritone Pierre Bernac (1899-1979), for whom he wrote about 90 songs for their recitals. Among Poulenc’s favorite poets was Guillame Apollinaire (1880-1918), and both Voyage à Paris and Hôtel are from the five settings of Apollinaire’s verses included in Poulenc’s 1940 song cycle, Banalités. One might say that the first of these paints the French capital as the “City of Carnival Lights, ” while the seconds paints a languid picture of sun streaming in through partially opened shutters on a slow riser whose ambition is as yet as ill-defined as the smoke circles he blows. Another Apollinaire poem, Rosemonde in which the poet reminisces about, well, stalking a woman through the streets of Amsterdam for a couple of hours, was specifically chosen with the audience for a 1954 Dutch recital in mind.

Mazurka is from Mouvements du Coeur (Stirrings of the Heart, 1949), seven songs by six different composers commissioned in commemoration of the 100th death anniversary of Chopin, especially appropriate as we celebrate Chopin’s 200th birth anniversary this year. In it French poet Louise Vilmorin (1902-1969) uses a refrain that recalls the children’s song, Ainsi font (This is How They Go), as she depicts the antics of flirtatious young dancers as if they were predictable movements of puppets.

Music @ Main 3/24/2010: Nocchiero & Biernacki

He also had a special affinity for wind instruments, and Poulenc’s mature chamber works featuring winds are among the most gratifying for both performers and listeners. Something of an anomaly among Poulenc’s works in that it flirts ever so gently with serialism (by way of Stravinsky more than Schoenberg), the 1957 Élégie is a darkly attractive and understandably somber tribute to the truly extraordinary British horn virtuoso Dennis Brain who, at age 36, lately had died in a car crash.

--Intermezzo Sunday Concerts, January 13, 2008 (Aaron Brask, horn)

Francis Poulenc: Sonata, Op. 143 (1940-48) [on YouTube]

I. Allegro-Tempo di marcia. II. Cavatine. III. Ballabile. IV. Finale

Poulenc, himself a pianist, had a much-lauded talent for writing for wind instruments, but he apparently felt a little less secure writing for solo strings: while working on his Cello Sonata, Op. 143 (1940-1948), he enlisted the advice of French cello virtuoso Pierre Fournier, to whom the work is dedicated. The advice paid off, such that in this duo for cello and piano Poulenc created what author and critic David Hurwitz identifies as the composer's "biggest and most important solo sonata."