Francis Poulenc

From the ebullient early years of the Groupe des Six to the seriousness of the opera Dialogue des Carmélites, via neo-classicism and light melodies, Francis Poulenc did not usurp the label "monk or rogue" attributed to him by critic Claude Rostand. Born in Paris on January 7, 1899, his father was Émile Poulenc, founder of the pharmaceutical company of the same name, which after a merger became the Rhône-Poulenc group, renamed Aventis. From the age of five, his mother Jennie-Zoé Royer gave him his first piano lessons, before entrusting him to the care of Ricardo Viñes, who introduced him to his friends Satie, Debussy and Ravel. On the death of his parents (his mother in 1915, then his father two years later), he lived with his older sister Jeanne and their maternal grandfather in Nogent-sur-Marne, before studying at the Lycée Condorcet in Paris. At eighteen, he gave his first concert at the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier, then tried to enter the Paris Conservatoire, but was rejected after auditioning his avant-garde Rapsodie nègre (1917), which Stravinsky liked enough to persuade the British publisher Chester to publish it. With his friend Georges Auric, he frequented the Maison des amis des livres where, under the patronage of Adrienne Monnier, he met the poets Jean Cocteau, Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob and Paul Éluard, whose texts he set to music. In 1918, based on Apollinaire's collection, Poulenc composed the song cycle Le Bestiaire ou Cortège d'Orphée, premiered by Suzanne Peignot and recorded with baritone Pierre Bernac, who was to become his regular performer. The young artists thus formed the Groupe des Six, named in 1920 by critic Henri Collet after the Groupe des Cinq of leading Russian composers. The collective, which included Poulenc, Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud and Germaine Tailleferre, produced just two works, the piano collection Album des Six and the ballet Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel, based on an argument by Cocteau, before disbanding. From 1921 to 1925, Poulenc, who had no formal training, took composition classes with Charles Koechlin. On January 6, 1924, he performed Les Biches in Monte-Carlo as part of Serge de Diaghilev's Ballets Russes program, before signing Chansons gaillardes two years later. In 1927, the composer left Paris to settle in Noizay, Touraine, on the Le Grand Coteau estate. The following year, he wrote Concert champêtre, a harpsichord concerto for Wanda Landowska premiered under the direction of Pierre Monteux, followed in 1932 by Concerto pour deux pianos premiered with Jacques Février, both commissioned by the Princesse de Polignac. The association with Bernac continued with Paul Éluard's Cinq poèmes (1935), which toured the world until 1959, and for which he composed ninety of his one hundred and forty-five melodies. 1935 was also the year of revelation, marking his return to the Catholic faith during a pilgrimage to Rocamadour. Without losing any of his whimsy, Poulenc tackled religious subjects, adapting his style to the austere tonality of Litanies à la Vierge noire (1936), Messe en sol majeur for mixed a cappella choir and the cantata Sécheresses (1937), or Quatre motets pour un temps de pénitence (1939). During the Second World War, he created the text and music for the humorous ballet Animaux modèles, presented at the Paris Opéra in 1942 and followed by the music for Jacques de Baroncelli's film La Duchesse de Langeais. He composed the cantata Figure humaine, first performed with texts and Éluard's poem Liberté in 1945. The following year, he set Jean de Brunhoff's children's story L'Histoire de Babar, le petit éléphant to music for radio. And for a more adult audience, the opéra-bouffe Les Mamelles de Tirésias (after Apollinaire), whose lead role was created by Denise Duval at the Opéra-Comique in 1947. The Sinfonietta, for chamber orchestra, dates from the same year, followed by the Stabat Mater in 1950. After returning from a tour with Bernac, and despite health problems, Poulenc began work on an adaptation of an unpublished text by Georges Bernanos, Dialogues des carmélites, about the persecution of nuns at the time of the Terror during the French Revolution. Commissioned by Ricordi, the Italian-language version starring Leyla Gencer and Virginia Zeani premiered at La Scala in Milan on January 26, 1957, before being revived in French with Régine Crespin and Denise Duval at the Opéra Garnier on June 21 of the same year. American soprano Leontyne Price, who had already performed Poulenc's melodies, premiered the role in her home country at the San Francisco Opera. In 1958, Poulenc adapted Cocteau's lyric tragedy La Voix humaine for the stage, a monologue in the Sprechgesang style premiered again by Denise Duval at Paris's Salle Favart on February 6, 1959. This was followed by a final sacred work, a Gloria for soprano, mixed choir and orchestra, premiered in Boston by Charles Munch on January 20, 1961, and in Paris by Georges Prêtre the following month. On January 30, 1963, Francis Poulenc succumbed to a heart attack at the age of 64. Two other works were premiered posthumously: a Sonata for oboe and piano by Pierre Pierlot and Jacques Février, and a Sonata for clarinet and piano by Benny Goodman and Leonard Bernstein.

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