Francis Poulenc

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France (1899 – 1963)

Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc (January 7, 1899 - January 30, 1963) was a French composer and a member of the French Group Les Six.

He was a Parisian by birth and death, and always preferred the city to the country. His mother, an amateur pianist, taught him to play, and music formed a part of family life.

Poulenc was a member of Les Six, a group of young French composers, Darius Milhaud, Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger and Germaine Tailleferre, who also had links with Erik Satie and Jean Cocteau. He embraced the movement’s techniques, creating melodies that would have been appropriate for Parisian music halls. An outstanding pianist, Poulenc featured the keyboard in many of his early compositions. He also, throughout his career, borrowed from his own compositions as well as those of Mozart and Camille Saint-Saëns.

He composed music in all major genres, including art song, chamber music, oratorio, opera, ballet music and orchestral music. Among Poulenc’s last series of major works is a series of works for Winds and Piano. He was particularly fond of the woodwind instruments, and planned a set of sonatas for all of them, yet only lived to complete four: the Flute Sonata (1956), and sonatas for oboe, clarinet and horn.

Poulenc’s Rapsodie nègre (1917), written for baritone, piano, string quartet, flute, and clarinet, sets nonsense syllables purportedly by a black Liberian poet.
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  • Bacteria4

    I think whoever composed the Apocalypse now soundtrack must have listened to his Concerto for Organ. Quite a few similarities

    last month

  • Aotus

    I'm looking for the 1957 Flute Sonata, can anyone point me in the right direction? Thanks!

    April 2011

  • yu00

    Such a great composer, I particularly love his organ concerto and his sinfonietta

    March 2011

  • ConkertheKing

    Playing the double piano concerto in our orchestra. good stuff!

    September 2010

  • Zlotythepoet

    Ou sont les "animaux modeles"? :(

    May 2010

  • Crashnodarfan

    Sombre nuit, aveugles ténèbres, Fuyez; Le jour s'approche et l'Olympe blanchit

    April 2010

  • theo_equis

    poulenc is where it's at

    March 2010

  • oseland

    ha, poo-long.

    February 2010

  • wafizainalmusic

    Dialogues of the Carmelites!

    February 2010

  • freezegelman

    nocturne #5 is where its at

    January 2010

  • moonlit_reverie

    Happy Birthday Poulenc! :)

    January 2010

  • _KevMusic_

    Everything he writes is so damned perfect :) The violin sonata is one of the most perfect things in existence, in my opinion. Beautiful, haunting, angry, dissonant yet melodic - simply perfect. And very definitely in my top 5 violin sonatas (the others being Prok 1, Enescu 3, Franck and about 50 others - as is how it is when there is such a wealth of "back catalogue")

    February 2009

  • tbwilliams

    French pronunciation sounds a lot like 'poo-long'. You don't actually make a harsh 'kuh' sound at the end. Just say poolong and deaden the 'ng' sound quickly. It'll sound pretty much right

    November 2008

  • Epitymbidia

    Hm, for those who are able to read the International Phonetic Alphabet it's quite simple: [pulɛ̃k], but the main problem is, I think, that there is no sound as the French [ɛ̃] in English. The one English open-mid front unrounded vowel [ɛ] is quite different from the French two, especially from the [ɛ̃]... So maybe "Pool-Ahnk" is really not so bad. I would have said "Pool-Unc" though, with "unc" as in "uncle", but with a long vowel...

    November 2008

  • nplanet

    What is the correct pronunciation of his last name?

    October 2008

  • bibo42

    There's nothing like the Organ Concerto after a lousy day at the office. But you need to turn it up LOUD (sorry neighbors).

    July 2008

  • KraeheK

    "but I'm an uneducated honkey" An affliction so many of us suffer from :-( Mr. Poulenc: your choral music kicks ass...

    July 2008

  • villa_seurat

    Monsigneur - vous ete un homme de couer et un musicien immense. Merci

    January 2008

  • Amina172

    Join Schumann group!

    October 2007

  • Mokami

    I am the first!

    August 2007
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