Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc (January 7, 1899 - January 30, 1963) was a Fren… Read Full Bio ↴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 Dada 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. The piece, dedicated to Erik Satie, kept him out of the Paris Conservatoire, composition teacher Paul Vidal saying, according to Poulenc, "Your work stinks, it's inept, infamous balls... Ah! I see you're a follower of the Igor Stravinsky and Erik Satie gang. Well, goodbye!" Stravinsky, hearing of this story, arranged to have the piece printed.
Later in his life, the loss of some close friends, coupled with a pilgrimage to the Black Madonna of Rocamadour, led him to rediscovery of his faith and resulted in compositions of a more sombre, austere tone. His opera, Les Dialogues des Carmelites was written at this time.
France
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 Dada 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. The piece, dedicated to Erik Satie, kept him out of the Paris Conservatoire, composition teacher Paul Vidal saying, according to Poulenc, "Your work stinks, it's inept, infamous balls... Ah! I see you're a follower of the Igor Stravinsky and Erik Satie gang. Well, goodbye!" Stravinsky, hearing of this story, arranged to have the piece printed.
Later in his life, the loss of some close friends, coupled with a pilgrimage to the Black Madonna of Rocamadour, led him to rediscovery of his faith and resulted in compositions of a more sombre, austere tone. His opera, Les Dialogues des Carmelites was written at this time.
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Mélancolie FP 105
Francis Poulenc Lyrics
We have lyrics for these tracks by Francis Poulenc:
8 chansons polonaises: VII. La Vistule Płynie Wisła płynie Po polskiej krainie Po polskiej krainie …
Huit chansons polonaises FP 69: Jezioro Płynie Wisła płynie Po polskiej krainie Po polskiej krainie …
Huit chansons polonaises FP 69: Wianek Płynie Wisła płynie Po polskiej krainie Po polskiej krainie …
Huit chansons polonaises FP 69: Wisła Płynie Wisła płynie Po polskiej krainie Po polskiej krainie …
Les Chemins De I'amour Les chemins qui montent à la mer ont gardé de…
Les chemins de l'amour Les chemins qui montent à la mer ont gardé de…
Les chemins de l'amour FP 106 Les chemins qui montent à la mer ont gardé de…
Les Chemins De L'amour FP. 106 Les chemins qui montent à la mer ont gardé de…
Les Chemins De L`amour Les chemins qui montent à la mer ont gardé de…
Salve Regina Salve Regina, Mater misericordiae, Vita, dulcedo et spes nos…
Salve Regina FP110 Salve Regina, Mater misericordiae, Vita, dulcedo et spes nos…
Stabat Mater: II. Cujus Animam Gementem Cujus animam gementem Contristatam ac dolentem Pertransivit,…
The lyrics are frequently found in the comments by searching or by filtering for lyric videos
Baileyrob
Poulenc's music is a great example of how we'll never run out of new things to do with tonal music!
David Brant
Yet it sounds atonal
Baileyrob
@David Brant ... ...
...
What?
ETMusic2
@Baileyrob Personally, think that tonality and atonality exist on a spectrum rather than as two distinct ways of doing things. This I would consider to be maybe like 70% tonality and 30% atonality, in a similar place to the works of Debussy or Ravel. Clearly influenced by sounds that are "outside" of tonality (whole tone especially!), but firmly rooted in tonal harmony.
Baileyrob
@ETMusic2 I absolutely disagree. Chromaticism is not atonality. This work was not written in the spirit of atonality, it's fundamentally a tonal work. Arguably the only 'atonal' music is dodecaphony. To say 'this work has a bit of atonality in it' is to seriously misunderstand the harmonies used and the reason behind its creation. Atonality pertains to a very slim canon of works in my opinion. Ones which go out of their way to be completely and consistently out of key, but still limit themselves to the 12 chromatic tones. Even the Messiaen modes are built from little shards of tonal scales.
I.,.,..,-"':;:-,;;^_:;-:'_
@Baileyrob a lot of music from the 1910s on can be said to be "atonal", from expressionism to serialism and beyond. It came to be associated almost exclusively with the second Viennese school, but I think historically the term has been used more broadly and as a purely negative concept - it's really just that, music that negates the conventions of eigteenth and nineteenth century tonality. So it will typically feautre irregular frasing, less sequences and candential cliches, an instrumentation which goes against the ideals of homogeneity and balance which developed during the classical era and so on. Schoenberg didn't just change the chords, he basically understood what it means to make music without organizing musical events in hierarchical fashion around the tonic chord. In this stylistic sense one may argue that Debussy for instance is as "atonal" as Schoenberg, beacuse even if he uses tonal or modal sonorities he arranjes them according to a completely different conception of form. I mean, no one really writes sonatas anymore, and the sonata is the tonal form par excellence, it's based on the tension between harmonic regions, it needs to affirm the tonality, modulate and then come back etc. Everyone uses triads but no one writes tonal music. If one focuses on which notes and harmonies are used the discussion becomes quite abstract and in my opinion not very helpful. Steve Reich uses this group of notes and so does Beethoven, and so does Paul McCartney etc but it doesn't really say anything about the music. I personally think it's more useful to think historically, when I was in music school we would have some very long discussions about "is this tonal or is this not, it has triads but to many added notes" or "this music is unnatural because it uses a quartal chord and nature gave us tonality" and so on and in the end I don't think this leads anywhere.
Samuel Holt
That last cord is so profoundly brilliant! Kind of how life is - things don’t end exactly “right” or exactly the way we would’ve hoped!
richard blake
I am stunned by this piece. I feel like I am floating. Gorgeous chords and running like the wind or a stream. So well played. Thank you for posting this. I have a new piece to start a new journey. Praise!
Randy Reade
This is a wonderful performance! Rogé's tone is subtle, dark and lyrical. His tempo is spot on -- I've heard it played many times too fast. He also has clarity and articulation while still enveloping the tones in a wash of color. That balance is difficult to achieve.
Jim Griffin
To me, he is one of the top three Satie interpreters.