Poulenc adored what he called bad music, then wrote profound sacred works
Francis Poulenc's mother, a capable pianist, played everything from classics to lowbrow pieces, leaving her son forever fond of what he called adorable bad music. He became known for irreverent wit, yet from 1936 he also wrote serious religious works, a side long overlooked until 21st-century revivals of his opera Dialogues des Carmélites.
Born in Paris on 7 January 1899, Poulenc was the only son of Émile Poulenc, co-owner of the pharmaceutical firm Poulenc Frères, later Rhône-Poulenc. Because his family expected him to enter the firm, conservatoire training was ruled out. He began piano at five and at eight was captivated by Debussy. After his mother died when he was sixteen, and his father two years later, the pianist Ricardo Viñes became his spiritual mentor as well as his teacher.
A childhood friend, Raymonde Linossier, took him in 1916 to Adrienne Monnier's bookshop, where he met Apollinaire, Éluard and Aragon, poets whose verse he later set to music. His debut came in 1917 with Rapsodie nègre, dedicated to Erik Satie. Through Satie he joined the young composers labelled Les Six, a grouping one of its members called entirely arbitrary, based on friendship rather than shared outlook. Jean Cocteau served as their father figure, and Poulenc set his words from 1919 to 1961.
Conscripted from January 1918 to January 1921, he served at the front between July and October 1918 and ended as a typist at the Ministry of Aviation, a post that left time to compose. Conscious of his missing academic training, he studied intermittently with Charles Koechlin from 1921 to 1925. Luckily for him, public taste was turning away from late-romantic lushness toward the fresh charm of his work.
His catalogue spans the ballet Les Biches (1923), the Organ Concerto (1938) and the Gloria (1959). He was a fine pianist, touring Europe and America with the baritone Pierre Bernac and the soprano Denise Duval, and was among the first composers to grasp the gramophone's importance, recording extensively from 1928. He died on 30 January 1963; in France he was long filed as lightweight until new productions of La Voix humaine and his Carmelite opera drew attention to his serious side.
Source: Francis Poulenc
