Life.: Poulenc, Francis

Poulenc, Francis
Myriam Chimènes and Roger Nichols
https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.22202
Published in print: 20 January 2001
Published online: 2001
(b Paris, Jan 7, 1899; d Paris, Jan 30, 1963). French composer and pianist. During the first half of his
career the simplicity and directness of his writing led many critics away from thinking of him as a
serious composer. Gradually, since World War II, it has become clear that the absence from his music of
linguistic complexity in no way argues a corresponding absence of feeling or technique; and that while,
in the field of French religious music, he disputes supremacy with Messiaen, in that of the mélodie he
is the most distinguished composer since the death of Fauré.
1. Life.
Myriam Chimènes
Born into a wealthy bourgeois family, Poulenc was Aveyronais by descent through his father, Emile
Poulenc, director of a family pharmaceutical business which eventually became the giant Rhône-
Poulenc, and of Parisian stock through his mother Jenny, née Royer, from a family of artist-craftsmen.
Poulenc regarded this dual heredity as the key to his musical personality: he associated his deep
Catholic faith with his Aveyronais roots and attributed his artistic heritage to his mother's family. It is
certainly the case that two strands, profane and religious, co-exist in his work: he was the composer of
the Chansons gaillardes as well as a Mass, of Les mamelles de Tirésias as well as a Stabat mater. The
two sources of inspiration were summed up by Claude Rostand in the celebrated remark: ‘In Poulenc
there is something of the monk and something of the rascal’.
His mother introduced him to the piano at the age of five, and before long entrusted him to a teacher
who was a coach for Cécile Boutet de Monvel, Franck's niece. In spite of his obvious talent and taste
for music, Poulenc bowed to his father's wishes and completed a conventional classical education at
the Lycée Condorcet, the condition on which he would then be allowed to enter the Conservatoire. But
the war and his parents' early deaths (his mother died when he was 16, his father when he was 18)
upset all his plans. From 1914 to 1917 Poulenc was the pupil of Ricardo Viñes, who, far more than a
teacher, was a spiritual mentor and the dedicatee or first performer of his earliest works. He affirmed
that the influence of Viñes had determined his career as pianist and composer, and thanks to him he
made the acquaintance of other musicians, notably Auric, Satie and Falla. He also met poets and
writers, and it was around this time that he was taken to Adrienne Monnier's bookshop in the rue de
l'Odéon by his childhood friend Raymonde Linossier, the future lawyer and orientalist, where he had
the privilege of meeting Apollinaire, Eluard, Breton, Aragon, Gide, Fargue, Valéry and Claudel, and to
become familiar with their work.
Poulenc destroyed his first attempts at composition, dating from 1914. He made his public début in
Paris in 1917 with his first work, Rapsodie nègre, dedicated to Satie and performed at the Théâtre du
Vieux Colombier at one of the avant-garde concerts organized by Jane Bathori. Stravinsky, whose
influence he had felt, took note of him and helped him to get his first works published by Chester in
London. A conscript from January 1918 to January 1921, Poulenc did not let military service interfere
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with composition, and produced, notably, Trois mouvements perpétuels which enjoyed immediate
success, and Le bestiaire, his first cycle of mélodies on poems by Apollinaire. His works were often
performed in the concerts given at the studio of the painter Emile Lejeune, in the rue Huyghens in
Montparnasse, where programmes also included the work of Milhaud, Auric, Honegger, Tailleferre and
Durey. This led to the birth of the ‘Groupe des Six’ in 1920, baptized by Henri Collet in a review of a
concert featuring all of them. Rather than a shared aesthetic, these composers were united by strong
friendship.
Instead of following a conventional course, Poulenc's years of study overlapped with the start of his
career. He already had a certain reputation when he approached Charles Koechlin in 1921, asking him
for lessons because until then he had ‘obeyed the dictates of instinct rather than intelligence’. He was
still Koechlin's pupil when he received a commission from Diaghilev for the Ballets russes: Les biches,
first performed in Monte Carlo in 1924, was a great popular and critical success. As well as intellectual
and artistic circles, Poulenc frequented Parisian society, in an age when private patronage still played
an important role in musical life. Princesse Edmond de Polignac (at whose home he met Wanda
Landowska, dedicatee and first performer of Concert champêtre) commissioned his Concerto for Two
Pianos and his Organ Concerto, while Aubade and Le bal masqué were composed specially for events
organized by Marie-Laure and Charles de Noailles. Poulenc was quick to see that the gramophone
would play a major role in the diffusion of music, and the earliest recordings of his own work date from
1928. He suffered his first serious bout of depression in the late 1920s, at about the time he became
fully aware of his homosexuality. He was permanently scarred by the death of Raymonde Linossier in
1930. His letters reveal that she was the only woman he ever wanted to marry. Throughout his life, his
letters testify to the complexity of his emotional life, which was closely bound up with his creativity;
they also reveal the existence of a daughter, born in 1946. Subject to a manic-depressive cycle, Poulenc
always rebounded from depression into phases of enthusiasm, and was possessed successively by
doubt and contentment.
The landmarks of Poulenc's life in the 1930s were the formation of a duo with the baritone Pierre
Bernac and the composition of his first religious works. In 1934 he decided to start a career on the
concert platform with Bernac, for whom he eventually composed some 90 mélodies, specifically for
their recitals together. Their association lasted until 1959. The rhythm of Poulenc's life was determined
henceforth by periods of concert-giving alternating with periods of composition. He divided his life
between Paris, to which he retained a visceral attachment, and his house at Noizay in Touraine, where
he retreated to work. He was deeply affected by the death of the composer Pierre-Octave Ferroud, but
a pilgrimage to Notre Dame de Rocamadour in 1936 revived his Catholic faith, the immediate first
fruits of which were Litanies à la vierge noire.
Poulenc passed the greater part of World War II at Noizay, which was in the German zone of
occupation. There he composed, notably, Les animaux modèles, first performed at the Paris Opéra in
1942, and Figure humaine, settings of clandestinely published poems by Eluard. His first opera, Les
mamelles de Tirésias, received its première at the Opéra-Comique in 1947 and inaugurated his
collaboration with the soprano Denise Duval, who became his favourite female interpreter. 1948 saw
the extension of Poulenc's international career, as he made his first concert tour in the United States.
He returned there regularly until 1960, to give concerts with Bernac or Duval, or to attend first
performances of some of his works, notably the Piano Concerto, commissioned by the Boston SO.
Between 1947 and 1949, recognizing the important influence that radio had acquired, he devised and
presented a series of broadcasts on French national radio.
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During the 1950s he was a dedicated composer: fiercely independent, deliberately distancing himself
from the musical mainstream of the time, while remaining attentive to what happened there. He had
gone to Vienna to meet Schoenberg in 1922, and from their inception he subscribed to the concerts of
Domaine musical. Of his compositions of this decade, Dialogues des Carmélites, commissioned by La
Scala, Milan, rapidly gained international success, and La voix humaine sealed nearly 50 years of
friendship with Jean Cocteau. In 1963 Poulenc died suddenly of a heart attack in his Paris apartment.
2. Piano music.
Roger Nichols
From Viñes, Poulenc learnt a clear but colourful style of piano playing, based on a subtle use of the
sustaining pedal, and in his own piano music he was insistent on there being ‘beaucoup de pédale’. In
his earlier pieces such a style gives body to the often arrogantly ‘popular’ tunes that abound, softening
the ostinatos in the Sonata for piano duet (1918) and the quasi-Alberti bass in Trois mouvements
perpétuels (1918). In Promenades (1921), written for Artur Rubinstein, a tougher harmonic language
appears, based on 4ths and 7ths, and the texture is thicker than in any of his other works for the
instrument.
The bulk of his piano music dates from the early 1930s, a time when he was reappraising the materials
of his art. He later admitted that his reliance on past formulae (long pedal notes, arpeggios, repeated
chords) was not always free of routine and that in this regard his familiarity with the piano could be a
hindrance; his most inventive piano writing, he claimed, was to be found in his song accompaniments.
Even so, a piece such as the Second Nocturne, Bal de jeunes filles, of 1933 is charming enough not to
need supporting with claims of originality; it is in the manner of Chabrier but is still unmistakably
Poulenc. His own favourite pieces were the 15 Improvisations, ranging in date from 1932 to 1959 and
in dedicatee from Marguerite Long to Edith Piaf. This confirms that the piano was not always a vehicle
for his deepest thoughts; he called the Thème variée (1951) an ‘oeuvre sérieuse’ and included a
retrograde version of the theme in the coda to show that he was up with the latest serial ideas, but it is
hardly the best of him. Inexplicably, he loathed what many would regard as his best piano work, Les
soirées des Nazelles (1930–36), a suite of eight variations enclosed by a ‘Préambule’ and a ‘Final’
which might be described as the fusion of eclectic ideas in a glow of friendship and nostalgia. Ex.1 is
typical of the suite and of Poulenc in the use of the dominant 13th, the pause after the end of the first
phrase, the barely disguised sequence of 4ths in the bass and the circuitous route taken in bars 3–5
between the closely related keys of E minor and G major, a characteristically impertinent blend of the
preceding and succeeding harmonic areas.
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Ex.1 Les soirées des Nazelles, III
3. Chamber music.
Roger Nichols
Poulenc's output in this genre falls conveniently into three chronological groups. The four works of the
first period (1918–26), each under ten minutes in length, are acidly witty, garnishing plain triadic and
scalic themes with spicy dissonances. No doubt they share something of the spirit of the 18th-century
divertissement, but the properties of harmonic and syntactical behaviour are not unfailingly observed.
In the Sonata for clarinet and bassoon (1922) there are passages of jazz and bitonality, often leading to
a mischievous cadence; in the Sonata for horn, trumpet and trombone (1922) the opening trumpet
theme is one of Poulenc's ‘folksongs’, clearly a relation of many in Les biches, which needs the
correction of only three ‘wrong’ notes in the first four bars for it to conform with 18th-century
harmonic practice – as it were, Pergolesi with his wig awry. The central group comprises the Sextet for
piano and wind (1932–9), one of his most popular works, and the sonatas for violin and piano (1942–3)
and for cello and piano (1940–8). Poulenc admitted to being unhappy writing for solo strings and had
written and destroyed two violin sonatas (1919 and 1924) before the surviving example, dedicated to
the memory of Lorca and first performed by Ginette Neveu. Poulenc consigned a string quartet to the
Paris sewers in 1947, rescuing three themes from it for his Sinfonietta. The final three sonatas for
woodwind, like the last three chamber works of Debussy, form part of a set that Poulenc did not live to
complete. They have already entered their appropriate repertories by virtue both of their technical
expertise and of their profound beauty. In the Sonata for oboe and piano (1962), Poulenc's last work,
dedicated to the memory of Prokofiev, his usual fast–slow–fast pattern of movements is altered to slow–
fast–slow, in which the final ‘déploration’ fulfils both affective and instrumental requirements.
4. Orchestral music.
Roger Nichols
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The best of Poulenc's orchestral music dates from before World War II. The first of his major works was
the Concert champêtre (1927–8), inspired by the playing and character of Wanda Landowska. The
countryside evoked is nothing more savage than a Parisian suburb and the fanfares in the last
movement emanate from nothing more exotic than the bugles in the barracks of Vincennes, but for all
that it is an enchanting work. Finer still are the two concertos commissioned by the Princess Edmond
de Polignac, for two pianos (1932) and for organ, strings and timpani (1938). The earlier of the two,
first performed by the composer and his friend Jacques Février, has no aim beyond entertainment, in
which it succeeds completely; its models range from Balinese gamelan at the end of the first movement
to Mozart at the beginning of the second, but as in the case of the Sonata for horn, trumpet and
trombone, Poulenc's 18th-century style affords a number of calculated inelegances before branching
off in a quite different direction. The Organ Concerto is altogether deeper in emotional character while
remaining stylistically ambivalent. Recognizably a product of ‘Janus-Poulenc’, it leads the solo
instrument from Bach's G minor Fantasia to the fairground and back again. Poulenc placed it ‘on the
outskirts’ of his religious music.
5. Music for the stage.

Roger Nichols
A number of Poulenc's dramatic works deal with the inconsequential, if not the downright absurd. His
first effort was incidental music to Le gendarme incompris (1920–1), a nonsense play by Cocteau and
Raymond Radiguet in which the policeman delivers himself of lines by Mallarmé; despite Milhaud's
enthusiasm, Poulenc withdrew the material soon afterwards. A month later, in June 1921, came the
première of the ballet Les mariés de la Tour Eiffel incorporating two movements by Poulenc. This joint
production by all the members of Les Six except Durey achieved no more than a brief succès de
scandale. By contrast, Les biches, first performed in 1924, is still one of his best-known works. The
absence of deep, or even shallow, symbolism was only accentuated by a tiny passage of mock-
Wagnerian brass, complete with emotive minor 9ths, in a score which is above all clear and tuneful,
matching the white and pale blue of Marie Laurencin's décor. Apart from the ballet Les animaux
modèles (1940–42), based on eight fables from La Fontaine, Poulenc was occupied for the next 20 years
by film music and incidental music to plays, until in 1939 he happened to reread Apollinaire's Les
mamelles de Tirésias which he then set as his first opera. Described as an opéra bouffe, it includes a
variety of scenes both inconsequential and absurd, but Apollinaire's underlying message, the need for
more French babies and a corresponding distaste for the incipient women's liberation movement, had
been a national preoccupation since Napoleon's time. The musical tone can therefore be either noble
or popular, often both, as inex.2 . Poulenc himself pointed out that the vocal phrase (where Thérèse/
Tirésias is reading in a newspaper of the death of two characters in a duel) would not disgrace a
religious work; the three introductory bars confirm the continuity of Stravinsky's influence. Les
mamelles is emphatically not an operetta – knowing winks, like smut, were anathema to Poulenc – but
accommodates a host of musical techniques, lyrical solos, patter duets, chorales, falsetto lines for tenor
and bass babies and, like Denise Duval whose Folies Bergères training was invaluable in the title role,
it succeeds in being both funny and beautiful.
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Ex.2 Les mamelles de Tirésias, Act 1 scene v
Poulenc's last two operas treat serious subjects seriously. In Dialogues des Carmélites (1953–6) he
charted the delicate vagaries of character and emotion among a group of nuns condemned to death in
the French Revolution. The text, which was originally a film scenario, is built up from a number of
short scenes whose brevity forced the composer to discriminate painstakingly between types of vocal
line, of rhythm, even of vowel sound; the immediate success of this two-and-a-half-hour opera with an
almost entirely female cast reveals Poulenc as a technician of the first order. He confronted similar
problems in La voix humaine (1958) and enriched this 40-minute solo scena, which presents one side of
the telephone conversation between a young woman and the lover who is abandoning her, with non-
referential ‘motifs conducteurs’, with a wide range of musical language mirroring both her manic
Page 6 of 26

condition and the perpetual interruptions of French telephonic life, with terrifying silences (as her
lover is saying what the audience never hears), and with a long-term aim for A minor as the tragic goal
of the harmony. The result is a powerful study of human despair.
6. Choral music.
Roger Nichols
Several minor secular works such as the Chansons françaises (1945–6) continue the French tradition of
Janequin and Sermisy, but Poulenc's early study of Bach chorales also left its mark. His masterpiece in
the genre, Figure humaine (1943), is a highly complex setting of words by Eluard; although
instrumental support would have reduced the performers' troubles, the composer wanted a pure choral
tone in order to capture the mood of supplication.
After his return to Roman Catholicism in 1936, Poulenc produced a steady flow of religious choral
works. Stretching over a quarter of a century they display a remarkable unity of tone as well as an
increasing complexity in language and resources. The Litanies à la vierge noire (1936), written in the
week after his visit to Rocamadour, are for a three-part female chorus in a conventionally modal style
that avoids conventional cadences, the organ punctuating the discourse with fervently chromatic
chords. The Mass in G (1937) is ‘more sober, more Romanesque’ than his next major work in the genre,
the Stabat mater (1950–51) for soprano, mixed chorus and orchestra, a powerful and profoundly
moving work whose choral writing enlarges on the serious implications in that of Les mamelles. In the
Gloria (1959–60) the choral writing is unsanctimonious to the point of wilfulness, as in the stressing of
the phrase ‘Gloria in excelsis Deo’, while the ostinatos, the soaring soprano and the matchless tunes
proclaim Poulenc a believer who had, in Tippett's phrase, ‘contracted in to abundance’. Finally, the
Sept répons des ténèbres (1961–2) pursue the same lush orchestral path but with a new concentration
of thought, epitomized in the minute but spine-chilling codetta to ‘Caligaverunt oculi mei’ where
Poulenc showed that his recognition of Webern was neither a matter of distant respect nor a piece of
time-serving diplomacy.
7. Songs and other works for solo voice.

Roger Nichols
In the Rapsodie nègre (1917) Poulenc showed a marked affinity with words which were less than
explicit, but his setting of six poems from Apollinaire's Le bestiaire (1918–19) is an extraordinarily
individual and competent piece of work for a young man of 20, in which he captured the mood of the
tiny, elusive poems, often by simple yet surprising means such as abnormal word-setting (as with
‘mélancolie’, the last word of all). The scoring is at once economical and faintly ‘impressionist’, but in
Cocardes (1919) he imitated the sound of a street band, and Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale was also
surely in his mind. There followed a period of 12 years before Poulenc again wrote songs by which he
set any store, the Trois poèmes de Louise Lalanne (1931) – a fictitious poet born of Apollinaire's lively
imagination; the second poem is by him, the others by his mistress Marie Laurencin. Apollinaire and
Max Jacob provided the texts for the other vocal works of 1931–2. Poulenc's favourite was Le bal
masqué, a nostalgic romp in which the ‘côté paysan’ of his nature is uncluttered by any kind of chic.
Page 7 of 26

On 3 April 1935 Poulenc and Bernac gave their first public recital, including the first performance of
the Cinq poèmes de Paul Eluard. Poulenc had been attracted by Eluard's poetry since adolescence but
there was ‘a stillness about it which I did not understand’. In the Cinq poèmes ‘for the first time, the
key is grating in the lock’, and the door opened wide the following year in the cycle of love-songs Tel
jour, telle nuit, a masterpiece worthy to stand beside Fauré's La bonne chanson. It lacks the common
touch of some other Poulenc songs, the sentimentality of Hôtel or the earthiness of the Chansons
villageoises, but otherwise it is highly characteristic. Where a single song contains more than one
tempo, Poulenc followed Satie's lead in making them ‘successive’ rather than ‘progressive’; there is
only one rallentando in the whole cycle; five of the nine songs move at a single, inexorable speed.
However, Poulenc planned at least three of them (nos.3, 5 and 8) as transitions between their more
important neighbours; in particular he intended the final climax of no.8, Figure de force, ‘to make more
keenly perceptible the kind of silence that marks the beginning of “Nous avons fait la nuit”’. Often
piano and voice work on independent dynamic levels, a dimension of songwriting not widely explored
before his time. The texture of the accompaniment is never complex but there must always be
‘beaucoup de pédale’.
From this point there was little change in the technique of his songwriting, rather a continual
refinement of means, an attempt to say more and more with less and less, a search for the pure line he
admired so much in Matisse. This tendency reached its utmost point with La fraîcheur et le feu (1950),
‘the most carefully wrought’ of his songs, being a setting of a single Eluard poem in seven sections, in
which two contrasted tempos (mostly crotchet = 120 and crotchet = 66–9) are treated as structural
elements. Poulenc's last important setting of Eluard was of texts he commissioned from the poet to
form Le travail du peintre (1956), a homage to seven contemporary painters. His last set of songs was
La courte paille (1960), written for Denise Duval to sing to her young son and containing the hilarious
patter song ‘Ba, be, bi, bo, bu’, but his last significant work for solo voice, La dame de Monte Carlo
(1961), a monologue for soprano and orchestra to words by Cocteau, shows, like La voix humaine, that
Poulenc understood all too well the terrors of depression.
In general, the sections that make up a Poulenc song are quite short and often built of two- or four-bar
phrases. His technique has much in common with the surrealist poets whom he set, in the value he
placed on the resonance of the individual elements. The opening of a song was rarely the first thing he
composed. Usually a line or two would come at a time, and in the case of Montparnasse (a song of 20
lines) the process was spread over a period of four years. Furthermore, ideas always came to him in
particular keys and he never transposed them; for example, D♭ major seems to have been a key of
relaxation and in it the fourth degree tends to be sharpened. Towards the end of the compositional
process, therefore, he might be confronted with a collection of quite disparate tonal areas which he
then had to combine to reach the listener as a single experience. Much though it annoyed him, the
legend of Poulenc the rich playboy of music, from whom mélodies flowed with every exhalation of
breath, is the perfect compliment to this most scrupulous of craftsmen.
8. Summary.
Roger Nichols
Poulenc never questioned the supremacy of the tonal-modal system. Chromaticism in his music is
never more than passing, even if he used the diminished 7th more than any leading composer since
Verdi. Texturally, rhythmically, harmonically, he was not particularly inventive. For him the most
Page 8 of 26

important element of all was melody and he found his way to a vast treasury of undiscovered tunes
within an area that had, according to the most up-to-date musical maps, been surveyed, worked and
exhausted. His definitive statement came perhaps in a letter of 1942: ‘I know perfectly well that I'm not
one of those composers who have made harmonic innovations like Igor [Stravinsky], Ravel or Debussy,
but I think there's room for new music which doesn't mind using other people's chords. Wasn't that the
case with Mozart–Schubert?’. And if Poulenc was not quite a Schubert, he is among the 20th century's
most eligible candidates for the succession.
Works
Myriam Chimènes
catalogue numbers from Schmidt (1995)
Dramatic
Operas
35 Recits for Gounod: La colombe, 1923, unpubd
125 Les mamelles de Tirésias (opéra bouffe, prol, 2, G. Apollinaire), 1939–44, rev.
1962, Paris, OC, 3 June 1947
159 Dialogues des Carmélites (3, 12 tableaux, G. Bernanos), 1953–6, Milan, La

Scala, 26 Jan 1957
171 La voix humaine (tragédie lyrique, 1, J. Cocteau), 1958, Paris, OC, 6 Feb 1959
Ballets
23 ‘La baigneuse de Trouville’ and ‘Discours du général’ for Les mariés de la Tour
Eiffel (1, Cocteau), 1921, rev. 1957 [other nos. by Auric, Honegger, Milhaud,
Tailleferre], Paris, Champs-Elysées, 18 June 1921
36 Les biches (ballet avec chant, 1, 17th-century text), chorus, orch, 1923, rev.
1939–40, 1947, Monte Carlo, 6 Jan 1924
45 ‘Pastourelle’ for L'éventail de Jeanne (1, Y. Franck and A. Bourgat), 1927

[other nos. by Ravel, Roussel, Ferroud, Ibert, Roland-Manuel, Delannoy,
Milhaud, Auric, Schmitt]; private perf., Paris, home of Jeanne Dubost, 16 June
1927; Paris, Opéra, 4 March 1929
Page 9 of 26

51 Aubade (concerto choréographique), pf, 18 insts, 1929, Paris, 18 June 1929
111 Les animaux modèles (1, after J. de La Fontaine), 1940–42, Paris, Opéra, 8 Aug
1942
Incidental music
20 Le gendarme incompris (Cocteau and R. Radiguet), 1920–21, Paris, Théâtre

Michel, 24 May 1921
64 Intermezzo (J. Giraudoux), 1933, Paris, Comédie des Champs-Elysées, 1 March

1933, unpubd
67 Petrus (M. Achard), 1933, Paris, Comédie des Champs-Elysées, 8 Dec 1933, ?
lost
— Monsieur le Trouhadec saisi par la débauche (Romains), 1933, ?lost
78 Margot (E. Bourdet), 1935, collab. Auric, Paris, Marigny, 26 Nov 1935,
unpubd, ?lost
106 Leocadia (J. Anouilh), 1940, Paris, Michodière, 3 Nov 1940, ?lost except for
song Les chemins de l'amour
112 La fille du jardinier (C. Exbrayat), 1941, Paris, Mathurins, 8 Oct 1941, ?lost
123 Le voyageur sans bagages (Anouilh), 1943, Paris, Michodière, 1944, ?lost
124 La nuit de la Saint-Jean (J.M. Barrie), 1944, Paris, Comédie des Champs-
Elysées, Dec 1944, ?lost
128 Le soldat et la sorcière (A. Salacrou), 1945, Paris, Sarah Bernhardt, 5 Dec
1945, ?lost
138 L'invitation au château (Anouilh), 1947, Paris, Atelier, 15 Nov 1947
139 Amphitryon (Molière), 1947, Paris, Marigny, 5 Dec 1947, ?lost
183 Renaud et Armide (Cocteau), 1962, Baalbeck, 18 Aug 1962, ?lost
Page 10 of 26

Film scores
76 La belle au bois dormant (A. Alexeieff), 1935 [promotional film for Les Vins
Nicolas]
116 La duchesse de Langeais (J. de Baroncelli), 1942
123 Le voyageur sans bagages (Anouilh), 1943 [film version of incid music]
appx Ce siècle a 50 ans, 1950, collab. Auric

3
149 Le voyage en Amérique (H. Lavorel), 1951
Orchestral
20 Le gendarme incompris, suite, 1920–21, unpubd [from incid music]
25 Esquisse d'une fanfare, wind, perc, pf, 1921
14 Trois mouvements perpétuels, before 1927, unpubd [arr. of pf work]
49 Concert champêtre, hpd, orch, 1927–8
61 Concerto, d, 2 pf, orch, 1932
88 Deux marches et un intermède, chbr orch, 1937 [composed for a gala dinner at
the Paris Exhibition, other nos. by Auric]
93 Concerto, g, org, str, timp, 1938
36 Les biches, suite, 1939–40 [from ballet]
111 Les animaux modèles, suite, 1942 [from ballet]
141 Sinfonietta, 1947–8
146 Piano Concerto, 1949
153 ‘Matelote provençale’ for La guirlande de Campra, 1952 [other nos. by

Honegger, Daniel-Lesur, Roland-Manuel, Tailleferre, Sauguet, Auric]
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160 ‘Bucolique’ for Variations sur le nom de Marguerite Long, 1954 [other nos. by
Françaix, Sauguet, Milhaud, Rivier, Dutilleux, Daniel-Lesur, Auric]
104 Orch: Satie: Deux préludes posthumes et une gnossienne, 1939
Choral
31 Chanson à boire (17th-century), TTBB, 1922
81 Sept chansons, mixed chorus, 1936: La blanche neige (G. Apollinaire), A peine
défigurée (P. Eluard), Par une nuit nouvelle (Eluard), Tous les droits (Eluard),
Belle et ressemblante (Eluard), Marie (Apollinaire), Luire (Eluard) [La blanche
neige replaced La reine de Saba (J. Legrand [J. Nohain]), sung at 1st perf. but
later rejected]
82 Litanies à la vierge noire, SSA, org, 1936, arr. SSA, str orch, timp, 1947
83 Petites voix (M. Ley), SSA, 1936: La petite fille sage, Le chien perdu, En
rentrant de l'école, Le petit garçon malade, Le hérisson
89 Mass, G, SATB, 1937
90 Sécheresses (cant., E. James), chorus, orch, 1937
97 Quatre motets pour un temps de pénitence, SATB: Vinea mea electa, 1938;
Tenebrae factae sunt, 1938; Tristis est anima mea, 1938; Timor et tremor,
1939
109 Exultate Deo, SATB, 1941
110 Salve regina, SATB, 1941
120 Figure humaine (cant., Eluard), 12vv, 1943
126 Un soir de neige (chbr cant., Eluard), 6vv, 1944
130 Chansons françaises: Margoton va t'a l'iau, SATB, 1945; La belle se siet au
pied de la tour, SATBarB, 1945; Pilons l'orge, SATBarB, 1945; Clic, clac,
dansez sabots, TBB, 1945; C'est la petit' fill' du prince, SATBarB, 1946; La
belle si nous étions, TBB, 1946; Ah! Mon beau laboureur, SATB, 1945; Les
tisserands, SATBarB, 1946
Page 12 of 26

142 Quatre petites prières de Saint François d'Assise, male vv, 1948
148 Stabat mater, S, chorus, orch, 1950–51
152 Quatre motets pour le temps de Noël, mixed chorus: O magnum mysterium,
1952; Quem vidistis pastores, 1951; Videntes stellam, 1951; Hodie Christus
natus est, 1952
154 Ave verum corpus, SMezA, 1952
172 Laudes de Saint Antoine de Padoue, male vv: O Jésu perpetua lux, 1957; O
proles hispaniae, 1958; Laus regi plena gaudio, 1959; Si quaeris, 1959
177 Gloria, S, chorus, orch, 1959–60
181 Sept répons des ténèbres, child S, male vv, children's vv, orch, 1961–2
Solo vocal
With ens or orch
3 Rapsodie nègre (text by Makoko Kangourou), Bar, fl, cl, str qt, pf, 1917, rev.
1933: Prélude, Ronde, Honouloulou, Pastorale, Final
6 Poèmes sénégalais, 1v, str qt, 1917–18, ?lost
15a Le bestiaire (Apollinaire), 1v, fl, cl, bn, str qt, 1919: Le dromadaire, Le chèvre
du Thibet, La sauterelle, Le dauphin, L'écrevisse, La carpe
16 Cocardes (Cocteau), 1v, cornet, trbn, b drum, triangle, vn, 1919, rev. 1939:
Miel de Narbonne, Bonne d'enfant, Enfant de troupe
22 Quatre poèmes de Max Jacob, 1v, fl, ob, bn, tpt, vn, 1921: Est-il un coin plus
solitaire, C'est pour aller au bal, Poète et ténor, Dans le buisson de mimosa
60 Le bal masqué (cant., M. Jacob), Bar/Mez, ob, cl, bn, pf, perc, vn, vc, 1932:
Préambule et air de bravoure, Intermède, Malvina, Bagatelle, La dame
aveugle, Finale
38 Poèmes de Ronsard, 1v, orch, 1934 [arr. of song cycle]
Page 13 of 26

117 Chansons villageoises (M. Fombeure), 1v, chbr orch, 1942: Chanson du clair
tamis, Les gars qui vont à la fête, C'est le joli printemps, Le mendiant,
Chanson de la fille frivole, Le retour du sergent
180 La dame de Monte Carlo (Cocteau), S, orch, 1961
Songs for 1v, pf
11 Toréador (Cocteau), 1918, rev. 1932
15a Le bestiaire, 1919 [arr. of work with ens]
15a/ Songs for Le bestiaire (Apollinaire), 1919, unpubd: Le boeuf, La mouche, La

b tortue, Le serpent, La colombe
16 Cocardes, 1919 [arr. of work with ens]
38 Poèmes de Ronsard, 1924–5: Attributs, 1924; Le tombeau, 1924; Ballet, 1924;

Je n'ai plus que les os, 1925; A son page, 1925
42 Chansons gaillardes (17th-century), 1925–6: La maîtresse volage, Chanson à

boire, Madrigal, Invocation aux Parques, Couplets bachiques, L'offrande, La
belle jeunesse, Sérénade
44 Vocalise, 1927
46 Airs chantés (J. Moréas), 1927–8: Air romantique, Air champêtre, Air grave,
Air vif
55 Epitaphe (F. de Malherbe), 1930
57 Trois poèmes de Louise Lalanne, 1931: Le présent (M. Laurencin), Chanson

(Apollinaire), Hier (Laurencin)
58 Quatre poèmes de Guillaume Apollinaire, 1931: L'anguille, Carte postale,

Avant le cinéma, 1904 [orig. title Carnaval]
59 Cinq poèmes de Max Jacob, 1931: Chanson, Cimetière, La petite servante,

Berceuse, Souric et Mouric
66 Pierrot (T. de Banville), 1933
Page 14 of 26

69 Huit chansons polonaises (Osiem piesni polskich), 1934: La couronne
(Wianek), Le départ (Odjazd), Les gars polonais (Polska młodzież), Le dernier
mazour (Ostatni mazur), L'adieu (Pożegnanie), Le drapeau blanc (Biała
chorągiewka), La vistule (Wisła), Le lac (Jezioro)
75 Quatre chansons pour enfants (Jaboume [J. Nohain]), 1934: Nous voulons une
petite soeur, La tragique histoire du petit René, Le petit garçon trop bien
portant, Monsieur Sans Souci
77 Cinq poèmes de Paul Eluard, 1935: Peut-il se reposer?, Il la prend dans ses
bras, Plume d'eau claire, Rôdeuse au front de verre, Amoureuses
79 A sa guitare (Ronsard), 1935, version for 1v, hp
86 Tel jour, telle nuit (Eluard): Bonne journée, 1937; Une ruine coquille vide,
1936; Le front comme un drapeau perdu, 1937; Une roulotte couverte en
tuiles, 1936; A toutes brides, 1937; Une herbe pauvre, 1936; Je n'ai envie que
de t'aimer, 1936; Figure de force brûlante et farouche, 1937; Nous avons fait
le nuit, 1937
91 Trois poèmes de Louise de Vilmorin, 1937: Le garçon de Liège, Au-delà, Aux

officiers de la garde blanche
92 Le portrait (Colette), 1938
94 Deux poèmes de Guillaume Apollinaire, 1938: Dans le jardin d’Anna, Allons

plus vite
95 Priez pour paix (C. d'Orléans), 1938
96 La grenouillère (Apollinaire), 1938
98 Miroirs brûlants (Eluard): Tu vois le feu du soir, 1938; Je nommerai ton front,
1939
99 Ce doux petit visage (Eluard), 1939
101 Fiançailles pour rire (L. de Vilmorin), 1939: La dame d'André, Dans l'herbe, Il
vole, Mon cadavre est doux comme un gant, Violon, Fleurs
106 Les chemins de l'amour (Anouilh), 1940 [from incid. music Léocadia]
107 Banalités (Apollinaire), 1940: Chansons d'Orkenise, Hôtel, Fagnes de

Wallonies, Voyage à Paris, Sanglots
Page 15 of 26

117 Chansons villageoises, 1942 [arr. of work with ens]
121 Métamorphoses (Vilmorin), 1943: Reine des mouettes, C'est ainsi que tu es,
Paganini
122 Deux poèmes de Louis Aragon, 1943: C, Fêtes galantes
127 Montparnasse (Apollinaire), 1941–5
128 Hyde Park (Apollinaire), 1945
131 Deux mélodies sur des poèmes de Guillaume Apollinaire, 1946: Le pont, Un
poème
132 Paul et Virginie (R. Radiguet), 1946
134 Le disparu (R. Desnos), 1946
135 Main dominée par le coeur (Eluard), 1946
136 Trois chansons de F. Garcia Lorca, 1947: L'enfant muet, Adelina à la

promenade, Chanson de l'oranger sec
137 … mais mourir (Eluard), 1947
140 Calligrammes (Apollinaire), 1948: L'espionne, Mutation, Vers le sud, Il pleut,

La grâce exilée, Aussi bien que les cigales, Voyage
144 Hymne (J. Racine), 1948
145 ‘Mazurka’ (Vilmorin), for Mouvements du coeur, 1949, collab. Sauguet, Auric,
Françaix, L. Preger, Milhaud
147 La fraîcheur et le feu (Eluard), 1950: Rayon des yeux, Le matin les branches
attisent, Tout disparut, Dans les ténèbres du jardin, Unis la fraîcheur et le feu,
Homme au sourire tendre, La grande rivière qui va
157 Parisiana (M. Jacob), 1954: Jouer du bugle, Vous n'écrivez plus?
158 Rosemonde (Apollinaire), 1954
161 Le travail du peintre (Eluard), 1956: Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Georges
Braque, Juan Gris, Paul Klee, Joan Miró, Jacques Villon
162 Deux mélodies 1956, 1956: La souris (Apollinaire), Nuage (L. de Beylié)
Page 16 of 26

163 Dernier poème (Desnos), 1956
169 Une chanson de porcelaine (Eluard), 1958
174 Fancy (Shakespeare), 1959
178 La courte paille (M. Carême), 1960: Le sommeil, Quelle aventure!, La reine du
coeur, Ba, be, bi, bo, bu, Les anges musiciens, La carafon, Lune d'avril
— La puce (Apollinaire), 1960
182 Nos souvenirs chantent (R. Tatry), version for 1v, gui
For 2 vv, pf
108 Colloque (P. Valéry), S, Bar, pf, 1940
Melodrama
129 L'histoire de Babar, le petit éléphant (J. de Brunhoff), nar, pf, 1940–45, orchd
Françaix, 1962
Chamber and solo instrumental
7 Sonata, 2 cl, 1918, rev. 1945
12 Sonata, vn, pf, 1918, ?lost
32 Sonata, cl, bn, 1922, rev. 1945
33 Sonata, hn, tpt, trbn, 1922, rev. 1945
43 Trio, ob, bn, pf, 1926
74 Villanelle, pipe, pf, 1934
Page 17 of 26

80 Suite française, 2 ob, 2 bn, 2 tpt, 3 trbn, perc, hpd, 1935, arr. vc, pf, 1953
[after C. Gervaise]: Bransle de Bourgogne, Pavane, Petite marche militaire,
Complainte, Bransle de Champagne, Sicilienne, Carillon
100 Sextet, wind qnt, pf, 1932–9
114 Untitled piece, fl, 1941, unpubd
119 Sonata, vn, pf, 1942–3, rev. 1949
143 Sonata, vc, pf, 1940–48
14 Trois mouvements perpétuels, 9 insts, 1946 [arr. of pf work]
164 Sonata, fl, pf, 1956–7
168 Elégie, hn, pf, 1957
179 Sarabande, gui, 1960
184 Sonata, cl, pf, 1962
185 Sonata, ob, pf, 1962
Piano
solo unless otherwise stated
5 Trois pastorales, 1917, ?lost no.1 rev. as no.1 of Trois pièces
8 Sonata, pf 4 hands, 1918, rev. 1939
14 Trois mouvements perpétuels, 1918, rev. 1939, 1962
17 ‘Valse’, for Album des Six, 1919, collab. Auric, Durey, Honegger, Milhaud,
Tailleferre
19 Suite, C, 1920, rev. 1926
21 Six impromptus, 1920–21, rev. 1939
24 Promenades, 1921, rev. 1952: A pied, En auto, A cheval, En bateau, En

avion, En autobus, En voiture, En chemin de fer, A bicyclette, En diligence
Page 18 of 26

40 Napoli, 1925: Barcarolle, Nocturne, Caprice italien
41 Dorfmusikanten-sextett von Mozart, 1925
45 Pastourelle, 1929 [arr. of ballet]
47 Deux novelettes: C, 1927, b♭, 1928
48 Trois pièces, pf, 1918–28, rev. 1953: Pastorale, Toccata, Hymne
50 Pièce brève sur le nom d'Albert Roussel, 1929
56 Nocturnes: no.1, C, 1930; no.2 (Bal de jeunes filles), A, 1933; no.3 (Les
cloches de Malines), F, 1934; no.4, c, 1934; no.5 (Phalènes), d, 1934; no.6,
G, 1934; no.7, E♭, 1935; no.8 (Pour servir de coda au cycle), G, 1938
60 Caprice, 1932 [based on finale of Le bal masqué]
62 Valse-improvisation sur le nom de Bach, 1932
63, Improvisations: nos.1–6, b, A♭, b, A♭, a, B♭, 1932; no.7, C, 1933; no.8, a,
113, 1934; no.9, D, 1934; no.10 (Eloge des gammes), F, 1934; no.11, g, 1941; no.
170, 12 (Hommage à Schubert), E♭, 1941; no.13, a, 1958; no.14, D♭, 1958; no.15
176 (Hommage à Edith Piaf), c, 1959
65 Villageoises, 1933: Valse tyrolienne, Staccato, Rustique, Polka, Petite ronde,

Coda
68 Feuillets d'Album, 1933: Ariette, Rêve, Gigue
70 Presto, 1934
71 Deux intermezzi, C, D♭, 1934
72 Humoresque, 1934
73 Badinage, 1934
80 Suite française, 1935 [based on chbr work]
84 Les soirées de Nazelles, 1930–36: Préambule, Cadence, Variations,

Cadence, Final
87 ‘Bourrée au pavillon d'Auvergne’, for A l'exposition, collab. Auric, Delannoy,

Ibert, Milhaud, Sauguet, Schmitt, Tailleferre
Page 19 of 26

103 Française (Allemande), 1939
105 Mélancolie, 1940
118 Intermezzo, A♭, 1943
150 L'embarquement pour Cythère, valse-musette, 2 pf, 1951
151 Thème variée, 1951
155 Capriccio [based on Le bal masqué], 2 pf, 1952
156 Sonata, 2 pf, 1952–3
160 Bucolique, from Variations sur le nom de Marguerite Long, 1956
173 Novelette sur un thème de Manuel de Falla, e, 1959
175 Elégie, 2 pf, 1959
Other lost or destroyed works
1 Processional pour la crémation d'un mandarin, pf, 1914
2 Préludes, pf, 1916
— Fanfare, 4 pf, 1917
4 Zèbre, 2 pf, 1917
6 Poèmes Sénégalais
9 Fanfare 4 pf, 1917 [to precede Jongleurs]
10 Jongleurs, 2 pf, 1918–19
13 Sonata, pf, vn, vc, 1918
appx 4 Sonata, cimb, wind qt, 1918
18 Quadrille, pf 4 hands, 1919
— Pièces en trio, pf, vc, tpt, 1920
Page 20 of 26

26 Etudes, pianola, 1921
27 Première suite d'orchestre, 1921
28 String Quartet, 1921–2
29 Trio, pf, cl, vc, 1921
30 Marches militaires, pf, orch, 1918–30
34 Caprice espagnol, ob, pf, 1922
37 Quintet, cl, str qt, 1923
appx 4 Sonata, fl, cl, eng hn, 1923
— Sonata, fl, eng hn, 1923
— Sonata, org, 1923
— Sonata, pf, 1924
39 Sonata, vn, pf, 1925–6
54 Sonata, vn, pf, 1929–31
— Concertino, pf 4 hands, 1931
— Sonata, vn, pf, 1933–5
85 Plain-chants (Cocteau), 1v, pf, 1936
appx 4 Dimanche de mai, ?pf, 1936
Sonata, duet, 1940
Trio, str, 1941
133 String Quartet, 1945–6
166 Sonata, bn, pf, 1959
Unrealized projects
Page 21 of 26

appx 4 Côte d'Azur (Radiguet), 1v, pf, 1920
appx 4 Victoire (Radiguet), 1v, pf, 1920
— Gargantua (op, Rabelais), 1937
— La Tempête (op, Shakespeare), 1939
— Périclès (op, Shakespeare), 1939–42
— Casanova (op, Apollinaire), 1945
— Le bal des voleurs (op, Anouilh), 1956
— La machine infernale (op, Cocteau), 1959
Principal publishers: Chester, Durand, Eschig, Heugel, Ricordi, Rouart Lerolle, Salabert, La Sirène
Writings
‘Paris Note: Music, Three String Quartets’, Fanfare, 1/4 (1921), 79–80
‘A propos de “Mavra” de Igor Stravinsky’, Feuilles libres, no.27 (1922), 22–4
‘Un entretien avec Francis Poulenc’, Guide du concert, 15 (1928–9), 855–7
‘Mes maîtres et mes amis’, Conferencia (15 Oct 1935)
‘Igor Stravinsky’, Information musicale (3 Jan 1941)
‘Le coeur de Maurice Ravel’, Nouvelle revue française, 55/1 (1941), 237–40
‘Centenaire de Chabrier’, Nouvelle revue française, 55/2 (1941), 110–14
ed. A. Martin: ‘La leçon de Claude Debussy’, Catalogue de l'exposition Claude Debussy (Paris,
1942), p.xii
‘Adieu à Laloy’, Information musicale (31 March 1944)
‘Oeuvres récentes de Darius Milhaud’, Contrepoints, no.1 (1946), 59–61
‘Un nouveau musicien: Anton Heiller’, Contrepoints, no.4 (1946), 60 only
‘Francis Poulenc on his Ballets’, Ballet, 2/4 (1946), 57–8
‘Mes mélodies et leurs poètes’, Conferencia (15 Dec 1947)
Tribute to Christian Bérard, Ballet, 7/4 (1949), 30–31
Page 22 of 26

Contribution to ‘Open Forum’, Music Today (London, 1949), 137 only
‘Feuilles américaines’, Table ronde, no.30 (1950), 66
‘La musique de piano d'Erik Satie’, ReM, no.214 (1952), 23–6
ed. P. Souvtchinsky: ‘La musique de piano de Prokofieff’, Musique russe (Paris, 1953), 269–76
‘Souvenirs: à propos de la musique de scène d'Intermezzo de Jean Giraudoux’, Jean Giraudoux et

‘Pour Lucrèce’ (Paris, 1953)
‘Hommage à Béla Bartók’, ReM, no.224 (1953–4), 18–19
ed. C. Rostand: Entretiens avec Claude Rostand (Paris, 1954)
‘Lorsque je suis mélancolique’, Mercure de France, 326 (1956), 72–3
‘Inventur der modernen französischen Musik’, Melos, 23 (1956), 35–41
Preface to G. Laplane: Albéniz: sa vie, son oeuvre (Paris, 1956)
‘Comment j'ai composé les Dialogues des Carmélites’, Opéra de Paris (1957)
‘Commémoration de la mort d'Apollinaire, “La mélancolie de son sourire”: entretien avec Hélène
Jourdan-Morhange’, Lettres françaises (13–19 Nov 1958)
ed. Roland-Manuel: ‘La musique et les Ballets Russes de Serge de Diaghilev’, Histoire de la
musique (Paris, 1960), 985–91
Emmanuel Chabrier (Paris, 1961; Eng. trans., 1981)
‘Opera in the Cinema Era’, Opera, 12 (1961), 11–12
‘A propos d'une lettre d'Arthur Honegger’, SMz, 102 (1962), 160–61
ed. S. Audel: Moi et mes amis (Paris, 1963; Eng. trans., 1978)
‘Hommage à Benjamin Britten’, Tribute to Benjamin Britten on his Fiftieth Birthday, ed. A.
Gishford (London, 1963), 13 only
Journal de mes mélodies (Paris, 1964, rev. 2/1993 by R. Machart; Eng. trans., 1985, incl.
discography)
A bâtons rompus: écrits radiophoniques, précédé de Journal de vacances et suivi de Feuilles

américaines (Arles, 1999)
Correspondence
ed. H. de Wendel: Correspondance, 1915–1963 (Paris, 1967)
ed. S. Buckland: Echo and Source: Selected Correspondence 1918–1963 (London, 1991)
ed. M. Chimènes: Correspondance 1910–1963 (Paris, 1994)
Page 23 of 26

Bibliography
Monographs and catalogues

H. Hell: Francis Poulenc: musicien français (Paris, 1958, 2/1978; Eng. trans., 1959)
Discographie des oeuvres de Francis Poulenc(Paris, 1964)
M. Allard: The Songs of Claude Debussy and Francis Poulenc (diss., U. of Southern California,
1964)
J. Roy: Francis Poulenc, l'homme et son oeuvre: liste complète des oeuvres, discographie (Paris,
1964)
W.K. Werner: The Harmonic Style of Francis Poulenc (diss., U. of Michigan, 1966)
I. Medvedeva: Fransis Pulenk (Moscow, 1969)
Georges Bernanos, Francis Poulenc et les ‘Dialogues des Carmélites’, Musée des Beaux-Arts, 11
Oct–15 Nov (Tours, 1970) [exhibition catalogue]
P. Bernac: Francis Poulenc: the Man and his Songs (London, 1977; Fr. orig., Paris, 1978 as
Francis Poulenc et ses mélodies)
K.W. Daniel: Francis Poulenc: his Artistic Development and Musical Style (Ann Arbor, 1982)
L'avant-scène opéra, no.52 (1983) [Dialogues des Carmélites issue]
F. Bloch: Phonographie de Francis Poulenc (Paris, 1984)
G.R. Keck: Francis Poulenc: a Bio-Bibliography (New York, 1990)
W. Mellers: Francis Poulenc (Oxford, 1993)
R. Machart: Francis Poulenc (Paris, 1995)
Francis Poulenc et les poètes, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, 14 June–22 July 1995 (Paris,
1995) [exhibition catalogue]
C.B. Schmidt: The Music of Francis Poulenc: a Catalogue (Oxford, 1995)
B. Ivry: Francis Poulenc (London, 1996)
D. Waleckx: La musique dramatique de Francis Poulenc (les ballets et de théâtre lyrique) (diss.,
U. of Paris, 1996)
S. Buckland and M. Chimènes, eds.: Francis Poulenc: Music, Art and Literature (Aldershot, 1999)
Other literature
J. Durey: ‘Francis Poulenc’, The Chesterian, no.25 (1922), 1–4
J. Cocteau: ‘Les Biches … notes de Monte Carlo’, Nouvelle revue française, 22 (1924), 275–8
Page 24 of 26

D. Milhaud: ‘Francis Poulenc et Les Biches’, Etudes (Paris, 1927), 61–8
R.H. Myers: ‘Francis Poulenc’, MMR, 60 (1931), 129–30
G. Pittaluga: ‘Francis Poulenc and the Praise of the Paradox in Art’, The Chesterian, 17 (1935–6),
37–40
E. Lockspeiser: ‘Francis Poulenc and Modern French Poets’, MMR, 70 (1940), 29–33
A. Schaeffner: ‘Francis Poulenc, musicien français’, Contrepoints, no.1 (1946), 50–58
C. Rostand: La musique française contemporaine (Paris, 1952, 4/1971; Eng. trans., 1955/R)
H. Jourdan-Morhange: Mes amis musiciens (Paris, 1955)
G. Favre: ‘Francis Poulenc: Sécheresses’, Musiciens français contemporains, 2 (Paris, 1956),

122–33
D. Drew: ‘The Simplicity of Poulenc’, The Listener (16 Jan 1958)
E. Lockspeiser: ‘An Introduction to Poulenc's La voix humaine’, Opera, 11 (1960), 527–34
P. Bernac: ‘Notes sur l'interprétation des mélodies de Francis Poulenc’, Feuilles musicales, 14
(1961), 68–70
H. Jourdan-Morhange: ‘Poulenc et ses poètes’, Feuilles musicales, 14 (1961), 76–7
R.H. Myers: ‘Hommage à Poulenc’, Music and Musicians, 11/7 (1962–3), 8–9
D. Cox: ‘Poulenc and Surrealism’, The Listener (11 July 1963)
A. Payne: ‘Tribute to Poulenc’, Music and Musicians, 11/10 (1963), 44 only
N. Rorem: ‘Poulenc: a Memoir’, Tempo, no.64 (1963), 28–9
J. Bellas: ‘Francis Poulenc ou le “son de voix de Guillaume”’, Guillaume Apollinaire, 3 (1964),

130
M. Houdin: ‘La jeunesse nogentaise de Francis Poulenc’, Bulletin de la Société historique et

archéologique de Nogent-sur-Marne, 4 (1964)
J. Bellas: ‘Apollinaire et Poulenc: peut-on mettre “Alcools” en musique?’, Journées Apollinaire:

Stavelot 1965, 49–57
J. Bellas: ‘Les mamelles de Tirésias en habit d'Arlequin’, Guillaume Apollinaire, 4 (1965), 30–54
G. Auric: ‘A propos du Gendarme Incompris’, Cahiers Jean Cocteau, 2 (1971), 39–42
F. Rauhut: ‘Les motifs musicaux de l'opéra Dialogues des Carmélites’, Revue des lettres
modernes, 4th ser., nos.340–45 (1973), 211–49
J. Amis: ‘In Search of Poulenc’, Music and Musicians, 22/3 (1973–4), 44–9
Y. Gouverné and others: Poulenc et Rocamadour (Paris, 1974)
Page 25 of 26

M. Duruflé: ‘Le concerto pour orgue et orchestra a cordes de Francis Poulenc’, L’orgue, 154
(1975), 40–42
A. Schaeffner: ‘Francis Poulenc, musicien français’, Essais de musicologie et autres fantaisies

(Paris, 1980), 317–25
J. Sams: ‘Poulenc's Carmelites: the Background’, Opera, 34 (1983), 375–9
E. Hurard-Viltard: Le groupe des Six, ou le matin d’un jour de fête (Paris, 1987)
P.L. Poulin: ‘Three Styles in One: Poulenc’s Chamber Works for Wind Instruments’, MR, 1 (1989),
271–80
H. Ehrler: Untersuchungen zur klaviermusik von Francis Poulenc, Arthur Honegger, und Darius
Milhaud (Tutzing, 1990)
‘Poulenc et ses amis’, Revue internationale de musique française, no.31 (1994) [whole issue]
E. Reibel: Les concertos de Poulenc (Bourg-la-Reine, 1999)

See also
Mélodie, §3: After 1870

See also from The New Grove Dictionary of Opera: Dialogues des Carmélites; Mamelles de
Tirésias, Les; and Voix humaine, La.
More on this topic

Poulenc, Francis, (7 Jan. 1899–30 Jan. 1963), French composer <http://ukwhoswho.com/view/
10.1093/ww/9780199540891.001.0001/ww-9780199540884-e-58007> in Who Was Who <http://
ukwhoswho.com>
Poulenc, Francis (opera) <http://oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/

9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-5000903945> in Oxford Music
Online <http://oxfordmusiconline.com>
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Who was Francis Poulenc and what were some of his notable works?

Who was Francis Poulenc and what were some of his notable works?

What were the influences on Poulenc's musical style and career?

What were the influences on Poulenc's musical style and career?

Poulenc, Francis

Myriam Chimènes and Roger Nichols

Subscriber: Gheorghe Dima Music Academy of Cluj-Napoca; date: 05 November 2019

Subscriber: Gheorghe Dima Music Academy of Cluj-Napoca; date: 05 November 2019

Subscriber: Gheorghe Dima Music Academy of Cluj-Napoca; date: 05 November 2019

Subscriber: Gheorghe Dima Music Academy of Cluj-Napoca; date: 05 November 2019

5. Music for the stage.

Subscriber: Gheorghe Dima Music Academy of Cluj-Napoca; date: 05 November 2019

Subscriber: Gheorghe Dima Music Academy of Cluj-Napoca; date: 05 November 2019

7. Songs and other works for solo voice.

Subscriber: Gheorghe Dima Music Academy of Cluj-Napoca; date: 05 November 2019

Subscriber: Gheorghe Dima Music Academy of Cluj-Napoca; date: 05 November 2019

catalogue numbers from Schmidt (1995)

35 Recits for Gounod: La colombe, 1923, unpubd

159 Dialogues des Carmélites (3, 12 tableaux, G. Bernanos), 1953–6, Milan, La

45 ‘Pastourelle’ for L'éventail de Jeanne (1, Y. Franck and A. Bourgat), 1927

Subscriber: Gheorghe Dima Music Academy of Cluj-Napoca; date: 05 November 2019

20 Le gendarme incompris (Cocteau and R. Radiguet), 1920–21, Paris, Théâtre

64 Intermezzo (J. Giraudoux), 1933, Paris, Comédie des Champs-Elysées, 1 March

— Monsieur le Trouhadec saisi par la débauche (Romains), 1933, ?lost

138 L'invitation au château (Anouilh), 1947, Paris, Atelier, 15 Nov 1947

139 Amphitryon (Molière), 1947, Paris, Marigny, 5 Dec 1947, ?lost

183 Renaud et Armide (Cocteau), 1962, Baalbeck, 18 Aug 1962, ?lost

Subscriber: Gheorghe Dima Music Academy of Cluj-Napoca; date: 05 November 2019

116 La duchesse de Langeais (J. de Baroncelli), 1942

appx Ce siècle a 50 ans, 1950, collab. Auric

149 Le voyage en Amérique (H. Lavorel), 1951

20 Le gendarme incompris, suite, 1920–21, unpubd [from incid music]

25 Esquisse d'une fanfare, wind, perc, pf, 1921

14 Trois mouvements perpétuels, before 1927, unpubd [arr. of pf work]

49 Concert champêtre, hpd, orch, 1927–8

61 Concerto, d, 2 pf, orch, 1932

93 Concerto, g, org, str, timp, 1938

36 Les biches, suite, 1939–40 [from ballet]

111 Les animaux modèles, suite, 1942 [from ballet]

141 Sinfonietta, 1947–8

146 Piano Concerto, 1949

153 ‘Matelote provençale’ for La guirlande de Campra, 1952 [other nos. by

Subscriber: Gheorghe Dima Music Academy of Cluj-Napoca; date: 05 November 2019

104 Orch: Satie: Deux préludes posthumes et une gnossienne, 1939

31 Chanson à boire (17th-century), TTBB, 1922

89 Mass, G, SATB, 1937

90 Sécheresses (cant., E. James), chorus, orch, 1937

109 Exultate Deo, SATB, 1941

110 Salve regina, SATB, 1941

120 Figure humaine (cant., Eluard), 12vv, 1943

126 Un soir de neige (chbr cant., Eluard), 6vv, 1944

Subscriber: Gheorghe Dima Music Academy of Cluj-Napoca; date: 05 November 2019

148 Stabat mater, S, chorus, orch, 1950–51

154 Ave verum corpus, SMezA, 1952

177 Gloria, S, chorus, orch, 1959–60

With ens or orch

6 Poèmes sénégalais, 1v, str qt, 1917–18, ?lost

38 Poèmes de Ronsard, 1v, orch, 1934 [arr. of song cycle]