Francis Poulenc

Synopsis

French composer

• 1899 born in Paris. His father founded a large chemical company, and his mother was an amateur pianist who gave him his first piano lessons. He then studied with a well-regarded teacher while completing his classical education at the Lycee, following his father's wishes.
• 1914-1917 Poulenc studied piano with Ricardo Vines, who also became his spiritual mentor.
• 1915 Poulenc's father died.
• 1916 a childhood friend, Raymonde Linossier, introduced Poulenc to Adrienne Monnier's bookshop, the Maison des Amis des Livres. There he met avant-garde poets such as Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Paul Éluard and Louis Aragon. He later set many of their poems to music.
• 1917 Poulenc's mother died.
• 1917 Poulenc's first surviving composition, Rapsodie nègre, was performed. Igor Stravinsky took note and later helped Poulenc get the work published.
• 1918-1921 Poulenc was conscripted into the army, but continued to compose. His works during this period were often performed at the studio of the painter Emile Lejeune. There he formed friendships with other young French and French-Swiss composers, and became a member of Erik Satie's Les nouveaux jeunes, followed by Jean Cocteau's Les Six,
• 1921-1925 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 already a noted composer by this time, and throughout his life he remained largely self-taught.
• 1938 Poulenc's only surviving work for organ, his Concerto in G minor for Organ, Strings, and Timpani, was composed on commission from Princesse Edmond de Polignac. This work exhibited Poulenc's more mature compositional style, which exhibited "new dimensions and greater depth," according to wikipedia.
• During World War II, Poulenc continued to compose, sometimes including patriotic hints that could be recognized by his audiences but not by the German occupiers of France.
• Throughout his life, Poulenc suffered from alternating bouts of enthusiasm and depression. He was deeply attached to his friends and suffered when they struggled. He also was openly homosexual.
• 1963 Poulenc died in Paris of a sudden heart attack.

According to Claude Rostand, Poulenc was "A lover of life, mischievous, 'bon enfant,' tender and impertinent, melancholy and serenely mystical, half monk and half delinquent."

For details, see the wikipedia article on Francis Poulenc: [1].

Oxford Music Online's biography of Francis Poulenc: http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.erl.lib.byu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/22202?q=Francis+Poulenc&search=quick&pos=1&_start=1#firsthit

List of Organ Works

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Opus	Title	Year
Op. 93	Concerto in G minor for organ, string orchestra and timpani	1938
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Background and General Perspectives on Performing These Organ Works

According to Roger Nichols writing for Oxford Music Online, "[Poulenc's} 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."

According to Wikipedia, "Poulenc's music is fundamentally tonal, although he made use of harmonic innovations such as pandiatonicism and chromatically altered chords. In some of his last works he used 12-tone rows, but Poulenc never questioned the validity of traditional tonic-dominant harmony. Lyrical melody pervades his music..."

Registration and Organs

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Fingering and Pedaling

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Articulation and Phrasing

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Ornamentation

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Tempo and Meter

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Notes

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