He never experimented with the popular sarabandw of “machine music,” asymmetrical rhythms, and poly-harmonies as cultivated by A. Francis Poulenc embraced the Dada movement’s techniques, creating melodies that would have been appropriate for Parisian music halls.įrom to he served in the French army, and then began taking lessons in composition with Koechlin An excellent pianist, Poulenc became in an accompanist to the French baritone Pierre Bernacfor sarabwnde he wrote numerous songs.Ĭompared with his fortuitous comrades-in-six, Francis Poulenc appears a classicist. The 6 musicians included, besides Poulenc: Although quite different in their styles of composition and artistic inclinations, they continued collective participation in various musical events. Deeply impressed by Satie’s fruitful eccentricities in the then-shocking manner of Dadaism, Poulenc joined an ostentatiously self-descriptive musical poulejc called the Nouveaux Jeunes.
A decisive turn in his development as a composer occurred when Francis Poulenc attracted the attention of Erik Satie, the arbiter elegantiarum of the arts and social amenities in Paris. His mother, an amateur sarabandd, taught him to play, and music formed a part of family life. January 7, – Paris, France Died: January 30, – Paris, France The brilliant French composer, Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc, was born into a wealthy family of pharmaceutical manufacturers. Francis Poulenc’s Sarabande for Guitar solo. Though Francis Poulenc () needs no introduction here, Just a few years before his death, he wrote the Sarabande, his only work.
The whole issue wins enthusiastic recommendation: it bids fair to become the undisputed yardstick for the future.Francis Poulenc: Sarabande for Guitar, FP – Play streams in full or download MP3 from Classical Archives (), the largest and best. In this work Poulenc allotted to the piano (his own instrument) rather more than equal status in the duo – a situation rather paralleled in the lighthearted Cello Sonata, over which the composer dallied longer than any other of his works – but balance in both is finely judged by the performers and the recording team. A hint of the guitar's tuning at the start of the second move- ment is almost the only Spanish reference in the Violin Sonata, which was composed in memoriam the poet Lorca, whose loss is bitterly suggested in the angry finale. There's a touching reading of the little Sarabande for guitar.
The Elégie for Dennis Brain was a not altogether convincing experiment in dodecaphony: Poulenc had earlier dabbled in atonality and polytonality in the little sonatas (really sonatinas) for, respectively, two clarinets and for clarinet and bassoon. All are given idiomatic, sensitive and satisfying performances by the Nash artists. The latter characteristic is most in evidence in his most enduring chamber works: the solo wind sonatas with piano, all three of which were in the nature of tombeaux, the Flute Sonata for the American patron Mrs Sprague Coolidge, that for clarinet for Honegger, and that for oboe for Prokofiev. Like the Trio (whose opening reveals Stravinskian influence), it's a mixture of the composer's madcap gamin mood and his predominantly melancholy bittersweet lyricism.
He knows, for example, how to control Poulenc's boisterous piano writing in the Sextet without sacrificing the sparkle, and as a result the work coheres better than ever before. Invidious as it may seem to pick out just one of these excellent artists, special mention must be made of Ian Brown, who plays in nine of the 13 works included and confirms his standing as one of the most admired and musicianly chamber pianists of our day.