1988
Search results
This is a list of works written by the French composer Francis Poulenc (1899–1963). As a pianist, Poulenc composed many pieces for his own instrument in his piano music and chamber music. He wrote works for orchestra including several concertos, also three operas, two ballets, incidental music for plays and film music.
Among the best-known are the piano suite Trois mouvements perpétuels (1919), the ballet Les biches (1923), the Concert champêtre (1928) for harpsichord and orchestra, the Organ Concerto (1938), the opera Dialogues des Carmélites (1957), and the Gloria (1959) for soprano, choir, and orchestra.
His first compositions— Rapsodie Nègre (1917), Trois Mouvements Perpétuels, for piano, and Sonata for Piano Duet (1918) and his settings of Guillaume Apollinaire’s poem Le Bestiaire and Jean Cocteau’s Cocardes (1919)—were witty pieces with streaks of impudent parody.
Feb 26, 2024 · In this article, I wanted to focus on the works that I feel are Poulenc’s greatest achievements, either because they are some of the best works for their instrumentation or because he just really hit it out of the park.
Join Classical Music Only and discover unknown masterpieces, create endless lists, see discussions of your favorite composers on your personalized homepage timeline and much more!
Poulenc's works around this time include the brilliant Rapsodie negre, in which a baritone chants the "Madagascan" word "Ho-no-lu-lu" over and over, the surrealist opera Les Mamelles de Tirésias, a classic ballet for Diaghilev, Les Biches, about flirtatious girls, and the Concert champêtre for harpsichord.
Today he may be the most fêted of the French composer group Les Six but Poulenc was a contradictory character full of self-doubt
