Major Works: Rhapsodie Negre; Les Biches; Aubade; Concerto for Two Pianos; Sextet.
Born in Paris in 1899, Poulenc studied music at an early age, urged on by his mother’s sophisticated musical taste and undying support. He had his first public success in 1918 with the première of his Rhapsodie nègre, a chamber work that employs Poulenc’s wry sense of humor. Based on the era’s popular fascination with Orientalism, it uses as its central inspiration a poem signed with a fraudulent Liberian name. The text is utter nonsense, and Poulenc jumped at the chance to create a work that would at once draw the masses with its fashionable flavor and offer him a venue to deliver sarcasm. He was turned away from the Paris Conservatoire for his irreverent tone and for supposed associations with the much-feared Stravinsky. (Later, this supposition would work in Poulenc’s favor; in hearing of it, Stravinsky would convince his London publishers to give Poulenc his initial printing).
In 1921, Poulenc began study with renowned composer Charles Koechlin. Yet even in this influential association Poulenc remained largely self-taught, praising Koechlin for his support and advice but constantly apologizing to him for his aloofness. The early part of Poulenc’s career was guided by apparent contradictions. The man who would later denounce the ‘fertilizer of fashion’ was creating music that is undeniably influenced by the dance halls and circuses of 1920s Paris. Entire books are devoted to the influence of popular music on Poulenc’s works—proof that he was an artist fully in tune with the cultural milieu surrounding him.
One point of fascination is his association with Les Six, a group of young Parisian composers so named by critic Henri Collet in reference to the nineteenth-century Russian group known as The Five. Though each member of Les Six—Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Germaine Tailleferre, and Poulenc himself—insisted upon Collet’s arbitrary manner of choosing them, the social and collaborative implications cannot be denied.
In fact, many of Poulenc’s best-known early works are parts of a collaborative whole. His first ballet Les Biches—which enjoyed an enormous success—was commissioned by Diaghilev for his Ballets Russes. Diaghilev paired Poulenc with choreographer Bronislava Nijinska and artist Marie Laurencin. Composer influenced choreographer, choreographer influenced designer, and so on. And this ‘meeting of the minds’ was no isolated incident in Poulenc’s career. He would often set to music the poetry of acquaintances and friends such as Jean Cocteau, Guillaume Apollinaire and Paul Eluard. For a man whose later years would be couched in religious quietude, Poulenc’s 1920s were marked by wit, insouciance, and banter—hallmarks of the social artist.
—Michael
Osborn
