1. From Childhood to the End of World War I

Francis Poulenc was a 20th-century French composer and pianist. He was born into a wealthy bourgeois family in Paris, the son of Émile, founder of a pharmaceutical company, and Jenny, an amateur pianist. He began learning piano at the age of five, and his maternal uncle, Marcel, often took him to theaters such as the Opéra-Comique, which fostered Poulenc's interest in music. However, his father, Émile, wished for his son to first complete his studies at a regular high school before attempting the entrance examination for the Paris Conservatoire. Consequently, Poulenc began his composition studies autodidactically. From 1914 to 1917, he studied piano with Ricardo Viñes, who had premiered many of Ravel's piano works. Viñes was also a spiritual guide for Poulenc, and it was mostly through him that Poulenc became acquainted with various musicians at a young age. As a result, Poulenc's earliest piano works were dedicated to or premiered by Viñes.

After the successive deaths of his mother in June 1915 and his father in July 1917, Poulenc, at the age of 18, decided to make a living as a musician. In April of the same year, he had completed the song Rapsodie nègre, which he premiered in December at a concert organized by Jane Bathori at the Vieux-Colombier Theatre, officially marking his debut as a composer. Due to these circumstances, Poulenc never received formal composition training at a specialized institution like the Paris Conservatoire. However, from 1921 for about four years, he sought out and received lessons from Charles Koechlin and also sought advice from Albert Roussel.

Poulenc's social circle from his boyhood to his youth was extensive. He formed close relationships with contemporary composers who would later be known as "Les Six," including Georges Auric, Darius Milhaud, Arthur Honegger, and Germaine Tailleferre. He met Erik Satie and Manuel de Falla through Viñes, and particularly with Satie, he maintained frequent correspondence. Furthermore, Igor Stravinsky, upon hearing the premiere of Rapsodie nègre with Sergei Diaghilev, the organizer of the Ballets Russes, recognized Poulenc's talent and helped him publish his early works.

For the teenage Poulenc, connections with figures in the literary world were also crucial. His love for literature dated back to his childhood, but particularly influential were "La Maison des Amis des Livres," a lending library and bookstore in the 6th arrondissement on the Left Bank of Paris, and his childhood friend Raymond Linossier, who introduced him to the bookstore. This bookstore not only sold books but also frequently hosted readings and discussion groups by writers, serving as a hub for the French literary scene in the 1910s and 1920s. Here, Poulenc met André Breton, Paul Éluard, and Louis Aragon, and became familiar with the poetry of Guillaume Apollinaire, deepening his interest in contemporary literature. Around 1917, he also met writers such as Jean Cocteau and Max Jacob, with whom he would maintain lifelong friendships. The influence of this literary exposure is strongly reflected in the subjects of Poulenc's later vocal works and operas.

2. From the End of World War I to the 1920s

After World War I ended in 1918, Poulenc traveled to other European countries. In 1921, during a visit to Vienna with Milhaud, he met Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern. His compositional activity was also vigorous; in particular, Les Biches, composed for the Ballets Russes, became Poulenc's first internationally successful work. In Poulenc's works of the 1920s, pieces using an orchestra were not very numerous, with the exception of works like Concert champêtre (composed in 1928); he primarily composed piano works, songs, and chamber music.

Poulenc's ability to engage in such active musical pursuits from a young age was not only due to his social skills, which allowed him frequent access to French intellectual and artistic circles, but also influenced by the period of France in the 1920s. At that time, individual patronage for artistic creation still held significant power in France. As a young composer making his debut, Poulenc received active support from aristocratic art enthusiasts, such as the Duke and Duchess of Polignac and the Count and Countess of Noailles, who commissioned his works. Thanks to this early success, Poulenc purchased a residence in Noizay, Touraine, in central France, in 1927, which served as an important base for his activities alongside his Paris home until his death.

3. From the 1930s to the World War II Period

Poulenc's compositional activity in the 1930s was even more prolific than in the 1920s. Piano works, songs, and chamber music remained central to his output in the 30s, leading to a succession of representative works such as Le Bal masqué (1932), Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra (1932), Cinq poèmes d'Éluard (1935), the song cycle Tel jour telle nuit (1937), Organ Concerto (1938), Aubade (1938), and Sextet (1939). Furthermore, having faced financial difficulties after purchasing the Noizay residence, he began composing film scores and incidental music for the stage from the 1930s onwards. In April 1935, he embarked on his first concert tour with the singer Pierre Bernac. This performing collaboration with Bernac continued until shortly before the composer's death in 1959, resulting in approximately 90 songs.

In 1936, Poulenc made his first visit to Rocamadour, a Catholic pilgrimage site in southwestern France. This experience of visiting the Notre-Dame sanctuary there, combined with the successive deaths of close individuals in the 1930s (Linossier in January 1930, Aunt Liénard in May 1935, etc.), led Poulenc to undertake works with religious themes from the mid-1930s onwards. Litanies à la Vierge noire (1936), Mass in G major (1937), and Quatre motets pour un temps de pénitence (1939) are examples of Poulenc's religious works from the 1930s.

Although World War II broke out in 1939, Poulenc was generally able to continue composing, apart from a brief period of military conscription. As the war intensified, he sometimes evacuated from Paris to Noizay or other places with relatives. However, during a stay in Brive-la-Gaillarde in the Limousin region in the summer of 1940, an episode occurred that would later culminate in L'Histoire de Babar, le petit éléphant (1945). In March 1944, his close Jewish writer friend Jacob died in a concentration camp. In addition to these wartime separations, Viñes died in April 1943 and Uncle Marcel in November 1945, marking a series of farewells to the people who had guided Poulenc into music. Nevertheless, in August 1942, the ballet Les Animaux modèles premiered at the Paris Opéra, and representative works such as Sonate pour violon et piano (1943), Figure humaine (1943), and Les Mamelles de Tirésias (1944) were composed. During rehearsals for Les Mamelles de Tirésias, he met Denise Duval, who would become the muse for his later vocal works, and she and Poulenc maintained a close personal and professional relationship until shortly before his death. Meanwhile, in 1946, his daughter Marie-Ange was born to a woman he had met in Touraine in the 1920s (though he did not marry the mother and treated Marie-Ange as a relative).

4. From After World War II to His Later Years

After World War II, Poulenc expanded his activities beyond the European continent to include America. From 1948 onwards, he visited various cities, particularly with Bernac and Duval, as a vocal and piano duo. Their performances helped to popularize not only Poulenc's own works but also other French songs in America. Poulenc himself also began actively accepting commissions from America, further developing his compositional career. Furthermore, around this time, Poulenc developed a great interest in radio broadcasting and began discussing his own works and music through radio programs, such as those on French National Radio. Some of these discussions are now included in Poulenc's collected writings, J'écris ce qui me chante, serving as a valuable resource testifying to composers active in France during the first half of the 20th century and the musical culture of the time.

In the 1950s, while continuing to focus on composing chamber music, piano works, and vocal works, Poulenc also began to undertake larger-scale compositions. The most prominent of these were his operas. Although Poulenc had already completed his first opera, Les Mamelles de Tirésias, in 1944, he adopted a concentrated approach to opera, premiering Dialogues des Carmélites in 1957 and La Voix humaine in 1959. Many of Poulenc's works from the 1950s are considered his masterpieces, including Stabat Mater (composed 1950-51), L'Embarquement pour Cythère for two pianos (also 1951), Sonata for two pianos (1953), the song cycle Le Travail du peintre based on Éluard's poems (1956), Flute Sonata (composed 1956-57), and Gloria (1959). At the same time, he was sensitive to the emerging "modern music" in France and frequently attended concerts of "Domaine musical," founded by Pierre Boulez. Poulenc himself was aware that his musical direction differed significantly from that of the younger generation, writing to a friend while composing Dialogues des Carmélites, "I can only write tonal music."

Maintaining his presence in the French music scene, Poulenc composed works such as La Dame de Monte-Carlo and Sept Répons des Ténèbres in the 1960s. However, on January 30, 1963, after calling Duval to cancel a lunch appointment, he died at the age of 64 due to a heart attack. This was the second death among the members of "Les Six," following Honegger's passing in 1955, and it occurred while Poulenc had various works, including new operas, in conception. There were no unfinished works, and his final piece, the Oboe Sonata, was premiered in June 1963. Poulenc's death was also reported in Japanese newspapers; the Yomiuri Shimbun evening edition on January 31 described him as having "brought a new breath to the French music scene after World War I alongside Honegger and Auric... known for his unique neoclassical style."

5. Musical Language and Characteristics of Piano Works

Poulenc consistently used a tonal musical language throughout his career, characterized by clear sonorities that avoided complex harmonic connections or syntheses. Consequently, his music was often perceived as "light" or "lacking seriousness." However, Claude Rostand, who interviewed the composer in 1954, noted that Poulenc's works possessed such distinctive characteristics that anyone could identify the composer's name the moment they heard them.

For Poulenc, an accomplished pianist himself, the piano was a crucial instrument supporting his musical activities. He often composed at the piano rather than at a desk, and he would sometimes bring or borrow an instrument when evacuating during World War II or on vacation. He composed over 100 works for piano or works that include piano in their instrumentation. Particularly notable are works that use the piano as an accompanying instrument. The majority of these combine voice and piano accompaniment, and Poulenc himself stated that the most original aspect of his piano writing is found in the piano accompaniment parts of his vocal works. On the other hand, there are also many works for solo piano, piano duet, or two pianos. The majority of his piano works were composed in the early 1930s, a period that, according to Roger Nichols, corresponds to Poulenc's re-evaluation of his works from the 1920s. The composer's favorite among his own piano works was Quinze Improvisations, which he completed over a long period from 1932 to 1959. Regarding Soirées de Nazelles, composed in the same decade, it is said that he did not particularly like it despite its high praise from others.

As a pianist, Poulenc learned much from his teacher Viñes, and it is reported that his playing was notably characterized by the frequent use of the sustain pedal. This point is reflected in his piano works, where instructions like "beaucoup de pédale" (plenty of pedal) are frequently found.