8. Summary.

Poulenc never questioned the supremacy of the tonal-modal system. Chromaticism in his music is never more than passing, even if he used the diminished 7th more than any leading composer since Verdi. Texturally, rhythmically, harmonically, he was not particularly inventive. For him the most important element of all was melody and he found his way to a vast treasury of undiscovered tunes within an area that had, according to the most up-to-date musical maps, been surveyed, worked and exhausted. His definitive statement came perhaps in a letter of 1942: ‘I know perfectly well that I'm not one of those composers who have made harmonic innovations like Igor [Stravinsky], Ravel or Debussy, but I think there's room for new music which doesn't mind using other people's chords. Wasn't that the case with Mozart–Schubert?’. And if Poulenc was not quite a Schubert, he is among the 20th century's most eligible candidates for the succession.

Poulenc, Francis

WORKS

catalogue numbers from Schmidt (1995)

Dramatic operas

35	Recits for Gounod: La colombe, 1923, unpubd
125	Les mamelles de Tirésias (opéra bouffe, prol, 2, G. Apollinaire), 1939–44, rev. 1962, Paris, OC, 3 June 1947
159	Dialogues des Carmélites (3, 12 tableaux, G. Bernanos), 1953–6, Milan, La Scala, 26 Jan 1957
171	La voix humaine (tragédie lyrique, 1, J. Cocteau), 1958, Paris, OC, 6 Feb 1959

Ballets

23	‘La baigneuse de Trouville’ and ‘Discours du général’ for Les mariés de la Tour Eiffel (1, Cocteau), 1921, rev. 1957 [other nos. by Auric, Honegger, Milhaud, Tailleferre], Paris, Champs-Elysées, 18 June 1921
36	Les biches (ballet avec chant, 1, 17th-century text), chorus, orch, 1923, rev. 1939–40, 1947, Monte Carlo, 6 Jan 1924
45	‘Pastourelle’ for L'éventail de Jeanne (1, Y. Franck and A. Bourgat), 1927 [other nos. by Ravel, Roussel, Ferroud, Ibert, Roland-Manuel, Delannoy, Milhaud, Auric, Schmitt]; private perf., Paris, home of Jeanne Dubost, 16 June 1927; Paris, Opéra, 4 March 1929
51	Aubade (concerto choréographique), pf, 18 insts, 1929, Paris, 18 June 1929
111	Les animaux modèles (1, after J. de La Fontaine), 1940–42, Paris, Opéra, 8 Aug 1942

Incidental music

20	Le gendarme incompris (Cocteau and R. Radiguet), 1920–21, Paris, Théâtre Michel, 24 May 1921
64	Intermezzo (J. Giraudoux), 1933, Paris, Comédie des Champs-Elysées, 1 March 1933, unpubd
67	Petrus (M. Achard), 1933, Paris, Comédie des Champs-Elysées, 8 Dec 1933, ?lost
—	Monsieur le Trouhadec saisi par la débauche (Romains), 1933, ?lost
78	Margot (E. Bourdet), 1935, collab. Auric, Paris, Marigny, 26 Nov 1935, unpubd, ?lost
106	Leocadia (J. Anouilh), 1940, Paris, Michodière, 3 Nov 1940, ?lost except for song Les chemins de l'amour
112	La fille du jardinier (C. Exbrayat), 1941, Paris, Mathurins, 8 Oct 1941, ?lost
123	Le voyageur sans bagages (Anouilh), 1943, Paris, Michodière, 1944, ?lost
124	La nuit de la Saint-Jean (J.M. Barrie), 1944, Paris, Comédie des Champs-Elysées, Dec 1944, ?lost
128	Le soldat et la sorcière (A. Salacrou), 1945, Paris, Sarah Bernhardt, 5 Dec 1945, ?lost
138	L'invitation au château (Anouilh), 1947, Paris, Atelier, 15 Nov 1947
139	Amphitryon (Molière), 1947, Paris, Marigny, 5 Dec 1947, ?lost
183	Renaud et Armide (Cocteau), 1962, Baalbeck, 18 Aug 1962, ?lost