Poulenc

[Amphissa]

I am rather surprised, I guess, that there has been no mention whatsoever of Francis Poulenc. I do not own a lot of his music, but have enjoyed his Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra (1932) and Piano Concerto (1949). As a member of Le Six, there is humor and fun incorporated into both pieces, but the music is rich with infectious and substantive melodies.

Beyond these two concertos, I like the Sinfonietta, but have heard no other large scale works. I have an assortment of violin and cello sonatas, but that's about it.

Would anyone like to recommend other music by him that would be worth tracking down, and what are your favorite recordings of his more popular works?

[Josh]

I don't know whether or not Poulenc would fall into the purview of this board... I don't think he's "unsung", and I don't think he's even "Romantic".  But he's probably the most modern-sounding composer to write a piece that I didn't outright loathe (unless you want to count film or video game music, which tends to harmonically sound more Romantic than 20th century).  His Concerto for Two Pianos is one of the few pieces of non-vocal music to make me laugh out loud!  I wasn't laughing at the piece because I thought it was bad, it just drew laughter out of me.  I first heard it probably 12 years or so ago; I had never read/heard any description of it, it was just someone recommending a piece of 20th century music I might not hate, but without any information to go along with it.  I agreed to buy a CD with it and listen to it totally blind, as it were.  And I thought it was hilarious, especially the first movement.  It sounded like a way to mock Vivaldi without really mocking Vivaldi, and more than that.  I can't remember all my first impressions.  True, the work contains passages that reach the point of nearly physically nauseating me due to certain sounds and/or note sequences that I find unbearable, but I actually like the piece overall.  I didn't know his music was meant to be humorous, I didn't know anything whatsoever at the time; the fact that I was laughing, and later found that I was supposed to find it amusing, to me shows that Poulenc had some real skill.  I may hate 95% of all the measures of music I've ever heard by him, but I just have to say he had real skill to pull that off.  I find most of Berlioz's music harsh and unpleasant, so you can imagine what many 20th-century sounds do to my poor 18th century ears!

Also on that CD was a Sextet (?), with flute and piano and other instruments, I think. My CDs are still in cardboard boxes since a tree fell on my house, and I haven't gotten them back out even though I've been back in the house for almost 13 months!  That had a pleasant tune or two in it, as I recall.  It did lots of 20th-century stuff that I just can't tolerate - I'm not exaggerating when I say sometimes a lot of music after 1830 or so makes me physically nauseous.  But at the same time, once again, to this day I hold the impression of real talent, refined with serious training and skill.


EDIT: I apologise again for the poor writing.  I'm one of those people who has very good spelling, but horrible writing skills.  I never use any kind of spellchecker, so you'll see any of my spelling errors when I brazenly leave them for all to see.  But this post is poorly written even by my abysmal standards.  I'm just too lazy and stupid to correct it tonight, and it's difficult for me to put into words the combination of positive and negative feelings Poulenc's music leaves on me.  I try never to talk about the negative on this message board, since it doesn't really do anything good for anyone (including myself).  I'm just talking about my negative reactions to certain music here to give an indication how impressive Poulenc is to leave someone like me - someone totally grounded in the "Classical Period" - anything even resembling a positive impression.

[eschiss1]

There's been at least one - if not more - Poulenc-centered thread on this board; one of them just a couple of months ago (whether or not he falls within the purview of this board, this is still the case) - here.  Found it easily using the search box at the top right of the page (from the main page, not from here- the search box is context-dependent.)

[FBerwald]

I agree. Poulenc's music is very Tongue n' Cheek. I believe the reason his music is liked because its accessible.  Jean Françaix is another example.

[John H White]

Josh, did you realise that Poulenc has an American counterpart in Don Gillis, whose music I find very enjoyable in spite  of my musical interests being mainly centred on the Classico-Romantic period?

[TerraEpon]

I'd hardly call Poulenc and Gillis similar, outside of the fact they both wrote very much in the style of their nationalities and wrote a lot of upbeat music.

[John H White]

I didn't mean that there styles were similar but they both wrote "fun music". i.e. they didn't take themselves too seriously.

[Amphissa]

 
So, I typed Poulenc into the Search box and came up empty before starting this thread. I run a search now, and I get only the results of this thread.

However, if I do the same search when at the Unsung Composers entry page, I do get results for those previous comments about Poulenc. Even though all the comments appear in the "Composers and Music" forum, doing the Search while in the "Composers and Music" forum does not seem to actually perform a complete or accurate search of Unsung, and not even of "Composers and Music" forum.

Are others getting the same kind of discrepancy? If so, perhaps this is a problem to bump up to the techies.

[Mark Thomas]

It's not a bug, it's a feature. 

As far as I can determine now, the search function is hierarchical. It assumes (obviously wrongly) that if you are in this topic, then you only want to search within this topic. If you are in Composers & Music, you'll get results restricted to that category. If you are in The Music or Home, then you'll get results from everywhere. I can't find anyway of changing that and don't have time at present to research through software's support site whether it is possible. But I will.

[Amphissa]

But there is a bug.

If you Search for Poulenc in the "Composers and Music" forum, it do not get all of the links to the previous discussion. Only to this particular thread. It is not searching the entire "Composers and Music" forum.

At least, that's the way it's working (or not) for me. 

[jerfilm]

Go back all the way to the "hone" menu - ie Unsung Composers and do your search, you will get a half dozen or so hits including one on his organ concerto which drew considerable comment.\\Jerry

[Mark Thomas]

I've checked.

Search from the top right search box works as I have described it: hierarchical search within the topic/board/ category/whole site, depending where you are. You get results for the next level down. So, if you search within a thread, you get all the posts which contain the word. In a board (Composers and Music for example) you get all the threads (six in this case, including the one about the Organ Concerto) which mention "Poulenc" and the text extract showing the first mention in each thread. If you search from The Music category or Home you get the same thing, but from all the boards (seven results, as there's one mention in New Recordings).

Alternatively, wherever you are, you can click the "Search" menu option on the menu bar and that takes you to a dedicated Search Page. Click on "Advanced Search". Now you can customise your search to include or exclude the boards searched as well as a number of other common search parameters.

As far as I can see, it is working as intended. At least for me.

I'm adding a copy of this post to the Problems board.

[chill319]

CPO 999 992-2 is a wonderful recording of the Poulenc 2-piano concerto, which likewise makes me laugh out loud.  It throws in the Milhaud and the delightful Casadesus concertos for good measure.

[Amphissa]

Mark, that may be the way it is supposed to work, but it is not working that way for me.

1. If I go to the top of this page, type Poulenc into the search box, I get a list of 8 posts, all from this thread.

2. If I got to the Composers and Music entry page, which lsts all topics in this forum, and do the search there, I get a list of 6 posts. One post is from this thread, but all 5 of the other posts appear elsewhere. My original post that started this thread is not among the result! And it does not search the New Recordings forum.

3. If I search from the main menu page of this site, where all forums are listed, I get the same results as in 2. It does not search the New Recordings forum there either.

4. If I go into the New Recordings forum and search on the main page there, I get only 1 resulting post. That post appeared in the New Recordings forum, and did not appear in any of the previous lists. It does not search the Composers and Music forum.

Are you getting difference results when you search? If you are getting different results, then what is the explanation for that, I wonder. I use Firefox. Could it be browser-related? I doubt it, but .....  However, if you are getting the same results I do, then I'd say the Search function is not working optimally. I'm okay with the idea that the search is limited to the forum I am in when I run the search. But I really would like it to give me a complete listing of all posts within that forum.

My concern is that, as the number of threads increases, finding older posts about specific composers becomes harder. And for new visitors who might be looking for discussion about some composer ....

[Mark Thomas]

Amphissa, where we differ is in your point 3 where, as it's supposed to, search for me produces a result from each of the threads in Composers and Music (6 in all) and one from New Recordings. You don't seem to be getting that. I routinely use Firefox too, but I've just tested Search using IE8 and get the same result. I can only conclude that whatever is happening is happening within your installation, although I don't really understand why that should be as all the data manipulation is on the server, nothing is done in the browser itself. I've had a couple of non-members carry out searches and they get the same results as I do.

Does search work properly for you from the Search menu bar option?

It does seem shortsighted that only one result per thread is shown. What is odd is that, you're right, the highlighted post in each thread is the last one, not the first as you'd expect. I'll dig around and see if I can change that and I'll also see if there is anything on the support forum which might shed light on your problem.

So as not to clog up this Poulenc thread, please post any reply in the Search thread I set up in the Problems board.