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Francis Poulenc (7 January 1899 - 30 January 1963) was born in Paris and largely self taught as a musician. His distinctively personal compositional voice, which often resulted in humorous and insouciant works, was to the musical public the perfect example of the mid-20th century French school of thought. To his countrymen however, Poulenc was more admired as a composer of chansons and religious music.
Poulenc was an indispensable part of Les Six, a group of Parisian composers whose music deliberately moved towards a lighter character, and considered by many to be a reaction against Wagnerism and Impressionism. However, unlike many of this contemporaries, Poulenc was not an avant-garde, nor an innovator like his friends Darius Milhaud and Arthur Honnegger, yet he has still left his stamp as an eminently influential composer.
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