Editing Francis Poulenc (section)

===Songs===
[[File:Guillaume-Apollinaire-1918.jpg|alt=Middle-aged man in French military uniform of the First World War|thumb|upright|left|[[Guillaume Apollinaire]], whose poems Poulenc frequently set]]
Poulenc composed songs throughout his career, and his output in the genre is extensive.{{refn|A 2013 CD set of the complete songs occupies four full discs and plays for more than five hours in total.<ref>Johnson, pp. 4–10</ref>|group= n}} In Johnson's view, most of the finest were written in the 1930s and 1940s.<ref>Johnson, p. 13</ref> Though widely varied in character, the songs are dominated by Poulenc's preference for certain poets. From the outset of his career he favoured verses by Guillaume Apollinaire, and from the mid-1930s the writer whose work he set most often was Paul Éluard. Other poets whose works he frequently set included Jean Cocteau, Max Jacob, and [[Louise de Vilmorin]].<ref>Hell, pp. 93–97</ref> In the view of the music critic Andrew Clements, the Éluard songs include many of Poulenc's greatest settings;<ref name=ac>Clements, Andrew. [https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/oct/17/poulenc-the-complete-songs-review "Poulenc: The Complete Songs&nbsp;– review"], ''The Guardian'', 17 October 2013</ref> Johnson calls the cycle ''Tel Jour, Telle Nuit'' (1937) the composer's "watershed work", and Nichols regards it as "a masterpiece worthy to stand beside Fauré's ''[[La Bonne Chanson (Fauré)|La Bonne Chanson]]''".<ref name=grove/> Clements finds in the Éluard settings a profundity "worlds away from the brittle, facetious surfaces of Poulenc's early orchestral and instrumental music".<ref name=ac/> The first of the ''Deux poèmes de Louis Aragon'' (1943), titled simply "C", is described by Johnson as "a masterpiece known the world over; it is the most unusual, and perhaps the most moving, song about the ravages of war ever composed."<ref>Johnson, p. 70</ref>

In an overview of the songs in 1973, the musical scholar [[Yvonne Gouverné]] said, "With Poulenc, the melodic line matches the text so well that it seems in some way to complete it, thanks to the gift which the music has for penetrating the very essence of a given poem; nobody has better crafted a phrase than Poulenc, highlighting the colour of the words."<ref name=gouverne>Gouverné, Yvonne. [http://www.poulenc.fr/userfiles/downloads/poulenc_yvonne_gouverne_en.pdf "Francis Poulenc"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150924080621/http://www.poulenc.fr/userfiles/downloads/poulenc_yvonne_gouverne_en.pdf |date=24 September 2015 }}, Francis Poulenc: musicien français 1899–1963, retrieved 27 October 2014</ref> Among the lighter pieces, one of the composer's most popular songs is a setting of ''[[Les Chemins de l'amour]]'' for [[Jean Anouilh]]'s 1940 play as a Parisian waltz;<ref>Johnson, p. 64</ref> by contrast his "monologue" "La Dame de Monte Carlo", (1961) a depiction of an elderly woman addicted to gambling, shows the composer's painful understanding of the horrors of depression.<ref>Johnson, p. 128</ref>