Editing Francis Poulenc (section)

===First compositions and ''Les Six''===
Poulenc made his début as a composer in 1917 with his ''[[Rapsodie nègre]]'', a ten-minute, five-[[movement (music)|movement]] piece for [[baritone]] and chamber group;{{refn|The Poulenc scholar Carl B Schmidt lists two works earlier than ''Rapsodie nègre'', unperformed and known to have been destroyed by the composer: "Processional pour la crémation d'un mandarin" (Processional for the Cremation of a Mandarin) (1914) and Préludes (1916) both for solo piano;<ref>Schmidt (1995), pp. 11–12</ref> several later pieces composed between 1917 and 1919 were also destroyed or lost.<ref>Schmidt (1995), p. 525</ref>|group= n}} it was dedicated to Satie and premiered at one of a series of concerts of new music run by the singer [[Jane Bathori]]. There was a fashion for African arts in Paris at the time, and Poulenc was delighted to run across some published verses, purportedly Liberian but full of Parisian [[Flâneur|boulevard]] slang. He used one of the poems in two sections of the [[rhapsody (music)|rhapsody]]. The baritone engaged for the first performance lost his nerve on the platform, and the composer, though no singer, jumped in. This ''jeu d'esprit'' was the first of many examples of what Anglophone critics came to call "leg-Poulenc".<ref>Harding, p. 13</ref>{{refn|A pun on the English colloquial expression "leg-pulling"&nbsp;– playful, humorous deception.<ref>[http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/107003?redirectedFrom=leg-pulling#eid39632778 "leg-pull"], ''[[Oxford English Dictionary]]'', retrieved 20 September 2014 {{subscription}}</ref>|group= n}} Ravel was amused by the piece and commented on Poulenc's ability to invent his own folklore.<ref>Machart, p. 18</ref> Stravinsky was impressed enough to use his influence to secure Poulenc a contract with a publisher, a kindness that Poulenc never forgot.<ref>Poulenc (1978), p. 138</ref>

[[File:Stravinsky-satie-ravel.jpg|thumb|alt=Three head and shoulders shots of early 20th century men|110px|[[Stravinsky]] (''top''), [[Satie]] and [[Ravel]]]]
In 1917 Poulenc got to know Ravel well enough to have serious discussions with him about music. He was dismayed by Ravel's judgments, which exalted composers whom Poulenc thought little of above those he greatly admired.<ref name=rn117>Nichols, p. 117</ref>{{refn|Poulenc recalled Ravel as saying that [[Saint-Saëns]] was a genius, Schumann was mediocre and much inferior to [[Mendelssohn]], late Debussy (such as ''[[Jeux]]'') was poor, and [[Chabrier]]'s [[orchestration]] incompetent.<ref name=rn117/> Chabrier's music was one of Poulenc's particular enthusiasms. He said in the 1950s, "Ah! Chabrier, I love him as one loves a father! An indulgent father, always merry, his pockets full of tasty tit-bits. Chabrier's music is a treasure-house you could never exhaust. I just could not do without it. It consoles me on my darkest days, because you know&nbsp;... I am a sad man&nbsp;– who likes to laugh, as do all sad men."<ref>Poulenc (1978), p. 54</ref>|group= n}} He told Satie of this unhappy encounter; Satie replied with a dismissive epithet for Ravel who, he said, talked "a load of rubbish".<ref name=rn117/>{{refn|In the original, Poulenc's quotation of Satie's words is given as, "Ce c... de Ravel, c'est stupide tout ce qu'il dit!"<ref name=p6375>Poulenc (1963), p. 75</ref>|group= n}} For many years Poulenc was equivocal about Ravel's music, though always respecting him as a man. Ravel's modesty about his own music particularly appealed to Poulenc, who sought throughout his life to follow Ravel's example.<ref name=n117>Nichols, pp. 117–118</ref>{{refn|Poulenc commented in 1958 how much he had come to admire Ravel and that he had been glad to be able to show it, not only in words, but as a pianist, through his interpretations of Ravel's works.<ref name=t1958/>|group= n}}

From January 1918 to January 1921 Poulenc was a conscript in the French army in the last months of the [[French Army in World War I|First World War]] and the immediate post-war period. Between July and October 1918 he served at the [[Western Front (World War I)|Franco-German front]], after which he was given a series of auxiliary posts, ending as a typist at the [[History of the Armée de l'Air (1909–42)#World War I|Ministry of Aviation]].<ref name=h9/> His duties allowed him time for composition;<ref name=grove/> the ''[[Trois mouvements perpétuels]]'' for piano and the Sonata for Piano Duet were written at the piano of the local elementary school at [[Saint-Martin-sur-le-Pré]], and he completed his first [[song cycle]], ''[[FP (Poulenc)#15a|Le bestiaire]]'', setting poems by Apollinaire. The sonata did not create a deep public impression, but the song cycle made the composer's name known in France, and the ''Trois mouvements perpétuels'' rapidly became an international success.<ref name=h9>Hell, pp. 9–10</ref> The exigencies of music-making in wartime taught Poulenc much about writing for whatever instruments were available; then, and later, some of his works were for unusual combinations of players.<ref name=guardian>"Francis Poulenc", ''The Guardian'', 31 January 1963, p. 7</ref>

At this stage in his career Poulenc was conscious of his lack of academic musical training; the critic and biographer [[Jeremy Sams]] writes that it was the composer's good luck that the public mood was turning against late-[[romantic music|romantic]] lushness in favour of the "freshness and insouciant charm" of his works, technically unsophisticated though they were.<ref name=opera>Sams, Jeremy. [http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/O903945 " Poulenc, Francis"], ''The New Grove Dictionary of Opera'', Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press, retrieved 24 August 2014 {{subscription}}</ref> Four of Poulenc's early works were premiered at the [[Salle Huyghens]] in the [[Montparnasse]] area, where between 1917 and 1920 the cellist Félix Delgrange presented concerts of music by young composers. Among them were Auric, Durey, Honegger, [[Darius Milhaud]] and [[Germaine Tailleferre]] who, with Poulenc, became known collectively as ''"[[Les Six]]"''.<ref>Hell, pp. 13–14</ref> After one of their concerts, the critic [[Henri Collet]] published an article titled, "The Five Russians, the Six Frenchmen and Satie". According to Milhaud:
<blockquote>In completely arbitrary fashion Collet chose the names of six composers, Auric, Durey, Honegger, Poulenc, Tailleferre and myself, for no other reason than that we knew each other, that we were friends and were represented in the same programmes, but without the slightest concern for our different attitudes and our different natures. Auric and Poulenc followed the ideas of [[Cocteau]], Honegger was a product of German Romanticism and my leanings were towards a Mediterranean lyrical art&nbsp;... Collet's article made such a wide impression that the Groupe des Six had come into being.<ref>''Quoted'' in Hell, pp. 14–15</ref>{{refn|Milhaud's view has been questioned by later writers. In ''[[Music & Letters]]'' in 1957 Vera Rašín cast doubt on the statement that Collet's choice was arbitrary, surmising that the label ''"Les Six"'' was carefully planned by [[Jean Cocteau]], who had taken the group under his wing.<ref name=vr>Rašín, Vera. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/729312 "'Les Six' and Jean Cocteau"], ''Music & Letters'', April 1957, pp. 164–169 {{subscription}}</ref> A similar view was put forward by the musicologist [[Robert Orledge]] in 2003.<ref>Orledge, pp. 234–235</ref>|group=n}}</blockquote>
Cocteau, though similar in age to ''Les Six'', was something of a father-figure to the group.<ref name=vr/> His literary style, "paradoxical and lapidary" in Hell's phrase, was anti-romantic, concise and irreverent.<ref>Hell, p. 13</ref> It greatly appealed to Poulenc, who made his first setting of Cocteau's words in 1919 and his last in 1961.<ref>Hell, pp. 13 and 93; and Schmidt (2001), p. 451</ref> When members of ''Les Six'' collaborated with each other, they contributed their own individual sections to the joint work. Their 1920 piano suite ''[[L'Album des Six]]'' consists of six separate and unrelated pieces.<ref>Hinson, p. 882</ref> Their 1921 ballet ''[[Les mariés de la tour Eiffel]]'' contains three sections by Milhaud, two apiece by Auric, Poulenc and Tailleferre, one by Honegger and none by Durey, who was already distancing himself from the group.<ref>Desgraupes, p. 5; and Hell, p. 19</ref>

In the early 1920s Poulenc remained concerned at his lack of formal musical training. Satie was suspicious of music colleges, but Ravel advised Poulenc to take composition lessons; Milhaud suggested the composer and teacher [[Charles Koechlin]].<ref name=h21>Hell, p. 21</ref>{{refn|Koechlin, like Ravel, was a pupil of [[Gabriel Fauré]], but Poulenc did not share their love of Fauré's music: the Fauré scholar [[Jean-Michel Nectoux]] comments that Poulenc's aversion seems strange because of all the members of ''Les Six'', Poulenc "is the nearest to Fauré in the limpid clarity and singing quality of his own writing, in his charm".<ref>Nectoux, p. 434</ref>|group= n}} Poulenc worked with him intermittently from 1921 to 1925.<ref>Schmidt (2001), p. 144</ref>