Francis Poulenc - chamber compositions for bassoon

Francis Poulenc became famous as a member of a group of composers which was founded in the beginning of the 20th century in Paris and is known as a Group ?Les Six?. With Poulenc also Darius Milhaud, Arthur Honegger, Georges Auric, Louis Durey and Germaine Tailleferre take part in it. Their music doesn?t have much more common, though they are usually assigned to a stream of musical neoclassicism. Great inspiration for the group was a person of Eric Satie; their speaker was then Jean Cocteau, whose manifesto The cock and Harlequin says a lot about philosophical ideas of the group. Francis Poulenc was born on 7th of January 1899 in Paris and lived there for a most of his life. He studied by Ricardo Viñes (piano) and Charles Koechlin (composition). He was a famous pianist at first (in Duo with baritone Piérre Bernac or soprano Denis Duval), then he became reputable also as a brilliant composer. He died of a heart attack on 30th of January 1963. By Poulenc we would find works from every music forms and genres. Mostly he wrote songs and piano music. Famous are also his operas (e. g. Les Mamelles de Tirésias or Dialogues des Carmélites), then concertos (e. g. Concert for piano and orchestra or Concert Champêtre for harpsichord) and also his religious music (Litanies à la vierge Noire or Stabat Mater). But among listeners his chamber music is loved the most, critics value its balance and beautiful melodies. In three of his chamber pieces there is written a bassoon part: In Sonate for clarinet and bassoon (1922), in Trio for oboe, bassoon and piano (1926) and in Sextuor for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, French horn and piano (1939). Each of these pieces has its own specificity and bassoon is there used different way. Sonate for clarinet and bassoon is based on the part of clarinet. Bassoon plays there only figurations and leaps as an accompanist. In Trio piano plays the main role and couple of oboe and bassoon second it. Though they are not only the accompanists, but they play also much of the piece themes. The last piece, Sextuor, is then well balanced chamber composition, in which all instruments are equally used