Customer Reviews

Francis Poulenc: Music, Art and Literature (Music & Literature) (Music & Literature)

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The book 'Francis Poulenc. Music, Art and Literature' is a must for everybody who wants to get closer to the great French composer Francis Poulenc. Although there are already a great many biographies available, this book gives a wealth of new information about Poulenc's likes and loves, his tastes and distastes, his ambitions and motives. All the authors of this well edited book, with many new pictures and facimiles, (Sindney Buckland and Myriam Chimenes) have done there research well and with love for details. They present their new facts with great taste and distiction. A couple of the subjects dealt with are: Poulenc's 58 lessons from Charles Koechlin, Poulenc's Choral Works, Raymonde Linossier (how important she really was!), Nogent Music, Poulenc and Dufy, Poulenc and Matisse, 'In search of a libretto', "A Baton Rompu", Poulenc as Disc Jockey. Recommended with five stars.

When I was doing research for my master's thesis, i used this biography of Poulenc extensively. It was the best English language reference I found. It was published a while back, but Poulenc's life has not changed much since then. :>) Also in the late 90's, Buckland, himself, was very accessible through his alma mater and very helpful.