Composed: 1947
Premiered: 1948, London
Duration: 29 minutes

Francis Poulenc was the scion of a prosperous French family. (The multinational pharmaceutical firm Poulenc-Rhône was the source of their wealth.) He was educated in the traditional, classical French way and pursued music only as a talented amateur until his 20s, when he decided some formal instruction was desirable. His endeavours centred on vocal music; he was a master of the subtleties of French poetry, which he set in a deceptively simple style. Later in life, he concentrated increasingly on religious music. Throughout, he searched for economy of means – saying more with less and less.

As befits a composer of mainly vocal music, melody was all-important to him, structure and counterpoint much less. His music is surely a refutation of the proposition that all tunes have been discovered. Accordingly, he took little interest in any of the fashionable musical trends of his day – serial, electronic, aleatoric, or other “new” kinds of composition held no appeal for him. As Poulenc himself put it, “I know perfectly well that I’m not one of those composers who have made harmonic innovations like Stravinsky, Ravel, or Debussy, but I think there’s room for new music which doesn’t mind using other people’s chords. Wasn’t that the way with Mozart and Schubert?”

Poulenc’s Sinfonietta was commissioned by the British Broadcasting Commission to celebrate the first anniversary of the Third Programme in 1947. It is his only symphonic work, and the title is an indication of its modest scale and lack of pretension.

Program note by the late Dr. C.W. Helleiner.