Composed 1932/39; 18 minutes

Even in his chamber music, Poulenc can epitomize all that is urbane, witty and rebellious in French music between the wars. That’s certainly the case with the Sextet he began to write in 1932 and then thoroughly revised seven years later. There’s also something that Poulenc, one of the least formally educated composers, may have picked up from the jazz that swept Paris in the early years of the 20th century. Ragtime, Dixieland, Harlem jazz, Charleston, foxtrot, cakewalk and shimmy: what Parisians knew as ‘jazz’ was an eclectic cocktail. But from this heady mix, Poulenc distills individuality in his instrumental writing. His five wind instruments do not speak as one. They are frequently called on to compete – and the loudest voice wins. In the opening movement, marked 'very quick and impetuous,' a punchy clarinet riff is up against a brilliant scale from the flute and a whoop from the horn. Each instrument asserts itself with a brief, two- or three-bar tune, much as a jazz instrumentalist will solo on a 16- or 32-bar theme. The piano is kept busy throughout, driving the rhythm, energizing the group, adding syncopation. The middle section delights in snuggling up to the sentimental and introduces both passionate solos and mysterious wind writing. 

The second movement, Divertissement, falls into Poulenc’s favorite three-part structure, with reflective, lyrical outer sections framing a livelier center. With the exuberant finale, we enter the music hall, where the music jumps good-naturedly from one idea to another. The effect is spontaneous, but the ideas are carefully balanced against one another. Poulenc was a perfectionist. Of his first draft of the work, premièred in 1933, he said to composer and teacher Nadia Boulanger: “There were some good ideas in it, but the whole thing was badly put together. With the proportions altered and better balanced, it comes over very clearly.” Listen how carefully Poulenc puts together a glittering kaleidoscope of melodic fragments in the finale. It’s not unlike a brightly colored jigsaw puzzle. The structure of the movement is cumulative and calculated, and the ending comes as a surprise. 

Francis Poulenc described his Sextet as “chamber music of the most straightforward kind.”  It is an homage to the wind instruments I have loved from the moment I began composing.”  Another commentator says that what creates interest in the work is not so much the slightly altered classical framework, but the heartfelt romantic melodies which Poulenc hangs on its bare-bones structure.