Francis Poulenc was born on 7 January 1899 in Paris. His father Émile Poulenc, an industrialist, came from a long line of pious Roman Catholics from the Aveyron area of southern France. His mother, née Jenny Royer, was the daughter of Parisian artisans. An amateur pianist, she bestowed a love of art upon her son. The young Francis first studied piano with his mother, and later with Mademoiselle Boutet de Monvel (the niece de César Franck) and her teacher, Mademoiselle Melon. At an early age, Poulenc took a particular shining to the music of Debussy, Schubert, Moussorgski, and Chabrier, and became an ardent reader of poetry. In 1913, he attended one of the first performances of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. Shortly thereafter, he became a student of pianist Ricardo Viñes, who introduced him to Georges Auric and Erik Satie.

Poulenc lost his mother in 1915 and his father in 1917, a few months before the premiere of his first serious composition, Rhapsodie Nègre. With his friend and “spiritual guide” Raymonde Linossier, he spent a considerable amount of time in Adrienne Monnier’s bookstore, where he met Louis Aragon, André Breton, and Paul Éluard, and heard Apollinaire recite his poems. Around this time, Poulenc also became acquainted with Jean Cocteau, Max Jacob, Arthur Honegger, Louis Durey, and Germaine Tailleferre. He was drafted into the French army in 1918. Following the war, Mouvements Perpétuels, one of Poulenc’s most well-known works, was premiered by Viñes in February 1919.

In early 1920, two articles by Henri Collet published in Comœdia, a French literary and artistic periodical, marked the birth of the “Group of Six,” a denomination which drew a comparison with the “Group of Five” Russian composers (César Cui, Aleksandr Borodin, Mily Balakirev, Modest Mussorgsky, and Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov). The group, united more by friendship than by unified creative objectives, was made up of Auric, Durey, Honegger, Milhaud, Poulenc, and Tailleferre, with Cocteau serving as an impresario and theorist and Satie as a creative mentor. The group existed formally until 1924, but its members remained close thereafter.

Conscious of his technical shortcomings as a musician, Poulenc undertook further study with Charles Kœchlin from 1921 to 1924. In 1921, Poulenc and Milhaud travelled to Rome, where they met Alfredo Casella, Gian Francesco Malipiero, and Vittorio Rieti, and the following year, to Vienna, where they met Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern. Poulenc’s Biches, composed for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, was premiered in 1924 in Monte Carlo.

In 1927, Poulenc bought a house in Noizay (in central France). Far from the bustle of life in Paris, it was here that he composed the majority of his works. Poulenc’s marriage proposal to Raymonde Linossier following the death of her partner in 1930 was rejected. While working on the ballet Aubade, Poulenc experienced his first period of depression, coinciding with his realisation (or acceptance) that he was homosexual.

Poulenc and baritone Pierre Bernac founded a piano/voice duo in April 1935. Their numerous performances in France and abroad would be a source of regular income for the composer; he wrote almost two-thirds of the numerous songs in his catalogue for the duo.

Upon receiving news of the brutal death of Pierre-Octave Ferroud in a car accident in 1936, Poulenc visited the Sanctuaire Notre-Dame de Rocamadour, a medieval pilgrimage site in the south of France. The trauma he experienced from the loss of his close friend led him to re-embrace his Catholic faith, and inspired the composition of Litanies à la vierge noire de Rocamadour, his first religious work.

Poulenc was again mobilised with the French army from early June to mid-July, 1940. In 1942, his ballet Les Animaux modèles was premiered at the Paris Opera. His secular cantata Figure humaine, a setting of Paul Éluard’s poems on themes of resistance to German occupation, was printed in secret and premiered in 1945 in London.

A rare romantic encounter with a woman resulted in the birth of Poulenc’s daughter, Marie-Ange, in 1946. His first opera, Les Mamelles de Tirésias, based on Apollinaire’s play of the same name, was premiered in 1947 at the Opéra Comique in Paris. Denise Duval, who played the title role, went on to become a close friend and long-term collaborator of the composer. He, along with Pierre Bernac, participated in tours of the opera in the United States in November-December 1948 and January-March 1950.

In January-March 1952, Poulenc and Bernac toured the United States for a third time. The book Interviews with Claude Rostand (transcriptions of a series of Rostand’s radio interviews with Poulenc) was published in 1954 by Julliard Editions (Paris). Despite progressing on the opera Dialogues des Carmélites (libretto by Georges Bernanos), Poulenc was going through a major crisis at this time, the result of psychological problems and legal concerns about the aforementioned opera. Dialogues des Carmélites was nonetheless premiered at La Scala in January 1957, and subsequently performed in June of the same year at the Paris Opera, with Denise Duval playing the lead role.

In 1958, a first biography, written by music critic Henri Hell in collaboration with the composer, was published by Plon. Poulenc’s third opera, La Voix humaine, composed for Denise Duval with a libretto by Cocteau, was premiered in January 1959. Shortly thereafter, Poulenc performed in a concert to celebrate his 60th birthday; this proved to be the occasion for the final performance of his duo with Pierre Bernac.

In February-March 1960, Poulenc again toured the United States with Denise Duval. He visited the country for a fourth (and final) time in January 1961 for the premiere of Gloria. Poulenc’s book Emmanuel Chabrier, dedicated to his “musical grand-father,” was published by La Palatine Editions in 1961.

Poulenc completed his final works, Répons des ténèbres, Clarinet Sonata, and Oboe Sonata in 1961 and 1962. On 30 January 1963, he died of a heart attack in his home on Rue de Médicis in Paris at the age of 64, leaving no works unfinished. A few months after his death, Moi et mes amis, a series of interviews with his friend Stéphane Audel, was published by La Palatine Editions.