Francis Poulenc

Born in 1899 to a wealthy manufacturer, Poulenc was barred from conservatory and groomed for the family business. After his parents died, he studied piano with Ricardo Viñes and fell in with Erik Satie, joining the group called Les Six. His early works - the perpetual-motion piano suite of 1919, the ballet Les Biches in 1923 - were all high spirits and cheek. Then the 1930s opened a second channel: religious music, beginning in 1936, that he wove between the lighter pieces. He performed across Europe and America as a pianist with baritone Pierre Bernac and soprano Denise Duval, and grasped early the gramophone's reach, recording from 1928 on. For years after his death in 1963 he was written off in France as merely funny, the sacred music ignored, but the 21st century has brought his serious works back into repertory.