Spring Concert - The French Connection - Stokesley Methodist Church

Gabriel Faure 1854-1924

Faure spent most of his life as a church organist and teacher, with little time for composing until he was in his mid 40s. Dismissed from his first job for turning up for Mass in evening wear after an all-night party, he rose to become Director of the Paris Conservatory.

The Cantique was one of his first compositions, aged 19, and he won first prize for it whilst still a music student : Saint-Saens was one of his teachers, and became a life-long friend and mentor.
Faure described his Requiem as "dominated from beginning to end by a very human feeling of faith in eternal rest" and "Perhaps I have also sought instinctively to escape what is thought right and proper, after all the years of accompanying burial services on the organ! I know it all by heart. I wanted to write something different".

Camille Saint-Saens 1835-1921

Saint-Saens began his Carnival of the Animals for his students, but didn't finish it till 1887. He was adamant it was not published in his life time, as he thought it too frivolous - except for The Swan. The Allegro Appassionato was written for an orchestra which performed good music, at affordable prices.

Francis Poulenc 1899-1963

Poulenc had little formal musical training, as he was expected to take over the family pharmaceutical business. However, both his parents were dead by the time he was 18, so being wealthy, he was able to enjoy the rich literary, intellectual and artistic Parisian life of the early 20th century, and was known as a bit of a joker; "half monk and half naughty boy". His Gloria was a late composition. Of it, he said "while writing it I had in mind those Crozzeli frescoes with angels sticking out their tongues and also some solemn-looking Benedictine monks that I saw playing football one day".