Thread by @dean_frey

Remembering Francis Poulenc on his birthday 🎂
📷 Boris Lipnitzki, c. 1930
"As the decades pass, he grows in stature, and his aloofness from musical party politics matters less."
- @alexrossmusic

A great photograph by Boris Lipnitzki from the garden of Charles de Noailles's hotel in Paris, 1932. Igor Markevitch, Charles Koechlin, Francis Poulenc, Georges Auric & Henri Sauguet.

Francis Poulenc by Fred Plaut, early 1960s.
Plaut was the great Columbia recording engineer who also took fabulous photographs (most notably of Glenn Gould).

Fred Plaut's wife was the soprano Rose Dercourt, who happened to be a close friend of Francis Poulenc. So his LP cover photo from 1963 has the intimacy of family friendship.

Francis Poulenc & Arnold Schoenberg, in a photo taken by Darius Milhaud, 1922
Milhaud comments:
"He invited us to his home in Mödling. We had a wonderful afternoon there. The walls of his apartment were full of pictures that he had painted himself: faces & eyes, everywhere eyes!”

Les Six, more or less, by Boris Lipnitzki, 1931.
Francis Poulenc, Germaine Tailleferre, (Jean Cocteau), Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger & Darius Milhaud. Georges Auric was missing, but Cocteau adds a drawing.

Boris Lipnitzki took some great shots of Les Six at a December 1951 reunion in Paris.
A fairly formal photo of Darius Milhaud, Georges Auric, Arthur Honegger, Germaine Tailleferre, Francis Poulenc & Louis Durey, with Jean Cocteau at the piano.

But best are the informal photos from Boris Lipnitzki's 1951 Les Six photoshoot:
Poulenc greets Milhaud
I love this shot!

Les Six by Boris Lipnitzki, Paris, December 1951.
Georges Auric, Arthur Honegger, Germaine Tailleferre & Louis Durey in the back, & up front, Francis Poulenc & Jean Cocteau on either side of Darius Milhaud, who seems to have nodded off.

Boris Lipnitzki tries to get Les Six + Jean Cocteau together for a portrait, 1951. Like herding cats...

An earlier photo of Francis Poulenc by Boris Lipnitzki. Francis can often seem a bit stern when he gets in front of a camera, so it's nice to see him more relaxed. The Getty caption says 1929.