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According to a recently published biography, the dominant factors in Poulenc’s life were his Catholocism and his homosexuality. Leaving aside the argument that nothing was more important to Poulenc than music, and accepting that his religion was a major source of inspiration for much (though by no means all) of his career, it still seems a curious and even misleading interpretation of his development. Every composer has his or her sexuality to cope with. Poulenc’s homosexuality no more makes him a special case than, say, Debussy’s heterosexuality or Saint-Saens’s bisexuality make them special cases. If Poulenc had suffered specifically for his homosexuality the situation wold be different. But he was living in neither Tchaikovsky’s Tsarist Russia nor Britten’s pre-Woolfenden Britain. In twentieth century France he had no reason to conceal his sexuality, which he embraced cheerfully and openly, without guilt and with no problem in reconciling it with his religious beliefs.

Although Poulenc’s father - one of the founders of the chemical company that became Rhône-Poulenc - was religious, his mother was not.