Tonal alchemist …

… Poulenc: A Biography by Roger Nichols; Poulenc: The Life in the Songs by Graham Johnson – review | Books | The Guardian.

… the more mischievous Poulenc becomes, the more he manages to be sincere. His music can provide a commentary on itself, the buttery melodies, even at their most passionate, spiked with rug-pulls, undercuts, little bubbles of flatulent woodwind. He can be “simply heavenly” in both a celestial and a Nancy Mitford sense. His mighty opera Dialogues des Carmélites is known for its numbing finale, in which 14 nuns are sent to the guillotine during the Reign of Terror, the noise of the descending blade slicing them from the music one by one. That Poulenc dares to venture so perilously close to sentimentality, even kitsch, at such a moment, can give the scene an astonishing power.