Since the early nineteenth century French composers have shown a particular skill and deftness of touch in handling wind instruments, following the pattern set at the Paris Conservatoire by Anton Reicha (1770-1836), with his preference for the textures of the quintet of different wind instruments, as opposed to the traditional doubling in sextets or octets.

Francis Poulenc only undertook formal musical training in composition in 1921 from Charles Koechlin. He had studied the piano with Ricardo Viñes and explored the music of composers that he favoured, Bach, Mozart, Satie and Stravinsky, and came to be associated with the group of friends known as Les Six, Honegger, Milhaud, Auric, Tailleferre and Du