[3] Françaix's music was also used for ballets: Le Roi nu, Les Malheurs de Sophie (both for Paris) and Jeu Sentimental (for Brussels).
[5] Françaix wrote pieces in many of the major large musical forms, including concerti, symphonies, opera, theatre, ballet,[1] and works drawing on traditions falling out of favor in the 20th century, such as the cantata.
One of his oratorios, entitled L'apocalypse selon St. Jean and written in 1939, "employs choral psalmody and full orchestra, with a second instrumental group that included saxophones, accordion, mandolin, and guitar (depicting Hell); the work was performed at the ISCM in Vienna (1932) and Palermo (1949)".
[6] Though he often put his own modern spin on the old modes of expression, he was an avowed neoclassicist who rejected atonality and formless wanderings, and he drew from great literature of the past for his vocal settings.
It changed little throughout his career; while he was influenced by composers he admired (such as Emmanuel Chabrier, Igor Stravinsky, Maurice Ravel, and Francis Poulenc), he integrated what he picked up into his own distinct aesthetic, which was already evident in his early works.