"Of course I honor Saint Francis," commented Francis Poulenc on one occasion, "but he is a little intimidating. At any rate, I wanted my musical settings of his poignant little prayers to be an exercise in humility." Scored for a cappella men's choir, Poulenc's Quatre petites prières de St. François d'Assise were composed for and dedicated to the monastery choir at Champfleury (and in particular, a certain monk there named Frère Jérome, who happened to be composer's great-nephew).

The archaic textures of plainchant and early polyphony are utilized not used merely as historical tags or references. The sounds of Léonin's Notre Dame are blended seamlessly with Poulenc's own musical language, to create a piece that shares a certain reverence and solemnity with its predecessors.

The first prayer, "Salut, Dame Sainte," begins with two baritone soloists providing a drone on a perfect fifth, above which the tenors sing a simple melody that rises in an arc from the tonic root tone and then descends to the fifth scale degree, the reciting tone in Gregorian chant. The structure is a deliberate reference to organum. Once the other voices enter, the texture remains full, alternating between staid chordal material and one glossed with sustained "ahs" moving in slower, steady quarter notes. Twisting harmonic progressions take the place of thematic working-out or other types of formal development; the tension that builds is not vertical but horizontal, finally concluding on a stark perfect fifth.

In the second motet, "Tout puissant très saint," the texture is perfectly homophonic throughout, and the melody consists largely of stepwise motion and repeated notes. There is nary a dissonant note to be found (save a single passing tone in an inner voice); the chordal color comes from a kind of Gesualdonian approach to harmonic progression, in which voices move by half step to the nearest note, propelling them to the most distant and ever-changing tonal centers. Sudden and extreme dynamic changes enhance the dramatic harmonic effects.

Harmonic color also plays a prominent role in shaping the expression of the third motet, "Seigneur, je vous en prie." Here, however, the modulations are clean and assertive, with a distinctively popular kind of chromatic inflection that decorates, rather than detours, the harmonic progression. A plainchant-inspired tenor solo begins the fourth and final motet, "O mes très chers frères." Poulenc also revisits the organum sounds from the first motet, and later incorporates the drones into a harmonically updated homophonic texture.

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