The Faure Song Cycles. Stephen Rumph

in Fauré, La bonne chanson.

      Example 5.1. Leitmotives of Fauré, La chanson d’Ève, op. 95.

      Example 5.2. Transformation of diegetic music in Fauré, Pénélope, act 2, scenes 1–2.

      Example 5.3. Fauré, “The King’s Three Blind Daughters,” incidental music to Maurice Maeterlinck, Pelléas et Mélisande, op. 80, mm. 1–8.

      Example 5.4. Fauré, “Paradis,” La chanson d’Ève, mm. 1–23.

      Example 5.5. Octatonic rotation of motive B in Fauré, “Comme Dieu rayonne,” La chanson d’Ève, mm. 15–20.

      Example 5.6. Rotation of Voice of God motive through three octatonic collections in Fauré, “Paradis,” La chanson d’Ève, mm. 76–85.

      Example 5.7. Symmetrical rotations of motive B in Fauré, “Dans un parfum de roses blanches,” La chanson d’Ève, mm. 1–18.

      Example 5.8. Complete rotation through the octatonic scale in Fauré, “O Mort, poussière d’étoiles,” La chanson d’Ève, mm. 18–21.

      Example 6.1. Transformations of a refrain in Fauré, “Je me poserai sur ton cœur,” Le jardin clos, op. 106.

      Example 6.2. Fauré, “Exaucement,” Le jardin clos, mm. 1–9.

      Example 6.3. Fauré, “Exaucement,” Le jardin clos, mm. 16–21.

      Example 6.4. Fauré, “Inscription sur le sable,” Le jardin clos, mm. 1–5.

      Example 6.5. Fauré, “Dans la nymphée,” Le jardin clos, mm. 1–5.

      Example 6.6. Fauré, “La messagère,” Le jardin clos, mm. 1–9.

      Example 6.7. Transformations of the Prinner schema in Fauré, “Quand tu plonges tes yeux dans mes yeux,” Le jardin clos.

      Example 7.1. Octatonic rotations in Fauré, “Cygne sur l’eau,” Mirages, op. 113, mm. 25–29.

      Example 7.2. Wagnerian influence in Fauré, “Reflets dans l’eau,” Mirages.

      Example 7.3. Fauré, “Danseuse,” Mirages, mm. 1–6.

      Example 7.4. Fauré, “La mer est infinie,” L’horizon chimérique, op. 118, mm. 1–11.

      Example 7.5. Fauré, “Je me suis embarqué,” L’horizon chimérique, mm. 40–46.

      Example 7.6. Fauré, “Diane, Séléné,” L’horizon chimérique, mm. 16–20.

      Example 7.7. Fauré, augmented triads in “Vaisseaux, nous vous aurons aimés,” L’horizon chimérique.

PREFACE

      Gabriel Fauré cultivated no genre so richly across his long career as the mélodie. His hundred-odd songs offer an inexhaustible variety of style and expression, and with good reason since they span so formidable a period of musical change. He wrote his first song in 1861, two years after the premiere of Gounod’s Faust, and his last in 1921, the year of Arnold Schoenberg’s first twelve-tone work. Fauré’s songwriting career divides strikingly in half: until 1890, he wrote individual mélodies; thereafter, he composed all but a handful within six carefully integrated cycles. (The lone outlier is Poème d’un jour, a short triptych from 1878.) The song cycle was not just another genre for Fauré. It represents a major vector in his creative life, a fundamental rethinking of song composition that left its mark on almost half of his mélodies.

      Fauré’s turn to cyclic composition comes as little surprise as he had always tended to concentrate on individual poets. He confined himself to Victor Hugo in his early years, drawing his first five songs from a single collection, then moved systematically through Charles Baudelaire and Théophile Gautier before immersing himself in the poets of the Parnassian school. In rapid succession, he would set ten poems by Armand Silvestre (1878–84), seventeen by Paul Verlaine (1887–94), and eighteen by Charles Van Lerberghe (1906–14). Fauré reimagined his musical idiom with each new poet and school and his song cycles show the same sensitivity to the poetic material. Far more than Debussy, Ravel, or Poulenc, Fauré conceived his song cycles as integrated works rather than mere sets. He reordered poems creatively and used thematic recollections, key schemes, and even leitmotives to unify the songs. The following chapters probe the expressive design of his seven song cycles, seeking the peculiar vision behind each synthesis of poetry and music.

      Previous studies of Fauré’s songs have focused on individual poets and texts but have paid little attention to the broader schools, movements, and aesthetic currents of French poetry. This book widens the lens on this context, approaching each of Fauré’s song cycles as the expression of a particular moment in French poetic and musical history. Chapter 1 unearths traces of a hidden cycle in Fauré’s earliest songs, showing how Victor Hugo’s play between genres allowed the young composer to navigate issues of national identity in French song. Chapter 2 interprets Poème d’un jour as a programmatic expression of Parnassian ideals. Chapters 3 and 4 read Fauré’s Verlaine cycles, the Cinq mélodies “de Venise” and La bonne chanson, within the entwined discourses of Symbolism and French Wagnerism. Chapters 5 and 6 relate the Van Lerberghe cycles, La chanson d’Ève and Le jardin clos, to the different concerns of Symbolist theater and Bergsonian philosophy. Finally, chapter 7 interprets the last two cycles, Mirages and L’horizon chimérique, as Fauré’s response to post–World War I neoclassicism. The portrait emerges of an astute reader and salon habitué who engaged keenly with the aesthetic issues of contemporary poetry.

      Critics have rarely taken so generous a view of Fauré’s literary acumen. Within the Belle Époque triumvirate, Fauré has figured as the musical purist, indifferent to the literary and artistic happenings that beguiled Debussy and Ravel. As Vladimir Jankélévitch put it succinctly, “he has no antennae.”¹ Assessments of Fauré’s songs always acknowledge his sensitivity to word music, his talent for evoking a general mood, and his Gallic qualities of elegance and taste. Yet not even his fiercest advocates have suggested anything akin to David Code’s evaluation of Debussy: “It was through his intensive readings of contemporary poets, from Théodore de Banville and Dante Gabriel Rossetti through Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine and Stéphane Mallarmé, that he primarily refined the literary sensibility that was to render him one of the finest musical readers of poetic and dramatic language.”² If any polemic fuels my study, it is the contention that Fauré belongs among the finest musical readers, and not sidelined as, in Debussy’s words, the “Maître des Charmes.”³

      This book offers close readings of poetic and musical texts, following a strictly topical approach. It thus does not move systematically through every song, nor does it delve deeply into the biographical context. Readers can fill out the picture with Graham Johnson’s thickly documented compendium on Fauré’s songs and poets or Klaus Strobel’s analytical survey of the complete mélodies. The life-and-works studies of Jean-Michel Nectoux and Robert Orledge also contain a wealth of information, as do the critical editions from Edition Peters and Bärenreiter. In this book, I have stuck doggedly to the artistic matters at hand, which has meant sacrificing many a colorful biographical detail and musical observation. The reader will be amply repaid, I hope, with a new appreciation for Fauré’s creative imagination and for the depth and variety with which he synthesized poetry and music in these seven precious works.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      My first thanks go to Carlo Caballero, the intellectual companion, collaborator, and friend from whom I have learned so much about Fauré. Roy Howat also lent generous encouragement and advice throughout the project. I am grateful to Emily Kilpatrick and David Code as well for their detailed and thoughtful comments on the book manuscript. Marshall Brown once again lent a watchful literary eye, while Jonathan Bernard and Robert O. Gjerdingen provided feedback on the musical analyses.

      Thanks are due to my colleagues at the University of Washington School of Music, especially Richard Karpen, for their support of this project. The book received welcome funding from the UW Royalty Research Fund as well as a Kreielsheimer