The Faure Song Cycles: Poetry and Music, 1861–1921 9780520969902

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The Fauré Song Cycles

The publisher and the University of California Press Foundation gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Roth Family Foundation Imprint in Music, established by a major gift from Sukey and Gil Garcetti and Michael P. Roth. Also, support for this publication was generously provided by the Publications Endowment of the American Musicological Society, supported in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The Fauré Song Cycles Poetry and Music, 1861–1921

Stephen Rumph

UNIVERSIT Y OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

University of California Press Oakland, California © 2020 by Stephen Rumph Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Rumph, Stephen C., author. Title: The Fauré song cycles : poetry and music, 1861-1921 / Stephen   Rumph. Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2020] |  Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2020004308 (print) | lccn 2020004309 (ebook) |   isbn 9780520297623 (cloth) | isbn 9780520969902 (epub) Subjects: lcsh: Fauré, Gabriel, 1845-1924. Songs. | Song cycles—19th  century—History and criticism. | Song cycles—20th century—History and criticism. | Songs—19th century—Analysis, appreciation. | Songs—20th century—Analysis, appreciation. | Music and literature— France—History—19th century. | Music and literature—France— History—20th century. Classification: lcc ml410.f27 r86 2020 (print) | lcc ml410.f27 (ebook) |   ddc 782.4/7092—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020004308 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020004309 29  28  27  26  25  24  23  22  21  20 10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

For Joseph Kerman, in memoriam

c ontents

List of Music Examples Preface Acknowledgments 1. Romancing the mélodie

170

Le jardin clos, op. 106

7. Neoclassical Voyages

132

La chanson d’Ève, op. 95

6. Writing in the Sand

92

La bonne chanson, op. 61

5. Theatrical Song

60

Cinq mélodies “de Venise,” op. 58

4. Wagnerian correspondances

31

Poème d’un jour, op. 21

3. The Discovery of Music

1

A Hugo Cycle?

2. Ascending Parnassus

ix xiii xv

202

Mirages, op. 113 and L’horizon chimérique, op. 118

Notes Bibliography Index

231 245 253

music ex a mples

Example 1.1. Common pentatonic motive in Fauré’s settings from Hugo, Les chants du crépuscule.  7 Example 1.2. Fauré, “Le papillon et la fleur,” mm. 1–25.  10 Example 1.3. Fauré, “Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre,” mm. 1–40.  17 Example 1.4. Fauré, variation of a head motive across the first strophe of “Mai.”  22 Example 1.5. Fauré, “S’il est un charmant gazon,” mm. 1–24.  26 Example 1.6. Fauré, “S’il est un charmant gazon,” mm. 57–68.  28 Example 2.1. Fauré, “Lydia,” mm. 1–19.  40 Example 2.2. Tonal ambivalence in Fauré, “Rencontre,” Poème d’un jour, op. 21, mm. 1–21.  47 Example 2.3. Modulation by Weitzmann regions in Fauré, “Toujours,” mm. 11–25.  51 Example 2.4. Weitzmann region in Fauré, Introït, Requiem, op. 48, mm. 50–61. Derived from Cohn, Audacious Euphony, 55.  53 Example 2.5. Fauré, “Adieu,” Poème d’un jour, mm. 1–12.  56 Example 2.6. Hypothetical half cadence in Fauré, “Adieu,” Poème d’un jour, m. 8.  57 Example 2.7. Fauré, “Adieu,” Poème d’un jour, mm. 28–34.  58 Example 3.1. Minuet modules in Fauré, “Clair de lune.”  66 Example 3.2. Transformation of a prosodic rhythm in Fauré, “Mandoline,” Cinq mélodies “de Venise,” op. 58.  70 Example 3.3. Fauré’s “Venice” motive in the Cinq mélodies “de Venise.”  72 Example 3.4. Fauré, “En sourdine,” Cinq mélodies “de Venise,” mm. 1–16.  77 ix

x      music examples

Example 3.5. Example 3.6. Example 3.7. Example 4.1. Example 4.2. Example 4.3. Example 4.4. Example 4.5. Example 4.6. Example 4.7. Example 4.8. Example 4.9. Example 5.1. Example 5.2. Example 5.3. xample 5.4. E Example 5.5. Example 5.6. Example 5.7. Example 5.8. Example 6.1. xample 6.2. E Example 6.3. Example 6.4. Example 6.5. Example 6.6. Example 6.7. Example 7.1. Example 7.2. Example 7.3.

Fauré, “À Clymène,” Cinq mélodies “de Venise,” mm. 1–13.  82 Fauré, “À Clymène,” Cinq mélodies “de Venise,” mm. 48–57.  85 Intertextuality in Fauré, Cinq mélodies “de Venise.”  89 Leitmotives in Fauré, La bonne chanson, op. 61.  97 Octave family of leitmotives in Fauré, La bonne chanson.  99 Appoggiatura family of leitmotives in Fauré, La bonne chanson.  101 Lydia family of leitmotives in Fauré, La bonne chanson.  105 Fauré, “Une Sainte en son auréole,” La bonne chanson, mm. 22–27.  114 Pentatonic leitmotives in Richard Wagner, Der Ring des Nibelungen.  120 Fauré, “N’est-ce pas?” La bonne chanson, mm. 1–12.  125 Fauré, “N’est-ce pas?” La bonne chanson, mm. 61–69.  129 Transformation of Avowal motive in Fauré, La bonne chanson.  130 Leitmotives of Fauré, La chanson d’Ève, op. 95.  135 Transformation of diegetic music in Fauré, Pénélope, act 2, scenes 1–2.  139 Fauré, “The King’s Three Blind Daughters,” incidental music to Maurice Maeterlinck, Pelléas et Mélisande, op. 80, mm. 1–8.  157 Fauré, “Paradis,” La chanson d’Ève, mm. 1–23.  159 Octatonic rotation of motive B in Fauré, “Comme Dieu rayonne,” La chanson d’Ève, mm. 15–20.  162 Rotation of Voice of God motive through three octatonic collections in Fauré, “Paradis,” La chanson d’Ève, mm. 76–85.  164 Symmetrical rotations of motive B in Fauré, “Dans un parfum de roses blanches,” La chanson d’Ève, mm. 1–18.  166 Complete rotation through the octatonic scale in Fauré, “O Mort, poussière d’étoiles,” La chanson d’Ève, mm. 18–21.  168 Transformations of a refrain in Fauré, “Je me poserai sur ton cœur,” Le jardin clos, op. 106.  180 Fauré, “Exaucement,” Le jardin clos, mm. 1–9.  182 Fauré, “Exaucement,” Le jardin clos, mm. 16–21.  183 Fauré, “Inscription sur le sable,” Le jardin clos, mm. 1–5.  188 Fauré, “Dans la nymphée,” Le jardin clos, mm. 1–5.  190 Fauré, “La messagère,” Le jardin clos, mm. 1–9.  194 Transformations of the Prinner schema in Fauré, “Quand tu plonges tes yeux dans mes yeux,” Le jardin clos.  198 Octatonic rotations in Fauré, “Cygne sur l’eau,” Mirages, op. 113, mm. 25–29.  209 Wagnerian influence in Fauré, “Reflets dans l’eau,” Mirages.  215 Fauré, “Danseuse,” Mirages, mm. 1–6.  218

music examples    xi

Example 7.4. Fauré, “La mer est infinie,” L’horizon chimérique, op. 118, mm. 1–11.  221 Example 7.5. Fauré, “Je me suis embarqué,” L’horizon chimérique, mm. 40–46.  224 Example 7.6. Fauré, “Diane, Séléné,” L’horizon chimérique, mm. 16–20.  226 Example 7.7. Fauré, augmented triads in “Vaisseaux, nous vous aurons aimés,” L’horizon chimérique.  228

pre face

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. xiii

xiv      preface

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-andworks 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.

acknowled g ments

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 Grant for Research Excellence in the Arts. Cambridge University Press kindly granted permission to reprint chapter 1, which originally appeared in Fauré Studies (2020). Chapter 2 and parts of chapter 5 appeared, respectively, in The Musical Quarterly and Journal of the American Musicological Society. Raina Polivka has been a wonderfully supportive and helpful editor. I thank her, Madison Wetzell, Jeffrey Wyneken, Emilia Thiuri, and the rest of the staff at University of California Press for another effortless publication venture. I am grateful to Robert Geiger as well for the musical engraving. My heartfelt thanks go out to all my friends and family, both living and departed. The love and wisdom you have shared with me means more than I can express.

xv

xvi      acknowledgments

I owe a special debt to Joseph Kerman, my Berkeley adviser whose magnum opus The Beethoven Quartets inspired my title. His deep, passionate, and humane engagement with musical art works remains an undimmed beacon, and I gratefully dedicate this book to his memory. Finally, to the One who gives both life and meaning be all the praise. To quote Fauré’s magnum opus, “Te decet hymnus, Deus, in Sion.”

1

Romancing the mélodie A Hugo Cycle?

Fauré’s first song cycle dates from 1878, but our story begins much earlier at the École Niedermeyer. Fauré’s student songs, written between 1861 and 1864, already give a taste of the cyclic impulse that would come to dominate his songwriting. This premonition does not appear in musical devices, whether key schemes, thematic recollections, or recurring motives; these features come and go across his seven song cycles. Nor can we locate it in a narrative, for three of those cycles lack any story line. The telltale element in Fauré’s adolescent songs is a common poetic vision, a reading that transcends the individual author and poems and engages deeper artistic concerns. As in his later song cycles, Fauré grasped poetry not merely as a source of evocative texts but as a nexus of technical and aesthetic issues bearing on his historical moment. And the issue that unites his earliest songs is genre. Fauré’s student songs demonstrate his lifelong penchant for focusing on a single poet, indeed, a single collection. All six have texts by Victor Hugo and five come from Les chants du crépuscule (1835). Fauré mined Hugo’s volume for “Le papillon et la fleur,” “Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre,” “Mai,” “L’aube naît,” and “S’il est un charmant gazon” (published as “Rêve d’amour”). “Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre” remained unpublished and “L’aube naît” has vanished entirely, although it is mentioned alongside the other songs in a letter from 1864.1 Fauré set yet another poem from Les chants du crépuscule, “L’aurore s’allume,” toward the end of the decade. In studying Fauré’s adolescent songs, we immediately face the question of genre. No single category existed for French art song in the 1860s equivalent to the AustroGermanic Lied. Since the late eighteenth century, the native romance had dominated song production in France. Elegant and unpretentious, the romance featured sentimental or characteristic texts set in strophic form with an unobtrusive piano 1

2      Chapter 1

accompaniment.2 During the second quarter of the nineteenth century, a new genre emerged alongside the romance, the highbrow mélodie. Inspired by Schubert’s Lieder, composers of mélodies gave the piano a more independent role, experimented with nonstrophic forms, and enriched the expressive palette. Guided by Frits Noske’s classic study La mélodie française de Berlioz à Duparc (1954), histories of French song have tended to trace an evolutionary narrative in which the mélodie inevitably usurps the place of the romance and reigns supreme after 1870.3 Fauré himself seems to ratify this narrative in a letter from 1870. The composer agrees to send an old schoolmate “the little mélodie that you asked for” (most likely “Lydia”) as well as “a copy of my romance ‘S’il est un charmant gazon.’ ”4 The letter appears to cordon off Fauré’s student songs from later and more ambitious compositions like “Lydia” or his three Baudelaire settings. And indeed, his adolescent Hugo songs are lightweight by comparison, with their pastoral texts, simple accompaniments, and strophic form. Fauré’s critics have found it easy to follow his lead and retrace the history of French song across his early career. Charles Kœchlin brushed past the Hugo settings, dismissing one as “slightly ‘romance,’ ” and rejoiced at Fauré’s emancipation from strophic form.5 Jean-Michel Nectoux entitled his fine chapter on the early songs “From the romance to the mélodie,” while Roy Howat and Emily Kilpatrick hailed Fauré’s “transition from the romance to the mélodie” during the 1860s.6 Like all evolutionary narratives, however, this account of Fauré’s early songwriting downplays the role of the historical agent. It ignores the way in which the composer himself understood and navigated the genres available to him. The evolution of French song into the mélodie was by no means preordained in the early 1860s. Composers continued to label songs both romance and mélodie until the end of the decade, designations that reflected real differences in form and style.7 Nor did Fauré lack for Germanic models of song composition during his student years. His tutor Camille Saint-Saëns was a champion of Liszt, Schumann, and Mendelssohn, while his teacher and headmaster Louis Niedermeyer had virtually founded the mélodie genre with his 1820 song “Le lac.” Niedermeyer cast Alphonse de Lamartine’s elegiac poem in the form of an operatic scène in which three stanzas of obbligato recitative introduce the lyric set piece, three strophes entitled “Romance.” As Saint-Saëns attested, Niedermeyer “broke the mold of the tired old French romance and, inspired by the beautiful poems of Lamartine and Victor Hugo, created a new genre, a superior art analogous to the German Lied.”8 Fauré’s setting of Hugo’s “Tristesse d’Olympio” (Les rayons et les ombres), written around 1865, demonstrates how easily he could adopt this elevated style. His song emulates Niedermeyer’s “Le lac” just as Hugo’s poem emulates Lamartine’s elegy. A recitative-like Grave built over an operatic lamento bass leads into two stormy strophes with a notably free phrase structure. This serious mélodie, written just a year or two after “S’il est un charmant gazon,” muddies the image of a linear evolution from romance to mélodie. Indeed, Fauré circled back to his lighter man-

Romancing the mélodie    3

ner in his next Hugo settings, “Dans les ruines d’une abbaye” and “L’aurore”—as one would expect from their lighter pastoral texts. Yet Fauré perhaps learned a deeper lesson about genre from “Le lac.” In Niedermeyer’s song the young composer found a strophic romance, labeled as such, embedded within a mélodie of Teutonic scope and gravitas. Niedermeyer’s song does not renounce the romance but deploys it artfully within the larger form of the operatic scène. Dramaturgically, the romance becomes a site of memory, the timeless lyric moment in which the bereaved poet finds consolation. Fauré’s “Tristesse d’Olympio” frames the romance even more clearly as a retrospective utterance. The introductory Grave recounts the poet’s return to the site of his lost love, ending as the poet begins his lament: Il se sentit le cœur triste comme une tombe, Alor il s’écria: His heart felt as sad as a tomb, So he cried out: The following strophes render the poet’s elegy, enclosed within quotation marks. The strophic romance again provides a locus of memory and nostalgia, a role that reflects its historical position as a conservative, backward-looking genre. The evolutionary view of Fauré’s early songwriting, then, is not merely dubious history. It also leads to an impoverished reading of his early songs. As “Tristesse d’Olympio” demonstrates, Fauré did not abandon the romance in favor of the mélodie but combined both in a sophisticated dialogue. And it was Hugo’s poetry that inspired this play between genres. To read Fauré’s songs in this manner requires that we view genres as more than taxonomic categories. Musical genres function instead as codes shared by composers, performers, and listeners, which activate expectations and shape the reception of individual works. Indeed, a composer can evoke multiple genres within the same work to produce a complex, resonant utterance.9 This chapter explores the dialogue of genres within Fauré’s surviving songs from Les chants du crépuscule, showing how he manipulated the generic codes of the romance and mélodie in response to Hugo’s poetry. Our study of the student songs will in turn prepare for the following chapters by demonstrating the sophisticated grasp of poetic art that guided Fauré from his earliest efforts as a songwriter.

A N A NAC R E O N T IC C YC L E

In Les chants du crépuscule, as in the preceding Feuilles d’automne, Hugo grappled with the new energies unleashed by the July Revolution of 1830. His title plays on the twin meanings of crépuscule, both dawn and dusk, to express the uncertainty of the times. As he mused in the preface, “Society waits to see if what lies on the

4      Chapter 1

horizon will be fully illuminated or whether it will be absolutely extinguished.”10 The cluster of texts set by Fauré begins midway through the thirty-nine poems of Hugo’s collection (see the list of poems). An envoi to the Feuilles d’automne (no. 18) closes the first half, which consists of political odes and meditations. “L’aurore s’allume” (no. 20) heralds a new dawn, lit not by human events but by the eternal truths of nature: Livre salutaire Où le cœur s’emplit! Où tout sage austère Travaille et pâlit! Dont le sens rebelle Parfois se révèle! Pythagore épèle Et Moïse lit!

Salutary book Where the heart is replenished! Where every austere sage Labors and grows pale! Whose recalcitrant meaning Sometimes reveals itself! Pythagoras deciphers And Moses reads!

The short five-syllable lines signal a shift to the lighter chanson genre. Indeed, the succeeding poems, from which Fauré drew his song texts, abandon politics for pastoral verse and meditations inspired by nature. Fauré set nos. 22, 23, 25, 27, and 31, and later “L’aurore s’allume” itself. Between the two halves of the volume, preceding “L’aurore s’allume,” comes a short ode to Anacreon (no. 19), the ancient Ionian poet of wine, love, and song: Anacréon, poète aux ondes érotiques Qui filtres du sommet des sagesses antiques, Et qu’on trouve à mi-côte alors qu’on y gravit, Clair, à l’ombre, épandu sur l’herbe qui revit, Tu me plais, doux poète au flot calme et limpide! Quand le sentier qui monte aux cimes est rapide, Bien souvent, fatigués du soleil, nous aimons Boire au petit ruisseau tamisé par les monts! Anacreon, poet of the erotic waters, You who filter ancient wisdom from the summit, Which we find midway up the mountain as we climb, Bright in the shade, diffused over the reviving grass, You please me, sweet poet of the calm and limpid stream! When the path that ascends to the heights is steep, How often, weary from the sun, we love To drink from the little brook filtered by the mountains! Anacreon’s modern reception had peaked during the eighteenth century. A handful of surviving odes (now known to be wrongly attributed) were translated and imitated and gained currency in France through Pierre de Ronsard’s sixteenth-

Contents of Victor Hugo, Les chants du crépuscule (1835), with dates of Fauré’s settings Préface Prélude 1.  Dicté après juillet 1830 2.  À la colonne 3.  Hymne 4.  Noces et festins 5.  Napoléon II 6.  Sur le bal de l’Hotel-de-Ville 7.  O Dieu! Si vous avez la France sous vos ailes 8.  À Canaris 9.  Seule au pied de la tour d’où sort la voix du maître 10.  À l’homme qui a livré une femme 11.  A M. le D. d’O. 12.  À Canaris 13.  Il n’avait pas vingt ans. Il avait abusé 14.  Oh! N’insultez jamais une femme qui tombe! 15.  Conseil 16.  Le grand homme vaincu peut perdre en un instant 17.  À Alphonse Rabbe 18.  Envoi des Feuilles d’automne à Madame *** 19.  Anacréon, poète aux ondes érotiques 20.  L’aurore s’allume (c. 1868–70) 21.  Hier, la nuit d’été, qui nous prêtait ses voiles 22.  Nouvelle chanson sur un vieil air (1864) 23.  Autre chanson (c. 1862–64) 24.  Oh! pour remplir de moi ta rêveuse pensée 25.  Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre à ta coupe encore pleine (1862) 26.  À mademoiselle J. 27.  La pauvre fleur disait au papillon céleste (c. 1861–62) 28.  Au bord de la mer 29.  Puisque nos heures sont remplies 30.  Espoir en Dieu 31.  Puisque mai tout en fleurs dans les prés nous réclame (c. 1862–64) 32.  À Louis B. 33.  Dans l’église de *** 34.  Écrit sur la première page d’un Pétrarque 35.  Les autres en tous sens laissent aller leur vie 36.  Toi! sois bénie à jamais! 37.  À mademoiselle Louise B. 38.  Que nous avons le doute en nous 39.  Date lilia

6      Chapter 1

century versions. Most recently, Charles-Marie René Leconte de Lisle had translated nine Anacreontic odes in his Poèmes antiques (1852), the last of which Fauré would set in 1890 (“La rose”). The author and critic Léo Joubert reviewed Leconte de Lisle’s translations in 1863, giving an intriguing description of the Anacreontic genre: The gaze effortlessly embraces a bounded field that displays familiar and alluring objects; the hyacinth blooms there; the rose spreads its purple robe beside the green ivy; the swallow babbles from break of dawn; the dew-drunk cicada sings on the high branches; reclining on the fresh myrtle and green lotus, an old man with white temples but a youthful heart drains his cup and watches the young girls dance to the sound of the zither. This little landscape, invented for the express pleasure of the eyes, is so lively, so brilliant, that we never think to count the artificial flowers in the decorative garlands; the little scenes of this mascarade galante succeed one another too quickly to weary us.11

Joubert’s vignette summons all the Anacreontic commonplaces—idyllic nature, wine, revelry, erotic desire, old age. Yet it also evokes the pleasure parks of the fêtes galantes, the fantastic eighteenth-century landscapes of Antoine Watteau that were enjoying a vogue in French poetry.12 Joubert fashioned his Arcadia as a theater, adorned with silk roses, where maskers play their stock roles. His essay celebrates the deliberate artifice of the Anacreontic genre, its play between surface convention and lyric depth.13 No poem in Les chants du crépuscule better demonstrates this equivocation than the lyric subtitled “S’il est un charmant gazon.” The poem bears the title “Nouvelle chanson sur un vieil air”—roughly, new words to an old tune. Hugo wove pastoral imagery into an intimate romantic confession, using a complex rhyme scheme and tortuous syntax. Yet his artful poem is haunted by the specter of the lost air. The anonymous folk relic hides beneath the modern poet’s verses, mutely reminding us that Hugo’s jasmine, lily, and honeysuckle are but painted copies of nature. Liszt, Saint-Saëns, Massenet, Franck, and many other composers set “S’il est un charmant gazon,” but as we shall see, only Fauré found the irony in Hugo’s title. The poems that Fauré chose from Les chants du crépuscule exemplify both the erotic tone of the Anacreontic genre and its delicate artifice. “La pauvre fleur disait au papillon céleste,” in which a flower chides her unfaithful butterfly, is a sly allegory by the priapic Hugo with an envoi dedicated to his mistress Juliette Drouet. Notably, Fauré chose the only two chansons in Hugo’s collection, songs in which lyric expression is distanced as performance. “Autre chanson” (subtitled “L’aube naît”) even originated as a stage song in Hugo’s play Angelo, tyran de Padoue. While we can only guess at Fauré’s treatment of “L’aube naît,” the autograph score of “S’il est un charmant gazon” imitates a serenader’s mandolin with an accompaniment in broken staccato chords. Fauré used a similar piano figuration in “Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre,” despite the poem’s more elevated register (he was perhaps tempted by Hugo’s racy opening line, “Since I placed my lips to your still brimming cup”). Fauré

Rumph Ex.1 page 1 of 1 RumphEx.1 Ex.1page page1 1ofof1 1 Rumph

Romancing the mélodie    7

example 1.1 . Common pentatonic motive in Fauré’s settings from Hugo, Les chants du crépuscule. Based on Fauré, Complete Songs, vol. 1: 1861-1882, ed. Roy Howat and Emily Kilpatrick (London: Peters Edition, 2015). a. “Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre,” m. 8.

. . . . œ & . œ. . œ. . œ. . œ. Œ Rœ Œ & &œœ œœ œœ œœ œŒ . . . . R Rœ œ . . œ . . . œ. . œ. ? œœ ≈ ‰ œ œ œ ? ?œœœ Rœœ≈ ≈ ‰ ‰ œ œ œ œœ œ

R R

b. “Mai,” m. 34.

b & b bb b œœ œ œ œ b b b bb b œ Jœœ œ ‰œ œ Œœ œ Œ && œ J‰ ‰Œ Œœ Œ Œ J œ ? bb b œ ‰ Œ Œœ œ b œ œ b b Jœ œ ?? b b bb b œœ œJ ‰ ‰ Œ Œ Œ Œœ

J

c. “S’il est un charmant gazon,” m. 8.

&b œ œ b œb Jœ œ && J J œ pp œ œ ? b œœ p œ Œœ œ œ œœb œœ ?? b Œ Œ

œ œ Œ œ œœ œ Œ Œ

left a motivic signature on these chanson accompaniments: the piano ritornellos of “Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre” and “S’il est un charmant gazon” trail off with the same descending pentatonic figure, as does the ritornello in the autograph of “Mai” (see example 1.1). This naïve coda, which follows passages of real harmonic complexity, sets an appropriately arch tone for poems presided over by the spirit of Anacreon.

8      Chapter 1

“Anacréon aux ondes érotiques” advertises the titillating nature of the genre, but it offered Fauré another clue as well. The protagonist finds the refreshing waters “mi-côte,” midway up the mountain. Similarly, Hugo’s ode arrives midway through Les chants du crépuscule as a respite from his odes to the Greek patriot Canaris or his diatribe against the Chambre des députés. The Anacreontic ode, or odelette as poets from Ronsard to Gautier called it, occupies a middle register between the sublime ode and the lower forms of satire and comedy. In short, an educated reader would not have mistaken the turn to pastoral love poetry in the second half of Les chants du crépuscule as a stylistic regression but would have understood it as a self-conscious modulation between genres. Neither should the simplicity of Fauré’s adolescent songs imply a lack of maturity, technique, or ambition. Read within the context of Hugo’s collection, their unpretentious charm suggests a deliberate artistic choice. Fauré’s student songs do not lack in sophistication, but they mask it behind a faux-naïf manner that matches Hugo’s artful simplicity. What distinguishes these songs from truly naïve romances is the keen awareness of Hugo’s poetic craft: in apparently systematic fashion, Fauré concentrated on a different aspect of the poet’s art in each song, whether prosody, syntax, rhetoric, or genre. This astute reading should come as no surprise in a pupil of Niedermeyer’s school who studied literature as part of the curriculum and won prizes in 1858 and 1862.14 The following discussion, based on the autograph scores, looks closely at Fauré’s craftsmanship in his student songs, and readers should prepare for some detailed technical analysis. It will be time and effort well spent. The analyses of the Hugo settings lay the foundations for the rest of the book in two ways. First, they establish Fauré’s bona fides as a reader, showing the urbane grasp of poetic art in his earliest settings. Second, they show how instead of merely tossing off individual songs, the young composer was already exploring a single idea from different angles, generating a set of songs unified neither by musical features nor by a story line, but by a common poetic ideal. But do Fauré’s settings from Les chants du crepuscule in fact constitute a hidden cycle? To answer this question, we must recapture the horizon against which he was writing in the early 1860s. French composers had as yet no native models equivalent to Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte, Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin, or Schumann’s Frauenliebe und -leben. Not until 1866 did Jules Massenet compose Poème d’avril, the first French song cycle with a unified narrative and thematic recollections. Fauré could only look back to Hector Berlioz’s Les nuits d’éte (1841) and Félicien David’s Les perles d’Orient (1846).15 Apart from its evocative title, Berlioz’s work coheres solely through its poetic source, Gautier’s La Comédie de la mort, while David’s songs have four different poets and share only an exotic theme. By these standards, Fauré’s five songs would indeed qualify as a cycle had he published them together. The common piano motive certainly argues for a unified conception. The autograph of “Mai” provides another possible clue: Fauré entitled

Romancing the mélodie    9

the folio “No. 4/Mai!/à Madame H. Garnier,” suggesting that he originally ordered the five songs from Les chants du crépuscule as a set (“Mai” was indeed the fourth song composed). Unfortunately, the composer’s intentions must remain uncertain, especially without the autograph of “L’aube naît.” P R O S O DY A N D R H Y T H M

Fauré’s first song, “Le papillon et la fleur,” does not at first appear to reach very high. The breezy tone, unremarkable harmonies, and waltz accompaniment might tempt us to dismiss the song as a Second Empire bonbon. Yet a closer look reveals a surprising level of craftsmanship. Fauré paid special attention to Hugo’s prosody as he addressed the knotty relationship between French verse and musical meter. Unlike musical meter, French prosody is governed not by accentual pattern but solely by syllable count. The second page of Louis Quicherat’s popular Petit traité de versification française (1850) instructs the student that “since French poetic lines have a fixed number of syllables, one must learn, above all, to count the syllables of the constituent words, or of those that one wishes to include.”16 Hugo’s quatrains alternate lines of twelve and three syllables (this does not include the final mute e’s, which are not counted although composers did set them):

1 La

2 pau-

  1 2 —Ne fuis

3 4 vre fleur

6 sait

7 au

8 pa-

9 pi-

10 llon

11 cé-

12 lest(e):

11 Je

12 rest(e),

3 pas!

1 2 3 Vois com- me

  1 2 —Tu t’en

5 di-

4 nos

5 6 7 8 de- stins sont dif-

9 10 fé- rents.

3 vas!

Fauré had a striking predilection for such heterometric stanzas in his early songs, including “L’aube naît” (8 + 4 syllables), “S’il est un charmant gazon” (7 + 5), “Tristesse d’Olympio” (12 + 6), “Dans les ruines d’une abbaye” (7 + 3), and “Seule!” (8 + 4).17 In practice, these early heterometric settings fall rather flat. Fauré struggled with the short lines, which tend to sound padded and inert. Not until “Au bord de l’eau” (1875) and “Nell” (1878) are the uneven lines convincingly integrated within the phrase structure. Nevertheless, Fauré made an imaginative stab at the problem in “Le papillon et la fleur.” The waltz topic helped Fauré negotiate this prosodic challenge. The song imitates not only the typical accompaniment of the waltz but also one of its most distinctive melodic features, an offbeat dotted rhythm introduced in m. 11 that permeates the vocal line (see example 1.2). The lilting figure pervades nineteenth-century waltzes

example 1.2 . Fauré, “Le papillon et la fleur,” mm. 1–25.

j œ œ œ œ œ nœ œ œ œ b œ œœœ œ b 6 œ & b b b 8 ‰ œœ œ œœœ œ œœœ œœ œœ œœ J œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ n œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ ? b b b 86 œ œ œ œ & œœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ nœ bb J 8va

(8va) 4

&

bbbb

b

œ

j

loco

œ œ œœœœœ œ œ œ J J œ. œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ

œ œ œ nœ J

œ ? œ œ b & b b b b n œ n œœ œœ œ œœ œ

j bœ œ œ b & b b b b œJ œœ‰ œ

7

? bb b œ bb

œ‰b œ œ œ œ œ bœ. œ œ œœ bœ œ nœ œ œ

œ œ ∫ œ œ œœ J

j j b & b b b b ‰ œj œj œj n œj œj œ œ œj œj œj . La

pau - vre fleur

d - sait

b & b b b b ‰ œœ œœ ‰ œ œ bœ œ ? bb b œ œ œ n œ œ œ ‰ ‰ bb

œ

j j œ

œ œ

œ œœ œœ ‰ œœ œœ

œ œ œ œ œ ∫ œœ œœ œ œ œ

10

au

pa - pil - lon

‰ œ œ ‰ œ œ nœ œ œ œ

œ œ œ‰ œ œ œ‰

œ œ œ œ œ nœ œ ‰ ‰ œ. œœ œœ n œœ œœ œ œ œ œ

r

œ œ œ‰ œ œ œ‰

œ œ

cé - les

-

j

œ

te:

‰ œ.

J

Ne

‰ œ œ ‰ n œœ œœ œœ œœ œ. œ ‰ á œ.

œ

R

fuis

Rumph Le papillon page 2 of 2 example 1.2 . (continued)

j œ ‰ ‰

13

b & b bbb œ .

pas!

‰ œj œj œj n œj œj œj œj œj œj œj . Vois com - me

nos

des - tins sont

r

œ

dif - fé - rents.

Je

b & b b b b ‰ œœœ œœœ ‰ œœœ œœœ ‰ œœ œœ ‰ œ œ ‰ œ œ ‰ œ œ n œœ œœ œ œ œ. œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ ? bb b œ . œ ‰ ‰ œ ‰ n œ ‰ J ‰ ‰ bb nœ

j œ

16

b & b bbb œ

res

-

te,

‰ œJ . Tu

j œ ‰ ‰

œ œ.

R

‰ œJ œJ œJ œJ œJ

t'en vas!

Pour - tant nous nous

b & b b b b ‰ œ œ ‰ œœ œœ ‰ œœ œœ ‰ œœ œœ œ. œœ b œœ .. ? b b b œ œœ œœ n œ . J ‰ ‰ bb ‰

j b & b b b b œJ œJ œJ n œ œJ .

19

- mons, nous

b & b bbb ‰

œ œ

R

vi - vons sans

les hom

b œ œ œ œ œ & b bbb ‰ J J J J J

‰ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ

œ. œ œ œ. œ œ

œ ‰ œj œj œ . J

mes

Et

loin

œ.

J

Et nous nous res - sem - blons, et

l'on dit que

nous som

b & b b b b ‰ œœ œœ ‰ œœœ œœœ ‰ œœœ œœœ ‰ n œœ œœ œ œ œ. nœ. n œœ .. ? bb b œ . bb

œ.

œ.

œ œ

R

‰

‰ œœ œœ ‰ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ

nœ.

œ œ œ œJ œ . J J J

Œ

d'eux,

‰ œ œ ‰ œœ œœ œœ œœ bœ œ

œœ œœ ‰ n œœ œœ œ œ

? bb b œ . œ œ œ . bb 22

-

ai -

-

j œ ‰ œJ .

mes

Fleurs

œ œ

R

tous deux

‰ œœœ œœœ ‰ œœ œœ œ œ œœ œœ J œ.

≈

œ

12      Chapter 1

and provided the signature rhythm for Ravel’s La valse. Waltzes evoke glittering entertainment, carefree pleasure, Second Empire frivolity—connotations that suit the flighty butterfly. Yet the waltz topic also helped Fauré to integrate the twelve- and three-syllable lines. Fauré fit each pair of unequal lines into a four-bar musical phrase but subdivided the phrases asymmetrically (2½ + 1½ bars), thereby reducing the need to pad the short lines. The waltz topic, with its lilting rhythm, provides the glue to connect the unequal lines: in each strophe, the long lines end with the offbeat rhythm, which the short lines immediately echo (see mm. 12–14 or 20–21). The syncopated figure thus unites Hugo’s unequal lines in the infectious, gyrating rhythm of the waltz. Fauré has suffered much criticism for his apparent mangling of word accent in the early songs.18 In “Le papillon et la fleur,” for example, the first phrase places the weak second syllables of “pauvre” and “papillon” on strong beats, resulting in “pau-vre” and “pa-pi-llon.” Such critiques, however, assume an equivalence of musical and poetic meter that is antithetical to French prosody. In fact, Fauré seems deliberately to have separated musical and poetic accent in “Le papillon et la fleur.” Each phrase starts on the second eighth note of the bar, ensuring that the first syllable is not stressed. The first two phrases begin with an almost chant-like intonation, and aside from the dotted waltz rhythm, the entire vocal melody consists of a stream of equal eighth notes. Each phrase of “Le papillon et la fleur” begins in medias res and flows smoothly toward the final accented syllable. Fauré’s first crack at French prosody shows an almost exaggerated concern for its distinctively syllabic, nonaccentual structure. Indeed, musical and poetic accents line up only twice in Hugo’s verses, at the end of each line and at the caesura of each twelve-syllable alexandrine. In the first two phrases of each strophe, Fauré marked the caesura with an upward leap on the sixth syllable, while in the third and fourth phrases he subdivided the line with a descending sequence. His opening phrase is perfectly tailored to Hugo’s prosody: the monotone melody leaps a minor third on the sixth syllable, “di-sait,” then descends to linger over an accented passing tone on the twelfth syllable, “cé-leste.” The musical phrase hugs the arching contour of Hugo’s alexandrine as it rises to the caesura and falls to the final syllable.19 Moreover, Fauré respected the subdivisions within each hemistich. The alexandrine offers a rich variety of internal divisions.20 In Hugo’s first line, for example, both hemistichs subdivide into 4 + 2 syllables:

1 2 3 4 La pau- vre fleur |

1 2 || di- sait

1 2 3 4 au pa- pi- llon |

1 2 cé- lest(e)

Fauré’s melody fastidiously marks these subdivisions by dipping a half step on “fleur” and elongating the third syllable of “pap-i-llon.” If we disregard the metrical accents and attend only to the rhythm and contour of Fauré’s melody, we find that he has indeed set the word “papillon” in perfect accordance with the prosody. Howat and Kilpatrick have noted that the vocal line of “Le papillon et la fleur”

Romancing the mélodie    13

falls into an implicit 3/4 meter (on the alexandrines), and the reason for the hemiola lies in Hugo’s first line.21 Unfortunately, the shortcomings of Fauré text-setting emerge during the succeeding strophes where he automatically repeated the rhythm of the first line even where it conflicts with the prosody. (Following the conventions of the romance, Fauré’s autograph provides only the vocal line of the second and third stanzas, duplicating the rhythm of the first stanza.) The second strophe, for example, begins with a 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 line better suited to 6/8 meter:

1 2 3 | Mais hé- las,

1 2 3 || 1 2 3 | l’air t’em- port(e) et la ter-

1 2 3 re m’en- chaîn(e)

The third strophe, on the other hand, scans as 2 + 4 + 4 + 2:

1 2 | 1 2 Tu fuis, puis tu

3 4 || 1 2 3 4 | re- viens, puis tu t’en vas

1 en-

2 cor(e)

In his early songs, alas, Fauré’s attention to prosody often ends with the first line.22 Did Fauré really attend so closely to Hugo’s verse structure? Are we perhaps imputing too much to the adolescent composer? The piano ritornello provides the answer. The first four bars consist of a little dialogue in the right hand, with soaring scales for the flighty butterfly and short chromatic responses for the dejected flower. The sequential melody that follows in mm. 5–8 is an ornamented version of the singer’s third phrase; given the primacy of the vocal line in the romance, we may assume that Fauré composed the strophes first and then derived the ritornello from the third phrase. The “butterfly” scales in mm. 1–4 derive in turn from the sequence in mm. 5–8, beginning on the second beat and inverting exactly the first four notes of the descending scale. We may conclude, then, that Fauré composed the opening dialogue last of all, as an afterthought. Now there are twelve notes in the “butterfly” scale and three notes in the chromatic “flower” response in mm. 1–2. The same pair of twelve- and three-note motives repeats up an octave in mm. 3–4. Taken together, the note count of the piano melody in mm. 1–4 comes to 12 + 3 + 12 + 3—the precise syllable count of Hugo’s stanzas! With this erudite wink, the novice composer reveals that he is already an astute reader of French prosody. SY N TA X A N D HA R M O N Y

Fauré confronted a different poetic technique in “Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre.” The most noticeable feature of Hugo’s poem is the insistent repetition of “puisque” (since) in the first twelve lines. This litany results in a striking instance of hypotaxis, or nesting of subordinate clauses within a sentence. In parataxis, the opposite syntactic principle, clauses are strung together additively as in “I came, I saw, I conquered.” A hypotactic version of Caesar’s sentence might read, “After I came, because I saw, I conquered.” The first two clauses no longer stand alone but must await completion

14      Chapter 1

by the main clause. Hugo exploited hypotaxis artfully in “Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre” to project the poem’s meaning. While Fauré’s setting does not fully align with Hugo’s rhetorical design, it shows a keen awareness of his syntactic structure. The five stanzas of “Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre” divide into two groups based on syntax. The first three stanzas belong to a single complex sentence and consist of nine subordinate clauses: Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre à ta coupe encor pleine; Puisque j’ai dans tes mains posé mon front pâli; Puisque j’ai respiré parfois la douce haleine De ton âme, parfum dans l’ombre enseveli; Puisqu’il me fut donné de t’entendre me dire Les mots où se répand le cœur mystérieux; Puisque j’ai vu pleurer, puisque j’ai vu sourire Ta bouche sur ma bouche et tes yeux sur mes yeux; Puisque j’ai vu briller sur ma tête ravie Un rayon de ton astre, hélas! voilé toujours; Puisque j’ai vu tomber dans l’onde de ma vie Une feuille de rose arrachée à tes jours; Since I placed my lips to your still brimming cup; Since I rested my pale brow on your hands; Since at times I breathed the sweet breath Of your soul, perfume hidden in the shade; Since I was blessed to hear you speak Words that spill over from a mysterious heart; Since I beheld tears, since I beheld smiles, Your mouth on my mouth, and your eyes on my eyes; Since I beheld, shining on my joyful head, A ray of your star, alas! always veiled; Since I beheld falling into the stream of my life A rose leaf torn from your days; The accumulation of dependent clauses strains the limits of the sentence, whetting the desire for closure. The fourth stanza discharges this pent-up energy in a flurry of exclamatory sentences: Je puis maintenant dire aux rapides années: —Passez! passez toujours! je n’ai plus à vieillir! Allez-vous en avec vos fleurs toutes fanées; J’ai dans l’âme une fleur que nul ne peut cueillir!

Romancing the mélodie    15

I can now say to the rushing years: —Pass on! pass on forever! I shall age no longer! Go forth with your withered flowers; I have a flower in my soul that none may pluck! The long-awaited main clause introduces two imperatives—“Passez!” and “Allezvous en!”—that call the syntax to order like twin trumpet blasts. (Note how Hugo has marked the turn by inverting “Puis-que” to “Je puis.”) The fourth stanza consists almost entirely of simple sentences, with only one subordinate clause. The fifth stanza, finally, concludes with a pair of sentences in which the subordinate clause follows the main clause. The poem thus ends by reversing the syntactic order of the sprawling opening sentence: Votre aile en le heurtant ne fera rien répandre Du vase où je m’abreuve et que j’ai bien rempli. Mon âme a plus de feu que vous n’avez de cendre! Mon cœur a plus d’amour que vous n’avez d’oubli! The blow of your wings shall not dislodge it From the vase where I drink and which I have filled up. My soul has more fire than you have ashes! My heart has more love than you have oblivion! Hugo’s syntax complements the theme of the poem, the victory of love over time and mortality. The first three stanzas dwell on the beloved, lingering over her hands, her breath, her eyes, her mouth. The massive prolongation of the sentence immerses the reader in the lover’s experience of time, his sense of desire and unsatisfied longing. In the fourth stanza, the lover asserts his triumph over time as he issues commands to the passing years. Having tasted of the beloved, he no longer fears decay and oblivion, and the stabilized syntax reflects his newfound peace. The last lines of the poem, finally, encapsulate the entire progression of thought, reversing the structure of the opening sentence. Each antithesis begins with a main clause exalting immortal love and ends with a subordinate clause mocking Father Time. Fauré’s setting shows little concern with the overall form of Hugo’s poem. The composer chose a da capo form that obscures the crucial turn between the third and fourth stanzas:

Section: Stanzas: Key:

A 1–2 C major

B 3–4 A minor

Aʹ 5 C major

The modulation to A minor does not correspond to any break in Hugo’s text, and the turn to the fourth stanza is buried within the B section, marked only by a brief feint toward F major. The da capo form also imposes a symmetry at odds with

16      Chapter 1

Hugo’s dynamic trajectory. Fauré’s setting of “Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre” makes a shapely lyric piece but disregards the larger form of Hugo’s poem. Nevertheless, at the local level “Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre” shows a keen awareness of Hugo’s syntax. Fauré’s vocal melody is an exercise in unfulfilled yearning worthy of Wagner (see example 1.3). The phrases rise insistently, crest on aching dissonances, then sink back to the starting point. The singer’s first eight bars press against the upper tonic and third, but fall back each time to the dominant. The following eight bars break through this ceiling with a leap to high A, but the melody again descends to the dominant, lingering deliciously over several dissonant passing tones. To enhance the upward surge of the melody, Fauré began each phrase of the song with an upbeat. This means that the vocalist sings “puis-que” eight times, an apparent gaffe that surpasses anything in “Le papillon et la fleur.” As in the previous song, however, Fauré’s concern lay with the larger shape of the line: by denying the natural trochaic rhythm (“puisque”), he allowed the melody to flow restlessly toward its unattainable goals. Fauré’s phrase structure projects the same sense of deferred resolution. The first sixteen bars form a sentence, as Arnold Schoenberg and Erwin Ratz dubbed this thematic type: after a pair of identical four-bar phrases, an eight-bar continuation leads to a half cadence.23 Unlike the period (ABABʹ), with its balanced antecedent and consequent, the AAB sentence creates a sense of propulsion and dynamic movement. Indeed, Fauré’s sentence perfectly matches Hugo’s first stanza, which also begins with two parallel clauses (lines 1 and 2) and continues with an expanded clause (3–4). Moreover, the sentence belongs to a larger compound form, functioning as the antecedent of a thirty-two-bar period that does not reach a full cadence until almost halfway through the song. This massive deferral of harmonic closure creates a sense of postponed desire that perfectly matches Hugo’s syntactic strategy, at least in his first three stanzas. As in “Le papillon et la fleur,” Fauré left a clue to his reading in a short piano prelude that again seems to gloss Hugo’s poetic structure. The eight-bar prelude is a duet in imitative counterpoint supported by pizzicato chords in the left hand. The melody and harmony derive from the continuation of the singer’s melody (mm. 17–18), indicating that Fauré again composed the vocal strophes first and wrote the prelude as an afterthought. The harmony of the prelude is a model of hypotactic construction. Instead of beginning on the tonic, it descends gradually through the circle of fifths, beginning on vii, the most distant point. The subtonic triad, with its diminished fifth, is also the most dissonant in the diatonic collection. Until the final cadence, moreover, the prelude consists entirely of seventh chords that heighten the harmonic instability. The tonality itself remains in doubt through the first four bars, whose oscillation between bø7 and E7 implies a resolution to A minor. Clarity emerges gradually in mm. 5–8, which complete the descent through the fifth cycle (a7-d7-G7-C). Fauré’s prelude thus creates a neat harmonic analogue to Hugo’s hypotactic design. Like the poem, it begins from a point of instability

example 1.3 . Fauré, “Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre,” mm. 1–40.

Œ 2 œ & 4 J œ

p

j

‰ œ

œ

œ #œ

. œ. ≈ œœ. œœ. œœ œR ≈ ‰ œ

(
) (leggiero)

? 42 ‰

œ & #œ

J

j

#œ ‰

œ

& Œ

‰

. . . . œ & œœœœŒ

R

? œœœ ≈ ‰

R

12

& &

œ plei

j

œ œ œ ‰ J

œœ

j œj

Puis - que

j'ai

œ J J œ

mis

. œœ

ma

lè

-

œœ.

J

ne,

œœ.

j

œ

j œj

œ

Puis - que

j'ai

œ J J œ

œœ œœ œ J J ‰

. ≈ œœ œœ. œœ. œ

J œ

vre∂à

ta

J

dans

œœ.

tes

œ

mains

po

œœ.

J

. . .

œœ. R ≈ œ‰

J

cou - pe∂en - cor

. œ. œ œ.

œ

. . œœ

œ œ œ J J J J œ

-

sé

mon

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . ≈ ≈ ? ≈œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ≈œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ . . .

œ. œ ‰ œJ

œ œ œ J J J J

œ

œ.

j

œœ

J

J œ.

‰ œ

. œ. ≈ œœ. œœ. œœ œR ≈ ‰ œ

. . . œ. œœ ≈ œœ œœ œ R ≈ ‰ œ

J œ

œ ‰

‰ œ

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ≈ ≈ œœœ ≈ œœ œœ œ œ œœ œ œœœœ œœœ œœ œ œ

œ -

j

œ

‰ œ

. . ≈ n œœ. œœ. œœ œœR ≈ ‰ œ

J

8

‰ œ

œ

J

(con sordino)

œ œœ ‰ J J . . œœ. œœ. # œœ œ ? ≈ #œ R≈‰ œ

4

j

#œ ‰

œ œœ ‰ J J . . œœ. œœ. # œœ œ # œ ≈ R ≈ ‰ œ

œœ

front

. œ. œ œ.

œ

pâ -

. . œœ

Rumph Ex.3 page 2 of 3 example 1.3 . (continued) 16

&

œ. - li,

&

. . ≈ œœ ? ˙

. œ. œ œ.

20

& œ

- lei

œ œ œ. J J

œ

J

Puis - que

. . . . ≈ œœ œœ ˙

œ

œ

ne

De

ton

& ≈ œ œ # œ œœ œ ? œ œ

œ œ

J

J

& œ.

. œ. œœ œ.

j œj

œ

Puis - qu'il

& ‰ œ ≈ œ≈ œ≈ œ. œ. œ.

&

me

& ?

di

-

re

r

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Les

mots

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œ.

me,

par

fut

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-

fum

. .

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œ J J

où

se

r

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ré

œ. œ. œ œ.

œ. œ .

*

la

dou

-

. . . . œ œ ≈ œœ œœ œ œ

né

de

œœ. ≈ œœ. # œœ. œœ.

t'en - ten - dre

me

œ

pand

le

cœur

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r

R

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ve

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28

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J J

â -

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24

re

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J J

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j'ai

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*

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r

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Rumph Ex.3 page 3 of 3

Romancing the mélodie    19

example 1.3 . (continued)

œ.

32

&

œ

J œJ œJ œ J

œ

J

- eux,

Puis - que

&

r

. œ. œ œ. œ.

. . . . œœ ˙˙œ

œ œ. œ. œ. .

? 36

& œ -

ri

& # œœ ? œ œ

J J

œ

J

œ

J

œœ œœr ≈ # œ ≈ œœ ≈ œ. . J . ∏ . . jœ œ. œ˙ ≈ œ ≈ R ≈ œ

re

vu

Ta

bou - che

œ

pleu - rer,

œ. œ. œ.

œœ. œ.

.

. . . . œ œœœ ˙˙

>

>

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j'ai

j

œ.

œ

œ

sur

ma

J

J

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J œj œ

bou - che

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puis

. .

que j'ai

et

j

œœ œ ‰ J

R

vu

j œ n œj œJ .

tes yeux sur

˙˙

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‰ œ #œ œ œ œ œ

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J

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mes yeux.

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and uncertainty, with the harmonic equivalent of subordinate clauses, and generates maximal tension before resolving. Once again, we perceive an urbane grasp of Hugo’s art beneath the naïve veneer of the romance. R H E T O R IC A N D M O T I V E

Fauré responded alertly to another facet of Hugo’s craft in his setting of “Puisque mai tout en fleur”: rhetorical expression. Of his five early songs from Les chants du crépuscule, only “Mai” employs direct lyric address. “Le papillon et la fleur” is a monologue quoted by a narrator; “L’aube naît” and “S’il est un gazon charmant” are chansons; and the mandolin accompaniment also seems to frame “Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre” as a performed song. “Mai” bears no trace of the chanson genre nor is it even prefaced by a piano ritornello. In Hugo’s poem, Fauré found a paragon of lyric expression, a direct and exuberant invitation to the beloved. Indeed, the composer faced the challenge of containing Hugo’s vigorous rhetoric within the genteel confines of the strophic romance.

20      Chapter 1

The poem achieves its headlong effect through the rhetorical figure of enumeratio, piling noun upon noun, phrase upon phrase: Puisque mai tout en fleurs dans les prés nous réclame, Viens! ne te lasse pas de mêler à ton âme La campagne, les bois, les ombrages charmants, Les larges clairs de lune au bord des flots dormants, Le sentier qui finit où le chemin commence, Et l’air et le printemps et l’horizon immense, L’horizon que ce monde attache humble et joyeux Comme une lèvre au bas de la robe des cieux. Viens! et que le regard des pudiques étoiles Qui tombe sur la terre à travers tant de voiles, Que l’arbre pénétré de parfum et de chants, Que le souffle embrasé de midi dans les champs, Et l’ombre et le soleil et l’onde et la verdure, Et le rayonnement de toute la nature, Fassent épanouir, comme une double fleur, La beauté sur ton front et l’amour dans ton cœur! Since May, full of flowers, calls us to the meadows, Come! do not weary of mingling your soul With the countryside, the woods, the pleasant shade, The wide moonlight on the banks of the sleeping waters, The path that ends where the road begins, And the air, and the springtime, and the vast horizon, The horizon that the world attaches, humbly and joyfully, Like a lip at the hem of heaven’s robe. Come! And may the gaze of the chaste stars, Which fall to earth through so many veils, May the tree infused with perfume and songs, May the breeze inflamed with noontime in the fields, And the shade and the sun and the wave and the greenery, And the resplendence of all nature Cause to blossom, like a double flower, Beauty on your brow and love in your heart! The poem unspools in two long sentences into which Hugo crowded a jumble of nature imagery. The phrases tumble out breathlessly, overwhelming the syntax as if straining toward a mystical union with the cosmos. The landscape is imbued with religious meaning—chaste stars gaze down through their veils; the earth kisses the edge of heaven’s robe like the hem of Christ’s garment. The poem plunges

Romancing the mélodie    21

into an animistic nature and ends with a triumphant fusion of body and soul, outward beauty and inward love. The form of Hugo’s poem produces the same cumulative effect. It does not divide into stanzas but consists of an unbroken stream of rhyming couplets. This stichic form is typically found in epics and discursive poems where the poet sacrifices concentration of thought to flexibility. In this case, the continuous form heightens the sense of impetuosity as if the deluge of emotion had burst the banks of the stanza. The absence of interlocking rhymes drives the poem onward from one couplet to the next. Comparing Hugo’s poem with Fauré’s setting can easily lead to disappointment. As Graham Johnson remarked, “The problem faced by the interpreter of this song is that Hugo’s over-the-top romantic enthusiasm (whereby he seems to embrace the whole of nature) is ill-suited to Fauré’s less extrovert temperament.”24 Yet Fauré found his own quiet answer to Hugo’s virile rhetoric. “Mai” wastes no time on a piano prelude but launches the singer after two bars of arpeggios. Fauré filled out Hugo’s rolling alexandrines with another broad melody without rests, but the form is even more spacious than that of “Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre.” The two strophes begin with a sixteen-bar period, but the consequent closes on a half cadence, extending the period into a thirty-two-bar lyric form (A1A2BA3) that does not reach tonic closure until the end of the strophe. The B section wanders far afield, modulating to CH major (HIII) before reaching an apparent cadence on GH major. The augmented triad in m. 24 frustrates the cadence, however, and pivots back to V7 for the final A phrase. Even then, a deceptive cadence undercuts the reprise, deferring tonic closure until the final bar. With its breathless urgency, formal breadth, and harmonic twists, Fauré’s setting responds ably to Hugo’s rhapsodic poem. The composer also nodded to the poet’s religious imagery with the modal cadence of the first phrase (m. 10) and the fauxbourdon 6/3 chords leading into the reprise (m. 25). Fauré found an even more direct analogue to Hugo’s accumulative rhetoric. As Frits Noske pointed out, the four phrases of “Mai” spin out different versions of the opening two-bar motive (see example 1.4).25 This ebullient melodic idea bounds up a fifth, outlining the tonic triad like a trumpet fanfare. Indeed, the singer’s triadic melody seems to spring directly from the pianist’s arpeggios, absorbing the energy of the surging accompaniment.26 The third and fourth phrases reiterate the twobar figure, compressing and intensifying the motivic development across the second half of the song. The fourth phrase ends by leaping a fifth to the climactic high AH, unleashing the full energy of Fauré’s heraldic figure. The “Mai” motive also acquires fresh harmonic colors with each new variation. In the first phrase, it perches atop a tonic triad, colored by a descending inner line. In the second phrase, a subdominant inflection shades the harmony deliciously. The third phrase ventures into more distant keys as the motive repeats, depicting Hugo’s image of “The path that ends where the road begins.” Finally, the fourth phrase presents the motive in the relative minor with a faintly modal coloration.

Rumph_Mai.a–d page 1 ofof a4head motive across the first example 1.4 . Fauré, variation strophe of “Mai.”

a. First phrase, mm. 3–4.

a

œ œj ˙ . J

3

b & b b b 43 œJ œJ œ

Puis - que Mai

b & b b b 43 Œ

tout

en

fleurs

‰ œ œ ˙ œ

‰ œ œ ˙ œ

Œ

j ? b b b 43 ‰ œ ˙ ˙. b

‰ œj ˙ ˙.

b. Second phrase, mm. 11–12.

b

11

b & b b b œJ

La

cam - pa

‰ œ œ ˙ œ

b & b bb Œ œ

‰ ˙

˙

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‰ bœ bœ œ b œ b b œœ .. bœ

J

p j œ

sempre

.

œ.

œ

‰

Œ

cresc.

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gne,

œ

où

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Œ

‰

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˙.

les

bois,

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Œ bœ

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˙

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bœ

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J

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ce,

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Œ

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fi

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qui

œ bœ J

bœ ? bb b œ ‰ Œ b œœ .

p

b & b bb Œ

b œ œ œ & b bb J J

19

c

c. Third phrase, mm. 19–22.

-

Rumph_Mai.a–d page 3 of 4

bœ œœ .

Œ

nit

b˙.

‰ Œ

‰ bœ bœ œ b œ b b œœ ..

œœ . œ

Œ

où

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bœ

J

‰

Œ

ce,

œ

Œ

bœ ‰ b œœ n œ b œ

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le

œ œ œ bœ b˙ J J J

‰

L'ho

- eux,

? bb b b ˙ . b b˙. °

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b ˙ & b bb

30

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-

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ri

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a tempo

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d. Fourth phrase, mm. 27–31.

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p

œ

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Œ

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Com

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que

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Romancing the mélodie    25

With his persistent, subtly varied motive, Fauré captured something of Hugo’s verve. New versions of the motive continually sprout from the melody like the poem’s cornucopian imagery. This sort of concentrated motivic development is absent from Fauré’s other Hugo settings and does not resurface until the 1870s when the composer turned to more serious verse. The motivic work in “Mai” exceeds the polite norms of song composition, gesturing toward the chamber and symphonic genres. We catch another glimpse of an elevated style behind the façade of the salon romance. G E N R E A N D C OU N T E R P O I N T

In “S’il est un charmant gazon,” his fifth song from Les chants du crépuscule, Fauré explored the expressive potential of counterpoint. Counterpoint here signifies not only the combination of melodic lines but also the relationship between the two performers. For the first time in Fauré’s songs, the piano ritornello plays a truly integrated role, becoming an inseparable part of the musical-poetic design. At a deeper level still, “S’il est un charmant gazon” presents a counterpoint of genres that crystallizes a particular moment in the history of French song. Motivically, the ritornello and strophes of “S’il est un charmant gazon” are closely interrelated (see example 1.5). The piano and vocal melodies both fall into two-bar subphrases that descend to an accented passing tone, a sighing figure that permeates the entire song. The rising arpeggio in m. 2 also resembles a similar figure in the second half of the vocal strophes (see mm. 19 and 21). Yet the pentatonic piano arpeggio is obviously related to the common motive from “Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre” and “Mai,” which follows at the end of the ritornello. Clearly, Fauré did not compose the piano ritornello of “S’il est un charmant gazon” as an afterthought, as in the earlier songs. The ritornello develops material from previous songs and is integrated motivically with the vocal strophes. The ritornello and strophes share another less noticeable structural feature. Fauré wrote the entire ritornello in strict four-part counterpoint, paying close attention to voice-leading. The first bar contains a voice exchange between the melody, which descends from F4 to D4, and the tenor voice in the left hand, which ascends from D3 to F3 in even quarter notes. The same voice exchange returns twice, each time a fifth higher, as the two-bar model repeats sequentially. The inner voice also returns at the cadence, where the alto line rises from D4 to F4. We might overlook this voice-leading detail did it not return so strikingly in the strophes. The first two phrases begin with a voice exchange between the descending vocal line (C5 to A4) and the ascending alto line in the piano (A3 to C4). The bass line, meanwhile, rises in contrary motion against the voice as it falls from C5 to F4. The bass only climbs a fourth in the first phrase, reversing direction on BH2, but in the consequent phrase it reaches C3, mirroring the singer’s fifth descent. This

example 1.5 . Fauré, “S’il est un charmant gazon,” mm. 1–24. Animé œ œ œ œ. œœ œ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œ & b 43 œ . œ œ œ ‰ ‰ ‰ ‰ n œ ‰ œ œ‰ œœ n œœ œ Œ Œ Œ Œ

p espressivo

? b 43 œ œ ˙.

œ

œ œ

Œ

œ

œ˙ œ .

Œ

œœ œ Œ

Œ

animé œ. œ œ œ œ œ & b ‰ # œ ‰ œ ‰ œ # œ œ Œ œ n Œœ œ œ˙ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ J œ œ œ

5

?b

œ˙ .

9

&b œ

S'il

cresc.

j œ ‰ Œ Œ

œ

œ

œ

œ œj œj œj ˙ J

est

œ œ

un char - mant ga - zon

. . . . . . &b ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ?

œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ b œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ . . . . . .

13

&b œ

Où

œ

œ œ œ œ ˙ J J J

J

nais - se∂en tou - te sai - son

&b ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ?

œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ b œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰

œ

˙˙ .

π

j

œœ ‰ Œ J

Œ

œ œ œj œ œ ˙ J J

œ. que

le ciel ar - ro

-

se,

‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ

œ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰

œ.

Quel

-

j œ œJ œJ

œ

que fleur é - clo

‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ

œœ œœ œœ œ ‰ ‰ œ œ ‰

-

˙

se,

‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ

œœ œ œœ œœ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰

Rumph Ex.5 page 2 of 2 Romancing the mélodie    27 example 1.5 . (continued) 17

&b œ

Où

œ œj œj œj ˙ J

œ l'on

cueil - le∂à

œ œ œ œ œ J J

plei - ne main

Lys,

&b ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ?b 21

&b

chè - vre - feuil

-

œ Nœ ˙ J J

le∂et jas - min,

‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ #œ ‰ œœ

œ b œ #œ œ œ #œ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ #œ #œ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰

j j œ œ

œ œ œ

J'en veux fai

-

re

œ œ ˙ J J le

che - min

&b

œ œ œ ? b ‰ œœ ‰ œœ ‰ œœ œ ‰ œ ‰ #œ ‰

‰ œ

œœœ ‰ b œœœ ‰ œ bœ ‰ nœ ‰ œ

œ œj œj œj œ J rallentando

Où

ton pied

se

po

-

œ

se!

‰ œ ‰ œ œj œœ œœœ œœ

œœœ ‰ œœœ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ ‰ ‰ ‰

j

œ

contrapuntal “consummation” immediately precedes the rhapsodic arpeggios, as if the rising bass line had released a new energy in the melody. The expressive meaning behind this contrapuntal design becomes clear in the third stanza, where Fauré departed from the strophic form. In the first two strophes, the staccato accompaniment consists of a bass line and offbeat chords, imitating a mandolin or guitar. In the third strophe, an emphatic new voice joins the serenade (see example 1.6). This inner voice begins with a series of descending octaves leaps, foregrounded with heavy accents. The falling interval is, of course, an inversion of the vocalist’s octave leap, which follows immediately in the fifth bar. The contrary motion introduced in the piano ritornello has thus expanded from a third to a fifth to a full octave. During the modified consequent phrase, the new tenor voice descends chromatically, shadowing the singer’s melody in parallel tenths (mm. 65–68). Fauré clearly wanted to call attention to the counterpoint in this stanza, but why? The answer lies in the fifth and sixth lines:

example 1.6 . Fauré, “S’il est un charmant gazon,” mm. 57–68. 57

œ œj œj œj ˙ J

più dolce

&b œ

S'il

œ

est

œ.

un rê - ve d'a - mour,

& b ˙>.

Par

‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ˙. œ. œ. œ. >

. . . > œ ? b ‰ œœ ‰ œœ ‰ œ ˙ . œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ . . . . . . 61

&b œ

Où

œ œ œ œ ˙ J J J

œ

l'on

trou - ve

& b ˙>.

J

cha - que jour

‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ

? b ‰ œœ ‰ œœ ‰ œœ œœ œ œœ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ ‰ œ ‰ ‰ 65

&b œ

Un

-

œ œ œ œ J

rê

-

J œJ n œJ

ve que

& b ‰ œœ ‰ œœ ‰ œœ

˙

Dieu bé - nit,

‰ #œ ‰ œ ‰ œ n œœ œœ œœ

œ œ œj œ J J

fu - mé de

ro

-

˙

se,

‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ

. . . > œ ‰ œœ ‰ œœ ‰ œ ˙ . œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ . . .

œ.

Quel

‰

œ

j œ œJ œJ

-

que dou - ce

œ cho

œ ‰

se,

‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ œ œœ œœ

œœ ‰ œœ ‰ œœ œ œ

-

˙

œ ‰ œ ‰

œ ˙ œ ‰ ‰ œ ‰ œ

n œ œ œ œ œJ œ n œ b œ ˙ Où

J J

l'â - me∂a l'â - me

‰ #œ ‰ œ ‰ œ œœ n œœ œœ

‰

J

s'u - nit,

‰ ‰ b b n œœœ œœœ œœœ

> > > > . ˙ # ˙ # ˙ n ˙ . . . œ œ ?b œ œ œ ‰ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ ‰ œ ‰

Romancing the mélodie    29

Un rêve que Dieu bénit Où l’âme à l’âme s’unit . . .

A dream that God blesses In which soul with soul unites . . .

The contrapuntal lines depict this union of souls as they crisscross, mirror, and parallel one another. This is no facile pictorialism or isolated effect. Fauré has baked the contrapuntal design into every bar of the song, in both the piano ritornello and vocal strophes. Yet the poetry and music of “S’il est un charmant gazon” are hardly soul mates. In fact, poetic and musical syntax are at loggerheads in Fauré’s peculiar setting. Hugo’s poem has a markedly hypotactic structure like that of “Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre.” Each stanza consists of a single complex sentence that begins with a series of subordinate clauses and does not reach closure until the last two lines: S’il est un charmant gazon Que le ciel arrose, Où naisse en toute saison Quelque fleur éclose, Où l’on cueille à pleine main Lys, chèvrefeuille et jasmin, J’en veux faire le chemin Où ton pied se pose!

If there is a pleasant lawn That heaven waters, Where at each season spring Blossoming flowers, Where one gathers abundantly Lily, honeysuckle, and jasmine, I would make a path Where your foot might tread!

The rhyme scheme also has a nested structure, ababcccb, in which the b rhyme encloses the whole stanza. Moreover, Hugo used the same b rhyme (-ose) in all three stanzas, knitting together the entire poem. If the construction of “Mai” suggests headlong enthusiasm, “S’il est un charmant gazon” has the effect of a tautly organized argument. In his setting of “Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre,” Fauré responded to Hugo’s hypotaxis with music that vividly represents the prolongation of desire—yearning melodic lines, unstable harmonies, a broad and complex phrase structure. His setting of “S’il est un charmant gazon,” on the other hand, could hardly be more complacent. The strophes begin squarely in the tonic with a melody that descends from ˆ5 to ˆ1 like a cadential formula. The harmony sticks doggedly to the tonic, and most remarkably, the antecedent phrase ends with a full cadence. Fauré seems to have been bent on defusing any harmonic or melodic tension, setting Hugo’s tortuous sentences to remarkably bland music. Yet Fauré by no means overlooked Hugo’s syntax. Let us turn again to the piano ritornello. The theme is an eight-bar sentence, like the prelude to “Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre,” with a pair of sequential two-bar phrases followed by a four-bar continuation. Each of the three phrases starts on a remote harmony with the melody poised on the dissonant seventh degree. The first phrase begins on a startling V7 of V and moves elliptically to I6. This uneasy resolution is undercut by the second phrase,

30      Chapter 1

which begins a fifth higher on vi7 and resolves to ii. The third phrase ratchets the tension still higher, rising another fifth and beginning abruptly on V of vi before working back around to the tonic. The piano thus supplies the harmonic tension and sense of prolonged resolution absent from the vocal part. In fact, there is a precise parallel between the harmonic structure of Fauré’s eight-bar ritornello and the syntax of Hugo’s eight-line stanzas. Both consist of a single complex sentence that begins with three unstable clauses and reaches closure in the final two bars/lines. A strange division of labor! The piano ritornello realizes Hugo’s rhetorical structure while the vocal strophes blithely ignore the poet’s complicated syntax. In fact, other than the shared motivic and contrapuntal features, the ritornello and strophes seem to belong to different songs. The ritornello strikes a serious tone with its strict four-part writing, rhapsodic gestures, and espressivo marking. The melody of the strophes, on the other hand, exudes a naïve, almost folk-like simplicity, while the staccato accompaniment evokes the modest chanson genre, the realm of serenades, barcarolles, and drinking songs. Not only do the vocal strophes ignore Hugo’s syntax, but they fit poorly with the word accents. Of all Fauré’s early songs, “S’il est un charmant gazon” is plagued by the most discrepancies of text-setting across sources, including editions. It almost seems as if Fauré had grafted Hugo’s poem onto the melody of a discarded song . . . Nouvelle chanson sur un vieil air. “New words to an old tune.” Hugo’s title, we recall, hints at an anonymous folksong beneath the new poem. Fauré seems to have taken the title seriously. His naïve vocal melody sounds very much like a vieil air to which new words have been awkwardly fitted. The sophisticated piano ritornello, on the other hand, suggests the perspective of the modern poet as he toys with his folk artifact. Given the carefully fashioned musical connections between the piano and vocal parts, it seems entirely plausible that the composer intended this duality. It is an ingenious conception that should banish forever the notion of Fauré as a naïve reader. Yet there is still more involved in this counterpoint of piano and voice. Fauré has staged a dialogue between national styles. The ritornello is pure German Romanticism, lifted from the pages of Schumann’s Dichterliebe, while the strophes tap the limpid vocalism of Fauré’s native tradition. As “S’il est un charmant gazon” demonstrates, Fauré did not need to graduate from the romance to the mélodie. His student songs already draw the two genres into a dialogue that engages stylistic register, social function, and national identity. Fauré clearly intended to publish these songs, since he approached Victor Hugo in 1864 for the rights to the poems.27 We may thus view Fauré’s dialogue of genres as his fashioning of a compositional voice as he prepared to set himself before the public eye. The early Hugo settings align him with the traditions of the salon romance, even as they bid for the prestige of the Germanic mélodie. They make a remarkable debut for the composer who more than any other would shape the course of French art song into the twentieth century.

2

Ascending Parnassus Poème d’un jour, op. 21

Fauré’s first song cycle has always fared better with the public than with critics. He composed the popular Poème d’un jour in 1878, thirteen years before he embarked on his six mature cycles. The three settings of poet Charles Grandmougin trace a brief love affair from infatuation (“Rencontre”) to rejection (“Toujours”) to resigned acceptance (“Adieu”). Musically, the songs cohere through a network of shared motives, piano figurations, and harmonic structures. The keys of Fauré’s autograph also follow a logical tonal plan from DH major to FG minor to GH major—enharmonically, a V-i progression followed by a major-minor shift. (The tonal scheme is even clearer in the 1880 first edition, which transposes the autograph keys to B major, E minor, and E major.) Yet despite the evident care that Fauré devoted to Poème d’un jour, critics have rated the work as little more than a fashionable pastiche. Vladimir Jankélévitch found no musical integration but only “the unity of a sort of sentimental biography.”1 As Robert Orledge remarked less charitably, “The only common factor of the three op. 21 songs is their relative mediocrity.”2 The obvious connection between the romantic narrative and Fauré’s broken engagement of 1877 has also tempted scholars to collapse the cycle into autobiography.3 Above all, critics have faulted a theatrical quality in the first two songs of Poème d’un jour— “much to the taste of singers” was Charles Kœchlin’s discreet phrase.4 Jankélévitch objected to “the insincerity of the emotion,” and even the sympathetic Émile Vuillermoz confessed to hearing “more than a hint of the dramatic stage.”5 A more serious interpretation emerges, however, if we take seriously Fauré’s title and read the cycle as a reflection on poiesis, the making of art. While the origin of Grandmougin’s three unpublished poems remains unknown, the title of the cycle clearly nods to a musical contemporary. Jules Massenet had recently 31

32      Chapter 2

composed a series of “poem” song cycles that trace similar tales of ephemeral love: Poème d’avril (1866), Poème d’octobre (1877), and Poème du souvenir (1878). The final song of Poème d’avril bears a particularly suggestive epigraph: Nous nous sommes aimés trois jours: Trois jours elle me fut fidèle. Trois jours. ___La constance éternelle, Et les éternelles amours! We loved each other three days: Three days she was faithful to me. Three days. ___Eternal constancy, And eternal love! Grandmougin’s poems have not turned up in any collection or periodical, so it remains unclear whether he wrote them for Fauré or if the composer assembled them himself.6 In either case, Massenet’s cycles provide an instructive foil for Poème d’un jour. Fauré’s cycle departs most strikingly from his models in identifying the protagonist as a poet—the “poète isolé,” as he calls himself in the first song. The cycle thus seems to invite an allegorical reading, a metapoetic interpretation that reaches beyond the trivial love story. In fact, both the text and music of Poème d’un jour resonate compellingly with the leading poetic movement of the time, Parnassianism. The Parnassian school, named for Mount Parnassus, the home of the ancient Greek muses, dominated French poetry during the Second Empire and well into the 1880s. Almost every notable poet of the later nineteenth century appeared in the eponymous anthology Le Parnasse contemporain alongside minor figures like Grandmougin.7 The 1866 inaugural volume established Parnassus as the driving force of French poetry, and Fauré vigorously embraced the new movement. Between 1868 and 1884, in addition to Poème d’un jour, he set three poems by Leconte de Lisle, the leader of the Parnassian poets; four by Théophile Gautier, their spiritual mentor, whose verse heads the first volume of Le Parnasse contemporain; three poems by the movement’s quirky philosopher, Sully Prudhomme; and ten by Armand Silvestre, cited in a notable 1882 essay as one of the four “chefs d’école” of Parnassus.8 Fauré was indeed “caught up in the Parnassian period movement,” as Nectoux noted, yet his relation to that movement remains almost entirely unexamined.9 This chapter explores Poème d’un jour as a manifestation, or perhaps even a manifesto, of Parnassian aesthetics. As I shall argue, the work constitutes a sort of Bildungsgedicht, a coming-of-age poem in which the protagonist passes through trials to reach artistic maturity. This reading helps explain Fauré’s curious rigor in crafting the song cycle, a genre to which he would not return until 1891. It also makes sense of the theatricality of “Rencontre” and “Toujours”: far from betraying a lapse of taste,

Ascending Parnassus    33

the flamboyant style sets off the Olympian restraint of “Adieu.” Coming at a pivotal moment in Fauré’s career, Poème d’un jour marks a break with his youthful apprenticeship and announces his new mastery as a composer. It also provides a barometer of the music-text relationship at this stage in his songwriting career. PA R NA S SIA N A E S T H E T IC S

In 1852 Leconte de Lisle published his Poèmes antiques from which Fauré derived three mélodies. The poet suffered the sense of alienation that afflicted many artists after the disappointing revolutions of 1848–49. Leconte de Lisle loathed the modern world and found solace in Greek, Roman, and Hindu antiquity. His epic verse portrays world-weary ascetics, followers of dispossessed gods, and dying sages, all symbols of the poet’s mal du siècle. He would even dip into Norse mythology, writing “La mort de Sigurd” and “La légende des Nornes” (Poèmes barbares, 1862). Yet Leconte de Lisle and Richard Wagner offered opposing antidotes to modernity: whereas Wagner aimed at emotional immediacy and disdained formal artifice, Leconte de Lisle strove for impassivity and embraced an exacting formalism. His programmatic poem “Vénus de Milo” expresses this detached aestheticism: Du bonheur impassible ô symbole adorable, Calme comme la Mer en sa sérénité, Nul sanglot n’a brisé ton sein inaltérable, Jamais les pleurs humains n’ont terni ta beauté. Oh, captivating symbol of impassive bliss, Calm as the serene Sea, No sob has burst from your immutable breast, Never have human tears tarnished your beauty. Leconte de Lisle rejected the autobiographical candor of the Romantics as well as their social commitment. Condemned to a prosaic age and politically impotent, the modern poet’s sole redemption lay in the study of healthier epochs. As Leconte de Lisle counseled his fellow poets in the preface to Poèmes antiques, “You are also destined, under pain of complete effacement, to isolate yourselves in the contemplative and learned life as in a sanctuary of repose and purification.”10 The young poets who flocked to Leconte de Lisle’s salon eventually published three volumes of Le Parnasse contemporain (1866, 1871, 1876) and even had their own house publisher, Alphonse Lemerre. José-Maria de Heredia summoned classical antiquity most imposingly in Les trophées, a collection of 121 sonnets that he eventually published in 1893. The opening sonnet, “L’oubli” (Oblivion), captures the historical nostalgia that haunted the Parnassians:

34      Chapter 2

Le temple est en ruine au haut du promontoire. Et la Mort a mêlé, dans ce fauve terrain, Les Déesses de marbre et les Héros d’airain Dont l’herbe solitaire ensevelit la gloire. Seul, parfois, un bouvier menant ses buffles boire, De sa conque où soupire un antique refrain Emplissant le ciel calme et l’horizon marin, Sur l’azur infini dresse sa forme noire. La Terre maternelle et douce aux anciens Dieux Fait à chaque printemps, vainement éloquente, Au chapiteau brisé verdir une autre acanthe; Mais l’Homme indifférent au rêve des aïeux Écoute sans frémir, du fond des nuits sereines, La Mer qui se lamente en pleurant les Sirènes. The temple lies in ruins atop the promontory. And Death has mingled, in this tawny landscape, The marble Goddesses and the bronze Heroes Whose glory lies buried beneath the lonely grass. All the while, a lone cowherd who leads his buffaloes to water And fills with his conch, sighing an ancient refrain, The calm sky and sea horizon, Raises his dark form against the infinite azure. The Earth, maternal and sweet to the ancient Gods, Each spring with vain eloquence Bedecks the broken capital with a green acanthus; But Man, indifferent to his ancestor’s dreams, Hears without shivering, in the depths of the serene nights, The Sea that tearfully laments its lost Sirens. Heredia’s elegy mourns the disenchantment of nature and mankind’s indifference to bygone glory. Yet it holds out hope for modernity. The sonnet turns upon the image of the acanthus: both natural plant and inspiration for the Corinthian column, the acanthus symbolizes the regenerative power of ancient art. Modern poets may yet recapture the lost music of the Sirens as they immerse themselves in antiquity. The sonnet, with its demanding rhyme scheme, provided an ideal vehicle for the Parnassian craftsmen. They found paragons of formal perfection in the jeweled miniatures of Théophile Gautier’s Émaux et camées (1852). Gautier’s concluding poem, “L’Art,” distills the formalist creed:

Ascending Parnassus    35

Les dieux eux-mêmes meurent. Mais les vers souverains   Demeurent Plus forts que les airains.

The gods themselves die, But the sovereign verses   Endure Stronger than bronze.

Sculpte, lime, ciselle; Que ton rêve flottant   Se scelle Dans le bloc résistant!

Sculpt, file, chisel; Let your floating dream   Be sealed In the resisting block!

The Parnassians emulated Gautier’s chiseled verse as they rejected the negligent flow of Romantic poetry in favor of more concentrated structures. Characteristic, too, is Gautier’s dense rhyming—both the rich rhyme of “meurent”/“demeurent” (three shared sounds instead of the normal two) and the sonorous near rhyme of “ciselle”/“Se scelle.” So highly did the Parnassians value rhyme that scholar Jean Martino could speak of a “cult of rich rhyme.”11 Théodore de Banville emphatically gave rhyme pride of place in his Petit traité de poésie française (1891), the bible of Parnassian poetics: “In every poem, the good construction of the phrase is in direct proportion to the richness of the rhyme.”12 An anonymous parody of the Parnassian school, Le Parnassiculet contemporain (1867), included a droll lampoon of their compact and fastidiously rhymed verse: le martyre de saint labre sonnet extrêmement rythmique

Labre, Saint Glabre, Teint Maint Sabre, S’cabre, Geint! Pince, Fer Clair! Grince, Chair Mince!13 The rigid structures of Parnassian poetry were a rebuke to the fluidity and emotionalism of Romanticism. Sculpture was the dominant artistic metaphor for the Parnassians, and their verse abounds with female statues, especially the Venus de Milo. As Gretchen Schultz explained, “Behind the Parnassian quest for formal

36      Chapter 2

stasis, then, lies a desperate attempt to reclaim the poetic act for masculinity and to render poetry, as a metaphor for femininity, unchanging and fixed beyond time.”14 The Parnassian ethic demanded that poets cleanse their work of emotion and sublimate personal experience in objective form. This aesthetic had particular relevance for Fauré in 1878 following his broken engagement to Marianne Viardot, the daughter of his famous patroness, opera diva Pauline Viardot. Marianne accepted his proposal in July 1877, and the composer’s letters overflow with an extravagant, almost manic enthusiasm. As he wrote on August 19: “I am anxious for your assurance that you have forgotten how turbulent and touchy my love for you has been these last few days. The more I carry on, the less clearly do I understand this inexplicable agitation that comes from deep within me! I can no longer sleep because of it!”15 Or in a letter of August 26: “You cannot suspect that it is all I can do to prevent myself sobbing fit to split the rocks open every time I write to you.”16 Daunted by this onslaught, Marianne broke off the engagement after only three months, leaving Fauré devastated. Poème d’un jour undoubtedly responded to that trauma, as Nectoux and others have suggested, yet the work transcends autobiographical confession.17 As the poet-protagonist passes from unbridled passion to philosophical resignation, he realizes the Parnassian ideal of impassivity. The song cycle not only sublimates personal tragedy but also grants that experience an enduring artistic form. Fauré’s sympathy with the Parnassian aesthetic appears fully blown in his first Leconte de Lisle setting, “Lydia.” This exquisite mélodie, written around 1870, haunted Fauré’s music till the end of his career and even appears as a leitmotive in La bonne chanson.18 “Lydia” also provided the direct model for “Adieu,” the final song of Poème d’un jour. A close reading of poem and song will illuminate Fauré’s affinity with the Parnassian poets, which lies, above all, in a shared historical vision. “LY D IA” A N D T H E L I V I N G PA ST

Fauré found “Lydia” in the Poèmes antiques at the end of the “Études latines,” eighteen poems inspired by Horace’s odes. Leconte de Lisle based the first sixteen études on specific odes; only “Lydia” and the concluding “Envoi” were freely composed.19 The sixth étude, “Vile potabis,” gives the flavor of these exercises. Leconte de Lisle modeled his poem on the twentieth ode from Horace’s first book: Vile potabis modicis Sabinum cantharis, Graeca quod ego ipse testa conditum levi, datus in theatro   cum tibi plausus, clare Maecenas eques, ut paterni fluminis ripae simul et iocosa

Ascending Parnassus    37

redderet laudes tibi Vaticani   montis imago. Caecubum et prelo domitam Caleno tu bibes uvam: mea nec Falernae temperant vites neque Formiani   pocula colles. You will drink from modest cups a cheap Sabine wine that I stored away in a Greek jar and sealed with my own hand on the day when you, Maecenas, illustrious knight, were given such applause in the theater that the banks of your fathers’ river, yes, and the playful echo from the Vatican Hill, repeated your praises. At home you can drink Caecuban and the grape that is crushed in the presses of Cales; my cups are not mellowed by the vines of Falernum or Formian hillsides.20

The French poet preserved Horace’s opening words and his basic content. But he transformed the Sapphic stanzas and quantitative meter into a modern form, a single dizain of rhyming octosyllables. Moreover, he gave the ode an aestheticist slant, emphasizing the role of the Parnassian muses: En mes coupes d’un prix modique Veux-tu tenter mon humble vin? Je l’ai scellé dans l’urne Attique Au sortir du pressoir Sabin. Il est un peu rude et moderne: Cécube, Calès ni Falerne Ne mûrissent dans mon cellier; Mais les Muses me sont amies, Et les muses font oublier Ta vigne dorée, ô Formies! In my cups of modest worth Would you try my humble wine? I sealed it in the Attic urn As soon as it left the Sabine press. It is a bit crude and new: Wines of Cecuba, Cales, and Falernum Are not aging in my cellar; But I am a friend to the muses, And the muses will make us forget Your golden vine, o Formia! Leconte de Lisle summed up his historicist vision in the “Envoi” to the Horatian études, which acknowledges the distance between ancient art and its modern emulation:

38      Chapter 2

Je n’ai ni trépieds grecs, ni coupes de Sicile, Ni bronzes d’Éturie aux contours élégants . . . De ces trésors, Gallus, je ne puis t’offrir rien; Mais j’ai des mètres chers à la Muse natale: La lyre en assouplit la cadence inégale. Je te les donne, ami! C’est mon unique bien. I have neither Grecian tripods nor Sicilian goblets, Nor elegantly contoured Etruscan bronzes . . . Of such treasures, Gallus, I can offer nothing; But I have meters dear to my native Muse: The lyre softens their uneven rhythm. I give them to you, friend! They are my sole possession. The dedication to the elegist Cornelius Gallus puns on gallus, or inhabitant of Gaul. The French poet thus appropriates Latin antiquity to his native tradition and passes the torch to his modern reader. In the “Études latines,” as Eduard Pich explained, the modern poet draws Horace into a living tradition: “These works nourish his genius and lead him to produce, in turn, works that death threatens to swallow up, but which the dying poet bequeaths to Gallus, his friend, his brother, his reader, who in turn will give new life to the ancient inspiration.”21 “Lydia,” the final étude, spins a delicate web of antitheses around the ancient carpe diem topos. The ode emphasizes the tension between permanence and flux, immortality and decay, timeless antiquity and modern art: Lydia, sur tes roses joues, Et sur ton col frais, et plus blanc Que le lait, coule étincelant L’or fluide que tu dénoues. Le jour qui luit est le meilleur; Oublions l’éternelle tombe; Laisse tes baisers de colombe Chanter sur tes lèvres en fleur. Un lys caché répand sans cesse Une odeur divine en ton sein; Les délices, comme un essaim, Sortent de toi, jeune Déesse! Je t’aime et meurs, ô mes amours! Mon âme en baisers m’est ravie. O Lydia, rends-moi la vie, Que je puisse mourir toujours!

Ascending Parnassus    39

Lydia, over your rosy cheeks And your fresh neck, more white Than milk, pours radiantly The liquid gold that you loosen. The shining day is best; Let us forget the eternal tomb; Let your dovelike kisses Sing upon your flowering lips. A hidden lily spreads unceasingly A divine odor in your breast; Delights, like a swarm, Issue from you, young goddess! I love you and die, oh my love. My soul is ravished by kisses! O Lydia, give me back my life That I may die forever. Lydia’s loosened hair suggests erotic abandon but also hints at the ultimate dénouement, death. The second stanza transforms her golden tresses into the shining sun, poised against the inexorable tomb, an opposition that also informs the paradoxical images of “liquid gold” (line 4) and “young goddess” (line 12). Likewise, the “divine odor” emanating from Lydia’s bosom in the third stanza evokes contradictory meanings, suggesting both youthful allure and embalming spices.22 Half woman, half goddess, Lydia unites sensuality and spirit, warm humanity and cool statuary. The fourth stanza epitomizes Leconte de Lisle’s exquisite craftsmanship. A caesura divides the first line symmetrically, enhancing the resonance between “amours” and “meurt,” love and death (understood as la petite mort, in the best Renaissance tradition). The outer lines of the rimes embrassées, concerning the poet’s death, end with -ou, the darkest of vowel sounds; the inner lines, celebrating his rebirth, with -i, the brightest sound. The repeated m sounds of “t’aime,” “meurt,” “mes amours,” and “mon âme” draw the reader’s lips into a kiss, the central image of the stanza. Indeed, Lydia’s singing, dovelike lips resolve the antitheses developed across the entire poem: as the modern poet unites his mouth to timeless beauty, a new art takes flight. Such is the discipline of the Parnassian artist, who must continually die to self and rise transfigured within objective form. With its balance of passion and control, “Lydia” both practices and preaches Leconte de Lisle’s poetic creed. Fauré’s setting achieves the same balance between spontaneity and discipline. He adhered to the conservative form of the salon romance, dividing Leconte de Lisle’s ode into two identical strophes (see example 2.1). Yet the composer abandoned his usual period or sentence structure and wrote an entirely through-composed melody,

example 2.1 . Fauré, “Lydia,” mm. 1–19. Andante

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bai -

42      Chapter 2

four unique phrases that unfold in a series of widening undulations. The first phrase surges passionately, while the second cascades back down like Lydia’s loosened tresses. The third phrase rises to high F for the image of the shining sun, but again falls earthward at the thought of “l’éternelle tombe.” Yet the rhapsodic melody conceals finely crafted motivic connections. The singer’s rising scale from m. 5 returns in the piano in mm. 17–18, while the rising sequence of interlocking thirds in mm. 3–4 is inverted in mm. 7–9. More subtly still, the voice exchanges between the tenor voice and melody in mm. 7–8 combine ascending and descending thirds in contrary motion. The fourth phrase nicely captures Leconte de Lisle’s chiaroscuro of beauty and death: a discreet touch of Italianate cantilena evokes the singing doves, while the flattened sixth and seventh degrees cast a shadow over Lydia’s flowering lips. Leconte de Lisle’s fusion of ancient and modern art awoke a rich echo in Fauré, a graduate of the École Niedermeyer who had studied plainchant accompaniment, Renaissance polyphony, and Bach’s organ works.23 The strict four-part texture in “Lydia” creates a sense of historical distance, as does the hint of fauxbourdon in m. 11 and, of course, Fauré’s witty use of the Lydian mode in its proper key of F major. Fauré’s treatment of modality, however, reveals the same free appropriation of the past as Leconte de Lisle’s Horatian études. For those unfamiliar with the medieval modes, a brief explanation will help. Each of the modes has an authentic and a plagal version—for example, Dorian and Hypodorian—depending on the ambitus of the melody. In the authentic mode, the melody lies above the final, or concluding note, while in the plagal mode it surrounds the final. The authentic and plagal modes also have different dominants, secondary pitch centers that serve as reciting tones. The dominant of the Lydian mode is C, while that of the Hypolydian mode is A. The melody of “Lydia” lies entirely within the F4-F5 ambitus of the Lydian mode, yet the first phrase cadences on A minor, the dominant of the Hypolydian mode (mm. 5–6). The composer certainly knew the correct dominant for each mode from his school days. In their 1857 treatise on plainchant accompaniment, Louis Niedermeyer and Joseph d’Ortigue wrote of the Hypolydian mode, “F is the final as in the preceding [mode], but the dominant is a, which gives rise to the frequent use of the chord we know as a minor.”24 Evidently, Fauré chose the Hypolydian dominant for its antique quality, rather than the historically accurate C major, which would have sounded indistinguishable from a modern V chord. The archaic spell of the modal dominant does not last long. No sooner does the melody cadence on A minor than a descending sequence in the piano restores tonal syntax, correcting the characteristic raised fourth of the Lydian mode. The deceptive cadence in m. 7 abruptly resumes the modal train of thought, as the Lydian BJ returns within a hovering vi7 chord. Yet a descending sequence again sweeps the song back into the present, restoring BH and rotating downward through the circle of fifths (mm. 8–10). Modality and tonality maintain a delicate balance in Fauré’s assimilation of the church modes.

Ascending Parnassus    43

The opening modulation of “Lydia” became a signature of Fauré’s music. The song “Le secret” (1881), a hymnlike setting of another Parnassian poet, begins with a Lydian melody and the same I-iii progression. The Agnus Dei of the Requiem (1888) uses the same progression in F major; the Lydian BJ infiltrates mm. 14–16, triggering a modulation to the modal dominant, A minor. “Fileuse,” the spinning song from the incidental music to Pelléas et Mélisande (1898), provides the classic example of Fauré’s “Lydia” modulation: the first phrase introduces the raised fourth of G major, CG, which leads to a decisive cadence on B minor. As we shall see, Fauré used the modulation to great effect in La bonne chanson where he actually quoted “Lydia.” The composer explained the rationale behind the progression in a letter to his son Philippe from 1906. The composer analyzed the “Air de danse” from his incidental music to Alexandre Dumas père’s Caligula (1888), jotting down a Lydian scale on G: You will find the elements of the G-major scale: G, A, B, D, E, FG, and the elements of the B-minor scale: B, CG, D, E, FG, G, on one hand, that is, the tonic G, the major third B, and its dominant D; and, on the other, the tonic B, the minor third D, and the minor sixth G . . . I wanted to suggest a dance of antique character (one only becomes aware of such things after they are realized!) and since the ancients did not modulate in the same way we do, I decided on a scale composed of two keys. Plainchant is full of similar examples.25

Fauré’s commentary not only reveals that he intended the church modes as a signifier for Latin antiquity. More intriguingly, it shows that he understood the modal progression as an alternative harmonic syntax distinct from modern tonality whose roots lay in ancient music. The “Lydia” progression does not merely summon the past but introduces a dialogic tension between ancient and modern harmonic systems. As in the best Parnassian poetry, past and present coexist in a graceful, life-giving synergy.

P OÈ M E D’ U N J OU R A N D T H E T R I UM P H O F F O R M

If “Lydia” is the locus classicus of Fauré’s Parnassian style, then Poème d’un jour is its ars poetica, a worthy companion to the programmatic poems of Leconte de Lisle and Gautier. Little information survives about the poet Charles Grandmougin. Best known today for his librettos to César Franck’s Hulda and Jules Massenet’s La vierge, Grandmougin distinguished himself as a regionalist poet devoted to his native Franche-Comté.26 He published two poems in the third volume of Le Parnasse contemporain (1876), and two years later, in the year of Poème d’un jour, he composed a “drame antique,” Prométhée (unrelated to Fauré’s 1900 lyric drama of the same name). The Parnassian influence in Grandmougin’s play peeks out in an original plot twist not found in Aeschylus. In the third scene, Venus appears

44      Chapter 2

with a chorus of Cupids to tempt Prometheus, promising him eternal love if he will but renounce humanity and join the immortal gods. With firm mind and manly resolve, the Titan resists the pull of the flesh: Dans mes yeux apparâit mon âme courroucée; Tu peux y voir le feu de toute ma pensée; Le charme de ton corps les laisse indifférents. Que peut leur importer la splendeur d’une femme? My enraged soul appears in my eyes; You can read therein the fire of my full mind; The allure of your body leaves them unmoved. What could a woman’s splendor matter to them? By 1878, Grandmougin had published only one collection of poetry, Les siestes (1874), which treats the familiar Parnassian themes. “L’été” ends by mourning the lost vitality of antiquity: Notre soleil paraît plus froid, nos cieux plus ternes; Adieu, flamboîment pur des étés primitifs! Qui rendra la vaillance aux poëtes plaintifs? Qui rendra la lumière à nos âmes modernes? Our sun seems colder, our skies duller; Farewell, pure radiance of primitive summers! Who will restore courage to the sorrowful poets? Who will restore light to our modern souls? Grandmougin included the obligatory ode to the Venus de Milo (“À la Vénus de Milo enfermée pendant la Commune dans une cave de la préfecture de police”), but Les siestes also takes gentle aim at the Parnassian sculptural fetish. The sonnet “Sur une Psyché” recounts a museum visit: C’était au Louvre, dans la salle de sculpture; Fatigué de Vénus et d’amours assez laids, J’étais debout devant Psyché: je contemplais Son corps aérien et sans musculature. Once at the Louvre, in the sculpture hall, Weary of Venus and the rather ugly Cupids, I stood before Psyche: I contemplated Her light, unmuscled body. The poet embraces the lifelike statue, but alas, he does not experience the mystical palingenesis of “Lydia”:

Ascending Parnassus    45

Moi jaloux, j’embrassai la Psyché, plein de fièvre, Désirant ardemment cette pâle beauté, Et ne trouvai qu’un peu de poussière à sa lèvre. Jealously, I embraced the Psyche in a fever, Ardently desiring that pale beauty, And found nothing but a bit of dust on my lips. Les siestes reveals a poet who embraced the Parnassian project yet remained capable of a critical, even satiric distance. Since the source of Poème d’un jour remains unknown, we cannot determine whether Grandmougin wrote the three poems as a triptych. Nevertheless, they suggest an intriguing historical progression. While the third (“Adieu”) is a quintessentially Parnassian artifact, the first (“Rencontre”) in many ways exemplifies the Romantic style rejected by the Parnassians: J’étais triste et pensif quand je t’ai rencontrée, Je sens moins aujourd’hui mon obstiné tourment; Ô dis-moi, serais-tu la femme inespérée, Et le rêve idéal poursuivi vainement? Ô passante aux doux yeux, serais-tu donc l’amie Qui rendrait le bonheur au poète isolé, Et vas-tu rayonner sur mon âme affermie, Comme le ciel natal sur un coeur d’exilé? Ta tristesse sauvage, à la mienne pareille, Aime à voir le soleil décliner sur la mer! Devant l’immensité ton extase s’éveille, Et le charme des soirs à ta belle âme est cher; Une mystérieuse et douce sympathie Déjà m’enchaîne à toi comme un vivant lien, Et mon âme frémit, par l’amour envahie, Et mon cœur te chérit sans te connaître bien! I was sad and pensive when I met you, I feel my stubborn torment less today; O tell me, will you be the unexpected woman And the ideal dream I pursued in vain? O passerby with the sweet eyes, will you then be the lover That restores happiness to the isolated poet? And will you shine upon my restored soul Like the native sky upon an exile’s heart?

46      Chapter 2

Your wild sadness, so like my own, Loves to watch the sunset on the sea! Before its immensity your ecstasy awakens, And the charm of the evenings is precious to your dear soul; A mysterious and sweet sympathy Already enchains me to you like a living tie, And my soul trembles, invaded by love, And my heart cherishes you without knowing you well! The sentimentality and confessional tone, perhaps a bit tongue-in-cheek, belong to an earlier age, as do the bland commonplaces—isolated poet, ocean sunset, ideal dream. The leisurely alexandrines also lack the concision prized by the Parnassians. In fact, the poetic meter grows more concentrated across Poème d’un jour, shifting to octosyllables in “Toujours” and ending with alternating eight- and twosyllable lines in “Adieu.” Fauré’s musical forms follow the same path: the cycle begins with the loose strophes of the salon romance, moves to a modified da capo, and ends with a perfectly symmetrical da capo form. The negligent lyricism of Grandmougin’s “poète isolé” finds an analogue in the harmonic structure of “Rencontre” (see example 2.2). Let us begin with a small detail: Fauré’s melody ends with a retrograde of its first three notes, DH-C-BH. The ˆ 7-ˆ1 in mm. 20–21. Moreover, the first line descends as ˆ1-ˆ7-6ˆ in m. 2 and reascends as 6-ˆ phrase ends with the same descending line (m. 4) but now functioning as 3ˆ-ˆ2-ˆ1 of BH minor. The third phrase also cadences on the relative minor, descending through the same three notes (m. 9). Accordingly, when the three-note line returns inverted in the final cadence, rising in ponderous augmentation and supported by an emphatic IV-V7-I progression, it corrects the tonal drift of the first and third phrases. Tonal instability runs deeper still in the first half of Fauré’s strophes. The four phrases form an ABABʹ period, but Fauré has deformed the harmonic structure. The antecedent does not reach a half cadence in the tonic but ends instead with a half cadence in F minor, the mediant (m. 6). The consequent begins in the tonic, but it also drifts away and reaches a full cadence in F minor (mm. 11–12). The first half of “Rencontre” persistently evades the tonic, gravitating toward keys a third above or below. In the second half of the strophe, as the poet addresses the beloved, the drooping melody reverses direction and climbs to a triumphant climax. The first phrase surges to the upper tonic twice then breaks through this ceiling to reach high F (m. 15). The second phrase repeats the pattern in sequence, pushing twice against F before reaching the climactic AH above a cathartic I6/4 chord. Meanwhile, the harmony returns to the secure orbit of the tonic. The first phrase reaches a firm half cadence in DH (mm. 15–16), answered by the emphatic final cadence and its ˆ 7-ˆ1 line. Fauré’s retrograde of the opening three notes, therefore, plays inverted 6-ˆ

example 2.2 . Tonal ambivalence in Fauré, “Rencontre,” Poème d’un jour, op. 21, mm. 1–21.

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50      Chapter 2

both a melodic and harmonic role in the expressive design of “Rencontre.” The rising line not only reverses the hangdog contour of the opening melody but also corrects the entropic drift away from the tonic. Yet this victory has a false note. There is an operatic bravura foreign to Fauré’s customary reserve in this vocal climax. “Rencontre” unabashedly indulges the vocalist, showcasing the singing subject. As Marshall Brown put it, “Fauré reveals absorption in a vision as self-absorption.”27 The second song, “Toujours,” will end on an even more flamboyant high note as the opera house fully invades the salon. The vehemence of both songs betrays a lack of control, as if the poet can only express himself through sheer rhetorical force. “Toujours” intensifies every disruptive element of the first song as the rejected poet hurls reproaches at his unfaithful lover: Vous me demandez de ma taire, De fuir loin de vous pour jamais, Et de m’en aller, solitaire, Sans me rappeler qui j’aimais!

You ask me to be quiet, To flee far from you forever And to depart alone Without thinking of the one I loved!

Demandez plutôt aux étoiles De tomber dans l’immensité, À la nuit de perdre ses voiles, Au jour de perdre sa clarté,

Rather ask the stars To fall from the sky, Or the night to lift its veils, Or the day to lose its brightness!

Demandez à la mer immense De dessécher ses vastes flots, Et, quand les vents sont en démence, D’apaiser ses sombres sanglots!

Rather ask the immense ocean To dry up its vast waves, And the madly raging winds To calm their dismal sobbing!

Mais n’espérez pas que mon âme S’arrache à ses âpres douleurs Et se dépouille de sa flame Comme le printemps de ses fleurs!

But do not hope that my soul Can ever tear itself from its sorrow And shed its flames Like the spring sheds its flowers!

The suave arpeggios of “Rencontre” return here as violent waves, crashing on the weak beats. The melody again begins with an impetuous double upbeat but now stretched into emphatic quarter notes. The harmony of “Toujours” also follows the same wayward path as “Rencontre,” plunging immediately to the submediant, D major. Indeed, the third relations that ruffled the surface of “Rencontre” usurp the tonal structure itself in “Toujours.” The middle section is the most audacious harmonic passage Fauré had yet composed and will require a detour into some rather complex technical analysis (see example 2.3). In Grandmougin’s second and third stanzas, the poet unleashes a barrage of similes whose hyperbolic rhetoric reverberates in Fauré’s

example 2.3 . Modulation by Weitzmann regions in Fauré, “Toujours,” Poème d’un jour, mm. 11–25.

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Ascending Parnassus    53 example 2.4 . Weitzmann region in Fauré, Introït, Requiem, op. 48, mm. 50–61. Derived from Cohn, Audacious Euphony, 55.

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œœ

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œœ

ni - et

d




harmony. The passage rotates through a complete minor-third cycle, rising a third with each new poetic conceit: after a half cadence in FG minor, the passage modulates to A major (m. 12), C major (m. 16), DG major (m. 20), and back to FG minor (m. 24). Moreover, another symmetrical formation, the augmented triad, governs the progression at a lower level. The modulation from A to C major in mm. 12–16 hinges on the augmented triad [BG E GG]. The progression begins with an E-major triad, V of A major; the fifth of the triad, B, rises a semitone, producing the augmented triad; the third, GG, then sinks a semitone to yield a C-major triad. Fauré repeated the same maneuver in mm. 17–20, moving between G and DG triads through another augmented triad [DG G B]. The final modulation back to FG minor in mm. 21–24 passes from EG major to FG minor via the augmented triad [CG EG G ] (see Ex. 2.3, mm. 20-22). This passage demonstrates the alternative diatonic syntax explored by neo-Riemannian theory in which chromatic voice-leading, rather than root progression, governs the movement between triads. Richard Cohn has located a similar passage in the Introït of Fauré’s Requiem, composed ten years after Poème d’un jour (see example 2.4).28 The augmented triad [A CG F], spelled in various ways, provides a pivot between FG-minor, BH-minor, F-major, and D-minor triads. All four triads

5

54      Chapter 2

belong to a single “Weitzmann region,” Cohn’s term for the six consonant triads that result from displacing the notes of an augmented triad by one semitone: lowering any note by a semitone yields a major triad, while raising any note produces a minor triad.29 Fauré exploited three of the four possible Weitzmann regions in “Toujours,” using three different augmented triads to modulate through the minor-third cycle. In the first two modulations, he reached the second triad in the rotation by lowering the fifth of the augmented chord (GG → G, B → BH). He broke out of the pattern in the third modulation (mm. 22–24), raising the fifth of the augmented triad [A CG EG] to lead back to FG minor (EG → FG). “Toujours” thus presses the harmonic dialectic of “Rencontre” to the breaking point, abandoning traditional tonality altogether. The first song had drifted into keys a major and minor third from the tonic; the second song uses these same intervals to construct an alternative harmonic system. The tonal structure becomes literally rootless, like the isolated poet. Located at the heart of Poème d’un jour, this astonishing passage threatens the disintegration of the musical language. The final song, “Adieu,” must resolve these tensions and rebuild the harmonic structure on more solid foundations. Grandmougin’s poem is a paragon of Parnassian verse: Comme tout meurt vite, la rose   Déclose, Et les frais manteaux diaprés   Des prés; Les longs soupirs, les bienaimées,   Fumées! On voit dans ce monde léger   Changer, Plus vite que les flots des grèves,   Nos rêves, Plus vite que le givre en fleurs,   Nos cœurs! À vous l’on se croyait fidèle,   Cruelle, Mais hélas! les plus longs amours   Sont courts! Et je dis en quittant vos charmes,   Sans larmes, Presqu’au moment de mon aveu,   Adieu! How quickly all dies, the rose   In bloom,

Ascending Parnassus    55

And the fresh iridescent mantles   Of the meadows; The longs sighs, the beloveds,   Up in smoke! One sees in this world how lightly   Change, More quickly than the waves against the shores,   Our dreams, More quickly than the frost on the flowers,   Our hearts! One believed you to be faithful,   Cruel one, But, alas! the longest loves   Are short! And I say, as I leave your charms,   Without tears, Almost at the moment of declaring myself,   Farewell! The chiseled form and two-syllable lines recall Gautier’s “L’Art.” Grandmougin’s poem also abounds in rich rhymes—“diaprés”/“prés,” “grèves”/“rêves,” “charmes”/“larmes.” Form and content create an admirable unity: the short lines emphasize ephemeral images (bloom, smoke, change, dreams), creating a cadence into which the final “Adieu!” drops with fatalistic certainty. Line 16 even comments on the meter—“Sont courts!” says the two-syllable line, “They are short!” The confessional tone has vanished and the pronoun “je” occurs only once, replaced by the impersonal “on.” Emotion has receded into form; personal expression into detached reflection. Fauré reached back to “Lydia” to set this Olympian poem (see example 2.5). The chorale texture, portato articulation, and steady quarter notes all recall the earlier song. The Lydian fourth, CJ, appears on cue in the third phrase, harmonized by the modal dominant, BH minor. James Kidd also noted the influence of Niedermeyer and d’Ortigue’s treatise on plainchant accompaniment in “Adieu,” both in the left hand’s parallel thirds and in the unusual iii-IV progression in m. 7.30 Fauré has purged all operatic vulgarity: the expression remains dolce (or even dolcissimo) throughout the song; the dynamics rarely swell above piano; and the one sustained high note is to be sung pianissimo. Critics have unfailingly singled out “Adieu” as the jewel of the cycle, perhaps because its reticence fits with an idealized vision of Fauré’s style—for Jankélévitch, “Adieu” possessed “more conviction” than the first two songs.31 Yet the song owes this conviction, or authenticity, to a deliberately archaic style that Fauré cultivated in response to the Parnassian poets. The

example 2.5 . Fauré, “Adieu,” Poème d’un jour, mm. 1–12. Moderato (t 76)

bb & b b b b c œœ

œœ

˙œ .

? b b b c œœ bbb

œœ

œœ

dolce

bb & b b bb

4

œœ

œœ

œœ

œ œ

œœ œ

œœ

œœ

œ

œœ œ

œ œ œ œ œ

dolce

∑

bb & b b b b œœ .

jœ œ œ œ

œœ œ

œ ? bb b b œ bb

œœ

œœ œ

œ

bb œ œ œ œ œ & b b bb

7

Et

j

œ

les frais man - teaux

Com - me tout meurt vi

œœ.

œœ .

œœ .

sempre dolce

œœ.

œœ.

œ nœ

œ.

-

œœ . œ œj œœ

π

te,

la

. œœ

nœ ˙

J

di - a - prés

œœ

œ œ œ

œ

ro - se

œ.œ

œœ.

œœ

œœ œœ

œ œ œ

Des prés;

Dé - clo - se,

œœ .

œœ.

œ. œ

œœ. œ

œœ.

œœ.

œ.

œœ.

œ

œ œ œ

œ

longs sou - pirs,

les

Les

œœ.

œœ.

œ nœ

œœ . œ n œj œœ.

œœ.

œœ. œœœ.

. œœœ

œœ

œœ

œœ

œœ.

œœ.

œœ

œœ. n œœ.

b œœ.

b œ ˙ & b bbbb œ

œ

b b œ. & b b bb œ ? bb b b bb

œœ

10

bien - ai - mé

b & b b b b b n œœœ . ? bbb bbb

œœ.

-

es,

œœ œœ œœ œ. œ. œ. œœ. œœ. œ. œ

Œ

p ‰ œ ˙

œœœ .

œœœ œ.

˙

œœ. œ œœ.

˙

œ

Œ

œœœ œœœ œ. n œ.

œœœ Œ

Ó

œ œ œ

˙

Œ

J

Fu - mé

dolcissimo

œ.

œœ

-

es!

œ œ œ œ œ œ 3 ° 3

3

Ascending Parnassus    57 example 2.6 . Hypothetical half cadence in Fauré, “Adieu,” Poème d’un jour, m. 8.

bb . & b b bb œ

8

nœ

- prés

b b œ. & b b bb œ ? bb b b bb

œœ.

b b: i6


J

j nœ Des

œ œœ. iv7

˙

prés;

n œœ.

œ.

œœ. œ

V

neoclassical restraint of “Adieu,” no less than the theatricality of “Rencontre” and “Toujours,” plays its role within the poetic allegory of Poème d’un jour. The old church modes allow “Adieu” to resolve the tonal issues that plagued the first two songs. The opening vocal phrase awakens obvious memories of “Rencontre”: as in the opening song, the melody descends from DH and then outlines a ii7 chord as it reascends. Of course, the first note plays a different tonal role in the outer songs, functioning as ˆ1 of DH major in “Rencontre” and ˆ5 of GH major in “Adieu.” Yet the CJ in m. 7 forges a common link between the two songs, reactivating the DH-C-BH line that persistently derailed the key in “Rencontre.” Indeed, the Lydian fourth also threatens to shunt “Adieu” into BH minor, the key into which the first phrase of “Rencontre” drifts. The first half of m. 8 strongly implies a half cadence in BH minor, as can be seen in a hypothetical version (see example 2.6). But the implied cadence is thwarted by the AH on beat 3. Without the AJ leading tone, the half cadence cannot convincingly tonicize BH minor. The phrase lights instead on an inconclusive F-minor triad and returns smoothly to the tonic as the outer voices expand in contrary motion. In this way, the ancient modes correct the tonal slippage of “Rencontre.” In “Adieu,” Fauré rewrote the opening melody of Poème d’un jour according to the modal system that he pioneered in “Lydia,” using the raised fourth as a pivot between the keys of GH major and BH minor. Yet since the Lydian scale does not include AJ, the chromatic tone needed for a modern applied dominant, it prevents the song from settling on the mediant. The song hovers between tonal centers, but never drifts off course as in “Rencontre.” With this modal reinterpretation of the DH-C-BH line, “Adieu” reintegrates the dissociated harmony of the first song, grounding the modern tonal language in the timeless forms of antique art.

58      Chapter 2 example 2.7 . Fauré, “Adieu,” Poème d’un jour, mm. 28–34.

b & b bbbb c œ

œ ≈œ œ J R

28

j j œ œ

œ

j œ ‰ œj

char - mes Sans lar - mes,

b & b b b b b c ‰ n œœ ‰ œœ . .

œ ? bbb c œ bbb w b & b bbbb

œœ

œœ

π

j

j œœ ‰ œj

œ œ

œ

n VI:


sempre




w

31

- dieu!

j œ

j j j ‰ n œœ ‰ œj ‰ b œœ ‰ œœœ

j

œ

œ œ

œœ .

A-

œ. n œœ . œ œ

œ

œ. b œ. œ œ

œ

∑

j j j œ j j j b œ & b b b b b ‰ œœœ ‰ œœ ‰ œœ ‰ œœœ ‰ œœœ ‰ œœ ‰ œœ ‰ œœœ ˙˙˙ gg ˙˙˙ ggg ˙ ggg ggg œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ ˙ gggg ˙˙ ? bb b b œ œ œ bb œ œ ˙ ggg ˙ I:

π

‰ œJ

œ

Pres - qu’au mo - ment de mon a - veu,

œœ ‰ n œœ ‰ n œœj ‰ œ œ. . . .

‰ œ œ.

œœ

dolce ‰ œ nœ nœ œ œ nœ œ ˙ J

∑ ggg www ggg w ggg ggg ggg ww ggg w

The symmetrical da capo form also allows “Adieu” to contain the turbulent energies of “Toujours.” The middle section returns to the key of the second song, oscillating between FG minor and D major, tonic and submediant. The restless arpeggios return along with the melodic upbeats, ruffling the serene hymn. The da capo restores order in m. 23, even as the piano’s broken chords quietly absorb the restless energies of the middle section. “Adieu” thus recapitulates the journey of Poème d’un jour, absorbing the cycle’s violent emotions within the sturdy symmetry of the da capo form. Nevertheless, the specter of chaos peeks out once more at the end. On the penultimate line, as the poet recalls his first declaration of love, “Adieu” drops abruptly into EH major (see example 2.7). Orledge perhaps exaggerated in writing that “Fauré comes close to disaster at the end of ‘Adieu,’ ” but the effect is certainly jarring within this Apollonian song.32 The tonic returns after two bars, and a pair of plagal cadences smooth away the brief disruption. This final harmonic detour bids farewell to the third relations that troubled Poème d’un jour from the opening bars and seals the victory of form over passion.

Ascending Parnassus    59

Fauré composed Poème d’un jour at a turning point in his career. He had just published his first work, the Violin Sonata in A Major (op. 13), and the following year he would complete two major works, the Ballade (op. 19) and the Piano Quartet in C Minor (op. 15). As Fauré broke with Pauline Viardot’s theatrical family, he gradually divested himself of the operatic ambitions that she had foisted on him, which had led to a string of vain projects.33 As the composer would reflect years later, “This break was perhaps not so bad for me, since within the dear Viardot family I would surely have been diverted from my true path.”34 Within the coming-ofage plot of Poème d’un jour, the operatic tone of the first two songs perhaps represents the stage career that had tempted the young composer chez Viardot, while the third song points to a higher path, embodying the poise, craftsmanship, and historicity prized by the Parnassians. These qualities make “Adieu” a worthy prize song for the apprentice composer as he embarked on a new stage in his career. Poème d’un jour also marks a milestone in Fauré’s conception of the wordmusic relationship. In a 1911 article, the composer surprisingly disparaged his settings of Leconte de Lisle. While few listeners will agree with his assessment, Fauré’s explanation bears repeating. The poetry, he wrote, is “too full, too rich, too complete for music to adapt to it successfully.”35 The rich rhymes and intricate forms of the Parnassians do indeed present a daunting challenge to the composer, and the strain can be felt in “Adieu.” Grandmougin’s two-syllable lines fit awkwardly into the symmetrical melodic structure; they either tumble out quickly or echo redundantly like afterthoughts. The lonely iambs introduce a note of hesitancy, complicating the flow of the vocal melody. The Parnassian form thus clips the wings of the operatic muse who fluttered so freely through the first two songs. In the end, Poème d’un jour exalts poetry, guardian of the manly virtues of reason, logic, and form, above pure music. But the balance of power would shift radically in Fauré’s next song cycle after he met his most congenial poet.

3

The Discovery of Music Cinq mélodies “de Venise,” op. 58

One of the great collaborations in art song history began in 1887 when Fauré discovered the poetry of Paul Verlaine. Fauré first composed “Clair de lune,” an unqualified masterpiece, then followed it the next year with “Spleen.” Fauré’s sojourn with Verlaine culminated in the Cinq mélodies “de Venise” and La bonne chanson, the first of his mature song cycles. The delicately sensual and evocative verse that made Verlaine the darling of French composers called forth a new harmonic and textural richness in Fauré’s music. In Verlaine’s poetry, Fauré found an art that married passion and restraint, intimacy and detachment, hedonism and intellectual precision—paradoxical qualities that resonated deeply with his own musical personality. His Verlaine settings, by many accounts, rank as his finest songs. Composer and poet reached this happy juncture by opposite routes. The collections toward which Fauré gravitated came from early in Verlaine’s career: Fêtes galantes (1869), inspired by Watteau’s paintings; La bonne chanson (1870), celebrating Verlaine’s ill-fated marriage to Mathilde Mauté de Fleurville; and Romances sans paroles (1874), written during his scandalous flight with fellow poet and lover Arthur Rimbaud. The torrid affair with Rimbaud led to prison time for Verlaine, followed by further personal drama and deepening bouts of alcoholism and drug addiction. By the late 1880s, when his poetry surged back into vogue, Verlaine was shuttling between flophouses and hospitals. Fauré, in the meantime, had achieved a modicum of personal and professional success. In the decade following the Viardot debacle, he had married, begun a family, and secured a solid if grueling living as a church musician and private teacher. He was also moving in loftier social circles, enjoying the favor of aristocratic supporters like Élisabeth Greffulhe and Winnaretta Singer, the legendary patroness of modern music. Fauré was introduced to 60

The Discovery of Music    61

Verlaine’s poetry by the Countess Greffulhe’s cousin, Robert de Montesquiou, an eccentric aesthete who inspired characters in Joris-Karl Huysmans’s À rebours and Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu. The Cinq mélodies “de Venise” owe their existence to Singer, by then the Princess de Scey-Montbéliard. In May 1891, the princess betook herself to Venice for several months, bringing along Fauré and two favored painters. Working amid the bustle of a Piazza café, Fauré set two poems from Fêtes galantes, “Mandoline” and “En sourdine.” On returning to Paris that summer, he completed the remaining songs of op. 58, “Green,” “À Clymène,” and “C’est l’extase,” the first and third from Romances sans paroles and the second from Fêtes galantes. Fauré dedicated the cycle to the princess in lieu of an unrealized operatic collaboration with Verlaine.1 Of all Fauré’s song cycles, op. 58 shows the least signs of advanced planning. The idea of a cycle seems to have emerged midstream, between composition of the second and third songs. Fauré apparently wrote the five songs consecutively and did not tinker with their order as he would with La bonne chanson and La chanson d’Ève. No obvious tonal plan or narrative governs the set, nor do the poems even come from the same collection. Nevertheless, Fauré vaunted his cyclic design in a letter to the princess, which accompanied a copy of the final song: You will see that, as with “Clymène,” I have attempted a form that I believe to be new, or at least one of which I know no other example; and it is fitting that I should try something novel when I am working for you, the one person in the world who least resembles others! After an initial theme that does not reappear, I have introduced in the second strophe a calm and milder recollection of “Green,” and in the third, on the contrary, a desperate recollection of “En sourdine” that grows ever more fervent and profound until the end. This forms a sort of conclusion and gives the five mélodies the manner of a Suite, a story, and, in reality, they are one: unhappily, the last chapter is not true! That is not my fault!2

Recalling themes at the end of a song cycle was hardly groundbreaking after Massenet’s Poème d’avril, let alone Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte or Schumann’s Dichterliebe, and Fauré was doubtless polishing his wares. The true novelty of the Cinq mélodies is the three-note cell that Fauré developed across the cycle like a quasi-leitmotive. Despite these unifying devices, however, op. 58 betrays its haphazard origins. Fauré acknowledged as much, according to Louis Aguettant: “The ‘Venetians’ were conceived as a cycle with the exception, so Fauré told me, of the first [“Mandoline”] and ‘À Clymène.’”3 Individually, the Cinq mélodies are incomparably richer in feeling and technique than the songs of Poème d’un jour, yet as a cycle they lack the cohesion of the earlier work. We may detect a different source of unity, however, in a constellation of ideas about music itself. Music becomes an object of representation and reflection in the

62      Chapter 3

Cinq mélodies. “Mandoline” describes a moonlit serenade in which human voices mingle with the rustling of the branches; “En sourdine” culminates in the twilight song of the nightingale; and “C’est l’extase” evokes the naturalistic “choir of little voices” that surrounds the lovers. “À Clymène” begins with a specifically Venetian reference, evoking the gondolier songs that inspired so much of Fauré’s piano music: “Mystiques barcarolles, / Romances sans paroles” (Mystic barcarolles, / Songs without words). Verlaine’s second line braids several strands of musicalpoetic thought: Mendelssohn’s Lieder ohne Worte, whose music was “too definite” for words; the title of Verlaine’s 1874 collection, with its “forgotten little songs” (ariettes oubliées); and the whole phantasm of “absolute music” that haunted French literature under the spell of Richard Wagner and Arthur Schopenhauer. In Verlaine’s poetry, Fauré discovered la Musique as a source of poetic inspiration. Verlaine was the most famously musical of French poets, as he proclaimed in the endlessly quoted “Art poétique” (1884): De la musique avant toute chose, Et pour cela préfère l’Impair Plus vague et plus soluble dans l’air, Sans rien en lui qui pèse ou qui pose. Music before all else, And for this prefer uneven verse, More vague and soluble in the air, With nothing in it that weighs or settles. Fauré, Debussy, and other song composers enthusiastically answered Verlaine’s call for an ethereal, understated art. Fauré responded even more specifically to Verlaine’s prosodic liberties. The first, second, and fifth poems of op. 58 have seven-syllable lines, vers impairs that unsettle the symmetries of French versification. Moreover, Fauré’s cycle begins with a poem consisting entirely of feminine rhymes, followed by one with exclusively masculine rhymes. He responded alertly to these unorthodox verse forms. The phrases of “Mandoline” trail off inconclusively, like the unaccented final syllables, and the melody ends suspended on the fifth degree. The melody of “En sourdine,” by contrast, reaches firm cadential goals and concludes with a decisive descent to the tonic. Verlaine’s appeal to music was echoed by the Symbolist poets, who by 1887 had emerged as a self-conscious school. Jean Moréas had published his manifesto “Le Symbolisme” the year before, and La Revue blanche, Le Symboliste, Mercure de France, and other periodicals began to broadcast the new poetry. Jules Huret introduced Symbolism to a wider audience in 1891 with his Enquêtes sur l’évolution littéraire. Fauré needed no such guide, however, since Robert de Montesquiou, a patron of the great Stéphane Mallarmé, was serving as his personal literary advi-

The Discovery of Music    63

sor. The Symbolists’ engagement with music had little to do with actual works of music (about which they knew little), but rather with an idea about the linguistic possibilities of the sister art. As Joseph Acquisto stated, “The strongest contribution of music to the poetics of the period in question lies not in concerns of musicality and its reshaping of versification but rather in the transformative powers of the idea of music as it is conceived by poets in dialogue with each other.”4 The Symbolist idealization of music received a powerful stimulus from the wave of Wagnerism that crashed over Paris during the late 1880s. Lohengrin was mounted at the Eden-Théâtre in 1887 over fierce opposition, marking the first Parisian performance of a complete Wagner opera since the 1861 Tannhäuser fiasco. In the same year, Fauré conducted the Siegfried Idyll in the home of Élisabeth Greffulhe and reprised the work in 1891 at two other soirées.5 Fauré traveled to Bayreuth in 1888 to attend the complete Ring cycle and was even received by the Wagner family at Wahnfried. Two years later, the Countess Greffulhe founded the Société des grandes auditions musicales de France to promote Wagner’s works, helping to make him the most performed composer at the Opéra during the 1890s.6 Wagner’s works impacted the Cinq mélodies “de Venise” most obviously in Fauré’s new motivic technique, but his presence can also be felt in the exalted role enjoyed by music in op. 58. In this, his first Verlaine cycle, Fauré celebrated music in its relationship to language, time, the senses, and the natural order. This chapter will progress through the five songs in chronological order, exploring four facets of Fauré’s musical meditation: his use of diegetic “scenic” music; his development of a common motive; his response to Baudelaire’s theory of correspondances; and his depiction of music as a conduit between humanity and nature. The idea of music, I shall suggest, lends op. 58 a greater coherence than Fauré or any of his critics have acknowledged. Yet this unity is circumpolar rather than linear, arising from successive variations on a common theme. A network of motives, harmonies, and textures connects the five songs, but these structures are saturated with poetic meaning and only make sense in relation to a constellation of aesthetic ideas. In the Cinq mélodies, poetic and musical content prove truly inseparable. SOUNDSCAPES

Fauré’s settings of Verlaine abound with music that the singer both hears and interprets—lute dances, mandolin serenades, barcarolles, birdsong, church bells. “Clair de lune” begins with a leisurely minuet in the piano that the singer describes quasi parlando and not without a certain droll irony, slipping into major on the words, “All singing in the minor mode.” In the sixth song of La bonne chanson, the singer joyously hails the lark and quail as the piano twitters with pentatonic birdcalls. Fauré’s own song “Lydia” returns as scenic music in the third song of La

64      Chapter 3

bonne chanson, following the verses, “From every branch / Issues a voice / Beneath the foliage.” The Verlaine songs forge a new bond between singer and audience, who share equally in the poetic soundscape. The music that invades the Verlaine accompaniments is a striking novelty for Fauré, whose earlier songs seldom represent or even mention music. Aside from some explicit chansons (“L’aube naît,” “Barcarolle,” and “Sérénade toscane”), his early songs contain no examples of scenic music. Fauré’s favored Parnassian poets showed little interest in music, preferring instead the cool abstraction of the eye. His settings of Leconte de Lisle and Armand Silvestre are filled with visual imagery—white necks, purple roses, pale dawns, rapid sunsets, golden orchards of stars—but they make scant mention of song or dance. The music that courses through the Verlaine settings introduces a new sense of time into Fauré’s songs. This new temporality is most obvious in “Prison” (1894), the setting of a poem that Verlaine wrote while he was serving time for wounding Rimbaud in a lovers’ quarrel. The text mentions the sound of a distant church bell, scenic music that Fauré depicted with open octaves played softly at the end of each phrase. The tolling of the hollow octaves allows both singer and audience to experience the grinding passage of time as the poet languishes in prison. (Fauré even marked the tempo “Q = 60.”) If Parnassian settings like “Lydia” or “Adieu” aspire to the timeless perfection of statuary, the Verlaine songs immerse the poem in the inescapable hic et nunc of music. The scenic music of “Clair de lune” (1887) constructs a more complex sense of time. The piano minuet that unfolds so luxuriously in the introduction flows through all but eight bars of the song. The prominence of music in Fauré’s setting is all the more striking given Verlaine’s visual emphasis. This first poem of Fêtes galantes places the reader before a Watteau canvas, with its pleasure parks and commedia dell’arte maskers, and ends with a paean to the moonlight: Votre âme est un paysage choisi Que vont charmant masques et bergamasques Jouant du luth et dansant et quasi Tristes sous leurs déguisements fantasques. Tout en chantant sur le mode mineur L’amour vainqueur et la vie opportune, Ils n’ont pas l’air de croire à leur bonheur Et leur chanson se mêle au clair de lune, Au calme clair de lune triste et beau, Qui fait rêver les oiseaux dans les arbres Et sangloter d’extase les jets d’eau, Les grands jets d’eau sveltes parmi les marbres.

The Discovery of Music    65

Your soul is a chosen landscape Where charming masks and bergamasks pass, Playing the lute and dancing, and almost Sad beneath their fantastic disguises. All singing in the minor mode Of victorious love and the opportune life, They do not seem to believe in their happiness And their song mingles with the moonlight, The calm moonlight, sad and beautiful, Which makes the birds dream in the trees And the fountains sob with ecstasy, The tall, slender fountains among the marble statues! Fauré imbued this landscape with sound and movement, crafting a minuet in the style brisé of the Baroque lutenists, and even subtitled the song “Menuet.” Fauré’s exquisite dance, which unfolds so negligently in the long introduction, could easily stand on its own. Marie-Noëlle Masson and François Mouret parsed the song as a minuet with two trios, a somewhat fanciful reading that nonetheless points up the autonomy of the piano part.7 Fitting a vocal line to this self-contained dance required considerable ingenuity. Fauré constructed the minuet from three modules, hereafter, A, B, and C, which succeed one another across the song (see example 3.1). The piano rotates through A and B twice in mm. 1–16, with the voice joining midway through the second rotation.8 Module C follows in mm. 18–25, extending the second rotation and completing the first stanza. A third rotation through A (repeated) and B accompanies the second stanza in mm. 26–37. The third stanza rotates once more through A, B, and C (mm. 42–55), after which A returns alone as an epilogue (mm. 57–61). Fauré’s modular construction provides formal coherence to the song, allowing the malleable vocal line to weave in and out of the piano melody. A cunning metrical scheme governs the soundscape of “Clair de lune,” as shown in example 3.1. The A module forms a two-bar hemiola in an implicit 3/2; the B module reverts to the notated 3/4 meter; and C falls into a 3/8 grouping, repeating a five-note rhythm typical of the Baroque minuet and passepied. The melody spins ever faster as the meter contracts, beginning with a lazy descending spiral and ending with dizzy oscillations. Fauré seems already to have had in mind a line from “Mandoline”: “They whirl about in the ecstasy / Of a pink and grey moon.” This scenic music is not regulated by the clock, like the tolling bells of “Prison,” but by a fluid sense of time that dilates and contracts in response to inner experience. Verlaine’s third stanza unveils the moon, whose mysterious light animates the landscape. The minuet disappears, replaced by arpeggios that traverse the keyboard like shimmering moonbeams. Their arching shape also anticipates the

Rumph Ex.3.1a–e page 1 of 1 Rumph Ex.3.1a–e page 1 of 1 Rumph Ex.3.1a–e page 1 of 1 Rumph Ex.3.1a–e page 1 of 1 Rumph Ex.3.1a–e page 1 of 1

example 3.1 . Minuet modules in Fauré, “Clair de lune.”

a. Module A.

b œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ & b b b b b 43 œ œ b 3 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ bbb 4p 1& œ b œ b 3 pœ œ œ œ œ œ œ 1& b b b 4 1 œ b œ œ & bb b b bb b 433 pœœ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ b & b 4 b. Module B. p 5 p b 5 & b bbbb œ n œ œ œ œ œ œ œ n œ œ œ b bbb œ n œ œ œ œ œ œ œ n œ œ œ 5& dolce b b sempre 5& b b b sempre n œ dolce œ œ œ œ œ œ œ nœ œ œ 5 b b œ œ nœ & b b b b œ n œ dolce n œ œœ œœ œ œ œœ œœ n œ œœ œœ & b b b b sempre œ 18 sempre dolce b b b C.œsempreœdolceœ c.18Module b & b b œ œ œ œ œ œ œ b &bbb œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ 18 b 18 & b bbb œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ 18 b & bb b b bb b œœ œœ œœ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œ œ & bb œ œ œ œ œ œ b & b b b b b 32 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ b b b b 32A (implicit d.&Module 3/2 meter). b œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ & b b b b 32 bb 3 œ œ œ œ & bb b b b b 32 œ œ œ œœ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œ b & b 2 b & b b b b b 38 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ b b b b 38 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ e.& Module C (implicit 3/8 meter). bbb 3 œ œ œ b & b 8 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ b & b b b b b 38 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ & b b b b 83 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ 1

1

œ œ œ œ œ

nœ nœ nœ nœ nœ

œ œ œ œ œ

œ œ œ œ œ

œ œ œ œ œ

œ œ œ œ œ

œ œ œ œ œ

The Discovery of Music    67

contour of the singer’s final phrase, which mimics the cascading fountain waters. The three modules return disjointedly, in dreamlike procession, interrupting the arpeggios. The juxtaposition of arpeggios and minuet fragments—visual and aural signs—realizes the synesthetic image that concludes the second stanza: “And their song mingles with the moonlight.” The singer’s final phrase achieves the same fusion of sound and sight. The arpeggio on “parmi les marbres” is an obvious pictorialism, depicting the rise and fall of the fountains (mm. 54–56). Yet the unaccompanied phrase, prepared by a predominant chord, also suggests an operatic cadenza, a celebration of pure vocalism. Fauré has twice associated the apex of this phrase, F5, with song or singing: the voice first reaches the note on the word “chantant” (m. 26), then touches it again on the word “chanson” (m. 35).9 When the voice revisits this high note in the final cadenza, it enacts a performance that transforms the singer from commentator into musical participant. Fauré’s setting draws the spectator into the canvas through the medium of song. Yet the musical performance transcends the singer, suggesting a more universal music that pervades the natural world. The piano and vocal melodies have remained separate through most of “Clair de lune,” but they align closely at the end. On the penultimate line of the poem, the singer doubles the pianist’s B module (mm. 48–50); and on the final line, the vocal cadenza states module A for the first time, echoing the first three notes of the introduction. The voice thus lends articulate speech to the piano, just as the moonlight animates the landscape. As Megan Sarno put it, “The piano’s coming to life through the singer’s voice is a symbol for the water fountains that come to have the human ability of sighing or wailing.”10 Fauré needed no musical subtitle for “Mandoline,” the first of the Cinq mélodies. The mandolin is the principal character in Verlaine’s scene, another moonlit musicale. The Watteauian vignette begins with insipid conversation between the serenading gallants and their ladies, but it ends with the chattering of the mandolin: Les donneurs de sérénades Et les belles écouteuses Èchangent des propos fades Sous les ramures chanteuses. C’est Tircis et c’est Aminte, Et c’est l’éternel Clitandre, Et c’est Damis qui pour mainte Cruelle fait maint vers tendre. Leurs courtes vestes de soie, Leurs longues robes à queues, Leur élégance, leur joie Et leurs molles ombres bleues

68      Chapter 3

Tourbillonnent dans l’extase D’une lune rose et grise, Et la mandoline jase Parmi les frissons de brise. The givers of serenades And the fair listeners Exchange sweet nothings Beneath the singing boughs. There is Tircis and there is Aminte, And there is the endless Clitandre, And there is Damis who for many a Cruel maid writes many a tender verse. Their short silken vests, Their long trailing robes, Their elegance, their joy, And their soft blue shadows Whirl in the ecstasy Of a pink and grey moon, And the mandolin chatters In the shivering of the breeze. Fauré could look back to “Clair de lune” for a model, but also to his ravishing Pavane from the same year. Robert de Montesquiou had added a choral text for a private staging, concocting some doggerel that draws liberally on “Mandoline”: C’est Lindor, c’est Tircis et c’est tous nos vainqueurs! C’est Myrtille, c’est Lydé! Les reines de nos cœurs! . . . There is Lindor, there Tircis and there all our conquerors! There is Myrtille, there Lydé! The queens of our hearts! . . . A four-part chorus murmurs these sweet nothings, but the main attraction is the solo flute playing Fauré’s unforgettable theme. The choral version of the Pavane thus reframes the flute melody as scenic music, analogous to the minuet in “Clair de lune.” In an important analysis of Verlaine’s “musicality,” Laurence Porter argued that Verlaine used music in Fêtes galantes to subvert linguistic communication. The music that pervades Verlaine’s landscapes, Porter argued, speaks through inanimate objects like the mandolin or the sobbing fountains of “Clair de lune.” Meanwhile, in “Sur l’herbe,” the characters abandon language altogether and lapse into solfège:

The Discovery of Music    69

– Ma flamme . . .—Do, mi, sol, la, si. L’abbé, ta noirceur se dévoile! . . . – Do, mi, sol.—Hé! bonsoir la Lune! – My love . . .—Do, mi, sol, la, si. Abbot, your black heart shows through! . . . – Do, mi, sol.—Hey, good evening, Moon! In this way, Verlaine attacks the belief that language is “the proud, unmatched achievement of humanity . . . By having the names of musical notes invade the poems, he refutes the belief that only what is verbal signifies.”11 Porter charted the dissolution of the human subject across the final stanzas of “Mandoline”: Insubstantial as these phantoms already are, they will be further reduced: to their clothes, to their mood, and finally to their limp shadows, which whirl until they in turn are absorbed into the moonlight. The last word applicable to human speech in this poem, “jase,” refers to the empty background chatter of the mandolin. Not only the signifying power of the speakers’ words but even the speakers themselves have been erased.12

Porter found his reading confirmed in Debussy’s setting of “Mandoline,” which ends on a note of ironic detachment. Not so Fauré’s setting: He presents the poem as a pleasurable vision that seduces and then slowly fades, rather than as a sham which disintegrates into nonsense. Thus his song takes Verlaine’s statement at face value without reflecting its ironic undertones. He achieves a coherent synthesis of music and text at the expense of the richly significant choppiness of Debussy’s version.13

Fauré did take a less granular approach to Verlaine’s poem, and as the reprise of the final stanza shows, he often “subordinates his texts to musical ideas.”14 Yet Fauré by no means overlooked Verlaine’s critique of language. A key to Fauré’s reading lies in his manipulation of scenic music. “Mandoline” begins with a jaunty staccato vamp in the piano that continues throughout the song, imitating the plucked instrument. The singer comments on this scenic music, but not in the detached parlando of “Clair de lune.” The lyrical melody of “Mandoline,” with its sustained notes and graceful melismata, shades into an actual vocal performance—that is, it embodies the serenade itself. While “Clair de lune” enacts the shift from commentary to performance gradually, “Mandoline” confuses the two functions from the outset. The song swerves dramatically into performance at the end of the first stanza on the word “chanteuses.” At the mention of the singing branches, the vocal line blossoms with an extravagant vocalise (mm. 9–10). This coloratura eruption is unprecedented for Fauré, who had previously confined himself almost entirely to syllabic text-setting. (The one

Rumph Ex.3.2a–b page 1 of 1 70      Chapter 3 example 3.2 . Transformation of a prosodic rhythm in Fauré, “Mandoline,” Cinq mélodies “de Venise,” op. 58.

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exception in his earlier songs is “Après un rêve,” whose lush fioritura fits the translated Tuscan poem.) Like the final cadenza in “Clair de lune,” the vocalise in “Mandoline” transcends the vocal persona. The singer’s rising scales pass into the fingers of the pianist, who commandeers them for the rest of the song. Fauré marked the passage from texted song to pure music in his derivation of the vocalise (see example 3.2). The rising scales originate in the singer’s opening phrase: they not only retrace the majorsixth ambitus of the melody but also diminish the anapestic rhythm of the first three notes. Fauré regularly used this EEQ rhythm for poems beginning with anapests—“Mai,” “Lydia,” “Les matelots,” “Cygne sur l’eau” (Mirages). The melisma on “chanteuses” transforms the speech rhythm into a wordless cantilena, drawing the rhythm from the linguistic domain into the realm of pure music. As the singer lapses into this inarticulate coloratura, the song slips unexpectedly into B major and the piano carries the vocal line skyward in a fantastic whole-tone scale. The vocalise may abandon human speech, but it joins in a more mysterious and universal music envoiced by the piano—just as Verlaine’s serenade has passed into the rustling of the branches. In her reading of Verlaine’s poem, Carolyn Abbate pictured the mandolin hung upon a tree, its strings vibrating in the breeze like an Aeolian harp.15 In Fauré’s setting, the trees themselves resound with a transcendent music. Fauré’s setting of the third stanza completes the metamorphosis of speech into music. As the human characters dissolve into spinning shadows, a spiraling cascade of arpeggios replaces the plucking accompaniment (mm. 23–29). Bright G major mellows into a hushed BH, and the voice descends an octave to low D, its deepest note of the song. On the final line, at the mention of the chattering man-

The Discovery of Music    71

dolin, the melody actually shrinks to semitones, as if singer and song were vanishing into the wooden sound box. Yet as human song withdraws, a higher music takes its place. The scales of the singing branches return in the piano at the end of each phrase, rising in contrary motion with the falling vocal line. The rising scales continue to interpenetrate the reprise of the first stanza, resurfacing in the piano beneath the singer’s held notes (mm. 30 and 34). The last whole-tone ribbon vanishes in the night air as the singer sustains “ramures,” naming the source of this mysterious song. In Fauré’s Verlaine songs, as “Mandoline” vividly demonstrates, nature is an animistic realm that resounds with hidden voices. T H E “ V E N IC E” M O T I V E

The Cinq mélodies render music audible in another way through the common motive that Fauré developed across the cycle. Jankélévitch first called attention to the three-note cell, and we may follow him in simply calling it the “Venice” motive, since it does not attach to any specific image or idea within Verlaine’s poems.16 Fauré’s early songs contain precedents for the motivic work in op. 58. “Mai” systematically varies a head motive, as we saw, while “Seule!” is built from a single three-note cell. In the Cinq mélodies, however, he drew the developing motives into the foreground, introducing an independent musical discourse that runs parallel to the poetic text. The transformation of the “Venice” motive further asserts the presence of la Musique as a distinct character in op. 58. In its most basic form, the “Venice” motive consists of a rising or falling third followed by a second moving in the opposite direction. The motive is most obvious in “Green,” where Fauré profiled the three notes with an anapestic rhythm (see example 3.3a). The anapestic motive pervades the piano accompaniment from m. 11 onward and continues to echo in the short postlude. Not coincidentally, perhaps, Fauré has recalled the exact anapestic rhythm of the coloratura scales from “Mandoline.” The memory of the singing boughs complements the pastoral imagery of “Green,” whose protagonist arrives bearing “fruit, flowers, leaves, and branches.” This rhythmic reminiscence is one of several subtle links that connect “Mandoline” to the more obviously unified later songs. The “Venice” motive already pervades the vocal melody of “Green” before the anapestic rhythm crystallizes in the piano (see example 3.3b). The singer begins with a falling major third and rising whole tone on “Voici des fruits” (BH-GH-AH) and then extends the motive in a descending sequence on “feuilles et des branches,” creating a chain of interlocking thirds (DH-BH-C-AH). The motive returns in this sequential form in the retransition to the da capo (mm. 20–22), the passage that Fauré recalled in the fifth song (see example 3.3c). In “À Clymène,” the piano spins the interlocking thirds into a shapely theme that returns throughout the song as a ritornello (see example 3.3d).

Rumph Ex.3.3a–d page 1 of 1 Rumph Ex.3.3a–d page 1 of 1 Rumph Ex.3.3a–d page 1 of 1 Rumph Ex.3.3a–d page 1 of 1 example 3.3 . Fauré’s “Venice” motive in the Cinq mélodies “de Venise.” a. “Green,” m. 11. 11 11

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The Discovery of Music    73 e. “En sourdine,” mm. 17–18.

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The rising version of the “Venice” motive emerges in the third stanza of “En sourdine,” the passage that returns in the fifth song (see example 3.3e). On the words “Ferme tes yeux à demi,” the singer introduces a mirror image of the motive that pervades “Green,” rising a minor third and falling a semitone (BH-DH-C). Notice, however, that the descending version is already present in the bass line, which moves in contrary motion with the voice (BH-GH-AH). Indeed, these are the singer’s first three pitches in “Green.” The piano proceeds to develop both versions

74      Chapter 3

in “En sourdine,” stating the motive twice in its rising form and then twice in inversion (mm. 24–30). Fauré also juxtaposed the two versions of the motive on the final line of “Green”: the piano repeats the descending anapestic motive while the voice rises in contrary motion from BH to DH, the original pitches from “En sourdine” (see example 3.3f). In developing the “Venice” motive, Fauré was not simply varying a melodic cell. From the outset, he seems to have conceived his motive vertically, as a counterpoint of two mirroring versions. This method of musical development has much to teach about Fauré’s conception of recurring motives in the Cinq mélodies “de Venise” and La bonne chanson. In both cycles, he treated motives not as isolated melodic shapes but as elements embedded within the contrapuntal and harmonic syntax. The “Venice” motive has no single melodic prototype: the ascending and descending versions return with equal authority in “C’est l’extase” and both reflect a basic principle of voice-leading—contrary motion. The abstraction of Fauré’s conception distinguishes the “Venice” motive from a Wagnerian leitmotive. The motive has no anchor within Verlaine’s text nor does it possess a recognizable character. Jankélévitch nicknamed the motive “Harlequin,” but that speaks more to its nimble, protean form than to any particular expressive quality. The motive most closely resembles Debussy’s aimless decorative lines, like the melody of his first Arabesque with its idle cascade of interlocking fourths. Fauré’s own Pavane surely provided another inspiration for the melodic loops and spirals in the Cinq mélodies, so well suited to Verlaine’s indolent ancien régime world.17 The “Venice” motive may lack the semantic content of a leitmotive, but it introduced an authentically Wagnerian revolution in Fauré’s songwriting. Before pursuing this argument, however, we must first address a stubborn prejudice of Fauré scholarship. Critics have always shown a curious resistance to the idea of Wagner’s influence on Fauré. “He admired him without submitting to his imprint,” claimed P.-B. Gheusi, theater director and editor of Le Figaro, in 1930.18 “While admiring their grandeur and nobility,” wrote Vuillermoz, “he very quickly came to understand, just as Debussy was to later realize, how dangerous a fascination Wagnerian music-drama could be for French composers.”19 Nectoux made the strongest claim in the New Grove Dictionary: “He was fascinated by Wagner but, almost alone among his contemporaries, did not come under his influence.”20 This view, echoed in countless program notes and online sources, seems like a prima facie case of wishful thinking, a vain attempt to safeguard Fauré as a bastion of Gallic values. Fauré’s passion for Wagner’s music began early and surpassed mere admiration. By 1882, he had attended eight of the ten major operas and had sat through two full Ring cycles. Fauré made the pilgrimage to Bayreuth before beginning the Verlaine song cycles and returned in 1896 to hear the complete Ring. A letter from 1888 gives a taste of his reaction: As for the ensemble, as for the orchestra, as for the direction, as for the union of everything that constitutes the Bayreuth theater, it is useless to try to give you even

The Discovery of Music    75 the slightest idea, I should not succeed! Bring lots of handkerchiefs, because you will cry a great deal! Bring lots of bromide, too, for you will be uplifted to the point of delirium! They ought to have doctors on call in the establishment!21

In 1894 Fauré even proposed a choral program that would include Wagner’s Das Liebesmahl der Apostel alongside his own Requiem22 The Wagnerian mania left clear marks on Fauré’s music. Howat and Kilpatrick have shown how the composer threaded a chromatic motive à la Tristan through the three Baudelaire settings (ca. 1870), while Marie-Claire Beltrando-Patier detected a new emotional intensity in his songs from the late 1880s, the high tide of French Wagnerism.23 Fauré used leitmotives in his two great stage works, the lyric drama Prométhée (1900) and the opera Pénélope (1913), confessing to his wife, “It’s the Wagnerian system, but there isn’t a better one.”24 Yet le système wagnérien had invaded Fauré’s Verlaine cycles long before with astonishing effects on his style. The impact of the Musikdrama is most obvious in La bonne chanson, in which Fauré wove the vocal line into a truly symphonic fabric of developing motives. The new texture already appears in the Cinq mélodies, however, as in the first two stanzas of “En sourdine.” Verlaine’s poem situates the lovers in a landscape full of ravishing sensations: Calmes dans le demi-jour Que les branches hautes font, Pénétrons bien nôtre amour De ce silence profond.

Calm in the half-light That the high branches cast, Let us immerse our love In this deep silence.

Mêlons nos âmes, nos cœurs Et nos sens extasiés Parmi les vagues langueurs Des pins et des arbousiers.

Let us mingle our souls, our hearts, And our ecstatic senses Amid the vague languor Of the pines and arbutus.

The “Venice” motive undergoes a continuous evolution across the two stanzas (see example 3.4). The vocal line begins by outlining a falling major third, descending languorously from G to EH. The melody continues its descent in mm. 4–5 with a sequence of interlocking thirds (F-DH-EH-C). The “Venice” motive reappears in mm. 6–7, but with the major third respelled as a diminished fourth (BH-FG-G). The motive undergoes its first inversion in mm. 9–10, rising in a sequence of interlocking thirds (AJ-C-BH-DH). The entire melody to this point consists of elaborations of the “Venice” motive in its ascending, descending, and sequential versions. This motivic process has an astonishing effect on Fauré’s text-setting. For the first time in his mélodies, the text-setting is completely independent from the poetic meter. This takes some explanation. As shown in the first chapter, French prosody is determined by syllable count rather than stress, and word accents need

76      Chapter 3

not line up with strong beats in the musical meter. Nevertheless, the larger phrase structure of Fauré’s earlier songs is tightly bound to the verse structure, as in most French vocal music of the time. Typically, he set each line of verse to two bars of music, or four bars in the case of longer alexandrines. The result is a regular, evenly paced delivery of text in which the vocal melody keeps step with the poetic meter. “En sourdine” throws these neat patterns into disarray. Verlaine’s first two lines fit into four bars, but the internal rhythms are completely asymmetrical. The two syllables of “Calmes” stretch across six beats, while the following eleven syllables tumble out in the same timespan. The lover’s first entreaty, “Pénétrons bien notre amour,” prompts an even more urgent delivery, beginning with an anacrusis and racing through seven syllables in five beats. The following phrase intensifies the appeal, beginning impetuously on the first beat. Verlaine’s next line splinters into breathless fragments (“Mêlons nos âmes . . . nos cœurs”) as the motive rises in sequence. The rhythm expands luxuriously in the final two lines as the lovers surrender to the mingled scents of pine and arbutus, and increasingly long notes prolong the words “vagues,” “langueurs,” and “pins.” Fauré’s setting of this passage amounts to nothing less than Wagnerian musical prose. In his music dramas from Das Rheingold onward, Wagner had abandoned traditional poetic meter in favor of Stabreim, unrhymed verses of unequal length. Accordingly, the vocal lines lose their classical symmetry, accumulating additively instead of fitting into neatly balanced periods. The leitmotivic web, meanwhile, takes over the role once played by the phrase structure. Carl Dahlhaus best analyzed this innovation: The correlative of the musical prose resulting from the discarding of periodic structure was leitmotivic technique, or, to be more precise, the extension of the technique to the entire work. From Rheingold onwards, the basis of Wagner’s musical form is no longer primarily syntactic but motivic. The complex of motivic association that spreads over the entire tetralogy in a dense network has to assume the form-building role previously performed by regular syntax.25

Fauré’s “Venice” motive performs the identical function in “En sourdine.” The developing motive provides coherence across the opening stanza, liberating the vocal melody from the rigid symmetries of the poetic meter. The treatment of Verlaine’s text is all the more striking considering that unlike Wagner or for that matter Debussy, who achieved a similar freedom of declamation in his Proses lyriques, Trois chansons de Bilitis, and Pelléas et Mélisande, Fauré was setting uniform lines of rhyming verse rather than Stabreim or prose. The new relationship between piano and voice allowed Fauré to realize a crucial aspect of Verlaine’s poetics: the passivity of the lyric subject. Jean-Pierre Richard analyzed this quality in a much-cited study: “Faced with objects, the Verlainian subject spontaneously adopts an attitude of passivity, of waiting . . . It remains

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78      Chapter 3

immobile and tranquil, content to cultivate the virtue of porosity so that things can better penetrate it when they deign to reveal themselves.”26 The third stanza of “En sourdine” epitomizes this receptive attitude: Ferme tes yeux à demi, Croise tes bras sur ton sein, Et de ton cœur endormi Chasse à jamais tout dessein.

Close your eyes halfway, Cross your arms over your breast, And from your sleeping heart Chase away all intention.

This Nirvana-like state proves unattainable, however, as Verlaine’s final stanza intimates: Et quand, solennel, le soir Des chênes noirs tombera, Voix de notre désespoir, Le rossignol chantera.

And when the evening solemnly Descends from the black oaks, The voice of our despair, The nightingale, will sing.

As Susan Taylor-Horrex remarked, “the letting go of the thinking self runs so close to self-annihilation that the conscious self reasserts itself. And this takes the form of despair in ‘En sourdine,’ despair at the loss of the conscious self, or equally at not being able to achieve the emotional ideal of passivity.”27 Fauré’s vocal subject adopts a similarly passive stance in “En sourdine,” although with little sense of despair. It is the piano that initiates the rising line in the first stanza as the lover urges his beloved to surrender to nature. The singer follows the pianist’s lead, leaping in to resolve the dissonant AJ in mm. 6–7. The piano also instigates the next entreaty and continues to lead throughout the song, prompting and nudging the vocal line. In “À Clymène,” too, the singer plays a passive role, answering the pianist’s opening phrases. The piano even guides the voice in “Mandoline,” as Ulrich Linke noted, sketching the singer’s ascending melody in the introductory bars.28 The piano embodies Verlaine’s call to forgetful surrender in the Cinq mélodies as it spins out the “Venice” motive in its ever-changing forms. Fauré again seems close to Wagner, especially the disciple of Schopenhauer who charted the movements of the cosmic will in Tristan und Isolde, Parsifal, and the later Ring. Heady vistas, indeed, have opened up for la Musique in op. 58. T O N E S A N D P E R F UM E S

The condition toward which “En sourdine” aspires is not the mystical transcendence of the Romantics, who gazed into nature as a mirror of spiritual truths. Verlaine’s poem evokes a purely sensual experience, a fusion of color, sound, aroma, and touch that lays no claim to spiritual meaning. Fauré suggested this blurring of the senses at the end of “Clair de lune,” which intersperses strains of the minuet with shimmering moonlight arpeggios. The third stanza of “Mandoline” also min-

The Discovery of Music    79

gles recollections of the singing boughs with a motive representing the dancers’ spinning shadows. Synesthesia figures most prominently in the fourth of the Cinq mélodies, “À Clymène.” The beloved’s voice is a strange vision, her scent the color of swans, and her entire being a harmonious fusion of tones and perfumes: Mystiques barcarolles, Romances sans paroles, Chère, puisque tes yeux, Couleur des cieux,

Mystic barcarolles, Songs without words, Dear one, since your eyes, The color of skies,

Puisque ta voix, étrange Vision qui dérange Et trouble l’horizon De ma raison,

Since your voice, strange Vision that disorders And troubles the horizon Of my reason,

Puisque l’arôme insigne De la pâleur de cygne, Et puisque la candeur De ton odeur,

Since the rare scent Of a swan’s pallor, And since the candor Of your odor,

Ah! puisque tout ton être, Musique qui pénètre, Nimbes d’anges défunts, Tons et parfums,

Ah! since your whole being, Music that penetrates, Clouds of departed angels, Sounds and perfumes,

A, sur d’almes cadences, En ces correspondances Induit mon cœur subtil, Ainsi soit-il!

Has with beneficent cadences, In their correspondences Led away my refined soul, So be it!

Synesthesia was a central concern of the French Symbolists, and Verlaine’s final stanza cites their source text, Baudelaire’s “Correspondances.” Baudelaire’s sonnet enunciates the doctrine, so influential for French writers in the 1880s, that poetry should reveal the hidden analogies among the different senses. Verlaine’s poem expands on the final line of Baudelaire’s octet, with its confusion of perfumes, colors, and sounds: La Nature est un temple où de vivants piliers Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles; L’homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles Qui l’observent avec des regards familiers. Comme de longs échos qui de loin se confondent Dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité, Vaste comme la nuit et comme la clarté, Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se répondent.

80      Chapter 3

Nature is a temple where living pillars Sometimes let confused words escape; Man traverses it through forests of symbols That observe him with familiar glances. Like drawn-out echoes that mingle in the distance In a deep and obscure unity, Vast like the night and like the light, Perfumes, colors, and sounds respond to each other. Baudelaire’s sestet concentrates on the analogy of scent and music: II est des parfums frais comme des chairs d’enfants, Doux comme les hautbois, verts comme les prairies, —Et d’autres, corrompus, riches et triomphants, Ayant l’expansion des choses infinies, Comme l’ambre, le musc, le benjoin et l’encens, Qui chantent les transports de l’esprit et des sens. There are perfumes as fresh as the flesh of infants, Sweet as oboes, green as the fields, —And others, corrupt, rich and triumphant, Having the expanse of infinite things, Like amber, musk, benzoin, and incense, Which sing the transports of the mind and the senses. Fauré is unlikely to have missed “Correspondances,” the fourth poem of Baudelaire’s Les fleurs du mal from which he had drawn three song texts around 1870. Moreover, according to his student Émile Vuillermoz, Fauré arranged for the publication of Debussy’s Cinq poèmes de Baudelaire in 1890.29 If so, he would have known Baudelaire’s “Harmonie du soir” and its celebrated line, “Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du soir” (Sounds and perfumes turn in the evening air). Synesthesia had moved well beyond Baudelaire in the 1880s to pervade French literary discourse. Rimbaud’s whimsical “Voyelles,” which assigns a color to each vowel, appeared in Verlaine’s Les poètes maudits in 1888. Two years earlier, René Ghil published Traité du verbe, a quixotic attempt to create a system of analogies between vowels, consonants, colors, and instruments. In Huysmans’s Decadent novel À rebours (1884), the reclusive aesthete Des Esseintes fashions a “mouth organ” from flasks of spirits: Each several liquor corresponded, so he held, in taste with the sound of a particular instrument. Dry curacao, for instance, was like the clarinet with its shrill, velvety note; kummel like the oboe, whose timbre is sonorous and nasal; crème de menthe and anisette like the flute, at one and the same time sweet and poignant, whining and

The Discovery of Music    81 soft. Then, to complete the orchestra, comes kirsch, blowing a wild trumpet blast . . . he could execute on his tongue a succession of voiceless melodies; noiseless funeral marches, solemn and stately; could hear in his mouth solos of crème de menthe, duets of vespetro and rum.30

Fauré must have known Huysmans’s epochal novel, especially since Robert de Montesquiou had provided the model for Des Esseintes. Symbolist playwrights also experimented with synesthesia as they enlarged on the ambitions of Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk. In 1891, audiences of Paul Napoléon Roinard’s Song of Songs at the Théâtre d’Art were misted with exotic scents, coordinated with lighting effects and specific vowel sounds.31 Music plays a privileged role in “Correspondances.” Baudelaire evoked synesthesia through a musical image, comparing correspondences to the mingling of distant echoes. The sonnet ends with another musical metaphor as the perfumes join in a choral hymn. Music figures even more prominently in “À Clymène.” Verlaine’s first lines invoke a paradoxical song without words, and it is the beloved’s voice that induces the vertiginous state receptive to synesthetic analogies. The final stanza of “À Clymène” returns to a musical conceit, comparing the correspondences between tone, perfume, and vision to “beneficent cadences.” Fauré foregrounded music in his setting, offering up the wordless barcarolle as an object of devout contemplation. The song begins with a languid sequence of the “Venice” motive, a swaying 9/8 melody that uncoils twice to a half cadence (see example 3.5). The singer responds each time with the consequent phrase as if to answer the question posed by the piano. The Dorian CG in the first bar adds a touch of mystery to the E-minor theme, as does the halting barcarolle rhythm in the accompaniment (as Peter Cahn noted, the left hand drops out precisely as the melody lights on the modal sixth degree).32 The singer’s consequent phrases seek to comprehend this inarticulate yet expressive sound: “Mystic barcarolles . . . Songs without words.” Musically, too, the singer’s phrases strive to contain the ambiguous melody. The vocal line twice reinterprets the modal CG as a leading tone, reaching a cadence in D major. The solemn plagal fifths in the vocal melody, prefiguring Verlaine’s final “So be it!” further anchor the modal theme to its home key. Yet the elusive theme slips the snare each time as the piano melody nudges the singer’s D up to DG and returns thence to the Dorian mode. The opening page of “À Clymène” presents music in all its ineffable mystery, but Fauré’s setting also constructs the listening subject who seeks to grasp that mysterious sound. Yet the barcarolle does not belong to the soundscape of the poem in the same way as the minuet in “Clair de lune.” The piano theme falls silent when the singer enters and only overlaps the vocal line intermittently. The piano melody weaves in and out of the rippling arpeggios, returning furtively at the end of the song to echo the singer’s final “Ainsi soit–il!” (mm. 67–69). The barcarolle seems to belong to

example 3.5 . Fauré, “À Clymène,” Cinq mélodies “de Venise,” mm. 1–17.

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The Discovery of Music    83 example 3.5 . (continued) 14

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the singer’s mind rather than to the outer world of the poem. It suggests an ideal music, an unheard melody haunting the protagonist’s imagination. Formally, the piano melody functions as a ritornello, marking the divisions within the poem. The barcarolle tune also registers the growing intensity of Verlaine’s synesthetic analogies. The piano theme frames the vocal line at the beginning of the first strophe, as the singer comments on the mystery of wordless song. The piano melody then seems to guide the singer toward the first union of the senses, the metaphor of voice as vision in the second stanza. Diverging from its previous course, the melody accompanies the vocal line, leading through undulating harmonies to a G-major cadence on the word “voix” (mm. 17–25). The blurring of senses that “deranges” rational thought also disorders the musical meter and tempo, which switch abruptly to a quicker passage in common time (Un poco più mosso). After four bars, the vocal line regains the home key and meter by again reascending through the chromatic D-DG-E line, and the piano ritornello returns to conclude this first episode (mm. 30–34). The vocal line takes on a more performative role in this first episode. On the word “chére,” as the protagonist first addresses the beloved, the singer sustains a high F across three bars and, after an expressive messa di voce, drops an octave, the largest melodic interval in “À Clymène” (mm. 19–21). The singer continues this high cantilena through the Un poco più mosso, ending forte on a sustained high E. As in “Clair de lune” and “Mandoline,” the vocal part no longer merely comments on the music; it enacts singing itself. There is a further resonance, moreover, in the descending octave of “chére.” Fauré has recalled this motive from the end of “En sourdine” where it set the word “chantera.” The evocation of the beloved’s voice in “À Clymène” thus recalls a prior performance, the serenade of the nightingale.

84      Chapter 3

Verlaine’s third and fourth stanzas venture more deeply into the analogical thickets, fusing scent, sight, and sound. The ritornello vanishes for sixteen bars during this long, increasingly ardent episode. On the final line, “Tons et parfums,” the singer soars to a robust high FG, followed by a dramatic return of the barcarolle theme (see example 3.6). The piano theme bursts out fortissimo, up an octave, and in the distant key of EH minor. Fauré effected this startling modulation through another Weitzmann transformation, as in the middle section of “Toujours” (Poème d’un jour).33 The penultimate line of this episode, “Nimbes d’anges défunts,” has led to a cadence on B minor. The root of the B-minor triad then drops a semitone to AG, producing an augmented triad [FG AG D]. The prominence of FG in the voice and bass line suggests an altered V, implying a resolution to B minor. But Fauré has drawn the harmony into a chromatic hallway with six possible doors. He opted for EH minor, raising the D a semitone and respelling the other notes enharmonically. The effect is electrifying, a flash of harmonic magic that seems to leap the gap between sound and scent. The neo-Riemannian modulation also suggests a deeper analogy with Baudelaire’s theory. In her classic study of the Symbolist movement, Anna Balakian distinguished Baudelaire’s correspondances from traditional Romantic allegories: “The synesthesia that occurs in the mingling of sense perceptions does not produce a link between heaven and earth, nor does it transport us to a divine state; instead, it finds its connections between sense experiences here on earth.”34 In the same way, Fauré’s modulation from B minor to EH minor abandons the vertical principle of root-progression harmony. The Weitzmann transformation relies entirely on horizontal voice-leading between triads, regardless of their relationship to a fundamental bass. The plunge into synesthetic analogy reconfigures the very logic of the harmonic structure. Fauré reserved his wittiest device for the fifth stanza and its explicit reference to Baudelaire’s theory. As shown in example 3.6, he set the first two lines, “A sur d’almes cadences, / En ses correspondances,” with a nearly identical two-bar melody. Yet the second phrase respells the first enharmonically, transforming the flats into sharps. (The effect is lost in the published D-minor version of “À Clymène,” which notates the two phrases identically.) This inaudible musical effect, perceptible only to the eye, nods urbanely to Baudelaire’s synesthetic theory. Fauré’s harmonic sleight of hand also acknowledges the prominence of music, those “beneficent cadences,” in Verlaine’s synesthetic alchemy. Appropriately, the enharmonic phrases recall the falling octave from the first stanza, a motive already associated with voice and singing. The harmonic liberties of “À Clymène” shocked at least one contemporary. In a letter from August 1891, Fauré reported the reaction of Camille Benoît, a disciple of César Franck: “I must confess that he told me, with a severe and pained expression, that I would do well to move on to other projects and leave Verlaine alone since I was becoming too incoherent and vague! And here I thought myself too classical!”35

example 3.6 . Fauré, “À Clymène,” Cinq mélodies “de Venise,” mm. 48–57. 48

& &

#

–  funts,

#

?#

51

& &

& &

Œ

œ˙ œ. í °

œ

#

œ

œ. >

bœ b œ> °

# bœ. d'al

# ˙.

°

œ.

œ

œ

Tons

et

par - fums,

&

œ˙ . # œ > °

œ

J

œ œ #œ #œ œ œ molto

œ. >

œ.

*

∑

f

œ

# œ˙ .

>

œ

œ œ #œ #œ œ œ œ. >

°

Œ

œ bœ œ

bœ œ. bœ bœ *

-

J

Œ ‰ bœ bœ

j

bœ. bœbœ

bœ œ

œ

J

í

bœ

œ

bœ bœ œ bœ. J J

°

*

œ‰ œ.

b˙.

p

œ bœ

bœ Œ ‰ bœ

í

°

‰ bœ.

œ œ

œ œ œ bœ Œ ‰ *

jj j œ œ œ #œ #˙. 2

-

ces

En

ses cor - res - pon - dan

bœ.

œ#œ#œ œ.

˙.

œ.

*

sur

œ bœ bœ œ.

mes ca - den

Nœ.

*

j

dolce

A

bœ ? # bœ bœbœœœ Œ ‰

í

*

f˙ .

˙.

cresc.

bœ.

ƒ

‰

œ œ œ œ œ ‰ ?œ

# ˙.

?#

54

˙.

œ.

bœ œ œ #œ œ œ Œ ‰ #œ #œ œ Œ ‰ œ nœ œ í ° * ° *

œœ œ í °

-

œ.

ces

œ œj # œ . œœ œ #œ

Œ‰ *

86      Chapter 3

Fauré remained with the poet, and his harmonic language grew even more audacious in La bonne chanson, making the Verlaine years his most adventurous period of stylistic experimentation. Fauré’s expanded palette was certainly a response to Verlaine’s art, with its prosodic licenses, preciosity, and exquisite sense of nuance. Yet as “À Clymène” suggests, the composer was responding to something beyond the individual poet, to an idea of music and its possibilities that he had absorbed from contemporary literary discourse. If Fauré’s style from the early 1890s presses complexity to the limits of comprehensibility, we may partially blame (or thank) the Symbolist poets who endowed music with such extravagant powers. A F O R E S T O F SYM B O L S

“C’est l’extase” bears the burden of integrating the Cinq mélodies “de Venise,” an opus that in many ways resembles a set more than a true cycle. As a structural device, Fauré’s recollections of “Green” and “En sourdine” can appear arbitrary, an eleventh-hour attempt to impose some sort of unity on the loose collation of songs. Yet as this chapter has argued, the identity of Fauré’s cycle grows not from a linear narrative but from variations on a poetic theme, the idea of music itself. The recollection of the earlier songs in “C’est l’extase” consummates this thematic development. The quotations of “Green” and “En sourdine” both respond to a musical reference in Verlaine’s poem, and both arrive bearing the accumulated meanings of the previous songs. With “C’est l’extase,” op. 58 culminates in a vision of a music that spans the human and natural realms. “C’est l’extase” can be read as a sequel to “En sourdine” in which the lyric self has surrendered fully to the sensory raptures of nature. The first-person je vanishes entirely, replaced by the impersonal “c’est”: C’est l’extase langoureuse, C’est la fatigue amoureuse, C’est tous les frissons des bois Parmi l’étreinte des brises, C’est vers les ramures grises Le chœur des petites voix.

It is languorous ecstasy, It is amorous fatigue, It is all the shivering of the woods Amid the embrace of the breezes, It is, around the grey boughs, The choir of little voices.

The poem registers the scene objectively, without human perspective or commentary. Verlaine has displaced the poetic voice instead onto the voices emanating from the woods. The second stanza portrays this natural choir through an anthropomorphic language of sighs, murmurs, and cries: Ô le frêle et frais murmure! Cela gazouille et susurre, Cela ressemble au cri doux

The Discovery of Music    87

Que l’herbe agitée expire . . . Tu dirais, sous l’eau qui vire, Le roulis sourd des cailloux. Oh, the fragile and fresh murmur! That twittering and whispering, It resembles the sweet cry That the stirred grass breathes out . . . You might say it were, beneath the turning water, The muffled rolling of pebbles. In the third stanza, this animistic song calls into question the very boundary between self and world: Cette âme qui se lamente Et cette plainte dormante, C’est la nôtre, n’est-ce pas? La mienne, dis, et la tienne, Dont s’exhale l’humble antienne Par ce tiède soir, tout bas? This soul that laments And this slumbering plaint, It is ours, isn’t it? Mine, tell me, and yours, That breathes the humble anthem On this warm evening so softly? Like the singing branches in “Mandoline” or the nightingale’s song in “En sourdine,” the music of “C’est l’extase” occupies a liminal space between humanity and nature. The second and third stanzas quote previous songs from op. 58, but the first stanza also alludes to a prior song. “C’est l’extase” begins with a falling fourth, played twice by the piano and echoed by the singer (see example 3.7a). Fauré almost certainly derived this opening dialogue from his second Verlaine setting, “Spleen” (1888), whose text comes from the same section of Romances sans paroles (see example 3.7b). The earlier song begins with a rising fourth, also played twice by the piano and echoed by the voice. Verlaine’s poem compares the rain falling on the city to the tears in the poet’s heart, a simile strengthened by the wordmusic of “pleure” and “pleut”: Il pleure dans mon cœur Comme il pleut sur la ville, D’ou vient cette langueur Qui pénêtre mon cœur?

There is weeping in my heart Like the rain falling on the town, Where does this languor come from That pervades my heart?

88      Chapter 3

The piano motive rises out of a delicate portato ostinato that mimics the falling raindrops. As the voice echoes this naturalistic sound, it realizes Verlaine’s analogy between outer nature and inner experience. The falling fourths in “C’est l’extase” emerge from the same background of hushed portato pulsations. A comparison with Debussy’s setting of the same poem in Ariettes oubliées (1887) will illuminate Fauré’s reading of Verlaine’s poem. Debussy’s song discovers the spent lovers as they loll beside the murmuring stream—the key word is “langoureuse.” The decisive word for Fauré is “extase,” expressed in the offbeat palpitations, rapid harmonic rhythm, and surging piano arpeggios. The beginning of Debussy’s song suspends time with a dominant ninth chord that hovers unresolved for eight bars; Fauré’s setting raises the temperature immediately with a surprise move from DH to C major—on “langoureuse,” of all words. Fauré’s first stanza quivers with wonder, expectancy, vibrant life. If Debussy evokes the postcoital languor of the lovers, Fauré depicts the buzzing choir that surrounds them. The falling fourths materialize out of this naturalistic background like the rising fourths in “Spleen.” The opening of “C’est l’extase” also echoes an earlier song from op. 58. The surprise moves to C major in mm. 4 and 6 imply a half cadence on the mediant, F minor. The brief feints unmistakably recall the vocalise of the singing branches in “Mandoline” where the song abruptly modulates to B major. In both songs, the swerve toward the mediant hinges on the leading tone, on which Fauré built a chord in “C’est l’extase” and a scale in “Mandoline.” The harmonic move even occurs on the same rhyme in both songs, a velvety “-euse.” And both passages concern a common theme, the animistic voice of nature as it issues from the “ramures chanteuses” (“Mandoline”) or “ramures grises” (“C’est l’extase”). The most eloquent natural voice in op. 58 belongs to the nightingale that sings at the end of “En sourdine.” To appreciate Fauré’s quotation of the song in “C’est l’extase,” we must trace the genealogy of this birdsong. The first source for the nightingale song is the “Venice” motive as it develops across the third and fourth stanzas of “En sourdine.” As shown in example 3.3e, the voice presents the motive in its rising form, but the three-note motive has acquired a tail, an oscillating figure with a triplet rhythm. The piano spins out the triplet figure across the fourth stanza in both rising and falling versions and then reprises the figure at the mention of the nightingale (“Voix de notre désespoir”). The triplet version of the “Venice” motive thus links the funereal image of the lovers lying with arms crossed over their breasts to the song of the nightingale. When that music returns in “C’est l’extase,” it thus adds a deeper resonance to the lines “This soul that laments / And this slumbering complaint.” Yet the actual song of the nightingale in “En sourdine” lies elsewhere. The triplet figure ceases precisely on the final line, “Le rossignol chantera.” The musical sign that replaces it is simplicity itself, an AJ5-BH5 semitone that the piano repeats

example 3.7 . Intertextuality in Fauré, Cinq mélodies “de Venise.” a. “C’est l’extase,” mm. 1–7. Allegro non troppo (u 120)

b & b b b b 43 Œ

∑

b bb b 3 Œ & & b bb bbb 443 œ -

- œ œ œ∑ œ œ œ œ ˙≈ œ ≈ œ ≈ œ ≈ œ ≈ œ ≈ œ . . . . -. . - œ. œ. œ. œ. œ œ. œ. ˙≈≈ œœœ ≈≈ œœœ ≈≈ œœœ ≈≈ œœœ ≈≈ œœœ ≈≈ œœœ . . . . . . ∑ °. . . . . . ≈ œ≈ œ≈ œ≈ œ≈ œ≈ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ∑ sempre dolce j œ °‰ œ J

Œ

π

43 œ . . -≈ œ ≈ œ 43 π œ œ Œ . . ? b b b 43 ≈ œœ ≈ œœ bb Œ 5 b b Œ &bbb Œ

J

œ œ. R

j œ œJ .

œ ˙

R

œ

dolcissimo j œ. œ œ. Œ˙ . Œ J≈ œ ≈ Rœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œJœ . œ œRœ ˙˙≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ œœ œ œ œ ≈ ≈ ≈ œ œ œ œ ≈ ≈ - ≈ se≈ lan≈ - ≈gou - reu œ œ - œ œ se, ≈ C'est l'ex - ta . . . . . . . . . ˙ .œ. ≈ œ. ≈ œ. ≈ œ. ≈ œ. ≈ œ. œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙≈ ≈ ≈ œœœ ≈≈ œ ≈ œ ≈ œ ≈ œ ≈ œ ≈ œ ≈≈ œ ≈≈ œ ≈≈ œ ≈≈ œ ≈≈ ≈≈ ≈ œ ≈ œ ≈ œœ ≈≈ œœ œ≈ œ ≈ œ œ. .œ .œ .œ .œ .œ œ œ œ œ n œœ œœ n n.œœ .œœ b b.œœ œœ œœ œœ ˙ ∑ ∑ Œ . . . . . . * ° ≈ œ ≈ œ ≈ œ ≈ œ ≈ œ ≈ œ ≈ œ ≈ œ ≈ œ ≈ œ ≈ n œ ≈ œ ≈ n œ ≈ œ ≈ b œœ ≈ œœ ≈ œœ ≈ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ nœ œ bœ œ œ œ ˙ ∑ ∑ Œ r jœ œ * ° ˙ œ œ œ œ C'est

Allegro non troppo (u 120)-

b & b bbb ? bb b bb

œ.

dolcissimo

Œ

l'ex - ta

J

-

se

R

lan

-

gou - reu

-

se,

r ˙ j œj œ ‰œ œJ œ œ œ bœ bœ œ J≈ œ≈ œR ˙≈ œ ≈ œ C'est ≈ œ laœ≈ œ fa≈ œ- ˙≈ti œ -≈ œ gue œ a - mou œ - reu œ - ≈ œ ≈- œ œ≈ - œœ se,Œ sempre π œ b œ œ. œ ≈ . Œ . ˙ bœ bœ . œ ˙ & b bbb ≈≈ œ ≈ œ œ≈≈ œ ≈≈ œ ≈≈ œ ≈≈ œ ≈≈ œ ≈≈ œ ≈≈ œ ≈≈ œ ≈≈ œ œ≈ œœ œŒ≈ b œ ≈ œ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ œ œ œ œ œ œ n œœ œœ œœ ≈ œœ œœ bœ œœ œœ œœ b œœ ? bb b œœ œœ œœ n œœ œœ n œœ b b ˙ œ œ n sempre ˙b œ œ π ∑ . . *. . ° ° * ° * * ≈ œ œ œ œ ≈ ≈ ≈ œ n œ œ œ ? bb b œ ≈ œœ ≈ œœ ≈ œœ ≈ œœ ≈ n œœ ≈ œœ ≈ n œœ ≈ œœ ≈ b b œœ ≈ œœ ≈ œœ ≈ œœ ≈ b b œœœ ≈ œœœ n œ œ œ bb ˙ ˙ œ ∑ ° * ° * ° * * Andante quasi allegretto t 76 b. “Spleen,” mm. 1–8. 3 ∑ ∑ ∑ Œ Œ b œ & 4 b & bb bb bbb Œœ œ œ ≈ Œ & bb

5

C'est

la

fa

-

ti

-

gue

sempre dolce

Andante quasi allegretto

a - mou - reu

-

-

-

se,

Il

t 76

∑ ∑ ∑ Œ Œ b 3 & & b 443 ≈ œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. ≈ œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. ≈ œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. ≈ œ. œ. œ. œ. œ œ. œ. Il

p

3 & b 4 ≈ œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. ≈ . œ. . œ. . œ. . œ. . œ. . œ. ≈ . œ. . œ. . œ. . œ. . œ. & b 43 œ œ œ. œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ˙ œ œ œ œœ . . . p. . Œ Œ . . . . . . . . . . . 5 & b 43 œ œ œ. œ œ œ œ œ œj œj œ œ œ œ j j œ œ œ ˙ . . œJ . œ œ . .˙ . &b œ œ œœ Œ Œœ œ œ ˙ J J pleu

-

re

dans mon

cœur

œ œ œ ˙ b œ. & & b ≈ œ. œ. œ. J œ. J œ. J œ. ≈ œ. pleu re dans mon cœur

5

& b ≈ œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. . . . . . . & b œ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ . . . . . . & b œ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ

j j œ œ

com - me il

œ.

œ.

œ.

œ.

com - me il

pleut

œ.

sur

la

j j œ œ

˙≈ œ œ œ. œ œ œ . . . . . sur la

pleut

. œ. œ

. œ

≈ œ œ œ. œ œ œ . . .. . .. .. .. œ˙ œ œ œ œœ œ

. . . . . . œ˙ œ œ œ œœ œ ˙ œ

vil

˙≈ œ.

vil

-

œ.

-

le.

œ.

œ.

œ

le.

œ.

œ.

≈ œ œ œ. œ œ œ ≈ œ œ œ. œ œ œ ≈ œ œ œ œ œ œ . . . . . . . . . . . ? œ˙ . œ . œ œ . œœ . œ . # ˙œ . œ . œ . œ . œ . œ . œ ˙œ œ œ œ œœ œ # œ˙ œ œ œ œ œ . . . . . . ? œ˙ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ˙ œ œ œ œœ œ

90      Chapter 3

six times as the singer delivers the climactic line (mm. 40–45). This G4ˆ-ˆ5 dyad traces its own genealogy, both backward and forward, in the Cinq mélodies. As shown in example 3.4, it first appears in m. 6 as the piano melody nudges the voice upward, urging the lovers to surrender to nature. The AJ-BH dyad returns in the da capo before the line “Voix de notre désespoir” (m. 36) and ascends stepwise into the avian register. The nightingale, it turns out, has been singing throughout “En sourdine,” voicing the will of the lovers toward sensual oblivion. The nightingale’s song returns in the final bars of “Green,” which also ends with a repeated G4-ˆ ˆ5 semitone in the piano (example 3.3f). On Verlaine’s last line, “Et que je dorme un peu puisque vous reposez” (And let me sleep a bit while you rest), the pianist plays the “Venice” motive five times with a raised fourth degree (EH-CJ-DH). The nightingale’s poignant tones return in this second image of passive surrender as the protagonist falls asleep on the beloved’s breast. What, then, is the function of the thematic recollections in the Cinq mélodies? According to Fauré’s letter to the princess, they confer a narrative unity, making the five songs into a “story.” That is the traditional function of thematic recollection: when themes from the prelude of Massenet’s Poème d’avril return in the final song, they summon the memory of the faithless lover; when the first song of Schumann’s Frauenliebe und -leben returns as an epilogue, it recalls the widow’s happy days of courtship. Yet the Cinq mélodies have no linear narrative, no story line that the returning themes can enhance. They function instead to represent music itself, embodying the “humble anthem” of Verlaine’s animistic world. The recollection of the third song follows the line “The choir of little voices,” while the quotation of the second song accompanies the lines “This soul that laments / And this slumbering plaint.” The recollections in “C’est l’extase” thus provide a sort of scenic music, like the mandolin serenade, nightingale song, and barcarolle in the previous songs. But this music no longer emanates from a human or avian voice. The disembodied memories belong instead to that mysterious “forest of symbols,” as Baudelaire put it, which surrounds and encompasses the human subject. The Cinq mélodies “de Venise” do indeed form a story, as Fauré told the princess, but it is the tale of music spreading out from human voices into the resounding cosmos. This reading of op. 58 assumes, of course, that we read Baudelaire’s sonnet at face value as a depiction of the cosmic order. This interpretation aligns with his famous 1861 essay “Richard Wagner et Tannhäuser à Paris” in which the poet, quoting the octet of “Correspondances,” claimed that things were “always expressed through a reciprocal analogy, since the day that God set forth the world as a complex and indivisible totality.”36 “Élévation,” the poem that immediately precedes “Correspondances” in Les fleurs du mal, also supports an esoteric reading, hailing the refined spirits who can grasp “Le langage des fleurs et des choses muettes!” (The language of flowers and mute things!). Postmodern critics, on the other hand, have interpreted Baudelaire’s web of signifiers as language itself. As Jonathan

The Discovery of Music    91

Culler remarked, the poet “does not necessarily place us in a forest at all: we are told that man passes not through forests that are symbolic but through forests of symbols.”37 Paul de Man argued similarly that Baudelaire’s sonnet depicts “the rhetorical dimension in which we constantly dwell.”38 Fauré seems to have interpreted Baudelaire’s cosmology literally, and he may even have believed in universal analogy. Esoteric beliefs ran rampant in fin-de-siècle France. Sâr Péladan founded his Ordre du temple de Rose+Croix in 1890 with Erik Satie as official composer. Spiritualism attracted devotees among the upper classes, including Robert de Montesquiou, as did theosophy and Swedenborgian mysticism. Even Henri Bergson, the leading philosopher of the Belle Èpoque, enthusiastically accepted the presidency of the British Society for Psychical Research, an organization dedicated to investigating paranormal experience.39 The Symbolist poets, with their distaste for naturalism and positivism, also gravitated toward mysticism and the occult. It is easy to imagine that Fauré, who detested realism and shunned topical or urban references in his songs, would find Baudelaire’s natural cosmology alluring. His son Philippe suggested as much in his biography of the composer, describing his father’s desire “to evoke the effusions of the night, the secret communion of humanity and invisible things.”40 Whatever Fauré’s personal beliefs, he granted music a central place in the universe of op. 58, equivalent to the musica mundana of Scholastic thought. That cosmic sound would swell in Fauré’s second Verlaine cycle, composed under the sign of Richard Wagner.

4

Wagnerian correspondances La bonne chanson, op. 61

If any song cycle deserves that title, it is surely La bonne chanson. In op. 61, Fauré crafted his most rigorously unified work, as well as his most exuberant. The composer fashioned a clear narrative from Verlaine’s eponymous collection, written in the flush of the poet’s brief union with Mathilde Mauté de Fleurville. The nine songs trace a dramatic arc from the awakening of love (nos. 1–3) through separation and anxiety (4–5) to the joyful nuptials and symbolic return of springtime (6–9). The last song recalls previous themes in the manner of the Cinq mélodies “de Venise,” but Fauré has now wedded these cyclic recollections to the cycles of nature: the first three songs pass in review after the words “Let summer come! Let autumn and winter come again!” The composer forged careful links between the adjacent songs and, most originally, connected the songs through a network of recurring motives. Every novel feature of the Cinq mélodies “de Venise” reaches a new degree of complexity in La bonne chanson. Verlaine’s collection offered Fauré an exotic array of verse forms: Dantean terza rima (nos. 4 and 8); a variant of the pantoum that interweaves two separate poems (6); and even a rare tarantara line consisting of five-syllable hemistichs (9).1 Fauré expanded the principle of thematic recollection, recalling not two but five of the previous songs in the final number, “L’hiver a cessé.” The harmonic language of La bonne chanson is bafflingly unpredictable, full of rapid modulations, elliptical progressions, and tonal non sequiturs, as in the opening phrase of “J’ai presque peur, en vérité” or the final pages of “Avant que tu ne t’en ailles.” The gossamer motivic web of op. 58 has fully overgrown the piano accompaniment, entangling the vocal line in its polyphonic thickets. Indeed, musical prose is the norm in La bonne chanson. Freed from the symmetrical phrasing imposed by poetic meter, Fauré expanded, contracted, and fragmented 92

Wagnerian correspondances    93

Verlaine’s verse to fit the motivic lines unfolding in the piano. The opening stanza of the first song epitomizes this fluid interplay of text and motive; the most extreme example comes at the beginning of the last song where Verlaine’s opening line (but only the first hemistich!) arrives on the cadence of a nine-bar piano prelude spun out of previous motives. The dizzying novelties of La bonne chanson unsettled contemporary listeners. “It is hard to know whether this music is the work of a decadent or a primitive,” marveled Camille Bellaigue in 1897, cautioning readers that “cunning looks like ignorance, and an excess of refinement leads to barbarism.” The sympathetic Proust wrote in a letter of 1894, “Did you know the younger composers are almost unanimous in disliking La bonne chanson?” Saint-Saëns reportedly advised his friend to burn the score, exclaiming, “Fauré has gone completely out of his mind!”2 Nevertheless, performers and listeners who have absorbed themselves in La bonne chanson can attest to the impeccable taste with which Fauré shaped its explosive energies. Each harmonic digression finds its way home with unfailing logic; each dazzling form enchains with the next in a single captivating flow. Maurice Ravel rightly praised the “incomparable symphony whose nine parts are ordered and balanced so as to form one vast lyric poem, stirring and perfect.”3 La bonne chanson is the crown jewel of Fauré’s song cycles, indeed, of his entire song oeuvre. Fauré began work on op. 61 in the summer of 1892 while vacationing outside Paris, and by September 1893 Hamelle had engraved seven songs. Fauré completed the remaining two songs by early 1894, and La bonne chanson appeared in print the same year.4 The joyful mood of op. 61 owes much to the woman who accompanied its gestation, Emma Bardac. A talented amateur singer and salonnière, the future Madame Debussy served Fauré as muse, artistic adviser, and interpreter throughout the composition of La bonne chanson, and the cycle reflects their passionate romance. The published order of the nine songs differs considerably from the order of composition, and as shown in parentheses, Fauré freely shuffled the order of poems in Verlaine’s collection:5 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

“Une Sainte en son auréole” (no. 8) “Puisque l’aube grandit” (no. 4) “La lune blanche luit dans les bois” (no. 6) “J’allais par des chemins perfides” (no. 20) “J’ai presque peur, en vérité” (no. 15) “Avant que tu ne t’en ailles” (no. 5) “Donc, ce sera par un clair jour d’été” (no. 19) “N’est-ce pas?” (no. 17) “L’hiver a cessé” (no. 21)

September 1892 1893 July 1893 Autumn 1892 December 1893 Autumn 1892 August 1892 May 1893 February 1894

The most novel feature of La bonne chanson, and Fauré’s singular contribution to the song-cycle genre, is the involved system of leitmotives. We may use the Wagne-

94      Chapter 4

rian term without hesitation: in every way, Fauré’s practice follows the model the German composer had established from Das Rheingold onward. As in Wagner’s music dramas, the motives of La bonne chanson reinforce the poetic text as they recur across the cycle. The motive associated with Mathilde’s name in the first song, for example, returns in the fourth and fifth songs as the poet recalls her comforting presence, and it reappears at the end of the cycle as he addresses her directly. Like Wagner’s orchestra, the piano also supplies information not spelled out in the text: the motive associated with birdsong thus returns in the boisterous prelude to “L’hiver a cessé,” although Verlaine’s poem nowhere mentions birds. Structurally, the continuous play of motives permits a flexible declamation of the poetic text, just as Wagner’s web of leitmotives accommodates the irregular lines of Stabreim. In La bonne chanson, Fauré arguably embraced Wagner’s leitmotivic technique more fully than had Massenet, Chabrier, Chausson, or any other French composer. Wagner’s influence on op. 61 does not flow directly from the music dramas, however, nor is it limited to musical features. La bonne chanson is best understood as an artifact of wagnérisme, a movement that reached fever pitch during Fauré’s Verlaine years. French Wagnerism, expressed most fervently in the Revue wagnérienne (1885–88), began as a literary enterprise associated, above all, with the nascent Symbolist movement. Symbolist poets contributed poems to the Revue (including Verlaine’s “Parsifal”) and turned out echt Wagnerian works like Élémir Bourges’s Le crépuscule des dieux (1884), Sâr Péladan’s La queste du Graal (1892), and Francis Vielé-Griffin’s Swannhilde (1894). Mallarmé sought to distance himself from Wagner, but he too was enlisted in the cause. Édouard Dujardin, a founder of the Revue wagnérienne, would later recall that “it was impossible to plumb the depths of Wagnerism without finding Symbolism.”6 The two movements also intertwined in La bonne chanson as Fauré continued the exploration of music and language he had begun in the Cinq mélodies. And the nexus of this Symbolist recherche is the Wagnerian leitmotive, where music and language join in a peculiarly volatile compound. Leitmotives resemble language in obvious yet deceptive ways. Like words, they can call to mind absent objects. Composers can also trope the meaning of leitmotives, whether by combining them with other motives or by altering their rhythm, harmony, or timbre.7 Indeed, leitmotives can signify more vividly than words. Unlike the arbitrary signs of language, musical signs typically represent their objects through resemblance, functioning, in C. S. Peirce’s terminology, as icons rather than symbols.8 A poet can name a “forge” or “horse,” but Wagner’s Forging motive actually mimics the hammering of smiths, while his Valkyrie motive imitates the galloping rhythm of a warhorse. Leitmotives do not merely embody qualities of their objects, but can also call up associations with characteristic styles and genres.9 The Sword motive thus imitates a military fanfare; the Nature motive borrows the compound meter and triadic outlines of pastoral music; and the

Wagnerian correspondances    95

Valhalla motive tropes a four-part chorale texture with the rhythm of a courtly sarabande. At the same time, however, leitmotives enjoy an abstraction and formal autonomy of which the Symbolist poets could only dream. Music can evoke emotions and objects with enviable immediacy and power, yet their meaning always hovers beyond verbal formulation, defying paraphrase or translation. Indeed, music can be enjoyed perfectly well as a system of structural relationships, with no awareness of its semantic dimension. The leitmotive thus occupies a precarious position between sound and sense, structure and meaning. At any moment, it can shed its signifying function and withdraw into the abstract play of musical form. La bonne chanson probes this ambivalence, testing the boundaries of the musical sign in ways that parallel the Symbolists’ critique of language. This chapter will show how Fauré used le système wagnérien, as he called it, both to deconstruct verbal signification and, more importantly, to evoke a discourse that transcends human language.10 An analysis of the motives in La bonne chanson will first demonstrate the care with which Fauré integrated them into his musical and poetic design. A series of close readings of individual motives will then build to a vision of Fauré’s aesthetic and religious vision in the two Verlaine cycles. A TA N G L E D W E B

Fauré was not the first composer to use recurring motives across a song cycle, nor was Wagner the only inspiration for this technique. César Franck had established the principle that would be known as cyclic form in a series of works that premiered in Paris during the late 1880s: the Prélude, chorale et fugue (1885), Variations symphoniques (1886), Violin Sonata (1887), Symphony in D Minor (1889), and String Quartet (1890). His disciple Ernest Chausson transferred Franck’s technique of recurring themes to the song cycle in Poème de l’amour et de la mer, which premiered at the Société nationale de musique in 1893. Chausson’s Poème, the first French song cycle composed expressly for orchestra, spins out two themes across six songs. Guy Ropartz would also adopt cyclic form in the Quatre poèmes d’après l’“Intermezzo” de Henri Heine (1899), which fixates obsessively on a four-note motive derived from the Dies irae. Fauré’s motivic practice differs fundamentally from that of the Franckists. Inspired by orchestral and chamber models, Chausson and Ropartz developed their themes chiefly in instrumental preludes, interludes, and postludes. In La bonne chanson, which contains only one extended introduction and no interlude longer than five bars, the motivic work permeates the vocal stanzas. Fauré’s motives are also more compact than Chausson’s lyrical themes, other than the quotation of “Lydia”: the shortest has two notes, the longest eight. The sharpest difference between Fauré and the Franck school, however, lies in the text-setting. Chausson

96      Chapter 4

and Ropartz took a traditional approach, setting the verse to symmetrical phrases in the vocal stanzas and reserving the motivic development for the instrumental sections. In La bonne chanson, the motivic work pervades the songs, creating a continuous polyphonic texture that frees the vocal line from the symmetries of the poetic meter and permits a flexible, prosaic delivery of Verlaine’s verse. Fauré’s motivic technique originated in the opera house and had a truly revolutionary impact on the mélodie. La bonne chanson contains six leitmotives, referred to here as the Mathilde, Lydia, Exquisite Hour, Avowal, Birdsong, and Sun motives (see example 4.1). Some of these monikers arise naturally. The Birdsong and Sun motives depict their objects through traditional text-painting: the first presents a duet of twittering pentatonic birdcalls; the second begins with a descending octave, falling like a heavenly ray, and continues with a majestic dotted rhythm. The Lydia motive derives from Fauré’s early Leconte de Lisle setting, while the Mathilde motive originally accompanies a litany of images evoked by her name and always returns in association with her. The names Exquisite Hour and Avowal, on the other hand, are mere placeholders derived from the texts that first accompany the two motives: the singer introduces the first on the line “C’est l’heure exquise” and the second on the avowal of love, “Que je vous aime.” These two motives, the only ones introduced by the voice, do not relate obviously to the text but accumulate meaning as they return across the cycle. As a rule, lists of leitmotives provide a paltry guide to the meaning of a dramatic work. Leitmotives do not map directly onto the text and action, except perhaps in the most formulaic opera or film score. As musical ideas, they undergo transformations that can parallel, but never duplicate, verbal discourse. Moreover, the musical material already carries a semantic charge before it ever meets the word. For example, the martial dotted rhythm of the Sun motive carries an association with nobility that stretches back to the French overture and the Sun King himself, while the pentatonic scale of the Birdsong motive belongs to a long tradition of pastoral music. In the case of La bonne chanson, moreover, the inventory fails abjectly to capture the porosity and fluid interplay of Fauré’s motives. In fact, an intricate network of structural features crisscrosses the separate leitmotives, spinning a web of meanings beneath the thematic surface. The six motives can be sorted into three structural groups, based on shared features, which we shall call the octave, appoggiatura, and Lydia families. An analysis of this structural level will bring to light the surprising depth and rigor of Fauré’s motivic design in La bonne chanson. The octave family contains Fauré’s earliest material for La bonne chanson (see example 4.2). “Donc, ce sera par un clair jour d’été,” the first song composed, begins with the Sun motive and its plunging octave. The second part of the song then inverts and arpeggiates that octave in the Avowal motive. The two motives occur, respectively, in nos. 6, 7, 9 and 5, 7, 8. The third octave motive, Exquisite Hour, emerges at the end of “La lune blanche” (no. 3) and returns in nos. 4, 5, 8,

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and 9. These motives recall the falling octaves from “En sourdine” and “À Clymène,” but they also anticipate Fauré’s two great works for the theater. Ulysses’ leitmotive in Pénélope twice leaps an octave, encompassing a major ninth like the first statement of the Avowal motive. The Theft of Fire motive in the lyric drama Prométhée (1900), a sequence of rising octaves, is cut from the same heroic cloth.11 In La bonne chanson, the octave leitmotives exude energy and confidence, representing both the majestic rays of the sun and the poet’s ardent declaration of love. Yet the burgeoning motives also express intimacy and nocturnal wonder in the hushed climax of “La lune blanche,” the second part of “Donc, ce sera par un clair jour d’été,” and the middle section of “N’est-ce pas?” The appoggiatura family encompasses the Mathilde and Birdsong motives, ˆ 5 appoggiatura (see example 4.3). This expressive figure both of which feature a 6-ˆ bookends La bonne chanson: both the opening pentatonic melody of “Une Sainte en son auréole” and the twittering pentatonic motive that begins “L’hiver a cessé” begin by leaping to a 6ˆ-ˆ5 appoggiatura. The appoggiatura also appears as an isolated figure at the beginning of “La lune blanche” and “J’allais par des chemins perfides,” and at the end of “Donc, ce sera par un clair jour d’été.” The Mathilde motive includes a ˆ2-ˆ1 appoggiatura as well, which returns in the final bars of “L’hiver a cessé” to complete the symmetry with the first song. The 6ˆ-ˆ5 figure was also present from the inception of La bonne chanson, appearing prominently in the postlude of “Donc, ce sera par un clair jour d’été.” The next song that Fauré composed, “Une Sainte en son auréole,” makes the most sustained use of the appoggiatura, and he followed it with “Avant que tu ne t’en ailles,” repurposing the 6ˆ -ˆ5 figure in the Birdsong motive.

Rumph Ex.4.2a–j page 1 of 1 example 4.2 . The octave family of leitmotives in Fauré, La bonne chanson.

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104      Chapter 4

The appoggiatura undergoes striking variations across La bonne chanson. It not only migrates between the Mathilde and Birdsong motives but also reappears in the minor mode in “J’allais par des chemins perfides,” reinterpreted there and in “La lune blanche” as a sighing figure. “J’ai presque peur, en vérité” deforms the appoggiatura almost beyond recognition. Fauré reinterpreted the opening cell of “Une Sainte en son auréole” as ˆ1-ˆ7-ˆ5, thereby removing the expressive accent from the first note. This motivic distortion complements the queasy harmonies of “J’ai presque peur, en vérité,” the most turbulent song in La bonne chanson. Fauré’s appoggiaturas have an impressive Wagnerian pedigree. The 6ˆ-ˆ5 figure, both major and minor, is the most pervasive motivic idea in Der Ring des Nibelungen. It begins the Rhinemaiden, Tarnhelm, Magic Fire, Rhinemaiden Song, and Valkyrie War Cry leitmotives—all of which Fauré and André Messager had spoofed in their four-hand Souvenirs de Bayreuth. The figure also runs through the Servitude, Rhinegold, Spear, Love, Slumber, Woodbird, and Dragon motives. The resonances with the Ring cycle are not coincidental, I shall argue, but lead to the heart of Fauré’s expressive design in La bonne chanson. The Lydia family takes its name from Fauré’s early song whose opening phrase he quoted in “La lune blanche” (see example 4.4). The melody divides into a head and tail that return separately across the cycle. The head consists of a sequence of interlocking major thirds rising to the Lydian fourth. Introduced in the third song, it returns in nos. 4 and 8. The tail is a five-note rising scale that crystallizes at the end of “La lune blanche” and permeates the fourth song. The tail also appears in the opening phrase of “Puisque l’aube grandit” and its recollection in “L’hiver a cessé.” The Lydia motive evidently held special meaning for Fauré. When Louis Aguettant queried him about the recurring themes in 1902, the composer responded: “The themes? But in truth, only one theme is recalled in the different songs of La bonne chanson, that of one of my mélodies, ‘Lydia,’ and it relates to a performer.”12 Pressed by Aguettant, Fauré acknowledged the other motives, yet “Lydia” alone stood out in his memory, doubtless because of its association with Emma Bardac. The three motivic families overlap and interpenetrate throughout La bonne chanson. Compare, for example, the opening melody of “Une Sainte en son auréole” (example 4.3a), the antiphonal birdsong at the beginning of “L’hiver a cessé” (example 4.3k), and the first appearance of the Avowal motive at the end of “J’ai presque peur, en vérité” (example 4.2b). The three motives, drawn from both the appoggiatura and octave families, all span a major ninth and outline a ˆ5-ˆ1-ˆ3-ˆ5 arpeggio—a structural similarity, as we shall see, which has important expressive implications. Similarly, the quotations of “Lydia” in “La lune blanche” and “Puisque l’aube grandit” span the same FG4-FG5 octave and end with a falling octave that recalls the Sun motive (examples 4.4b and 4.4c).

example 4.4 . Lydia family of leitmotives in Fauré, La bonne chanson.

Rumph Ex.4.4a–g page 1 of 1

a. “Une Sainte en son auréole,” mm. 88–89.

Rumph Ex.4.4a–g page 1 of 1 88

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The leitmotives of La bonne chanson not only cross family lines but also combine contrapuntally. The first example comes at the end of the third song, “La lune blanche,” where the Lydia and Exquisite Hour motives emerge simultaneously (example 4.4d). The following song, “J’allais par des chemins perfides,” unites all three families with rising scales derived from Lydia in the left hand, the Mathilde motive in the right hand, and Exquisite Hour in the voice (example 4.3f). The same combination returns in the fifth song, “J’ai presque peur, en vérité” (example 4.4e). Fauré’s motivic counterpoint neatly complements the narrative of La bonne chanson: the leitmotives reach maximal density at the midway point of the cycle, in the stressful minor-mode songs, and unfold singly thereafter. Yet the Birdsong motive, which appears in the sixth song, absorbs the counterpoint of the preceding songs. The antiphonal chirping of the birds transforms the solitary sighs of the first five songs into a merry dialogue as the lovers embark on the nuptial rites. Are we perhaps becoming too subtle in our analysis, seeking hidden relationships of which Fauré never dreamt? A letter from 1907 suggests otherwise. Fauré explained to his wife how he worked on a leitmotive from Pénélope: And when I say that I try out this theme, here is what that entails: I search out all the combinations in which I can shape this theme, according to the circumstances . . . I also see whether this theme could combine with Penelope’s. I look for all the ways of modifying it, of producing different effects, whether in its entirety or in fragments . . . In a word, I make index cards [fiches] that will serve me in the course of composition, or if you like, I make studies, as one does for a painting.13

Fauré’s account of his working methods—how he modified a motive for different contexts, treated it as a composite of simpler ideas, and explored its contrapuntal potential—exactly matches our analysis. Fauré has described the classic rhetorical

108      Chapter 4

stage of inventio, in which the author explores all the possibilities of the material before composing the work. (And the leitmotivic design certainly belonged to Fauré’s earliest conception of La bonne chanson: he recalled the Mathilde and Sun motives in “J’allais par des chemins perfides” and “Avant que tu ne t’en ailles,” both composed in the autumn of 1892, with clear semantic intent.) The letter to Marie postdates La bonne chanson, but it suggests the kind of careful thought and planning that went into the earlier work. In summary, the motives of La bonne chanson resemble neither the cyclic themes of the Franck school nor even Wagner’s early leitmotives in Das Rheingold or Die Walküre. Fauré’s motives are short, malleable figures that intertwine through a subthematic network of structural features. With the exception of the Sun and Birdsong motives, they lack the mimetic character that Wagner stamped on his Sword, Giant, Ring, or Valkyrie leitmotives. Aguettant understandably asked Fauré whether his recurring themes had a “literary value,” or whether they were merely “musical arabesques.”14 The indeterminate character of Fauré’s leitmotives allows their meaning to emerge cumulatively as they pass through diverse poetic contexts and musical variations. The Mathilde motive, for example, is originally associated with the poet’s beloved, yet the kinship with the later Birdsong motive complicates that meaning, drawing attention to the shared appoggiatura that haunts the entire cycle. Fauré’s use of leitmotives in La bonne chanson more closely resembles Wagner’s later practice, after he had absorbed Schopenhauer’s musical metaphysics. The motivic ideas of Tristan und Isolde and the later Ring enjoy a greater independence from the poetic text than in the early music dramas and develop according to a more purely musical logic. Tellingly, the Wagner work that Fauré conducted in 1887 and 1891 was the Siegfried Idyll, a textless chamber work. The Idyll shares material with the last act of Siegfried, composed in 1869, but the broad lyrical themes originated in an abandoned string quartet.15 They occur in one of the most abstract musical passages in the Ring, an aria in sonata form, and never return as leitmotives. The motivic work and contrapuntal textures of La bonne chanson also recall the chamber genre, as Fauré recognized in his 1898 arrangement for string quintet and piano. His leitmotives do not slavishly follow the verbal text. On the contrary, they form a complex, autonomous discourse that can stand up to language and its asymmetrical powers of naming. And this contest emerges immediately in the first song of La bonne chanson. L A M U S I QU E P U R E

Verlaine’s collection may have inspired Fauré’s finest song cycle, but it has met with a chilly reception. La bonne chanson has never attracted the attention lavished on Fêtes galantes and Romances sans paroles, and even the one full-length study labors to defend the paternity of Verlaine’s book.16 The problem lies in the transparency

Wagnerian correspondances    109

of the language. The poet wears his heart on his sleeve in La bonne chanson. Rather than evoke emotion indirectly through impressionistic landscapes or the shadow play of commedia dell’arte figures, he trumpets his feelings in the most obvious terms. “Puisque l’aube grandit,” the text of Fauré’s second song, will illustrate: Puisque l’aube grandit, puisque voici l’aurore, Puisque, après m’avoir fui longtemps, l’espoir veut bien Revoler devers moi qui l’appelle et l’implore, Puisque tout ce bonheur veut bien être le mien . . . Since day is breaking, since the dawn is here, Since, after eluding me for so long, hope would now Return to me who call and implore her, Since all of this happiness will truly be mine . . . The poem deals in blank generalities—hope, happiness. It lacks the delicate ambivalence of “Clair de lune,” whose maskers sing of triumphant love in the minor key, or the mysterious analogy of nature and soul in “Spleen,” where the monotonous drumming of the rain suggests a pain without origin or cause. Nature does not furnish an evocative sensual tapestry in “Puisque l’aube grandit” but functions as blunt equivalence—the rebirth of hope is like a sunrise. Antoine Adam noted the many capitalized words in La bonne chanson (“la petite Fée,” “Être de lumière,” “la Vie,” “le Nom si beau,” “l’Espoir”), which waft Verlaine’s discourse to an almost allegorical abstraction. As Adam complained: “He speaks to our intellect. He leaves nothing to our imagination.”17 In La bonne chanson, Verlaine abandoned the Symbolist virtues of ambiguity, understatement, and suggestion and embraced an unabashedly designative conception of language. It is striking, therefore, that Fauré began his cycle with the poem that best represents the Symbolist ideal of language. “Une Sainte en son auréole,” Verlaine’s eighth poem, revels in the associations aroused by the beloved’s name: Une Sainte en son auréole, Une Châtelaine en sa tour, Tout ce que contient la parole Humaine de grâce et d’amour; La note d’or que fait entendre Un cor dans le lointain des bois, Mariée à la fierté tendre Des nobles Dames d’autrefois; Avec cela le charme insigne D’un frais sourire triomphant Éclos dans des candeurs de cygne Et des rougeurs de femme-enfant;

110      Chapter 4

Des aspects nacrés, blancs et roses, Un doux accord patricien: Je vois, j’entends toutes ces choses Dans son nom Carlovingien. A Saint in her halo, A Lady of the Castle in her tower, Everything that the human word contains Of grace and love. The golden note sounded By a horn from afar in the woods, Wedded to the tender pride Of noble Ladies of long ago. With all that, the rare charm Of a fresh, triumphant smile Blooming in swan-like purity And the blushes of a child-bride. Pearly aspects, white and pink, A sweet patrician harmony: I see, I hear all these things In her Carolingian name. “Parole” and “nom” bookend this feast of language, but Verlaine has also hidden “signe” within the third stanza—“Le charme insigne,” “des candeurs de cygne.” The poem names neither feelings nor ideas. All is connotation, suggestion, evocative imagery. Verlaine’s poem recalls Mallarmé’s dictum from an 1891 interview: “To name an object is to suppress three-quarters of the poem’s pleasure, which comes from the joy of guessing it little by little; to suggest it, there is the dream.”18 “Une Sainte en son auréole” celebrates a conception of the verbal sign that had become common currency by the 1890s. The poem begins with two images of enclosure: the halo that surrounds the saint and the tower that guards the lady of the castle. The third line then introduces the word as “that which contains”— that is, as another sacred repository. Yet the sign-vessel does not aspire to transcendent meaning; the enjambment of lines 3–4 makes that clear by highlighting “Humaine.” The human word merely stimulates a web of earthbound, sensory associations. Synesthetic correspondances traverse “Une Sainte en son auréole,” which pairs rosy blushes with hunting horns, and downy white skin with aristocratic harmonies. The poem ends with a marriage of eye and eye—“I see, I hear all these things.”

Wagnerian correspondances    111

Significantly, Verlaine omitted the name itself. Of course, anyone who has read the dedication page knows Mathilde’s name. Within the context of the poem, however, the omission preserves the mystery of the sign, allowing its meaning to emerge through the play of associations. Verlaine’s poem thus realizes Mallarmé’s famous goal: “To paint not the thing itself, but the effect that it produces.”19 Mallarmé’s quest for la poésie pure, a poetry that escapes the debased language of representation, found its most radical statement in his sonnet “Ses purs ongles.” The famous “Sonnet en –yx” far outstrips Verlaine’s poem in its rejection of designative language, yet it bears close comparison with Fauré’s setting. Mallarmé’s poem and Fauré’s song both enact a movement from representation to pure structure, a shared process that illuminates both how the Symbolists “musicalized” poetry and how Fauré used the Wagnerian leitmotive to outdo them at their own game. Mallarmé’s daunting poem thematizes the death of referentiality and birth of a purified poetic language.20 The octet is filled with images of decay, death, and resurrection—anguish, tears, midnight, vespers, nothingness, ashes, the phoenix, the river Styx: Ses purs ongles très haut dédiant leur onyx, L’Angoisse, ce minuit, soutient, lampadophore, Maint rêve vespéral brûlé par le Phénix Que ne recueille pas de cinéraire amphore Sur les crédences, au salon vide: nul ptyx, Aboli bibelot d’inanité sonore, (Car le Maître est allé puiser des pleurs au Styx Avec ce seul objet dont le Néant s’honore.) Her pure nails on high dedicating their onyx, Anguish, this midnight, supports, a lamp-holder, Many a twilight dream burnt by the Phoenix Which will not be collected by any funeral urn On the credenzas, in the empty room: no ptyx, Abolished bauble of sonorous inanity, (For the Master has gone to draw tears from the Styx With that sole source of the Void’s vanity.) The meaningless word “ptyx,” which Mallarmé invented to fill out the rhyme scheme, empties language of reference, serving as a mere repository like the funeral urn.21 Nevertheless, the poet will replenish the word in the immortal waters of the Styx. The sestet presides over the redemption of language. The “or” (gold) of the first line suggests the alchemy that transforms base discourse into pure poetry. The virginal water sprite survives the assault on language and endures as self-referential (mirrored) beauty, fixed like an eternal constellation:

112      Chapter 4

Mais proche la croisée au nord vacante, un or Agonise selon peut-être le décor Des licornes ruant du feu contre une nixe, Elle, défunte nue en le miroir, encor Que, dans l’oubli fermé par le cadre, se fixe De scintillations sitôt le septuor. But near the casement onto the vacant north, a gold Is dying, in accord perhaps with the décor Of unicorns rushing fire against a water sprite, She who, dead and naked in the mirror, still In the oblivion enclosed by the frame, is fixed As soon by scintillations as the septet. With the final word, “septuor,” Mallarmé allied poetry with the Symbolists’ paragon of nonrepresentational language, music. Indeed, music—that is, the play of pure sonorities—provided the raison d’être of Mallarmé’s text. The poet began with an exacting rhyme scheme, basing his sonnet on only two rhymes, including the rare -yx for which he had to coin a new word. Moreover, he reversed the gender of the rhymes in the sestet, switching from -yx/-ore to -ixe/-or. Form and sonority, rather than meaning, generates “Ses purs ongles.” As Mallarmé explained to Henri Cazalis, the sonnet did not originate in a theme or subject: “It is the opposite, I mean that the sense, if there is one . . . is evoked by the internal mirage of the words themselves.”22 Yet if music provides a negative image of language in Mallarmé’s sonnet, it also points to a higher meaning that can emerge from the systematic organization of sound. The sonnet shows, as Roger Pearson put it, “the writer teetering on the edge of a fold: to one side is language as noise, a meaningless babble; to the other, language as constellation, a mysterious and potentially significant domain of revealing interconnections.”23 The poem progressively traverses this fold as its “musical” structure moves into the foreground. Mallarmé’s sonnet begins with a characteristic play of homophones that multiply and scatter meaning. “Ses purs ongles” conceals pur son (pure sound), while “l’Angoisse” fuses langue and angoisse (language-anguish). Likewise, the -ore rhymes anticipate the alchemist’s gold that begins the sestet. The -yx rhymes, on the other hand, suggest a different kind of signification, based on resemblance rather than arbitrary association. The -x looks like a cross, the instrument on which language will be put to death. The symmetrical chi (×) also forms the mystical symbol of the chiasmus. More abstractly, the cross-shaped letter echoes the formal structure of the rimes croisées (abab) in the octet. The -yx does not represent these objects arbitrarily, in the manner of words. Like a musical sign, it functions iconically, imi-

Wagnerian correspondances    113

tating qualities of the object in the same way that Wagner’s Forging motive represents hammering or Fauré’s Sun motive represents a falling sunbeam. The neologism ptyx plays a pivotal role in the movement from arbitrary to iconic representation. The word not only is meaningless but even prompts an alliterative babble of word-music—“Aboli bibelot”—that itself contains a chiastic vowel structure (o-i/i-o).24 Ptyx may be a linguistic “inanity,” but it obeys a perfect musical logic. The -yx rhyme resembles a musical motive that is spun out in different variants without losing its identity—onyx, Phénix, ptyx, Styx. Composers and listeners demand not that a motive encode a meaning but merely that it remains recognizable to the ear. The meaningless neologism thus releases language from arbitrary meaning into a purely sonorous, musical logic. Mallarmé acknowledged as much in a letter to Leconte de Lisle: “I just needed a rhyme for Styx; not finding one, I created an instrument of a new music.”25 “Ses purs ongles” does not abandon linguistic meaning (it cannot and still remain comprehensible), but the sestet increasingly reflects on the nonsignifying structure of the poem. This turn begins in line 9 with “la croisée au nord vacante.” The phrase refers cryptically to a window casement, but it also comments on the rimes croisées directly above in the octet—that is, to the north. The crossed rhymes are indeed “vacant,” based on pure sonority. The reflecting “mirror” in line 12 alludes similarly to the chiastic shape of the -x, while the “frame” in line 13 points to the rhyme structure that encloses the poem. The reflection on the poetic structure culminates in the final word, “septuor,” which gazes back over the seven rhyming pairs of the sonnet. Septuor even contains seven letters, a structural mirroring of its meaning. The musical term thus consummates a movement from arbitrary linguistic meaning to a mode of signification based solely on sonic resemblance and formal relationships. Let us now trace this same movement across Faure’s setting of “Une Sainte en son auréole.” The song begins with a graceful three-bar theme in the piano, the first member of the appoggiatura family (example 4.3a). The lilting triple meter and pentatonic melody suggest nostalgic innocence, while the four-part imitative counterpoint adds a learned flavor. The theme evokes bygone music, a polyphonic chanson that complements Verlaine’s chivalric imagery. The pianist repeats the theme twice verbatim, dutifully supporting the singer’s declamation. In this first version, the piano theme performs a traditional mimetic function, imitating a characteristic style that enhances the poetic text. Yet the musical sign immediately begins to exceed its representational function. Fauré constructed the melody from a single three-note cell (F-EH-C) whose sequential repetition (BH-AH-F) completes the pentatonic scale. As the song modulates to HIII, the melody is liquidated in a descending sequence (mm. 10–13). The return to the tonic in m. 14 unveils a more concentrated version of the opening melody, shorn of its upbeat and compressed into two bars (example 4.3b). Fauré

114      Chapter 4 example 4.5 . Fauré, “Une Sainte en son auréole,” La bonne chanson, mm. 22–27. 22

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has also rotated the two cells vertically so that the first three notes now repeat up a fourth, instead of down a fifth. This rotation imparts a serpentine contour to the melody, reminiscent of the graceful arabesque-like lines of the Cinq mélodies “de Venise.” The reworked theme now has two appoggiaturas, 6ˆ-ˆ5 and ˆ2-ˆ1. It also departs from the pentatonic scale, ending on a DJ. With this surplus of operations—liquidation, compression, rotation, chromatic ornamentation—the piano theme departs from its mimetic, text-bound function and begins to obey a more purely musical logic. Indeed, the piano is evolving its own discourse. The new version of the theme is the prototype of the Mathilde leitmotive that will recur across La bonne chanson. The birth of this musical sign, moreover, is directly associated with language, arriving as the singer delivers the phrase “la parole/Humaine.” The piano states the new motive three times while the singer sustains the tonic. Floating above the singer’s pedal point like overtones above a fundamental, the graceful arabesques suggest the images emanating from the verbal symbol. No longer the signifier of a historical style, the opening melody has begun to represent language itself. The opening pentatonic theme undergoes more radical transformations in the second stanza. The piano introduces a new three-bar theme, stated four times (see example 4.5). The theme oscillates between ninth chords, connected by the common-tone FH/E in the top voice. This ostinato passage contains all the elements of the opening piano theme, but Fauré has reordered them with an almost Cubist abstraction. The first three notes of the melody return but are projected into the bass line and rewritten in the minor. The twin appoggiaturas of the opening melody also return, but Fauré has combined them vertically in the two hands: the bass line reprises the 6ˆ -ˆ5 appoggiatura, while the upper FH, the minor second of EH major, preserves the ˆ2-ˆ1 dyad. These contrapuntal manipulations render the

Wagnerian correspondances    115

pentatonic theme almost unrecognizable. Fauré’s medieval chanson has vanished into a formalist labyrinth, leaving Verlaine’s text far behind. Yet, paradoxically, this passage also contains the most explicit text-painting in the song. The monotonous FH in the right hand represents, in literal fashion, the “golden note” of the horn echoing in the woods. The most overt musical mimesis in “Une Sainte en son auréole” thus coincides with the most abstract motivic development. The passage exposes the fundamental polarity of the leitmotive—both its capacity for referential meaning and its susceptibility to formal processes that disperse that meaning. Appropriately, it is counterpoint, a uniquely musical technique, which produces this paradox. At the beginning of “Une Sainte en son auréole,” the learned style functions as a musical signifier, evoking the lost world of saints, castles, and noble ladies. Yet Fauré’s linear texture, which emerges so effectively in the 1898 string transcription, is no mere splash of local color. It persists throughout the entire song and eventually absorbs the pentatonic theme into its combinatorial web. The fourth stanza completes the process of abstraction. The ostinato passage from the second stanza returns before the penultimate line, together with the monotonous horn call (mm. 70–75). Yet the repeated note no longer merely represents a horn. The recollection of the motive now enacts the process of memory and association (“I see, I hear all these things”), allowing singer and audience to partake in the poetic imagination. The musical echo precedes the climax of the song, the enunciation of the word “nom” (mm. 79–80). As the singer declaims the longawaited word, the piano unfurls the final variation of the opening melody (example 4.3c). The circular chromatic motive from the first stanza returns above another pedal point, but Fauré has reversed the order of the two motivic cells so that the melody begins on BH with the ˆ2-ˆ1 appoggiatura. This is the definitive version of the leitmotive that will return across the song cycle. As in the first stanza, Fauré has coordinated the arrival of the motive with a reference to language, but he has drawn the connection more pointedly. The pianist pauses dramatically on a cadential I6/4, after which the voice enters alone for the first time in the song. The Mathilde leitmotive arrives precisely on “nom,” circling above the voice as it sustains another long tonic pedal. The opening melody has become the embodiment of language, the musical analogue of the (unnamed) name. Fauré’s leitmotive thus accomplishes what poetry could not achieve. It represents the nonrepresentational—not with a nonsense syllable like ptyx, but with a coherent and logically developed theme. “Une Sainte en son auréole” culminates in a purified language, a music that has cut all ties to representation. By the end of the song, the opening motive has shed the pentatonic scale and counterpoint that bound it to Verlaine’s medieval imagery; the horn call has fallen silent; and all that remains is the meaningless play of the arabesque. Fauré’s song births an ideal Symbolist language, a poésie pure that draws its meaning solely from the inner play of its own structure.

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Yet Fauré has gone a step beyond Mallarmé. For all the poet’s efforts at abstraction, the word still clings to its referents and only achieves purity in the gesture of renunciation. As Hugo Friedrich put it, “Language halts at the outermost bound at which it can still, by obliterating objects, create in the negative word itself a space to admit the Void.”26 The Wagnerian leitmotive allowed Fauré to summon the form of language yet drain it of meaning. The first song of La bonne chanson unveils la musique pure, a music that has passed through the fire and emerged transfigured. I N SE A R C H O F “LY D IA”

Like any sign, the leitmotive belongs to two domains, the syntactic and semantic. As a purely musical idea, the motive is embedded within the formal syntax of the work, its systematic organization of pitch, rhythm, texture, and timbre. As a signifier, the motive belongs to a semantic system, the interpretive contexts and lexicon of conventional signs that allow a listener to construct extramusical meanings. Of the six leitmotives in La bonne chanson, the Lydia motive lays strongest claim to the semantic. Listeners might hear the Mathilde, Avowal, Exquisite Hour, and even Sun and Birdsong motives as beautiful but meaningless forms—“musical arabesques,” as Aguettant put it. But Fauré’s blatant self-quotation, which any listener familiar with his songs will recognize, inevitably provokes speculation. Does the quotation betoken a hidden romantic program, as the composer intimated, a tribute to the woman whose presence pervades La bonne chanson? Should we rather interpret it within Fauré’s wider fascination with “Lydia,” whose melody resurfaces throughout his works, most notably in the love theme from Pénélope? Or did Fauré recall the Leconte de Lisle setting, the ne plus ultra of his Parnassian manner, as a stylistic foil to the Dionysian song cycle? Like the Dies irae in Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique or “Ein’ feste Burg” in Debussy’s En blanc et noir, the recollections of “Lydia” divert attention from the purely musical experience, impelling the listener to reflect and interpret. Yet, ironically, the most extroverted leitmotive in La bonne chanson is also the one most deeply embedded within the musical structure. When we trace the history of the Lydia motive, it becomes clear that Fauré was not simply pasting a preexisting song onto an autonomous musical structure. The following analysis will trace two separate genealogies of the Lydia motive: first, its evolution across the score of La bonne chanson, and second, its compositional genesis from September 1892 to late 1893. We will encounter the same paradox found in “Une Sainte en son auréole,” namely, that the most representational elements in La bonne chanson are also the most structurally contingent. Opening the score of La bonne chanson, we discover the origins of the Lydia motive in the very first bar. The pentatonic melody that begins “Une Sainte en son auréole” lacks a fourth degree, skipping from EH to C. This degree, of course, defines the Lydian mode. When the prototype of the Mathilde leitmotive appears

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a few bars later, it fills in the gap between EH and C with a DJ—that is, the Lydian fourth. In the Mathilde motive, of course, the raised fourth functions as a chromatic ornament, part of a double neighbor-tone figure. The postlude, however, transforms the DJ into a truly modal element (example 4.4a). After playing the Mathilde motive thrice, the piano closes with a quaintly archaic cadence. The left and right hands expand from a sixth to an octave in the manner of a medieval cadence, and the melody rises through the Lydian scale to EH (mm. 88–89). The second song, “Puisque l’aube grandit,” continues to unfold the modal implications of the raised fourth. The singer’s first phrase ends with the five-note tail of “Lydia” in its original rhythm (example 4.4b). But this reminiscence involves more than just the melody of Fauré’s early song. The Lydian CG in mm. 3–4 also triggers a move to the mediant, leading to a firm half cadence in B minor. This is the “Lydia” modulation that Fauré pioneered in the early song and analyzed in his letter concerning Caligula.27 The Lydian fourth from the end of the first song thus not only invades the melody of the second song but commandeers its harmonic syntax. Fauré’s seamless development of the modal element forges a link between the songs, the first of many such connections in La bonne chanson. Fauré also created a harmonic connection between “Puisque l’aube grandit” and the third song, “La lune blanche,” where the full quotation of “Lydia” emerges. The second song ends with an abrupt harmonic detour into HVII, F major (mm. 43–45). The singer soars to a climactic high F in this startling new key, after which a V7 chord shepherds the song back to G major. “La lune blanche” begins with a similar swerve toward HVII, in this case E major (mm. 2–4). The singer’s first phrase rises toward the upper tonic, FG5, but bumps up against EJ5, the flat seventh degree. The EJ arrives above an FG-minor chord and leads to B7, implying a ii7-V7-I cadence in E major. And, indeed, the “Lydia” quotation begins in E major, realizing the implied progression (example 4.4c). The detour into HVII thus links the full revelation of “Lydia” to the end of the second song, continuing the evolution of the quoted material. The connection between the second and third songs begins even earlier, however, and extends beyond harmony to the linear structure. In “La lune blanche,” the quotation of “Lydia” ends on the peak of its first phrase, here DG5, but the melody continues to climb to a triumphant FG5 as the stanza closes in the tonic. The “Lydia” quotation thus completes the interrupted ascent of the singer’s first phrase, which had stalled on EJ5 in m. 3.28 The entire first stanza of “La lune blanche,” including the parenthetical quotation of “Lydia,” elaborates an octave ascent from FG4 to FG5. The vocal melody even ends with a falling octave from FG5 to FG4, bracketing the middle-ground line. The identical octave ascent also underlies the first appearance of “Lydia” in the previous song. In the first phrase of “Puisque l’aube grandit,” which recalls both the melody and modal progression of the early mélodie, the singer descends to FG4 and

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then climbs to a full-throated FG5. As in “La lune blanche,” moreover, the singer immediately drops the octave. The parallel passages thus inaugurate the octave family of leitmotives, anticipating the falling octave of the Sun motive. This makes perfect sense, of course, since the first quotation of “Lydia” occurs on the word “aurore” (dawn). The end of “La lune blanche” seals the union of the octave and Lydia families: as the five-note Lydia tail motive repeats in the piano, the voice leaps the octave from FG4 to FG5, introducing the Exquisite Hour motive (example 4.4d). The fourth song, “J’allais par des chemins perfides,” unfurls an even richer counterpoint of leitmotives. In the final stanza, as the poet celebrates the triumph of love over adversity, the three motives from the previous songs return in triple counterpoint, representing all three leitmotivic families (example 4.3f). The right hand plays the Mathilde motive while the left hand plays rising scales derived from the five-note tail of the Lydia motive, which immediately precedes the passage in m. 46 and appears earlier in m. 13. Meanwhile, the singer leaps from FG4 to FG5 with the Exquisite Hour motive, recalling the identical octave ascent that framed the first two recollections of “Lydia.” With this dense counterpoint, Fauré consummated the intertwined development of his first three leitmotives. Let us consider now the compositional history of La bonne chanson. The systematic development of motives across the first four songs might suggest a corresponding genealogy in Fauré’s work on the cycle. Yet the manuscript record tells a different story. Fauré completed the first and fourth songs by the autumn of 1892 but did not compose the second and third songs until 1893. The triple counterpoint of “J’allais par des chemins perfides,” therefore, predates the introduction of the “Lydia” quotations and Exquisite Hour motive in the second and third songs. In other words, Fauré wrote the three-part counterpoint first and then unpacked its individual lines the following year in “Puisque l’aube grandit” and “La lune blanche.” Clearly, he had already composed “Une Sainte en son auréole” before writing “J’allais par des chemins perfides,” since he recalled the Mathilde motive exactly as it appears in the first song. But there is no reason to believe that Fauré had “Lydia” in mind at all, since he did not compose the two songs that quote the early mélodie until a year later. More likely, he was simply concerned with writing good counterpoint, which required a voice moving in contrary motion with the falling contour of the Mathilde motive. Indeed, this contrapuntal combination appears in the opening bars of “J’allais par des chemins perfides” (example 4.3e). The pianist’s left hand plays a rising scale in quarter notes against sighing appoggiaturas in the right hand. The plodding bass line, depicting the poet’s heavy steps as he treads the “treacherous paths,” foreshadows the rising lines of the final counterpoint, just as the doleful appoggiaturas anticipate the Mathilde motive. At the mention of the beloved in m. 13, a fivenote motive in rising eighth notes appears in the right hand. This is the Lydia motive from the end of “La lune blanche.” In 1892, however, Fauré did not treat the

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five-note line as a differentiated motive. It appears only twice in “J’allais par des chemins perfides” and emerges each time from a background of rising scales. It appears, then, that the Lydia leitmotive originated as a nondescript scalar motive whose rising contour was dictated by a fundamental principle of part-writing, contrary motion. We may draw two important conclusions from this analysis of the first four songs of La bonne chanson. First, and most surprisingly, it appears that Fauré did not derive the Lydia leitmotive from his early mélodie. On the contrary, the quotations of “Lydia” in “Puisque l’aube grandit” and “La lune blanche” were inspired by a five-note motive that the composer had introduced the previous year in “J’allais par des chemins perfides.” This motive, in turn, arose out of contrapuntal necessity, providing a rising line that could balance the descending contour of the Mathilde motive and its drooping appoggiaturas. As in the Cinq mélodies de “Venise,” the abstraction of Fauré’s motivic conception stands out. The musical structure generates the leitmotive, just as the -xy and -ore rhymes generate the text of Mallarmé’s “Ses purs ongles.” Second, Fauré integrated the quotations of “Lydia” within La bonne chanson in ways that strongly blur the boundary between syntax and semantics, form and content. The modal cadence at the end of “Une Sainte en son auréole” may anticipate the quotation of “Lydia” in the following song, but it also realizes the implications of the DJ in the Mathilde motive, creating a characteristically Fauréan alloy of tonality and modality. “La lune blanche” explicitly quotes “Lydia,” but Fauré embedded the melody within a linear-harmonic structure derived from the end of “Puisque l’aube grandit” that bears no semantic relation to the quoted mélodie. And the FG4-FG5 octave that frames the quotations of “Lydia” in both the second and third songs originated in the climactic passage of “J’allais par des chemins perfides,” where it functions as merely one strand within a three-part contrapuntal texture. “Lydia” repeatedly breaks the thematic surface of La bonne chanson, but its roots are lodged inextricably within the harmonic and contrapuntal structure. The most richly connotative leitmotive in the cycle is also the one most deeply enmeshed in the musical syntax. The search for “Lydia,” paradoxically, leads away from extramusical signification and into the opaque structures of the musical signifier. A C YC L E O F NAT U R E

So far, this chapter has peered at La bonne chanson through a Mallarméan lens, exploring how Fauré destabilized the representational function of musical signs. Yet the song cycle betrays none of Mallarmé’s metaphysical angst, nor does it withdraw into solipsistic reflection on the act of writing. If Fauré complicated human communication in La bonne chanson, he did so in order to unveil a higher discourse. As in the Cinq mélodies “de Venise,” the composer has interwoven human

Rumph Ex.4.6a–c page 1 of 3 120      Chapter 4 example 4.6 . Pentatonic leitmotives in Richard Wagner, Der Ring des Nibelungen.

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and natural music to suggest the hidden connections that bind humanity to the cosmos. In La bonne chanson, moreover, the inspiration seems to have come directly from Wagner. The time has come to explore Fauré’s ubiquitous 6ˆ-ˆ5 appoggiaturas, especially in the pentatonic themes that frame the song cycle. The piano melody that opens “Une Sainte en son auréole” may sound familiar to listeners acquainted with the Ring cycle. In fact, the first six notes replicate the melody of the Slumber motive from the end of Die Walküre. (Wagner’s leitmotive also appears in mm. 37–47 of the Siegfried Idyll.) The Slumber motive belongs to a trio of pentatonic leitmotives in the Ring, all of which begin with a 6ˆ-ˆ5 appoggiatura (see example 4.6). The family resemblance with “Une Sainte en son auréole” appears most clearly in the Rhinemaiden motive, which shares the triple meter and key of AH major. The Woodbird motive, meanwhile, has its counterpart in Fauré’s Birdsong motive, which inhabits the identical pentatonic collection. The Woodbird motive, we should note, appears during the Forest Murmurs in Siegfried, the scene that Fauré claimed had inspired his early Ballade (op. 19).29

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Fauré quoted other composers throughout his career, almost always with witty or ironic intent. He borrowed the refrain of his early song “Tristesse” from Bach’s Passacaglia in C Minor, whose brooding gothic tone betrays the theatrical posturing of Gautier’s melancholic poem.30 Kœchlin located another Bach allusion in Fauré’s Madrigal (op. 35), which quotes the cantata Aus tiefer Not schrei’ich zu dir—a waggish choice for a wedding serenade!31 Pénélope contains an overt allusion to Tristan und Isolde, which, as discussed in the next chapter, mirrors the plot of Fauré’s opera. Katherine Bergeron has identified a quotation from Prélude à L’après-midi d’un faune in “Danseuse” (Mirages), an angular rewriting of Debussy’s flute melody that reflects post–World War I aesthetics.32 Finally, the String Quartet (op. 121), begins with a solo viola line that recalls the motto of Beethoven’s Quartet in F, op. 135 (“Der schwer gefasste Entschluss”), famously quoted in Franck’s Symphony in D Minor. The allusion to Beethoven’s last quartet provides an apt epigraph for Fauré’s valedictory work and perhaps a reflection on his own mortality (“Must it be? It must be!”).33 La bonne chanson itself contains a second self-quotation alongside “Lydia,” indeed, from another Leconte de Lisle setting. In “Puisque l’aube grandit,” the pentatonic melody of “Les roses d’Ispahan” (1884) returns on the words “que ce soit par des sentiers de mousse” (mm. 23–25). Fauré had orchestrated the song in 1891, and the repeated word “mousse” in Leconte de Lisle’s poem doubtless triggered the association. Yet the pentatonic snippet also anticipates Verlaine’s following stanza, where the poet tells his beloved, “Je chanterai des airs ingénus” (I shall sing simple airs). Given Fauré’s fondness for witty intertextual allusions, memories of the Ring should come as no great surprise in La bonne chanson, his work that most fully embraces Wagner’s leitmotivic technique. Moreover, the Slumber motive fits perfectly with the text of “Une Sainte en son auréole.” The leitmotive summons the vision of Brünnhilde ringed with fire atop her rocky crag, an image that neatly complements Verlaine’s opening lines: “A Saint in her halo, / A lady of the castle in her tower.” The note of the hunting horn, echoing in the depths of the woods, completes the Wagnerian vignette. At a metaphorical level, the Slumber motive suggests the images lying dormant within the beloved’s name, waiting to be awakened like Brünnhilde at Siegfried’s kiss. In the Ring cycle, Wagner’s three pentatonic motives occupy a liminal space between nature and humanity, meaningless sound and articulate speech. The Rhinemaidens materialize from the water as elemental forces of nature, uttering a speech-song that bubbles up from the play of -w and -l sounds: Weia! Waga! Woge, du Welle, walle zur Wiege! wagala weia! wallala, weiala weia! The Woodbird also traverses human and animal speech as it converses with Siegfried; its leitmotive begins as a woodwind melody but takes on human voice and

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language after Siegfried tastes Fafner’s blood. The Slumber motive, finally, represents Brünnhilde’s vegetative sleep as she awaits rebirth as a mortal woman. The pentatonic scale, a traditional signifier of the pastoral mode, lends the three leitmotives the sense of a harmonious union with nature. Whether or not Fauré had the Ring in mind, his pentatonic leitmotives play the identical role in La bonne chanson, serving as mediators between humanity and nature. Fauré blurred the line between human and natural music most obviously through the quotation of “Lydia” in the third song. The quoted song is explicitly framed as scenic music. In each of the stanzas of “La lune blanche,” Verlaine set off the last line with a blank space as if to suggest the ineffable mysteries of the nightscape. The first stanza trails off after the mention of little voices beneath the foliage: La lune blanche Luit dans les bois; De chaque branche Part une voix Sous la ramée . . .

The white moon Shines in the woods; From every branch Comes a voice Beneath the foliage . . .

Ô bien-aimée.

O beloved.

The piano fills this white space with the “Lydia” quotation, lending a song to the hidden choir. The human mélodie becomes a voice of nature. The opening appoggiatura of La bonne chanson also bridges human and natural realms as it recurs throughout the cycle. In “Une Sainte en son auréole,” the 6ˆ-ˆ5 figure belongs to a human genre, the courtly chanson. The appoggiatura returns with a different meaning in the first stanza of “La lune blanche” as the text pictures the little choir beneath the branches, and again in the second stanza as the wind weeps in the willows (mm. 23–30). The sighing appoggiaturas now belong to the animistic world of singing branches and murmuring trees that Fauré had portrayed so eloquently in his first Verlaine cycle. “J’allais par des chemins perfides” subsequently returns the 6ˆ -ˆ5 figure to its human origins in the form of an operatic sigh, expressing the poet’s tribulations. Fauré fused human and natural expression most poetically in his treatment of avian music. To understand the role of birdsong in his expressive design, we must first consider the overall form of La bonne chanson. For many reasons, the cycle divides most persuasively into two nearly equal parts (5 + 4 songs). The first half concentrates on three leitmotives (Mathilde, Lydia, and Exquisite Hour), which emerge during the serene opening songs and enter into increasingly dense counterpoint in the turbulent fourth and fifth songs. The key scheme of La bonne chanson matches this emotional descent: the first five songs sink stepwise (AH-G-FG-fGe), reaching a nadir in “J’ai presque peur, en vérité.”34 The arrival of the Avowal motive at the end of the fifth song brings the first half of the cycle to a triumphant

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conclusion. The poet seals the moment by addressing his beloved for the first time with the informal tu—“Que je vous aime! Que je t’aime!” This intimate declaration of love, the equivalent of a marriage proposal, signals the end of the poet’s tribulations and the turn to the wedding rituals. “Avant que tu ne t’en ailles,” which begins before dawn and ends with the glorious sunrise, inaugurates the second half of the cycle. The Sun motive, which appears at the end of this song, returns immediately at the beginning of “Donc, ce sera par un clair jour d’été” as the poet pictures the radiant summer wedding, creating a smooth transition between the songs. Three new leitmotives (Avowal, Birdsong, and Sun) dominate the second half of La bonne chanson as the poet keeps the wedding vigil (no. 6), proceeds to the marriage ceremony and wedding night (7), and sets forth on his new life (8 and 9). The key scheme also ceases its stepwise descent after the fifth song and begins to rotate around a minor-third cycle ([e]DH-BH-G-BH), just as the poet enters into the biological cycles of marriage and generation. And at this critical juncture, at the beginning of the second half of La bonne chanson, the pentatonic Birdsong motive makes its debut. “Avant que tu ne t’en ailles” plays a pivotal role in La bonne chanson, bridging the two halves of the cycle with its unique two-part form. Fauré exploited the pantoum-like form of the poem to portray the ambivalent moment before sunrise when the world is suspended between night and day. Verlaine interleaved two distinct poems within the stanzas, separated by dashes. In the first half of each stanza, the poet entreats Venus (both evening and morning star) to convey his love to the slumbering fiancée; the second half switches to excited exclamations describing the arrival of dawn: Avant que tu ne t’en ailles, Pâle étoile du matin, – Mille cailles Chantent, chantent dans le thym. – Tourne devers le poète, Dont les yeux sont pleins d’amour; – L’alouette Monte au ciel avec le jour. – Tourne ton regard que noie L’aurore dans son azur; – Quelle joie Parmi les champs de blé mûr! – Puis fais luire ma pensée Là-bas—bien loin, oh, bien loin! – La rosée Gaîment brille sur le foin. –

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Dans le doux rêve où s’agite Ma mie endormie encor . . . – Vite, vite, Car voici le soleil d’or. – Before you depart, Pale morning star, – A thousand quail Are singing, singing in the thyme. – Turn toward the poet, Whose eyes are full of love; – The lark Soars into the sky with daybreak. – Turn your gaze drowned By the blue dawn; – What joy Amid the fields of ripe corn! – Then make my thoughts shine There—far away, ah, far away! – The dew Glitters brightly on the hay! – Into the sweet dream where still sleeping My love is stirring . . . – Quickly, quickly, For here is the golden sun. – The braided poems present opposing states. The first half of each stanza, contemplative and retrospective, lingers in the realm of sleep and dreams; the second half, spontaneous and forward-looking, revels in the sights and sounds of morning. Fauré sharpened this antithesis through contrasting tempos and meters, juxtaposing a stately 3/4 Quasi adagio to a boisterous 2/4 Allegro moderato. The final stanza synthesizes the opposing states: the Allegro moderato supplants the slower tempo while retaining its 3/4 meter. The two halves of Verlaine’s poem flow together in a mighty flood, crowned by the virile Sun motive. “Avant que tu ne t’en ailles” thus splices the two halves of the cycle, enacting in microcosm the journey from separation to union, anticipation to consummation. Yet Fauré’s setting dramatizes another dialectic within La bonne chanson: the opposition of human and natural song. The first halves of Verlaine’s stanzas are highly mannered, steeped in the conventions of the medieval aubade. The archaic diction (“devers,” “ma mie”), elaborate metaphor, and rhetorical exclamatio in the

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126      Chapter 4

fourth stanza identify the verses as a poetic performance. Indeed, this is the only song in La bonne chanson that identifies the protagonist as a poet. Fauré responded to this stilted verse with strict four-part writing, redolent of the archaic chanson in “Une Sainte en son auréole.” The second halves of Verlaine’s stanzas, by contrast, abandon literary artifice and register experience in artless description, emphasized by the telegraphic third lines. Fauré’s setting also sheds its courtly raiment and erupts in a flurry of arpeggios and birdcalls. Hymnody gives way to birdsong, human expression to the voices of nature. Fauré flagged this transition with a motivic link. The fifth song ends with the Avowal motive as the poet exclaims, “Que je vous aime.” On this first appearance, the leitmotive arpeggiates a 6/4 chord like a triumphal fanfare (example 4.2b). “Avant que tu ne t’en ailles” immediately recalls the motive in the first Allegro moderato section. At the mention of the singing quail, the singer retraces the contour of the Avowal motive with another heraldic flourish, outlining the same 6/4 arpeggio (example 4.2c). The poet’s confession of love now resounds in the heavens, caroled by the avian choir. With this motivic transformation, Fauré has enlarged the scope of music in La bonne chanson. Human song, represented by the polyphonic chanson, the four-part hymn, and the quotations of “Lydia,” gives way in the second half of the cycle to a more universal song that permeates the cosmos. Fauré enacted this metamorphosis most eloquently in the transition between the last two songs. Let us linger for a moment over the marvelous penultimate song, the true gem of La bonne chanson. “N’est-ce pas?” provides a balance to its symmetrical counterpart, “Puisque l’aube grandit,” also in G major. The second song also pictured the lovers journeying together, but they now set forth as newlyweds: N’est-ce pas? nous irons, gais et lents, dans la voie Modeste que nous montre en souriant l’Espoir, Peu soucieux qu’on nous ignore ou qu’on nous voie. Isn’t it so? We shall go, happily but slowly, along the modest path That Hope, smiling, will show us, Caring little who notices or sees us. Fauré invested this humble journey with a mythic grandeur, drawing on another signifier from the Ring cycle (example 4.7). “N’est-ce pas?” begins with the Exquisite Hour motive, a lone rising octave in the bass. Projected into this deep register and followed by a rising fifth, the motive evokes the overtone series, through which Wagner had portrayed virginal nature in the Rheingold prelude. The singer’s first phrase then arpeggiates the tonic triad, completing the “chord of nature” (mm. 3–4). The intervals of the singer’s first phrase also follow a strict series, expanding from a unison to a second, third, and fourth. “N’est-ce pas?” allies the

Wagnerian correspondances    127

lovers to the mathematical structure of the cosmos as if a new Adam and Eve, pure and unsullied, were venturing forth from Eden. The singer’s first phrase introduces a Lydian fourth, another parallel with the second song. The CG predictably triggers a “Lydia” modulation as in the opening phrase of “Puisque l’aube grandit.” The first phrase of “N’est-ce pas?” also seems headed for a cadence on the mediant, B minor, but the progression is blocked by a deceptive cadence in m. 9. The melody circles hypnotically for two bars, its harmonic resolution deflated twice more by deceptive cadences. The protracted phrase finally reaches its mediant goal, a luminous B-major cadence that ushers in the middle section of the song. Fauré had never used the “Lydia” modulation so artfully, but he reserved his finest effect for the da capo. After a nocturnal interlude, the lovers renew their journey: Sans nous préoccuper de ce que nous destine Le Sort, nous marcherons pourtant du même pas . . . Without troubling ourselves over what Destiny Holds in store, we shall walk together . . . The reprise of the opening phrase heads again toward the mediant and is blocked by the same series of deceptive cadences. But instead of succumbing to the narcotic spell of B major, the vocal line surges to C, dragging the surprised piano into C major through a traditional tonal progression (mm. 52–53). A happy metaphor: as the couple strides bravely into the future, the song casts off the old church modes and embraces modern tonality! The middle section of “N’est-ce pas?” recalls the twilight vignette from the end of “En sourdine,” where the nightingale voices the lovers’ despair amid the black oaks: Isolés dans l’amour ainsi qu’en un bois noir, Nos deux cœurs, exhalant leur tendresse paisible, Seront deux rossignols qui chantent dans le soir. Isolated in love as in a dark wood, Our two hearts, breathing gentle love, Will be two nightingales singing at dusk. The memory of op. 58 may explain the melancholic undertow of this nocturne, which passes into G minor and gravitates persistently toward flat keys (note the tritone descent from D major to AH major in mm. 33–40). The middle section ends on a pungent half-diminished seventh chord, casting its shadow over “soir.” The

128      Chapter 4

“Tristan” chord draws out the undertones of Verlaine’s death-by-passivity Liebestod as the lovers again relinquish their wills to nature. The Avowal motive pervades this passage in the tender version heard in the preceding song, “Donc, ce sera par un clair jour d’été.” The leitmotive has passed through a variety of situations from the fifth to the eighth song of La bonne chanson, all united by the expression of intimacy. The first appearance of the Avowal motive heralds the poet’s turn to the familiar tu; it then accompanies the newlyweds as they retire to the starlit bridal chamber; and it now depicts their hermetic retreat into the Nachtwelt. Yet the leitmotive undergoes a decisive transformation between the first and second halves of the cycle. As we saw, the poet’s proclamation of love (“Que je vous aime!”) returns in the warbling chorus of larks and quail in “Avant que tu ne t’en ailles,” migrating from human to natural voices. The Avowal motive undergoes the same metamorphosis in “N’est-ce pas?” The piano murmurs the leitmotive three times in an inner voice at the beginning of the middle section (mm. 14–23). On the fourth statement, however, the motive soars into the upper register, doubled in sonorous octaves (mm. 29–30). Moreover, the motive returns to the heraldic ˆ5-ˆ1-ˆ3-ˆ5 version from the end of the fifth song, the version that passed into the avian choir in the sixth song. Fauré’s meaning is clear: human song has again been transformed into natural music, the duet of the nightingales. The odyssey of the Avowal motive culminates in the joyous birdcalls of “L’hiver a cessé.” Fauré spelled out his intentions meticulously in the transition from the eighth song (see example 4.8). On the last phrase of “N’est-ce pas?” the singer reprises the Exquisite Hour motive, but the octave is now poised inconclusively on the dominant as befits the final question—“Isn’t it so?” The singer’s last note, a sustained D5, is also the first note of “L’hiver a cessé,” suggesting that the final song answers the dangling question. The piano frames the singer’s final phrase with three statements of the Avowal motive, rising an octave with each repetition (mm. 61–67). But Fauré has pruned the third from the opening arpeggio, leaving an open fifth that recaptures the elemental purity of the opening bars. Indeed, he has merged the Avowal motive with the overtone series: m. 61 begins with the G1 “fundamental,” like the first bar of the song, and the leitmotive continues the series with the upper octave and fifth. Fauré also omitted the sixth degree from the Avowal motive, thereby restricting the motive to the pentatonic scale. The song thus ends with a three-note pentatonic cell, F5-G5-D5, which has risen from the depths of the keyboard to the clear, bright upper register. And now the final piece falls into place. “L’hiver a cessé” begins with the identical pentatonic cell, indeed, with its retrograde, D5-G5-F5. Perched on their high branch, the nightingales of “N’est-ce pas?” pass their darkling song to the lark and quail, the heralds of morning. Yet “L’hiver a cessé” does not merely reprise the naïve birdsong of “Avant que tu ne t’en ailles.” The unmediated cries of nature have

example 4.8 . Fauré, “N’est-ce pas?” La bonne chanson, mm. 61–69. 61

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Rumph Ex.4.8a–b page 1 of 2 130      Chapter 4 example 4.9 . Transformation of Avowal motive in Fauré, La bonne chanson. a. “Donc, ce sera par un clair jour d’été,” mm. 28–29 (transposed).

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passed metaphorically into the human psyche in “N’est-ce pas?” embodying the conjoined souls of the lovers. Human and natural music have merged fully in a marriage that parallels the lovers’ union. With its work complete, the Avowal motive vanishes from La bonne chanson: it is the only leitmotive not to return in “L’hiver a cessé.” The poet’s confession of love is absorbed at a higher level (sublated, as Hegelians would say) within the raucous birdsong of “L’hiver a cessé.” And with this master stroke, La bonne chanson comes full circle. As we recall, the song cycle began with the identical 6ˆ -ˆ5-ˆ3 cell. Fauré developed the pentatonic cell across the first song, dislodging it from the chanson topic and spinning it into an abstract arabesque. After this Mallarméan catharsis, the pentatonic fragment sojourned in the enchanted woods of “La lune blanche,” underwent the baptism of human pathos in the fourth and fifth songs, and arose transfigured in the aerial chorus of “Avant que tu ne t’en ailles.” La bonne chanson drains the sign of its human meaning so that it can be replenished at the wellsprings of nature. Fauré’s cycle begins by deconstructing human communication, but it ends by affirming a transcendent language within the hidden affinities of the cosmic order. When the forgotten leitmotives from the first half of La bonne chanson return at the end of “L’hiver a cessé,” they arrive with the inevitability of the changing seasons—“Let summer come! Let autumn come again and winter!” The three leitmotives now belong fully to the natural order and its cycles. The Lydia motive surges up the octave, just as it debuted in “Puisque l’aube grandit”; the Exquisite

Wagnerian correspondances    131

Hour motive then retraces the confident octave; and Mathilde’s motive, the first leitmotive of La bonne chanson, returns to round off the cycle (mm. 44–53). The Birdsong and Sun motives have already appeared at the beginning of “L’hiver a cessé,” which leaves only the Avowal motive unaccounted for. And Fauré did not completely forget about his absent motive (see example 4.9). On the singer’s last phrase, the melody descends through a half-diminished seventh chord on the words “cette raison.” This is the exact intervallic inversion of the Avowal motive in its original version from the end of “Donc, se sera par un clair jour d’été,” where it rises through a V7 chord. The topsy-turvy variation cleverly mirrors Verlaine’s final antithesis—“Cette fantaisie et cette raison” (This imagination and this reason). We are in a position, finally, to venture a broad interpretation of Fauré’s two Verlaine cycles. In her study of fin-de-siècle spirituality, music, and Symbolism, Megan Sarno urged a reconsideration of Fauré’s Verlaine settings in light of his Requiem, noting that its composition coincided almost exactly with his work on the songs.35 Carlo Caballero’s important study of Fauré’s religious thought indicates the direction such a reading might take. Like other scholars, Caballero documented Fauré’s indifference to Catholic dogma, his broad taste in church music, and his drift toward a freethinking agnosticism.36 Yet Caballero suggested an alternative religious tradition, pantheism, toward which Fauré seems to have gravitated. Caballero identified this strain in La chanson d’Ève, written more than ten years after La bonne chanson, but the Verlaine cycles already show signs of a pantheistic orientation. Fauré’s use of naturalistic symbols (pentatonicism, birdsong, the overtone series) and his portrayal of music as a conduit between nature and humanity suggest a faith in a divine presence pervading the cosmos. The timeliness of La bonne chanson, and Fauré’s true originality as a reader, lies in the way he used the leitmotive to intertwine religious and linguistic thought. Both Wagnerian and wagnériste, op. 61 weds the cosmological vision of the Ring to the arcane quest for the symbol. And Fauré accomplished this feat by exploiting the new resources of the Musikdrama with a boldness unprecedented in French opera or song. To the beauty, expressivity, and technical fecundity of La bonne chanson we may thus add another virtue: intelligence. Fauré’s song cycle partakes of Mallarmé’s intellectual rigor, his desire to infuse poetry with metaphysical substance. La bonne chanson is a wonder of creative and intellectual synthesis that reveals a composer and thinker at the height of his powers.

5

Theatrical Song La chanson d’Ève, op. 95

In a letter from September 1906, Fauré offered a rare glimpse into his songwriting workshop. He had just begun a new cycle drawn from Charles Van Lerberghe’s La chanson d’Ève (1904), a collection from which he had published a setting in June. Fauré described the project to his wife: In short, it concerns this poem La chanson d’Ève by a Belgian, Van Lerberghe. This is the poem from which I’ve already borrowed “Crépuscule.” Now then, I am trying to start over from the beginning with the plan of setting a certain number of pieces that will form a set and a counterpart [pendant] to La bonne chanson. The difference in character between the two poems must entail a difference in the music and from that point of view my project interests me.1

The letter provides explicit evidence, if still needed, that Fauré reimagined his musical idiom with each new poet and collection. In the case of La chanson d’Ève, the conception seems to have arrived tout à coup. Within days of writing to Marie, Fauré completed the long opening song, “Paradis,” which contains both of the leitmotives used in the cycle as well as its most striking harmonic innovations. By the end of September he had completed a third song, “Prima verba.” Despite this quick start, Fauré would not complete the ten songs of La chanson d’Ève until 1910, although he continued to develop the ideas planted in 1906 (see the list of songs). Fauré’s letter suggests a promising point of entry to this longest of his song cycles. What precisely, we might ask, was the difference between Van Lerberghe and Verlaine that so fired his imagination? Van Lerberghe belonged to the generation of Belgian Symbolist poets that came of age around 1890, just as Verlaine was entering his final alcoholic spiral. The new 132

Theatrical Song    133 Keys, compositional dates, and recurring motives of Gabriel Fauré, La chanson d’Ève, op. 95. Song

Key

Date of composition

Leitmotives

1.  Paradis, 2.  Prima verba 3.  Roses ardentes 4.  Comme Dieu rayonne 5.  L’aube blanche 6.  Eau vivante 7.  Veilles-tu ma senteur de soleil 8.  Dans un parfum de roses blanches 9.  Crépuscule 10.  O Mort, poussière d’étoiles

e/E GH E c/C DH C D G d/D DH

August 27–September 8, 1906 September 25–28, 1906 June 1908 before May 26, 1909 June 1908 before May 26, 1909 January 1910 before June 5, 1909 June 4, 1906 January 15, 1910

A, B — — A, B — — — B A B

school included Albert Mockel, Max Elskamp, and Van Lerberghe’s famous Ghent schoolmate Maurice Maeterlinck. (Van Lerberghe and Fauré may have met in 1898 while the composer was in London conducting his incidental music to Maeterlinck’s Pelléas et Mélisande.2) La chanson d’Ève fashions Eve as a poetess, the Ur-singer who gives voice to creation. The Symbolist epic falls into four parts, preceded by a prelude narrated posthumously by Eve. In Premières paroles (First Words), from which Fauré drew seven of his songs, Eve awakens to the beauty of nature and revels in her power to envoice creation. In La tentation (Temptation), she meets characters from pagan mythology, the Sirens, Venus, and Eros, who entice her to plumb the deeper secrets of nature. Eve transgresses God’s limits upon human knowledge in La faute (Original Sin), renouncing the spiritual realm and realizing her unity with nature. She consummates her song in Le crépuscule (Twilight) as she wills her own dissolution and reabsorption into the cosmos. Van Lerberghe’s collection shares many elements with La bonne chanson, not least an animistic world in which human and natural musics commingle. La chanson d’Ève again follows a natural cycle, like the course of the seasons in La bonne chanson. It begins at daybreak as Eve awakens and ends at nightfall as she dies, tracing, as Graham Johnson put it, “the trajectory of a vast cosmic sun across the heavens.”3 La chanson d’Ève also begins with a reflection on language, a long narrative poem in which God institutes speech and directs Eve to name His creatures. Despite these thematic similarities, however, La bonne chanson and La chanson d’Ève differ radically in style and tone. Verlaine’s exuberance and preciosity have no place in Van Lerberghe’s limpid poem, a paragon of Symbolist discretion that surpassed the subtlety of his previous collection, Entrevisions (1898). Van

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Lerberghe described this new refinement through an untranslatable play on words: “After the things that one can only ‘glimpse’ [entrevoir], those to which one can only ‘allude’ [entredire].”4 The poet pruned his style of the artful diction, prosody, and rhetoric that beguiled Verlaine, and confined himself instead to a simple treasury of words and symbols that spin out in a diaphanous web. Inspired by the poèmes en prose of the later Symbolists, Van Lerberghe varied his line lengths freely and scattered vers blancs among the rhymes. Fauré’s song cycle provides a counterpart to La bonne chanson in many ways. The composer used leitmotives again, although he limited himself to only two motives, hereafter A and B (see example 5.1). La chanson d’Ève also suggests a symmetrical tonal plan, akin to the minor-third cycle that governs the second half of La bonne chanson. As Caballero pointed out, Fauré’s final ordering of the first nine songs (he tried out several, as we shall see) falls into groups of three that begin and end with the same tonic:5 E GH E | C DH C | D G D | DH The tenth song departs from this ternary pattern, although it shares the same key as the fifth song. Fauré reinforced this tonal rhyme between the two halves of the cycle with a common motive, a descending whole-tone scale that occurs in both the fifth and tenth songs.6 Yet La chanson d’Ève departs decisively from La bonne chanson in its simplicity and reserve. As Nectoux wrote, “The highly chromatic language, the wide, sweeping lines and the passionate excesses of an almost orchestral lyricism give way to a dreamscape in which the vocal line is modelled on the text, the harmony becomes taut and the texture lighter, denser, more transparently contrapuntal.”7 This new reticence is Fauré’s most obvious response to the different character of Van Lerberghe’s poem and might alone explain his remark to Marie. Yet there remains the puzzling matter of Fauré’s treatment of motives. Unlike the labile, endlessly varied shapes of La bonne chanson, the twin leitmotives of La chanson d’Ève are lapidary blocks that undergo precise operations—juxtaposition, truncation, ostinato, sequence. They never interweave or combine polyphonically but always occur separately or in the sharp relief of a major-minor pairing. This angular, mechanistic treatment contrasts oddly with Van Lerberghe’s feather brush. Curiously, although the two motives appear in five of the songs of La chanson d’Ève and pervade almost half of the music of the cycle, none of Fauré’s critics have seriously explored their meaning or function. A clue to Fauré’s new motivic approach lies in the material itself. In both cycles, Fauré derived a leitmotive from one of his earlier songs—“Lydia” in La bonne chanson, and in La chanson d’Ève, “The King’s Three Blind Daughters” from his incidental music to Pelléas et Mélisande. The ballad, which Mélisande sings at her

Theatrical Song    135 example 5.1 . Leitmotives of Fauré, La chanson d’Ève, op. 95.

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spinning wheel in act 3, is a translation of “Les trois sœurs aveugles,” a song that Maeterlinck substituted for the familiar “Mes longs cheveux” in the 1893 Parisian premiere of the play.8 Fauré first adapted the ballad for his setting of “Crépuscule,” grafting Van Lerberghe’s poem onto the stage song with minor changes. He then used the accompaniment part as thematic material in both “Paradis” and “Comme Dieu rayonne,” the first and fourth songs of La chanson d’Ève. Fauré’s two self-borrowings represent entirely different poetic modes. “Lydia” is a lyric utterance, the direct expression of the poetic subject, while “The King’s Three Blind Daughters” is diegetic music, a stage song framed as performance. This theatrical song differs from the scenic music that pervades the accompaniments of Fauré’s Verlaine songs. The mandolin serenades, lute dances, and birdcalls belong to the phenomenal world of the lyric subject; they form part of the vocal subject’s inner experience. Mélisande’s ballad lacks this lyric interiority. She does not invent the words spontaneously but is presumably repeating an old folksong. Like serenades or drinking songs, ballads do not directly express the feelings of a lyric or dramatic subject. On the contrary, they can comment on, shade, or ironize the stage action. As Carolyn Abbate explained, diegetic song also encourages a sense of distance in the audience: “It forces us to deal explicitly with ourselves as listening subjects, for we— the audience—are mirrored by the rapt listeners on stage.”9 Fauré’s more detached treatment of his two leitmotives, I shall argue, reflects this loss of lyric interiority. Fauré had mixed theatrical song among his mélodies long before La chanson d’Ève. His early Hugo settings include the lost “L’aube naît,” whose text originated in a song from the play Angelo, tyran de Padoue. Fauré published songs from the incidental music to Edmond Haraucourt’s Shylock in his third recueil, while a serenade from Molière’s Le bourgeois gentilhomme appeared posthumously. “Clair de lune” and “Le plus doux chemin” crossed the footlights in the opposite direction, appearing in the ballet-comedy pastiche Masques et bergamasques (1919).10 Fauré’s mélodies typify the fluidity between French concert and theatrical song, which had enjoyed an easy commerce since the eighteenth century. The salon romance

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belonged equally to the Opéra-Comique, and it invaded the Opéra with Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable.11 Leading opera singers during the nineteenth century, such as Adolphe Nourrit, Adelina Patti, Marie Carvalho, Jean-Baptiste Faure, and Fauré’s patroness Pauline Viardot, regularly performed romances in the salons, including their own compositions.12 La chanson d’Ève itself was written for an international opera star, mezzo-soprano Jeanne Raunay, rather than a talented amateur like Amélie Duez or Emma Bardac. This chapter will explore the implications of Fauré’s theatrical self-borrowing in La chanson d’Ève, showing how he exploited the performative dimension of stage song. Fauré’s response to Van Lerberghe’s work reaches well beyond surface affinities of style. At a deeper level, he used the theatricality of Mélisande’s ballad to explore the Symbolist problematics of representation, writing, and authorial presence. The difference between La bonne chanson and La chanson d’Ève to which Fauré referred in his letter to Marie turns on a new vision of the Symbolist project, concerned less with mysterious correspondances within the cosmos than with the inner contradictions within language itself. We shall approach this conclusion carefully in three stages. As a prelude to analysis, we shall consider the theatrical work that occupied Fauré during the composition of the song cycle, his opera Pénélope. We shall then venture a cross-reading of Van Lerberghe’s collection and Fauré’s cycle, focusing especially on his deployment of leitmotives. Finally, a detailed musical analysis will pinpoint the theatrical element in the music of La chanson d’Ève and its role within Fauré’s imaginative response to Symbolist poetics. P E N E L O P E’ S S O N G

By 1906, Symbolist poetry had run its course in France. The great voices had fallen silent, including that of Van Lerberghe, and the once vital movement had passed into the fading chronicles with Arthur Symons’s The Symbolist Movement (1899), Paul Léautaud’s Les poètes d’aujourd’hui (1900), and Gustave Kahn’s Symbolistes et décadents (1902).13 Yet the Symbolist movement still thrived in one area of French artistic life: the opera. Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande premiered in 1902 and rapidly became a staple of the Opéra-Comique, reaching its hundredth performance in 1913. Paul Dukas’s Ariane et Barbe-Bleue, a setting of another Maeterlinck play, premiered at the Opéra-Comique in 1907. Fauré worked briefly on his own Maeterlinck opera, Sœur Béatrice, receiving the exclusive rights from the author in 1900. The composer stayed with the project through at least 1902, although no sketches survive.14 Maeterlinck’s play, subtitled Miracle en trois actes (Miracle in Three Acts), shares several common themes with La chanson d’Ève. Beatrice also falls from grace, abandoning the nunnery to elope with a rakish prince. Like Van Lerberghe’s

Theatrical Song    137

poem, the play explores the line between spirit and matter, representation and presence, featuring a statue of the Virgin Mary that comes to life and sings. The composition of La chanson d’Ève falls squarely within Fauré’s major period of operatic composition. Prométhée, a monumental hybrid of incidental music and opera, premiered at the outdoor arena in Béziers in 1900. After a revival in Béziers, Prométhée traveled to Paris in 1907 for performances at the Hippodrome and Opéra. More consequentially, Fauré devoted the years 1907–13 to his one true opera, Pénélope, which he composed alongside La chanson d’Ève during his summer vacations in Lausanne. The opera and song cycle share intriguing parallels beyond their epic subjects and female protagonists. The opening key-pairing of La chanson d’Éve, E minor and E major, plays an outsized role in Pénélope, especially in scenes involving the title character. Penelope makes her first entrance in E minor, and her forceful presence swiftly impels the suitors to a docile cadence in E major (act 1, scene 4). Penelope has an E-minor aria in the following scene, and the act ends with Ulysses’ E-major paean to his wife (“Épouse chérie”). The final bars of act 1 also introduce the soaring E-major motive associated with the reunion of Ulysses and Penelope. Finally, the first scene of act 2 begins in E minor and ends in E major, preparing the arrival of the royal pair. More to our purposes, Pénélope includes two scenes in which Fauré used stage music in truly novel ways. The first example comes in the act 1 ballet, which includes an air de danse sung by four of Penelope’s suitors. The scene begins with dancing girls, who move to the strains of a flute, harp, tambourine, and triangle. This exotic dance clearly belongs within the frame of the narrative, as does the air de danse in which the suitors toast Penelope. She interrupts this stage song brusquely, however, mocking the suitors’ insipid refrain: “Vouz n’avez fait qu’éveiller dans mon sein / Le souvenir ardent des heures de délice / Où je brûlais d’amour entre les bras d’Ulysse!” (You have done nothing but awaken in my breast / The fervent memory of the delicious hours / When I burned with love in Ulysses’ arms!). As Penelope’s thoughts turn to her absent husband, the sounds of the onstage music resume. The pizzicato accompaniment and exotic instruments return as Penelope begins an aria addressing Ulysses. The dance resumes as well, but Penelope continues to sing her retrospective aria, oblivious to the whirling onstage entertainment. Caballero has remarked on this blurring of boundaries, which has no precedent in French opera: “What is most remarkable about this scene from a kinetic point of view is that Fauré has chosen to blend lyrical delivery not only with music already heard and used for dancing, but with actual dancing seen onstage behind or around the queen.”15 Penelope thus absents herself from the suitors and their demands, casting herself defiantly into the inner sanctum of memory. Yet the astonishing result of Penelope’s aria is to render her lost husband present. As the aria progresses, the omniscient orchestra steadily drowns out the exotic

138      Chapter 5

dance with leitmotives associated with Ulysses—a majestic dotted fanfare, urgent rising triplets, a sequence of rising fifths. Penelope invokes Ulysses seven times across the aria, an incantation that reaches its climax with the outburst, “Ulysse! mon époux! / Viens! viens! secours ma détresse!” (Ulysses! my husband! / Come! come! help me in my distress!). The aria breaks off after Penelope’s climactic high note, leaving only a shimmering echo of his leitmotives. And from the wings, the liminal zone between presence and absence, comes the voice of Ulysses. His first line, “Holà! ho!” is surely a deliberate homage to Debussy by librettist René Fauchois: Ulysses sings the identical words with which Pelléas enters in the act 3 Tower Scene, responding to Mélisande’s singing. Like Mélisande, Penelope has the power to summon absent objects with her voice. Yet, ironically, she materializes Ulysses precisely by retreating from the external, audible world of stage song. The second example of Fauré’s play with diegetic music comes at the beginning of act 2 and also involves an intertextual allusion. The act opens with a melancholy tune in E minor traded between a solo bassoon and English horn (see example 5.2a). This pastoral prelude prepares the entrance of the faithful shepherd Eumaeus, who explicitly identifies the woodwind duet as diegetic music: Ses rayons mêlés aux rumeurs marines Guident vers l’enclos les troupeaux Que la musique des pipeaux Et le tintement des clarines Accompagnent dans l’air léger. Her rays, mingling with the sounds of the sea, Guide the flock toward the fold, Accompanied by the music of pipes And the chiming of cowbells In the mild air. After these words, an oboe joins the bassoon and English horn, completing the trio of double-reed pipeaux. The following scene begins with a new motive as Penelope enters with the disguised Ulysses (see example 5.2b). This monophonic idea, which will punctuate the scene, derives from the shepherds’ pipe tune, beginning with a displaced version of the first three notes, E-B-C. As the melody descends, it outlines an augmented triad [E-GG-C], a harmony associated with the suitors throughout Pénélope.16 The timbre changes from double reed to trumpet, the instrument of Ulysses’ fanfare leitmotive, but the violins double the trumpet, cloaking its metallic timbre just as the beggar’s rags hide Ulysses. The diegetic music is thus drawn into the leitmotivic system, distanced and disguised like Penelope’s present-yet-absent husband.

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Theatrical Song    141

As Penelope sings of her husband to Ulysses, the shepherd tune returns in its original form. She describes how she arranges roses every night for his return: Car si sa nef, soudain, arrivait sur la côte, C’est vers cette colonne haute Qu’Ulysse d’abord lèverait les yeux. Ces roses lui diraient mon amour anxieux Et son cœur connaîtrait sur l’heure à cette vue Que Pénélope attend, fidèle, sa venue. For if his ship suddenly landed upon the shore, It is this high column to which Ulysses would first raise his eyes. These roses would declare to him my anxious love, And his heart would know by that sight That Penelope faithfully awaits his arrival. As she pictures Ulysses’ ship returning, the first four notes of the tune return, retracing the rising fifth and ˆ5-6ˆ neighbor motion (see example 5.2c). The melodic fragment repeats seven times with mounting urgency during this imagined reunion. Semantically, the motivic recollection makes little sense. Penelope has not heard the shepherd tune, nor is it associated with Ulysses. We would expect his own leitmotives to return here as they do elsewhere when Penelope refers to her absent husband. Evidently, Fauré did not recall the motive for its associated meanings but rather as an enactment of memory itself. The pastoral tune derives its value from its lost immediacy, its original presence as audible stage music. Penelope calls the absent theme to life with that same incantatory power by which she summoned Ulysses in the first act. The pipes also conjures another presence. Any knowledgeable listener would have caught the allusion to act 3 of Tristan und Isolde, which also begins with a forlorn shepherd’s tune played by a solo double-reed instrument. Fauré has replicated the fifth leap in Wagner’s melody as well as the neighbor motion around the dominant. The plot parallels between the two shepherd tunes are also precise: Wagner’s alte Weise is a signal for the dying Tristan as he awaits Isolde’s ship, while Fauré’s tune returns as Penelope imagines Ulysses’ ship returning to Ithaca. The diegetic music thus summons the shade of Wagner that loomed over every fin-desiècle French opera. Wagner also haunts Pénélope, whether in the thunderous “Tristan” chord that accompanies the heroine’s first entrance or in the echoes of the Sword motive from the Ring in Ulysses’ principal leitmotive, a solo trumpet fanfare haloed by tremolo violins. With his allusion to the shepherd’s tune from Tristan, Fauré was perhaps exorcising the anxiety that surfaces in his 1907 remark

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to Marie about the “Wagnerian system,” or his complaint that “that devil seems to have exhausted all the formulas.”17 The diegetic music acknowledges the presence of Wagner even as its motivic recollection immures it safely within memory. As the songs of Pénélope demonstrate, Fauré was experimenting imaginatively with diegetic music during the composition of La chanson d’Ève. He showed particular interest in the paradoxical ability of diegetic music to suggest both presence and absence, immediacy and distance. These oppositions will guide our discussion of Van Lerberghe’s epic, a book introduced posthumously by the dead poetess herself. An analysis of Fauré’s motivic design will show how Mélisande’s ballad, by virtue of its theatricality, lent itself to Van Lerberghe’s voyage into language and its inherent contradictions. Before addressing Fauré’s music, however, we must attempt to reconstruct his reading of La chanson d’Ève, situating the ten song texts within the context of the entire collection. The following interpretation is not the only possible interpretation of Van Lerberghe’s poem or perhaps even the best. But I believe it best accounts for Fauré’s musical and poetic design, especially his cunning use of stage song. L A MORT DE L A C HA N T E U S E

This reading builds on two important discussions of Fauré’s song cycle. Katherine Bergeron began her book on Belle Èpoque song, Voice Lessons (2009), with a lengthy analysis of La chanson d’Ève. Her elegant study fleshes out Roland Barthes’ dictum that “the historical meaning of the mélodie is a certain culture of the French language,” drawing on sources both graphic and phonographic.18 Bergeron traced the peculiar reticence of the fin-de-siècle mélodie, its retreat from musical expressivity, to a fastidious concern with diction (l’art de dire) by singers, actors, pedagogues, phoneticians, and Symbolist poets. Composers tempered musical expression, she argued, in order to foreground the sensuous qualities of the French tongue. Bergeron adduced La chanson d’Ève as a paragon of this new aesthetic, indeed, as a programmatic work. As she noted, Fauré began the song cycle immediately after embarking on his modernizing leadership of the Conservatoire, which included a reform of singing instruction. Bergeron perceived an allegory for the birth of la mélodie française in Fauré’s cycle: In the beginning, there was song, though Eve knew not how nor why. She did not think, she merely sang, thus producing a song with no intention . . . Then came the temptation, the desire for melodious self-expression, that disturbed the natural order of things and separated Eve from her earlier, blissful state of unknowing. What is left for her to do? How can this supreme figure of melody right the wrong and restore the Edenic order? There is only one way. She demands to be put to death. And thus the final song of Fauré’s La Chanson d’Ève enacts the ultimate origin myth of modern French song.19

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Bergeron’s reading trades heavily on Barthes’ essay “Le grain de la voix” (1972), with its invidious comparison of baritones Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Charles Panzéra. For Barthes, Fischer-Dieskau’s recordings epitomized “pheno-song,” the use of the voice as an instrument for textual expression. Panzéra’s recordings, by contrast, model “geno-song,” the materiality of the voice that emanates from the bodily production and articulation of sound. This elusive grain is “the body in the voice as it sings, the hand as it writes, the limb as it performs.”20 Borrowing categories from Julia Kristeva, Barthes directed attention away from the “symbolic,” the patriarchal order of representation and signs, and toward the “semiotic,” the prelinguistic substrate of kinesthetic-emotional experience.21 Barthes’ bodily emphasis also informs Bergeron’s offbeat treatment of French Symbolism, which bypasses the intellectual thickets of Baudelaire’s correspondances, Mallarmé’s Idée, and the problematics of meaning and communication. She focused instead on the phonemic project of Symbolist poetics, lingering over René Ghil’s Traité du verbe, Arthur Rimbaud’s “Voyelles,” and Pierre Louÿs’s prose poems. Bergeron situated Eve within the preconscious realm of the Kristevan semiotic: “Awake or dreaming, Eve sang without thinking, and so her song was essentially nothing to her. Later, she would long to return to this nothingness, her original state of unknowing.”22 Bergeron’s allegorical interpretation is compelling, especially for songs like “Prima verba” or “L’aube blanche” that conform to her prototype of spontaneous song. Yet her reading overlooks the theatrical source of Fauré’s thematic material. Mélisande’s ballad belongs to the stage, site of representation, artifice, and masquerade. As we have seen, Fauré was experimenting with precisely these properties of diegetic music in Pénélope while he was working on La chanson d’Ève. Bergeron’s reading also underestimates Fauré’s use of the système wagnérien in the song cycle. The twin leitmotives, which saturate half of the songs, create a semantic dimension at odds with Bergeron’s ideal of unconscious song, inviting reflection and interpretation as they return across the cycle. In fact, Fauré’s deployment of the musical signs contradicts her allegorical plot. They vanish in “Eau vivante” and “Veilles-tu ma senteur de soleil,” the unabashedly mimetic songs in which Bergeron located Eve’s sin of musical expressivity, and resurface in the last three songs as Eve allegedly dies to self-expression.23 The second important reading of La chanson d’Ève comes from Caballero’s discussion of the composer’s religious thought, mentioned in the previous chapter. Caballero showed how Fauré softened the biblical narrative through his selection of poems, favoring the prelapsarian Premières paroles and avoiding any mention of temptation, sin, or the Fall. As he noted, Fauré also muted Catholic doctrine in the Requiem, which omits the Dies irae and centers on the childlike Pie Jesu. Caballero emphasized instead the marked pantheistic strain of La chanson d’Ève, as expressed in the final stanza of “Roses ardentes”:

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Et c’est en toi, force suprême, Soleil radieux, Que mon âme elle-même Atteint son dieu! And it is in you, supreme power, Radiant sun, That my soul itself Attains its godhood! Van Lerberghe’s immanentist theology transforms the biblical story: “Unredeemed because never guilty, Eve does not transcend the world through personal immortality but rather returns to the world, is absorbed by it, becomes it.”24 Caballero suggested that the composer sympathized with pantheism during the writing of La chanson d’Ève, indeed that the song cycle “reflects, as clearly as we can seem to know, Fauré’s own beliefs at this particular moment in his life.”25 Both Bergeron and Caballero left unexamined one crucial aspect of Fauré’s song cycle: the metapoetic dimension. Van Lerberghe’s work is, among other things, an allegory of poetry, and Eve’s spiritual odyssey is interwoven with her poetic vocation. Bergeron read Eve’s chanson literally as song. Yet, as in La bonne chanson, song serves as a metaphor for poetry. Tellingly, La chanson d’Ève begins with the birth of language, not song. Fauré had a keen awareness of the self-reflexive impulse of French Symbolism, as we have seen in La bonne chanson. His use of both leitmotives and diegetic song in La chanson d’Ève suggests that he listened no less carefully to the metapoetic overtones in Van Lerberghe’s work. A key to Fauré’s reading lies in a second, equally famous essay by Roland Barthes. In “La mort de l’auteur” (1967), Barthes attacked the traditional subject of literary criticism, the transcendent Author to whom the ultimate meaning of a work can allegedly be traced. In the act of writing, Barthes argued, the author enters into a system of collective codes that transform his real self into a virtual construct. The sovereign voice vanishes within the written text: “Once an action is recounted, for intransitive ends, and no longer in order to act directly upon reality—that is, finally external to any function but the very exercise of the symbol—this disjunction occurs, the voice loses its origin, the author enters his own death, writing begins.”26 Barthes traced the first revolt against the cult of the author to French Symbolism: “Mallarmé’s entire poetics consists in suppressing the author in the interest of writing.”27 This fall from the immediacy of the voice does not originate, as in Bergeron’s allegory, with the awakening of self-conscious expression. It begins with the act of writing itself as the “scriptor” submerges himself in the textual codes. Barthes’ linguistic polemic did not leave theology unscathed. He extended his critique to the transcendent God that underwrote the authorial voice. The reader

Theatrical Song    145

should not seek a hidden meaning behind the text, Barthes contended, but should enter into a cocreating work of interpretation: In precisely this way literature (it would be better from now on to say writing), by refusing to assign a “secret,” an ultimate meaning, to the text (and to the world as text), liberates what may be called an anti-theological activity, an activity that is truly revolutionary since to refuse to fix meaning is, in the end, to refuse God and his hypostases—reason, science, law.28

Barthes portrayed the writer in pantheistic terms, picturing a god inseparable from the world: “The modern scriptor is born simultaneously with the text, is in no way equipped with a being preceding or exceeding the writing, is not the subject with the book as predicate.”29 Barthes’ linguistic theology dovetails neatly with Caballero’s pantheistic reading of La chanson d’Ève. Eve’s estrangement from her voice would thus parallel her rejection of the transcendent God and her embrace of the unity of nature and the divine. Poetically, this shift hinges on the oppositions of presence and representation, speech and writing, spontaneity and repetition. David Code has explored these dualities in his important analysis of Debussy’s Prélude à L’après-midi d’un faune.30 Code emphasized the tension between lyrical and theatrical address in Mallarmé’s eclogue, which originated as a verse drama and still designates the faun as a dramatic character. As Code argued, “To follow Mallarmé’s language with—as—his dramatic character is to be led to experience, at the crux of the text, a singular moment of irresolvable conflict between speech and writing.”31 Code mapped this opposition onto the orchestral choirs: the warm string sound correlates with vocal presence, the cooler timbre of the winds with writing. In La chanson d’Ève, Fauré played with the same oppositions between voice and writing, theatrical and lyrical address. And unlike Debussy, he had an actual theatrical source with which to dramatize the movement from presence to representation. Yet Fauré reversed the terms of the opposition. Mélisande’s dramatic ballad does not function as a vessel for spontaneous vocal expression. On the contrary, Fauré found an ingenious analogue to writing in the stage song, with its absence of lyric interiority: as Eve’s song gradually detaches itself from her voice and fades into inscription, Mélisande’s ballad reemerges in its original theatrical form. Let us sketch the outlines of this movement across Van Lerberghe’s collection, paying closest attention to the five songs in which Fauré deployed his leitmotives.

R E P E T I T IO N , R E P R E SE N TAT IO N , A N D W R I T I N G

The “Prélude” to La chanson d’Ève begins with a utopian vision of language, the Symbolist dream of a pure language untainted by usage:

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Je voudrais te la dire, Ma première chanson, Presque les lèvres closes, Et comme si, tous deux, nous songions La même chose, En le même sourire; Avec des mots Si frais, si virginaux, Avec des mots si purs, Qu’ils tremblent dans l’azur, Et semblent dits Pour la première fois au paradis. I would like to speak it for you, My first song, With lips almost closed, And as if the two of us thought The same thing, With the same smile; With words So fresh, so virginal, With words so pure, That they tremble in the azure, And seem to be uttered For the first time in paradise. Note Van Lerberghe’s reference to “l’azur,” Mallarmé’s famous symbol for the pure, unattainable Ideal.32 Eve acknowledges the fatal wound that language inflicts on reality as it reifies the fleeting impressions of consciousness: De mon mystérieux voyage Je ne t’ai gardé qu’une image, Et qu’une chanson, les voici: Je ne t’apporte pas de roses, Car je n’ai pas touché aux choses, Elles aiment à vivre aussi.

Of my mysterious voyage I have saved but one image, And one song, here they are: I do not bear roses, For I have not touched things, They also like to live.

Language must remain an undifferentiated totality (one image, one song) that preserves the holism of consciousness. Yet the peculiar address of the “Prélude” belies these claims to immediacy. As the reader will learn, Eve has already died and is speaking posthumously—the

Theatrical Song    147

author is literally dead. The italicized font clearly sets off Eve’s ghostly writing from the lyric and narrative voices that will follow in the collection. But is this really Eve’s voice? The unnamed je might also stand for Van Lerberghe, just as the toi might signify the reader rather than Eve’s interlocutor (God, Eros, nature). By withholding Eve’s name, Van Lerberghe has emphasized the mobility of the firstperson pronoun, which contradicts its promised immediacy. The “Prélude” concedes the impossibility of transparent presence in language, even as it strains toward that ideal. The first poem of Premières paroles (Faure’s “Paradis”) depicts language in a state of prelapsarian plentitude. The opening stanzas portray Eden as a confusion of interpenetrating sensory impressions:   C’est le premier matin du monde. Comme une fleur confuse exhalée de la nuit, Au souffle nouveau qui se lève des ondes,   Un jardin bleu s’épanouit. Tout s’y confond encore et tout s’y mêle,   Frissons de feuilles, chants d’oiseaux,    Glissements d’ailes, Sources qui sourdent, voix des airs, voix des eaux,    Murmure immense,   Et qui pourtant est du silence.   It is the first morning of the world. Like a misty flower exhaled by the night On the new breath that rises from the waters,   A blue garden opens out. Everything still mingles and mixes together:   Rustling of leaves, birdsongs,    Fluttering of wings, Streams that gush, voices of air, voices of water,    An immense murmuring,   And which yet is all silence. Human language descends directly from God, who instructs Eve himself:   Or, Dieu lui dit: Va, fille humaine,    Et donne à tous les êtres Que j’ai créés, une parole de tes lèvres,    Un son pour les connaître.

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Et Éve s’en alla, docile à son seigneur,    En son bosquet de roses,    Donnant à toutes choses Une parole, un son de ses lèvres de fleur: Chose qui fuit, chose qui souffle, chose qui vole . . .   And God said to her: Go, human daughter,    And give to all the beings That I have created a word from your lips,    A sound to know them by. And Eve went, obedient to her lord,    Into her thicket of roses,    Giving to all things A word, a sound from her flowering lips: Things that scurry, things that rustle, things that fly . . . Eve’s first words are onomatopoetic signs that preserve the vital presence of their referents. The rustling fricatives and sibilants of “Chose qui fuit, chose qui souffle, chose qui vole” mimic the sounds of nature rather than merely representing them with arbitrary signs. Fauré omitted Van Lerberghe’s final stanza and ended his song with a celebration of Eve’s sovereign voice as it embodies God’s creation: La voix s’est tue, mais tout l’écoute encore,    Tout demeure en l’attente, Lorsqu’avec le lever de l’étoile du soir,    Ève chante. The voice has died out, but everything still listens for it,    Everything remains in expectancy, Until at the rising of the evening star    Eve sings. Van Lerberghe’s missing final stanza, however, enacts a critical transformation. As Eve sings, pure presence fades into recollection: Elle évoque les mots divins qu’elle a créés; Elle redit du son de sa bouche tremblante: Chose qui fuit, chose qui souffle, chose qui vole . . .   Elle assemble devant Dieu     Ses premières paroles,    En sa première chanson.

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She calls up the divine words that she created; She speaks again with the sound of her trembling mouth: Things that scurry, things that rustle, things that fly . . .   She gathers before God    Her first words,    In her first song. As Eve repeats her newly minted words, they lose their original presence and become inscribed in memory. She is not creating language spontaneously, but evoking and retelling. The sonorous line “Chose qui fuit, chose qui souffle, chose qui vole” returns as a refrain, no longer as the immediate echo of natural sound. And Eve now assembles her first book of verse, her “premières paroles.” With this reference to the title of his first section, Van Lerberghe has conflated Eve’s song with the book itself. Fauré may have omitted this final stanza, but his use of leitmotives captures its meaning. Motives A and B alternate steadily across “Paradis,” with only a single interruption for God’s voice: Motive: Bars:

A 1–16

B 21–49

A B [God’s voice] B A B 50–59 61–72 73–90 91–107 108–26 135–40

The two motives do not develop as they return in “Paradis” but simply alternate as contrasting blocks. This static oscillation has nothing in common with Fauré’s treatment of leitmotives in La bonne chanson, where the short ideas constantly change shape and interpenetrate. In “Paradis,” juxtaposition and repetition take the place of inner development. As with the shepherd song in Pénélope, Fauré seems unconcerned with semantics or musical logic; motivic recollection functions performatively, enacting the processes of repetition, memory, and inscription. His re-presentation of the motives thus provides a musical analogue to Eve’s retelling of the mots divins. When motive B returns for the fourth time on the final line, “Ève chante,” it does not represent a spontaneous effusion. Rather, it crystallizes a once vital utterance in the collection of Eve’s “first words.” The passage from voice to writing is played out in three adjacent poems at the end of Van Lerberghe’s Premières paroles, the second of which Fauré set. The first poem is a lengthy dialogue between Eve and a flighty bird that embodies her desire for knowledge: “Suis-moi, suis-moi, Suis ma voix, Ève blanche! Par le bois enchanté, De branche en branche, Je vole et chante dans la clarté.”

“Follow me, follow me, Follow my voice, fair Eve! Through the enchanted forest, From branch to branch, I fly and sing in the light.”

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The command “suis-moi,” repeated eight times across the poem, puns on the phrase “je suis moi” (I am me). The lyric self has become objectified as a separate being, the moi. Quotation marks invade La chanson d’Ève for the first time in this dialogue, distancing the lyric subject from her own utterance. Quotation, that is, represented speech, has begun to replace lyric presence. This substitution is completed by the following poem, “Dans un parfum de roses blanches,” which became the eighth song of Fauré’s cycle. Eve’s lyric voice vanishes altogether, replaced by a third-person narrator. The italicized font, returning for the first time since the “Prélude,” encourages us to identify the speaker with Eve’s posthumous voice: Dans un parfum de roses blanches, Elle est assise et songe; Et l’ombre est belle comme s’il s’y mirait un ange. Le soir descend, le bosquet dort; Entre les feuilles et les branches, Sur le paradis bleu s’ouvre un paradis d’or. Sur le rivage expire un dernier flot lointain. Une voix qui chantait, tout à l’heure, murmure. Un murmure s’exhale en haleine, et s’éteint. Dans le silence il tombe des pétales . . . In a perfume of white roses, She sits and thinks; And the shade is beautiful as if one regarded an angel. The evening descends, the grove falls asleep; Between the leaves and the branches, A golden paradise opens upon the blue paradise. A distant stream expires on the bank. A voice that was singing, just now, murmurs. A murmur exhales in a breath, and is extinguished. In the silence petals fall . . . “Dans un parfum de roses blanches” plays a pivotal role in Fauré’s cycle, modulating between the innocent songs from Premières paroles and the bleak ninth and tenth songs, taken from Van Lerberghe’s final section, Le crépuscule. The leitmotives come apart for the first time in the eighth song and appear singly thereafter. “Dans un parfum de roses blanches” also contains the most adventurous harmonies of the cycle, as well as the most sophisticated treatment of motives. “Dans un parfum de roses blanches” is one of the few poems in Van Lerberghe’s collection that fall into a classical form. The ten lines are a modified version of

Theatrical Song    151

terza rima, the stanza of Dante’s Inferno. The first nine lines fall into symmetrical tercets (ABA CAC DED) but without the strict overlapping of rhymes. The Dantean stanza, of course, foreshadows Eve’s coming temptation and fall. The unrhymed tenth line of “Dans un parfum de roses blanches” invites comparison with Fauré’s tenth song, “O Mort, poussière d’étoiles.” The verb s’éteindre (to be extinguished) looks ahead to the final song: C’est en toi que je veux m’étendre, M’éteindre et me dissoudre, Mort, où mon âme aspire! It is in you that I want to extend myself, Extinguish myself, and dissolve myself, Death, to whom my soul aspires! “Dans un parfum de roses blanches” also concerns death, but it is an allegorical death that can perhaps shed light on Fauré’s overall conception of La chanson d’Ève. The first tercet of the poem detaches Eve from the natural world that she had once enjoyed spontaneously. She now sits pensively, an unusually static pose in Van Lerberghe’s vibrant garden. As the twilight glow envelops Eden, a voice gradually dies out, fading from a song to a murmur to mere breath and, finally, to silence. The poem ends with a complex, evocative image. The falling petals connote death, loss, separation from the vital whole. Yet the white petals also suggest Mallarmé’s beloved symbol of the feuille, both leaf and page—as the voice dies out, the written page takes its place. (The poet used this conceit, for example, in the poem “Soupir,” which both Ravel and Debussy would set in 1913.) Van Lerberghe even underscored this crucial caesura with a dotted line beneath the poem, a graphic symbol that he used nowhere else in La chanson d’Ève. On this reading, then, Eve’s fall is directly linked to the passage from voice to writing, presence to representation. Significantly, “Dans un parfum de roses blanches” develops motive B more persistently than any other song in La chanson d’Ève. The motive is stated six times without interruption during the first two stanzas, and then a variation of the motive returns on the tenth line. Fauré’s use of motive B in the eighth song suggests a parallel meaning to its use in “Paradis.” In the first song, the return of the motive after the singer’s last line enacts Eve’s retelling of her first words; the motivic recollection embodies the transformation of spontaneous speech into poetry. In the eighth song, motive B pervades the piano accompaniment as speech is supplanted by writing. The motivic repetition that gave birth to the book in “Paradis” engulfs the lyric subject in “Dans un parfum de roses blanches.” Fauré followed “Dans un parfum de roses blanches” with his original adaptation of Mélisande’s ballad, the song he entitled “Crépuscule.” In this ninth song, Eve fully perceives her voice as an external object:

152      Chapter 5

Ce soir, à travers le bonheur, Qui donc soupire, qu’est-ce qui pleure? Qu’est-ce qui vient palpiter sur mon cœur, Comme un oiseau blessé? Est-ce une plainte de la terre, Est-ce une voix future, Une voix du passé? J’écoute, jusqu’à la souffrance, Ce son dans le silence. Île d’oubli, ô Paradis! Quel cri déchire, dans la nuit, Ta voix qui me berce? Quel cri traverse Ta ceinture de fleurs, Et ton beau voile d’allégresse? This evening, through this bliss, Who then is sighing, what is it that weeps? What has come to quiver on my heart, Like a wounded bird? Is it a lament of the earth, Is it a future voice, A voice from the past? I listen, until it hurts, To this sound in the silence. Isle of oblivion, o Paradise! What cry rends in the night Your voice that cradles me? What cry traverses Your girdle of flowers, And your beautiful veil of happiness? Mélisande’s ballad, a stage song framed as performance, made a happy choice for this poem about Eve’s estrangement from her own voice. Other factors might have influenced Fauré’s choice of text, of course, most obviously the theme of darkness in “The King’s Three Blind Daughters.” Yet aside from the first line, Van Lerberghe’s poem makes no reference to vision, light, or darkness. It is a song about voice—voice as a disembodied, alien object. Fauré represented this dédoublement ingeniously through diegetic song, a vocal performance without a lyric subject. “Crépuscule” thus forms a logical sequel to “Dans un parfum de roses blanches,” in which Eve’s spontaneous

Theatrical Song    153

voice has passed into lifeless repetition. Motive A completely dominates the ninth song, even more than B in the eighth. The piano plays the motive thirteen times, with one brief interruption, and only relents on the final three lines of the poem. The equation of writing and death culminates in the final lines of Van Lerberghe’s epic: En l’universelle rumeur Elle se fond, doucement, et s’achève, La chanson d’Ève. In the universal sound She melts, sweetly, and completes La chanson d’Ève. This concluding stanza is an illocutionary speech act: in pronouncing Eve’s death, the narrator completes the work, affixing the title itself. The death of the poetess thus gives birth to the book. Fauré did not set these final lines but ended instead with “O Mort, poussière d’étoiles,” the last poem in Eve’s first-person voice. Nevertheless, as in “Paradis,” his use of leitmotives fulfills the speech act performed by Van Lerberghe’s closing lines. As the soprano sings her final stanza, motive B returns one last time, stated four times in a mechanical sequence: Et comme d’une amphore d’or Un vin de flamme d’arome divin, Épanche mon âme En ton abîme, pour qu’elle embaume La terre sombre et le souffle des morts. And like a fiery, divinely fragrant wine From a golden amphora, Pour out my soul Into your abyss, that it may embalm/perfume The dark earth and the breath of the dead. Motive B simulates the act of singing, as it did at the end of “Paradis.” But it now returns as a relic, a lifeless trace of Eve’s fading presence. The theological dimension of Fauré’s leitmotivic design surfaces most obviously in the fourth song, “Comme Dieu rayonne.” The song, which follows the explicitly pantheistic text of “Roses ardentes,” transforms the biblical Jehovah into a young pagan god who pervades all of nature: Comme Dieu rayonne aujourd’hui, Comme il exulte, comme il fleurit, Parmi ces roses et ces fruits!

154      Chapter 5

Comme il murmure en cette fontaine! Ah! comme il chante en ces oiseaux . . . Qu’elle est suave son haleine Dans l’odorant printemps nouveau! Comme il se baigne dans la lumière Avec amour, mon jeune dieu! Toutes les choses de la terre Sont ses vêtements radieux. How God shines today, How he exults, how he flourishes, Amid these roses and these fruits! How he murmurs in this fountain! Ah! how he sings in these birds. . . How soft is his breath In the fragrant new springtime! How he bathes in the light Lovingly, my young god! All earthly things Are his radiant vestments! The song begins with motive A in the piano, but at the mention of the “jeune dieu” in the third stanza, motive B returns at its original pitch. The motive was last heard at the end of “Paradis,” where its recollection enacts Eve’s retelling of her first words—that is, her transformation of spontaneous speech into poetic production. In the first poem, her mots divins arise at God’s command as an image of His creative word and return as writing, the assemblage of the Premières paroles. The recollection of motive B in “Comme Dieu rayonne” suggests a Barthesian link between authorial and theological immanence. Eve’s song has detached itself from the Chain of Being and floats free in the pantheistic cosmos opening before her eyes. The youthful god takes the place of Adam (that “unseemly ape,” as Van Lerberghe dismissed him) in a monistic Eden that admits no division of the sexes.33 This “Anacreontic” figure, as Albert Mockel called him, emerges as an antipode to the angels, Eve’s previous spiritual guides:34 Des roses couronnaient ses cheveux d’hyacinthe, Et son visage ressemblait à l’Amour. Roses crowned his hyacinth locks, And his face resembled that of Eros.

Theatrical Song    155

During La tentation, Eve discovers unknown sensual depths in nature, above all in the watery realm of the Sirens. After tasting the fruit of self-knowledge, it is Eros who disabuses her of spiritual illusions: O fille née de la terre et des eaux, Ne crois qu’aux dieux jeunes et beaux Qui viennent dans la lumière Couronnés de roses Et qu’accompagne la douce voix Murmurante des colombes. O daughter born of the earth and waters, Believe only in young and beautiful gods Who arrive full of light, Crowned with roses, And accompanied by the sweet Murmuring voice of doves. In Van Lerberghe’s epic, Eve’s encounter with the jeune dieu opens her eyes to the monistic essence of reality and dispels the mirage of a transcendent realm. This can help to explain Fauré’s late addition in 1910 of the seventh song, “Veilles-tu, ma senteur de soleil,” which immediately precedes “Dans un parfum de roses blanches.” The poem comes from La tentation amid a cluster of poems addressed to Eros. It contains the most sensual language in the cycle, with scarcely veiled erotic imagery: La nuit, lorsque mes pas Dans le silence rôdent, M’annonces-tu, senteur de mes lilas, Et de mes roses chaudes? . . . Sent-il que j’étends les bras Et que des lys de mes vallées, Ma voix qu’il n’entend pas Est embaumée? At night, while my steps Roam in the silence, Do you announce my presence, scent of my lilacs, And of my humid roses? . . . Does he sense that I reach out my arms And that with the lilies of my valleys My voice that he does not hear Is perfumed?

156      Chapter 5

No longer the chaste and obedient daughter of “Paradis,” Eve now addresses her god frankly as a lover. Significantly, the poem ends with a reference to Eve’s voice, which has already lapsed into inaudibility. Bergeron noted the dual meaning of the final word, “embaumée”: “The personified scents of the first line are emanating, it seems, from a corpse, the verb veiller also meaning to ‘stand watch over the dead.’ Now defunct, the voice lies preserved—‘embalmed,’ as the poem says—in the heady aroma of Eve’s earthly scents.”35 The stage is thus set for “Dans un parfum de roses blanches” and the passage from voice to writing. This reading has sketched the outlines of a musical analysis, paying particular attention to Fauré’s deployment of leitmotives. The following section looks more closely at the meaning and function of his two motives, exploring the role they play in his interpretation of Van Lerberghe’s epic. We shall concern ourselves, above all, with the issue of theatricality, returning to Fauré’s original source for La chanson d’Ève, “The King’s Three Blind Daughters.” T H E T H E AT E R O F E D E N

What marks Mélisande’s ballad as theatrical? It has no refrain and departs from the traditional couplets form of French stage song. Nor does the piano accompaniment suggest a lute, mandolin, or guitar. What quality, then, associates “The King’s Three Blind Daughters” with the stage? The answer lies in its ostinato form, a technique unique among Fauré’s songs. The actress declaims her text against a repeating two-bar melody in the piano, stated nine times with varied harmonization (see example 5.3). The ostinato form, together with the slow 3/2 meter and accented second beat, point to a specific theatrical origin: the chaconne of French Baroque opera and ballet. Fauré became a passionate advocate of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s stage works during the time he was composing La chanson d’Ève, and even singled out the “grave and expressive” chaconne of Les Indes galantes in a review from 1904.36 Fauré would certainly have known Rameau’s works before composing the Pelléas music in 1898. Excerpts were played at the Societé des concerts du conservatoire and the Schola Cantorum from 1877 on, and Durand began issuing the Œuvres complètes in 1895 under the direction of Fauré’s closest friend, SaintSäens.37 The archaic flavor of the Baroque dance is enhanced by the Phrygian tendency of the two-bar theme, which avoids the second scale degree and cadences on VI, the modal dominant.38 The melody also descends to the final cadence through EH, the Phrygian second degree. The cyclic form of “The King’s Three Blind Daughters” echoes the many circular images in Maeterlinck’s play. These include Mélisande’s golden crown and ring; the gloomy woods that surround the old castle of Allemonde; and the inexorable wheel of life invoked by Arkel’s final line, “C’est le tour de la pauvre petite . . .” (It is the poor infant’s turn . . .). Mélisande even sings the ballad at a spinning wheel, in

Theatrical Song    157 example 5.3 . Fauré, “The King’s Three Blind Daughters,” incidental music to Maurice Maeterlinck, Pelléas et Mélisande, op. 80, mm. 1–8. Lento

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a scene cut from Debussy’s opera.39 The relentless ostinato makes audible Maeterlinck’s principe invisible, the hidden destiny that controls the marionette-like characters of Pelléas et Mélisande.40 The chaconne expresses the sense, as Maeterlinck put it, “of imprisonment, of stiflement, the breathless panic of characters who want to be free, to escape, to get away, to flee, to get out, but who cannot move.”41 The momentary reprieve in mm. 19–21, as the second sister strains her ear for the

158      Chapter 5

Prince’s footfall, makes the return of the theme all the more dispiriting. Fauré’s ballad depicts Mélisande as the pawn of an unseen, uncontrollable force. This portrayal differs pointedly from Debussy’s treatment of Mélisande’s diegetic music. His Mélisande sings another onstage song, “Mes longs cheveux,” but without the accompaniment of the pit orchestra and its leitmotivic commentary. As Bergeron put it, “For just a moment, the song seems to be free from this entrapment we call opera, coming from some other place and time like Mélisande herself.”42 Debussy’s heroine enjoys a rare moment of agency as she sings for her own pleasure. Abbate heard a reversal of gender stereotypes, drawing a comparison with cinematic convention: “Mélisande’s voice, at least in this scene, is like any male voice-over, sensible and disembodied at once . . . Even her illogical poetic jumps work toward her figurative masculinization; in their suggestion of improvisation, they suggest her authorship of what she sings.”43 Fauré’s ballad tends in precisely the opposite direction. The mechanical cycling of the chaconne theme underlines Mélisande’s lack of agency as she repeats the anonymous folk ballad. There is nothing rigid or deterministic about the ballad, however, when it first emerges in the opening bars of La chanson d’Ève (see example 5.4). Motive A opens like a flower in leisurely rhythmic augmentation, while the voice follows in canon. The singer begins the second phrase, asserting an equal partnership with the piano. The labile, exploratory quality of the opening statement is matched by its enhanced modal ambivalence: the Phrygian quality stands out more obviously in E minor, and Fauré has changed the penultimate chord from i6 to iv, further attenuating the tonic (m. 4). Tonal definition emerges only gradually in the opening page of “Paradis,” as chromatic tones invade the white-key collection. The second phrase introduces a CG5, leading to a tonal half cadence (m. 7). The third phrase adds a DG5 leading tone as the vocal melody completes its octave ascent to E5. By the climactic high note in m. 14, the voice has filled in the gap between ˆ5 and ˆ8, unfolding the foreground line B4-C5-CG5-D5-DG5-E5. When motive B emerges in m. 21, it permutes this chromatic tetrachord. The foreground line now surfaces as an undulating melody with the pitches DG5-CG5D5-B4-CG5-BG4-CG5-[FG5]-E5. The transition from motive A to motive B thus traces a progression—or Fall—from ancient modality into modern tonality, from “natural” diatonicism into “artificial” chromaticism. Appropriately, the two motives are bridged by a partial whole-tone scale in the bass (mm. 14–20), the first of many symmetrical partitions of the octave in La chanson d’Ève. The whole-tone scale will return poignantly in the final song, “O Mort, poussière d’étoiles,” as Eve wills her own death: “Viens, brise-moi comme une fleur d’écume” (Come, break me like flower of foam). Fauré exploited the archaic tone of Mélisande’s ballad in later songs of La chanson d’Ève. When motive A returns next at the beginning of “Comme Dieu

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

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160      Chapter 5 example 5.4 . Fauré, “Paradis,” La chanson d’Ève, mm. 1–23.

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rayonne,” its learned contrapuntal setting serves to evoke the old biblical God. “Eau vivante” does not quote motive A, but Fauré clearly modeled the piano’s ostinato in mm. 1–4 on the opening of “Paradis.” The four-beat pattern replicates the opening fifth ascent, the overall minor-tenth contour of the melody, and the cadential progression from A minor to C major. Although in C major, “Eau vivante” begins with rising Phrygian scales, creating the same modal-tonal ambiguity as in “Paradis.” Ancient modality again suggests the purity of nature, gushing like fresh water from its subterranean source. In “Roses ardentes,” finally, the rising arpeggio that blossomed so modestly in “Paradis” soars ecstatically as Eve recognizes her own divinity in the sun. Motive A evokes not only purity and innocence but also Eve’s aspiration to the bright aerial region of God and the angels. Motive B is as lush, warm, and sensual as her companion is chaste and spiritual. Like the two nymphs in Mallarmé’s L’après-midi d’un faune, the twin motives embody the spiritual and carnal sides of Eve’s nature.44 Whereas motive A rises heavenward, B coils downward in lazy undulations. Motive A remains within the diatonic white keys, while B exhausts the chromatic tetrachord. The sinuous motive B suggests various associations—the Dies irae, the biblical serpent, waves of light and color. But I believe that Fauré had another theatrical model in mind. His stark opposition of diatonicism and chromaticism in the two motives evokes a binarism of French opera familiar from Bizet and Saint-Saëns. Motive B triggers memories of the exotic seductress, Carmen or Delilah, as it slithers about the chromatic tetrachord. Fauré’s one explicitly Orientalist song, “Les roses d’Ispahan” (1884), begins with a similar inner line in the piano ritornello, a serpentine melody that uncoils from ˆ1 to ˆ5. The Orientalist topic suits Eve in her traditional role as temptress, but it takes on a more

Theatrical Song    161

nuanced meaning in Van Lerberghe’s amoral paradise. Motive B suggests that erotically charged, watery netherworld to which Eve gradually succumbs, the realm of young gods, humid roses, and hyacinth locks. If Van Lerberghe’s Sirens were to sing, their music might well resemble this innocently lascivious melody. And here we arrive at the most important meaning of motive B. It is the embodiment of song itself. Bergeron called it simply “Eve’s song.”45 Motive B is the crystalline, rounded form toward which A evolves. In “Paradis,” motive A is inchoate, labile, motionless; each time B arrives, it bestows measure, repetition, and clarity. The association of motive B with Eve’s song appears most clearly at the end of “Paradis,” as the singer intones “Ève chante.” Eve’s song is not the narrator’s sterile recitation but the shapely, sensuous piano melody that follows her words. This melody has already been heard thrice in the song, crystallizing in memory. It has become not merely Eve’s song but La chanson d’Ève, a fixed text that she repeats as in Van Lerberghe’s final stanza. When motive B next appears in “Comme Dieu rayonne,” it undergoes a decisive transformation (see example 5.5). The third song begins in C minor with a learned contrapuntal setting of motive A, and on the final stanza, motive B emerges in its original key of E major. But the motive now undergoes a minor-third rotation, repeating sequentially in DH and BH major. Fauré has truncated motive B to end on the fifth note, a whole tone below the first note, and he has accented that note agogically with a longer rhythmic value. (The fifth note is already foregrounded in motive B, where it has an agogic accent and is the only repeated tone in the melody.) As the two structural tones of the truncated motive descend sequentially, they generate the foreground line DG-CG-C-BH-A-G. This line belongs to the octatonic scale, made up of alternating half and whole steps, a scale most famously associated with Igor Stravinsky. As example 5.5 shows, the scale results from filling in a cycle of minor thirds with alternating major and minor seconds. Even more dramatically than in “Paradis,” Fauré’s twin motives enact a transition into chromatic artifice. Fauré was intimately acquainted with the octatonic scale and its harmonic possibilities. As Sylvia Kahan has revealed, Prince Edmond de Polignac, the second husband of Winnaretta Singer, compiled an Étude sur les successions alternantes de tons et demi-tons around 1879 and illustrated his theory with a series of Orientalist works.46 In 1888, Fauré took part in performances of one of these octatonic essays, “La danse du serpent,” which formed part of a pastiche entitled Échos de l’Orient judaïque. The work was published later that year with the composer’s explanation of his new scale.47 Fauré wrote admiringly of another of Polignac’s octatonic works, “Pilate livre le Christ,” in a letter to Winnaretta from 1894 and published an enthusiastic review of the piece in 1905, the year before he began La chanson d’Ève.48 His praise for Polignac’s “Judaic Orient” helps explain his own use of octatonicism for the Garden of Eden narrative: “The eloquence of the text and the emotion of the scenes are enveloped in a truly far-off atmosphere, tinted with a truly Oriental color.”49

162      Chapter 5 example 5.5 . Octatonic rotation of motive B in Fauré, “Comme Dieu rayonne,” La chanson d’Ève, mm. 15–20.

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jeu - ne dieu!

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sempre f œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœ œœœ œ œ œ œ ˙ œ ≈ ≈ b ˙œ n ˙œ œ œ ≈ œ œ b ˙œ œ œ ≈ œ œ > >

Bb:

Theatrical Song    163

The passage from diatonicism to experimental modern harmony in “Comme Dieu rayonne” corresponds to the shift from the biblical God to the young pagan god bathing luxuriantly in the light. This correlation of octatonicism and pantheism also provides a key to Fauré’s portrayal of God in the opening song. Midway through “Paradis,” God directs Eve to name every living creature (see example 5.6). He intones his command in the manner of a plainchant reciting tone, accompanied by a repeating two-bar module in the piano. Fauré described this passage far too modestly to his wife: “I have worked for seven hours and have solved the problem of making God sing. When you see what his eloquence consists of, you will be amazed it took me so long to find it.”50 In fact, the two-bar piano motive consists of an octatonic tetrachord, generated by a minor-third sequence. Moreover, Fauré rotated the module upward through the chromatic scale in mm. 76–85, exhausting the three possible octatonic collections before returning to the original one (“Série B,” in Edmond de Polignac’s treatise).51 Despite his majuscule spelling, the deity who speaks to Eve is already the jeune dieu of the fourth song. The Voice of God motive returns as Eve proceeds to name the creatures. The piano plays the motive eight times in a rising chromatic sequence in mm. 98–108, beginning with the octatonic collection that framed the original presentation of the motive. The singer intones the text in the manner of God’s commandment as she describes Eve’s obedient action. But first, motive B undergoes its first minorthird rotation in La chanson d’Ève, descending sequentially from E major to DH major (mm. 91–94). As Eve assumes the divine power of speech, she appropriates both God’s motive and its symmetrical principle of harmonic organization. “Paradis” forges a connection between the invention of the sign—and hence, representation—and the octatonic scale. The break with diatonic tonality correlates with the loss of unmediated presence. And here we confront directly the issue of theatricality. For God’s command is a performance, the representation of an absent speaker. As in Schubert’s “Der Erlkönig,” the singer abandons the narrative voice and performs the quoted speech. God’s words are the only quoted text in the song cycle; indeed, Fauré himself added the quotation marks to Van Lerberghe’s text. As an embedded performance, the Voice of God motive functions as diegetic music. (We recall that Fauré, in the letter to Marie, described God as singing, not speaking.) The composer bracketed the divine song not only orthographically and harmonically but also texturally. God delivers his text in quasi parlando declamation above a repeating two-bar ostinato—that is, in the precise texture of Mélisande’s ballad. The intrusion of performance into La chanson d’Ève thus restores the most singular feature of Fauré’s theatrical source. Ostinato form emerges fully in Fauré’s eighth song, the pivotal poem in which voice fades into writing. “Dans un parfum de roses blanches” opens with six statements of motive B, but the motive has now passed into the left hand as a

164      Chapter 5 example 5.6 . Rotation of Voice of God motive through three octatonic collections in Fauré, “Paradis,” La chanson d’Ève, mm. 76–85. 76

bœ

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sempre

Theatrical Song    165

passacaglia bass (see example 5.7). As it descends chromatically to the dominant, the motive recalls the Baroque lamento bass, an appropriate theatrical device for a song that initiates the death of the poetess. The bass rotates through two symmetrical third-cycles, each rotation consisting of three statements of motive B. Motive B first rotates through a major-third cycle in mm. 1–8, beginning successively on FG, D, and BH. As in “Comme Dieu rayonne,” the truncated version of B places an agogic accent on the fifth note, a whole tone below the first. The majorthird rotation thus generates the foreground line FG-E-D-C-BH, a partial wholetone scale. Motive B then rotates through a minor-third cycle in mm. 10–18, generating a partial octatonic scale, FG-E-DG-CG-C. Both formally and harmonically, then, the passacaglia in “Dans un parfum de roses blanches” imposes a cyclic form on Eve’s discourse, a rigid shape that leaves no space for spontaneous expression. Eve’s lyric voice has indeed vanished, replaced by the italicized narrator of Van Lerberghe’s “Prélude”—that is, by the posthumous voice of Eve herself. In Bergeron’s reading, the narration reflected “Eve’s own changed condition, as a split personality that now looks down on herself—‘Eve’—with a detachment that reveals her principal offense.”52 Bergeron diagnosed the split personality of “Dans un parfum de roses blanches” as the fruit of indulgent expressivity, Eve’s intoxication with song for its own sake. Yet Fauré’s musical signs point in a different direction. The symmetrical partitions of the octave recall Eve’s first act of dissociation when she discovered language, splitting the world into signs and absent objects. The cycling passacaglia translates this primal rupture into performance, imposing a theatrical form on her lyric utterance. We are witnessing the birth of diegetic song—not song that has transcended performance, but song-as-performance. The following song, “Crépuscule,” brings La chanson d’Ève full circle to its theatrical origin. The chaconne form of Mélisande’s ballad returns with its numbing repetition of motive A. Eve now hears her estranged voice and anguishes over the unfamiliar sound. On the verse “Quel cri déchire, dans la nuit, / Ta voix qui me berce?” (What cry rends, in the night, / Your voice that cradles me?), the piano twists motive A into a painful diminished-seventh figure. Yet unlike Mélisande’s ballad, “Crépuscule” ends on a hopeful note. The last two lines break free of the ostinato, the voice rises to a triumphant climax on “allégresse” (happiness), and the song ends in D major. The effervescent postlude, with its rising scales, suggests an apotheosis or celestial leave-taking, a reading that aligns with the end of Van Lerberghe’s epic. This uplifting conclusion is the most significant alteration that Fauré made to “The King’s Three Blind Daughters,” which ends on a note of unrelieved gloom. From the beginning, Fauré seems to have grasped Eve’s dissociation within the overall context of Van Lerberghe’s collection—not as tragedy but as the symbolic death through which the poetess-singer must pass in order to complete her song.

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

# Andantino 3 ∑ & 4

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J

Theatrical Song    167 example 5.7 . (continued) 13

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Fauré originally intended “Crépuscule” to serve as the conclusion to La chanson d’Ève. As Robert Orledge has revealed, the composer wrote preliminary orderings of the cycle’s contents on the manuscript covers of “Roses ardentes” and “Comme Dieu rayonne,” which show that he initially ordered the songs in the sequence 1–23–5-9 and then changed it to 1–2-3–4-8–6-5–9. The 1909 edition also ends with “Crépuscule.”53 From the outset, Fauré intended the cycle to culminate in his adaptation of Mélisande’s ballad, a theatrical song with a unique ostinato form. His final ordering, which pairs “Crépuscule” with the passacaglia-like “Dans un parfum de roses blanches,” strengthens the role of this form as the goal and consummation of the cycle. The cyclical patterns of the ballad progressively invade Eve’s music as she becomes alienated from her voice. The final song that Fauré eventually added in 1910, “O Mort, poussière d’étoiles,” restores Eve’s first-person voice. She now voices the will to dissolution that the preceding two songs had enacted musically. Yet the final strophe summons a familiar constellation of signs as she prays to be emptied like a golden amphora (see example 5.8). Motive B emerges one last time as the final refrain of Eve’s song. The motive rotates

168      Chapter 5 example 5.8 . Complete rotation through the octatonic scale in Fauré, “O Mort, poussière d’étoiles,” La chanson d’Ève, mm. 18–21.

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Theatrical Song    169

through the minor-third cycle, indeed, completing the only full rotation and octatonic scale in La chanson d’Ève. And the texture of Mélisande’s ballad returns as Eve intones in parlando declamation above the repeating motivic module. With these harmonic and textural recollections, Fauré’s final song reprises the theological and aesthetic journey of La chanson d’Ève. It retraces the path from transcendence to immanence, presence to representation, voice to inscription. As Eve’s song returns for the last time, it consummates the death of the poetess and the birth of the poem: She melts, sweetly, and completes La chanson d’Ève.

6

Writing in the Sand Le jardin clos, op. 106

Fauré’s fifth song cycle presents a paradox. With La chanson d’Ève, he had ceased to write individual mélodies. Of the twenty-seven songs published from 1910 to 1922, all but the trivial “C’est la paix” belong to a cycle. Yet even as the solitary songs draw together into families, their organization grows more diffuse. The unity of the late cycles owes less to narrative or motivic connections and more to a shared subject matter and ethos. This new reticence shows immediately in Le jardin clos (1914), perhaps Fauré’s most elusive song cycle. Drawn from Charles Van Lerberghe’s early collection Entrevisions (1898), op. 106 lacks the visible unifying devices that Fauré had honed in his first four cycles. No clear narrative connects the eight songs, nor do the keys suggest an obvious tonal plan. Most strikingly, the thematic recollections and leitmotives that had burgeoned across the Verlaine cycles and La chanson d’Ève have vanished entirely, leaving behind only a shadowy network of textures and piano figurations, like cobwebs in an abandoned house. Fauré’s selection of poems appears equally disjointed. Entrevisions (or Glimpses) consists of three loosely related sections: Jeux et songes (Games and Dreams), Le jardin clos (The Enclosed Garden), based on verses from the Song of Songs, and Sous le portique (Beneath the Portico). Fauré plucked his texts indifferently from the three parts of Van Lerberghe’s book: Jeux et songes 3. 5. 6. 8.

“La messagère” (G major) “Dans la nymphée” (DH major) “Dans la pénombre” (E major) “Inscription sur le sable” (E minor) 170

Writing in the Sand    171

Le jardin clos 2. “Quand tu plonges tes yeux dans mes yeux” (F major) 4. “Je me poserai sur ton cœur” (EH major) 7. “Il m’est cher, amour, le bandeau” (F major) Sous le portique 1. “Excaucement” (C major) Although he took his title from the middle section, Fauré set only three of the biblical poems and his overall ordering appears scattershot. The conclusion seems inevitable: both musically and poetically, Fauré abandoned the unified ideal of his earlier cycles in Le jardin clos, even as he adopted the song cycle as his sole form of lyric expression. “One calls it a ‘cycle’ only as a matter of convenience,” concluded Nectoux, noting that Fauré himself referred to Le jardin clos as a “suite.”1 Yet this reading is suspect on many levels. Fauré’s track record in the song cycle should already alert us. In his four previous cycles, he had embraced the model of Schumann and Massenet, using thematic recollections, tonal planning, and a story line to create truly unified works rather than mere sets. He even outdid his predecessors by adapting Wagner’s leitmotivic system to the song cycle. Fauré’s sudden departure from this model must be regarded, at least potentially, as an artistic decision. Certainly, the integrated song cycle still remained viable. In 1914, Lili Boulanger completed Clairières dans le ciel (with a dedication to “the master Gabriel Fauré”), which features a narrative, recurring motives, a cyclic return of the opening song, and a cryptic tonal and numerological structure.2 In the same year, Saint-Saëns dedicated to Fauré Le cendre rouge, a song cycle with a framing prologue and epilogue, unified key scheme, and thematic recollection. Fauré himself returned to his earlier practice in L’horizon chimérique, which begins and ends in the same key, makes strategic use of the sharp-flat polarity, and traces the protagonist’s seafaring ambitions from longing to resignation. When we position Le jardin clos against its sister works, the absence of unifying features begins to asssume a positive, expressive aspect. The impression grows stronger when we consider Fauré’s curious habit of composing his song cycles in complementary pairs. The Cinq mélodies “de Venise” and La bonne chanson (1891–94) share not only the same poet but also the same fascination with music as a conduit between nature and humanity. Mirages and L’horizon chimérique (1919–21) both have four songs, and as the titles indicate, both cycles explore the line between reality and illusion. La chanson d’Ève and Le jardin clos also overlap suggestively. The two “garden” cycles center on femmes exotiques from the Old Testament, Eve and the dusky Sulamite of the Song of Songs. Both Van Lerberghe cycles also end with a meditation on a woman’s death. “Inscription sur le sable” recalls precise images from “O Mort, poussière d’étoiles”— dust, dissolution, sublimation in song:

172      Chapter 6

Toute, avec sa robe et ses fleurs,  Elle, ici, redevint poussière, Et son âme emportée ailleurs  Renaquit en chant et lumière. Altogether, with her robe and flowers, She turned back to dust here, And her soul, carried away elsewhere, Was reborn in song and light. Finally, Le jardin clos ends with an explicit reference to writing—not as the crystallization of voice, as depicted in the previous chapter, but as a trace of vital presence amid the shifting sands of time. These parallels suggest that we read Le jardin clos, including its denial of unifying features, in counterpoint with La chanson d’Ève. Fauré retained the limpid, reserved style of La chanson d’Ève and even simplifed the texture and melodic writing in Le jardin clos. The two Van Lerberghe cycles differ most sharply in the treatment of recurring material. La chanson d’Ève is governed by cycles: the churning ostinato of Mélisande’s ballad that engulfs the eighth and ninth songs; the rondo-like repetition of the two leitmotives in “Paradis”; the return of the two motives across the following songs; the sequential rotation through major- and minor-third cycles; and, finally, the procession of night and day that shapes the entire narrative. In Le jardin clos, Fauré mercilessly purged the music of repetition. Of the eight songs, only “Je me poserai sur ton cœur” contains repeating thematic material. Elsewhere, Fauré confined himself to veiled motivic echoes, lasting no longer than a few beats. His beloved da capo form is missing entirely (by contrast, there are two da capo forms in the Cinq mélodies, two in La bonne chanson, and one each in Mirages and L’horizon chimérique, not to mention the diverse rounded forms of “Mandoline,” “À Clymène,” “Une Saint en son auréole,” “Avant que tu ne t’en ailles,” “Paradis,” “Dans un parfum de roses blanches,” “Crépuscule,” “Reflets dans l’eau,” “Jardin nocturne,” and “Diane, Séléné”). Sequences are also at a premium in Le jardin clos. The cycle contains only a handful of literal repetitions (whose scarcity lends them surprising weight). More often, Fauré blurred the outlines of his model, disguising the sequence within the supple, unforeseeable flow of the melody. Repetition and recurrence are key ingredients of musical form, and their absence in Le jardin clos might tempt us to hear the work as formless and diffuse. Yet while repetition lends a work coherence, it can also distance the listener from the temporal flow of the music. Marcel Proust analyzed this process in À la recherche du temps perdu, discussing the famous “little phrase” from Vinteuil’s violin sonata. The narrator describes how Swann internalized the phrase, an idée fixe for his infatuation with Odette: And so, scarcely had the exquisite sensation which Swann had experienced died away, before his memory had furnished him with an immediate transcript, sketchy, it is true,

Writing in the Sand    173 and provisional, which he had been able to glance at while the piece continued, so that, when the same impression suddenly returned, it was no longer impossible to grasp. He could picture to himself its exent, its symmetrical arrangement, its notation, its expressive value; he had before him something that was no longer pure music, but rather design, architecture, thought, and which allowed the actual music to be recalled.3

Swann purchases memory at the price of immediacy. He takes possession of the musical idea, indeed turns it into a fetish, but only by abstracting it from the actual time of the performance. Similarly, in La chanson d’Ève, the two leitmotives harden into inert, mechanically repeating objects as Eve perishes, inscribing her living voice as text. By suppressing repetition in Le jardin clos, Fauré sacrificed that synoptic “architectural” view prized by Swann, but preserved instead the vital flow and continuity of the musical experience. In this way, La chanson d’Ève and Le jardin clos model opposing ideals of time and memory. Vladimir Jankélévitch put his finger on the matter in his comparison of the final songs. “Inscription sur le sable” does not open onto the abyss like Eve’s swan song, but evokes instead the perennial existence and fidelity of memory. There is no longer cosmic ecstasy, but simply an enclosed garden and a tender heart that daily celebrates the cult of the absent one. Le jardin clos is thus the present rejoining the past, it is “Le parfum impérissable” of fidelity.4

Jankélévitch’s insight reaches, quite literally, to the heart of Le jardin clos. As Max Loppert noted, Fauré’s key scheme forms a rough palindrome.5 The cycle begins in C major, progressively adds sharps and flats until the fifth song, and then regresses to simpler key signatures: C —

F H

G G

EH HHH

DH HHHHH

E

GGGG

G G

F H

e G

At the heart of this tonal cloister lies “Dans la nymphée,” in the lush Fauréan key of DH major. In the grotto shrine consecrated to the nymphs, the speaker invokes the memory of another departed elle: Quoique tes yeux ne la voient pas, Sache, en ton âme, qu’elle est là, Comme autrefois divine et blanche. Though your eyes see her not, Know, in your soul, that she is there, Divine and fair as in past days. It seems, then, that Fauré took seriously the image of the jardin clos. Although the cycle contains only three of the biblical poems, the opening song (“Exaucement”) announces the title:

174      Chapter 6

Que ton âme calme et muette, Fée endormie au jardin clos, En sa douce volonté faite Trouve la joie et le repos. May your soul, calm and still Like a fairy asleep in the enclosed garden, With its sweet desire fulfilled, Find joy and rest. The image of the enclosed garden comes from Song of Songs 4:12: “A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.” The hortus conclusus became linked to the Virgin Mary in late medieval iconography, as Stanley Stewart explained: “Chosen by God, she is untouched, enclosed, sealed. Though shut from the world in both body and spirit, yet she bore fruit.”6 Fauré’s cycle is also a sacred enclosure wherein a mysterious elle—slumbering fairy, bygone nymph, dead princess—lives on in imagination. In Le jardin clos, each of whose songs Fauré dedicated to a different woman, the eternal feminine becomes a figure of memory, or better, of a process of remembering in which past and present flow together in an unbroken stream. Time, memory, continuity—these themes were in the air, to say the least, when Fauré wrote Le jardin clos. In 1913, Debussy composed his famously amorphous ballet score Jeux, an apparently seamless work with a minimum of internal repetitions. In the same year, Proust published the first installment of À la recherche du temps perdu, a monument to memory that submits traditional narrative to the flow of inner experience. The political situation may also have stimulated thoughts of memory and nostalgia. Fauré’s composition of Le jardin clos straddled the opening hostilities of World War I in most dramatic fashion. He began the cycle during July in the German town of Bad Ems, then had to flee through Switzerland to reach France. In a letter from October, he mourned his country “where so many regions were devastated, where houses are burned down, where there is shooting, where there is massacre!”7 While Fauré could not have foreseen the cataclysm of the Great War, Loppert can hardly be blamed for identifying the wispy elle of Le jardin clos with “the spirit of civilisation, a beautiful but mirage-like illusion.”8 Jankélévitch again points in the most fruitful direction. As he discussed the evolution of Fauré’s later style, the French philosopher dropped a familiar name: To evolve means neither to renounce nor to abjure, but rather to deepen the secret of reminiscence. Such is for Fauré the Bergsonian meaning of the future and of innovation; such is for Van Lerberghe . . . the message of the indelible trace that an imponderable finger inscribes in the shifting sand.9

Writing in the Sand    175

Jankélévitch was referring to his teacher Henri Bergson, the leading figure of French philosophy before World War I. Bergson founded his entire oeuvre on the notion of pure time, idealizing the kind of temporal experience enshrined in Le jardin clos—fluid, continuous, unhindered by rigid mental structures. Van Lerberghe’s collection evinces the same Bergsonian concern with the fleeting, mutable nature of experience. Describing Entrevisions, Lucien Christophe remarked on the thought of the poet eager and impatient to mingle his breath with the breath and palpitation of a universe where all is passage and change. He weds himself to their most secret undulations, using words as light as leaves, tenuous as the breath of flowers, rhythms that borrow their gait from the agile breezes.10

Nothing suggests that Fauré ever read Bergson. Yet the philosopher’s writings have always attracted critics as a heuristic model for fin-de-siècle French music. In fact, an article on Bergson and music appeared in 1914 in the fashionable daily Comœdia.11 Bergson’s philosophy offers a unique conceptual vocabulary for interpreting Le jardin clos, a vocabulary grounded in the shared ideas of Fauré’s world. The following analysis reads Le jardin clos within the context of Bergsonian thought, focusing on the issues of time, memory, and vitalism. In the philosopher’s spirit, the discussion will unfold continuously without divisions or subheadings. Our analysis will follow the evolution of Bergson’s ideas, moving sequentially through his three great books: Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience (translated as Time and Memory, 1889), Matière et mémoire (Matter and Memory, 1896), and L’évolution créatrice (Creative Evolution, 1907). The writings of Jankélévitch, especially his book on Bergson’s philosophy, will also figure in the discussion. As always in comparative studies of music and philosophy, the value of the model rests on the insights that it provides into the work of art, and in the case of Le jardin clos, these prove rich indeed. INTO THE GARDEN WITH BERGSON

Van Lerberghe began Entrevisions with a famous glimpse from classical mythology. The opening poem, “Psyche,” lays out the principal themes of both his collection and Fauré’s cycle. In the myth, Eros has rescued the beautiful Psyche, offered as a sacrifice to Venus, and only appears to his bride by night. Spurred by her jealous sisters, Psyche shines a lamp on the sleeping god who flees, leaving her to suffer poverty and trials until her final redemption by the Olympian gods. The poem captures her fleeting glimpse of Eros: Ouvre tes yeux comme une flamme, Mais sois silence, l’Amour dort. Viens, lève-toi, Psyché, mon âme, Et prends en main ta lampe d’or.

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Regarde bien, l’Amour s’éveille. Vois comme il s’est évanoui En la lumière et la merveille Que ton regard posa sur lui. Open your eyes like a flame, But keep still, Love is sleeping. Come, rise up, Psyche, my soul, And take your golden lamp. Look closely, Eros is awakening. See how he has vanished In the light and the wonder Of your glance that rests on him. In four songs from Fauré’s cycle the protagonist gazes upon a dreamer; in “La messagère” the sleeper is even Eros himself. Like “Psyche,” these songs inhabit the half-light between night and day, dream and reality. They explore a hidden mode of knowledge glimpsed, as it were, out of the corner of the eye. This knowledge entails loss—to behold the mystery is also to destroy it: Et maintenant c’est le mystère, L’abandon et la pauvreté; Mais en tes larmes la lumière Et le songe de sa beauté. Demain, triste, mais frêle et blanche, Belle d’avoir voulu mourir, Tu sentiras ton front qui penche, Sous des roses s’épanouir. And now there is mystery, Abandonment and poverty; But in your eyes, light And the dream of his beauty. Tomorrow, sad, but slender and white, Beautiful with the desire for death, You will feel your head droop Beneath blossoming roses. Yet Psyche lives on, like the dead princess of “Inscription sur le sable,” sublimated in the “divine murmur” of poetry: Aux splendeurs de l’aube future, Demain tes lèvres apprendront

Writing in the Sand    177

A n’être qu’un divin murmure De mots de résurrection. With the splendors of the coming dawn, Tomorrow your lips will learn To be nothing more than a divine murmur Of words of resurrection. A special mode of knowledge also inspired the philosophy of Henri Bergson. His most original idea, and the germ of all his thought, is the notion of pure time (durée). In the Essai, Bergson posited two distinct selves. The intellectual moi superficiel, through which we navigate the material world, reduces experience to a homogeneous geometrical form. The intellect also imposes this spatial form on time: we depict hours and minutes on a clock face, arrange dates on a timeline, and imagine events as isolated points. The intuitive moi profond, on the other hand, grasps experience more spontaneously as a “confused multiplicity,” in which different psychological states succeed each other yet interpenetrate. Intuition alone allows us to access this authentic self: “We reach the latter by deep introspection, which leads us to grasp our inner states as living things, constantly becoming, as states not amenable to measure, which permeate one another and of which the succession in duration [durée] has nothing in common with juxtaposition in homogeneous space.”12 Only in this state can we know true freedom: “To act freely is to recover possession of oneself, and to get back into pure duration.”13 Bergson illustrated durée through his critique of intensity. We rely on this concept when we say that a pain increases or a sound diminishes. Such statements, however, are constructs of the intellect, which always seeks to quantify experience. What we call intensification is really the succession of intermingling psychic states. Bergson invited readers to imagine a page lit by a decreasing light source: while the intellect conceives a uniform dimming of the white paper, intuition perceives diverse shades of gray flowing together.14 In durée, as Jankélévitch explained, “our states of consciousness concatenate according to an uninterrupted becoming without relation to number.”15 Bergson also explained durée through his famous resolution of Zeno’s paradoxes. The best known of these pre-Socratic conundrums is the problem of Achilles and the tortoise. If the tortoise begins with a head start, the argument goes, Achilles can never overtake it, since no matter how quickly he races toward its position the creature will always have inched further in the meantime. Achilles may close the distance infinitely, but as long as the tortoise keeps moving he will never catch it. Bergson attacked this sophistry by exposing the confusion of spatial and temporal thinking. Zeno’s paradox only makes sense, he argued, if we eliminate motion and conceive the race as a series of fixed points. But motion is simple and indivisible, a temporal process that cannot be decomposed and quantified.

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The trajectories of Achilles and the tortoise coexist as heterogeneous actions and do not submit to a uniform measurement. The Eleatic philosophers thus created a pseudo-problem when they robbed durée of its inner mobility and diversity: “In place of Achilles pursuing the tortoise they really put two tortoises, regulated by each other, two tortoises which agree to make the same kind of steps or simultaneous acts, so as never to catch one another.”16 Le jardin clos, with its absence of repetition and formal divisions, embraces the flux of Bergsonian durée. Even the one song that repeats thematic material reveals Fauré’s care to preserve a sense of forward motion. “Je me poserai sur ton cœur” glosses the famous phrase from Song of Songs 8:6, “Set me as a seal upon thine heart”: Je me poserai sur ton cœur Comme le printemps sur la mer, Sur les plaines de la mer stérile Où nulle fleur ne peut croître, A ses souffles agiles, Que des fleurs de lumière.

I will set myself on your heart Like springtime on the sea, On the plains of the barren sea Where no flower can grow In its nimble breezes Except flowers of light.

Je me poserai sur ton cœur Comme l’oiseau sur la mer, Dans le repos de ses ailes lasses, Et que berce le rythme éternel Des flots et de l’espace.

I will set myself on your heart Like a bird on the sea, Resting its weary wings, And rocked by the eternal rhythm Of waves and space.

The royal seal is a static image, yet Van Lerberghe infused it with movement and life. The casual rhyme scheme casts a loose net around the lines, which fluctuate between six and nine syllables. The poem projects the action into the future and summons mutable, ephemeral images—waves, flowers of light, nimble breezes, a floating bird. At the same time, the parallel stanzas and repeating first line create a sense of fixity, like the seal itself. The poem delicately balances motion and stasis, like a bird arrested in flight as it beats against the ocean breeze. Fauré preserved Van Lerberghe’s sense of dynamic inertia through harmonic means. He set the poem in a rounded form in which the singer’s first phrase returns as a refrain at the beginning of the second stanza and again as an additional coda. The opening phrase hovers above a I6/4 chord, a harmony both stable and unsettled, while the syncopated bass line pulls gently against the beat (see example 6.1a). When the phrase returns in the second stanza, a stealthy modulation transports it into GH, the flat mediant (see example 6.1b). The modulation denies the refrain a sense of formal closure and propels the second stanza instead toward a climactic high EH. The song reaches a tentative close in m. 28, coming to rest on the original I6/4. This cadence also dissolves, however, as the refrain returns in C major (see example 6.1c). The melody comes back at its original pitch, but

Writing in the Sand    179

with G now functioning as ˆ5 of the new key so that a root-position chord finally supports the melody. Yet this illusory stability also evaporates as the chromatic bass line leads back to EH. With these fresh, unexpected changes to the harmony, Fauré imparted a sense of mobility and direction to the cyclic form. The song models a truly Bergsonian experience of repetition, like the philosopher’s description of the successive ticks of a clock, “each permeating the other and organizing themselves like the notes of a tune, so as to form what we shall call a continuous or qualitative multiplicity with no resemblance to number.”17 Bergson often compared durée to melody to suggest the holism of psychological experience. Jankélévitch, who wrote more technically about music than his teacher, found a better metaphor. It is counterpoint, he wrote, that allows music to express this intimate copenetration of states of mind. Does not polyphony make it possible to conduct several superposed voices in parallel, voices that express themselves simultaneously and harmonize among themselves and all the while remain distinct and even opposed to one another? . . . This is what the inner life does at every moment: in paradoxical counterpoints, it associates experiences that appear to us as without connection, such that each of them bears witness to the entire person.18

Formal counterpoint is rare in Fauré’s music, but contrapuntal thinking increasingly informed his late works. Chords and harmonic motion arise less from standard bass progressions and more from the movement of all the individual lines. This linear orientation is evident from the first bars of Le jardin clos and plays a major role in creating the sense of continuity in the cycle. “Exaucement” begins with a deceptively simple texture (see example 6.2). As in all of Fauré’s songs after 1910, the upper notes of the piano inflexibly double the vocal line. This is a steep drop-off in complexity from La chanson d’Ève where the piano melody enjoys considerable independence, especially in the leitmotivic songs. “Exaucement” begins with rippling C-major arpeggios in the right hand within which an inner voice descends stepwise from the tonic (C-B-A-G-F). Fauré began his adolescent song “Mai” similarly with static tonic arpeggios and a descending line in the inner voices. In the early song, however, the line is purely coloristic and merely adds tang to the tonic triad. In 1914, the inner line splits off from the arpeggio and becomes an independent contrapuntal voice. It passes into the left hand in m. 3 and continues its stepwise descent to a low B. In mm. 6–8, as Strobel noted, the new voice enters into a loose canon with the melody as the rising bass line (D-E-FG-G) shadows the melody (FG-G-A-B).19 The two lines form parallel tenths, yet the staggered rhythm keeps the consonances from arriving on the same beat. Throughout the song, the left hand remains out of sync with the right, always pushing beyond or lagging behind the melody and its accompanying harmony. As in “Je me poserai sur ton cœur,” the mulish bass line accounts for the surprising amount of dissonance in the outwardly placid song.

Rumph Ex.6.1 page 1 of 1

example 6.1 . Transformations of a refrain in Fauré, “Je me poserai sur ton cœur,” Le jardin

clos, op. 106. a. Mm. 3–6.

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Writing in the Sand    181

The two hands rejoin briefly at the end of the first stanza, as shown in example 6.2, sealing it with a plagal cadence in V. The churchly tone befits the text in which the speaker fancies his love the fulfillment of the dreamer’s prayer: Alors qu’en tes mains de lumière Tu poses ton front défaillant, Que mon amour en ta prière Viennent comme un exaucement.

When on your hands of light You rest your drooping head, May my love enter your prayer As a fulfillment.

Before the singer has finished the word “exaucement,” however, the bass line drives onward, knocking out the supports of the new key. The independence of the contrapuntal line thus preserves the forward momentum, keeping fulfillment from becoming stasis. Fauré decoupled counterpoint and harmony most radically in the third stanza (see example 6.3). After surging to an apex at the end of the second stanza, the vocal line discharges the accumulated energy in a descending melody, floating above fluid and unpredictable harmonies. Sylvain Caron analyzed mm. 16–21 as a prolonged V-I progression, with the outer voices again moving in parallel tenths.20 In Edward Phillips’s Schenkerian reduction, the same passage prolongs the tonic triad.21 Yet neither Caron nor Phillips accounted for the chromatic melodic line, C-B-A-GG-FG-E, which omits the crucial fourth and fifth degrees of the scale. In fact, Fauré’s melody follows the octatonic scale, which he had exploited in La chanson d’Ève. The symmetrical scale unfolds fully in the left hand across mm. 16–19 with only one foreign note: C-B-A-[G/F ]-GG-FG-EG-DG-D-C. It is the collision between linear (octatonic) and harmonic (tonal) logic that generates the tortuous progression in this passage. The sequence begins with a conventional tonal progression, which lies naturally under the fingers of an experienced pianist. At the end of the second stanza, as the singer sustains “d’or,” the bass line descends stepwise from B to G, moving in parallel tenths with the melody on the last two notes. Fauré harmonized this ˆ3-ˆ2-ˆ1 bass with a I6-V4/3-I progression (with a few dissonant notes), as he undoubtedly learned at the École Niedermeyer. As Robert Gjerdingen has shown, Fauré both absorbed and transmitted to his own students the Neapolitan partimento tradition, in which students learned to improvise standard progressions above stock bass lines.22 Louis Niedermeyer studied partimenti in Naples with Niccolò Zingarelli, and as Saint-Saëns testified, Pierre Maleden taught Fauré and his classmates according to the same method:

5

In this system chords are not considered only by themselves—a 5–3 chord, a 6–3 chord, a 7th chord—but according to the scale degree on which they are placed; one learns that according to the place they occupy, they acquire different properties, and one thus can explain cases deemed inexplicable. This method is taught at the École Niedermeyer; I do not know if it is taught elsewhere.23

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

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Writing in the Sand    183 example 6.3 . Fauré, “Exaucement,” Le jardin clos, mm. 16–21. 16

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Saint-Saëns was describing the hallowed regola dell’ottava, which prescribes the chords to be built on each note of the scale, depending on whether it ascends or descends. In the case of a descending ˆ3-ˆ2-ˆ1 bass, the regola dictates precisely the I6-V4/3-I progression used by Fauré.24 Things become bizarre in the third stanza, however, as this standard progression descends sequentially through the octatonic scale. GJ does not belong to the unfolding scale, and the left hand promptly shifts to the proper note, GG (note how Fauré has respelled the G as F , reinterpreting the note as a chromatic neighbor to the octatonic degree). As the bass line continues its descent from GG to FG, the I6-V4/3-I progression begins anew, this time in E major. But the octatonic scale now blocks the way: instead of completing the ˆ3-ˆ2-ˆ1 descent to E, the bass line drops a half step to EG, the next note in the scale. As the bass continues from

5

184      Chapter 6

EG to DG, the diatonic progression begins again, now in CG major. Yet it goes astray again as the bass falls a half step to DJ. As Fauré well knew, the ˆ3-ˆ2-ˆ1 progression is impossible within the octatonic scale, which alternates whole and half steps. Counterpoint frustrates harmony as the bass line stubbornly follows its own path. A determined analyst can certainly reduce this passage to a tonal progression, but it sounds like nothing of the sort. When the bass line finally reaches C in m. 21, all sense of tonal logic has vanished. Alternatively, the analyst could try to refer the pitches to the octatonic collection. Yet both approaches would perpetuate Zeno’s error: like Achilles and the tortoise, harmony and counterpoint pursue independent vectors and do not submit to a uniform measurement. The unique course of this passage arises from its divergent, heterogeneous tendencies. “Exaucement” sets the tone for the rest of Le jardin clos, and indeed, we may regard it without too great a stretch of the imagination as a microcosm of the cycle. The song previews the palindromic tendency of the overall key scheme: it begins in lucid C major, progressively adds sharps and flats as it passes through G, EH, and E major (all keys of coming songs), and reaches CG major before returning to the pure ivories of the opening page. This distant key is even the enharmonic equivalent of DH major, the key of “Dans la nymphée” at the heart of Le jardin clos. And “Exaucement” enters this black-key sanctum precisely as the text mentions the enclosed garden and its cloistered maiden. Fauré returned to the same vignette in the third song, “La messagère.” Eros himself slumbers in the depths of this garden, and his fair sisters come like Psyche to gaze upon him: Avril, et c’est le point du jour. Tes blondes sœurs qui te ressemblent, En ce moment, toutes ensemble S’avancent vers toi, cher Amour. Tu te tiens dans un clos ombreux De myrte et d’aubépine blanche: La porte s’ouvre entre les branches; Le chemin est mystérieux. April, and it is daybreak. Your fair sisters who resemble you All together at this moment Advance toward you, dear Love. You are hidden within a shaded enclosure Of myrtle and white hawthorn: The door opens amid the branches; The path is mysterious.

Writing in the Sand    185

The musical resemblance to “Exaucement” is unmistakable. “La messagère” also begins with rippling 6/4 arpeggios in the right hand but now rising joyously, and an energetic bass again moves in staggered imitation with the melody. At the mention of the mysterious path, the G-major song swerves abruptly toward DH, the tonal core of Le jardin clos, and the texture thickens and grows stiller as the maidens cross the “indistinct threshold” separating night and day (mm. 22–35). The genders are reversed, but both songs explore the same liminal space between waking and dreaming, outer and inner worlds. The sixth song, “Dans la pénombre,” also discovers a dreamer, lost in thought at her spinning wheel in the half-light of another April morn: A sourire à son rêve encore Avec ses yeux de fiancée, À travers les feuillages d’or, Parmi les lys de sa pensée.

Still smiling at her dream With the eyes of a fiancée, Across the golden foliage, Among the lilies of her thought.

Finally, “Dans la nymphée” portrays the apparition of the absent elle as a waking dream: Un bref éblouissement bleu La découvre en ses longs cheveux; Elle s’éveille, elle se lève. Et tout un jardin ébloui S’illumine au fond de la nuit, Dans le rapide éclair d’un rêve. A short blue glare Reveals her with her long tresses; She wakes, she arises. And an entire dazzled garden Reveals itself in the depths of the night In the brief flash of a dream. In pursuing the oneiric topos and its musical treatment in Le jardin clos, we can learn much from Bergson’s second book, Matière et mémoire, where the philosopher addressed the hoary mind-body problem. In Matière et mémoire, Bergson defended a dualist theory of mind against both materialism and idealism. He mapped body and soul onto twin poles of mental activity, pure perception and pure memory. Bergson provocatively defined perception as action: it does not provide speculative knowledge but merely governs neuromuscular response. He portrayed the nervous system as a telephone exchange that routes sensory stimuli to the brain and returns commands to the

186      Chapter 6

muscles.25 Perception thus embeds the body within the material world. Memory, by contrast, belongs entirely to the soul. Memories do not lodge within the brain, Bergson insisted, nor do they obey mechanical laws of association. He located pure memory in the dream state, in which images mingle freely without neuromuscular compulsion. As he explained, “To call up the past in the form of an image, we must be able to withdraw ourselves from the action of the moment, we must have the power to value the useless, we must have the will to dream.”26 In practice, body and soul always combine in “mixed perception” as reflexive habit and spontaneous memory unite in mutual support. As Bergson explained: So, on the one hand, the memory of the past offers to the sensori-motor mechanisms all the recollections capable of guiding them in their task and of giving to the motor reaction the direction suggested by the lessons of experience . . . But, on the other hand, the sensori-motor apparatus furnish to ineffective, that is unconscious, memories, the means of taking on a body, of materializing themselves, in short of becoming present.27

Bergson pictured this reciprocal action as a cone intersected at different levels by planes. The base of the cone represents pure memory, latent in the unconscious; the apex represents pure perception as the body contacts matter in the present moment; and the cross-sections stand for mixtures of perception and memory in varying degrees of contraction or relaxation. Matter is completely relaxed (détendu), spread out into discrete objects that exist side by side. Dreams, in which reminiscences float free of one another, approach a similar state of détente. As Bergson stated in his 1901 lecture “Le rêve,” the dreaming subject is “a distraught self, a self which has let itself go.”28 Or again, as he wrote in L’évolution créatrice, dreaming breaks up our past “into a thousand recollections made external to one another . . . Our personality thus descends in the direction of space.”29 Absence, memory, embodiment: these are the central themes of Le jardin clos, and Bergson’s cone provides a compelling model for their musical realization. Fauré’s cycle begins and ends in a state of pure détente. At one extreme are the placid arpeggios of “Exaucement,” which evoke the unconscious state of the dreamer, untouched by the material world. At the opposite extreme is the wasteland of “Inscription sur le sable,” from which the human soul has fled, leaving behind only inert matter: Mais un léger lien fragile Dans la mort brisé doucement, Encerclait ses tempes débiles D’impérissables diamants.

But a delicate fragile band, Gently broken in death, Encircled her weak temples With imperishable diamonds.

En signe d’elle, à cette place, Seules, parmi le sable blond,

As a sign of her in this place, Alone amid the white sand,

Writing in the Sand    187

Les pierres éternelles tracent Encor l’image de son front.

The eternal stones trace Still the image of her brow.

Fauré depicted this spiritual desert with syncopated chords, broken like the royal diadem (see example 6.4). The bass line sinks inexorably through the Phrygian scale, a token of dead antiquity but also a mode that lacks the leading tone and V-I relationship that give tonality its inner tension and life. Between these two extremes—disembodied mind and soulless matter—lies the realm of durée. As memories contract to meet sensation, mind and body unite and the subject becomes truly present to itself. Bergson described this optimal state in L’évolution créatrice: The more we succeed in making ourselves conscious of our progress in pure duration, the more we feel the different parts of our being enter into each other, and our whole personality concentrate itself in a point, or rather a sharp edge, pressed against the future and cutting into it unceasingly. It is in this that life and action are free.30

“Exaucement” culminates in this kind of freedom, as harmony and counterpoint interpenetrate in a labile, unpredictable trajectory. The passage directly follows an image of mind-body fusion, as the lover’s kiss passes into the sleeper’s dream: Alors que la parole expire Sur ta lèvre qui tremble encore, Et s’adoucit en un sourire De roses en des rayons d’or . . .

When the word expires On your lip that trembles still, And mellows into a smile Of roses lit by golden beams . . .

“Exaucement” prefigures the more profound embodiment of “Dans la nymphée,” the crux of Le jardin clos where past and present, soul and body, memory and reality find a fleeting unity. “Dans la nymphée” reanimates the barren landscape of “Inscription sur le sable,” calling to life the absent psyche through the operation of memory. Loppert has detailed the ways in which “Dans la nymphée” stands apart as “the centerpoint of the cycle, the heart of the mystery.”31 After the transparent arpeggios of the first and third songs and the syncopated chords of the second and fourth, the texture thickens into a five- or six-part chorale, a solemn incantation in the tradition of Fauré’s “Le secret,” “Au cimetière,” and later, “Diane, Séléné.” The five flats also mark off “Dans la nymphée” from the simpler keys that surround it and offer rich opportunities for enharmonic ambiguity. Given the stolid texture and declamation, the harmony must shoulder the main burden for Van Lerberghe’s mystical transformation. The song draws its force from the steady accumulation of complexity within the hypnotic chords.

example 6.4 . Fauré, “Inscription sur le sable,” Le jardin clos, mm. 1–5. quasi adagio ( # Andante c ∑ &

# & c œœ

˙˙

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#

fleurs,

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5

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#

œ -

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?#

leurs

El - le,∑i - ci,

œ˙

œ œ

J

˙˙ ˙ œ

Tou

œ œ

re - de - vint

œ œ œ œ œj

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R R R R

te,

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œœ

r j r r j r œ œ nœ . œ

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?# c Ó 3

t 56)

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pou - sié

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e∂ail -

Writing in the Sand    189

In “Dans la nymphée,” the tension between diatonic tonality and chromatic voice-leading nears a breaking point (see example 6.5). The first stanza establishes a firm tonal frame, opening with a pulsing tonic triad and closing with a V7-I cadence. In between, linear logic takes over completely. The opening DH chord sideslips to C major through a sequence of semitone displacements, and similar stepwise shifts lead to B major and to D major. After this hieratic procession of chords, the harmony returns abruptly to DH, restoring the tonal frame. The stanza is a classic example of Fauré’s “contrapuntal arabesques,” as Nadia Boulanger called them, progressions that suggest movement but merely circle back to their origin.32 The second stanza varies the assault on diatonic tonality with an enharmonic swerve into CG major. Ever elusive, Fauré refuses to nail down the new key but merely hints at it with a GG7 chord. This enharmonic digression approaches a tonal close on V (m. 9), but the third stanza interrupts the expected cadence with another pivot to the sharp side before finally working back to a cadence on iii, F minor (m. 13). The first three stanzas, we might say, steadily increase the density of harmonic durée. As memory surges forward to meet the present, chromatic voiceleading and enharmonic slippage direct the harmony along increasingly strange, unforeseeable paths. The pressure on the tonal structure peaks in the second half of “Dans la nymphée” as memory summons the nymph and reenchants the garden. Fauré fashioned this revelatory climax in two ways. First, he contracted the phrase structure to add urgency to the declamation. The poem falls into three-line stanzas with an aab rhyme scheme. Fauré set the first three stanzas as little AAʹB sentences (1 + 1 + 2 bars). In the fourth and fifth stanzas, he shortened the B phrases, compressing the stanzas into three bars. At the same time, he released the A phrases from their static sequences, allowing the melody to rise purposefully. The fourth stanza reaches CG in m. 15, a respelling of the earlier pitch ceiling. This enharmonic flash occurs on the word “éclair” (flash), a word that echoes throughout the second half of “Dans la nymphée.” The fifth stanza pushes on to EH, the highest note of the song, on the word “s’éveille” (wakes). But the real climax is the enharmonic blaze of sharps in the following bar as the garden bursts into dazzling light. The effect comes straight out of “Paradis,” with its sudden harmonic éclats for the awakening of Eve and her garden. In his insightful study of Ravel and memory, Michael Puri elaborated a Bergsonian reading of the Valses nobles et sentimentales (1911) that can also shed light on “Dans la nymphée.” Puri focused on the dreamy Epilogue in which the earlier waltzes pass in review. Like “Dans la nymphée,” Ravel’s final waltz consists of six sentences of varying length: each begins with the same four-bar presentation but continues with increasingly full recollections of the earlier waltzes. Puri cited Bergson’s distinction in Matière et mémoire between habitual memory,

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

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Quoi - que

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nœ

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p

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ne

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n œœ ? bb b n œ bb

yeux

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b j r r r & b b b b n œj œr œr n œ . œ œ œ # œj œ

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œ œ n œ A œœ œ nœ Aœ

n œœ b œœ

A œœ bœ

Writing in the Sand    191

based on ingrained neuromuscular patterns, and pure memory: “At one moment, habit memory might guide [humans] smoothly through the routines of the day; at another, it might trigger an association with a long-forgotten experience, thereby diverting their attention suddenly inward toward some deeper level of memory.”33 In Ravel’s Epilogue, the numb repetition of the four-bar presentation obeys habit memory, while the varied continuation of the sentence “swings far out and into the recesses of memory . . . reveling in the unpredictability and heterogeneity of its recollections.”34 These excursions are involuntary and released by chance stimuli, like the memory of Combray reawakened by Proust’s tea-soaked madeleine. Ravel’s final waltz thus oscillates between a melancholic present, governed by habit, and the confused multiplicity of memories that surge forward to meet it. “Dans la nymphée” does not literally recall past events in the manner of Ravel’s Epilogue, but the invocation of the nymph suggests a similar contest between habitual and pure memory. In Fauré’s song, the repeating four-bar sentences and tonal frame belong to habit memory; they are ingrained patterns, familiar to both composer and listener. As the absent elle rises to consciousness, however, these formulas yield to the chancier operations of analogy and contiguity. The first stanza manages to contain these centrifugal forces, but they burst the bounds of the second; as the sentences contract to three bars, the division between stanzas breaks down entirely, overwhelmed by the freely climbing melody. These shocks to the syntax grow in frequency and strength across “Dans la nymphée” as the past floods the present. The recovery of memory, stimulated by the familiar sensations of the nymphaeum, results in the fecund confusion of durée. The comparison of Fauré’s song with Ravel’s waltz, of course, disingenuously elides texted and instrumental music, and sidesteps the knotty relationship between music and language. The word-tone relationship is particularly problematic in Bergson’s philosophy. Among the major philosophers, perhaps only Schopenhauer esteemed music more highly. Yet like Schopenhauer, Bergson seems to have had pure instrumental music in mind. The mélodie presents more of a problem for his philosophy. While music modeled pure duration for Bergson, language epitomized spatial thinking. Throughout his works, he condemned language as an instrument of the intellect. He launched his first salvos in the Essai: “The rough and ready word, which stores up the stable, common, and consequently impersonal element in the impressions of mankind, overwhelms or at least covers over the delicate and fugitive impressions of our individual consciousness.”35 Or again: “But this wholly dynamic way of looking at things is repugnant to the reflective consciousness, because the latter delights in clean cut distinctions, which are easily expressed in words, and in things with well-defined outlines, like those which are perceived in space.”36 Bergson returned to the same theme in L’évolution créatrice: “The most living thought becomes frigid in the formula that expresses it. The word

192      Chapter 6

turns against the idea. The letter kills the spirit.”37 For Bergson, language estranged humanity from its authentic self, the self that experiences life directly. Bergson’s view of language fueled Jankélévitch’s notorious polemic against musical hermeneutics (which did not stop him from writing copiously about music).38 In La musique et l’ineffable, Jankélévitch defended the “drastic” experience of performed music against “gnostic” speculation on its meaning.39 Verbal commentary, with its rigid schemata, distorted our experience of music: “We would need a second Bergson to root out the mirages of spatialization that are scattered throughout musical aesthetics.”40 Yet this hostility to language posed a problem for a devotee of Fauré, a composer best known for his songs and Requiem: how can the fluid, temporal art of music maintain its integrity when yoked to a verbal text? Jankélévitch resolved this contradiction through the notion of “organic totalities.” Meaning resides in the holistic unity of the sentence or poem, he argued, rather than in isolated images or words: “Spiritual things are thus always whole; that is no doubt why there are no fragments of life to correspond to fragments of matter, just as there are no pieces of ideas to correspond to pieces of a sentence . . . The poem always lies beyond its own text.”41 Jankélévitch drew a parallel with Bergson’s theory of pure memory: just as memories are diffused throughout the brain and not stored in the cerebral folds, so too meaning suffuses the poem and does not lodge within the material signs.42 Music and poem thus complement one another as spiritual totalities. In a somewhat cryptic passage, he described the mélodie as a three-fold nesting of semantic wholes: If the meaning of a sentence is inherent in the totality of that sentence, without any of the fragments of the sentence necessarily corresponding to fragments of that “meaning,” if a fortiori a poetic verse’s Charm—which is the meaning of a meaning— is inherent in the totality of this verse and the meaning of this verse, then music—the “charm of the Charm”—will emanate like an evasive meaning from the totality of the poem.43

Put more simply: musical expression, like the poetic quality of language, is both everywhere and nowhere; it pervades the song yet cannot be pinpointed in any single element. Jankélévitch could thus declare that “a song by Fauré can express as a whole the poetry of a poem, without each note corresponding to each detail of the text.”44 In the vital flow of durée, the heterogeneous elements of music and text coexist in perfect harmony. In practice, this synthesis varies greatly across Fauré’s song cycles. The seven works describe a broad arc in which music gradually achieves parity with language, reaches a high tide in La bonne chanson, and retreats to a subordinate role

Writing in the Sand    193

in the late cycles. Poème d’un jour exalts the word over music, taming operatic excess to the exacting poetic form of “Adieu.” In the Cinq mélodies “de Venise,” music emerges as a transcendent discourse bridging human and natural realms, with a new motivic texture that both ennobles the piano accompaniment and frees the vocal melody from the regular phrasing imposed by the poetic meter. Music attains its zenith in La bonne chanson, whose leitmotives create an eloquent discourse that engages with yet remains independent of the poetic text. The tide begins to ebb in La chanson d’Ève. Musical expression grows more reticent; leitmotives shed their mimetic function; and the supple motivic play hardens into mechanical patterns. Le jardin clos silences forever the Wagnerian orchestra, shackling the piano melody to the vocal line and purging the inner voices of their rich polyphony. The late song cycles settle into a Baroque texture of melody, bass, and chordal filler. At the same time, the vocal line retreats into a blank psalmody, bound firmly to the poetic line (although text-painting will surge back in L’horizon chimérique). Only one outlet remains to la Musique in this homophonic regime: the independent bass line. The left hand of Fauré’s late song cycles preserves the contrapuntal freedom of the leitmotive, yet without its speech-like eloquence. This peculiar vestige of the earlier cycles haunts the opening stanza of “La messagère” (see example 6.6). The left hand loosely imitates the melody, answering the singer’s bounding fifth with a major-sixth leap. At first blush, the bass seems to respond to Van Lerberghe’s text by echoing the exuberant melody and arpeggios. Yet the left hand abandons this mimetic pretense and begins to loop aimlessly, descending through a sequence of interlocking thirds (mm. 4–9). As Mario Champagne noted, this passage reawakens the “Venice” motive from the Cinq mélodies.45 The bass line thus reclaims the dignity of a leitmotive, spinning out an independent melody instead of merely supporting the harmony. Yet the lazy arabesques correspond to nothing in Van Lerberghe’s text. And while interlocking thirds pop up elsewhere in Le jardin clos, they clearly arise by happenstance rather than poetic design. The recollection of the “Venice” motive recalls the form of the leitmotive but forgets its semantic function. Some counterexamples from Fauré’s earlier songs will highlight this uncanny feature of the late cycles. “Seule!” (1871) has an independent bass line that moves in canon with the voice, but the counterpoint is motivated by Gautier’s poem, joining with the alla breve meter and strict motivic work to lend an archaic ambience to the Byzantine setting. “Automne” (1878) also begins with an exposed bass line that the voice echoes. Again, the bass serves the poem, tracing a lamento tetrachord that mirrors Silvestre’s bleak, memory-haunted landscape. Finally, “J’allais par des chemins perfides” (La bonne chanson) features an active contrapuntal bass that responds to the poetic text: the rising line first depicts the heavy footsteps of the

example 6.6 . Fauré, “La messagère,” Le jardin clos, mm. 1–9. Allegro (t 120)

# & 43 Œ

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f

‰ œj ˙ .

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3

et c’est le point

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du

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Writing in the Sand    195

lover and then assumes a fleeter gait as the poet’s thoughts turn to Mathilde. In Le jardin clos, the contrapuntal bass lines lack these expressive resonances. The bass line may simulate a leitmotive, but its discourse remains purely musical, sealed like a monad from the poetic text. The voice of la Musique speaks instead through the friction between these inarticulate contrapuntal lines and the harmonic structure. This contest plays out most dramatically in the octatonic passage of “Exaucement,” but it pervades “Je me poserai sur ton cœur” as well. In both songs, the syncopated bass line ensures an almost continual state of dissonance, like the skewed counterpoint of a fourth-species exercise. In the third stanza of “La messagère,” as the sisters enter the shady enclosure, the recusant contrapuntal line migrates into the tenor voice where it grinds against the melody and adds crunching dissonances (mm. 22–35). The counterpoint conspires en bloc against the tonal structure in “Dans la nymphée,” shooting out chromatic tendrils in every direction. In these songs, the music exceeds its role as accompaniment and pulses with an inner life—not the scenic music of the Cinq mélodies or the leitmotivic web of La bonne chanson, but the contraction of heterogeneous forces into one spontaneous and unpredictable vector. The antithesis of this inner vitality comes in “Inscription sur le sable,” harmonically and contrapuntally the most docile song in Le jardin clos. Compare, for example, the left hand’s untroubled descent through the Phrygian scale in the first stanza with the dynamic octatonic bass in “Exaucement.” No chromatic lines enliven this diatonic desert whose only accidentals arise from modal inflections. The one inner cadence in “Inscription sur le sable” falls on the Phrygian dominant, C major, preserving the serene reign of the white keys (m. 10). The sway of modality even extends backward to the seventh song, set in F major, the second degree of the Phrygian mode. (Fauré would use the same modal pairing in Mirages, in which the final song, in a Phrygian-inflected D minor, follows a song in EH major.) “Inscription sur le sable” retreats into the archaic church modes, leaving behind the chromatic lines and enharmonic equivocation that generate such productive friction in the earlier songs. The simple diatonic harmonies arrange themselves neatly above the bass line, cleaving to the patterns of school counterpoint. The whole song exudes an air of heavy finality, of a lassitude lacking in any vital spark. “Inscription sur le sable” thus confirms Bergson’s bleak vision of language. The writing in the sand is but a lifeless sketch, the epitaph of a departed soul. Van Lerberghe’s poem is an autopsy of language, a reflection on the inscription that simultaneously enshrines and entombs the living subject. His last two stanzas, omitted by Fauré, frame the poem as a memento mori: Celui que les dieux ont conduit Qui sur sa route les a vues,

196      Chapter 6

S’arrête et contemple ébloui Cette splendeur qu’il croit perdue. Perdue! Et des rayons s’y posent! O voyageur, tu ne sais pas Le sens mystérieux des choses; Elle, seule, ne le fut pas. He whom the gods have led here, Who spies these in his path, Stops bedazzled and contemplates This splendor that he believes lost. Lost! Beams rest upon them! O traveler, you know not The mysterious meaning of things; She, alone, was not lost. The poem holds out the promise of renewed life, but Fauré’s setting depicts only the spent embers. La chanson d’Ève ends more hopefully, enacting Eve’s rebirth in song with the reprise of her leitmotive. In Le jardin clos, no theme or leitmotive returns to close the circle. The cycle ends in disarray, its songs scattered like the gems of the broken circlet. The missing spark is Bergson’s famous élan vital, or vital impulse. In L’évolution créatrice, he extended the philosophy of time from psychology to ontology: durée no longer belongs merely to human consciousness but is a property of the universe. And evolution is the history of the life force as it unfolds the confused multiplicity of durée. The élan vital expresses itself in inert matter, like the imprint of a hand thrust into tightly packed iron filings, or a shell that bursts into fragments that “burst in their turn into fragments destined to burst again.”46 Yet life extinguishes itself as it expresses itself in matter. As Jankélévitch put it, “In order to affirm itself, life, in a singular derision, needs the matter that kills it.”47 The élan vital thus falls prey to entropy, exhausting its impulse in a creative explosion of forms. And since the essence of durée is freedom and invention, the movement of life can never be predicted in advance. As Bergson stated, “If the unity of life is to be found solely in the impetus that pushes it along the road of time, the harmony is not in front, but behind.”48 Le jardin clos thus plots a genuinely Bergsonian progression, moving from fulfillment (an odd starting point for a song cycle!) to spiritual depletion. Jankélévitch found this contest between life and matter in musical composition. No sooner has a musical idea emerged than a host of formulas threatens to sap its vitality: Inspiration has barely taken on flesh and already it succumbs to the conventional developments that come in from all sides to meet it. The least of melodic ideas

Writing in the Sand    197 attracts a crowd of ready-made formulas toward which any sensibility that is a little complacent will willingly let itself slide . . . At each point of the creative labor, we must thus turn a deaf ear to the thousands of good formulas that offer to help us to get out of our predicament.49

Gilles Deleuze described this contest through the opposition of the “actual” and the “virtual.” The actual, represented by matter, admits only quantitative differences of degree. Its divisions and development, therefore, can be fully known in advance: “Its differences, whether realized or not, are always actual in it.”50 Musical examples of actuality would include the classical period, a sequence through the circle of fifths, or a twelve-bar blues pattern: once the formula begins, we can predict its entire future course. Virtuality, on the other hand, is characterized by qualitative difference. Its development, Deleuze explained, can never be predicted in advance but only realized in the creative multiplicity of durée: “It is inseparable from the movement of its actualization.”51 Le jardin clos exemplifies virtuality in its determined rejection of repetition, formal schemata, melodic sequences, and other formulas. Fauré’s music unfolds spontaneously, developing according to an unforeseeable process of differentiation. The second song of Le jardin clos epitomizes Fauré’s resistance to formulaic shortcuts. The biblical poem, celebrating the Beloved’s communion with the Lover, teems with vital forces—offbeat portato chords, a surging melody that begins in the piano and continues in the voice, rising phrases that top each other as they lead to the ecstatic climax. This fecund energy expresses itself tellingly in the way that the song transforms a stylistic convention (see example 6.7a). Fauré’s first phrase ends with a familiar contrapuntal formula, a 4ˆ-ˆ3-ˆ2-ˆ1 bass moving in parallel tenths with a 6ˆ -ˆ5-ˆ4-ˆ3 line in the alto voice. This schema, which Gjerdingen dubbed the Prinner, pervades eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century repertory and was still taught in Conservatoire exercises during the 1870s.52 It grows out of the partimento tradition that Fauré learned at the École Niedermeyer and passed on to his own pupils. The Prinner begins in its traditional position in “Quand tu plonges tes yeux dans mes yeux” as the riposte to an opening idea, but Fauré reworked the trite formula with remarkable creativity across the song. The Prinner returns four times, flagged each time with a widely spaced IV9 or 7 IV chord. It reappears immediately in the second stanza but now as part of the initial idea rather than the cadence (see example 6.7b). The schema begins with the same parallel tenths, but the bass line does not complete the descent, swerving off course after the third note. In the third stanza, by contrast, the Prinner unspools through an entire octave (see example 6.7c). The schema returns at the climax of the song, yet the bass now descends only two notes before an ecstatic sequence bumps the counterpoint up a step (see example 6.7d). The singer’s last phrase restores the complete Prinner in its original form, but even here Fauré has toyed

Rumph Ex.6.8a–e page 1 of 2 example 6.7 . Transformations of the Prinner schema in Fauré, “Quand tu plonges tes yeux dans mes yeux,” Le jardin clos. a. Mm. 4–5. a 4

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200      Chapter 6

with the formula by prolonging the alto’s ˆ4-ˆ3 descent for two bars (see example 6.7e). The song is a tour de force of creative transformation, a demonstration of the vital power of the imagination as it works upon inert material. Nevertheless, the élan vital exhausts itself in the musical matter of Le jardin clos, resembling, in Bergson’s memorable image, “the fiery path torn by the last rocket of a fireworks display through the black cinders of the spent rockets that are falling dead.”53 This entropic process can be felt, curiously, in the prosodic structure. When he abandoned leitmotives in his last three song cycles, Fauré also bid farewell to Wagner’s musical prose. He returned to the regular phrase structure of his early songs in Le jardin clos, allotting two or three bars to each line of text. Yet the phrases tend to dilate across the songs. The stanzas of “La messagère” gradually swell from ten to sixteen bars, while the final stanza of “Quand tu plonges tes yeux dans mes yeux” doubles the length of the previous four. The stanzas expand most dramatically at the end of the cycle in “Il m’est cher, amour, le bandeau” (8 + 8 + 8 + 18 bars) and “Inscription sur le sable” (4 ½ + 4 ½ + 8 ½ bars). In the penultimate song, the massive dilation of the final stanza mirrors the Beloved’s erotic flowering: Mes lèvres où mon âme chante, Toute d’extase et de baiser S’ouvrent comme d’une fleur ardente Au-dessus d’un fleuve embrasé. My lips, where my soul sings, Full of ecstasy and kisses Open like a glowing flower Above a burning river. The end of the song spends this ardor in a lyrical outburst that grows in range, power, and length. But alas, all that blossoms must fade away, and the lines that follow in the last song carry a poignant echo: “Altogether, with her robe and her flowers, / She turned to dust here.” After the flaming climax only ashes remain in “Inscription sur le sable.” Those ashes grow colder in the final quatrain as the text cools and solidifies, like letters engraved on a stele. Yet signs of life remain in this desolate song. At the end of the second stanza, on the words “impérissables diamants” (imperishable diamonds), the singer soars to a resonant high E (m. 10). The voice reasserts its power in this bold flourish, insisting on the living presence enshrined in the script. The voice continues to fight the gravity of the sinking lines in the final lines of the song, as the text turns again to thoughts of eternity (mm. 15–18). On “éternelles pierres” (eternal stones), the singer lifts her voice in a four-note motive (B-D-CG-B), building steadily in volume. She repeats the same motive on “image,” leaning more pointedly on the Dorian CG. This motive comes from the first stanza (mm. 5–6), where it set words about the act of singing—“Renaquit en chant de lumière” (Was reborn in a song of light).

Writing in the Sand    201

Fauré even changed the text from "chant et lumiére" (song and light) to emphasize singing. As these moments of insistent vocalism make clear, the letter has not killed the spirit. The absent soul will live on so long as singers lend her life and breath. Le jardin clos ends with the image of a broken circlet. It is a perfect metaphor for op. 106, a work that breaks open the song cycle and scatters eight exquisite songs like jewels in the sand. Le jardin clos invites us to immerse ourselves in the flux of time, memory, and life itself, unencumbered by the plots and musical devices that make Fauré’s earlier cycles so much easier to grasp. There is no loss of vision on the composer’s part, no retreat from the rigor of his early works. On the contrary, Le jardin clos reveals an almost heroic effort to avoid the rigid formula, the pat phrase. Written on the cusp of world cataclysm, it pays poignant tribute to a culture and an aesthetic that were fast slipping away.

7

Neoclassical Voyages Mirages, op. 113, and L’horizon chimérique, op. 118

A mystique surrounds the last works of great composers. It matters little whether they worked into their seventies like Fauré, their fifties like Beethoven, or their thirties like Mozart. The same cluster of traits haunts all descriptions of “late style”—simplification, economy of means, abstraction, introspection. Great composers supposedly attain a ripe wisdom in their last years, where inessentials drop away and loftier vistas come into focus. Fauré’s final song cycles certainly seem to fit the model. Mirages (1919) and L’horizon chimérique (1921) have a new concision and simplicity, cleansed of the obscure and extravagant and polished to a smooth monochrome finish. Both cycles begin with a voyage, but both return the restless protagonist to safe shores. The voice of the aging master, wistfully resigned to his limitations, seems to speak through the last line of L’horizon chimérique: “For there are great unfulfilled departures within me.” Yet this verse resonates beyond Fauré’s biography, echoing calls for restraint and moderation voiced, ironically, by a younger generation. Igor Stravinsky’s L’histoire du soldat (1918) ends with a moralizing speech accompanied by a Lutheran chorale, in which the narrator urges the soldier to renounce Faustian ambitions and accept his lot: You must not seek to add To what you have that which you once had, You cannot be at the same time What you are and what you were. You must choose; You do not have the right to everything: 202

Neoclassical Voyages    203

That is forbidden. One happy thing is every happy thing; Two, as if they had never existed.1 Jean Cocteau’s Le coq et l’arlequin (1918) praises the same quality of restraint in Erik Satie’s music: Sick to death of flabbiness, superfluity, frills, and all the modern sleight-of-hand, though often tempted by a technique of which he knows the ultimate resources, Satie voluntarily abstained in order to “model in the block” and remain simple, clear, and luminous. Each of Satie’s works is an example of renunciation.2

Stravinsky and Cocteau were articulating ideals of the emerging neoclassical movement, which arose after World War I in reaction to Romanticism and the horrors it seemed to have spawned. The new aesthetic opposed emotionalism, grandiosity, populism, Wagner, impressionism, vitalism, mysticism, and everything “1900.” The eighteenth century beckoned instead as an age of order, discipline, clarity, objectivity, aristocratic elitism—values that some musicians, alas, found embodied in the new totalitarian movements.3 Stravinsky did not write his first properly neoclassical work, Pulcinella, until 1920. But L’histoire du soldat, with its lean chamber ensemble, crisp angular rhythms, tonal harmonies, and pastiche of waltz, tango, and ragtime, already modeled the new look—smart, detached, supremely self-aware. Many threads bound Fauré to the new generation of composers. As director of the Conservatoire he defended Maurice Ravel and his comrades in the composition class, who gratefully elected him president of the upstart Société musicale indépendante in 1910. Revered by Nadia and Lili Boulanger, and later by Les Six, Fauré also knew Stravinsky and even attended the 1913 premiere of The Rite of Spring (which improbably alternated evenings with Pénélope at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées).4 Fauré’s last song cycles are also, in a real sense, works of youth. Renée Baronne de Brimont was not yet forty in 1919 when she published the sixty poems of Mirages. As for Jean de La Ville de Mirmont, he died just shy of his twenty-eighth birthday, killed by a shell at Verneuil, and a devoted friend published L’horizon chimérique in 1920. While working on Le jardin clos in 1914 Fauré had complained, “I find nothing, alas, in French poets today, nothing that calls for music.”5 After the war, he snapped up French poetry barely off the press. The singers for whom he wrote the two cycles were also young. Madeleine Grey, a recent Conservatoire graduate, and the great Swiss baritone Charles Panzéra were both born in 1896, half a century after Fauré. The titles of Fauré’s last song cycles suggest a hazy seascape by Monet or perhaps a Debussy prelude. Yet the lucid, sharply etched style of the two cycles has

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little in common with impressionism. As Robert Orledge wrote, “Mirages, which begins like a chorale and ends with a spirited dance, is one of Fauré’s most downto-earth later creations.”6 Panzéra’s virile baritone inspired a still more robust style in L’horizon chimérique, as well as some of Fauré’s most vivid text-painting. The shimmering mirage and vanishing horizon do not awaken visions of the au-delà as in Henri Duparc’s “L’invitation au voyage.” On the contrary, they serve as limits that confine the poetic subject to its proper sphere. The searching exploration of language and musical signification traced in the Verlaine and Van Lerberghe cycles also recedes, giving way to a straightforward word-text relationship that invites a less complicated critical mode, closer to a traditional explication de texte. In the same year that he composed Mirages, Fauré produced his most purely neoclassical work, as that term was understood in France. Masques et bergamasques, commissioned by Prince Albert I of Monte Carlo and reprised to fabulous success in 1920 at the Opéra-Comique, revived the fêtes galantes with a pastiche of songs and dances performed by commedia dell’arte characters. The ballet thus anticipated Stravinsky’s Pulcinella, another pastiche based on the commedia dell’arte. Fauré cobbled together the score from youthful orchestral works, supplemented with suitably ancien régime works like “Clair de lune” and the Pavane. The period suite, comprising a classical overture, minuet, gavotte, and pastorale, belongs within a line of eighteenth-century stylizations that stretches back through Debussy, Ravel, d’Indy, Pierné, and Chaminade to Saint-Saëns’s Septet (op. 65; 1882) and Alexis Castillon’s Cinq pièces dans le style ancien (1871). As Scott Messing has documented, these elegant tributes represent le nouveau classicisme in France before 1920 rather than the more sardonic manner associated with Stravinsky.7 Fauré revived another neoclassical strain in his last song cycles: the Parnassian cult of Greek antiquity. Mirages is Fauré’s most explicitly Hellenic work outside of his operas. “Reflets dans l’eau” reworks the Narcissus myth, alluding to nymphs, fauns, and hamadryads, while “Danseuse” brings to life a Grecian vase painting. L’horizon chimérique nods to the ancients with “Diane, Séléné,” which invokes the moon goddess by both Greek and Latin names. (Such erudition came naturally to La Ville de Mirmont, the son of a classics professor.) In Mirages and L’horizon chimérique, Fauré abandoned the sultry gardens of ancient Judea and dipped back into the bracing waters of pagan antiquity. He had a possible model at hand in 1919. Early that year Satie’s chamber cantata Socrate was performed in the homes of Jane Bathori and Winnaretta Singer.8 Fauré made no mention of the work, yet it seems unlikely to have escaped his attention given his close connection with the princess. With its transparent textures and clean vocal writing, Socrate epitomizes the style dépouillé of French neoclassicism. Satie may even have highlighted that aesthetic in his choice of texts. As Samuel Dorf argued, the allusion to the myth of Marsyas, flayed alive by Apollo,

Neoclassical Voyages    205

dramatizes “the violent and painful sacrifices underlying musical neoclassicism.”9 Mirages shares the same aesthetic of renunciation. Fauré whittled the vocal line to the bone, confined the piano to a few simple patterns, and ended the cycle with his most austere, minimalist song. Another curious feature allies Mirages and L’horizon chimérique with postwar aesthetics. Both works have four movements, a format that Beltrando-Patier compared to the classical sonata cycle.10 The two song cycles begin and end with the same key signature—and key, in the case of L’horizon chimérique—and both have an intimate EH-major “slow movement” in the third position, Fauré’s preferred spot in his four-movement chamber works. Mirages and L’horizon chimérique fall within Fauré’s busiest period of chamber-music composition, during which he completed a violin sonata (1917), two cello sonatas (1917–21), a piano quintet (1921), a piano trio (1923), and a string quartet (1924). We might be tempted to hear these intimate works as the final reflections of an aging composer, akin to Beethoven’s late quartets. Yet composers across Europe were returning to the classical genres. Debussy composed three sonatas during World War I and left three others unfinished; Paul Hindemith produced two string quartets in the early 1920s and began his Kammermusik series; Stravinsky wrote his Octet (1923) and Piano Sonata (1924); and even Alban Berg structured his expressionist opera Wozzeck (composed 1914–22) around a symphonic cycle, sonata movement, theme and variations, and other eighteenth-century forms. The classicist turn also left its imprint on Fauré’s postwar song cycles. The following discussion situates Mirages and L’horizon chimérique within the neoclassical movement, highlighting new influences and discontinuities in these works of old age. This reading not only challenges the platitudes of composer biography, but also takes aim at the stubborn view of Fauré as an isolated creative spirit who followed a purely inner path. Jankélévitch made the most extravagant claim in his study of the songs: “From the pre-1870 romances to L’horizon chimérique, Gabriel Fauré’s mélodies trace a long straight line in which the music continually denudes and simplifies itself and, like Salome, sheds one by one the seven veils that covered it.”11 The late songs do indeed grow simpler, yet a sharp caesura divides Mirages and L’horizon chimérique from the Van Lerberghe cycles, cutting like a trench through Fauré’s late period. This break was not dictated by inner necessity. It resulted from external forces and demonstrates once again Fauré’s sensitivity to the changing features of the artistic world. M I R AG E S

Fauré’s two last cycles begin with the identical conceit. The poet compares the imagination to a bird, venturing onto unfamiliar waters. In “Cygne sur l’eau,” the first song of Mirages, the protagonist fancies her restless mind a black swan:

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Ma pensée est un cygne harmonieux et sage qui glisse lentement aux rivages d’ennui sur les ondes sans fond du rêve, du mirage, de l’écho, du brouillard, de l’ombre, de la nuit . . . Il glisse, roi hautain fendant un libre espace, poursuit un reflet vain, précieux et changeant, et les roseaux nombreux s’inclinent lorsqu’il passe, sombre et muet, au seuil d’une lune d’argent; et des blancs nénuphars chaque corolle ronde tour à tour a fleuri de désir ou d’espoir . . . Mais plus avant toujours, sur la brume et sur l’onde, vers l’inconnu fuyant glisse le cygne noir. My thought is a harmonious and wise swan that glides slowly along banks of ennui on the fathomless waters of dreams, of mirages, of echoes, of mist, of shadow, of night . . . He glides, haughty king, cleaving an open space, pursuing a vain reflection, precious and flickering, and many reeds bow as he passes, somber and quiet, at the edge of a silvery moon; and each round corolla of the white waterlilies has blossomed in turn with desire or hope . . . But always advancing, in mist and waves, the black swan glides toward the receding unknown. The poem is typical of Brimont’s collection, a rechauffé of Symbolism, Orientalist exoticism, and erotically tinged classical mythology in the manner of Pierre Louÿs’s Les chansons de Bilitis. The opening stanzas summon trusty Symbolist commonplaces: swans, ennui, dreams, mirages, mists. The homophone signe always lurks behind cygne, especially in the case of Brimont’s cygne noir. The image of the black swan unites both the feather quill and the inky wake it trails as it glides across the lake/page. An editorial voice suddenly intrudes in the fifth stanza to check the poet’s restless thoughts. The authorial superego dissuades the swan from its perilous journey and directs it back to familiar surroundings: Or j’ai dit: “Renoncez, beau cygne chimérique, à ce voyage lent vers de troubles destins; nul miracle chinois, nulle étrange Amérique ne vous accueilleront en des havres certains;

Neoclassical Voyages    207

les golfes embaumés, les îles immortelles ont pour vous, cygne noir, des récifs périlleux; demeurez sur les lacs où se mirent, fidèles, ces nuages, ces fleurs, ces astres et ces yeux.” Now, I said: “Renounce, lovely chimerical swan, this slow voyage toward troubled destinies; no Chinese miracle, no exotic America will welcome you into safe harbors; the fragrant gulfs, the immortal isles, all have perilous reefs for you, black swan; rest in your lakes that behold, faithfully, these clouds, these flowers, these stars, and these eyes.” The quoted voice pierces the Symbolist mist like a searchlight, dispelling all mystery with its pedantic diction. The reference to China and America is jolting, all the more so in a song by Fauré who so carefully pruned his texts of proper nouns and place names. Brimont may indeed have been targeting Satie’s Parade (1917) with its Chinese magician and American girl, as Katherine Bergeron suggested, warning poets against “the seductions of a later, more modern time.”12 The end of the quoted warning, omitted by Fauré, strikes a distinctly Parnassian pose in its cool detachment from the present: “Que votre nostalgie ait une grâce fière,   et votre solitude un grand air nonchalant!”   “Let your nostalgia have a proud grace, and your solitude a great air of nonchalance!” The formal construction of Brimont’s poem might well have pleased the Parnassians. Her last stanza recapitulates the first, but the poet has reversed the order of the two couplets, folding the poem back upon itself: Et sur l’onde sans fond du rêve, du mirage, de l’écho, du brouillard, de l’ombre, de la nuit, ma pensée est un cygne harmonieux et sage qui glisse lentement aux rivages d’ennui. And on the fathomless waters of dreams, of mirages, of echoes, of mist, of shadow, of night, my thought is a harmonious and wise swan that glides slowly along banks of ennui. Fauré set the first stanza to music of striking purity and simplicity. The key, four-part texture, and even the singer’s opening anapestic rhythm all recall the

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serene classicism of “Lydia.” The entire stanza remains within the chaste confines of the diatonic scale, with only a single accidental. The vocal melody, doubled by the right hand as in all the songs in Mirages and L’horizon chimérique, rises steadily to the fifth degree, arriving on the title word “mirage” (m. 10). Yet the image did not elicit whole-tone harmonies, a wispy pianissimo, or any other Debussyan effect. On the contrary, as Orledge noted, Fauré underlined the title word with the fullest, most sonorous chord of the passage.13 The mirage functions as a boundary, a ceiling that contains the rising melody and deflects it back to its starting point. As the swan sets forth in the second stanza, the accompaniment grows more animated and the song begins to modulate. Fauré’s setting of the third stanza, one of his most adventurous harmonic passages, is governed entirely by the octatonic scale (see example 7.1). The bass ascends the symmetrical scale (F-GH-GG-A-B-CD-EH-F), lingering over each node of the minor-third cycle. The passage is a strict sequence, beginning with a three-beat model in F minor that repeats in GG minor, B minor, and D minor. Meanwhile, the singer traverses a different octatonic scale (DG-E-FG-G-A-B-C), supplying the fifth of each minor triad. (Ever attentive to voice-leading, Fauré avoided parallel fifths by staggering the movement of the bass and melody.) The sequence breaks off in mm. 29–30 with a cadence on DH minor. Another sequence begins as the bass ascends a different octatonic scale beginning on CG, but is cut short by the EH-major cadence in mm. 33–34. The octatonic passage rotates through three chords, each freighted with historical connotations. The sequential modules each begin with a minor triad, token of traditional tonality; the diatonic chord then expands to an augmented triad, reminiscent of Debussy’s beloved whole-tone collection; finally, each module ends with a half-diminished seventh chord, forever associated with Tristan und Isolde. Fauré’s third stanza amounts to a compendium of modernist harmonic practice that encompasses Wagner’s Romantic chromaticism, Debussy’s impressionist palette, and the symmetrical octatonic structures that reach back through Stravinsky, Bartók, and Edmond de Polignac to Rimsky-Korsakov and Liszt.14 The swan has reached the horizon of late Romantic harmonic practice as it ventures “toward the unknown.” This passage recalls the middle section of “Toujours” from Poème d’un jour, which also rises through a minor-third sequence. The early song modulates by means of neo-Riemannian voice-leading rather than the octatonic scale, yet the two passages play the same role in Fauré’s expressive design, providing a momentary suspension of the tonal syntax. Each passage also occurs at the midpoint of a da capo form that encloses its entropic energies. In “Cygne sur l’eau,” the return to tonality occurs as the poet addresses the errant swan. The admonition in mm. 36–45 breaks the spell of the nebulous harmonies as the piano switches to ticking portato chords, oscillating mechanically like a Haydnesque musical clock. The

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

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210      Chapter 7

passage begins with a half-diminished seventh chord and gradually divests itself of the Wagnerian harmony as it returns to familiar tonal waters. Fauré cut the final three stanzas of Brimont’s poem, but he remained true to her formal design by ending the song with a strict reprise of the first stanza. The da capo is perhaps the most startling feature of this quietly subversive song. Fauré had largely renounced rounded forms in his Van Lerberghe cycles, especially in the resolutely through-composed Le jardin clos. While his songs from the 1890s contain their share of da capo forms, the reprise always brings some new revelation that transforms the opening music, like the 6/4 chord that lends the reprise of “En sourdine” its unique blend of expectation and fatalism, or the sudden swerve into C major in “N’est-ce pas?” that derails the “Lydia” modulation. The reprise of “Cygne sur l’eau” lacks any dynamic element. It is a literal repetition of the opening page, departing only in the broken piano figuration. Not since his songs of the 1880s had Fauré composed such a blank, impersonal form. The blunt reprise violates the ideal that had governed the mélodie française since the 1890s of a seamless musical continuity, with nothing “qui pèse ou qui pose.” Fauré’s da capo rejects fin-de-siècle temporality and vitalism as surely as the brittle recapitulations in Stravinsky’s Octet or Piano Sonata. The second song of Mirages, “Reflets dans l’eau,” warns against another bête noir of postwar aesthetics, unchecked egotism. As the protagonist contemplates her reflection in a garden pool, images from the past flood back. Absorbed in her own beauty, she slides into the realm of memory: Étendue au seuil du bassin, dans l’eau plus froide que le sein    des vierges sages, j’ai reflété mon vague ennui, mes yeux profonds couleur de nuit    et mon visage. Et dans ce miroir incertain j’ai vu de merveilleux matins . . .    J’ai vu des choses pâles comme des souvenirs, dans l’eau que ne saurait ternir    nul vent morose. Alors—au fond du Passé bleu— mon corps mince n’était qu’un peu    d’ombre mouvante; sous les lauriers et les cyprès j’aimais la brise au souffle frais    qui nous évente . . .

Neoclassical Voyages    211

Lying at the edge of a pool, In water colder than the bosom    of wise virgins, I saw reflected my vague ennui, my deep eyes, the color of night,    and my face. And in that uncertain mirror I saw wondrous mornings . . .    I saw things as pale as memories in the water that could not be tarnished    by any gloomy wind. Then—in the depths of the blue Past— my slim body was but a bit    of moving shadow; beneath the laurels and cypresses I used to love the fresh breath of the breeze    that fanned us . . . The protagonist bathes in nostalgia for childhood when the world still teemed with mythological creatures: J’aimais vos caresses de sœur, vos nuances, votre douceur,    aube opportune; et votre pas souple et rythmé, nymphes au rire parfumé,    au teint de lune; et le galop des aegypans, et la fontaine qui s’épand    en larmes fades . . . Par les bois secrets et divins j’écoutais frissonner sans fin    l’hamadryade. I used to love your sisterly caresses, your nuances, your sweetness,    opportune dawn; and your supple and rhythmic step, nymphs with scented laughter    and lunar tint.

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and the galloping of the satyrs, and the fountain that spreads out    in vapid tears . . . Through the secret, divine woods I heard the ceaseless quivering    of the wood nymph. The past lures her toward the waters that consumed Narcissus as he pined after his own image. She imagines herself absorbed into the reflecting pool: Ô cher Passé mystérieux qui vous reflétez dans mes yeux    comme un nuage, il me serait plaisant et doux, Passé, d’essayer avec vous    le long voyage! . . . Si je glisse, les eaux feront un rond fluide . . . un autre rond . . .    un autre à peine . . . Et puis le miroir enchanté reprendra sa limpidité    froide et sereine. O dear mysterious Past, you who are reflected in my eyes    like a cloud, it would be pleasant and sweet, O Past, to embark with you on    the long voyage! . . . If I glide, the waters would make a watery ring . . . another ring . . .    another, barely . . . And then the magic mirror would regain its limpidity,    cold and serene. Debussy’s shade haunts this beautiful song and not just in the title, which he used for the first of his Images, book 1. The lost wood nymphs and satyrs also recall “Le tombeau des Naïades” from the Trois chansons de Bilitis, where another poetess mourns over her disenchanted world. Brimont’s eighth stanza (cut by Fauré) alludes to a more famous mythological poem, Mallarmé’s “L’après-midi d’un faune”:

Neoclassical Voyages    213

Dans l’ombre molle qui consent, j’ai parfois sucé votre sang, grenades mûres . . .   (“Reflets dans l’eau”) Ainsi, quand des raisins j’ai sucé la clarté . . . Chaque grenade éclate et d’abeilles murmure . . .   (“L’après-midi d’un faune,” lines 57, 96) The allusion foreshadows the overt quotation of Debussy’s Prélude à L’après-midi d’un faune, discussed below, which Bergeron has identified in the final song. Fauré made a rare excursion into musical impressionism in “Reflets dans l’eau,” perhaps inspired by Debussy’s piano piece. The accompaniment resumes the broken arpeggios that accompanied the swan’s voyage in “Cygne sur l’eau,” while the melody rocks between two notes like the gentle movement of the water. This undulating figure will also return in the tone-painting of the final stanza, depicting the spreading ripples. Fauré’s entire song unfolds in a series of expanding ripples that begin and end with the opening motive. The voice joins the piano’s undulating melody in mm. 1–3, rocking hypnotically between EH and F. The vocal melody expands to an apex on “visage,” then descends to its starting point, restoring the placid surface. The next musical ripple begins in m. 13 as the opening music returns. The singer begins with same EH-F dyad, but the melody breaks free of the oscillating pattern in a rising sequence of parallel major-seventh chords on each first beat, prompted by thoughts of the “blue Past.” The sequence leads to the climax of the song, returning to the tonic but with the right hand up an octave (m. 18). The broken arpeggios suddenly give way to chords moving in parallel thirds with the singer, who reaches the highest note of the song on the erotic lines, “I used to love your sisterly caresses, / your nuances, your sweetness.” From this aching peak of nostalgia, the emotional crux of the song, the melody falls in a downward sequence as the bass descends a whole-tone scale to its opening note (mm. 18–20). As in the octatonic sequence of “Cygne sur l’eau,” an augmented triad instigates each upward sequence in mm. 13–16 (on the third beats). The augmented triad becomes a signature harmony in Mirages and L’horizon chimérique. The spacious chord almost always accompanies texts that concern exploration or voyages and catalyzes modulations between distant harmonic areas. Not until the final page of L’horizon chimérique did Fauré silence this seductive harmony that continually lures the protagonist onto perilous waters. The third ripple begins in m. 25 with the second reprise of the opening music. The passage begins in EH major and reaches a cadence in D minor (interestingly, the keys of the third and fourth songs). The turn to minor draws out the dark undertones of Brimont’s text, revealing the death wish behind her fantasy of the “long voyage.” The first of the piano’s three water portraits begins aptly with an

214      Chapter 7

ascending chromatic motive reminiscent of Tristan und Isolde (see example 7.2a). Yet Fauré has filtered Wagner through a French source, Duparc’s song “Extase” (1874). Fauré had dedicated “Chant d’automne,” with its own Wagnerian echoes, to Duparc around 1870.15 “Extase,” which Duparc modeled explicitly on Tristan, begins with the identical chromatic line as “Reflets dans l’eau” (E4-EG4-FG4-G4-GG4A4) above another oscillating A-major arpeggio (see example 7.2b).16 “Extase” is Duparc’s most Wagnerian mélodie, perhaps the most Wagnerian mélodie ever composed. Within the space of sixteen bars, Duparc managed to cite the Tristan prelude (mm. 1–4), Sieglinde’s “Du bist der Lenz” from Die Walküre (mm. 5–6), the Twilight of the Gods motive (mm. 7–9), the Wanderer motive from Siegfried (mm. 10–13), and the Tristan chord (m. 16). Jean Lahor’s poem is a Decadent homage to the Liebestod: Sur un lys pâle mon cœur dort D’un sommeil doux comme la mort: Mort exquise, mort parfumée Du souffle de la bien-aimée. On a pale lily my heart sleeps A sleep as sweet as death: Exquisite death, death perfumed With the beloved’s breath. The Duparc allusion identifies Brimont’s Symbolist waters with the toxic potions of Bayreuth. Fauré was no Cocteau, railing at Wagner as a sorcerer dispensing drugs for the “stupefaction of the faithful,” but the leitmotive-drenched ecstasies of La bonne chanson lie far behind.17 The detached narration of this passage recalls the editorial voice from “Cygne sur l’eau.” The singer holds back from the piano’s hypnotic spell, describing the watery vignettes in an unaccompanied monotone (“like the intertitles of a silent film,” as Bergeron put it).18 Fauré depicted the expanding ripples with an almost mechanistic precision, closer in spirit to Ravel’s Jeux d’eau than to Debussy’s fluid watercolor. Each piano ripple begins with eighth-note triplets in a rocking hemiola pattern, and then expands to duple eighth notes with the same hemiola, creating a strict 2:3 ratio. (The rhythmic transition is clearest in mm. 39–41, where the hemiola expands from 3 to 4 ½ beats.) “Reflets dans l’eau” also obeys another ratio at a deeper level. As Roy Howat pointed out, the song is structured around the Fibonacci series, a possible tribute to Debussy who modeled several works on the same number series.19 “Jardin nocturne” is the weakest link in Mirages, a charming song that nevertheless provides no relief from the mood of the first two songs. The lack of contrast in Fauré’s cycle, which begins with three muted songs with nearly

example 7.2 . Wagnerian influence in Fauré, “Reflets dans l’eau,” Mirages. a. Fauré, “Reflets dans l’eau,” Mirages, mm. 33–37.

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216      Chapter 7

identical metronome markings (Q = 66, 60, and 63), can feel excessive even by the ascetic standards of the late works. “Jardin nocturne” evokes an atmosphere infused with wonder, trading on a familiar vocabulary of rising sequences and shifting enharmonic chords. It looks ahead to the third song of L’horizon chimérique, another moonlit meditation in EH major that ends with the voice hovering on the fifth degree. But “Jardin nocturne” lacks the vigorous surroundings that lend “Diane, Séléné” its otherworldly serenity. One noteworthy poetic device connects “Jardin nocturne” to the preceding songs of Mirages. Brimont’s poem consists of three sizains that begin with a couplet and conclude with a quatrain in rimes embrassées. Yet Fauré set the poem in two unequal parts, dividing the second stanza after the fourth line. Moreover, he highlighted this division with a reprise of the opening music transposed to DH: Nul bruit, si ce n’est le faible bruit de l’onde fuyant goutte à goutte au bord des vasques rondes, ou le bleu frisson d’une brise d’été, furtive parmi des palmes invisibles . . . Je sais, ô jardin, vos caresses sensibles  [Reprise of opening theme] et votre languide et chaude volupté! Je sais votre paix délectable et morose, vos parfums d’iris, de jasmins et de roses, . . . Fauré’s asymmetrical division highlights the repetition of “Je sais” across the second and third stanzas. More importantly, it emphasizes the apostrophe in the penultimate line of the second stanza, where the protagonist directly addresses the garden—“Je sais, ô jardin, vos caresses sensibles” (I know, oh garden, your sensual caresses). “Diane, Séléné” has the same binary structure. The poet describes the nocturnal scene in the first stanza, then turns to address the moon in the second: “O lune je t’en veux de ta limpidité” (Oh moon, I covet your limpidity). Fauré thus highlighted the rhetorical presence of the poet in “Jardin nocturne,” foregrounding the sovereign voice that cautions the errant swan in “Cygne sur l’eau” and describes the pianistic ripples in “Reflets dans l’eau.” Mirages ends, like both Van Lerberghe cycles, with a solitary woman poised against the forces of time and decay. But the lithe maiden of “Danseuse” does not dissolve into cosmic dust or vanish in the shifting desert sands. Indeed, she cannot perish for she is but a painted figure. The poem evokes, in Nectoux’s words, “a bacchanale outlined in black figures against a red background on some Greek vase.”20 Fauré set four of Brimont’s six stanzas: Sœurs des Sœurs tisseuses de violettes, une ardente veille blémit tes joues . . .

Neoclassical Voyages    217

Danse! Et que les rythmes aigus dénouent    tes bandelettes. Vase svelte, fresque mouvante et souple, danse, danse, paumes vers nous tendues, pieds étroits fuyant, tels des ailes nues    qu’Éros decouple . . . Sois la fleur multiple un peu balancée, sois l’écharpe offerte au désir qui change, sois la lampe chaste, la flamme étrange,    sois la pensée! Danse, danse au chant de ma flûte creuse, sœur des Sœurs divines.—La moiteur glisse, baiser vain, le long de ta hanche lisse . . .    Vaine danseuse! Sister of Sisters, weavers of violet, A burning vigil whitens your cheeks . . . Dance! And let the sharp rhythms loosen    your ribbons. Slender vase, supple and moving fresco, dance, dance, palms extended before us, narrow feet flying, like the naked wings    that Eros unfurls . . . Be the multiple flower that sways a bit, be the scarf offered to a fickle desire, be the chaste lamp, the exotic flame,    be thought! Dance, dance to the song of my hollow flute, sister of divine Sisters.—The moisture glides, vain kiss, along your lithe hip . . .    Vain dancer! Brimont’s transposition d’art offers a final rebuke to fin-de-siècle vitalism. The turn to pottery and fresco recalls the Parnassians and their tireless odes to the Venus de Milo. Her poem belongs to another age disillusioned with Romanticism and its utopias, an age in which fixity, control, and classical form beckoned as antidotes to destruction and chaos. Fauré performed a second-order transposition d’art as he set to music this meditation on a Grecian vase. His song realizes Brimont’s antique vision in the

218      Chapter 7 example 7.3 . Fauré, “Danseuse,” Mirages, mm. 1–6.

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archaeological spirit of his “Hymne à Apollon,” the arrangement of an ancient Delphic hymn that he had completed under the scholarly eye of Théodore Reinach in 1894 and revised in 1914.21 Fauré depicted Brimont’s antique music through an extraordinary piano accompaniment, a spare counterpoint that pits a dotted ostinato line against a dominant pedal, like a flute accompanied by a cithara (see example 7.3). “Danseuse” is the most austere and dépouillé of Fauré’s songs, surpassing even the simplicity of Satie’s Socrate. Predictably, Fauré resorted to the ancient modes, approaching the cadence of the first stanza through a Phrygian EH (mm. 11–12). The modal cadence thus subtly recapitulates the tonal progression of the last two songs, a move already foreshadowed in “Reflets dans l’eau.” The final key also corrects the flat-side drift in Fauré’s overall key scheme. The first three songs descend through the circle of fifths, F-BH-EH, as the protagonist is drawn ever further into the world of nostalgia and dreams. “Danseuse” arrests this tendency by restoring the opening key signature, ending the cycle in the relative minor of F major. But Fauré has stepped outside the modern tonal system with this final key. He has not restored the original key but merely its diatonic collection,

Neoclassical Voyages    219

establishing a looser modal connection between the two outer songs. Indeed, the EH-D relationship between “Jardin nocturne” and “Danseuse” replaces the circleof-fifths progression with an implied Phrygian cadence. Fauré’s strategy recalls “Adieu” (Poème d’un jour), another classicizing finale in which he appealed to the ancient modes to resolve tensions within the tonal structure of the preceding songs. Fauré’s music abounds with dances, but none of them sound remotely like “Danseuse.” The jerky ostinato does not seduce the ear like the elegant “Clair de lune” and Pavane or capture the listener in its infectious sway like “Le papillon et la fleur” or “Le pas espagnol” from the Dolly Suite. In “Danseuse,” Fauré fashioned something more objective, even atavistic. The dotted rhythm is rigid and angular, as stiff as the outstretched palms of the dancer. She seems to remain trapped on the ceramic surface, her vital movements fixed like the piano’s unyielding pedal point. Fauré’s song amounts to a dehumanization of dance, in the sense that José Ortega y Gasset would give that term six years later: “the progressive elimination of the human or too human elements characteristic of romantic and naturalistic works of art.”22 The quotation from the Prélude à L’après-midi d’un faune in the fourth stanza drives the final nail into the coffin of Bergsonian vitalism. As Bergeron pointed out, the pianist’s inner line in mm. 44–51 retraces the exact intervals of the famous flute solo, but Fauré has imposed a stiff dotted rhythm on the lazy arabesque.23 Moreover, the quotation follows the only passage in the song where the dotted rhythms give way to arpeggios, as if to discipline the fluid motion. Bergeron aptly compared Fauré’s revision of Debussy’s melody to Nijinsky’s contrarian choreography for the Prélude (1912), itself inspired by Greek vase paintings. Or perhaps Fauré had in mind a more famous work from the Ballets Russes, The Rite of Spring, which also ends with a maiden dancing to jagged modernist rhythms. As Bergeron concluded, the final song of Mirages breathes the air of a new generation: “With its mechanical ostinato, denuded style, and squared-off phrases, it had more in common with the values of those ‘young ones’ who belonged to Cocteau’s immediate circle.”24 L’ H OR I ZON C H I M É R I QU E

Fauré composed two perfectly shaped song cycles, works in which the overall form not only unifies the individual songs but also captures their unique expressive character. In La bonne chanson, the cumulative force of the leitmotives bends the explosive variety of the nine songs into a single dramatic arc. In L’horizon chimérique, an opposing drive toward balance and sameness informs both the individual songs and the form of the cycle. The texts that Fauré selected from Jean de La Ville de Mirmont’s fourteen poems trace a voyage that begins and ends on terra firma. In “La mer est infinie,” the protagonist imagines his dreams venturing upon the deep like seagulls (a less poetic version of Brimont’s swan); “Je me suis

220      Chapter 7

embarqué” pictures him at sea on a rocking vessel; “Diane, Séléné” lingers in this shipboard utopia; and “Vaisseaux, nous vous aurons aimés” renounces the voyage, declaring the protagonist one of those “whose desires are of the earth.” Fauré’s tonal plan, D-EH-DH-D, mirrors this journey of the mind in two ways. The cycle begins and ends in a sharp key, representing dry land, and modulates to flat keys during the voyage. The key scheme also describes a minute pendulum swing, inching a semitone to either side of D major before returning to equilibrium. This strict tonal symmetry, unique among Fauré’s song cycles, strengthens the comparison of L’horizon chimérique with a four-movement sonata cycle, in which the second and third songs would serve, respectively, as scherzo and slow movement. Uniquely among Fauré’s song cycles, moreover, L’horizon chimérique avoids entirely the minor mode. The form is as orderly and balanced as the poet’s prim alexandrines. In fashioning his narrative, Fauré upended La Ville de Mirmont’s collection. The poet began with texts that express the protagonist’s longing for adventure, including Fauré’s final song, “Vaisseaux, nous vous aurons aimés” (no. 5). Fauré’s first two songs actually come at the end of the book (nos. 13 and 14), where the protagonist sets sail for distant climes. In the final line of the collection, the poet muses on his reception by the natives to whom he brings his adventurous heart: “Mais les sauvages, en voudront-ils?” (But the savages, will they want it?). La Ville de Mirmont’s alter ego embraces the voyage, boldly bearing his offering (that is, poetry) to the savages (critics and public). Fauré cut this conclusion to “Je me suis embarqué” and moved the poem to the first half of the cycle where it marks the outermost limit of the voyage. Unlike the poet, Fauré’s protagonist renounces the journey and lingers wistfully on the quay. The first song of L’horizon chimérique stands out for the intensity of its textpainting. Fauré clearly wanted to fix every image before the reader’s eyes, and La Ville de Mirmont’s lusty poem gave him plenty to work with: La mer est infinie et mes rêves sont fous. La mer chante au soleil en battant les falaises Et mes rêves légers ne se sentent plus d’aise De danser sur la mer comme des oiseaux souls . . . The sea is infinite and my dreams are mad. The sea sings to the sun as it strikes the cliffs And my light dreams have no greater pleasure than To dance on the sea like drunken birds . . . Fauré painted the scene with broad brushstrokes (see example 7.4). From the first to the last measure of the song, the sunlit ocean sparkles in rapid piano arpeggios. The first phrase portrays the poet’s enlarged vision of sea and sky with a dramatic octave ascent that peaks on “falaise” (cliff). After swelling to this height, the

example 7.4 . Fauré, “La mer est infinie,” L’horizon chimérique, op. 118,

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222      Chapter 7

melody capers like the tipsy birds before plunging an octave as if to swoop up a fish. Fauré did not neglect the finer details of the text either, stretching out “infinie” for three beats and inserting an abrupt F-major chord on “fous” (mad). In the second stanza, the melody rises to CG then drops a fifth, cresting and falling like “The vast movement of the waves” (mm. 12–16). At the climax of the song, as the poet contemplates the open sea, the melody and bass expand in contrary motion and the singer soars to a sustained high E (m. 26). The final phrase rocks gently between ˆ5 and 6ˆ , caught up in the sea’s undulation (mm. 30–32). Fauré depicted the text more subtly through his treatment of phrase and meter. The poet’s first two lines unfold in stately three-bar phrases as the melody climbs the octave, while the third line tumbles out in a single bar like the poet’s giddy thoughts. During the second and third stanzas, the phrases shrink to two bars, consuming the text more rapidly as the poet’s reverie takes flight. Fauré’s final two phrases swell to four bars in an implicit 3/2, responding to the vision of the open sea. This bold text-painting contrasts starkly with Fauré’s practice in his Van Lerberghe cycles. He eschewed pictorialisms in La chanson d’Ève, other than the rising scales of “Eau vivante,” and purged Le jardin clos of any concrete representation that might distance the listener from the musical durée. “La mer est infinie” makes a most un-Bergsonian appeal to spatial representation, playing with register, pitch goals, and hypermeter to depict the horizontal and vertical expanse of the seascape. The remarkable balance of dynamism and repose in “La mer est infinie,” what Amy Dommel-Diény called its “mobilité immobile,” owes much to Fauré’s masterful treatment of harmony.25 The harmonic rhythm is quick, with a new chord on almost every beat, but the stepwise voice-leading blurs the changes into a vibrant shimmer. The harmony remains fresh and unpredictable, despite its firm diatonicism. The singer’s first two phrases, as shown in example 7.4, outline the tonic triad as they climb the octave, yet the first phrase cadences unexpectedly on HIII6, a substitute for the expected V. The second phrase dislodges the harmony smoothly with a V4/2 chord as the bass begins its stepwise descent from ˆ5 to ˆ1. The second phrase ends with another deceptive cadence on HIII6, but the melody effortlessly guides the harmony back to D major as it slides down to the leading tone. These brief detours create a subtle tension within the otherwise straightforward tonal progression. The harmony grows more disordered in the second song, “Je me suis embarqué,” as the protagonist casts off from shore. The sea now appears as a place of blessed forgetfulness, a nourishing and ceaselessly moving maternal space: Je me suis embarqué sur un vaisseau qui danse Et roule bord sur bord et tangue et se balance. Mes pieds ont oublié la terre et ses chemins; Les vagues souples m’ont appris d’autres cadences Plus belles que le rythme las des chants humains.

Neoclassical Voyages    223

À vivre parmi vous, hélas! avais-je une âme? Mes frères, j’ai souffert sur tous vos continents. Je ne veux que la mer, je ne veux que le vent Pour me bercer, comme un enfant, au creux des lames . . . I have embarked on a ship that dances And rolls side to side and pitches and sways. My feet have forgotten the earth and its paths; The supple waves have taught me other cadences More beautiful than the tired rhythm of human songs. To live among you, alas! Did I have a soul? My brothers, I have suffered on all of your continents. I want nothing but the sea, I want nothing but the wind To rock me, like an infant, in the hollow of the waves . . . Some of Fauré’s progressions are gentle swells, like the “Lydia” modulation to F minor in mm. 13–17 or the enharmonic parenthesis in mm. 7–10. Others toss the harmony about more roughly, like the progression through a Weitzmann region in mm. 23–25. An augmented triad [GH-BH-D] appears on the wonderfully alliterative line, “Je ne veux que la mer, je ne veux que le vent,” responding as in Mirages to thoughts of freedom and exploration. Semitone displacements of the augmented triad then create a progression through G, EH, and B minor. The following two bars suspend the key entirely with an oscillation between parallel 4/3 chords, depicting the poet’s blissful forgetfulness (mm. 26–28). Fauré exploited the sharp-flat polarity of L’horizon chimérique to great effect in “Je me suis embarqué,” descending from the bright opening key into his beloved DH major. The flat major key in Fauré’s songs, as Beltrando-Patier remarked, “paints to perfection the nuances of night, secrets, emotions, and dreams.”26 The sea also belongs to this mysterious flat-side realm (for his other great seafaring song, “Les berceaux,” Fauré chose BH minor, the relative minor of DH major). The mention of land in the opening stanza, however, prompts a brief digression to the sharp side (mm. 8–10). The song veers more dramatically into FG minor as the singer laments, “My brothers, I have suffered on all of your continents” (mm. 20–28). This outburst subsides more slowly, lulled by the gentle rocking of the ship. The da capo reprise that follows holds out the promise of secure containment, as if the DH vessel could shield the protagonist from memories of his past life: Hors du port qui n’est plus qu’une image effacée, Les larmes du départ ne brûlent plus mes yeux. Je ne me souviens pas de mes derniers adieux . . . Ô ma peine, ma peine, où vous ai-je laissée?

224      Chapter 7 example 7.5 . Fauré, “Je me suis embarqué,” L’horizon chimérique, mm. 40–46.

f

b & b b b b œj ‰ Œ

40

#œ

œ. #œ œ

Ô

ma pei

J

. . . b b b ‰ # œj ‰ œj ‰ œj b & b # # œœ œœ œœ

f

? bb b b b n˙ 43

b & b bbb œ &

bbbb

j

œ‰ Œ J

[simile]

j j

b ‰ # ## œœœ ‰ œœœ ‰ œœœ sempre

f

> ? bb b b b n ˙œ # œ n ˙ œ . >

-

#œ. œ œ

J R

vous ai

j

J # œr œr œ

-

ne,

ma

R

j

n n ˙˙

œ

pei

-

ne,

.j .j .j ‰ n # œœ ‰ œœ ‰ œœ #œ œ œ #œ

n˙

∫˙.

je lais - sé

‰ # # œœ ‰ # œœ ‰ œj #œ œ # œœ

œœ

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J

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où

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sostenuto

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˙.

-

j

e?

j j

‰ ∫ œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ œj ∫ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ dim.

b ˙œ .

>

> nœ n˙

œ

˙œ . >

> ˙ œ

œ

Far from the port, which is no more than a fading image, The tears of parting no longer burn my eyes. I no longer remember my last farewells . . . O my pain, my pain, where have I left you? Yet FG minor bursts out with still greater violence on the climactic cry, “O my pain, my pain” (see example 7.5). The enharmonic resolution is far less convincing this time. The singer lingers on a dissonant BHH for a full bar after the return to DH. The H6ˆ -ˆ5 appoggiatura recalls the end of “La mer est infinie,” but Fauré has transformed the cradling figure into an anguished sob. The bass line also clouds the resolution to DH. Descending like a traditional lamento bass, it strongly signals a Phrygian half cadence in FG minor, and even the V-I cadence in m. 46–47 cannot

Neoclassical Voyages    225

dispel the memory of that aborted progression. The sea offers a brief respite from reality, but no lasting peace. “Je me suis embarqué” stands out among Fauré’s late songs for its rhythmic verve. The offbeat accent on the second beat queasily evokes the roll and pitch of the deck, and Dommel-Diény has noted the resemblance of the bass ostinato to Ulysses’ bounding leitmotive in Pénélope, an apt nautical allusion.27 The poet registered the fresh maritime rhythms prosodically, using a Romantic trimètre (4 + 4 + 4) in the second stanza: “Pour me bercer, / comme un enfant, / au creux des lames.” Fauré responded with two bars of 3/2 hypermeter with the melody oscillating between GG and FG like a rocking cradle (mm. 26–28).28 The hemiola embodies the fresh cadences of the ocean, “more beautiful than the tired rhythm of human songs.” The expansive hypermeter and 6ˆ -ˆ5 oscillation also recall the end of “La mer est infinie,” a memory that adds to the poignancy of the final BHH-AH groan. The protagonist enjoys a momentary reprieve in “Diane, Séléné,” free from the pull of tide and wave. The calm moonlight brings a healing balm after the anguish of the preceding song. “Diane, Séléné” is Fauré’s last and most beautiful Parnassian creation, in a line with “Lydia,” “Adieu,” “Le secret,” and “Le parfum impérissable.” Like Leconte de Lisle, the poet wore his learning rather heavily, addressing the moon in both Greek and Latin. The pale goddess, like the Venus de Milo, beckons as a model of l’impassible: Diane, Séléné, lune de beau métal, Qui reflète vers nous, par ta face déserte, Dans l’immortel ennui du calme sidéral, Le regret d’un soleil dont nous pleurons la perte. Ô lune, je t’en veux de ta limpidité Injurieuse au trouble vain des pauvres âmes, Et mon cœur, toujours las et toujours agité,  Aspire vers la paix de ta nocturne flamme. Diane, Selene, moon of beautiful metal, You who reflect on us, from your deserted face, In the immortal ennui of sidereal calm, The regret of a sun whose loss we mourn. O moon, I covet your limpidity, Painful to poor souls with their vain troubles, And my heart, always weary and always agitated, Aspires to the peace of your nocturnal flame. Fauré’s setting revives the antique style of “Lydia” but within a richer chromatic alloy. The accompaniment again pulses with portato, hymnlike chords, and the Lydian AJ glints in the first phrase like the moon’s “beau métal.”

226      Chapter 7 example 7.6 . Fauré, “Diane, Séléné,” L’horizon chimérique, mm. 16–20.

b j j &bb œ œ

(15)

Et

mon

nœ

cœur,

r r œ œ œj œJ œ œ œJ œ œ R R R R tou - jours

b . & b b œœ œ

n œœ . n œ.

œ

? b b œœ b

œœ

œœ

18

œœ

œœ. b &bb œ

. œœ œ

n œœ. nœ

œœ

œœœ n œœœ

42

- pi - re vers la paix

. œœ œ

42

a - gi

-

b œœ œ œ œ

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œ œ œ ˙

? b œœ bb

et tou - jours

j œ

b œ &bb

J R R

las

b˙

de

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2 4 b œœ

r

r r j

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œ. b bb œœ

p

senza rall.

j

té,

œ -

ne

œ œ

J J

œœ. œ

œ. b œœ

b b œœ

b b œœ

œ

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c ˙ flam

As -

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-

me.

. œœ

. c œ œœ

. œœ

. . œœ œ œ œ

œ œœ

c œ œ

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The interval of the perfect fifth presides over “Diane, Séléné,” sanctifying the song with its pure sonority. In the two-bar introduction, the piano melody twice falls from BH to EH and back, while the bass traces the same path in stepwise motion. The rising and falling fifths present a mirror image, like the poet’s soul reflected back from the moon’s face. The symmetrical motive suggests the precarious equilibrium that the protagonist attains in “Diane, Séléné.” Fauré has perched the melody above a I6/4 chord in mm. 1 and 3, recapturing the same sense of dynamic stasis as in “Je me poserai sur ton cœur” (Le jardin clos). Falling fifths pervade “Diane, Séléné,” and as in the preceding songs, the voice ends poised on the fifth degree. Yet Fauré has purified the note of its 6ˆ -ˆ5 appoggiatura, leaving only the perfect interval. Fauré highlighted the moment of apostrophe even more dramatically than in “Jardin nocturne” (Mirages). The second stanza closes in C minor, with one of those “hier-

Neoclassical Voyages    227

atic” cadences that Jankélévitch so admired, and the pianist’s opening figure returns in a higher, more vulnerable register. On the intimate confession, “O moon, I covet your limpidity,” the singer floats to a piano EH, the apex of the song. Fauré bid farewell to his “Lydia” modulation with this lovely phrase, which pivots to the mediant, G minor, by means of the pervasive raised fourth. The composer reserved his most exquisite effect for the last line of La Ville de Mirmont’s poem (see example 7.6). The voice reaches a pitch ceiling of DH on the penultimate line as the troubled poet yearns for the distant moon (m. 17). The falling fifths from the prelude return in GH major as the vocal melody sustains the DH. On the verb “aspire,” the singer pushes through to EH in full voice, yet the piano counteracts this climax with a downward sequence. The pianist repeats the falling fifths down a minor third, relaxing into the tonic just as the singer reaches the high EH. Striving and repose, tension and relaxation find a perfect equilibrium in this magical passage. Fauré dovetailed the third and fourth songs by beginning “Vaisseaux, nous vous aurons aimés” with an almost exact transposition of the final chord of “Diane, Séléné.” The voice also remains poised on the fifth degree, where the previous song ended. Fauré thus emphasized the sobering drop into D major as the protagonist returns to solid earth: Vaisseaux, nous vous aurons aimés en pure perte; Le dernier de vous tous est parti sur la mer. Le couchant emporta tant de voiles ouvertes Que ce port et mon cœur sont à jamais déserts. Ships, vainly would we have loved you; The last of you has departed on the sea. The setting sun carried away so many open sails That this port and my heart are forever deserted. The wide-spaced tonic triad underlies the opening bars of “Vaisseaux nous vous aurons aimés” like a pastoral drone and returns stolidly at the end of the first and third stanzas. Unfolding as a broad 12/8 barcarolle, the song bears the same tempo marking as the first song, Andante quasi allegretto, and the compound meter has absorbed the rolling maritime rhythms into a sturdy quadruple meter. Yet Fauré’s final song brings little sense of peace. The piano arpeggios propel the restless vocal line across the through-composed stanzas to the final cri de cœur. Like Debussy’s “Beau soir,” another wistful barcarolle, Fauré’s final song sweeps the listener inexorably toward the bittersweet conclusion. Fauré made his most telling use of the augmented triad in this final song. The chord appears on the penultimate line of the first stanza, “The setting sun carried away so many open sails” (see example 7.7a). The expanded triad [D-FG-BH] depicts the billowing sails but also suggests the protagonist’s yearning after the vanishing

Rumph Ex.7.8/7.9 page 1 of 2 228      Chapter 7 example 7.7 . Fauré, augmented triads in “Vaisseaux, nous vous aurons aimés,” L’horizon chimérique. a. Mm. 6–8.

a.

# & # Œ

6

‰ œ œJ œ . Le

œ œ ˙.

bœ

œ œ œ œ bœ.

em - por - ta

tant

de voi - les ou - ver

J

cou - chant

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J J J J

jœŒ œ œœ

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j bœ b œ œœ

Œ

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œ

-

‰

œ.

tes

jœ œ œœ

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b. Mm. 23–24.

# & # œ

j œ bœ.

# & # Œ

‰

23

œ

vo - tre∂ap - pel,

? ## n œ œ

au fond

j bœ Œ b œ a œœ

œ œ.

œ œ J

œ œ

‰

j œœ œ œ

œ œ.

j

j œ bœ

œ

œ

des

soirs,

me

Œ

‰

dé

œ œ. -

j b œœ bœ b œ

bœ œ. bœ bœ

J

ses - pè

Œ

œ

œ.

-

re,

‰

j œ œ œœ

œ œ œ.

ships. The voice lingers wistfully on the dissonant BH after the piano has resolved the chord to D major, recalling the ending of “Je me suis embarqué.” The same augmented triad returns in the final stanza: Je suis de ceux dont les désirs sont sur la terre. Le souffle qui vous grise emplit mon cœur d’effroi, Mais votre appel, au fond des soirs, me désespère, Car j’ai de grands départs inassouvis en moi.

Neoclassical Voyages    229

I am one of those whose desires are earthbound. The breath that intoxicates you fills my heart with fear, But your call, in the depths of evening, fills me with despair, For I have great unfulfilled departures within me. The chord again comes on the penultimate line (see example 7.7b). The vocal line presses insistently on the BH, and Fauré even underlined the dissonant note this time with a Neapolitan harmony. But the protagonist again withstands the pull of the seductive harmony that has haunted the late cycles since “Cygne sur l’eau.” “Vaisseaux, nous vous aurons aimés” revisits melodic features of the opening song but overcomes their centrifugal forces as well. Fauré has reversed the background linear motion of “La mer est infinie”; as Caballero put it, “The vocal lines of the first and last songs are palindromes writ large.”29 The first song begins with an octave ascent and continues to press against the upper tonic, driving past it at the climax. The melody of “Vaisseaux, nous vous aurons aimés” also rises to high D, but the first stanza ends with a weighty plagal cadence on the lower tonic in mm. 9–10, tamping down the upward tendency of the line. In the second stanza, the singer rises to a full-throated high E, but the melody now sinks back to its starting note, A, again frustrating the upward impulse. The fifth degree has a stifling effect on the melody throughout “Vaisseaux, nous vous aurons aimés,” reflecting the ubiquity of this note throughout L’horizon chimérique. Each of the stanzas begins on A and the melody persistently circles back to this starting pitch; not even the expansive augmented triads can escape its orbit. Unlike the previous songs, however, “Vaisseaux, nous vous aurons aimés” does not end on the fifth degree. The final phrase descends resolutely from ˆ5 to ˆ1, ending with a falling octave that closes down the pitch space opened in the first stanza of “La mer est infinie.” With this decisive cadence, L’horizon chimérique brings to an end a voyage that began in 1919, when the black swan first glided beyond its familiar banks. Our voyage through the Fauré song cycles has also reached its end. We began in the middle of another century, as the fledgling composer first tested the waters of genre, and have followed him along calm Parnassian streams into the churning rapids of Wagnerism, through the hanging vines and branches of Symbolism and into the narrow canals of postwar neoclassicism. This voyage is illusory, of course, a narrative conceit that should not obscure the unchanged actualité of Fauré’s last song cycles. Mirages and L’horizon chimérique do not gaze into the past; still less do they look ahead to the future. Fauré remained precisely where he had always been from the first time he leafed through a volume of Hugo’s verse: in the present moment, navigating its unique currents and possibilities. His seven song cycles record the astonishing imagination and intelligence that he brought to each poetic encounter and prove him one of the consummate readers in the history of art song.

notes

P R E FAC E

1.  Vladimir Jankélévitch, Gabriel Fauré: Ses mélodies, son esthétique (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1938), 15. 2.  David Code, Claude Debussy (London: Reaktion Books, 2010), 7. 3.  Claude Debussy, Monsieur Croche et autres écrits, ed. François Lesure (Paris: Gallimard, 1987), 119. C HA P T E R 1 : R OM A N C I N G T H E M É LODI E

1.  Paul Meurice wrote to the poet concerning the copyright of the song texts: “A young man, a pupil of Niedermeyer’s, M. Gabriel Fauré, has set some of your poetry to music; he is prepared to pay you for the rights to the poor things, but I know that several pieces have rights reserved, and I am sending you the titles of those he has chosen so that you can tell me whether they are reserved: La fleur et le papillon [sic], Puisque mai tout en fleurs, S’il est un charmant gazon, Puisqu’ici bas toute âme, L’aube naît, Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre.” Letter to Victor Hugo, May 1864, in Correspondance entre Victor Hugo et Paul Meurice, ed. Eugène Fasquelle (Paris: Bibliothèque-Charpentier, 1909), 187. “Puisqu’ici bas toute âme” is a duet drawn from Hugo’s Les voix intérieures (1837). All French translations in this book are my own, unless otherwise indicated. 2.  See David Tunley, Salons, Singers, and Songs: A Background to Romantic French Song, 1830–1870 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), which complements his Garland anthologies of French Romantic song. 3.  Frits Noske, La mélodie française de Berlioz à Duparc: Essai de critique historique (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1954); translated by Rita Benton as French Song from Berlioz to Duparc: The Origin and Development of the Mélodie (New York: Dover, 1970). 231

232      Notes to pages 2–13 4.  “Je t’enverrai la Gavotte un de ces jours avec la petite mélodie que tu me demandes. J’y joindrai un exemplaire de ma romance S’il est un charmant gazon qui va paraître bientôt.” Letter to Julien Koszul, June 1870, in Gabriel Fauré, Correspondance suivie de Lettres à Madame H., ed. Jean-Michel Nectoux (Paris: Fayard, 2015), 29. 5.  Charles Kœchlin, Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924), trans. Leslie Orrey (London: Dennis Dobson, 1946), 18. 6.  Jean-Michel Nectoux, Gabriel Fauré: A Musical Life, trans. Roger Nichols (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 64–78; Roy Howat and Emily Kilpatrick, “Editorial Challenges in the Early Songs of Gabriel Fauré,” Notes 68, no. 2 (2011), 246. 7.  See Kitti Messina, “Mélodie et romance au milieu du XIXe siècle: Points communs et divergences,” Revue de musicologie 94, no. 1 (2008): 59–90. As Michel Faure and Vincent Vivès reminded readers in their sweeping study Histoire et poétique de la mélodie française (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2000), “The history of the mélodie is not governed by any teleology that imposes upon it a course of development or assigns it a goal” (14). 8.  Introduction to Louis Alfred Niedermeyer, Vie d’un compositeur moderne (1802–1861) (Paris: Fischenbacher, 1893), vii–viii. 9.  For examples of this dialogic approach to genre, see Jeffrey Kallberg, “The Rhetoric of Genre: Chopin’s Nocturne in G Minor,” 19th-Century Music 11, no. 3 (1988): 238–61; and James Hepokoski, “Genre and Content in Mid-century Verdi: ‘Addio del passato,’ La traviata, Act III,” Cambridge Opera Journal 1, no. 3 (1989): 249–76. 10.  Victor Hugo, Œuvres poétiques de Victor Hugo, vol. 1: Avant l’exil, 1802–1851, ed. Pierre Albouy (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1964), 812. 11.  Léo Joubert, Essais de critique et d’histoire (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1863), 192. 12.  Watteau’s canvases had inspired poems by Hugo, Gautier, Banville, and Baudelaire, as well as Charles Blanc’s Les peintres de fêtes galantes: Watteau, Lancret, Pater, Boucher (Paris: Jules Renouard et cie, 1854), and Edmond and Jules de Goncourt’s L’art du dixhuitième siècle (Paris: E. Dentu, 1859–75). They would also inspire Paul Verlaine’s Fêtes galantes (1869), which Fauré discovered in 1887. 13.  See Marshall Brown, “Passion and Love: Anacreontic Song and the Roots of Romantic Lyric,” ELH 66, no. 2 (1999): 373–404. 14.  See Nectoux, Gabriel Fauré, 7–9. 15.  For a complete list of French song cycles from 1841 to 1962, see Ulrich Linke, Der französische Liederzyklus von 1866 bis 1914: Entwicklungen und Strukturen (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2010), 293–98. 16.  Louis Marie Quicherat, Traité de versification française, 2nd ed. (Paris: Hachette, 1850), 2. 17.  See Noske, French Song from Berlioz to Duparc, 257–59. 18.  See, for instance, Mimi Daitz, “Les manuscrits et les premières éditions des mélodies de Fauré: Étude préliminaire,” Études fauréennes 20–21 (1983–84), 19–28. 19.  David Hunter has discussed the characteristic arch shape of the alexandrine in Understanding French Verse: A Guide for Singers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 30–31. 20.  See Clive Scott, French Verse-Art: A Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 29–60. 21.  Howat and Kilpatrick, “Editorial Challenges in the Early Songs,” 265.

Notes to pages 13–33    233 22.  For an alternative reading of musical and prosodic interplay in “Le papillon et la fleur” see Roy Howat, “Fauré the Practical Interpreter,” in Fauré Studies, ed. Carlo Caballero and Stephen Rumph (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 172–75. 23.  See William Caplin, Classical Form: A Theory of Formal Functions for the Instrumental Music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 35–48. 24.  Graham Johnson, Gabriel Fauré: The Songs and Their Poets, with translations of the song texts by Richard Stokes (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 41. 25.  Noske, French Song from Berlioz to Duparc, 256. 26.  The triadic accompaniment figure in “Dans les ruines d’une abbaye” also generates the singer’s opening motive, as Klaus Strobel noted in Das Liedschaffen Gabriel Faurés (Hamburg: Verlag Dr. Kovaĉ, 2000), 46. 27.  See note 1. C HA P T E R 2 : A S C E N D I N G PA R NA S SU S

1.  Jankélévitch, Gabriel Fauré, 63. For a detailed analysis of the thematic connections in Poème d’un jour, see Strobel, Das Liedschaffen Gabriel Faurés, 83–89; Marie-Claire Beltrando-Patier, “Les mélodies de G. Fauré,” state thesis, University of Strasbourg II, 1978, 193–98; and Nectoux, Gabriel Fauré, 177–78. 2.  Robert Orledge, Gabriel Fauré (London: Eulenberg Book, 1979), 54. 3.  For example, Nectoux argued in Gabriel Fauré, 32, that through op. 21 “Fauré was able, if not to forget, at least to overcome the despair he had felt in the autumn of 1877.” 4.  Kœchlin, Gabriel Fauré, 20. 5.  Jankélévitch, Gabriel Fauré, 63; Émile Vuillermoz, Gabriel Fauré, trans. Kenneth Schapin (Philadelphia: Chilton Book, 1969), 71. 6.  Howat and Kilpatrick argue for the first hypothesis in Fauré, Complete Songs, vol. 1: 1861–1882 (Leipzig: Peters Edition, 2014), ix. Although Grandmougin approached Fauré with a text in 1907 (which he declined), there is no record of an earlier meeting, although the poet and composer might easily have crossed paths during the 1870s. 7.  For a general survey of Parnassianism, see Pierre Martino, Parnasse et symbolisme (1850–1900) (Paris: Armand Colin, 1954); and Robert Denommé, The French Parnassian Poets (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1972). Seth Whidden has argued for the centrality of the understudied Parnassian movement in Leaving Parnassus: The Lyric Subject in Verlaine and Rimbaud (Amsterdam: Editions Radopi, 2007), 17–43. 8.  Henri Gauthier-Villars, Les parnassiens (Paris: Gauthier-Villars Imprimeur-Libraire, 1882), 37–42. The future husband of Colette (nom de plume, Willy) named Leconte de Lisle, Théodore de Banville, and Catulle Mendès as the other Parnassian leaders. 9.  Nectoux, Gabriel Fauré, 173. Katherine Richards has suggested affinities between Fauré’s chamber music and Parnassian aesthetics, although without addressing his songs, in “A View of the French Chamber Music ‘Renaissance’ from Parnassus,” in Regarding Fauré, ed. Tom Gordon (Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach, 1999), 75–96. Camille Benoît offered a distinctly Parnassian reading of the Requiem, without mentioning the songs, in “La messe de Requiem de Gabriel Fauré,” Le guide musical 32–33 (August 9 and 16, 1888): 195–97. 10.  Charles-Marie René Leconte de Lisle, Œuvres complètes, vol. 1: Poèmes antiques, ed. Vincent Vivès (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2011), 93.

234      Notes to pages 35–54 11.  Martino, Parnasse et symbolisme, 27. 12.  Théodore de Banville, Œuvres de Théodore de Banville: Petit traité de poésie française (Paris: Alphonse Lemerre, 1891), 73 (emphases original). 13.  Le Parnassiculet contemporain: Recueil de vers nouveaux précédé de L’Hotel du dragon bleu et orné d’une très-étrange eau-forte (Paris: Librairie Centrale [J. Lemer], 1867), 25. The authors were Paul Arène, Alfred Delvau, Jean Charles Du Boys, and Jules Renard. 14.  Gretchen Schultz, The Gendered Lyric: Subjectivity and Difference in NineteenthCentury French Poetry (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1999), 138. 15.  Fauré, Gabriel Fauré: A Life in Letters, ed. and trans. J. Barrie Jones (London: B. T. Batsford, 1989), 34. The composer’s younger son, Philippe Fauré-Fremiet, provided an account of the failed engagement in Gabriel Fauré (Paris: Les éditions Rieder, 1929), 40–43. 16.  Fauré, Life in Letters, 36. 17.  See note 3. 18.  Nectoux has traced other appearances of “Lydia” in “Works Renounced, Themes Rediscovered: Eléments pour une thématique fauréenne,” 19th-Century Music 2 (1979), 235. See also Nectoux, Gabriel Fauré, 70–72. 19.  The first sixteen études correspond to Odes I:11, II:12, I:9, III:28, IV:1, V:20, III:19, I:21, I:19, II:23, IV:7, II:16, III:25, III:15, I:17, and I:5. See Joseph Vianey, Les sources de Leconte de Lisle (Montpellier: Coulet et Fils, 1907), 335; and Leconte de Lisle, Œuvres complètes, 302–11. 20.  Horace, Odes and Epodes, ed. and trans. Niall Rudd (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), 62–65. 21.  Edgar Pich, Leconte de Lisle et sa création poétique: “Poèmes antiques” et “Poèmes barbares,” 1852–1874 (Lyon: Imprimerie Chirat, 1975), 120. 22.  Camille Bênoit would compare Fauré’s own music to funerary lilies in “La messe de Requiem de Gabriel Fauré,” 195: “From Fauré’s work breathes forth this gentle odor of lilies, this vapor of purest incense rises, weightless and aromatic.” 23.  As Louis Niedermeyer declared in the first issue of his journal La Maîtrise (1857), “For plainchant, we say Saint Gregory; for sacred music, we say Palestrina; for the organ, we say J. S. Bach”; quoted in Louis Alfred Niedermeyer, Vie d’un compositeur moderne, 139. 24.  Louis Niedermeyer and Joseph d’Ortigue, Traité théorique et pratique de l’accompagnement du plain-chant (Paris: E. Repos, 1859), 75. For a comprehensive study of the influence of the Traité on Fauré, see James Kidd, “Louis Niedermeyer’s System for Gregorian Chant Accompaniment as a Compositional Source for Gabriel Fauré,” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1973. As Kidd noted (48–50), Niedermeyer encouraged organists to emphasize harmonies built on the final and dominant of the chant mode. 25.  Letter to Philippe Fauré-Fremiet, ca. August 1906, in Fauré, Correspondance, 323–24. 26.  See Aaron Schaffer, The Genres of Parnassian Poetry: A Study of the Parnassian Minors (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1944), 349–53; and Jules Mazé, “Charles Grandmougin,” Nouvelle revue internationale (August 1, 1896): 134–41. 27.  Marshall Brown, The Tooth That Nibbles at the Soul: Essays on Music and Poetry (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2010), 33. 28.  Richard Cohn, Audacious Euphony: Chromatic Harmony and the Triad’s Second Nature (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 54–56. 29.  See ibid., 59–81. Adam Ricci has also offered a neo-Riemannian reading of “Toujours,” emphasizing enharmonic transformations, in “Maximal Evenness as Conceptual

Notes to pages 55–69    235 Apparatus for a Course on Post-tonal Theory and Analysis,” Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy 22 (2008): 18–21. 30.  Kidd, “Louis Niedermeyer’s System,” 177–79. 31.  Jankélévitch, Gabriel Fauré, 64. 32.  Orledge, Gabriel Fauré, 54. 33.  See Nectoux, Gabriel Fauré, 135–39. 34.  Fauré-Fremiet, Gabriel Fauré, 43. 35.  Fernand Divoire, ed., “Sous la musique que faut-il mettre? De Beaux Vers, de Mauvais, des Vers libres, de la Prose?” Musica 101 (February 1911), 38. C HA P T E R 3 : T H E D I S C OV E RY O F M U SIC

1.  Sylvia Kahan has detailed the genesis of op. 58 in Music’s Modern Muse: A Life of Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2003), 50–63. 2.  Letter to Winnaretta Singer, September 1891, in Fauré, Correspondance, 202–3. 3.  Letter to André Lambinet, July 12, 1902, published by Jean-Michel Nectoux as “Rencontres avec Gabriel Fauré,” Études fauréennes 19 (1982): 6. 4.  Joseph Acquisto, French Symbolist Poetry and the Idea of Music (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 9. Henri Peyre has noted the indifference of the Symbolist poets to actual music in “Poets against Music in the Age of Symbolism,” in Symbolism and Modern Literature: Studies in Honor of Wallace Fowlie, ed. Marcel Tetel (Durham: Duke University Press, 1978), 179–92. 5.  See Kahan, Music’s Modern Muse, 354, n. 41. 6.  For a summary of this phase of Wagner’s French reception, see Steven Huebner, French Opera at the Fin de Siècle: Wagnerism, Nationalism, and Style (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 11–22. 7.  Marie-Noëlle Masson and François Mouret, “Verlaine/Fauré, Clair de lune: Les interactions du texte et de la musique dans la segmentation de l’œuvre vocal ou la problématique du sens,” Musurgia 1, no. 1 (1994), 26–30. 8.  Rotational form, in which a sequence of musical ideas or formal sections repeat cyclically, is discussed by James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy in Elements of Sonata Theory: Norms, Types, and Deformations of the Late-Eighteenth-Century Sonata (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 611–14. 9.  See Stacy Moore, “Mort exquise: Representations of Ecstasy in the Songs of Duparc and Fauré,” in Regarding Fauré, ed. Tom Gordon (Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach, 1999), 291–92; and David Powell, “Debussy et Fauré traduisent Verlaine: Les mises en musique de ‘Clair de lune,’ ” Revue des sciences humaines 285 (January–March 2007), 59–60. 10.  Megan Sarno, “Symbolism and Catholicism in French Music at the Time of the Separation of Church and State (1888–1925),” PhD diss., Princeton University, 2016, 60. 11.  Laurence Porter, The Crisis of French Symbolism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 92. 12.  Ibid., 99. 13.  Laurence Porter, “Text versus Music in the French Art Song: Debussy, Fauré, and Verlaine’s ‘Mandoline,’ ” Nineteenth-Century French Studies 12, nos. 1/2 (1983–84), 143. 14.  Ibid., 139.

236      Notes to pages 70–91 15.  Carolyn Abbate, In Search of Opera (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 164. 16.  See Jankélévitch, Gabriel Fauré, 114–32. 17.  The “Venice” motive follows the underlying harmony too closely to match Gurminder Bhogal’s prototype of a musical arabesque in Details of Consequence: Ornament, Music, and Art in Paris (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 100–114. Nevertheless, the version in stanzas 3–5 of “En sourdine,” with its narrow, circuitous melody and mixture of duple and triple rhythms, closely approaches Bhogal’s model, which she located in the flute solo from Debussy’s Prélude à L’après-midi d’un faune, the piano figuration of Ravel’s “Noctuelles” (Miroirs), or the opening bassoon solo of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. 18.  Fauré, Opinions musicales, ed. P.-B. Gheusi (Paris: Rieder, 1930), 12. 19.  Vuillermoz, Gabriel Fauré, 12. 20.  Nectoux, s.v. “Fauré, Gabriel,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. 6, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 1980), 418. 21.  Letter to Marguerite Baugnies, July 27, 1888, in Fauré, Correspondance, 146. 22.  Letter to Élisabeth Greffulhe, May 1894, in Fauré, Correspondance, 218. 23.  See Roy Howat and Emily Kilpatrick, “Wagnérisme de Fauré: Pénélope (1913) et les mélodies,” in Le wagnérisme dans tous ses états, 1913–2013, ed. Cécile Leblanc and Danièle Pistone (Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2016), 5–11; and Marie-Claire Patier, “Fauré et le wagnérisme,” Bulletin de l’Association des amis de Gabriel Fauré 8 (1976): 5–9. 24.  Letter to Marie Fauré-Fremiet, August 16, 1907, in Fauré, Lettres intimes, ed. Philippe Fauré-Fremiet (Paris: La Colombe, 1951), 144. 25.  Carl Dahlhaus, Richard Wagner’s Music Dramas, trans. Mary Whittall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 107. 26.  Jean-Pierre Richard, Poésie et profondeur (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1955), 165. 27.  Susan Taylor-Horrex, Verlaine: “Fêtes galantes” and “Romances sans paroles” (London: Grant & Cutler, 1988), 42–43. 28.  Linke, Der französische Liederzyklus, 206. 29.  Vuillermoz, Gabriel Fauré, 36. 30.  J.-K. Huysmans, Against the Grain (À rebours), trans. Robert Baldick (New York: Dover, 1969), 44–45. 31.  See Frantisek Deak, Symbolist Theater: The Formation of an Avant-Garde (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 153–56. 32.  Peter Cahn, “Faurés À Clymène op. 58 Nr. 4: Überlegungen zur ‘forme nouvelle’ in den Cinq Mélodies ‘de Venise,’ ” in Gabriel Fauré: Werk und Rezeption, ed. Peter Jost (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1999), 134–35. 33.  See chapter 2, 50–54. 34.  Anna Balakian, The Symbolist Movement: A Critical Appraisal (New York: New York University Press, 1977), 37. 35.  Letter to Maurice Bagès and Pierre de Bréville, August 28, 1891, in Fauré, Correspondance, 201. 36.  Charles Baudelaire, Œuvres complètes, vol. 2, ed. Claude Pichois (Paris: Gallimard, 1976), 784. 37.  Jonathan Culler, “Intertextuality and Interpretation: Baudelaire’s ‘Correspondances,’ ” in Nineteenth-Century French Poetry, ed. Christopher Prendergast (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 122.

Notes to pages 91–108    237 38.  Paul de Man, The Rhetoric of Romanticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 246. 39.  His address to the society is reprinted in Henri Bergson, Mind-Energy [L’énergie spirituelle], trans. H. Wildon Carr (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1920), 75–103. 40.  Fauré-Fremiet, Gabriel Fauré, 53. C HA P T E R 4 : WAG N E R IA N C OR R E S P ON D A N C E S

1.  See J.-S. Chaussivert, L’art verlainien dans La Bonne Chanson (Paris: A. G. Nizet, 1973), 42–44. 2.  Camille Bellaigue, “Revue musicale: La Bonne chanson,” Revue dex deux mondes, October 15, 1897; Marcel Proust to Pierre Lavallée, in Correspondance, vol. 1, ed. Philip Kolb (Paris: Plon, 1970), 338; Gabriel Fauré and Camille Saint-Saëns, The Correspondence of Camille Saint-Saëns and Gabriel Fauré: Sixty Years of Friendship, ed. Jean-Michel Nectoux, trans. J. Barrie Jones (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 52, n. 75. All three sources are quoted and translated in Carlo Caballero, Fauré and French Musical Aesthetics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 148–49. 3.  Maurice Ravel, “Les mélodies,” La revue musicale 4, no. 11 (1922), 25. 4.  For the complete compositional and publication history, see Gabriel Fauré, Gabriel Fauré: Complete Songs, vol. 3: The Complete Verlaine Settings (1887–1894), ed. Roy Howat and Emily Kilpatrick (Leipzig: Peters Edition, 2015), xi-xiii and 78–80. 5.  See ibid., 78; and Nectoux, Gabriel Fauré, 182. 6.  Édouard Dujardin, “La Revue wagnérienne, Wagner et la France,” La revue musicale (October 1, 1923), 149; quoted in Elwood Hartman, French Literary Wagnerism (New York: Garland, 1988), 37. 7.  See Robert S. Hatten, Interpreting Musical Gestures, Topics, and Tropes: Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 68–89. 8.  According to Peirce’s famous trichotomy, a sign represents its object through pure convention (symbol), causality or contiguity (index), or resemblance (icon). For a musical application of Peirce’s semiotic theory, see Naomi Cumming, The Sonic Self: Musical Subjectivity and Signification (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001). 9.  See Raymond Monelle The Sense of Music: Semiotic Essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 41–80. 10.  See chapter 3, note 24. 11.  This motive appears most dramatically in the final bars of act 1, before the line “De l’indomptable Prométhée.” Caballero has traced the echoes of these octave motives through Fauré’s late chamber music in Fauré and French Musical Aesthetics, 159–60. 12.  Aguettant, “Rencontres avec Gabriel Fauré,” 6. 13.  Fauré, Lettres intimes, 144. 14.  Aguettant, “Rencontres avec Gabriel Fauré,” 5. 15.  The themes come from Brünnhilde’s “Ewig war ich, ewig bin ich” (Sehr ruhig und mässig bewegt) in act 3, scene 3. Wagner’s wife, Cosima, revealed the quartet source in an 1869 diary entry; see Thomas Grey, Wagner’s Musical Prose: Texts and Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 170, n. 43. 16.  See Chaussivert, L’art verlainien.

238      Notes to pages 109–131 17.  Antoine Adam, The Art of Paul Verlaine, trans. Carl Morse (New York: New York University Press, 1963), 86. 18.  Jules Huret, Enquête sur l’évolution littéraire, ed. Daniel Grojnowski (Paris: José Corti, 1999), 103. 19.  Letter to Henri Cazalis, October 30, 1864, in Stéphane Mallarmé, Correspondance, vol. 1: 1862–71, ed. Henri Mondor and Jean-Pierre Richard (Paris: Gallimard, 1959), 137. 20.  My reading owes much to Roger Pearson, Unfolding Mallarmé: The Development of a Poetic Art (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 157–65. 21.  In fact, ptyx means “fold” in Greek, and Victor Hugo had already used the word in La légende des siècles. Mallarmé claimed it as a neologism, however, as he wrote to Eugène Lefébure: “I have been assured that it does not exist in any other language, which I would greatly prefer so as to enjoy the charm of creating it through the magic of rhyme.” Letter of May 3, 1868, in Mallarmé, Correspondance, vol. 1, 274. 22.  Letter to Cazalis, July 18, 1868, in ibid., 278. 23.  Pearson, Unfolding Mallarmé, 159. 24.  As Patrick McGuinness wrote, “They are two words pinned to a mirroring axis where the first, ‘Aboli,’ swallows up while also spewing out, the second, ‘bibelot,’ throwing it up from its own syllabic inversion—the ‘Nothing’ swallows up and brings forth the ‘Thing.’ ” “ ‘Beaucoup de Bruit Pour Rien’: Mallarmé’s ‘Ptyx’ and the Symbolist ‘Bric-a-Brac,’ ” Romantic Review 86, no. 1 (1995), 108. 25.  Quoted in Stéphane Mallarmé, Œuvres complètes, vol. 1: Poesies, ed. Carl Paul Barbier and Gordon Millan (Paris: Flammarion, 1983), 222. 26.  Hugo Friedrich, The Structure of Modern Poetry, trans. Joachim Neugroschel (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974), 98. 27.  See chapter 2, note 24. 28.  Fauré highlighted this middle-ground line registrally. The pianist’s sighing octaves in mm. 4–6 trace an ascending line that breaks off on EG6; at the end of the “Lydia” quotation, as the singer reenters to complete the interrupted ascent to FG, the piano recollects that upper line by touching on DG6. 29.  See Alfred Cortot, “Le visage innombrable de la musique: Le dialogue du piano et de la symphonie,” Conferencia 32, no. 12 (June 1, 1938): 38–40. 30.  See my “Fauré and the Effable: Theatricality, Reflection, and Semiosis in the mélodies,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 68, no. 3 (2015), 520–26. 31.  Kœchlin, Gabriel Fauré, 26. 32.  Katherine Bergeron, Voice Lessons: French Mélodie in the Belle Epoque (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 334–36. 33.  Beethoven’s motto, which comes before the finale, bears the words, “Muss es sein? Es muss sein!” Fauré salvaged the opening theme of op. 121 from an abandoned violin concerto, but only added the solo viola motive in 1921 after embarking on the string quartet. See Nectoux, Gabriel Fauré, 253–54. 34.  For a discussion of Fauré’s tonal layout, see Strobel, Das Liedschaffen Gabriel Faurés, 142–43. 35.  Sarno, “Symbolism and Catholicism in French Music,” 27–83. 36.  See Caballero, Fauré and French Musical Aesthetics, 170–218.

Notes to pages 132–143    239 C HA P T E R 5 : T H E AT R IC A L S O N G

1.  Letter to Marie Fauré-Fremiet, September 3, 1906, in Fauré, Lettres intimes, 127. 2.  See Nectoux, Gabriel Fauré, 356. 3.  Johnson, Gabriel Fauré, 307–8. 4.  Letter to Fernand Severin, July 23, 1899, in Charles Van Lerberghe, Lettres à Fernand Severin (Paris: La Renaissance du Livre, 1924), 92; quoted in Yves-Alain Favre, “La création poétique chez Van Lerberghe,” Cahiers de l’Association internationale des études françaises 34 (1982), 147. 5.  Caballero, Fauré and French Musical Aesthetics, 214–16. 6.  See ibid., 211–15. 7.  Nectoux, Gabriel Fauré, 366. 8.  See Georges Hermans, “Les cinq chansons de Mélisande,” Annales de la Fondation Maurice Maeterlinck 17 (1971): 67–76. For the history of the incidental music, see Robert Orledge, “Fauré’s ‘Pelléas et Mélisande,’ ” Music and Letters 56 (1975): 170–79; and JeanMichel Nectoux, “Le ‘Pelléas’ de Fauré,” Revue de musicologie 67, no. 2 (1981): 169–90. Mélisande’s song was not published until 1937, although audiences had always known the theme from “La mort de Mélisande,” the final movement of the Pelléas suite, in which the song is recollected. 9.  Carolyn Abbate, Unsung Voices: Opera and Musical Narrative in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 85. 10.  Fauré’s two settings from Théophile Gautier’s La Comédie de la mort also show traces of theatrical song, as I have argued in “Fauré and the Effable,” 497–558. 11.  See Annegret Fauser, “The Songs,” in The Cambridge Companion to Berlioz, ed. Peter Bloom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 108–111; Julian Rushton, The Music of Berlioz (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 165–78; and David Charlton, “The Romance and Its Cognates: Narrative, Irony and Vraisemblance in Early Opéra Comique,” in Die Opéra comique und ihr Einfluss auf das europäische Musiktheater im 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Herbert Schneider and Nicole Wild (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1997), 43–92. 12.  See Tunley, Salons, Singers and Songs, 42–57. 13.  See Kenneth Cornell, The Symbolist Movement (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951), 188–200. 14.  See Nectoux, Gabriel Fauré, 296–97. 15.  Carlo Caballero, “Dance and Lyric Reunited: Fauré’s Pénélope and the Changing Role of Ballet in French Opera,” in Bild und Bewegung im Musiktheater: Interdisziplinäre Studien im Umfeld der Grand Opéra/Image and Movement in Music Theater: Interdisciplinary Studies around Grand Opera, ed. Roman Brotbeck, Kai Köpp, Laura Moeckli, Anette Schaffer, and Stephanie Schroedter (Schliengen: Argus, 2016), 6. 16.  See, for example, the entirety of act 1, scene 3. 17.  Letter of August 16, 1907, in Fauré, Lettres intimes, 144. 18.  Roland Barthes, “The Grain of the Voice,” in Image, Music, Text, trans. Stephen Heath (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 186. 19.  Bergeron, Voice Lessons, 51. 20.  Barthes, “Grain of the Voice,” 188.

240      Notes to pages 143–161 21.  See Julia Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language, trans. Margaret Waller (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 1–106. 22.  Bergeron, Voice Lessons, 61–62. 23.  Ibid., 34–41. 24.  Caballero, Fauré and French Musical Aesthetics, 205. 25.  Ibid., 217. 26.  Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” in Image, Music, Text, trans. Stephen Heath (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 142. 27.  Ibid., 143. 28.  Ibid., 147. 29.  Ibid., 145. 30.  David Code, “Hearing Debussy Reading Mallarmé: Music après Wagner in the Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 54, no. 3 (2001): 493–554. 31.  Ibid., 500. 32.  “Like Mallarmé, Van Lerberghe is haunted by l’azur,” wrote Claire Michant in Défense et illustration de la chanson d’Ève (Brussels: Éditions du Bourdon, 1946), 42. 33.  Charles Van Lerberghe, Lettres à Albert Mockel (Brussels: Éditions Labor, 1986), 298; quoted in Patrick Laude, L’Eden entredit: Lecture de “La chanson d’Ève” de Charles Van Lerberghe (New York: Peter Lang, 1994), 37. 34.  See Jeannine Paque, Le symbolisme belge (Brussels: Éditions Labor, 1989), 126. 35.  Bergeron, Voice Lessons, 40–41. 36.  Fauré, Opinions musicales, 112. Nicole Labelle has documented Fauré’s enthusiasm for Rameau in “Gabriel Fauré: Music Critic for Le Figaro,” in Gordon, ed., Regarding Fauré, 18. 37.  See William Gibbons, Building the Operatic Museum: Eighteenth-Century Opera in Fin-de-Siècle Paris (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2013), 145–62. 38.  We have already observed Fauré’s attention to modal dominants in “Lydia,” with its emphasis on A minor. 39.  The song comes in act 3, scene 1, which is preceded by the entr’acte “Fileuse.” 40.  See Patrick McGuinness, Maurice Maeterlinck and the Making of Modern Theater (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 125–68; and Susan Youens, “The Unseen Player: Destiny in Pelléas et Mélisande,” in Reading Opera, ed. Arthur Groos and Roger Parker (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 60–91. 41.  Quoted in McGuinness, Maurice Maeterlinck, 159. 42.  Katherine Bergeron, “Mélisande’s Hair, or the Trouble in Allemonde: A Postmodern Allegory at the Opéra-Comique,” in Siren Songs: Representations of Gender and Sexuality in Opera, ed. Mary Ann Smart (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 174. 43.  Abbate, In Search of Opera, 172. 44.  Fauré’s son Philippe Fauré-Fremiet suggested similarly that the two motives might represent Eve’s soul and the world, in “La chanson d’Éve de Van Lerberghe-Fauré,” Synthèses 196/197 (1962), 270. 45.  Bergeron, Voice Lessons, 41–42. 46.  See Sylvia Kahan, In Search of New Scales: Prince Edmond de Polignac, Octatonic Explorer (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2009). Fauré may also have noticed the

Notes to pages 161–175    241 octatonic passages in the music of his student Maurice Ravel; see Steven Baur, “Ravel’s ‘Russian’ Period: Octatonicism in His Early Works, 1893–1908,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 52 (1999): 531–92. 47.  Kahan, In Search of New Scales, 60–64. 48.  “What is the prince up to? Is he working? I don’t know if he doubts the strong impression his Pilate made on people who aren’t imbeciles!” Letter to Winnaretta Singer, September 1894, in Fauré, Correspondance, 224. 49.  Fauré, “Échos de l’Orient judaïque du prince Edmond de Polignac,” Le Figaro (April 19, 1905): 5–6; quoted in Kahan, In Search of New Scales, 110. 50.  Letter to Marie Fauré-Fremiet, September 7, 1906, in Fauré, Lettres intimes, 129. 51.  See Kahan, In Search of New Scales, 161, 306. The symmetrical octatonic scale can only be transposed twice by semitone before cycling back to the original collection. Edmond de Polignac’s three series begin, respectively, on C, B, and CG and ascend in semitone-tone alternation. The Voice of God motive thus begins with the first four notes of series B. 52.  Bergeron, Voice Lessons, 42. 53.  For a table of the successive orderings, see Mario Joseph Serge Gérard Champagne, “The French Song Cycle (1840–1924): With Special Emphasis on the Works of Gabriel Fauré,” PhD diss., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1984, 207. C HA P T E R 6 : W R I T I N G I N T H E S A N D

1.  Nectoux, Gabriel Fauré, 373. Fauré mentions “a Suite of eight mélodies that I composed recently to verses by Van Lerberghe” in a letter to Charles Kœchlin from February 15, 1915, in Fauré, Correspondance, 422. On the other hand, Fauré referred to the Cinq mélodies “de Venise” as a suite in his 1891 letter to Winnaretta Singer, precisely because of their thematic and narrative unity (see chapter 3, note 2). 2.  See Linke, Der französische Liederzyklus, 250–80; and Annegret Fauser, “Die Musik hinter der Legende: Lili Boulangers Liederzyklus Clairières dans le Ciel,” Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 151, no. 11 (1990): 9–14. 3.  Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way: In Search of Lost Time, vol. 1, trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, rev. D. J. Enright (New York: Modern Library, 2004), 295–96. 4.  Vladimir Jankélévitch, Fauré et l’inexprimable (Paris: Plon, 1974), 215. “Le parfum impérissable” (1897) is Fauré’s fifth and final setting of Leconte de Lisle’s poetry. 5.  Max Loppert, “A Neglected Garden,” Music and Musicians 21, no. 249 (1973), 44. 6.  Stanley Stewart, The Enclosed Garden: The Tradition and the Image in SeventeenthCentury Poetry (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1966), 37–38. 7.  Letter to Emmanuel and Jeanne Fauré-Fremiet, October 15 [1914], in Fauré, Correspondance, 420. 8.  Loppert, “Neglected Garden,” 44. 9.  Jankélévitch, Fauré et l’inexprimable, 215. 10.  Lucien Christophe, Charles Van Lerberghe: L’homme et l’œuvre (Brussels: Office de publicité, 1943), 35–36. 11.  Louis Laloy, “La Musique chez soi: M. Henri Bergson et la Musique,” Comœdia (February 19, 1914).

242      Notes to pages 177–192 12.  Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, authorized trans. F. L. Pogson (London: Allen & Unwin, 1959), 231. 13.  Ibid., 232. 14.  Ibid., 53–60. 15.  Vladimir Jankélévitch, Henri Bergson, ed. Alexandre Lefebvre and Nils Schott, trans. Nils F. Schott (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015), 30. 16.  Bergson, Time and Free Will, 113. 17.  Ibid., 105. 18.  Jankélévitch, Henri Bergson, 7. 19.  Strobel, Das Liedschaffen Gabriel Faurés, 218. 20.  Sylvain Caron, “Hiérachie et homogénéité dans Le jardin clos de Fauré,” in Musique et modernité en France, 1900–1945, ed. Sylvain Caron, François de Médicis, and Michel Duchesneau (Montreal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2006), 242–45. 21.  Edward Phillips, “Smoke, Mirrors and Prisms: Tonal Contradiction in Fauré,” Music Analysis 12, no. 1 (1993), 15–17. 22.  Robert O. Gjerdingen, “Fauré as Student and Teacher of Harmony,” in Fauré Studies, ed. Carlo Caballero and Stephen Rumph (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 59–79. 23.  Camille Saint-Saëns, École buissonnière: Notes et souvenirs (Paris: Pierre Lafitte, 1913), 8–9; quoted in Gjerdingen, “Fauré as Student and Teacher of Harmony,” 63. 24.  Thomas Christensen, “The ‘Règle de l’Octave’ in Thorough-Bass Theory and Practice,” Acta Musicologica 64 (1992): 91–117. 25.  Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, authorized trans. Nancy Margaret Paul and W. Scott Palmer (London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1911), 17–21. 26.  Ibid., 94. 27.  Ibid., 197. 28.  Bergson, “Le rêve,” reprinted as “Dreams” in Mind-Energy [L’Énergie spirituelle], trans. H. Wildon Carr (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1920), 104–85. 29.  Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, authorized trans. Arthur Mitchell (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1911), 201. 30.  Ibid. 31.  Loppert, “Neglected Garden,” 44. 32.  “The return to the principal tonality after curves that resemble modulations, and modulations that are nothing but contrapuntal arabesques, is of a wholly Fauréan grace.” Nadia Boulanger, “La musique religieuse,” La revue musicale 4, no. 11 (1922), 110. 33.  Michael Puri, Ravel the Decadent: Memory, Sublimation, and Desire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 162. 34.  Ibid. 35.  Bergson, Time and Free Will, 132. 36.  Ibid., 9. 37.  Bergson, Creative Evolution, 127. For the relation of language to Bergson’s later evolutionary theories, see Leszek Kolakoswski, Bergson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 59–61. 38.  See Judy Lochhead, “Can We Say What We Hear?—Jankélévitch and the Bergsonian Ineffable,” in “Colloquy: Vladimir Jankélévitch’s Philosophy of Music,” ed. Michael Gallope and Brian Kane, Journal of the American Musicological Society 65, no. 1 (Spring 2012): 231–35.

Notes to pages 192–204    243 39.  Carolyn Abbate popularized (and exaggerated) this aspect of Jankélévitch’s aesthetics in “Music—Drastic or Gnostic?” Critical Inquiry 30, no. 3 (Spring 2004): 505–36. 40.  Vladimir Jankélévitch, Music and the Ineffable, trans. Carolyn Abbate (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 90. 41.  Jankélévitch, Henri Bergson, 8. 42.  “The brain is a general condition for memory, in the sense that there is no memory without a brain—and nonetheless memories do not divide up, neuron by neuron, in the different folds of the brain’s surface . . . the soul is not localizable, but more a diffuse presence . . . This ubiquity, this everywhere and nowhere exclusive of a somewhere, this omnipresent presence that is at the same time omniabsence, also characterizes the present absence of meaning in a sentence, and of the Charm in music.” Jankélévitch, Music and the Ineffable, 52–53. 43.  Ibid., 53. 44.  Jankélévitch, Henri Bergson, 89. 45.  Champagne, “French Song Cycle,” 233. Champagne located other echoes of the “Venice” motive in “Exaucement,” mm. 9–11 and “Dans la nymphée,” mm. 19–20. 46.  Bergson, Creative Evolution, 98. 47.  Jankélévitch, Henri Bergson, 145. 48.  Bergson, Creative Evolution, 103. 49.  Jankélévitch, Henri Bergson, 146. 50.  Gilles Deleuze, Bergonism, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (New York: Zone Books, 1988), 41. 51.  Ibid., 42–43. 52.  See Robert O. Gjerdingen, Music in the Galant Style (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 71–88 and 530–31. Gjerdingen discovered a Prinner in Émile Durand’s Conservatoire counterpoint exercises, with realizations by Debussy and Gabriel Pierné (personal communication). 53.  Bergson, Creative Evolution, 251. C HA P T E R 7 : N E O C L A S SIC A L VOYAG E S

1.  “Il ne faut pas vouloir ajouter / à ce qu’on a ce qu’on avait, / on ne peut pas être à la fois / qui on est et qui on était / On n’a pas le droit de tout avoir: / c’est défendu. / Un bonheur est tout le bonheur; / deux, c’est comme s’ils n’existaient plus.” 2.  Jean Cocteau, Cock and Harlequin: Notes Concerning Music, trans. Rollo H. Myers (London: The Egoist Press, 1921), 26. 3.  See Richard Taruskin, “The Dark Side of Modern Music. Music in Fascist Italy, by Harvey Sachs,” New Republic (September 5, 1988): 28–33. 4.  Stravinsky recalled seeing Fauré, whom he had already met through Ravel, in Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Expositions and Developments (London: Faber, 1962), 60. 5.  Fauré, Lettres intimes, 223. 6.  Robert Orledge, “A Voyage of Discovery into Fauré’s Song Cycle Mirages,” in Gordon, ed., Regarding Fauré, 353–54. 7.  See Scott Messing, Neoclassicism in Music: From the Genesis of the Concept through the Schoenberg/Stravinsky Polemic (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1988), 38–59, 75–85.

244      Notes to pages 204–229 8.  For a chronology of the composition and early performance history, see Samuel Dorf, “Erik Satie’s Socrate (1918), Myths of Marsyas, and un style dépouillé,” Current Musicology 98 (Fall 2014), 119. 9.  Ibid., 95. 10.  Beltrando-Patier, Les mélodies de G. Faure, 237–40. 11.  Jankélévitch, Gabriel Fauré, 15. 12.  Bergeron, Voice Lessons, 343. 13.  Orledge, “Voyage of Discovery,” 336. 14.  See Richard Taruskin, “Chernomor to Kashchei: Harmonic Sorcery; or, Stravinsky’s ‘Angle,’ ” Journal of the American Musicological Society 38, no. 1 (1985): 72–142. 15.  As noted in chapter 4, Howat and Kilpatrick have explored the resonances of Tristan in “Chant d’automne” and the other Baudelaire settings in “Fauré et le Wagnérisme,” 5–11. 16.  As Pierre de Breville recalled in the Revue de la société des amis de la musique française (May 1933): 83, “Duparc amused himself by deliberately writing this mélodie in the ‘style de Tristan’ ”; quoted in Henri Duparc, Complete Songs, ed. Roger Nichols (London: Edition Peters, 2005), v. 17.  Cocteau, Cock and Harlequin, 15. 18.  Bergeron, Voice Lessons, 327. 19.  Roy Howat, Debussy in Proportion: A Musical Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 192–93. 20.  Nectoux, Gabriel Fauré, 447. 21.  See Samuel Dorf, Performing Antiquity: Ancient Greek Music and Dance from Paris to Delphi, 1890–1930 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 21–46. 22.  José Ortega y Gasset, The Dehumanization of Art; and Other Essays on Art, Culture, and Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 69. 23.  See Bergeron, Voice Lessons, 334–36. 24.  Ibid., 327. 25.  Amy Dommel-Diény, L’analyse harmonique en examples de J.-S. Bach à Debussy: Contribution à une recherché de l’interpretation, fascicule no. 13: Fauré (Neuchatel: Éditions Delachaux and Niestlé, 1967), 43. 26.  Beltrando-Patier, Les mélodies de G. Fauré, 480. 27.  Dommel-Diény, L’analyse harmonique, 51. 28.  Jean Molino has demonstrated Fauré’s meticulous attention to prosody in op. 118 in “Poésie et musique: L’horizon chimérique, de Jean de la Ville de Mirmont à Gabriel Fauré,” Intersections 31, no. 1 (2010): 100–162. 29.  Caballero, Fauré and French Musical Aesthetics, 103.

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In dex

An n or nn after a page number refers to a footnote or footnotes; fig. refers to a musical example. Abbate, Carolyn, 70, 135, 158 actual vs virtual in musical composition, 197 Adam, Antoine, 109 Aguettant, Louis, 61, 104, 108, 116 alexandrine, 12–13, 21, 46, 76, 220, 232n19 Anacreon, 4, 6–8 animism, 21, 88, 90, 122, 133 avian music, 90, 122, 126, 128. See also birds; birdsong and birdcalls; leitmotives, Birdsong

of, 63, 84; “Richard Wagner et Tannhäuser à Paris,” 90 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 202, 205, 238n33; “Der schwer gefasste Entschluss,” 121; An die ferne Geliebte, 8, 61 Bellaigue, Camille, 93 Belle Époque, 91 Benoît, Camille, 84, 233n9, 234n22 Bergeron, Katherine, 142–44, 156, 158, 161, 165, 207, 213–14, 219; Voice Lessons, 142 Bergson, Henri, 91, 174–75, 177, 179, 185–87, 189, 191–92, 195–96, 200, 219 Berlioz, Hector: Les nuits d’été, 8; Symphonie fantastique, 116 birds, 94, 107, 149, 178, 205, 222. See also nightingales; swans birdsong and birdcalls, 88, 94, 122, 126, 128, 130–31, 135. See also leitmotives, Birdsong La bonne chanson (op. 61), 60–61, 92–96, 104, 107–9, 116–24, 126, 130–34; “Avant que tu ne t’en ailles,” 92, 98, 108, 123–24, 126, 128, 130; “Donc, ce sera par un clair jour d’été,” 96; “J’ai presque peur, en vérité,” 92, 104, 107, 122; “J’allais par des chemins perfides,” 98, 104, 107–8, 118–19, 122, 193; “L’hiver a cessé,” 92, 94, 98, 104, 128, 130–31; “La lune blanche,” 96,

Bach, Johann Sebastian, 234n23; Fauré’s allusions to, 121; Fauré’s study of organ works by, 42 Balakian, Anna, 84 ballad of Mélisande, 134–36, 142–43, 145, 151–52, 156, 158, 163. See also Fauré, Gabriel, works of, Pelléas et Mélisande (op. 80) Banville, Théodore de, 35, 233n9 barcarolle, 30, 63, 81, 83–84, 90, 227 Bardac, Emma, 93, 104 Baroque period: dance, 65, 156; lamento bass, 165; style brisé, 65; texture of Fauré’s late song cycles and, 193 Barthes, Roland, 142–45; “Le grain de la voix,” 144; “La mort de l’auteur,” 144 Bartók, Béla, 208 Baudelaire, Charles, 2, 75, 79–81, 90–91; “Correspondances” (poem), 80, 90; correspondances

253

254      Index La bonne chanson (continued) 98, 104, 107, 117–19, 122, 130; “N’est-ce pas?,” 98, 125fig., 126–28, 129fig., 130, 210; “Puisque l’aube grandit,” 104, 109, 117–19, 121, 126–27, 130; “Une Sainte en son auréole,” 98, 104, 110, 113–16, 114fig., 118–22, 126 Boulanger, Lili, 171, 203; Clairières dans le ciel, 171 Boulanger, Nadia, 189, 203, 242n32 Bréville, Pierre de, 244n16 Brimont, Renée de, 203, 206–7, 210, 213–14, 216–18. See also Mirages (op. 113) British Society for Psychical Research, 91 Brown, Marshall, 50 Brünnhilde, 121–22, 237n15 Caballero, Carlo, 131, 134, 137, 143–45, 229, 237n11 Caligula (Dumas père) 43, 117 chanson, 131–37, 142–46, 150–51, 153, 158, 160–61, 167–73. See also French song; Lied; mélodie; romance La chanson d’Ève (op. 95), 131–34, 136–37, 142–56, 158–63, 165, 167, 171–73; “Comme Dieu rayonne,” 135, 154, 161–63, 162fig., 165, 167; “Crépuscule,” 132, 135, 151–52, 165, 167, 172; “Dans un parfum de roses blanches,” 150–52, 156, 163, 165–67, 166fig., 172; “Eau vivante,” 143, 160, 222; “L’aube blanche,” 133, 143; “O Mort, poussière d’étoiles,” 151, 158, 167, 168fig., 171; “Paradis,” 149, 151, 153–54, 159fig., 160–61, 163, 172; “Prima verba,” 132, 143; “Roses ardentes,” 143, 153, 160, 167; “Veilles-tu ma senteur de soleil?,” 143 Chausson, Ernest, 94–95 Cinq mélodies “de Venise” (op. 58), 60–61, 63, 86, 89fig., 90, 92, 114; “C’est l’extase,” 61–62, 74, 86–88, 90; “À Clymène,” 61–62, 71, 78–79, 81–84, 82fig., 85fig., 86; “Green,” 61, 71, 73–74, 86, 90; “Mandoline,” 61–62, 65, 67–70, 70fig., 71, 78, 87–88; “En sourdine,” 61–62, 73–76, 77fig., 78, 83, 86–88, 90 Cocteau, Jean, 203, 219 Code, David, 145 commedia dell’arte, 64, 109, 204 counterpoint, 27, 29–30, 118–19, 179, 193, 195, 197; contrapuntal thinking, 179; contrapuntal arabesques, 189, 242n32; decoupled from harmony, 181; meaning of, 25, 179; motives and, 74, 107, 115, 118 Culler, Jonathan, 91 da capo form, 15, 46, 58, 71, 172, 208, 210 David, Félicien, Les perles d’Orient, 8

Debussy, Claude, 62, 69, 74, 76, 88, 138, 151, 174, 205, 208, 214, 227; Cinq poèmes de Baudelaire, 80 diegetic music, 135, 138, 141–43, 158, 163 diegetic song, 135, 144, 152, 165 Dommel-Diény, Amy, 222, 225 Dorf, Samuel, 204 Dumas, Alexandre, père, 43 Duparc, Henri, 204, 214, 215fig., 244n16 durée, 177–79, 187, 189, 191–92, 196–97, 222. See also Bergson, Henri École Niedermeyer, 1, 42, 181, 197. See also Niedermeyer, Louis Entrevisions (Van Lerberghe), 170. See also Le jardin clos (op.106) Eve. See La chanson d’Ève (op. 95); language, of Eve Fauré, Gabriel: as astute reader of poetry, 8–9, 12, 14, 16, 19, 29–30, 131, 229; Bayreuth, pilgrimage to, 74; broken engagement to Marianne Viardot, 31, 36; Catholic dogma, indifference to, 131; chamber music composition, busiest period of, 205; Conservatoire de Paris, director of, 142, 197, 203; contrapuntal design, use of (see counterpoint); copyright request for Hugo poems, 231n1; diegetic music of (see diegetic music; diegetic song); École Niedermeyer, topics studied at, 42; fascination with “Lydia,” 116; Fêtes galantes (Verlaine), discovery of, 232n12; late period of, 200, 202–5, 210, 219, 229; Leconte de Lisle settings, disparagement of own, 59; letters of, 2, 36, 43, 61, 74, 84, 90, 107–8, 132, 136, 161, 163, 174; Montesquiou as literary advisor, 62 (see also Montesquiou-Fézensac, Robert); musical and intellectual influences, summary of, 229; Neoclassicism and, 204–5; opera, break from, 59; opera, major period of, 137; in Paris, 61, 93; Parnassianism, aesthetics and Fauré’s chamber music, 233n9; Parnassianism, affinity for, 32, 36; Parnassian poets, archaic style in response to, 55; personal and professional success, 60; Realism, detestation of, 91; scenic music, use of, 63–65, 68–69, 90, 122, 135; Société musicale indépendante, president of, 203; student songs of, 1–2, 8; student songs of, national identity in, 30; temperament of, 21; theater and, 136, 143, 145, 156, 160, 163, 165; theatrical song, use of, 135, 239n10; in Venice,

Index    255 61; Verlaine cycles and, 63, 84, 86, 91, 95, 122, 131, 170; Verlaine poetry and, 60, 62, 69, 76; Wagner’s musical prose and, 200; waltz topic and, 9, 12. See also Fauré, Gabriel, song cycles; Fauré, Gabriel, songwriting; Fauré, Gabriel, works of; mélodie; Parnassianism; various poets and composers Fauré, Gabriel, song cycles, 1, 31, 61, 179, 201; abandonment of leitmotives, 200; apparent abandonment of unified ideal, 171; complementary pairs of, 171; criticism of La bonne chanson, 93; hidden song cycle (see Hugo, Victor, Les chants du crépuscule); nature of final song cycles, 202; Parnassian cult of Greek antiquity and, 204; rigor in composing, 32. See also La bonne chanson (op. 61); La chanson d’Ève (op. 95); Cinq mélodies “de Venise” (op. 58); L’horizon chimérique (op. 118); Le jardin clos (op.106); Mirages (op. 113); Poème d’un jour (op. 21) Fauré, Gabriel, songwriting: 6ˆ-ˆ5 appoggiatura, ubiquitous, 98, 114, 120, 122, 224, 226; allusions, use of, 121; criticism of, 12; early stage of, 1–2, 9, 12, 76; evolutionary view as dubious, 3; focus on one poet at a time, 1, 132; Germanic models for, 2; heterometric stanzas in early songs, 9; human song, transformations of, 71, 126, 128, 225; mélodie and romance, use of both, 3; musical and poetic accent, separation of, 12; musical devices (see key schemes; leitmotives; motives; recollections); rounded forms, 161, 172, 178, 210; song as expression of entire poem, 192; le système wagnérien, use of, 75, 95, 142, 171; text-painting, 96, 115, 193, 204, 220, 222; text-setting, 13, 30, 69, 75, 95 Fauré, Gabriel, works of: “L’aube naît (Hugo), 1, 6, 9, 19, 64, 135, 231n1; “L’aurore” (Hugo), 3; Ballade (op. 19), 59; “Clair de lune” (Verlaine), 60, 63–65, 66fig., 67–70, 78, 81, 109, 204; “Dans les ruines d’une abbaye” (Hugo), 3, 9, 233n26; “The King’s Three Blind Daughters,” 134–35, 152, 156, 157fig., 165; “Lydia” (Leconte de Lisle), 2, 36, 38–40, 40fig., 42–44, 63–64, 104, 116–19, 121–22; “Mai” (Hugo), 7–9, 19–21, 22fig., 25, 29, 70–71, 179, 231n1; Masques et bergamasques (op. 112), 135, 204; “Le papillon et la fleur” (Hugo), 1, 9, 10fig., 12–13, 16, 19, 219, 231n1; Pavane (op. 50), 68, 74, 204, 219; Pelléas et Mélisande (op. 80), 43, 134, 138, 156, 157fig., 157, 239n8; Pénélope (opera), 75,

136–38, 139fig., 141–43, 149, 225; Piano Quartet in C Minor (op. 15), 59; Prométhée (lyric drama), 75, 98, 137; “Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre” (Hugo), 1, 6–7, 13–16, 17fig., 19, 21, 25, 29, 231n1; “Rêve d’amour” (Hugo), 1; Requiem (op. 48), 75, 131; Requiem (op. 48), compared to funerary lilies, 234n22; Requiem (op. 48), Agnus Dei, 43; Requiem (op. 48), Dies irae, omission of, 143; Requiem (op. 48), Introït, 53; “S’il est un charmant gazon” (Hugo), 1, 6–7, 9, 25, 26fig., 27, 28fig., 29–30, 231n1; song cycles (see La bonne chanson (op. 61); La chanson d’Ève (op. 95); Cinq mélodies “de Venise” (op. 58); L’horizon chimérique (op. 118); Le jardin clos (op. 106); Mirages (op. 113); Poème d’un jour (op. 21); Souvenirs de Bayreuth (spoof written with Messager), 104; “Spleen” (Verlaine), 60, 87–88, 109; String Quartet (op. 121), 121, 238n33; “Tristesse d’Olympio” (Hugo), 2–3, 9 Faure, Michel, 232n7 Fauré-Fremiet, Philippe, 234n15 Fibonacci series, 214 Fischer-Dieskau, Dietrich, 143 France: Anacreontic odes in, 4; César Franck, premieres of works in, 95; fin de siècle, 91; Neoclassicism in, 204; Prométhée, performances in, 137; Wagnerism in, 63; during World War I, 174 Franck, César, 6, 43, 84, 95, 121 Franck school, 95, 108 French poetry, 6, 32, 203; Symbolist poetry, 62, 136. See also prosody, French prosody; Symbolism French poets, 37–38, 203. See also Symbolists French song, 1–2, 25, 30, 142; cycles of, 8, 95. See also chanson; mélodie; romance Friedrich, Hugo, 116 Gautier, Théophile, 8, 32, 35, 43, 55, 121, 193, 232n12; La Comédie de la mort, 8, 239n10; Émaux et camées, 34 genres: Anacreontic, 6; chamber, 25, 108; chanson, 4, 19, 30, 122; classical, 205; Fauré’s dialogue of, 3, 30; mélodie, 2; as shared codes, 3; song cycle, 32, 93; strophic romance, 3; symphonic, 25 Ghil, René, 80, 143 Gjerdingen, Robert O., 181, 197, 243n52 God, 145, 147–49, 154, 160, 163, 174; Barthes and view of, 144–45. See also motives, Voice of God

256      Index Grandmougin, Charles, 31–32, 43–46, 50, 54–55, 59, 233n6. See also Poème d’un jour (op. 21) Greffulhe, Élisabeth, 60, 63 Gregorian chant. See plainchant Haraucourt, Edmond, 135 harmony, 16, 178–79, 184, 187, 189, 192–93, 222–23; decoupled from counterpoint, 181; modernist practice of, 208; Neapolitan harmony, 229 hemiola, 13, 65, 214, 225 Heredia, José-Maria de, 34; Les trophées, 33 L’horizon chimérique (op. 118), 171–72, 202–5, 208, 213, 216, 219–20, 229; “Diane, Séléné,” 172, 187, 204, 216, 220, 226fig., 226–27; “Je me suis embarqué”, 220, 223–25, 224fig., 228; “La mer est infinie,” 219, 221fig., 222, 224–25, 229; “Vaisseaux, nous vous aurons aimés,” 220, 228fig., 229 Horace, 36–38 Howat, Roy, 2, 12, 75, 214, 244n15 Hugo, Victor, 1–3, 6, 12–16, 19–21, 29–30, 238n21; approached by Fauré for rights to poems, 30; hypotaxis compared to parataxis, 13; hypotaxis in poems of, 13–14, 29; lyric expression and, 6, 19; poems as texts for Fauré student songs, 1–3. Hugo, Victor, Les chants du crépuscule, 1, 3–6, 7fig., 8–9, 19, 25; as hidden song cycle, 8; “Anacréon aux ondes érotiques” (Hugo), 8; “L’aurore s’allume,” 1, 4; “Autre chanson: L’aube naît,” 6, 9, 19, 64; “Nouvelle chanson sur un vieil air: S’il est un charmant gazon,” 6; “La pauvre fleur disait au papillon céleste,” 6; “Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre,” 13–15; “Puisque mai tout en fleurs,” 19–21 Huysmans, J.-K., À rebours, 80–81 Impressionism, 203–4; Debussy and, 208; Fauré and, 213 Jankélévitch, Vladimir, 31, 55, 71, 74, 173–75, 177, 179, 192, 196, 205, 227 Le jardin clos (op. 106), 170–75, 178–79, 184–87, 193, 195–97, 200–201, 203; “Dans la nymphée,” 173, 184–85, 187, 189–91, 190fig., 195; “Dans la pénombre,” 185; “Exaucement,” 173, 179, 181– 82, 182fig., 183fig., 184–87, 195; “Il m’est cher, Amour, le bandeau,” 200; “Inscription sur le sable,” 171, 173, 176, 186–87, 188fig., 195, 200; “Je me poserai sur ton cœur,” 172, 178–79, 180fig.,

195, 226; “La messagère,” 176, 184–85, 193–95, 194fig., 200; “Quand tu plonges tes yeux dans mes yeux,” 197, 198fig., 200 Johnson, Graham, 21, 133 July Revolution (1830), 3 key schemes, 122–23, 171, 173, 184, 218, 220; palindromic, 173, 184 Kilpatrick, Emily, 2, 12, 75, 244n15 Kœchlin, Charles, 2, 31, 121 La Ville de Mirmont, Jean de, 203–4, 219–20, 227. See also L’horizon chimérique (op. 118) language: Baudelaire’s correspondances as, 90; Bergson and, 191–92, 195; of Eve, 149, 165; Faure’s music and, 63, 94, 115–16, 136, 192, 204; harmonic language, 86, 92; human language, 95, 147; Jankélévitch and, 192; leitmotives and, 94, 108, 114–15; Van Lerberghe and, 142, 144, 147, 195; Mallarmé and, 111–13; Mallarmé and, la poésie pure, 111; music as nonrepresentational, 112; signs of music and language compared, 94; Symbolists and, 145; Verlaine and, 69, 109–10 Leconte de Lisle, Charles-Marie René, 6, 32–33, 36–37, 39, 42, 59, 64, 121; Poèmes antiques, 33, 36 leitmotives: abstraction and autonomy of, 95; A and B in La chanson d’Ève, 133fig., 134, 135fig., 144, 149–51, 153, 167; A and B in La chanson d’Ève, derivation of, 134; appoggiatura family, 96, 98, 101fig., 113; Avowal, 96, 98, 126, 128, 130, 130fig., 131; Birdsong, 96, 98, 104, 107–8, 116, 120, 123; in La bonne chanson, 93, 97fig., 101fig., 107–8, 122–23, 130–31, 193; as discourse, 108; Exquisite Hour, 96, 107; in Fauré’s late song cycles, 193; Fauré’s process for development of, 107; in Fauré’s stage works, 75; Lydia family, 36, 105fig., 107, 116, 118–19, 130, 134; Lydia family, derivation of, 96, 119; Lydia family, origin of name, 104; Lydia family, special significance for Fauré, 104; Mathilde, 94, 96, 98, 107–8, 114–19, 131; meaning of, 94, 96; as musical arabesques, 108, 116; octave family, 98, 99fig., 104, 118; pentatonic leitmotives, 120fig., 120, 122; Sun, 96, 108, 118, 123, 131; syntactic and semantic domains of, 116; theological dimension of, 153; of Ulysses in Pénélope, 98, 138, 141; Wagnerian leitmotives, 74, 94, 108, 111, 116, 120–21; Woodbird, 120–21. See also motives

Index    257 Lied, 1–2, 62. See also chanson; mélodie; romance Loppert, Max, 173–74, 187 lyric subject, 76, 135, 150–52 Maeterlinck, Maurice, 135–36, 156, 157fig., 157 Mallarmé, Stéphane, 62, 94, 111–12, 116, 119, 130–31, 145, 160; “L’après-midi d’un faune,” 212; l’azur as symbol, 146; Barthes on poetics of, 144; feuille as symbol, 151; naming and dictum regarding, 110; ptyx as neologism of, 111, 113, 238n21 Massenet, Jules, 8, 31–32, 43; Poème d’avril, 8, 61, 90 Mauté de Fleurville, Mathilde, 60, 92 McGuinness, Patrick, 238n24 mélodie, 2–3, 60–63, 70–72, 74–75, 90, 170–72, 191–93; history of, 232n7. See also chanson; French song; Lied; romance memory, 3, 141–42, 149, 172–75, 185–87, 189, 191–92. See also Bergson, Henri; Proust, Marcel; recollections Mendelssohn, Felix, 2; Lieder ohne Worte, 62 Messager, André, Souvenirs de Bayreuth (spoof written with Fauré), 104 Messing, Scott, 204 Meurice, Paul, 231 Michant, Claire, 240n32 Mirages (op. 113), 171–72, 202–5, 208, 213–14, 216, 219, 223; “Cygne sur l’eau,” 70, 205, 208–10, 209fig., 213–14, 216, 229; “Danseuse,” 121, 204, 216, 218fig., 218–19; “Jardin nocturne,” 172, 214, 216, 219; “Reflets dans l’eau,” 172, 204, 210, 213–14, 215fig., 216, 218 modality, 42, 119, 195; ancient modality, 158, 160 modes: ancient, 57, 218–19; authentic and plagal, 42; chant, 234n24; church, 42–43, 57, 127, 195; Dorian and Hypodorian, 42, 81; Lydian and Hypolydian, 42, 116; medieval, description of, 42; Phrygian, 156, 195, 224 modulation, 15, 43, 53–54, 84, 178, 213, 242n32; “Lydia” modulation, 43, 117, 127, 210, 223, 227; neo-Riemannian modulation, 53–54, 84, 225 Montesquiou-Fézensac, Robert, comte de, 61–62, 68, 81, 91 Moréas, Jean, “Le Symbolisme”, 62 motives: Fauré compared to Franck school and, 95; Fauré’s technique, 63, 96; head motive, 22fig., 71; recurrence of, 74, 92, 95, 133fig.; Slumber, 120–22; “Venice,” 71–76, 72fig., 78, 81, 88, 90, 193; Voice of God, 163, 164fig., 241n51. See also leitmotives

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 202 musical signs, 88, 95, 112–14, 143, 165; Fauré’s destabilization of, 119; as icons rather than symbols, 94 Musikdrama, 75, 131 mysticism, 91, 203; Swedenborgian mysticism, 91 narrators, 19, 150, 153, 165, 172, 202 Nectoux, Jean-Michel, 32, 36, 74, 134, 171, 216, 233n3 Neoclassicism, 203–5, 229 Niedermeyer, Louis, 2, 42, 55, 181, 231n1, 234nn23,24. See also École Niedermeyer nightingales, 62, 78, 83, 87–88, 90, 127–28. See also birds Noske, Frits, 2, 21 octatonic scale, 161, 163, 184, 208; Fauré and, 161, 168–69, 181 opera: Bergeron on entrapment of, 158; French opera, 131, 137, 141, 160; impact of Wagner operas on Fauré, 74; invasion of the salon, 50; Symbolist movement and, 136. See also Fauré, Gabriel, works of, Pénélope; Fauré, Gabriel, works of, Prométhée Ordre du temple de Rose+Croix, 91 Orledge, Robert, 31, 58, 167, 204, 208 Ortega y Gasset, José, 219 Ortigue, Joseph d’, 42, 55 pantheism, 131, 143–45, 153, 163 Panzéra, Charles, 143, 203–4 Parnassianism, 32–33, 35–36, 45–46, 59, 64, 207, 217; aesthetics of, 33–36, 233n9; cult of Greek antiquity, 204; Le Parnasse contemporain, 32; sculpture as dominant metaphor, 35 Parnassus, Mount, 32. See also Parnassianism partimento tradition, Neapolitan, 181, 197 Peirce, Charles Sanders, 94, 237n8 Péladan, Joséphin, 91, 94 Pich, Edgar, 38 plainchant, 42–43, 55, 234n23 Poème d’un jour (op. 21), 31–33, 36, 43, 45, 57–59, 193; “Adieu,” 45–46, 55–56, 56fig., 57fig., 57, 58fig., 58–59; “Rencontre,” 31–32, 45–46, 47fig., 50, 54, 57; “Toujours,” 31–32, 46, 50, 51fig., 54, 57–58, 84 Polignac, Edmond, prince de, 161, 163, 208, 241n51 Polignac, Winnaretta, princesse de. See Singer, Winnaretta Porter, Laurence, 68–69

258      Index Prinner schema, 197, 198fig., 243n52 prose: musical prose, 76, 92, 200; poèmes en prose, 134 prosody: Fauré’s attention to, viewed as meticulous, 244n28; Fauré’s attention to, viewed as poor, 13; French prosody, 9, 12–13, 75; of Hugo, 9, 12 Proust, Marcel, 93, 191; À la recherche du temps perdu, 172, 174 Raunay, Jeanne, 136 Ravel, Maurice, 12, 93, 151, 189, 191, 204, 236n17, 241n46 recollections, 61, 86, 104, 116, 118, 189, 191; Bergson’s view of, 186; cyclic, 92; harmonic and textural, 169; motivic, 115, 141–42, 149, 151, 154, 193; thematic, 8, 90, 92, 170–71. See also memory Rimbaud, Arthur, 60, 64, 80, 143 ritornello, 7fig., 13, 19, 25, 27, 29–30, 83–84 romance, 1–3, 13, 19, 30, 60–62, 79, 87; in France, 1; salon, 25, 30, 39, 46, 135. See also chanson; French song; Lied; mélodie Romanticism, 33, 35, 78, 217; Neoclassicism in response to, 203 Ropartz, Guy, 95–96 Saint-Säens, Camille, 2, 6, 93, 156, 160, 171, 181, 183 salons, 33, 136; opera house invasion of, 50. See also romance, salon Sâr Péladan. See Péladan, Joséphin, 94 Satie, Erik, 91, 203–4; Socrate, 204 Schola Cantorum, 156 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 62, 78, 108, 191 Schubert, Franz, 2, 8, 163 Schumann, Robert, 2, 8, 30, 61, 90, 171 Scott Messing, 204 Silvestre, Armand, 32, 64, 193 Singer, Winnaretta, 60–61, 161, 204, 241n1 Les Six, 203 Societé des concerts du conservatoire, 156 Société musicale indépendante, 203 song. See chanson; Fauré, Gabriel, works of; French song; Lied; mélodie; plainchant; romance spiritualism, 91 Stabreim, 76, 94 Stravinsky, Igor, 161, 203–5, 208, 236n17, 243n4; L’histoire du soldat, 202; Pulcinella, 203–4 Strobel, Klaus, 179, 233n26

strophes, 2–3, 12–13, 21–22, 25, 27, 29–30, 46; strophic form, 1–2, 27; strophic romance, 3, 19; vocal strophes, 16, 25, 29–30 swans, 79, 206, 208, 213, 216; black swans, 205, 229. See also birds Symbolism, 62, 84, 131, 136, 143–44, 206, 229 Symbolists, 79, 86, 91, 94–95, 109, 111, 134; commonplaces of, 206; periodicals publishing poems of, 62; poèmes en prose, 134; “Le Symbolisme” (manifesto), 62 synesthesia, 67, 79–81, 84, 110 syntax, 8, 13–15, 20, 29–30, 119, 191; diatonic, 53; harmonic, 43, 74, 117; of Hugo, 15–16, 29–30; poetic vs musical, 29; tonal, 42, 208 Taylor-Horrex, Susan, 78 texture, 63, 75, 116, 163, 169–70, 172, 179; linear, 115; three-part contrapuntal, 119 theosophy, 91 tonality, 16, 42, 187, 208, 242n32; diatonic, 163, 189; and modality, Fauréan, 119; modern, 43, 127, 158, 218; traditional, 208; traditional, abandonment of, 54 tonal plan, 31, 134, 171, 220; lack of, 61, 170 tonal progression, 181, 184, 218, 222 tonal structure, 50, 54, 195, 219 Van Lerberghe, Charles, 132–33, 142, 147–55, 161, 165, 170–72, 174–75. See also La chanson d’Ève (op. 95); Le jardin clos (op. 106) Venus, 43, 123, 133, 175 Venus de Milo, 35, 44, 217, 225 Verlaine, Paul, 60–65, 68, 76, 78–81, 84, 86–87, 109–11; “Art poétique,” 62. See also La bonne chanson (op. 61); Cinq mélodies “de Venise” (op. 58); Fauré, Gabriel; Fauré, Gabriel, works of Viardot, Marianne, 31, 36 Viardot, Pauline, 36, 59, 136 Virgin Mary, 137, 174 vitalism, 175, 203, 210, 217. See also Bergson, Henri Vivès, Vincent, Histoire et poétique de la mélodie française, 232n7 voice, 64–65, 67, 83–84, 143–45, 147–53, 155–56, 226–27 voice leading, neo-Riemannian, 53, 208 Vuillermoz, Émile, 31, 74 Wagner, Richard, 16, 33, 62–63, 74–76, 78, 90–91, 94–95, 108, 120–21, 126, 141–42, 200, 203, 214; Der Ring des Nibelungen, 104, 120fig.; influ-

Index    259 ence on Fauré, 74–76, 78; le système wagnérien, Fauré’s use of, 75, 95, 142, 171; Tristan und Isolde, 75, 78, 108, 121, 141, 208, 214 Wagnerism, 63, 75, 94, 229 Watteau, Antoine, 6, 232n12

Weitzmann regions, 51fig., 53fig., 84, 223; meaning of, 54 World War I, 174, 205; post-World War I, 121, 203 Zeno’s paradoxes, 177

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