Fauré: 4 Mélodies, Op. 39 (1884) with score

Details

Description

0:00 Aurore
1:48 Fleur jetée
3:18 Le pays des rêves
6:50 Les roses d'Ispahan

Performers (No. 1): Pierre Bernac (voice), Francis Poulenc (piano)
Performers (No. 2, No. 4): Marilyn Schmiege (voice), Donald Suzen (piano)
Performers (No. 3): Sarah Walker (voice), Malcolm Martineau (piano)

Notes by Anne Feeney for AllMusic:
In the first song, Aurore, Faure begins with a steady rhythm in the piano as the vocal lines sinuously describe the dawn in somewhat exaggerated metaphor. As the text begins to describe the poet's emotions, however, first the tempo changes, the steadiness of the piano lines change to a more animated series of sixteenth notes, and lastly the key changes. The vocal lines remain smooth and tranquil, however, continuing the dreamy mood through the end of the song.

Fleur jetee is, by contrast, one of Faure's stormiest songs, beginning with a tense accompaniment strongly reminiscent of the beginning of Schubert's Erlkonig, though in this song, the galloping piano lines are persistent throughout. The raging vocal lines are bitterly passionate throughout as well, with each brief decrescendo followed by an immediate return to forte, and covering a wide range from almost growled low notes on "perit l'amour," to the high climax on the last "que le vent" and "seche mon coeur." The final vocal line is delivered at full forte, and the accompaniment continues with the violently rushing theme to the end, marked with a final, almost flourished chord. Rather like Toujours in his Opus 21, Faure wrote a deliberately theatrical setting, and one where most of the few contrasts in tempo and dynamics are on words, or at the longest, segments of phrases, rather than entire phrases.

The third song, Le pays des reves, uses repetition almost as persistently, though here the repeated, gentle melodies in the piano and vocal lines, with some resemblance to a lullaby, are far removed from the wild passions of Fleur jetee. The vocal lines are appropriately dreamy, accented by the rocking accompaniment and the quick ornamentation from the piano, and often rise at the end of each line with a gently yearning effect. There is a slightly more sober moment at the lines "Mais/Ah combien la terre est lointaine," but the first mood returns quickly, and is sustained through the end.

While not strictly strophic (made up of repeated verses), Les Roses d'Ispahan is closer to the strophic form than many of Faure's other songs, in both the vocal lines and the accompaniment. The brief piano prelude and interludes between the verses often utilize the same phrases, and many of the vocal lines are repeated from verse to verse. When Faure set "exotic" texts like this de Lisle text, he often incorporated pseudo-Eastern effects in the music, such as the accents on the first notes of each bar in the prelude and interludes, and the setting of the name "Leilah," with the quick sixteenth notes emphasizing the first syllable to make sure that the "foreignness" of the name comes through clearly. Faure does not engage in any direct word-painting, but the song's caressing vocal phrases, the repeated dolce markings in the vocal line, and the repeated quiet arpeggios of the accompaniment all suggest the tenderly sensual atmosphere that the poem depicts, with its repetitions of such words as "leger," (light) "douce," (sweet) and "mousse" (moss.)