FAURÉ EDITION Liner Notes and Sung Texts Liner Notes
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FAURÉ EDITION Liner notes and sung texts Liner notes ORCHESTRAL WORKS spiritual home for the young generation of French composers, The 'Dolly' of Fauré's suite was Hélène, the daughter of Emma whom he inspired tremendously. All this must be rated as Bardac, to whom Fauré was emotionally attached some years something extraordinary, because Fauré until then had chosen an before her marriage to Debussy. The six‐movement suite has an unusually quiet way of life, being simple church musician, not appropriate tenderness that has always ensured its popularity. It showing any special ambitions, cautious and reserved also with was originally written for piano between 1893 and 1897; the regard to his compositional work. In fact, even today he is orchestral score was made by Henri Rabaud c.1906. The difficult to place. No comparison could help to classify his work. arrangement of Masques et Bergamasques, on the other hand, His style is guided by a special kind of aesthetics, which one might was done primarily by Fauré himself. This is a suite of four pieces call unrealistic. His musical thinking is dominated by one great taken from a one‐act Iyrical divertissement, first staged in 1919; flow, one total process; he does not stick to any rules, he just the orchestral suite dates from the same year. Fauré's score for follows his inspiration. Fauré is never concrete, neither in writing Pelléas et Mélisande was composed as incidental music for the songs, his first field of composition, nor in liturgical works, not Maeterlinck play and was first heard in that form when the play even in symphonic and operatic works. His approach to form was was given (in an English translation) at the Prince of Wales always vague: in the very beginning, when in the domain of song Theatre in London in 1898. This time the original orchestration he developed a new romance style of madrigalian freedom, or had been done by Fauré's talented pupil Charles Koechlin, but for later, when he freed himself more and more from stylistic rules, the suite derived from that score Fauré reorchestrated certain finding a 'harmonic flow', whereupon he was accused of losing movements. tonality. According to his pupil Koechlin, tonality to Fauré was always connected with a 'legitimate, expressive and musical cause'. The attempt of classifying Fauré as a representative of PIANO QUINTETS impressionism or one of its forerunners had to be dropped as Both of Gabriel Fauré’s Piano Quintets (1906 and 1921) are unsuccessful due to his musical diction and his historical mature masterpieces, although written fifteen years apart. They importance. Only the comparison with Debussy's different kind of are hardly known, far less even than his two Piano Quartets Op.5 aesthetics might eludicate Fauré's position: yet, whereas and Op.45 (1879 and 1886). The first quintet resulted directly Debussy's language is dictated by concrete realities, in from his experience with the second quartet: 'After Fauré in 1891 unconcealed clearness, and can be analysed back even to non‐ had made sketches for the work, which he imagined as a third musical roots, Fauré's is wrapped in ideas. Fauré never translates quartet, he somehow was overwhelmed by his own music. This real pictures into music. His planning is 'from the start purely fact induced him in 1905 to give the new work the enlarged form musical', as Bernard says, 'the only composer after Mozart to of a quintet’. From 1891 to 1905 Fauré lay aside the Allegro and have found purely musical accents'. the Andante, as they did not satisfy him. The completed Piano Quintet in D minor Op.89 was first performed in March 1906 in Fauré's second Piano Quintet, with all its peculiarity, does not in Brussels, and played again two months later in Paris. The violinist the least express either sorrow or distress, its composer being far Ysaÿe, to whom the work was dedicated, was deeply moved, from illustrating private thoughts by means of music. Fauré calling it 'absolute music in the purest sense of the word'. Trying specialists have rated this second piano quintet in C minor as the to describe the character of the work one could agree with the 'summum opus' of his chamber music. It is astonishing to see how following statement: 'In spite of the serious atmosphere of the his intellectual process persuades by means of precise and dense initial Allegro and the entrancement of the Adagio the whole musical consequence. Nevertheless, and in spite of its literally work breathes serene clarity, untroubled freshness and infinite unreal beauty, this work does confirm some traits of that radiating abundance.' Nobody but Fauré himself had any doubts hermetical character which Fauré was trying to avoid from the about the work, and his doubts were typical of the composer's beginning. His musical language takes on quite unreal and difficult and somewhat tragic personality and fate, which esoteric traits, apparently in contrast to Debussy's style. Again, manifests itself in a progressive hearing defect ‐ comparable to and in spite of the overwhelming success of the quintet's first Beethoven in his late deafness or to Smetana, who, similar to performance in Paris in 1921, Fauré was aware of this fact. He Fauré, suffered terrible disharmonies in his ear. Thus, after a had arrived at the end of his term as director of the most successful performance of his first quintet in Paris, he was Conservatoire; he was now 76 years old and still convinced of the overwhelmed by an obviously un motivated anxiety. He was insufficiency of his music. tormented by the lacking of a Scherzo as well as by the allusion of At any rate, the following report of the first performance of the his Finale to Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy', which although intended, work, which was dedicated to Paul Dukas, makes us believe so: suddenly seemed to be too obvious. For it was typical of Faure to be afraid 'of using a hermetical language, as he was always As the quintet was played for the first time in the old hall of the tortured by the thought of not being understood: 'I feel in the Conservatoire, performed by artists who were carried away with bottom of my heart that what I really want is not accessible to incredible enthusiasm, the audience was thrilled right from the everybody.' This statement is essential for the understanding of beginning. We had expected a beautiful work, but not one as Fauré's later works. Its full meaning, however, can be realized beautiful as this. We knew that Gabriel Fauré's music was only if one knows that it was made at the artist's zenith regarding significant, yet we had not realized that it had reached such his career: when Fauré wrote his first quintet, he was appointed heights without being noticed by the world. The more we heard of director of the Paris Conservatoire, in spite of the opposition of the work, the greater became the enthusiasm, an enthusiasm, the academic faculty. Fauré's appointment was revolutionary, as however, that seemed combined with remorse, because one was the fact that during his administration he effected an might have misjudged the old man who held such a gift in his enormous change within music education, thus creating a new hands. With the last chord everybody rose from his seal. Waves of 94750 Fauré Edition 1 applause went over to the reviewers' box, where Gabriel Fauré ‐ The Adagio returns to C minor. It is a three‐part song in which the who, by the way, had heard nothing – stayed hidden. Quite alone strings are now treated not as a choir but as individuals, entering he advanced as far as to the dress circle, warding off the in imitation of a prayer‐like short melody over the rich chords of applause. He looked at this hall, where Berlioz and Liszt, Chopin the piano, cadencing frequently. This prepares for the Allegro and Wagner had lived exciting moments, and he looked at the molto last movement that tears along at a furious pace that crowd, which was seized by the power of his music. He was very nothing can stop. This movement is really in sonata form, but no frail and thin, seeming to stagger under the weight of his heavy longer classical. The first subject is merely a motif, and a second fur coat. He looked extremely pale. Back home again, he sat on rhythmic one is later combined with it, achieving what Fauré's his bed before going to sleep and said to us: ' Of course, such an pupil, Florent Schmitt, described as a perpetual renewal. The evening is a joy. The exasperating thing about it is that wonderfully singing second theme is yearning and full of lyrical afterwards you have to keep up with your own standard ‐ you passion. Most astonishing is the development section that takes have to keep us with yourself ‐ and you must try to do even these themes through all possible keys, mostly without better'. modulation. A strong and masculine coda brings the movement to a fiery ending. PIANO QUARTETS The Piano Quartet in G Minor, Op.45, was composed in 1886. It is The Piano Quartet in C Minor, Op 15, is undoubtedly Fauré's best‐ also in four movements, and as in the previous work, the Scherzo known work of chamber music, still popular today and frequently appears after the first movement. But, while Fauré's manner of performed. It is in four movements, quite classical in form and writing is immediately recognizable in the way he handles the procedure, but it is characteristic of the composer's masterly piano and the strings, there are notable differences between the craftsmanship that the romantically passionate thematic material two works.