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CHAN 9745 Front.qxd 26/7/07 10:35 am Page 1 CHAN 9745 CHANDOS LILI BOULANGER Lili Boulanger Yan Pascal Tortelier Faust et Hélène D’un matin de printemps • D’un soir triste Psaume 130 ‘Du fond de l’abîme’ • Psaume 24 City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus • Yan Pascal Tortelier • CHAN 9745 BOOK.qxd 26/7/07 10:36 am Page 2 Lili Boulanger (1893–1918) Boulanger: Faust and Helen etc. 1 Psaume 24* 3:25 Lili Boulanger’s music is like no other. Though influence from Fauré and Debussy – was 2 Faust et Hélène† 30:05 perhaps not ‘the first important woman inspired by an exceptional creative situation. composer’ her sister Nadia declared her to be, Lili Boulanger’s audacious Psaume 24 – 3 D’un soir triste 10:37 she is certainly important for the extraordinary scored for four-part chorus, brass, timpani, inspiration that arose from the unhappy harp and organ in a modal kind of E minor – situation she was in. It is true that she had no would not have won her the Prix de Rome. 4 D’un matin de printemps 4:42 effect on the course of musical history, except This, the first of her three psalm settings, perhaps in that she stimulated Nadia written two years into the First World War in 5 ‡ Psaume 130: Du fond de l’abîme 24:08 Boulanger to embark on what was to be a 1916, is more like an act of defiance than a TT 73:24 long and internationally influential career as a hymn of praise to ‘the King of glory’. There is teacher of composition. It is also true that on no easy splendour in either the dissonant Lynne Dawson soprano† her death at the age of twenty-four she had harmonies based on piled-up fifths or the Ann Murray mezzo-soprano‡ fulfilled little of her potential. On the other primitive scoring for brass. Much of the vocal hand, no other composer has died so young writing, which is confined at first to tenors and † Bonaventura Bottone tenor and achieved so much. basses, is either aggressively severe or Neil MacKenzie tenor*‡ It was, in fact, Lili’s suffering from almost distantly modal. It is only with the entry of Jason Howard bass† permanent ill health and the awareness that sopranos and altos on ‘Portes, élevez vos City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus*‡ she did not have long to live that made her têtes,’ that the composer applies more BBC Philharmonic the composer she was. After becoming, at the conventional colouring. The enriched age of nineteen, the first woman ever to win harmonies are retained in the final section Yan Pascal Tortelier the Prix de Rome – the most coveted which, propelled by a rhythmic ostinato on composition prize France had to offer – she brass and organ, accelerates to its devoted her few remaining years to coming to emphatically affirmative conclusion. terms, through her music, with her expectation D’un matin de printemps (On a morning in of an early death. A unique, modally inflected spring) and its companion orchestral piece D’un language – developed independently of the soir triste (On a sad evening) were completed in harmonic rules she had learned at the the last year of the composer’s life, probably in Conservatoire, though not without some January 1918. There is no conclusive evidence as 2 3 CHAN 9745 BOOK.qxd 26/7/07 10:36 am Page 4 to which of the two was written first, but it is superficially brief encounter spookily ended by his vocal line with a fervent appeal, ‘Viens à approximately half the tempo and against impossible to escape the feeling that D’un soir the intervention of the jealous ghost of her travers les temps, viens à travers les âges’. The dark accumulations of fifths in the strings it triste is a dying composer’s unhappily realistic Trojan lover, Paris. The most extraordinary ecstatic melodic curve of his ‘Hélène au front gives a quite different impression. Here too commentary on the all too transient radiance of quality of Lili Boulanger’s setting of Faust et de lys’, immediately echoed by a solo violin, there is a more passionate middle section, this D’un matin de printemps. Although the two pieces Hélène – completed, according to the rules of introduces another, contrasting leitmotif into one beginning dramatically with a motif of are very different in emotional significance, their the competition, in four weeks of isolation at the drama. This new Helen motif is heard descending semitones on trombones and tuba basic material is much the same. the Palais de Compiègne in the summer of again on oboe and flute over rippling harps as and ending on the height of a long crescendo The main theme of D’un matin de 1913 – is that it restores a deeper meaning to Mephistopheles uses his magic powers to with a sudden silence. printemps, introduced by flutes against a the theme. summon her from the past, and then on Again the composer avoids an immediate lightly articulated ostinato in the upper Lili could have approached the Adénis text violins as, most reluctantly, she appears before return to the opening material, this time by strings, is a positively cheerful little tune in entirely on its own terms. Indeed, in the central them. interpolating what, even though it is still in carefree dotted rhythms. As it passes to the love scene between Faust and Helen, she Faust’s strategy in winning Helen is to coax triple time, can only be called a funeral march harp, a solo cello offers a graceful variant and missed no opportunity to demonstrate that she her out of her tonal neutrality by means of a with dark off-beat colouring on harp and the two melodies are developed in resourceful had the skill and the inspiration to challenge lyrical line and caressing major harmonies and percussion. When the opening section is and colourfully scored counterpoint. In the even Massenet in seductive melody and it proves to be a gradual process crowned eventually recalled, with its unconsoling modal middle section, inspired by expressive solo voluptuous harmony. There is, however, another eventually by a passionate duet in E major. It harmonies, it approaches a new height of strings, the orchestra takes a more poetic and level to the score expressed in a different, is interrupted, however, by a shrill storm and a despair. Just before the end, however, there is increasingly passionate view of springtime overtly Wagnerian, operatic language. From the chillingly sombre march in E flat minor of the a hint of reconciliation, or even transfiguration, nature, but only to be cut short by muted beginning, where a chromatically sinister ghosts of all those warriors who died for as strings and harp catch a brief glimpse of horn and trumpet eager to restore the initial leitmotif casts a dark shadow over a tonally Helen of Troy. A dramatic trio, for radiant E major harmonies and sustain their activity. Instead of reintroducing the main uncertain orchestral introduction, a premonition Mephistopheles and the threatened lovers, is faith into the attenuated closing bars. theme immediately in its original form and its of disaster runs through the work. That cut short by the spectral intervention of Paris The last and most important of Lili original key, however, Lili teasingly reserves unsettling leitmotif rises frequently to the and the disaster foreshadowed from the Boulanger’s psalm settings, Psaume 130: that event for the main climax of the piece, surface while the uncertain tonality, coinciding beginning. The sinister leitmotif is heard for Du fond de l’abîme (Out of the depths of the not long before its explosive ending. with the negative harmonic quality represented the last time on Mephistopheles’s abyss), was completed in 1917. Dedicated ‘à The text prescribed for the Prix de Rome by Mephistopheles (Mephisto), offsets the pronouncement of ‘Sur nous malheur’. la mémoire de mon cher Papa’, – her father competition in the year Lili Boulanger won the radiant major keys of the love scene and D’un soir triste is in the same triple-time had died when she was only six but had left a Premier Grand Prix was a ‘lyric episode’ by ultimately confirms their unreality. metre and in a similar, if more sombre, lasting impression on her – it is a dramatic Eugène Adénis allegedly based on Part Two of The first recall of the introductory leitmotif, modally influenced E minor as D’un matin de expression of a theme common to much of Goethe’s Faust. In fact, it has scarcely anything now representing Faust’s ill-fated desire for printemps. Its main theme, introduced in the her work, which is a longing for light in the to do with Goethe. It reduces the allegorical Helen, occurs on violins after he awakens from opening bars by clarinets, is a close variant of prevailing darkness. The symbolism is clear marriage of Goethe’s Faust and Helen to a a blissful B major dream about her and enters that of the companion piece. However, at enough in the slow orchestral introduction 4 5 CHAN 9745 BOOK.qxd 26/7/07 10:36 am Page 6 where, over rumbling percussion and amid the alto soloist to take up with the consoling Concertgebouw and London Philharmonic. (Cavalleria rusticana) and Pinkerton (Madam B flat minor harmonies made all the more words ‘Mais la clémence est en toi’. The Lynne Dawson’s personal recording catalogue Butterfly). He is a regular guest at many oppressive by their modal inflections, a tuba oppressive modal inflections are still there, comprises more than sixty CDs and includes international opera houses and at concert and a solo cello utter a subterranean fragment however, and it is only at the beginning of the Norina (in Don Pasquale), also for Chandos.