Trois Romances Sans Paroles

[Cloris Sopha]

Lestrois romances sans paroles, op. 17 de Gabriel Faur sont trois pices pour piano seul. Elles sont respectivement ddies Madame Flix Lvy, Mademoiselle Laure de Leyritz et Madame Florent Saglio[1].

Elles auraient t composes vers 1863[2] et dites pour la premire fois aux ditions Hamelle en 1880[2]. Il existe une transcription pour violon ou violoncelle et piano par Jules Delsart[2]. Il y a une transcription pour quatre mains de la premire romance crite par Gabriel Faur lui-mme en 1864[3].

Much of Faur's piano music is difficult to play, but is rarely virtuosic in style. The composer disliked showy display, and the predominant characteristic of his piano music is a classical restraint and understatement.

As a man, Faur was said to possess "that mysterious gift that no other can replace or surpass: charm",[13] and charm is a conspicuous feature of many of his early compositions.[14] His early piano works are influenced in style by Chopin,[15] and throughout his life he composed piano works using similar titles to those of Chopin, notably nocturnes and barcarolles.[16] An even greater influence was Schumann, whose piano music Faur loved more than any other.[17] The authors of The Record Guide (1955) wrote that Faur learnt restraint and beauty of surface from Mozart, tonal freedom and long melodic lines from Chopin, "and from Schumann, the sudden felicities in which his development sections abound, and those codas in which whole movements are briefly but magically illuminated."[18] When Faur was a student at the cole Niedermeyer his tutor had introduced him to new concepts of harmony, no longer outlawing certain chords as "dissonant".[n 3] By using unresolved mild discords and colouristic effects, Faur anticipated the techniques of Impressionist composers.[6]

In later years Faur's music was written under the shadow of the composer's increasing deafness, becoming gradually less charming and more austere, marked by what the composer Aaron Copland called "intensity on a background of calm."[13] The critic Bryce Morrison has noted that pianists frequently prefer to play the accessible earlier piano works, rather than the later music, which expresses "such private passion and isolation, such alternating anger and resignation" that listeners are left uneasy.[19] The Faur scholar Jean-Michel Nectoux writes:

The nocturnes, along with the barcarolles, are generally regarded as the composer's greatest piano works.[16] Faur greatly admired the music of Chopin, and was happy to compose in forms and patterns established by the earlier composer.[14] Morrison notes that Faur's nocturnes follow Chopin's model, contrasting serene outer sections with livelier or more turbulent central episodes.[16] The composer's son Philippe commented that the nocturnes "are not necessarily based on rveries or on emotions inspired by the night. They are lyrical, generally impassioned pieces, sometimes anguished or wholly elegiac."[20]

Nectoux rates the first nocturne as one of the best of the composer's early works.[15] It is dedicated, like Faur's song "Aprs un rve", to his friend and early patron Marguerite de Saint-Marceaux.[21] Morrison calls the piece "cloistered and elegiac." Though published as the composer's Op. 33/1 in 1883, it was written considerably earlier.[3] It opens with a slow, pensive melody, followed by a more agitated second theme and another melody in C major, and ends with the return of the opening theme.[22] The pianist and academic Sally Pinkas writes that the work contains many hallmarks of Faur's style, including "undulating rhythms, syncopation of the accompaniment against the melody and layered textures are already in evidence."[23]

In the third nocturne, Morrison notes that the composer's fondness for syncopation is at its gentlest, "nostalgia lit by passion."[16] Like its predecessors, it is in tripartite form. An expansive melody with syncopated left-hand accompaniment leads into a middle section in which a dolcissimo theme metamorphoses into bursts of passion.[27] The return of the opening section is concluded by a gentle coda that introduces new harmonic subtleties.[16]

By contrast with its predecessor, the fifth nocturne is more animated, with unexpected shifts into remote keys.[16] Nectoux writes of its undulating outline, and the "almost improvisatory, questioning character" of the opening.[8]

The sixth nocturne, dedicated to Eugne d'Eichthal, is widely held to be one of the finest of the series. Cortot said, "There are few pages in all music comparable to these."[28] Morrison calls it "among the most rich and eloquent of all Faur's piano works."[16] The pianist and writer Nancy Bricard calls it "one of the most passionate and moving works in piano literature."[22] Faur wrote it after a six-year break from composing for the piano. The piece begins with an emotional, outpouring phrase, with echoes of Faur's song cycle La bonne chanson.[29] The second theme, at first seemingly tranquil, has what the composer Charles Koechlin calls a persistent inquietude, emphasised by the syncopated accompaniment.[29] The initial theme returns, and is followed by a substantial development of a gentle, contemplative melody. A recapitulation of the principal theme takes the piece to its conclusion.[29] Copland wrote that it was with this work that Faur first fully emerged from the shadow of Chopin, and he said of the piece, "The breath and dignity of the opening melody, the restless C sharp minor section which follows (with the peculiar syncopated harmonies so often and so well used by Faur), the graceful fluidity of the third idea: all these elements are brought to a stormy climax in the short development section; then, after a pause, comes the return of the consoling first page."[28]

Faur did not intend the eighth nocturne to appear under that designation. His publisher collected eight short piano pieces together and published them as 8 pices brves, allocating each of them a title unauthorised by the composer. The nocturne, the last piece in the set of eight, is shorter and less complex than its immediate predecessor, consisting of a song-like main theme with a delicate semiquaver accompaniment in the left hand.[34]

The ninth nocturne, dedicated to Cortot's wife, Clotilde Bral, is the first of three that share a directness and sparseness in contrast with the more elaborate structures and textures of their predecessors.[35] The left-hand accompaniment to the melodic line is simple and generally unvaried, and the harmony looks forward to later composers of the 20th century, using a whole-tone scale. Most of the piece is inward-looking and pensive, presaging the style of Faur's final works, although it ends optimistically in a major key.[36]

The eleventh nocturne was written in memory of Nomi Lalo; her widower, Pierre Lalo, was a music critic and a friend and supporter of Faur.[39] Morrison suggests that its funereal effect of tolling bells may also reflect the composer's own state of anguish, with deafness encroaching.[13] The melodic line is simple and restrained, and except for a passionate section near the end is generally quiet and elegiac.[37]

Barcarolles were originally folk songs sung by Venetian gondoliers. In Morrison's phrase, Faur's use of the term was more convenient than precise.[16] Faur was not attracted by fanciful titles for musical pieces, and maintained that he would not use even such generic titles as "barcarolle" if his publishers did not insist. His son Philippe recalled, "he would far rather have given his Nocturnes, Impromptus, and even his Barcarolles the simple title Piano Piece no. so-and-so."[42] Nevertheless, following the precedents of Chopin and most conspicuously Mendelssohn,[n 5] Faur made extensive use of the barcarolle, in what his biographer Jessica Duchen calls "an evocation of the rhythmic rocking and lapping of water around appropriately lyrical melodies."[44]

Faur's ambidexterity is reflected in the layout of many of his piano works, notably in the barcarolles, where the main melodic line is often in the middle register, with the accompaniments in the high treble part of the keyboard as well as in the bass.[45] Duchen likens the effect of this in the barcarolles to that of a reflection shining up through the water.[44]

Like the nocturnes, the barcarolles span nearly the whole of Faur's composing career, and they similarly display the evolution of his style from the uncomplicated charm of the early pieces to the withdrawn and enigmatic quality of the late works.[46] All are written with compound time signatures (6/8, 9/8, or 6/4).

The first barcarolle was dedicated to the pianist Caroline de Serres (Mme. Caroline Montigny-Rmaury) and premiered by Saint-Sans at a concert of the Socit Nationale de Musique in 1882.[47] The piece begins with an uncomplicated melody in a traditional lilting Venetian style in 6/8 time.[48] It develops into a more elaborate form before the introduction of the second theme, in which the melodic line is given in the middle register with delicate arpeggiated accompaniments in the treble and bass.[49] Morrison comments that even in this early work, conventional sweetness is enlivened by subtle dissonance.[48]

The second barcarolle, dedicated to the pianist Marie Poitevin,[47] is a longer and more ambitious work than the first, with what Morrison calls an Italianate profusion of detail.[48] Duchen writes of the work as complex and questing, harmonically and melodically, and points to the influence of Saint-Sans, Liszt and even, unusually for Faur, of Wagner.[49] The work opens in 6/8 time like the first, but Faur varies the time signature to an unexpected 9/8 in the middle of the piece.[47]

The third barcarolle is dedicated to Henriette Roger-Jourdain, wife of Faur's friend, the painter Roger-Joseph Jourdain [fr]. It opens with a simple phrase that is quickly elaborated into trills reminiscent of Chopin.[49] The middle section, like that of the first, keeps the melody in the middle register with delicate arpeggiated ornaments above and below. The pianist Marguerite Long said that these ornaments "crown the theme like sea foam."[48]

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