Gabriel Fauré
1845-1924
Born in 1845 in Ariège, Gabriel
Urbain Fauré was to become the most advanced composer of his generation. His
harmonic and melodic innovations would profoundly influence many early C20th
composers. He anticipated Impressionism creating a unique and identifiable
style, a personal musical language.
His mother’s family were minor
aristocrats and his father was the director of a teacher training college at
Montgauzy, near Foix. During the first four years of his life, Fauré was sent
to a nurse in a neighbouring village. On his return he found his mother and
father were generally too busy to spend much time with him or his siblings and
were very strict. His main solace was the large garden at Montgauzy, where he
could escape from the austere family house into a world of Mediterranean trees
– pines, cypresses, magnolias, cedars, and beautiful flowers, which made a
lasting impression on him.
Montgauzy’s “Jardin Clos” was a
priest’s garden, with sweet-smelling flowers and fragrant plants native to that
region. Montgauzy School had once been a convent and on the opposite hill the
medieval chateau of Foix, with its ramparts and towers, was silhouetted against
the sky. Fauré would listen to the sounds of hammering from the Catalan forges
of the Arget and the evening bells from nearby Cadirac. The chiming bells
syncopated with the rhythms of hammering from the forges.
Fauré was also attracted by the
religious chants and the sound of the harmonium, which he heard in the chapel
adjoining the school. As soon as he could, he began playing the harmonium and
would practice here for hours. A well-connected lady of the village advised his
father to send him to Paris to the Ecole Niedermeyer to prepare him as a
choirmaster.
Aged 9, Fauré boarded at the
school, helped by a scholarship from the Bishop of Pamiers. Here he studied
mainly church music and plainchant. In 1861 Saint-Saëns became his piano
teacher and a life long friendship was begun. Introduced to the contemporary
music of Schumann, Liszt and Wagner and composition, Fauré wrote his first
songs. By 1865 he had completed his training, winning 1st prize for
composition.
His first appointment was as
organist of St Sauveur at Rennes. He was not suited to the austere life but
gave private lessons and did much composition. With Saint-Saën’s help, Fauré
was deputised as accompanist to a singer, Madame Miolan-Carvalho, whose concert
tours took her to Brittany. She rewarded him by performing one of his songs in
her programme. Fauré presented her with “Le Papillon et la Fleur”, which was
very successful.
He returned to Paris to enlist
for the Franco-Prussian War in a regiment of light infantry. He was involved in
various battles during the siege of Paris, acting as a liaison agent. He would
help his fellow soldiers to temporarily forget their suffering and hunger by
improvising recitals in abandoned houses in the suburbs of Paris. After the war
he remained in Paris until The Commune, when he escaped with a forged passport,
and spent the summer in Switzerland. He taught at the Niedermeyer School, which
had taken refuge in Cours-sur-Lausanne. Here he met and formed a lifelong
friendship with his first pupil André Messager.
He returned to Paris in 1871and
became assistant organist at St Sulpice, regularly visiting Saint-Saëns’ salon
and meeting the musical society of Paris. He was most impressed by the soirées
of the Spanish contralto Pauline Viardot, and dedicated some of his early songs
to Pauline and her daughters. His friends included D’Indy, Lalo, Duparc and
Chabrier and he was a founder member of The Société Nationale de Musique. Fauré
gave many premières of his works here and helped the renaissance of French
music at the end of the 19th century.
In January 1874, Fauré left St
Sulpice to deputise for Saint-Saëns at La Madeleine. Here he composed his first
masterpieces. Camille Clerc, a rich industrialist, helped him to get his first
works published and invited him to his summer residences at Villerville and
Sainte-Adresse on the fashionable Normandy coast. Provided with spiritual
understanding, emotional warmth and an artistically enlightened milieu, he
wrote his Sonata in A major for violin and piano, which he dedicated to violist
Paul Viardot. He was engaged to Paul’s sister Marianne and wrote her 35 letters
that summer. It was unrequited love and she broke off the engagement. It took
him years to recover and he kept the letters she returned to him all his life.
He became choirmaster at La
Madeleine in 1877 and travelled with Saint-Saëns to Weimar for the premiere of
Samson and Delila, where he met Liszt. With Messager he travelled to Cologne,
Munich and London to see Wagner productions. Later went to Bayreuth to see
Parsifal. He was fascinated by Wagner but like Duparc he was not under his
influence; he could also see the ridiculous side of the Wagnerian cult.
In 1883 he married Marie Fremiet,
the daughter of a sculptor. She was more of a homemaker than the bohemian
Marianne and gave him two sons. He worked at the church and gave lessons to
keep the family, selling his songs and full rights for 50 francs each. He only
found time to compose during the summer holidays, which he took alone. When his
father died in 1885, he wrote his beautiful Requiem mass. By time it was
performed his mother had died and his wife was ill. It was a dark time and he
was not making much money.
Fauré remained youthful and
lively, happy with his friends but from 1880-90 he became very depressed and
developed a violent temperament. He struggled to work, despairing of ever
gaining fame. His preference of musical purity and sobriety of expression was
not the fashion; he hated the popular “verismo”. The 1890’s were a turning
point and his ambitions began to be realised. In 1891, he visited Venice and
Florence as a guest of the Princess de Scey-Montbéliard (later the Princess de
Polignac), a wealthy and astute American arts patroness and daughter of Isaac
Merritt Singer of sewing machine fame. He composed his first song cycle “Cinq
Mélodies de Venise”, opus 58 setting Verlaine’s poems.
He was appointed chief organist
at La Madeleine and invited to be a teacher of composition at the Paris
Conservatoire in 1896. His pupils included Ravel, Ducasse and Nadia Boulanger.
At 50 years old, Fauré was gaining his fame and was established in the grand
salons of the Princess de Polignac and Madame Saint-Marceaux, a stronghold of
the avant-garde. These salons were frequented by his friends and made his music
widely known. Here he met Chabrier, de Falla, Satie and Stravinski and
premiered many of his new works. Many liked his personality but found his music
too severe.
“Le Figaro” asked him to be their music
critic, which he was from 1903 to 1921. He always saw the positive aspects of
works he reviewed and remained silent when he disliked it; but this made his
critiques of interest only to his friends who knew his real thoughts. Following
the “Affaire Ravel “ at the Paris Conservatoire in 1905, he agreed to become
the new Director if the Conservatoire made a series of important reforms. He
was surprisingly resolute and firm. He now became very famous and his works
were regularly performed at important concerts.
This recognition was overshadowed
by his growing deafness. By the summer of 1903 he had noticed it, but by 1910
it was a serious problem. He could only listen to singing and not instrumental
music because of distortion: high sounds seemed lower and low sound higher with
only his middle range remaining correct.
By 1908 the French Concerts
Society in Manchester, run by the enterprising Mme Barbier with lectures and
visiting celebrity concerts, was in full battle against the pro-Germanic
programmes of the resident Hallé Orchestra. Fauré accompanied Mrs George Swinton,
a talented singer of Russian origin, with whom he had stayed in South Wales, in
her performances of various songs. He found Manchester ‘black, smoky, foggy and
altogether terrible’. A Guardian editorial of 28 March 1910, explained that
opera would never be as successful as orchestral music in Manchester, because
its grey skies and murky atmosphere were ‘unfavourable to a refined sense of
visual form and colour’.
When Germany declared war on
France in August 1914, Fauré was at Ems in Germany, where he had gone to
convalesce and compose the first songs of “Le Jardin Clos”. By the time he came
to leave, the French border was closed and he had to travel by train to Saint-Louis,
then on via Basle to Geneva, partly on foot and partly by car. Finally after
great difficulty he reached Paris. During term time he remained in Paris as
Head of the Conservatoire and spent the summers at Saint-Raphaël or Evian on
the shore of Lake Geneva. He also visited his brother in Pau and was constantly
worried about his son Philippe, who was on active service. “The variety of
opinions, the information culled from usually unreliable sources, and all the
rumours – good and bad – floating around, would eventually undermine the most
firmly founded hopes.”
To keep his mind off current events Fauré wrote his song
cycle “Le Jardin Clos” with text by the mystical Belgian poet Van Lerberghe.
The cycle does not reflect the force that characterises most of the other
wartime works. He sent a copy of “Le
Jardin Clos” to Camille Saint-Saëns, who replied: “For all its apparent
simplicity it is not particularly easy to read’ but how engaging and
engrossing! … I congratulate you on writing accompaniments that are genuinely
written for the piano and not lavish orchestrations arranged for that
instrument and unplayable, and on writing for the voice vocally and literally.
As regards the literature itself, they are certainly fine lines showing a
craftsman’s hand, but often quite obscure.” The poems by Van Lerberghe belong to
Symbolism. They form a cycle through style and content rather than thematic
links. It was their blend of sensuality and mysticism that prompted Fauré to
choose them, as he had chosen the work of Verlaine, 20 years earlier. He has
set the words with sensitivity, craftsmanship and precision and yet they remain
expressive and sensual.
He retired from the Conservatoire
in 1920 at the age of 75. He devoted his time to composition, including the
song cycles “Mirages” and “L’Horizon Chimérique”, and was now a national
celebrity. He was awarded the Grand
Croix of the Légion d’Honneur in 1920 and in 1922 there was a national tribute
to him and his music at the Sorbonne. His health declined from heavy smoking
and he would stay in his room for months. Yet he always made himself available
to others, particularly young musicians like Honegger.
He died at home in Passy, in
1924. He was given a state funeral, which was attended by the President and
conducted by the Archbishop of Paris at the Madeleine.
Fauré was a very attractive man
with a distant expression in his eyes, a soft voice and gentle manner of
speech, retaining the rolled “r” of his provincial accent. When he got angry he
would become silent and withdrawn. What upset him most was the amateur
music-making of the Cantegrel family in the flat below him: “It is as if they
were wrenching off the strings” of their instruments he would say, and,
whenever he could, he went out on Tuesday evenings, for it was then that they
“rehearsed”.
“For me, Art, and especially Music, exists to elevate us
as far as possible above everyday existence…The artist should love life and
show us that it is beautiful; without him, we might doubt it…I always enjoy
seeing sunlight play on the rocks, the water, the trees and plains. What
variety of effects, what brilliance, what softness… I wish my music could show
as much diversity” © H Kean
My Translations of the Walled Garden - Le
Jardin Clos
1. Exaucement
When you place your faltering head
In your hands of light
May my love come
Like a fulfilment to your prayer.
Then the word expires
On your still-trembling lips,
And softens in a smile of roses
In golden rays;
May your calm and mute soul,
A sleeping fairy in the enclosed garden,
In its sweet accomplished wish
Find joy and repose.
2. Quand tu plunges tes yeux dans mes yeux
When you plunge your eyes into my eyes,
I am all in my eyes.
When your mouth loosens my mouth,
My love is only my mouth.
If you caress my hair,
I exist only in them,
If your hand lightly brushes my breasts,
I rise there like a sudden fire.
Is it I whom you have chosen?
There is my soul, there is my life.
3. La Messagère
April, and it is the break of day.
Your blond sisters who resemble you,
At this moment advance towards you, Dear love.
You keep yourself in a shady
enclosure
Of myrtle and white hawthorn:
The door opens under the
branches:
The way is mysterious.
They slowly, in long gowns,
One by one, hand in hand,
Cross the hazy threshold
Where the night becomes dawn.
She who advances first,
Looks at the shadow,
Discovers you, shouts,
And the flower of her eyes
Opens resplendent, in golden
laughter.
And all to the last sister
trembles,
Your lips touch their lips,
The flash of your mouth
Burst into their hearts.
4. Je me poserai sur ton
coeur
I will lie upon your heart
Like the spring upon the sea,
On the plains of the sterile sea,
Where no flower could grow
In its agile breath,
Except flowers of light.
I will lie upon your heart
Like the bird upon the sea,
While resting its weary wings,
And may the endless rhythm
Of the waves and space soothe.
I will lie upon your heart
Like the bird upon the sea.
5. Dans la nymphée
Although your eyes do not see
her,
Believe in your soul that she is
there,
As long ago, divine and pure.
On this bank rest her hands.
Her head is among these jasmines,
There her feet lightly brush the
branches.
She slumbers in these boughs,
Her lips and her eyes are closed,
And her mouth hardly breathes.
Sometimes at night, in a flash,
She appears, her eyes open,
And the flash is reflected in her
eyes.
A brief blue dazzling flash
Reveals her in her long hair,
She awakens, she rises,
And a dazzling garden is all
illuminated
In the depth of the night,
In the rapid flash of a dream.
6. Dans la pénombre
With what, on this April morning,
So fresh and wrapped in shadow,
Is the beloved child of subtle
heart
So completely engaged?
Pensively, with a slow gesture,
In a long dress, a dress with
train,
On the sun’s white spinning-wheel
Spinning blue wool,
Still smiling at her dream
With the eyes of a bride-to-be,
Through the golden foliage,
Amid the lilies of her thought.
7. Il m’est cher, Amour…
It is dear to me, Love, the
blindfold
That holds my eyelids closed;
It weighs like the sweet burden
Of sun on frail roses.
If I move forward, how strange!
I seem to walk on water;
My feet are more heavy
Where I rest them,
And sink deeply as if in rings.
Who then, has released in the
shadows
The golden burden of my long
hair?
Encircled by a dark embrace,
I dive into waves of fire.
My lips, where my soul sings,
Full of ecstasy and kisses,
Open like a passionate flower
Above a burning river.
8. Inscription sur le sable
All with her dress and her
flowers,
She returned here to dust,
And her soul, carried elsewhere
Was reborn in songs of light.
But a light delicate bond,
In death gently broken,
Encircled her weak temples
With immortal diamonds.
As a symbol of her, in this
place,
Alone, amid the pale sand,
The eternal stones still outline
The image of her face.
Comments
Post a Comment