Henri Duparc
1848-1933
Born in Paris, his full name was
Marie-Eugene Henri Fouques-Duparc. On the advice of a publisher, he shortened
it to Henri Duparc. As a child he had no particular interest in music and
preferred games. While training as a lawyer at the Jesuit College of Vaugirard,
César Franck recognised his musical talent and taught him piano and
composition.
Duparc responded with energy and
enthusiasm. At age 19 he wrote his first work a sonata for cello and piano and
by 1868 he had written his first five songs. During the Franco-Prussian war he
served in the 18th Battalion of the Mobile Guard. It was during the
siege of Paris that he wrote “L’Invitation au Voyage”.
In 1871 he married an Irish girl
Ellie MacSwiney from County Cork. He was devoted to her and their two sons. He
was friends with D’Indy and Liszt and met Wagner at Liszt’s house in Weimar in
1869. Duparc admired Wagner and had seen performances of “Tristan und Isolde”
and “Die Walküre” in Munich,
but unlike many French composers of the time, he was not a Wagner fanatic.
At age 35, he lost all power of
artistic creation when he was debilitated by a nervous disease. He lived to be
85 but his last 50 years were overshadowed by this nervous illness, which made
him so self critical that he destroyed a great deal of his works including the
first act of an opera. He left Paris and went to Lake Leman, Tarbes and finally
to Mont-de-Marsin. At first he kept in touch with artistic life in Paris and
visited friends, exhibitions and important musical events but it became too
painful for him emotionally.
He continued to read and be interested in music
but not to compose. He painted watercolours, pastels and sepia drawings until
he became blind. After many pilgrimages to Lourdes he came to a resignation:
“Have I not loved too well the beauty of shapes and colours…God desires that I
live more inwardly; he has deprived me of sight but, since then, what I hear is
so beautiful!”
Duparc’s songs were not published
until 1910, probably because he did not like the fashion of his time for
singers with powerful voices and exaggerated tonal contrasts, and displays of
vocal exhibitionism. He preferred the natural inflexions and sensuous
impressionism to express the eloquence of the poem, avoiding over dramatisation
and wistful nostalgia.
“L’Invitation au Voyage” evoking
Holland and a romantic yearning to travel, is from Baudelaire’s 1857 book “Les
Fleurs du Mal”, which is intended as a demonstration of the fundamental
corruption of human nature. It was suppressed as an outrage on public morality;
poet, publisher and printer were prosecuted. Baudelaire, whose poems have a
profound beauty and power, had a wild lifestyle taking opium and alcohol to
excess in direct contrast to the modest Duparc, but the passionate imagination,
voyages and experiences of Baudelaire appealed to Duparc’s broad aestheticism.
Duparc set two stanzas of this sensuous and voluptuous
poem in 1870 and dedicated it to his wife. The music begins with delicate
billowing veils of mist, warmed by the sun. There is a poetic atmosphere in the
piano part, which has an emotional emphasis, expressing the poetic mood.
Duparc’s musical symbolism was ahead of its time; he conveys the poet’s
thoughts and feelings beyond the words. “L’Invitation au Voyage” is a beautiful
and evocative piece of pure impressionism. Ravel described his melodies as “imperfect,
but works of genius”.
Duparc lived long enough to know of his success and was
made Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur on 17th March 1921.He died at
Mont-de-Marsin in Feb 1933 aged 85.
© H Kean
My translation of Invitation to the Voyage
L’Invitation au Voyage
My child, my sister,
Dream of the sweetness
Of going yonder to live together!
To love at leisure,
To love and to die
In a country that resembles you!
The watery suns of these misty
skies,
For my spirit, have the charm,
So mysterious, of your
treacherous eyes,
Shining through their tears.
There, all is only order and
beauty,
Luxuriousness,
Calm and sensuous delight.
See on these canals
The sleeping ships
Whose nature is to roam:
It is to fulfil your least desire
That they come
From the ends of the earth.
The setting suns dress the
fields,
The canals, the whole town
In hyacinth and gold;
The world falls asleep in a warm
light!
There, all is only order and
beauty,
Luxuriousness,
Calm and sensuous delight.
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