Mélodies passagères Op 27 (c1950)

Puisque tout passe

Un cygne

Tombeau dans un parc

Le clocher chante

Départ

The travelling in Barber’s settings of verse from Rilke’s Poèmes français is not so much across countries as across cultures. One of the greatest of German poets, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) was a long-term and highly literate francophile who knew the language so well that towards the end of his life, when he was being treated for leukaemia in a clinic at Valmont near Montreux and thinking about applying for Swiss citizenship, he started writing poetry in French. Barber also crossed a cultural gap when he made a selection of five of those poems and applied himself to making songs of them for the French baritone Pierre Bernac. “Setting French to music is ticklish,” he said. “The French are very, very particular about it. On the other hand, I thought, why not? So I plunged in…” In fact, Barber’s settings - which were first performed by Bernac with his uniquely distinguished recital partner Francis Poulenc in New York in 1952 - are at least as idiomatic as Rilke’s verse.

The title Mélodies passagères derives from the second line of the first song in the set, which is an appropriately elusive equivalent of Rilke’s characteristically understated thoughts on the transitoriness of life. The poetic vision of the swan floating on its own reflection in Le Cygne inspires a liquid, rocking accompaniment and a gently arching vocal line which, to match the troubling ambiguity Rilke sees in the double image, meets and mingles with an expressive piano counterpoint. The discreet treatment of Tombeau dans un parc, another quiet thought on the transitoriness of life, is effectively offset by the jangling bells and the ringing voice of Le clocher chante. In Le Départ Rilke presents the end of life as a departure and Barber responds first with sparse dissonances and then, as the dying poet travels hopefully even now, with texturally swollen scored passion.