Conte fantastique d’après Edgar Poe (1908-23)

The French harp repertoire was much enriched in the early years of the last century by competition between the double-action pedal harp patented by Erard and a more recent invention, Pleyel’s chromatic harp. Debussy’s Danse sacrée et danse profane, for example, was written to demonstrate the benefits of the chromatic harp and so, four years later, was André Caplet’s Conte fantastique for harp and orchestra. The Erard harp won the day, however, and in 1923 Caplet rescored the Conte fantastique for the much more practical combination of double-action pedal harp and string quartet. Based as it is on a lurid story by Edgar Allan Poe, The Mask of the Red Death, it is an indication of Caplet’s resource in scoring for harp and strings that little of the incident of the story - the masked ball, the chiming clock, the entry of the Red Death “like a thief in the night” - is lost in the chamber version.