Idylle (from Pièces pittoresques) [1880]

Bourreé fantasque [1891]

Although Schumann’s influence on French music in the latter half of the nineteenth century was nothing like as extensive as that of Wagner, it was not insignificant either. Emmanuel Chabrier was so overwhelmed by Tristan und Isolde in 1880 that he gave up a safe job in the French Ministry of the Interior to devote himself exclusively to composition. But, being an adventurous pianist, he was inspired by Schumann too, not least by the shorter descriptive pieces like some of those of Kinderscenen and Waldscenen, That much is clear from the ten Pièces pittoresques he completed in 1880: the opening Paysage is a direct descendant of Eintritt at the beginning of Waldscenen and Schumann’s poetically applied dissonances, chords of the ninth in particular, echo throughout the collection. In fact, it was partly through Chabrier, whose music was held in great affection by both Debussy and Ravel, that Schumann had some part in inventing the colours of impressionism.

After the (partial) first performance of Pièces pittoresques in Paris in 1888 César Franck declared that “we have just heard something quite extraordinary. This music is a link between our own age and that of Couperin and Rameau.” Idylle, the sixth piece in the collection, does indeed look both ways. The two lines of even quavers carried by the left hand and the lower fingers of the right are characteristic harpsichord figuration. The melodic line sustained “with freshness and naïveté” above that modal accompaniment combines with it to create a quite new piano texture. Inspired by a pastoral poem by Victor Hugo - “Je vis aux champs, j’aime et je rêve” (I live in the fields, I love and I dream) - Idylle found early echoes in the Passepied of Debussy’s Suite bergamasque and, at a slower tempo, Ravel’s Pavane pour une Infante défunte.

As a native of the Auvergne, which he never forgot in spite of all his years in Montmartre, Chabrier was interested in the bourrée not for its classical credentials but for its personal associations. The bourrée was part of the regional culture of the Auvergne, where it was traditionally performed with a peasant energy that made it something quite different from the courtly dance known to Couperin and Rameau. Chabrier once said, “I dance the rhythms of my music in my Auvergnat clogs” and in his last piano work, written shortly after his last return visit to the Auvergne in 1891, he does just that.

The Bourrée fantasque is a formidable piece of piano writing which, though it probably owes something to Balakirev’s Islamey in this respect, elevated the repeated note to a new status in the repertoire of keyboard techniques. “I have counted nearly 113 different sonorities in it,” Chabrier told Edouard Risler, the young dedicatee of the work, who compared performing it to “playing the orchestra on the piano.” If the rattling rhythms of the outer sections were to reverberate in Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit and Alborada del gracioso, the whole-tone harmonies and impressionistic colouring of the tenderly poetic middle section must have been a source of much interest for Debussy. Not the least impressive aspect of the piece is the way its conflicting personalities are so sucessfully integrated.