Composers › Emmanuel Chabrier › Programme note
Ode à la Musique
for soprano, female chorus and orchestra
Sitting in at a rehearsal of the Ode à la Musique one day in 1913 - it had been selected as one of the items for the inaugural concert of the Théâtre des Champs-Elysés - Claude Debussy took the conductor aside and suggested that he should have another look at it. “Was it better that time?” asked Désiré Inghelbrecht when he had played through it once more. “It was quite all right the first time,” said Debussy, “but I love the music so much I just wanted to hear it again.”
It is that kind of work. If Edmond Rostand’s words have a not entirely appealing cosiness about them, Chabrier’s score, without being in any way pretentious or out of scale, transcends the domestic occasion for which they were both written. First performed, with the composer at the piano, at a house-warming concert for music-lover Jules Griset in 1890, the Ode à la Musique is, as Debussy put it, Chabrier’s “Credo.” There is scarcely a sign here of the truculent composer of España or Joyeuse Marche: this is the tender, affectionate Chabrier who is usually confined to the lyrical middle sections of otherwise boisterous pieces like Bourrée fantasque or (Ravel’s favourite) Menuet pompeux. As Chabrier said to Edouard Colonne, who conducted the first performance with orchestra in 1891, “The music is a tracing, so to speak, of the words; its character is intimate, quite simple, and almost well-behaved.”
Certainly, the phrase tracing the first two words, musique adorable - a rising and falling fifth, then a rising and falling octave - is simplicity itself. The harmonies applied to much of the rest of the setting, though well-behaved in that they do not draw attention to themselves, are anything but simple. The beauty of the work is its free-floating fragrance achieved by seductive unresolved dissonances and liquid rhythms. The solo voice makes a perfectly timed change of colour on its first entry at the beginning of the middle section, where the chorus is liberated from the prevailing four-part texture, and adds another adoring voice to the reprise. The last choral harmony, in which the dissonant top A of the first sopranos dies out without being resolved, is not of course the mistake Chabrier’s contemporaries thought it was but an essential feature of the work.
parallel texts from here
A la Musique
choeur:
Musique adorable! ô Déesse!
Tois qui berces l’enfance et charmes la vieillesse,
et qui troubles par tes accents
le coeur des blonds adolescents!
Toi par qui nous voguons vers l’idéale grève,
Musique adorable! ô Déesse, c’est toi!
Mère de souvenir et nourrice du rêve,
c’est toi qu’il nous plaît ajourd’hui
d’invoquer sous ce toit!
soprano solo:
Nous te vouons cette demeure,
prends en faveur ses habitants;
et fais leur de si doux instants
qu’il vivent oublieux de l’heure.
choeur:
Musique adorable! ô Déesse!
Musique adorable! ô Déesse!
soprano solo:
Fais pleuvoir la céleste manne
sur leurs hôtes comme sur eux,
et rends chaque jour plus heureux
leur petit groupe mélomane!
Verse sur nous, penchant les urnes
des maîtres qui furent des Dieux,
les andante mélodieux
et les délicieux nocturnes!
Et qu’ici les moins tendres âmes
soient prises d’attendrissements
en entendant les choeurs charmants
que font des voix de jeunes femmes!
Soit la Déesse protectrice, ô Musique, de ce foyer.
et toujours fais-y flamboyer
la flamme d’art consolatrice!
Et que tous ceux au coeur fidèle,
qui dans ces murs s’assembleront
sentent au-dessus de ta grande aile!
O Déese! ô Déesse! ô Déesse! ô Déesse!
Musique adorable! ô Déesse!
Musique adorable! ô Déesse!
choeur:
Musique adorable! ô Déesse!
Musique adorable! ô Déesse!
tois qui berces l’enfance et charmes la vieillesse etc
Edmond Rostand
To Music
chorus
Music, adorable goddess!
You who cradle childhood and charm old age,
and who touch with your melody
the hearts of of the young and fair!
You with whom we float to ideal shores,
Music, adorable goddess, it is you!
Mother of memories and nurse of dreams,
it is you whom we are pleased today
to invoke under this roof!
soprano solo
We dedicate this dwelling to you,
look with favour on those who live here;
and give them such sweet moments
that they will live oblivious of time.
chorus
Music, adorable goddess!…
soprano solo
Let your celestial manna rain
down on their guests as upon them,
and increase the happiness every day
of their little group of music-lovers!
Pour on us, tilting the urns
of masters who became gods,
melodious andantes
and delicious nocturnes!
And let it be that less sensitive souls
are overcome by tenderness
on hearing charming choruses
sung by young women’s voices!
Be the protecting goddess, O Music, of this hearth.
and keep always alight
the consoling flame of art!
And let it be that all those with faithful hearts
who meet between these walls
will feel their brows touched
by the air of your great wing!
O goddess!…
Music, adorable goddess!…
chorus
Music, adorable goddess!…
You who cradle childhood and charm old age
etc
From Gerald Larner’s files: “Ode à la Musique”