Poème de l’Amour et de la Mer

La fleur des eaux:

L’air est plein d’une odeur exquise de lilas –

Et mon coeur s’est levé par ce matin d’été –

Quel son lamentable et sauvage

Interlude

La mort de l’amour:

Bientôt l’île bleue et joyeuse –

Le vent roulait les feuilles mortes –

Le temps des lilas

For those who know nothing of his music, Chausson’s claim to posthumous fame rests on the unfortunate manner of his death – which was the result of a fall from his bicycle when out riding with his daughter in the countryside near Mantes in 1899. It was a sad end for a composer who, though he had graduated in law before taking up music, and though he was the recipient of a considerable private income, was one of the most dedicated musicians of his generation. Having studied first with Jules Massenet at the Paris Conservatoire, which was an education, and then privately with César Franck, which was an inspiration, he was not only formidably well equipped technically but also thoroughly convinced of the high seriousness of his profession as a composer.

Without that conviction and without the private income, the Poème de l’Amour et de la Mer would surely not have been written. It took the composer most of the eleven years between 1882 and 1893 – during which time he was occupied also by his opera Le roi Arthus and his Symphony in B flat – to complete a score which had no precedent and which no ordinary professional could have attempted. Even so, it is distinguished by a fresh and uniquely distinctive fragrance which it retained through all the years of labour devoted to it. You can almost smell the lilacs which are such a prominent feature of Marcel Bouchor’s text. As the poet remarked, Chausson’s music is illuminated by “that spiritual halo which the notes do not account for and which extends them beyond themselves.”

This “symphonic song,” as Chaussson called it, is actually based on six Bouchoir poems. There are three of them in each of the two main parts: the first part, La fleur des eaux, celebrates the birth of love in a seascape setting and laments a parting; the second, La mort de l’amour, which follows a purely orchestral Interlude, anticipates a return to the island and a renewal of the relationship but finds only cold indifference.

What in other hands might have been a dangerously diverse compilation of six songs is held together by the apparently spontaneous (rather than schematic) recurrences of two or three lyrical themes. The first of them is tenderly introduced by violins in the opening bars, developed by woodwind and then refashioned in an expressive variant version by the voice on its very first, lilac-scented entry. The most important theme of all , what on might call the love theme, makes its definitive appearance in the climactic orchestral passage directly, and signficantly, following the last line of the first song “faites-moi voir ma bien-aimée” (let me see my beloved). It occurs again in the orchestral passage between the amorous second song and the unhappy third, where the lovers take their farewell. The fairly short but exquisitly scored orchestral Interlude is based almost entirely on the love theme, which emerges first on bassoon, passes to a solo cello and then lends itself to a passionately melodious rumination.

Chausson’s score, the composer would be the first to admit, offers clear echoes of Wagner here and there, particularly Tristan. But it is also prophetic – not least of Debussy’s La Mer as, at the beginning of the third part, La mort de l’amour, the lover returns with eager anticipation to the “île bleue et joyeuse.” The orchestral passage leading to the next song suggests, however, that his joy is misplaced and the sustained, desolately coloured “l’oubli” in the last line confirms that she has indeed forgotten him. His heart-broken reflections inspired the most beautiful of the six songs, Le temps des lilas, which is so sadly and yet so poetically suffused by the love theme in both the vocal and the orchestral parts.

La fleur des eaux:

L’air est plein d’une odeur exquise de lilas –

Et mon coeur s’est levé par ce matin d’été –

Quel son lamentable et sauvage

Interlude

La mort de l’amour:

Bientôt l’île bleue et joyeuse –

Le vent roulait les feuilles mortes –

Le temps des lilas

For those who know nothing of his music, Chausson’s claim to posthumous fame rests on the unfortunate manner of his death – which was the result of a fall from his bicycle when out riding with his daughter in the countryside near Mantes in 1899. It was a sad end for a composer who, though he had graduated in law before taking up music, and though he was the recipient of a considerable private income, was one of the most dedicated musicians of his generation. Having studied first with Jules Massenet at the Paris Conservatoire, which was an education, and then privately with César Franck, which was an inspiration, he was not only formidably well equipped technically but also thoroughly convinced of the high seriousness of his profession as a composer.

Without that conviction and without the private income, the Poème de l’Amour et de la Mer would surely not have been written. It took the composer most of the eleven years between 1882 and 1893 – during which time he was occupied also by his opera Le roi Arthus and his Symphony in B flat – to complete a score which had no precedent and which no ordinary professional could have attempted. Even so, it is distinguished by a fresh and uniquely distinctive fragrance which it retained through all the years of labour devoted to it. You can almost smell the lilacs which are such a prominent feature of Marcel Bouchor’s text. As the poet remarked, Chausson’s music is illuminated by “that spiritual halo which the notes do not account for and which extends them beyond themselves.”

This “symphonic song,” as Chaussson called it, is actually based on six Bouchoir poems. There are three of them in each of the two main parts: the first part, La fleur des eaux, celebrates the birth of love in a seascape setting and laments a parting; the second, La mort de l’amour, which follows a purely orchestral Interlude, anticipates a return to the island and a renewal of the relationship but finds only cold indifference.

What in other hands might have been a dangerously diverse compilation of six songs is held together by the apparently spontaneous (rather than schematic) recurrences of two or three lyrical themes. The first of them is tenderly introduced by violins in the opening bars, developed by woodwind and then refashioned in an expressive variant version by the voice on its very first, lilac-scented entry. The most important theme of all , what on might call the love theme, makes its definitive appearance in the climactic orchestral passage directly, and signficantly, following the last line of the first song “faites-moi voir ma bien-aimée” (let me see my beloved). It occurs again in the orchestral passage between the amorous second song and the unhappy third, where the lovers take their farewell. The fairly short but exquisitly scored orchestral Interlude is based almost entirely on the love theme, which emerges first on bassoon, passes to a solo cello and then lends itself to a passionately melodious rumination.

Chausson’s score, the composer would be the first to admit, offers clear echoes of Wagner here and there, particularly Tristan. But it is also prophetic – not least of Debussy’s La Mer as, at the beginning of the third part, La mort de l’amour, the lover returns with eager anticipation to the “île bleue et joyeuse.” The orchestral passage leading to the next song suggests, however, that his joy is misplaced and the sustained, desolately coloured “l’oubli” in the last line confirms that she has indeed forgotten him. His heart-broken reflections inspired the most beautiful of the six songs, Le temps des lilas, which is so poetically suffused by the love theme in both the vocal and the orchestral parts.