La Péri: poème dansé

“If you think it’s not good enough…I’ll destroy the manuscript.” Happily, the friends to whom Dukas made that alarming promise shortly after he had completed La Péri early in 1911 thought the new score far too good to become another victim of the composer’s ruthless quality control over his own music. Dukas might also have been encouraged in this case by the flattering interest that Diaghilev took in the work. No doubt he heard musical imagery in it as vivid as that of L’Apprenti sorcier, which had won Dukas his first (and, as it turned out, only) popular success in 1897. For a variety of reasons – not the least of which was the composer’s insistence that his mistress Natasha Trouhanova should dance the title-role opposite Nijinsky as Iskender – the Ballets Russes never staged La Péri. It was first performed at the Théâtre du Châtelet in 1912 with Florent Schmitt’s La Tragédie de Salomé and Ravel’s Adélaïde in a three-part programme mounted by Gabriel Astruc as a Parisian impresario’s answer to Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes Trouhanova danced all three title-roles.

The story of La Péri is based on an ancient Persian legend about Iskender and his quest for the Flower of Immortality. After three years of wandering to the ends of the earth, he finds it in the form of a lotus clasped in the hands of a sleeping Peri (or fairy) and takes it from her. Distressed though she is by the loss of this sacred object, she sees a way of getting it back: when the lotus turns purple in Iskender’s hands it betrays his desire for her and she realises that, by performing the Dance of the Peri, she can seduce him into returning it. Having lost the Flower of Immortality, Iskender knows that his end is near.

An exotic story, it inspired in Dukas a correspondingly exotic musical language and a sensuously multifaceted orchestral sound. In spite of that, however, and in spite of his allegiance to Wagner and Franck and some late influence from his impressionist contemporaries, he remained a classicist at heart. His “poème dansé” is basically two series of variations, each based on an alluring melody associated with the Peri, symmetrically placed between an introduction and an epilogue. The whole structure is set in a slender poetic framework (not unlike like that of L’Apprenti sorcier) where the magical atmosphere is created by very quiet high-lying string harmonies and a distant three-note horn call tinged by a touch of celesta colour and scented by the Flower of Immortality. Iskender’s motif makes its introductory entry on woodwind and trumpets brightly decorated by violins and clarinets and is immediately followed by the principal Peri theme flowing sinuously on cor anglais, horns and cellos.

The first main variation section is devoted to the Peri melody which is presented in a whole spectrum of orchestral colours and which is offset, when he catches sight of her, by Iskender’s motif in the background. The moment when he steals the Flower of Immortality is preceded by an echo of the framework harmonies, the lotus-scented three-note horn call and some very stealthy violin tremolandos over scarcely perceptible brass-drum rolls. His passion for her is clear enough in the violent orchestral outburst that follows and in a highly expressive version of the Peri theme.

A new Peri theme, a gentle dance tune in 6/8 time, is introduced by flutes, horn and violas with a pizzicato accompaniment on cellos and basses. This is both the subject of the second variation section and the melodic means by which the Peri wins back the Flower of Immortality. Chaste in demeanour at first, her dance takes on an increasingly erotic dimension and in alliance with the first Peri theme, at its height in brilliant augmentation on trumpets and in liberated provocation on the four horns, overwhelms Iskender.

The epilogue incorporates the moment at which, with an acquiescent recall of Iskender’s motif and the briefest allusion to the three-note horn call, he restores the Flower of Immortality to the Peri. She disappears in a very quiet but texturally elaborate combination of her two themes and, after a dying allusion to Iskender, all that is left of her is distant echoes on solo violin and woodwind. As the closing horn calls suggest, the Flower of Immortality lives on.