Chanson triste

    Chanson triste by Jean Lahor is not perfect poetry but even in 1868, seventeen years before Duparc’s nervous illness paralysed his creativity, its escapist sentiment must have appealed to him profoundly. Certainly – and above all where the piano joins the voice in counterpoint on “Tu prendras ma tête malade” -–the setting adds a personal dimension to the text, converting undistinguished or even embarrassing words into sounds of much beauty.

L’Invitation au voyage

Soupir

Phidylé

“It’s nothing to do with genius,” said Duparc in 1904 - when he had composed no music for nearly twenty years and would compose none for the nearly thirty years that were left to him - “I have written a few songs into which I have put my heart and soul: that is their only merit. Now the little spring is dried up, that’s all: no one regrets it but me, and I regret it a lot…For me, music inspired by poetry has no purpose unless it adds something to that poetry… but there is some perfect poetry which is so complete in itself that music - even the most beautiful music, even that music which I am incapable of writing - can only diminish it.”

Chanson triste by Jean Lahor is not perfect poetry. Even in 1868, however, long before his nervous illness overwhelmed him, Duparc must have found its escapist sentiment profoundly appealing. Certainly - and above all where the piano joins the voice in counterpoint on “Tu prendras ma tête malade” - the setting adds a personal dimension to the text, converting undistinguished or even embarrassing words into sounds of much beauty.

In spite of his modesty, Duparc did set two of Baudelaire’s greatest poems, L’Invitation au voyage and La vie antérieure, and made similarly great songs of them. What he was able to add in L’Invitation au Voyage, which was written during the traumatic siege of Paris in 1870 , was a very genuine longing for “ordre et beauté, luxe, calme et volupté” and a no less genuine sentiment of affection for the dedicatee of the song, the composer’s Irish fiancée Ellie Mac Swiney. The rippling figuration of the minor harmonies in the accompaniment to the first stanza is stilled by a measured pronouncement of “ordre et beauté…” in the major. The exalted coda, which treats the same words in a quite different way, is perhaps Duparc’s finest inspiration.

Soupir, which was first published in Duparc’s earliest collection of songs in 1869, is a similarly intimate confession. By dedicating it to his mother and so directing Sully Prudhomme’s declaration specifically towards her, it reveals much of a relationship that is said to have been a contributory factor to the composer’s later breakdown. A two-note sighing motif, discreetly integrated into the Schumannesque piano figuration, echoes throughout the song.

After Baudelaire’s L’Invitation au voyage and La Vie antérieure, Leconte de Lisle’s Phidylé is the most distinguished of the poems Duparc chose to set to music. Phidylé is also one of the most successful of all his songs. Although he first approached the poem in 1872, the present version dates from the height of his powers in 1882 and is a remarkably free and apparently spontaneous reaction to the fondly amorous text. Beginning with a comparatively expressionless introduction, it ranges emotionally through a variety of keys at a rising tempo until it alights on the tonic again on the second entry of “Repose, ô Phidylé.” The structure is held together partly by the vocal phrase that goes with the refrain but more by the lyrical piano melody that immediately follows its first appearance. The passionate last few lines, agitated by tremolandos in the accompaniment, are based almost exclusively on that piano melody.

When he gave up composing in 1885 Duparc might well have taken comfort from the advice frequently issued by his teacher, César Franck: “Write little, but make sure it’s really good.” At least as far as his songs are concerned, he did make sure that what little he wrote was, to say the least, “really good.”

Le Manoir de Rosemonde

Extase

L’Invitation au voyage

“It’s nothing to do with genius,” said Duparc in 1904 - when he had composed no music for nearly twenty years and would compose none for the nearly thirty years that were left to him - “I have written a few songs in which I have put my heart and soul: that is their only merit. Now the little spring is dried up, that’s all: no one regrets it but me, and I regret it a lot…For me, music inspired by poetry has no purpose unless it adds something to that poetry… but there is some perfect poetry which is so complete in itself that music - even the most beautiful music, even that music which I am incapable of writing - can only diminish it.”

Chanson triste by Jean Lahor (Dr Henri Cazalis) is not perfect poetry but even in 1869, when Duparc’s nervous illness was not yet so far advanced as to paralyse his creativity, its sentiment must have seemed very familiar to him. The earliest of the thirteen songs published in the definitive edition of 1911, the setting certainly “adds something” to the poetry - above all where the piano joins the voice in counterpoint on “Tu prendras ma tête malade” - converting undistinguished or even embarrassing words into sounds of much beauty. That he would not have done it without Schumann’s example is clear enough, but the marriage of the Lied and the mélodie was one of Duparc’s most valuable contributions to the development of song. Similarly, although Le Manoir de Rosemonde owes much to Schubert’s Erlkönig, the emotive quality of the piece is not so much its persecuted rhythms as the tortured harmonies which enter the piano part beneath a declamatory vocal line as the tempo slows down to contain the pathos at the end.

The most profound influence on Duparc was not his teacher, César Franck, but Richard Wagner, whose Tristanesque influence on Extase converts more Lahor verse into pure poetry. As for L’Invitation au voyage, Duparc’s setting adds something significant to what is one of the greatest of all Baudelaire’s poems. The harmonic constant of the same open fifth repeated low down in the piano part anticipates and even, as the harmonies first come to rest on the tonic major, seems to confirm the reality of the poet’s vision of “ordre et beauté, luxe, calme et volupté.” The exalted coda, which treats the same words in a quite different way, is perhaps Duparc’s finest inspiration.

Chanson triste

Dans ton coeur dort un clair de lune,

Un doux clair de lune d’été.

Et pour fuir la vie importune

Je me noierai dans ta clarté.

J’oublierai les douleurs passées,

Mon amour, quand tu berceras

Mon triste coeur et mes pensées

Dans le calme aimant de tes bras!

Tu prendras ma tête malade

Oh! quelquefois sur tes genoux,

Et lui diras une ballade

Qui semblera parler de nous,

Et dans tes yeux alors je boirai

Tant de baisers et de tendresses

Que, peut-être, je guérirai…

(Jean Lahor)

Sad Song

In your heart sleeps moonlight,

The gentle moonlight of summer.

And to escape this troublesome life

I shall drown myself in your light.

I shall forget past pain,

My love, when you cradle

My sad heart and my thoughts

In the loving calm of your arms!

You will take my sick head

Oh! sometimes on your knees,

And you will tell me an old story

That seems to be about us,

And in you eyes full of sadness,

In your eyes then I shall drink

So many kisses and caresses

That, perhaps, I shall be cured…

Le Manoir de Rosemonde

De sa dent soudaine et vorace,

Comme un chien l’amour ma mordu…

Et suivant mon sang répandu,

Va, tu pourras suivre ma trace…

Prends un cheval de bonne race,

Pars, et suis mon chemin ardu,

Fondrière ou sentier perdu,

Si la course ne te harasse!

En passant par où j’ai passé,

Tu verras que seul et blessé

J’ai parcouru ce triste monde.

Et qu’ainsi je m’en fus mourir

Bien loin, bien loin, sans découvrir

Le bleu manoir de Rosemonde.

(Robert de Bonnières)

The Manor of Rosemonde

With its snapping and voracious teeth,

Like a dog love has bitten me:

Following my spilled blood,

You could go and follow my trail…

Take a thoroughbred horse,

Go, and follow my arduous track,

Pitfall or lost path,

If the chase doesn’t torment you!

Passing where I have passed,

You will see that alone and wounded

I have covered all this sad world,

And that I died in this way

Far away, far away, without finding

The blue manor of Rosemonde.

Extase

Sur un lys pâle mon coeur dort

D’un sommeil doux comme la mort…

Mort exquise, mort parfumée

Du souffle de la bien-aimée…

Sur ton sein pâle mon coeur dort

D’un sommeil doux comme la mort…

(Jean Lahor)

Ecstasy

On a pale lily my heart sleeps

A sleep as sweet as death…

Exquisite death, death perfumed

By the breath of my beloved…

On your pale breast my heart sleeps

A sleep as sweet as death…

L’Invitation au voyage

Mon enfant, ma soeur,

Songe à la douceur

D’aller là-bas vivre ensemble!

Les soleils mouillés

De ces ciels brouillés

Pour mon esprit ont les charmes

Si mystérieux

De tes traîtres yeux,

Brillant à travers leurs larmes.

Là, tout n’est qu’order et beauté,

Luxe, calme et volupté.

Vois sur ces canaux

Dormir ces vaisseaux

Dont l’humeur est vagabonde;

C’est pour assouvir

Ton moindre désir

Qu’ils viennent du bout du monde.

Les soleils chouchants

Revêtent les champs,

Les canaux, la ville entière,

D’hyacinithe et d’or;

Le monde s’endort

Dans une chaude lumière!

Là, tout n’est qu’order et beauté,

Luxe, calme et volupté!

(Charles Baudelaire)

The Invitation to the Voyage

My child, my sister,

Think how sweet it would be

To go and live down there together,

To love at leisure

To love and to die

In the country which is so like you!

The moist sun

In a misty sky

Has to my mind the same

Mysterious charm

As you treacherous eyes,

Shining through their tears.

There is only order and beauty

Luxury, calm and voluptuousness.

See on these canals

The sleeping vessels

Whose nature it is to wander;

It is to satisfy your least desire

That they come from the end of the world.

The setting sun

Clothes the fields,

The canals, the whole town,

In hyacinth and gold;

The world goes to sleep

In a warm light!

There is only order and beauty

Luxury, calm and voluptuousness.