5 songs from Sept chansons de Clément Marot Op.15 (1908)

Estrenes à Anne

Languir me fais

Aux damoyselles paresseuses d'escrire à leurs amys

Estrene de la rose

Changeons propos, c'est trop chanté d'amour 

The poems of Clément Marot (1496–1544) were frequently set to music in his own time and for a few decades after that. As his literary reputation waned, however, musicians lost interest. It wasn’t until the turn of the 20th century, when Ravel published his Épigrammes de Clément Marot, that they turned to him again – but not many of them even then. After Ravel, George Enescu and Jean Françaix are the only composers of any significance to have written Marot songs. One thing that must have appealed to them, while deterring the majority perhaps, was Marot’s archaic language, which offers the composer a pressing invitation to pastiche. Certainly, this was the case with Ravel’s D’Anne qui me jecta de la neige and D’Anne jouant l’espinette, in 1896 and 1899 respectively, and Enescu’s Sept chansons de Clément Marot in 1908. As a not far from life-long resident in Paris, in spite of his Romanian allegiances, Enescu had no trouble even with 15th century French.

Having been fellow students in Gabriel Fauré’s composition class at the Paris Conservatoire, Ravel and Enescu were long-term friends. There can be little doubt that Enescu knew Ravel’s Épigrammes. It is striking how the frequent changes of metre in the first of the Ravel settings is adopted by Enescu as a consistent feature of his. At the same time Enescu’s neo-baroque interests, evident in several other works of the same period, encouraged him into bolder harmonic archaisms than Ravel attempted. The chord progressions in Estreines à Anne are only the first example. The Anne addressed with such passion here incidentally, is the same Anne as the one who threw snow at the poet and played the spinet in the Ravel Épigrammes. Whereas Ravel’s accompaniment to the second of those songs imitates the spinet, Enescu’s in Languir me fais evokes the lute, its elaborately embellished line acting as a sad counterpoint to the lamenting vocal melody and occasionally contributing a handful of parallel fifths to the period detail. In contrast, the opening piano gesture of Aux damoyselles paresseuses d'escrire à leurs amys throws down a challenge to those lazy ladies and spiritedly sustains it. The lute is prominent again in Estrene de la rose where its arpeggio figuration mingles with archaic cadences and a melodious vocal line in the most lyrical song in the set. Changeons propos, c'est trop chanté d'amour is a drinking song which by the end becomes a victim of its own enthusiasm.