4 Mélodies to words by Armand Silvestre

Aurore Op.39, No.1 (1884)

Automne Op.18 No.3 (1878)

Le Secret Op.23, No.3 (1880-81)

Notre amour Op.23, No.2 (1879)

Of the twenty or so writers whose poems Fauré set to music, Armand Silvestre was not the most distinguished. For a few years round 1880, however, when the composer was in his thirties and still developing his mature style, the “dreamy indolence” of Silvestre’s verse suited him very well. If Aurore seems at first to be little better than the average salon romance of the day, it takes on a different colour in the middle section, where the harmonies turn to the minor and a subtle two-note suggestion of the “chant plaintif, éternel et lointain” mingles with the restless semquavers in the right hand of the piano part. Automne has a grandeur and gravity entirely beyond the scope of the salon and rarely met with in Fauré and, indeed, in French song in general. It distinction is not only the wide-ranging left hand of the piano part undermining and contradicting the 12/8 ostinato in the right but also the climactic vocal line at the end. Fauré transcends the quality of the verse also in Le Secret which anticipates one of the most moving of his Verlaine settings, Prison, in the simple and regular rhythm of its chordal accompaniment and its economical vocal line. Notre amour, one the earliest of Fauré’s Silvestre settings is also one of the most attractive – not only for its lightly articulated rhythmic impulse but also for the developing interest in both the accompaniment and the vocal line as the song approaches its brief climax at the end.