Cinq mélodies de Venise Op.58 (1891)

Mandoline

En sourdine

Green

À Clymène

C’est l’extase

Cinq mélodies de Venise - Five Songs from Venice - is an attractive title. It’s nice too to think of Fauré elegantly at work in the Café Florian with his copy of Verlaine’s poems and his manuscript paper on the table in front of him. The reality is a little different. As a guest of the American heiress Princesse Wynarette de Scey-Montbéliard (later the Princesse de Polignac), the composer was certainly in Venice in the summer of 1891 and it is true that he preferred to work in the Piazza San Marco rather than in the room that had been set aside for him in the fifteenth-century palazzo where he was staying. But all he achieved on his six-week holiday was Mandoline and part of En sourdine. The rest of the second song and the three others were all written between late June and September on his return to Paris.

He must, however, have been doing some serious thinking while he was in Venice. The Cinq Mélodies de Venise are not just a collection of songs related only by the fact that they are all settings of words by the same poet. They are actually Fauré’s first song cycle: the poems are ordered to make a loose kind of narrative and the music is designed to form harmonic and thematic links between them. They can be performed separately, as the first three often are, but they make complete sense only when heard as a cycle. Mandoline is a delightful song in itself, of course, the piano imitating a plucked mandolin in its accompaniment and later taking over the decorative chromatic line introduced by the voice when it comes to the bird song in the first stanza. En sourdine, accompanied by gently rolling arpeggios and an expressive right-hand that joins the voice in counterpoint in the third line, is another lovely song in its own right. But the two are linked by a little phrase they have in common. In En sourdine that phrase is set in high profile in the piano part at the beginning of the fourth stanza and offers a discreet hint of the song of the nightingale just before the end.

“Verlaine is exquisite to set to music,” said Gabriel Fauré, speaking for generations of composers who have been drawn to this most musical of French poets. “There is a short poem by him, Green, which contains a fresh and melancholy landscape, but this landscape is only atmosphere, ambience. Harmony must be applied to underlining the profound sentiment which the words only sketch.” In Fauré’s setting the eager sentiment of Green is reflected in the variety of harmonies applied to a variant of the little phrase common to the first two songs: it enters the piano part at the beginning of the second stanza and persists in its breathless way to the end of the song.

Debussy also enjoyed setting Verlaine and, indeed, set all but one of these five texts before Fauré approached them. The exception is À Clymène which, since the poem is one long sentence, is an awkward subject for music and which Debussy left well alone. It must have appealed to Fauré as a barcarolle, which is an essentially Venetian song form. Certainly, he sets it in a characteristic barcarolle meter and integrates it into his Venetian cycle by incorporating the little phrase in the modal melody first heard in the piano introduction and repeated several times during the course of the song. The unity of the work is confirmed in C’est l’extase where the little phrase in both its forms reappears prominently in the piano part and relates the whole cycle to this final expression of amorous ecstasy.

Mandoline

En sourdine

Green

À Clymène

C’est l’extase

Cinq mélodies de Venise    – Five Songs from Venice – is an attractive title. It’s nice too to think of Fauré elegantly at work in the Café Florian with his copy of Verlaine’s poems and his manuscript paper on the table in front of him. The reality is a little different. As a guest of the American heiress Princesse Wynarette de Scey-Montbéliard (later the Princesse de Polignac), the composer was certainly in Venice in the summer of 1891 and it is true that he preferred to work in the Piazza San Marco rather than in the room that had been set aside for him in the fifteenth-century palazzo where he was staying. But all he achieved on his six-week holiday was    Mandoline and part of En sourdine. The rest of the second song and the three others were all written between late June and September on his return to Paris.   

He must, however, have been doing some serious thinking while he was in Venice. The Cinq Mélodies de Venise are not just a collection of songs related only by the fact that they are all settings of words by the same poet. They are actually Fauré’s first song cycle: the poems are ordered to make a loose kind of narrative and the music is designed to form harmonic and thematic links between them. They can be performed separately, as the first three often are, but they make complete sense only when heard as a cycle. Mandoline is a delightful song in itself, of course, the piano imitating a plucked mandolin in its accompaniment and later taking over the decorative chromatic line introduced by the voice when it comes to the bird song in the first stanza. En sourdine, accompanied by gently rolling arpeggios and an expressive right-hand that joins the voice in counterpoint in the third line, is another lovely song in its own right. But the two are linked by a little phrase they have in common. In    En sourdine      that phrase is set in high profile in the piano part at the beginning of the fourth stanza and offers a discreet hint of the song of the nightingale just before the end.

“Verlaine is exquisite to set to music,” said Gabriel Fauré, speaking for generations of composers who have been drawn to this most musical of French poets. “There is a short poem by him,      Green    , which contains a fresh and melancholy landscape, but this landscape is only atmosphere, ambience. Harmony must be applied to      underlining      the profound sentiment which the words only      sketch    .” In Fauré’s setting the eager sentiment of      Green    is reflected in the variety of harmonies applied to a variant of the little phrase common to the first two songs: it enters the piano part at the beginning of the second stanza and persists in its breathless way to the end of the song.

Debussy also enjoyed setting Verlaine and, indeed, set all but one of these five texts before Fauré approached them. The exception is      À Clymène      which, since the poem is one long sentence, is an awkward subject for music. Debussy left it well alone. It must have appealed to Fauré, however, for its allusion to the barcarolle, which is an essentially Venetian song form. Certainly, he sets it in a characteristic barcarolle meter and integrates it into his Venetian cycle by incorporating the little phrase in the modal melody first heard in the piano introduction and repeated several times during the course of the song. The unity of the work is confirmed in      C’est l’extase    where the little phrase in both its forms reappears prominently in the piano part and relates the whole cycle to this final expression of amorous ecstasy.