L’Horizon chimérique Op.118 (1921)

La mer est infinie

Je me suis embarqué

Diane Séléné

Vaisseaux, nous vous aurons aimés

Jean de La Ville de Mirmont was one of the young French writers – Alain-Fournier, author of Le Grand Meaulnes, was another – who were killed at the front in the first few weeks of the First World War. His poetry collection, L’Horizon chimérique, came to light when it was found among his papers by his mother and published by Grasset in 1920. Planning at that time to write something for Charles Panzéra – a young Swiss baritone who had distinguished himself not only as a student at the Paris Conservatoire but also as a volunteer in the French Army – Fauré clearly found it an appropriate and emotive source of inspiration. For what would be his last song cycle, his last vocal work of any kind in fact, he chose four poems from L’Horizon chimérique, three of them inspired by ships and the sea, a favourite subject of a poet who had spent most of his short life in Bordeaux. La mer est infinie is animated throughout by the agitated semi-quaver movement of the waves, Je me suis embarqué by a rolling tango rhythm in a nautical 3/4 rather than a land-locked 2/4. Diane Séléné, a comparatively static hymn to the moon accompanied by an unbroken succession of crotchets in the piano part, is a timely change of subject before a return to the sea and its rocking rhythms, this time in a kind of barcarolle, in Vaisseaux, nous vous aurons aimés.