La Chanson d’Ève Op.95 (1906–10)

Paradis

Prima Verba

L’Aube blanche

Veilles-tu, ma senteur de soleil?

Crépuscule

Just why Fauré was attracted to La Chanson d’Ève - a collection of poems running to no fewer than two hundred pages by the Belgian symbolist Charles Van Lerberghe - is a question that has never been answered. We can safely assume that the composer met the poet when the latter came to London with his colleague Maurice Maeterlinck for the first performance in English of Maeterlinck’s play Pelléas et Mélisande, with incidental music by Fauré, in June 1898. It is possible that Fauré read Maeterlinck’s long review in Le Figaro when La Chanson d’Ève was first published in 1904. And we know that Fauré’s attention was drawn to the poems when he was in Brussels for the first performance of his Piano Quintet in D minor in March 1906, three months before he wrote the first of his ten settings of poems from La Chanson d’Ève.

If the chronology of Fauré’s approach to Lerberghe’s poetry is fairly straightforward, the thinking behind it is not. There is, however, a beginning of a clue in that first Lerberghe setting, Crépuscule, which is actually a reworking of a then unpublished song for Mélisande from the Pelléas et Mélisande incidental music. That in itself is perhaps not enough to demonstrate that Fauré somehow identified Lerberghe’s Eve with Maeterlinck’s Mélisande. But Paradis, the first song he wrote after he had decided to make a whole cycle of Chanson d’Ève settings in September 1906, surely is evidence enough. Like that of Crépuscule, the piano part of Paradis begins with a melody which is associated in the incidental music with Mélisande and which now becomes one of the two main themes of the cycle. For Fauré, it seems, Lerberghe’s Eve and Maeterlinck’s Mélisande are both innocents whose personalities acquire depth with experience.

Fauré’s only previous song cycle was La Bonne Chanson, written in the midst of his affair with Emma Bardac in 1892. La Chanson d’Ève, he knew would be very different but, as he wrote to his wife when he told her he was going to incorporate Crépuscule into a set of songs from the same source, it was the difference that interested him. He did not find it easy, however, least of all in Paradis. “My text is difficult,” he wrote, “it is descriptive and not at all sentimental. And I have to have God the Father speaking and then his daughter Eve. Ah! It’s not easy to have to have to deal with such eminent persons.” The answer, he found, was simplicity. “I’ve worked seven hours and I’ve solved the problem of having God sing. When you see what his eloquence consists of you will be very surprised that it took me so long to find it. But, alas!, bare simplicity is the most difficult thing to imagine.”

The longest of all Fauré’s song, Paradis is so varied in content that it is almost a cantata. It is held together, however, by the radiantly innocent Mélisande-Ève motif which rises slowly in the right hand of the piano part as the first day dawns in the opening line. It is twice recalled during the course of the song - at “Ouvrant à la clarté ses doux et vagues yeux” and “Cependant le jour passe.” The other main theme, a more melodious idea, is first heard in the piano part just after “Un jardin bleu s’épanouit” as a link to the next stanza, where it features as a nature motif. It too recurs several times before its final appearance at the end but never with the harmonic indulgence its shapely line seems to imply: Fauré preserves the freshness of the scene and the innocence of Eve by means of a contrapuntal texture and fresh, even severe harmonies that exclude any suggestion of sensuality.

As it happens, none of the next three songs in the present selection from La Chanson d’Ève alludes to either of the two cyclical themes. They do, however, reflect Eve’s personal development as she sings of the beauties of nature she brings to life by giving them names in Prima verba (First Words), as she awakens to the sensuality and the love in them in L’Aube blanche and as she anticipates her meeting with Adam in the passionate if still innocent Veilles-tu, which is impelled throughout by the same impatient rhythmic figuration in the piano part.

Fauré’s first Lerberghe setting, Crépuscule eventually found its place as the ninth of the ten songs of La Chanson d’Ève. When Jeanne Raunay and Fauré gave a preliminary performance of the still incomplete cycle in 1909, however, it came last - an entirely appropriate position for song which is based on the same innocent motif as the opening song, Paradis, but which senses the end of the paradise to which Eve awoke on that radiant first day of the world.

Paradis

Prima Verba

Roses ardentes

Comme Dieu rayonne

L’Aube blanche

Eau vivante

Veilles-tu, ma senteur de soleil?

Dans un parfum de roses blanches

Crépuscule

O mort, poussière d’étoiles

It is very likely that Fauré met the Belgian symbolist poet Charles Van Lerberghe when he came to London with his colleague Maurice Maeterlinck for the first performance in English of Maeterlinck’s play Pelléas et Mélisande, with incidental music by Fauré, in 1898. That does not explain, however, why he chose to write a cycle of ten songs from Lerberghe’s La Chanson d’Ève, a collection of poems running to no fewer than 200 pages published in 1904. There is, however, a clue in his setting of Crépuscule, which is reworking of the material of a then unpublished song for Mélisande from the Pelléas et Mélisande incidental music and which, written shortly before the others, was published separately. That in itself is perhaps not enough to demonstrate that Fauré somehow identified Lerberghe’s Eve with Maeterlinck’s Mélisande. But Paradis, the song which committed him to making a whole cycle of Chanson d’Ève settings, is surely evidence enough: it begins with the same unaffectedlly simple Mélisande motif as that which opens Crépuscule and which becomes one of the two main themes of the cycle. For Fauré, it seems, Lerberghe’s Eve and Maeterlinck’s Mélisande are both innocents whose personalities acquire depth with experience.

The other main theme of the cycle also occurs in Paradis, which is by far the longest of all Fauré’s songs and almost a cantata in itself. A chromatic, comparatively sensual idea, this second theme is introduced by the piano just after the words “un jardin bleu s’épanouit” on a lovely change of harmony to the tonic major. Neither of the two main themes is heard again until Comme Dieu rayonne where, again in the piano part, the Mélisande-Ève motif opens the song in diminution and the second theme floats in the right hand on a quickening of the figuration, matching a quickening of emotion, just before the words “Comme il se baigne.” The second theme is recalled, perhaps because of the reference to “le paradis bleu,” as the sinuous bass line which runs through most of Dans un parfum de roses blanches. Crépuscule, based entirely on the Mélisande-Ève motif and the initial inspiration for the cycle, makes an apparently encouraging late change to the major. Even so, and although O mort, poussière d’étoiles begins and ends in the major, the last page of the cycle, through which the chromatic theme descends in the left hand, comes as close to despair as any song by Fauré.

Fauré’s only previous song cycle was La Bonne Chanson, written in the midst of his affair with Emma Bardac in 1892. La Chanson d’Ève, he knew would be very different but, as he wrote to his wife when he told her he was going to incorporate Crépuscule into a set of songs from the same source, it was the difference that interested him. He did not find it easy, however, least of all in Paradis. “My text is difficult,” he wrote, “it is descriptive and not at all sentimental. And I have to have God the Father speaking and then his daughter Eve. Ah! It’s not easy to have to have to deal with such eminent persons.” The answer, he found, was simplicity. “I’ve worked seven hours and I’ve solved the problem of having God sing. When you see what his eloquence consists of you will be very surprised that it took me so long to find it. But, alas!, bare simplicity is the most difficult thing to imagine.”

The longest of all Fauré’s song, Paradis is so varied in content that it is almost a cantata. It is held together, however, by the radiantly innocent Mélisande-Ève motif which rises slowly in the right hand of the piano part as the first day dawns in the opening line. It is twice recalled during the course of the song – at “Ouvrant à la clarté ses doux et vagues yeux” and “Cependant le jour passe.” The other main theme, a more melodious idea, is first heard in the piano part just after “Un jardin bleu s’épanouit” as a link to the next stanza, where it features as a nature motif. It too recurs several times before its final appearance at the end but never with the harmonic indulgence its shapely line seems to imply: Fauré preserves the freshness of the scene and the innocence of Eve by means of a contrapuntal texture and fresh, even severe harmonies that exclude any suggestion of sensuality.

As it happens, none of the next three songs in the present selection from La Chanson d’Ève alludes to either of the two cyclical themes. They do, however, reflect Eve’s personal development as she sings of the beauties of nature she brings to life by giving them names in Prima verba (First Words), as she awakens to the sensuality and the love in them in L’Aube blanche and as she anticipates her meeting with Adam in the passionate if still innocent Veilles-tu, which is impelled throughout by the same impatient rhythmic figuration in the piano part.

Fauré’s first Lerberghe setting, Crépuscule eventually found its place as the ninth of the ten songs of La Chanson d’Ève. When Jeanne Raunay and Fauré gave a preliminary performance of the still incomplete cycle in 1909, however, it came last – an entirely appropriate position for a song which is based on the same innocent motif as the opening song, Paradis, but which senses the end of the paradise to which Eve awoke on that radiant first day of the world.