Nocturne from Shylock, Op.57

Fauré’s Shylock Nocturne breathes much the same air, in the same moonlit garden in Venice, as Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music. Written as part of the incidental music for a French version of The Merchant of Venice at the Théâtre de l’Odéon in Paris in 1889, the Nocturne was designed for the love scene between Lorenzo and Jessica in the last act. Nearly fifty years later Vaughan Williams found the words for his Serenade, “How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank,” in the equivalent scene in the Shakespearian original. Although Fauré’s Nocturne is scored for strings only and Vaughan Williams’s Serenade for voices and orchestra, the enchanted atmosphere, the erotic poetry and even the shape of the melodic lines of the two works clearly derive from the same source of inspiration. The main theme of the Fauré Nocturne, first heard on violins after a short introduction and spontaneously developed by a string ensemble in up to twelve parts, haunted the composer for years afterwards and reappears in several other pieces.