Nocturne No 7 in C sharp minor Op. 74 (1898)

Molto lento – Allegro – Molto lento

It takes no more than a glance at the most frequently recurring titles in the list of Fauré’s works – Nocturnes, Barcarolles, Impromptus, Préludes – to work out where, as a piano composer, he was coming from. Even if he hadn’t chosen to signal his allegiance in that way, the Chopin influence would still have beeen plain enough in his piano music until he was well into his thirties. As far as the 13 Nocturnes are concerned, the turning point is No.4 in E flat major, which was written when he was not far short of forty. Coming 14 years after that, No.7 in C sharp minor not only betrays no trace of the Chopin model but also bears no resemblance to any other example of its kind. It is one of the most personal, even one of the most enigmatic, of all Fauré’s works.

The clue to its inspiration is probably to be found in the dedication to Adela Maddison, herself a gifted musician, whom the composer first met in 1894 and who left her husband and two children at about the same time as the Seventh Nocturne was written. This is not to suggest, however, that the work is a conventional confession of erotic passion. There is nothing at all conventional about the Molto lento material with which it begins and which returns, after a quicker and eventful middle section, towards the end. It is a kind of organ-style chorale set in C sharp minor and in a rare 18/8 time, its sustained melodic line undermined by the counterpoint that runs in a limping iambic rhythm or triplet quavers beneath it. The erotic element enters in a slightly quicker passage in D major, still in 18/8 time, where the duple rhythms of an expressive right-hand melody clash exquisitely with the triplets in the left. The opening tempo and chorale are restored but now to be confronted with the erotic material in a conflict which rises to a passionately dissonant climax.

The central Allegro ­– which­ begins only after the opening section has come to a rest on three C sharp minor chords in the bottom half of the keyboard – is a an ecstatically happy, melodically abundant episode in F sharp major. Based on no fewer than four themes, it blossoms into voluptuosuly decorative figuration and encounters scarcely a trace of adversity. Not even the return of the Molto lento, recalling the chorale melody and its iambic counterpoint, erases the idyll: although the dissonant climax of the opening section is recalled, the original C sharp minor harmonies are avoided. Indeed, the closing section dissolves, enharmonically, into a blissful D flat major coda.