Pelléas et Mélisande, Suite, Op.80

Of the four composers most prominently associated with Maurice Maeterlinck’s Pelléas et Mélisande - Debussy for his opera, Schoenberg for his symphonic poem, Fauré and Sibelius for their incidental music - Fauré was the first to have his score performed. Commissioned in a hurry by Mrs Patrick Campbell to write the music for the first production of the play in English, Fauré completed it in a month and conducted it himself at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London in 1898.

The four movement he later chose to include in a concert suite - from a total of nineteen bits and pieces, including a song for Mrs Patrick Campbell as Mélisande - present a poignant portrait of Maeterlinck’s lonely heroine. The Prélude is based on a theme which, in its restricted movement in narrow melodic intervals, reflects her introverted, essentially private personality. A second theme, introduced by a compassionate solo cello and woodwind, might be taken to represent Mélisande as Golaud sees her when, lost while out hunting, he first finds her by the well in the forest.

La Fileuse accompanies Mélisande innocently at work at her spinning wheel. A characteristically intimate theme rises gently on a solo oboe, the spinning wheel running quietly but persistently on upper strings and failing only at the climax of the movement where, perhaps, Mélisande’s mind wanders from her work and turns towards Golaud’s younger half-brother, Pelléas. The one moment of happiness shared by Pelléas and Mélisande is represented by the Sicilienne, and no less aptly because it was originally written for a quite different occasion.

The funereal implications of the Molto adagio are unmistakable. So too is the subject of the lament as the melody in the flute and clarinets rises and falls in characteristically narrow intervals. The audience at the Prince of Wales Theatre in 1898 would also have recognised the first entry of the violins as an allusion to Mélisande’s song. The first theme returns ff on the strings before a last echo of the song and a sadly modal approach on solo flute to the final chord.

Though not the greatest example of European theatre round the turn of the century, Maurice Maeterlinck’s Pelléas et Mélisande did touch directly on the aesthetic nerve of the time. Debussy completed the first version of his Pelléas et Mélisande opera only three years after the play was published, although it took a further seven years and much revision before it was first performed in 1902. It was also in 1902 that Schoenberg, working in Berlin and apparently unaware of Debussy’s triumph with the opera in Paris, wrote his symphonic poem, Pelleas und Melisande. In the meantime Gabriel Fauré had conducted his incidental music for Pelleas and Melisande in English at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London in 1898. Sibelius’s equally inspired incidental music was written for a production of the play in Swedish in Helsinki in 1905.

Fauré was not an entirely uncritical admirer of Maeterlinck’s writing but he clearly found himself in sympathy with the melancholy poetry of Pelléas et Mélisande. There were eight pieces of incidental music in all - including a song for Mrs Patrick Campbell as Mélisande - and, although they were written in a hurry (with the scoring for small orchestra undertaken by Fauré’s pupil Charles Koechlin) - they present a poignant portrait of Maeterlinck’s lonely heroine. The four pieces selected and reorchestrated by Fauré for the concert suite, are a fascinating and moving example of musical characterisation.

The Prélude is based on a theme which, in its restricted movement in seconds and minor thirds, reflects the introverted, essentially private personality of Mélisande. A second theme, introduced by solo cello and woodwind and distinguished by its compassionate falling sixth, might be taken to represent Mélisande as Golaud sees her when he first finds her by the fountain in the forest - which seems to be confirmed towards the end of the movement when the sound of his hunting horn echoes between repeated fragments of cello melody.

La Fileuse accompanies Mélisande innocently at work at her spinning wheel. A characteristic Mélisande theme rises gently in seconds and third on a solo oboe and then falls down a sixth. The spinning wheel runs quietly but persistently on upper strings, continuing through the middle section and the introduction of a new theme on horn and clarinet. It fails only at the climax of the movement where, perhaps, Mélisande’s mind wanders from her work and turns towards Golaud’s younger half-brother, Pelléas.

The Sicilienne was originally a cello and piano piece written for a quite different occasion. The quality of the melody introduced by flute over harp arpeggions and the modestly resourceful monothematic construction should be persuasive enough to settle any doubts as to its propriety here.

The funereal implications of the Molto adagio, which originally introduced the last act of the play, are unmistakable. So too is the subject of the lament as the melody in the flute and clarinets rises and falls in second and thirds. The audience at the Prince of Wales Theatre in 1898 would also have recognised the first entry of the violins as an allusion to Mélisande’s song. The central climax is based on the theme of the middle section of La Fileuse and the compassionate falling sixth from the Prélude. The first theme returns ff on the strings before a last echo of the song and a sadly modal approach on solo flute to the final chord.

The Molto adagio was one of several Fauré pieces performed at the composer’s funeral in 1924.