Poème d’un jour Op.21 (1878)

Rencontre

Toujours

Adieu

Heartbroken by the end of his engagement to Pauline Viardot’s daughter Marianne - who apparently realised, just in time, that her passion for him was nothing like as intense as his for her - Fauré was moved to write his first song cycle, Poème d’un jour. It has been argued that his settings of three not very distinguished poems by Charles Grandmougin scarcely add up to a cycle but, since they were inspired by the same event and represent a narrative progression, from first meeting to dismissal and a lingering farewell, it seems perverse to deny cyclical status to them.

While it is true that the three songs have no significant melodic motif in common, there is not only a logical key relationship but also a textural link between them. In both the first two songs the vocal line is supported by a rhythmic pattern sustained from the first bar to the last - flowing semiquaver arpeggios in Rencontre, driving triplets in Toujours. It is conceivable that they could be performed as a pair but neither is complete in itself and they make complete sense only when followed by Adieu. In this last case the textural identity changes with each stanza, the second agitated by a memory of the unhappy triplet rhythms of Toujours as the harmonies turn to the minor. The calm beauty of the melodic line of the first stanza is restored in its major-key security in the third - though not without a dangerous harmonic side-step towards the end and a hint of underlying regret before the final “Adieu!”

      Rencontre

      Toujours

      Adieu

Green Op.58 No.3 (1891)

Prison Op.83 No.1 (1894)

Nell Op.18 No1 (1878)

Fleur jetée Op.39 No.2 (1884)

Heartbroken by the end of his engagement to Pauline Viardot’s daughter Marianne – who apparently realised, just in time, that her passion for him was nothing like as intense as his for her – Fauré was moved to write his first song cycle, Poème d’un jour. It has been argued that his settings of three not very distinguished poems by Charles Grandmougin scarcely add up to a cycle but, since they were inspired by the same event and represent a narrative progression from first meeting to dismissal and a lingering farewell, it seems perverse to deny cyclical status to them.

While it is true that the three songs have no significant melodic motif in common, there is not only a logical key relationship but also a textural link between them. In both the first two songs the vocal line is supported by a rhythmic pattern sustained from the first bar to the last – flowing semiquaver arpeggios in Rencontre, driving triplets in Toujours. It is conceivable that they could be performed as a pair but neither is complete in itself and they make complete sense only when followed by Adieu. In this last case the textural identity changes with each stanza, the second agitated by a memory of the unhappy triplet rhythms of Toujours as the harmonies turn to the minor. The calm beauty of the melodic line of the first stanza is restored in its major-key security only towards the end.

After the Grandmougin songs, Green, one of the earliest of Fauré’s 17 Verlaine settings (from Cinq Mélodies de Venise) presents a refreshingly verdant landscape, its eager sentiment reflected in the variety of harmonies applied to a little motif that enters the piano part at the beginning of the second stanza and persists in its breathless way to the end of the song His last Verlaine setting, Prison, is an uncharacteristically stark but effectively dramatic reaction to the poet’s bitter self-recriminations (published in Sagesses) in prison in Brussels after his attack on Arthur Rimbaud in 1873.

Fauré’s favourite poet before Verlaine was Leconte de Lisle whose Nell (from Chansons écossaises vaguely in the manner of Burns) inspired an early masterpiece which, though accompanied throughout by semiquaver arpeggios, is remarkable for its flexible phrasing, its liberated modulations and its expressive counterpoint between voice and piano. Though not in the same literary league as Leconte de Lisle, Armand Sylvestre produced in Fleur jetée a poem which, far from inducing the “dreamy indolence” usually associated with him, moved Fauré to an expression of violence of an intensity so rare in French song that, it seems, he found the model for his setting in Schubert.