Puisqu'ici-bas

By far the most successful Saint-Saëns pupil, and perhaps the greatest of all French song composers, was Gabriel Fauré. While the proportion of duets to solo songs is even smaller in his case (only three out of a hundred or so) they are among the best of their kind. Of the two Op.10 duets - written in 1873 for Marianne Viardot, to whom he was briefly to be engaged, and her sister Claudine - Pusiqu’ici-bas tout âme was originally conceived as a solo song during Fauré’s student days. If its solo origin shows through in the way the two voices alternate for most of the piece, coming together only in the middle and at the end, it is no less appealingly melodious and no less attractively coloured for that. As for Tarentelle, which sets the two voices in bravura competition at the end, there is surely no more brilliantly written duet in the repertoire.