Composers › Reynaldo Hahn › Programme note
Quand je fus pris au Pavillon (1899)
Gerald Larner wrote 2 versions of differing length — choose one below.
3 Études latines (1900)
Lydé
Tyndaris
Pholoé
Trois jours de vendange (1891)
À Chloris (1916)
Whatever his other qualities as a song composer – and it is worth remembering that it was his rather than Debussy’s or Fauré’s Verlaine settings that moved the poet to tears – Hahn was a master of pastiche. Quand je fus pris au pavillon is a characteristic example. Although he didn’t go as far back as the fifteenth century in search of a musical equivalent to the verse of Charles d’Orléans, he did find a historical style convincingly appropriate to its archaic language and fussy rondel form (just two rhymes recurring through thirteen lines).
Where there was no known period style to draw on, as in the cycle of ten songs based on Leconte de Lisle’s Études latines, Hahn was adept at inventing one. Lydé, though probably not what one imagines the music of the Romans to have sounded like, has a ritual aspect in both its steady succession of piano chords (arpeggiated at one point by Lydé’s lyre) and the formality of its baroque keyboard decorations. The piano ritornello in the tender setting of Tyndaris is more lyrical, reflecting perhaps the soft song of the doves or the running springs, while Pholoé postulates another ceremonial atmosphere, not least in its closing cadence.
If the stylistic allusion in the first stanza of the Daudet setting Trois jours de vendange is no more historical than Chabrier’s relatively recent Lied, by the end of the song, after the change of harmony in the second stanza, it goes as far back as the medieval Dies irae theme. As for À Chloris, it is a frank pastiche of J.S. Bach justified, on one level, by its peculiar charm and, on another level, by its stylistic reflection of the baroque sentiment of the seventeenth-century text.
From Gerald Larner’s files: “Etudes latines”
Trois jours de vendange (1891)
3 Études latines (1900)
Lydé
Tyndaris
Pholoé
À Chloris (1916)
Whatever his other qualities as a song composer - and it is worth remembering that it was his rather than Debussy’s or Fauré’s Verlaine settings that moved the poet to tears - Hahn was a master of pastiche. Quand je fus pris au pavillon is a characteristic example. Although he didn’t go as far back as the fifteenth century in search of a musical equivalent to the verse of Charles d’Orléans, he did find a historical style convincingly appropriate to its archaic language and fussy rondel form (just two rhymes recurring through thirteen lines). If the folk-song style of the first stanza of the Alphone Daudet setting Trois jours de vendange is no more authentic than that of Chabrier’s rather similar and relatively recent Lied, by the end of the song, after the change of harmony prompted by the change of fortune in the second stanza, the allusions go as far back as the medieval Dies irae theme.
Where there was no known period style to draw on, as in the cycle of ten songs based on Leconte de Lisle’s Études latines, Hahn was adept at inventing one. Lydé, though probably not what one imagines the music of the Romans to have sounded like, has a ritual aspect in both its steady succession of piano chords (arpeggiated at one point by Lydé’s lyre) and the formality of its baroque keyboard decorations. The piano ritornello in the tender setting of Tyndaris is more lyrical, reflecting perhaps the soft song of the doves or the running springs, while Pholoé postulates another ceremonial atmosphere, not least in its closing cadence.
As for À Chloris, it is a frank pastiche of J.S. Bach justified, on one level, by its peculiar charm and, on another level, by its stylistic reflection of the baroque sentiment of the seventeenth-century text.
From Gerald Larner’s files: “3 Etudes latine/n*.rtf”