Pastorale d’été

Honegger’s two most popular works, Pastorale d’été and Pacific 231, seem to have little in common. Though written within three years of each other, when the composer was in his late 20s and early 30s, they derive from mutually exclusive, even inimical, sources of inspiration, with the result that each has its own entirely distinctive sound. Pastorale d’été, conceived during a holiday in the countryside at Wengen in the Bernese Oberland in August 1920, is a serene reflection of nature scored for a small ensemble of strings with one each of flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn. Pacific 231 is an awesome representation of mechanical might scored for a correspondingly large orchestra. Even so – though headed by an evocative line from Rimbaud, “J’ai embrassé l’aube d’été” (I have embraced the dawn of summer) –    Pastorale d’eté is no piece of impressionistic self-indulgence. It is as precisely engineered as the locomotive that powers its way through Pacific 231.

One indication of the calculation involved in Pastorale d’été is that the undulating motif heard on the cellos at the outset is repeated in nearly every bar until the change of tempo a third of the way through. As well as the cello ostinato, there are other repeated figures in the opening Tranquillo section, mainly on violins and violas, which makes the contemplative melody introduced by the horn and taken up by the oboe seem all the more lyrically liberated. With fragments of bird song echoing on flute and clarinet it is an idyllic scene. The middle section, though it proceeds at precisely twice the speed, is scarcely less idyllic, given its folk-song tune introduced by clarinet and its answer on bassoon. Developed by the whole ensemble (not without echoes of Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony here and there) the new material animates a fortissimo climax before it subsides to make way for a return of the opening Tranquillo.

Another indication of Honegger’s structural calculation is that while the familiar features of the opening section are recalled here – the cello ostinato, the wind melody, the bird song – the folk tune from the middle section is discreetly integrated with them, first in its original tempo on woodwind, later very much slowed down on horn as the tempo is further reduced for the nostalgic closing bars.