À quoi bon entendre

If a claim could be made for anyone as Hugo’s composer it would be Saint-Saëns. He set only twenty of his poems, which scarcely makes him Hugo’s equivalent of Mörike’s Wolf, but they were written over a long period in his life and represent as much as a third of his total song output. His enthusiasm having been aroused by a handsomely bound collection of Hugo poems given to him in his youth, he acquired every new volume as it was published and never lost his musician’s interest in them. Even during the time in the middle of his career when he wrote few songs of any kind he fashioned choruses on Hugo poems, composed his symphonic poem Le Rouet d’Omphale after a poem in Les Contemplations, and contributed to a campaign to erect a statue to the poet with his Hymne à Victor Hugo in 1881. He is one of the few composers, moreover, to have set a poem (Chant de ceux qui s’en vont sur mer) from the politically unsafe Les Châtiments when Hugo was still in exile.

The affinity between poet and composer is no better illustrated than by the earliest of the songs in this group, Soirée en mer (from Les voix intérieures), which is an apparently spontaneous and yet broadly conceived outpouring of vocal melody over a suitably undulating piano accompaniment. In comparison with that À quoi bon entendre seems no more than a salon charmer. In fact, its light rhythms, flexible vocal line and easy harmonies, which are artfully recalled in the little piano postlude, are perfectly adjusted to the not very great weight of words taken from a serenade in Ruy Blas.

La Coccinelle is a delightfully playful setting of another light-hearted poem (from Les Contemplations) - basically a pun on the French term for ladybird, “Bête au bon Dieu” - its piano part briefly anticipating insect songs by Chabrier and Ravel, its vocal line resorting to parody at the end. One of the most intriguing of all Hugo poems, Si vous n’avez rien à me dire (also from Les Contemplations) is set here with masterfully understated sentiment. The modest change of harmony for the second stanza, the quickly suppressed access of passion in the third and the quietly melodious piano interludes are all the more poignant for the prevailing simplicity.