Читать книгу The Faure Song Cycles - Stephen Rumph - Страница 16

In “S’il est un charmant gazon,” his fifth song from Les chants du crépuscule, Fauré explored the expressive potential of counterpoint. Counterpoint here signifies not only the combination of melodic lines but also the relationship between the two performers. For the first time in Fauré’s songs, the piano ritornello plays a truly integrated role, becoming an inseparable part of the musical-poetic design. At a deeper level still, “S’il est un charmant gazon” presents a counterpoint of genres that crystallizes a particular moment in the history of French song.

Motivically, the ritornello and strophes of “S’il est un charmant gazon” are closely interrelated (see example 1.5). The piano and vocal melodies both fall into two-bar subphrases that descend to an accented passing tone, a sighing figure that permeates the entire song. The rising arpeggio in m. 2 also resembles a similar figure in the second half of the vocal strophes (see mm. 19 and 21). Yet the pentatonic piano arpeggio is obviously related to the common motive from “Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre” and “Mai,” which follows at the end of the ritornello. Clearly, Fauré did not compose the piano ritornello of “S’il est un charmant gazon” as an afterthought, as in the earlier songs. The ritornello develops material from previous songs and is integrated motivically with the vocal strophes.

The ritornello and strophes share another less noticeable structural feature. Fauré wrote the entire ritornello in strict four-part counterpoint, paying close attention to voice-leading. The first bar contains a voice exchange between the melody, which descends from F₄ to D₄, and the tenor voice in the left hand, which ascends from D₃ to F₃ in even quarter notes. The same voice exchange returns twice, each time a fifth higher, as the two-bar model repeats sequentially. The inner voice also returns at the cadence, where the alto line rises from D₄ to F₄.

We might overlook this voice-leading detail did it not return so strikingly in the strophes. The first two phrases begin with a voice exchange between the descending vocal line (C₅ to A₄) and the ascending alto line in the piano (A₃ to C₄). The bass line, meanwhile, rises in contrary motion against the voice as it falls from C₅ to F₄. The bass only climbs a fourth in the first phrase, reversing direction on B♭₂, but in the consequent phrase it reaches C₃, mirroring the singer’s fifth descent. This contrapuntal “consummation” immediately precedes the rhapsodic arpeggios, as if the rising bass line had released a new energy in the melody.

EXAMPLE 1.5. Fauré, “S’il est un charmant gazon,” mm. 1–24.

EXAMPLE 1.5. (continued)

The expressive meaning behind this contrapuntal design becomes clear in the third stanza, where Fauré departed from the strophic form. In the first two strophes, the staccato accompaniment consists of a bass line and offbeat chords, imitating a mandolin or guitar. In the third strophe, an emphatic new voice joins the serenade (see example 1.6). This inner voice begins with a series of descending octaves leaps, foregrounded with heavy accents. The falling interval is, of course, an inversion of the vocalist’s octave leap, which follows immediately in the fifth bar. The contrary motion introduced in the piano ritornello has thus expanded from a third to a fifth to a full octave. During the modified consequent phrase, the new tenor voice descends chromatically, shadowing the singer’s melody in parallel tenths (mm. 65–68). Fauré clearly wanted to call attention to the counterpoint in this stanza, but why? The answer lies in the fifth and sixth lines:

EXAMPLE 1.6. Fauré, “S’il est un charmant gazon,” mm. 57–68.

Un rêve que Dieu bénit	A dream that God blesses
Où l’âme à l’âme s’unit . . .	In which soul with soul unites . . .

The contrapuntal lines depict this union of souls as they crisscross, mirror, and parallel one another. This is no facile pictorialism or isolated effect. Fauré has baked the contrapuntal design into every bar of the song, in both the piano ritornello and vocal strophes.

Yet the poetry and music of “S’il est un charmant gazon” are hardly soul mates. In fact, poetic and musical syntax are at loggerheads in Fauré’s peculiar setting. Hugo’s poem has a markedly hypotactic structure like that of “Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre.” Each stanza consists of a single complex sentence that begins with a series of subordinate clauses and does not reach closure until the last two lines:

S’il est un charmant gazon	If there is a pleasant lawn
Que le ciel arrose,	That heaven waters,
Où naisse en toute saison	Where at each season spring
Quelque fleur éclose,	Blossoming flowers,
Où l’on cueille à pleine main	Where one gathers abundantly
Lys, chèvrefeuille et jasmin,	Lily, honeysuckle, and jasmine,
J’en veux faire le chemin	I would make a path
Où ton pied se pose!	Where your foot might tread!

The rhyme scheme also has a nested structure, ababcccb, in which the b rhyme encloses the whole stanza. Moreover, Hugo used the same b rhyme (-ose) in all three stanzas, knitting together the entire poem. If the construction of “Mai” suggests headlong enthusiasm, “S’il est un charmant gazon” has the effect of a tautly organized argument.

In his setting of “Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre,” Fauré responded to Hugo’s hypotaxis with music that vividly represents the prolongation of desire—yearning melodic lines, unstable harmonies, a broad and complex phrase structure. His setting of “S’il est un charmant gazon,” on the other hand, could hardly be more complacent. The strophes begin squarely in the tonic with a melody that descends from to like a cadential formula. The harmony sticks doggedly to the tonic, and most remarkably, the antecedent phrase ends with a full cadence. Fauré seems to have been bent on defusing any harmonic or melodic tension, setting Hugo’s tortuous sentences to remarkably bland music.

Yet Fauré by no means overlooked Hugo’s syntax. Let us turn again to the piano ritornello. The theme is an eight-bar sentence, like the prelude to “Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre,” with a pair of sequential two-bar phrases followed by a four-bar continuation. Each of the three phrases starts on a remote harmony with the melody poised on the dissonant seventh degree. The first phrase begins on a startling V⁷ of V and moves elliptically to I⁶. This uneasy resolution is undercut by the second phrase, which begins a fifth higher on vi⁷ and resolves to ii. The third phrase ratchets the tension still higher, rising another fifth and beginning abruptly on V of vi before working back around to the tonic. The piano thus supplies the harmonic tension and sense of prolonged resolution absent from the vocal part. In fact, there is a precise parallel between the harmonic structure of Fauré’s eight-bar ritornello and the syntax of Hugo’s eight-line stanzas. Both consist of a single complex sentence that begins with three unstable clauses and reaches closure in the final two bars/lines.

A strange division of labor! The piano ritornello realizes Hugo’s rhetorical structure while the vocal strophes blithely ignore the poet’s complicated syntax. In fact, other than the shared motivic and contrapuntal features, the ritornello and strophes seem to belong to different songs. The ritornello strikes a serious tone with its strict four-part writing, rhapsodic gestures, and espressivo marking. The melody of the strophes, on the other hand, exudes a naïve, almost folk-like simplicity, while the staccato accompaniment evokes the modest chanson genre, the realm of serenades, barcarolles, and drinking songs. Not only do the vocal strophes ignore Hugo’s syntax, but they fit poorly with the word accents. Of all Fauré’s early songs, “S’il est un charmant gazon” is plagued by the most discrepancies of text-setting across sources, including editions. It almost seems as if Fauré had grafted Hugo’s poem onto the melody of a discarded song . . .

Nouvelle chanson sur un vieil air. “New words to an old tune.” Hugo’s title, we recall, hints at an anonymous folksong beneath the new poem. Fauré seems to have taken the title seriously. His naïve vocal melody sounds very much like a vieil air to which new words have been awkwardly fitted. The sophisticated piano ritornello, on the other hand, suggests the perspective of the modern poet as he toys with his folk artifact. Given the carefully fashioned musical connections between the piano and vocal parts, it seems entirely plausible that the composer intended this duality. It is an ingenious conception that should banish forever the notion of Fauré as a naïve reader.

Yet there is still more involved in this counterpoint of piano and voice. Fauré has staged a dialogue between national styles. The ritornello is pure German Romanticism, lifted from the pages of Schumann’s Dichterliebe, while the strophes tap the limpid vocalism of Fauré’s native tradition. As “S’il est un charmant gazon” demonstrates, Fauré did not need to graduate from the romance to the mélodie. His student songs already draw the two genres into a dialogue that engages stylistic register, social function, and national identity. Fauré clearly intended to publish these songs, since he approached Victor Hugo in 1864 for the rights to the poems.²⁷ We may thus view Fauré’s dialogue of genres as his fashioning of a compositional voice as he prepared to set himself before the public eye. The early Hugo settings align him with the traditions of the salon romance, even as they bid for the prestige of the Germanic mélodie. They make a remarkable debut for the composer who more than any other would shape the course of French art song into the twentieth century.