Читать книгу The Faure Song Cycles - Stephen Rumph - Страница 19

Fauré found “Lydia” in the Poèmes antiques at the end of the “Études latines,” eighteen poems inspired by Horace’s odes. Leconte de Lisle based the first sixteen études on specific odes; only “Lydia” and the concluding “Envoi” were freely composed.¹⁹ The sixth étude, “Vile potabis,” gives the flavor of these exercises. Leconte de Lisle modeled his poem on the twentieth ode from Horace’s first book:

Vile potabis modicis Sabinum

cantharis, Graeca quod ego ipse testa

conditum levi, datus in theatro

cum tibi plausus,

clare Maecenas eques, ut paterni

fluminis ripae simul et iocosa

redderet laudes tibi Vaticani

montis imago.

Caecubum et prelo domitam Caleno

tu bibes uvam: mea nec Falernae

temperant vites neque Formiani

pocula colles.

You will drink from modest cups a cheap Sabine wine that I stored away in a Greek jar and sealed with my own hand on the day when you, Maecenas, illustrious knight, were given such applause in the theater that the banks of your fathers’ river, yes, and the playful echo from the Vatican Hill, repeated your praises. At home you can drink Caecuban and the grape that is crushed in the presses of Cales; my cups are not mellowed by the vines of Falernum or Formian hillsides.²⁰

The French poet preserved Horace’s opening words and his basic content. But he transformed the Sapphic stanzas and quantitative meter into a modern form, a single dizain of rhyming octosyllables. Moreover, he gave the ode an aestheticist slant, emphasizing the role of the Parnassian muses:

En mes coupes d’un prix modique

Veux-tu tenter mon humble vin?

Je l’ai scellé dans l’urne Attique

Au sortir du pressoir Sabin.

Il est un peu rude et moderne:

Cécube, Calès ni Falerne

Ne mûrissent dans mon cellier;

Mais les Muses me sont amies,

Et les muses font oublier

Ta vigne dorée, ô Formies!

In my cups of modest worth

Would you try my humble wine?

I sealed it in the Attic urn

As soon as it left the Sabine press.

It is a bit crude and new:

Wines of Cecuba, Cales, and Falernum

Are not aging in my cellar;

But I am a friend to the muses,

And the muses will make us forget

Your golden vine, o Formia!

Leconte de Lisle summed up his historicist vision in the “Envoi” to the Horatian études, which acknowledges the distance between ancient art and its modern emulation:

Je n’ai ni trépieds grecs, ni coupes de Sicile,

Ni bronzes d’Éturie aux contours élégants . . .

De ces trésors, Gallus, je ne puis t’offrir rien;

Mais j’ai des mètres chers à la Muse natale:

La lyre en assouplit la cadence inégale.

Je te les donne, ami! C’est mon unique bien.

I have neither Grecian tripods nor Sicilian goblets,

Nor elegantly contoured Etruscan bronzes . . .

Of such treasures, Gallus, I can offer nothing;

But I have meters dear to my native Muse:

The lyre softens their uneven rhythm.

I give them to you, friend! They are my sole possession.

The dedication to the elegist Cornelius Gallus puns on gallus, or inhabitant of Gaul. The French poet thus appropriates Latin antiquity to his native tradition and passes the torch to his modern reader. In the “Études latines,” as Eduard Pich explained, the modern poet draws Horace into a living tradition: “These works nourish his genius and lead him to produce, in turn, works that death threatens to swallow up, but which the dying poet bequeaths to Gallus, his friend, his brother, his reader, who in turn will give new life to the ancient inspiration.”²¹

“Lydia,” the final étude, spins a delicate web of antitheses around the ancient carpe diem topos. The ode emphasizes the tension between permanence and flux, immortality and decay, timeless antiquity and modern art:

Lydia, sur tes roses joues,

Et sur ton col frais, et plus blanc

Que le lait, coule étincelant

L’or fluide que tu dénoues.

Le jour qui luit est le meilleur;

Oublions l’éternelle tombe;

Laisse tes baisers de colombe

Chanter sur tes lèvres en fleur.

Un lys caché répand sans cesse

Une odeur divine en ton sein;

Les délices, comme un essaim,

Sortent de toi, jeune Déesse!

Je t’aime et meurs, ô mes amours!

Mon âme en baisers m’est ravie.

O Lydia, rends-moi la vie,

Que je puisse mourir toujours!

Lydia, over your rosy cheeks

And your fresh neck, more white

Than milk, pours radiantly

The liquid gold that you loosen.

The shining day is best;

Let us forget the eternal tomb;

Let your dovelike kisses

Sing upon your flowering lips.

A hidden lily spreads unceasingly

A divine odor in your breast;

Delights, like a swarm,

Issue from you, young goddess!

I love you and die, oh my love.

My soul is ravished by kisses!

O Lydia, give me back my life

That I may die forever.

Lydia’s loosened hair suggests erotic abandon but also hints at the ultimate dénouement, death. The second stanza transforms her golden tresses into the shining sun, poised against the inexorable tomb, an opposition that also informs the paradoxical images of “liquid gold” (line 4) and “young goddess” (line 12). Likewise, the “divine odor” emanating from Lydia’s bosom in the third stanza evokes contradictory meanings, suggesting both youthful allure and embalming spices.²² Half woman, half goddess, Lydia unites sensuality and spirit, warm humanity and cool statuary.

The fourth stanza epitomizes Leconte de Lisle’s exquisite craftsmanship. A caesura divides the first line symmetrically, enhancing the resonance between “amours” and “meurt,” love and death (understood as la petite mort, in the best Renaissance tradition). The outer lines of the rimes embrassées, concerning the poet’s death, end with -ou, the darkest of vowel sounds; the inner lines, celebrating his rebirth, with -i, the brightest sound. The repeated m sounds of “t’aime,” “meurt,” “mes amours,” and “mon âme” draw the reader’s lips into a kiss, the central image of the stanza. Indeed, Lydia’s singing, dovelike lips resolve the antitheses developed across the entire poem: as the modern poet unites his mouth to timeless beauty, a new art takes flight. Such is the discipline of the Parnassian artist, who must continually die to self and rise transfigured within objective form. With its balance of passion and control, “Lydia” both practices and preaches Leconte de Lisle’s poetic creed.

Fauré’s setting achieves the same balance between spontaneity and discipline. He adhered to the conservative form of the salon romance, dividing Leconte de Lisle’s ode into two identical strophes (see example 2.1). Yet the composer abandoned his usual period or sentence structure and wrote an entirely through-composed melody, four unique phrases that unfold in a series of widening undulations. The first phrase surges passionately, while the second cascades back down like Lydia’s loosened tresses. The third phrase rises to high F for the image of the shining sun, but again falls earthward at the thought of “l’éternelle tombe.” Yet the rhapsodic melody conceals finely crafted motivic connections. The singer’s rising scale from m. 5 returns in the piano in mm. 17–18, while the rising sequence of interlocking thirds in mm. 3–4 is inverted in mm. 7–9. More subtly still, the voice exchanges between the tenor voice and melody in mm. 7–8 combine ascending and descending thirds in contrary motion. The fourth phrase nicely captures Leconte de Lisle’s chiaroscuro of beauty and death: a discreet touch of Italianate cantilena evokes the singing doves, while the flattened sixth and seventh degrees cast a shadow over Lydia’s flowering lips.

EXAMPLE 2.1. Fauré, “Lydia,” mm. 1–19.

EXAMPLE 2.1. (continued)

Leconte de Lisle’s fusion of ancient and modern art awoke a rich echo in Fauré, a graduate of the École Niedermeyer who had studied plainchant accompaniment, Renaissance polyphony, and Bach’s organ works.²³ The strict four-part texture in “Lydia” creates a sense of historical distance, as does the hint of fauxbourdon in m. 11 and, of course, Fauré’s witty use of the Lydian mode in its proper key of F major. Fauré’s treatment of modality, however, reveals the same free appropriation of the past as Leconte de Lisle’s Horatian études. For those unfamiliar with the medieval modes, a brief explanation will help. Each of the modes has an authentic and a plagal version—for example, Dorian and Hypodorian—depending on the ambitus of the melody. In the authentic mode, the melody lies above the final, or concluding note, while in the plagal mode it surrounds the final. The authentic and plagal modes also have different dominants, secondary pitch centers that serve as reciting tones. The dominant of the Lydian mode is C, while that of the Hypolydian mode is A. The melody of “Lydia” lies entirely within the F₄-F₅ ambitus of the Lydian mode, yet the first phrase cadences on A minor, the dominant of the Hypolydian mode (mm. 5–6). The composer certainly knew the correct dominant for each mode from his school days. In their 1857 treatise on plainchant accompaniment, Louis Niedermeyer and Joseph d’Ortigue wrote of the Hypolydian mode, “F is the final as in the preceding [mode], but the dominant is a, which gives rise to the frequent use of the chord we know as a minor.”²⁴ Evidently, Fauré chose the Hypolydian dominant for its antique quality, rather than the historically accurate C major, which would have sounded indistinguishable from a modern V chord.

The archaic spell of the modal dominant does not last long. No sooner does the melody cadence on A minor than a descending sequence in the piano restores tonal syntax, correcting the characteristic raised fourth of the Lydian mode. The deceptive cadence in m. 7 abruptly resumes the modal train of thought, as the Lydian B♮ returns within a hovering vi⁷ chord. Yet a descending sequence again sweeps the song back into the present, restoring B♭ and rotating downward through the circle of fifths (mm. 8–10). Modality and tonality maintain a delicate balance in Fauré’s assimilation of the church modes.

The opening modulation of “Lydia” became a signature of Fauré’s music. The song “Le secret” (1881), a hymnlike setting of another Parnassian poet, begins with a Lydian melody and the same I-iii progression. The Agnus Dei of the Requiem (1888) uses the same progression in F major; the Lydian B♮ infiltrates mm. 14–16, triggering a modulation to the modal dominant, A minor. “Fileuse,” the spinning song from the incidental music to Pelléas et Mélisande (1898), provides the classic example of Fauré’s “Lydia” modulation: the first phrase introduces the raised fourth of G major, C♯, which leads to a decisive cadence on B minor. As we shall see, Fauré used the modulation to great effect in La bonne chanson where he actually quoted “Lydia.” The composer explained the rationale behind the progression in a letter to his son Philippe from 1906. The composer analyzed the “Air de danse” from his incidental music to Alexandre Dumas père’s Caligula (1888), jotting down a Lydian scale on G:

You will find the elements of the G-major scale: G, A, B, D, E, F♯, and the elements of the B-minor scale: B, C♯, D, E, F♯, G, on one hand, that is, the tonic G, the major third B, and its dominant D; and, on the other, the tonic B, the minor third D, and the minor sixth G . . . I wanted to suggest a dance of antique character (one only becomes aware of such things after they are realized!) and since the ancients did not modulate in the same way we do, I decided on a scale composed of two keys. Plainchant is full of similar examples.²⁵

Fauré’s commentary not only reveals that he intended the church modes as a signifier for Latin antiquity. More intriguingly, it shows that he understood the modal progression as an alternative harmonic syntax distinct from modern tonality whose roots lay in ancient music. The “Lydia” progression does not merely summon the past but introduces a dialogic tension between ancient and modern harmonic systems. As in the best Parnassian poetry, past and present coexist in a graceful, life-giving synergy.