When Gabriel Fauré was a boy, Berlioz had just written
La damnation de Faust and Henry David Thoreau was
writing Walden. By the time of his death, Stravinsky
had written The Rite of Spring and World War I had
ended in the devastation of Europe. In this dramatic
period in history, Fauré strove to bring together the
best of traditional and progressive music and, in the
process, created some of the most exquisite works in
the French repertoire. He was one of the most advanced
figures in French mu...(+)
When Gabriel Fauré was a boy, Berlioz had just written
La damnation de Faust and Henry David Thoreau was
writing Walden. By the time of his death, Stravinsky
had written The Rite of Spring and World War I had
ended in the devastation of Europe. In this dramatic
period in history, Fauré strove to bring together the
best of traditional and progressive music and, in the
process, created some of the most exquisite works in
the French repertoire. He was one of the most advanced
figures in French musical circles and influenced a
generation of composers world-wide.
Fauré was the youngest child of a school headmaster
and spent many hours playing the harmonium in the
chapel next to his father's school. Fauré's father
enrolled the 9-year-old as a boarder at the École
Niedermeyer in Paris, where he remained for 11 years,
learning church music, organ, piano, harmony,
counterpoint, and literature. In 1861, Saint-Saëns
joined the school and introduced Fauré and other
students to the works of more contemporary composers
such as Schumann, Liszt, and Wagner. Fauré's earliest
songs and piano pieces date from this period, just
before his graduation in 1865, which he achieved with
awards in almost every subject. For the next several
years, he took on various organist positions, served
for a time in the Imperial Guard, and taught. In 1871
he and his friends -- d'Indy, Lalo, Duparc, and
Chabrier -- formed the Société Nationale de Musique,
and soon after, Saint-Saëns introduced him to the
salon of Pauline Viardot and Parisian musical high
society.
"Prison" Opus 83 No. 1: In the summer of 1873 the
tension between those run-away lovers Rimbaud and
Verlaine reached breaking point. The pair had travelled
backwards and forwards between London and Brussels, and
the arrival of that éminence grise, Verlaine’s
mother, complicated matters further. On 10 July
Verlaine shot Rimbaud twice with a revolver and wounded
him, though not severely. He was tried in October, and
sentenced to two years in prison. (It was fortunate
that this incident took place in Belgium, rather than
England.) The poet spent the whole of 1874 in custody
in Mons; during that time he reconverted to
Catholicism, receiving communion. He was released in
January 1875; a few months later he took up a position
as a teacher in Stickney, Lincolnshire. The text for
Prison – Fauré’s pithy title allows the uninformed
listener to place these words in context – appeared
without heading in Sagesse, a collection of poetry
published in 1881 under a Catholic imprint, evidence of
Verlaine’s chastening, albeit only temporary. The
song is among Fauré’s most powerful, and it is
certainly his most concise. In that most melancholy of
keys, E flat minor, the clarity of the light, the muted
poignancy of the chiming clock (in octaves on the third
beats of bars 4, 7, 10 and 13), the enviable simplicity
of life on the outside, the birdsong ruefully
appreciated in the distance – all these things are
depicted with rigorous economy. In Fauré’s setting
the anguished middle section, beginning ‘Mon Dieu,
mon Dieu, la vie est là, / Simple et tranquille’, is
no appeal to a higher power, but the self-castigating
outburst of a battle-scarred ne’er-do-well (‘God,
I’ve been so stupid’). The composer was a master of
the religious miniature when he chose, but he ignores
the devout penitent of Sagesse who emerges in
Séverac’s music for this poem; this is no monastic
cell, and the poet’s confession is for all to hear.
The final lines are accompanied by inexorably rising
harmonic progressions on an E flat pedal. This
heartbreaking music signifies an evaporation of
youthful hopes, a wasting of life’s vital substances,
the disappearance of good fortune over the distant
horizon. Debussy had the good sense not to attempt a
rival setting. Reynaldo Hahn’s D’une prison has
languid charm, but it suggests an idyllic incarceration
on a desert island. In the ineluctable rhythmical
impulse of Fauré’s music, quiet and gentle though
the opening is, we can hear the bars of the poet’s
cell, and the iron that has entered his soul.
Source: AllMusic
(https://www.allmusic.com/artist/gabriel-faur%C3%A9-mn0
000654108/biography)
Although originally composed for Voice (Soprano) and
Piano, I created this arrangement of "Prison" (Op. 83
No. 1) for Flute & Piano.
PARTITION