SONGS OF LOVE

i. Oh, that longed-for happiness does not bloom for our love (Ó naší lásce nekvete to vytoužené štěstí)
ii. So many a heart is as though dead (V tak mnohém srdci mrtvo jest)
iii. Around the house now I stagger (Kol domu se teď potácím) 
iv. I know that in sweet hope (Já vím, že v sladké naději) 
v. Over the countryside reigns a light sleep (Nad krajem vévodí lehký spánek) 
vi. Here in the forest by a brook (Zde v lese u potoka) 
vii. In that sweet power of your eyes (V té sladké moci očí tvých) 
viii. Oh dear soul, the only one (Ó duše drahá jedinká) 

Dvorak’s Love Songs are a reworking of his earlier collection Cypresses. The Cypresses were first written in 1865, but Dvorak revisited them again in 1889 to create 8 new songs out of the original 18.  Inspired by the traditional music of his native country, the works are settings of romantic poems by Gustav Pfleger-Moravsky, a fellow Czech who’s work Dvorak admired. The songs were rewritten in many forms by the composer, including a reworking for string quartet, and he pulled many of the main themes out of the song cycle for other works. Although originally written for piano and voice, this arrangement has the vocal line accompanied by violin, viola, cello and double bass. Love Songs are distinctive and known for their elaborate accompaniments and are argued to be the best example of his writing for solo voice. 

i. Soupir  
ii. Placet futile 
iii. Eventail 
 

Paris in the late-19th century was a hub of creative innovation. The poet Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898) was a central figure in this experimental scene. At his weekly meetings on Tuesdays at his apartment on the Rue de Rome, Mallarmé held court, speaking for hours about art and politics. Regular attendees included W.B. Yeats, Oscar Wilde, Édouard Manet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Emile Zola, Paul Gauguin, Edgar Degas, Paul Verlaine, Rainer Maria Rilke… and Claude Debussy.  

Debussy adored poetry, particularly the works of Mallarmé. Indeed, his most-famous composition, the orchestral tone poem Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, is closely based on Mallarmé’s poem (‘The Afternoon of the Faune’). Debussy’s music evokes the languid feeling of the poem, while the work’s structure closely mirrors that of the text: Debussy’s composition has the same number of bars (110) as the poem has lines. 

This reverence for poetry can be seen in Debussy’s setting of three poems by Mallarmé, composed late in the composer’s life in 1913. In her analysis of the first of the three songs – ‘Soupir’ (Sigh) – musicologist Marianne Wheeldon notes that “Debussy’s setting tries to imitate the permutability of Mallarmé’s syntax”. Debussy closely mirrors the poem’s sophisticated form, adapting his music to the text (rather than attempting to make the poem fit a traditional musical structure) so that the poem’s ambiguity is preserved. Just as Mallarmé’s poem is written as a single breathless sentence – “Faithful, a white jet of water sighs toward the Azure / – Toward the tender Azure of pale and pure October” – Debussy imitates the freely flowing and associative form of Mallarmé’s poem in which the poet’s ‘soul’ reaches toward ‘autumn’, ‘freckles’, ‘the sky’, and so on.  

Debussy was not the only composer to set poems by Mallarmé. Famously, Maurice Ravel also composed his own Trois poèmes de Mallarmé. Indeed, it was Ravel who first secured the rights to set Mallarmé’s poetry to music. Both Debussy and Ravel set ‘Soupir’ and ‘Placet futile’, however whereas Ravel chose to end his collection with ‘Surgi de la croupe et du bond’ (‘ Risen from the crupper and leap’), Debussy finishes with ‘Eventail’ (‘Fan’), a setting of Mallarmé’s poem ‘Autre Éventail de Mademoiselle Mallarmé’.  Subtly erotic, the poem begins: 

O dreamer, so that I
May plunge in that pathless thing,
Pure delight, by a subtle lie
Learn to hold in your hand my wing. 

Originally published in two series, The Nursey song cycle was written between 1868 and 1872. Made up of seven songs, Mussorgsky wrote both the music and the words. The text is written musically exactly as it would be spoken, which leads to some unexpected melodies, and a fluid rhythm in an irregular time signature. Mussorgsky was one of the first composers to make music from speech patterns in this way. The style of each song is varied, but Mussorgsky’s appreciation for humour is clear. Although written to express the feelings and ideas of a child, the music is not for children, as it is as advanced as any other work from that era, and offers a fresh but haunting insight into domestic life. 

Debussy’s String Quartet was first performed at the Société Nationale de Musique on 29 December 1893 – almost exactly a year before he shocked Paris with the Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, the most laconic manifestation of his revolutionary creative spirit. The Quartet, composed just after the Prélude, is one of his earliest mature works – a piece that still has some roots in the musical language of César Franck but in which a fresh and brilliant imagination can be heard, not just in the free handling of forms, but also in the spectacularly inventive writing for string instruments – something absorbed by Ravel in the Quartet he wrote a decade later. The first movement is robust and confident, while the second, with its extensive use of pizzicato, hints at the Javanese music that Debussy heard at the 1889 Exposition. The slow movement begins with fragments of the theme split between the lower instruments before being introduced in full by the first violin, over rich chromatic harmonies. The finale has clear thematic links with the first. It starts hesitantly, gradually building up both tension and speed, on a melodic idea that is presented in different guises before reaching the dazzling conclusion in G major. 

Nigel Simeone © 2011