Gabriel Urbain Fauré (1845 – 1924) was a French
composer, organist, pianist and teacher. He was one of
the foremost French composers of his generation, and
his musical style influenced many 20th-century
composers. Among his best-known works are his Pavane,
Requiem, Sicilienne, nocturnes for piano and the songs
"Après un rêve" and "Clair de lune". Although his
best-known and most accessible compositions are
generally his earlier ones, Fauré composed many of his
most highly regarded works in...(+)
Gabriel Urbain Fauré (1845 – 1924) was a French
composer, organist, pianist and teacher. He was one of
the foremost French composers of his generation, and
his musical style influenced many 20th-century
composers. Among his best-known works are his Pavane,
Requiem, Sicilienne, nocturnes for piano and the songs
"Après un rêve" and "Clair de lune". Although his
best-known and most accessible compositions are
generally his earlier ones, Fauré composed many of his
most highly regarded works in his later years, in a
more harmonically and melodically complex style.
Fauré was born into a cultured but not especially
musical family. His talent became clear when he was a
young boy. At the age of nine, he was sent to the
École Niedermeyer music college in Paris, where he was
trained to be a church organist and choirmaster. Among
his teachers was Camille Saint-Saëns, who became a
lifelong friend. After graduating from the college in
1865, Fauré earned a modest living as an organist and
teacher, leaving him little time for composition. When
he became successful in his middle age, holding the
important posts of organist of the Église de la
Madeleine and director of the Paris Conservatoire, he
still lacked time for composing; he retreated to the
countryside in the summer holidays to concentrate on
composition. By his last years, he was recognised in
France as the leading French composer of his day. An
unprecedented national musical tribute was held for him
in Paris in 1922, headed by the president of the French
Republic. Outside France, Fauré's music took decades
to become widely accepted, except in Britain, where he
had many admirers during his lifetime.
Fauré's music has been described as linking the end of
Romanticism with the modernism of the second quarter of
the 20th century. When he was born, Chopin was still
composing, and by the time of Fauré's death, jazz and
the atonal music of the Second Viennese School were
being heard. The Grove Dictionary of Music and
Musicians, which describes him as the most advanced
composer of his generation in France, notes that his
harmonic and melodic innovations influenced the
teaching of harmony for later generations. During the
last twenty years of his life, he suffered from
increasing deafness. In contrast with the charm of his
earlier music, his works from this period are sometimes
elusive and withdrawn in character, and at other times
turbulent and impassioned.
The poem "Fleur Jetee" follows Notre amour in
Silvestre’s collection entitled Les ailes d’or. It
inspires a powerful song that is often compared to
Schubert’s Erlkönig because of the challenging
octave repetitions of the piano-writing. There is a
romantic grandiloquence about this music, one might
even call it melodramatic, which is not native to the
composer. Because Fauré so seldom allows himself to
become passionate in this manner, Fleur jetée is a
useful foil for the more introverted mélodies when
performers plan a group of contrasting Fauré songs. It
is rare to find an instance where Fauré’s teacher
Camille Saint-Saëns has actually exerted an influence
on his pupil, but the piano-writing here, requiring
both exact adherence to the tempo and clarity in its
repetitive articulation, reminds us of the robust
demands of certain passages in the Saint-Saëns piano
concertos (speed up the accompaniment to Dalila’s
aria, Mon cœur s’ouvre à ta voix, and you will find
similarities with the stave-hopping piano-writing of
the whole central portion of Fleur jetée). The voice
too, as in some of Saint-Saëns’ songs, is unafraid
to flirt with an operatic scale and manner that easily
becomes ‘ham’ in the hands of less refined singers.
There are, nevertheless, details a-plenty to admire;
the seamless harmonic progress of the music sweeps us
along and blows us away, ‘au gré du vent’, in one
great courbe. As in Notre amour, the pulsating
right-hand accompaniment is interlaced with ascending
and descending scale passages in the left hand. Towards
the end the time signature changes for three bars from
6/8 to 9/8 – an indication of how well Fauré
understood the voice, and the expanded space that it
needs to manoeuvre at the top of the stave. A polished
performance of Fleur jetée can be thrilling, but too
often the public remembers only the final high notes,
and the thundering postlude where the pianist always
risks landing on a split chord at the last hurdle.
Source: Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Faur%C3%A9)
Although originally composed for Voice (Soprano) and
Piano, I created this Interpretation of the "Fleur
Jetée" from "4 Songs" (Op. 39 No. 2) for Winds (Flute,
Oboe, French Horn & Bassoon) and Strings (2 Violins,
Viola & Cello).
PARTITION