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BERCEUSE
Music of Peace
and Calm
Bach ¢ Fauré ¢ Chopin
Brahms ¢ Schubert
Debussy ° Tchaikovsky
and many othersBerceuse
The cradle-song or lullaby is found in every
civilisation, In its French romantic transmogrification as
Berceuse it takes on a more formal existence. Here the
simple cradle-song to lull a child to sleep becomes the
careful product of art, with the title used by Chopin,
Liszt and their successors. A general feature of the
form, even in its natural and primitive state, is that it is
imbued with a mood of maternal tenderness and has, as
the French title suggests, a rocking rhythm, The
German Wiegentied has a similar connotation, In
Christian tradition, of course, there are also associations
with the Christ-child, so that a lullaby may sometimes
take on a new significance, as in some Renaissance
painting of the Madonna and Child.
In fact the Air from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Third
Orchestral Suite lacks the thythm of a cradle-song but
certainly possesses its soporific quality. Written for
strings, the melody is heard over a gently repetitive bass
pattern. A nineteenth-century arrangement by the
violinist August Wilhelmj earned it the popular name
Air on the G String. Bach wrote the third of his four
Orchestral Suites, between 1729 and 1731 in Leipzig,
where he served from 1723 until his death in 1750
Thomascantor, responsible for music in the principal
city churches.
The titles chosen by the eccentric French composer
Erik Satie for many of his works are characteristic
enough. His Gynmopédies, a word that suggests the
naked ritual games of Spartan boys in ancient Greece,
are an example of this, since the music, with its gentle
lilt, seems to have no bearing on the title, There is
tranquilly undulating rhythm throughout, under the
poignant and essentially simple melody, suggesting
something statuesque about the games or their
representation,
‘The Finnish-born composer Armas Jirnefelt
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enjoyed a career as a conductor and composer in
Sweden, eventually taking Swedish citizenship. His
Berceuse, scored for small orchestra, is among his better
known compositions.
Relatively little is known of the German amateur
composer Bernhard Flies, who was probably born in
Berlin about the year 1770, He was a doctor and wrote
some piano pieces and some songs. OF the latter the
lullaby Sclelafe mein Prinzchen (Sleep, my little Prince)
is the best known and was once attributed to Mozart,
Gabriel Fauré, who achieved a recognised place in
the official world of French music in the 1890s, as Satie
was beginning his strange career, wrote a very well-
known Berceuse of his own, familiar in many
arrangements. Less familiar is the Nocturne from his
music for Shylock, a play based on the work of
Shakespeare by Edmond Haraucourt staged in Paris in
1889
The French viola-player and composer Benjamin
Godard was slightly younger than Fauré, although the
latter outlived him by nearly thirty years, His Berceuse
is taken from his opera Jocelyn, based on a poem by
Lamartine, and represents the only element in it that
found any popular favour.
‘The Wiegentied (Cradle-Song) by Johannes Brahms
was written in 1868. It is based on a German folk-song
text and must be the most widely known of all lullabies,
with its gently lilting Guten Abend, gute Nacht to be
heard on many a musical-box.
Claude Debussy’s Clair de lune (Moonlight)
enjoyed a degree of popularity that the composer found
embarrassing. It was written in 1890 as part of a set of
pieces under the title Suite bergamasque. The reference
is to the fin de siécle poetry of Verlaine, in a mood of
nostalgic yearning for the world that has gone, the
idealised period of Watteau and his contemporaries, now
2recalled by two lonely ghosts of the past, conversing in
the moonlight in the deserted park of some ehidteau,
Franz. Schubert's Wiegenlied, Schlafe, schlafe,
holder siifer Knabe (Sleep, sleep, lovely sweet child)
was written in 1816. The simplicity of the words has
suggested that, like the other songs of the same month
of November, they should be attributed to Matthias
Claudius, although the poem is not found among the
published work of a writer known for his treatment of
simple, even trivial subjects in simple language.
After a return to Erik Satie’s Gymnopédies, now the
second of the set of three, a place is found for the piano
transformation of the Berceuse into a concert piece,
among other forms that Chopin similarly changed and
developed, It is a relatively late work, completed in
1844, and is highly original in its presentation of what
are, in fact, sixteen variations.
Sleep or, at least, day-dreams are suggested in the
title of Robert Schumann’s Tréumerei, one of his
Scenes of Childhood written in 1838 and exemplifying
his talent for the composition of short picture-pieces,
here a picture of a feature of childhood rather than a
piece for children. While not particularly demanding,
the little pieces are intended rather as an adult’s view of
a child’s world.
The Russian composer Pyotr ‘Tchaikovsky
modelled his own Album for the Young on a similar,
later work by Schumann, written with his own children
in mind, Tchaikovsky, of course, had no children but in
writing his new Albwn met a ready and useful market,
His Douce réverie (Sweet Dreams) is No. 21 in a set of
24 easy pieces for children to play, written in 1878, as
he began a new life of freedom from teaching, through
sudden and unexpected patronage, and from the ties of
a highly unsuitable marriage, which had foundered a
few months after it had been contracted.
Igor Stravinsky was eleven when Tchaikovsky
died. The son of a distinguished singer, he took lessons
from Rimsky-Korsakov and soon after the latter’s death
won a measure of fame in Paris with his music for
Dyagilev’s ballet The Firebird, first staged in 1910, The
Lullaby is danced by the Firebird, the magic creature
through whose powers the evil Kashchey is defeated
and the Prince and Princesses held captive released
from his spell.
‘The final Pavane pour une infante défunte (Pavane
for a Dead Princess) is music of nostalgic beauty.
Maurice Ravel apparently chose the title after the work
had been completed in its first version, for piano. The
music is infused with a nostalgic yearning that is very
much of the period of its composition, 1899, In 1910
Ravel orchestrated the Pavane for a ballet.
Keith Anderson
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