Candice Zhiyuan Luo

Melodie song profile assignment

Song title: Dans les ruines d'une abbaye - in the ruins of an abbey
Composer (dates): Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)
#1 from opus. 2, two songs
Year composed: 1866, published in 1869
Poet (dates): Victor Marie Hugo (1802 - 1885)
Voice type: soprano
Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)
Gabriel Fauré is a French composer, organist, pianist and teacher. Fauré’s talents
became apparent at an early age, composed his first composition in 1863 while studying
piano. Fauré then became a professor of composition at the Paris Conservatory in 1896,
whilst working as a church organist on the side. He succeeded and remained the director
of the conservatory from 1905 to 1920, when he resigned due to poor health and
deafness.
Fauré composed for solo voice, chorus, solo piano, chamber, orchestra, alongside
theatre (plays and lyric dramas). Fauré’s composition demonstrates delicate refinement
and gentle sensitivity. His influential vocal works include
Dans les ruines d’une abbaye is composed in Fauré’s very early years while still a
pupil. In this piece it is evident that his compositional style is still more conservative -
rhythmically steady and harmonically simple; in comparison to some of his later works
like La bonne chanson. Fauré was keen on Wagner and Liszt’s compositions, their
influences are apparent in some of Fauré’s later works. Dans les ruines d’une abbaye,
however, presents a texture (in both the vocal melody and accompaniment) that is more
lyrical, with gradual dynamic and harmonic developments that are closer to what some
Romantic composers (like Schumann) would use.
The poem itself has more of a Romantic flavor, as well. The personification of
birds, the rapture described in nature and spring. In this piece, “various shouts of joy”
and “sparkling laughter” replace the reverent silence of prayer within the abbey; jasmine
flowers bloom around the stone statue; a new dawn of spring and of love fills the empty
air with euphoria. The poem was written by Napoleonic poet Hugo in post-revolutionary
France. Hugo paints a glorious picture with his words while in exile, describing a new
joyous feeling that replaces silence and darkness. One can say the fairy-tale love in
splendid nature is specifically nostalgic of German Romanticism. However, Fauré’s
harmonic writing describes newly-weds’ exuberant enchantment, basking in the joy and
excitement of love.

Main Characteristics of Song

Original Key: A major
Range: E4 to F5#
Harmony: Diatonic
Rhythm: 6/8, even phrasing with tempo marking Allegretto
Form: A B A B A
Accompaniment: even arpeggiation