Gabriel Faur: The Songs and Their Poets

Publication: Music Library Association. Notes Author: Sobaskie, James William Date published: September 1, 2010 Gabriel Faur: The Songs and Their Poets. By Graham Johnson, with translations of the song texts by Richard Stokes. (Guildhall Research Studies, 7.) London: Guildhall School of Music and Drama; Farnham, Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2009. [xxviii, 460 p. ISBN 9780754659600. $89.95.] Music examples, illustrations, appendices, indexes. Singers have long deserved a detailed guide dedicated to Gabriel Faur's mlodies, that rich legacy of more than one hundred songs at the core of modern French vocal literature. Introductions to the Gallic genre of the mlodie by Pierre Bernac (The Inter pretation of French Song [New York: W. W. Norton, 1978]), Thomas Grubb (Singing in French: A Manual of French Diction and French Vocal Repertoire [New York: Schirmer, 1979]), and the authors reviewed here (A French Song Companion [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002]), are all surveys that discuss Faur's music, but do not focus solely on his oeuvre. Barbara Meister's Nineteenth-Century French Song: Faur, Chausson, Duparc, and Debussy (Blooming - ton: Indiana University Press, 1980) presents problems of interpretation, analysis, and translation that must qualify any endorsement. However, Graham Johnson's Gabriel Faur: The Songs and Their Poets, which addresses each of the composer's mlodies and reproduces their texts with sensitive translations by Richard Stokes, finally fills the need for a thorough handbook devoted to the lyric repertoire left by the composer whom Maurice Ravel and Nadia Boulanger called "matre." Graham Johnson, collaborative pianist extraordinaire, is well qualified to offer a survey of Faur's songs. His releases on Hyperion Records, including the unprecedented fortyCD set Franz Schubert: The Complete Songs (comprehensively reviewed by James Parsons, Susan Wollenberg, Susannah Clark, David Gramit, Susan Youens, Lorraine Byrne Bodley, and Richard Kramer in Nineteenth-Century Music Review 5, no. 2 [2008]: 123-64), and certainly by Gabriel Faur: The Complete Songs, Volumes 1-4 (reviewed by this writer in Nineteenth-Century Music Review 3, no. 2 [2006]: 190-96), are most impressive. Johnson's liner notes are also as articulate as his playing, providing context and insight particularly well suited to those new to Faur's music. Comparisons with fellow pianist Charles Rosen, widely known for The Classical Style (New York: W. W. Norton, 1971), Sonata Forms (New York: W. W. Norton, 1980), and The Romantic Generation (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995), may be tempting, but Johnson's aims in this book are not nearly as broad. In fact, Johnson's research base for Gabriel Faur: The Songs and Their Poets seems surprisingly sparse, apparently neglecting much scholarly work published on Faur's music in recent years, such as Jean- Michel Nectoux's essay "Faur: Voice, Style and Vocality" in Regarding Faur (ed. Tom Gordon [Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach, 1999], 369-402), which surely deserves reference in chapter 15, "Some Notes on the Performance of Faur's Songs." And, oddly enough, there is no bibliography or "suggested further reading" list, just

eight to forty-three footnotes per chapter, though certainly there is room for much more. Yet this does not seem to be history repeating itself (see Robert Orledge, Gabriel Faur [London: Eulenburg, 1979] and its review by James C. Kidd in 19th Century Music 4, no. 3 [Spring 1981]: 276-80]), for Johnson frequently acknowledges the pioneering efforts of Nectoux, indeed so much so that at times he appears to sustain a lively conversation with the French musicologist most responsible for the current resurgence of interest in Faur. Of course, this dialogue demonstrates the vital need for a translation of Nectoux's recently updated biography Gabriel Faur: les voix du clair-obscur (Paris: Fayard, 2008), on behalf of readers who now rely on Nectoux's two-decades-old Gabriel Faur: A Musical Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991; reviewed by this writer in Notes 49, no. 1 [September 1992]: 571-73), for the most essential and authoritative facts about the composer. Examining each of Faur's more than one hundred mlodies, composed during the six decades between 1861 and 1921, is no small undertaking. Following a foreword and acknowledgements is a helpful chronology called "Songs through a Life" that places key compositions within the context of Faur's personal and professional circumstances. Next, fourteen chapters are distinguished by public, personal, or poetic factors that dominated the composer's creativity in each span, e.g., "Second Empire and First Songs," "Chez Mme. P. Viardot-Garcia," and "Interlude: The Silent Gift." Two more chapters offer advice to singers and pianists (the latter, fancifully entitled "The Pianist's Workshop [wherein Singers are Always Welcome]" even supplies metronomic suggestions, many derived from historical recordings, plus other practical advice) respectively. Finally, there is an appendix that lists Faur's mlodies by opus number and another that collates them by tonality, as well as a general index, an index of poets and settings, and an index of song titles. Had there been any doubt, it should be clear by now that Gabriel Faur: The Songs and Their Poets was formulated for singers and their coaches to help them plan recitals, prepare accompanists, and produce program notes, as well as to perform this music authentically. Johnson's book's title announces its most valuable feature. Faithful performance of Faur's mlodies begins with a thorough understanding of their texts, and Johnson's foci on Faur's poets-their lives, times, aesthetics, and styles-enables that grasp. Some of these figures, like Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire, and Paul Verlaine, are well known, while others, like Armand Silvestre, Charles Van Lerberghe, and Jean de La Ville de Mirmont are less so. Yet an appreciation of each poet's artistic stance and personal circumstances is crucial to any convincing interpretation of Faur's music, for every setting represents both close collaboration and creative colloquy between metrist and composer. Although Johnson's attention to individual selections varies considerably, with certain critical songs like "Accompagnement" (1902) allotted just a page (p. 274) of discussion (for more on its transitional role, see James William Sobaskie, "The Emergence of Gabriel Faur's Late Musical Style and Technique," Journal of Musicological Research 22, no. 3 [July-September 2003]: 225-34), while masterpieces like the cycle La chanson d'Eve (1910) are accorded appropriately extended spans (pp. 299-324), on the whole, this repertoire is wellcovered. And if one might have wished that the author had dug further below the surface in his analysis of widely acknowledged masterpieces of French vocal literature like La bonne chanson (1894) (see pp. 219-49) to reveal their modernity and antiromanticism (for another view, see James William Sobaskie, "Le sous-texte ironique de La bonne chanson de Gabriel Faur," in Musique franaise, esthtique et identit en mutation 1892-1992, ed. Pascal

Terrien [Sampzon: Editions Delatour France, forthcoming]), and perhaps hoped he had highlighted others for their structural innovation or their symbolist underpinnings, singers nevertheless will find enough insights to develop their comprehension and interpretations. Sumptuous illustration distinguishes Gabriel Faur: The Songs and Their Poets, and warm thanks are due Ashgate for accommodating a plethora of black-and-white photographs, numerous front pages and frontispieces from first publications of mlodies, plus a few signatures, sketches, music examples, and autograph excerpts, all of which make this book difficult to put down. Johnson's conversational tone, mixed with a few charming British colloquialisms (e.g., "dab hand" [pp. 7, 87], "comically downmarket" [p. 88], "one string to his bow" [p. 132], etc.), random esotericisms (e.g., "mountebanks" [p. 33], "sacerdotal" [pp. 69, 182], "tenterhooks" [p. 303], etc.), essential Gallicisms on nearly every page, plus a genuine love and respect for Faur's music devoid of the patronizing praise typical of much twentieth-century Englishlanguage writing on the composer, all assure that Gabriel Faur: The Songs and Their Poets will be a lively read. Indeed, Johnson's directness, undoubtedly borne of his long tenure at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, effectively establishes a personal connection with readers, as this quote demonstrates: "When we perform the music of Faur we are, or should be, taking part in his existence on his own terms.... Another way of putting it is to say that in the service of his music we should be prepared to give only what is asked of us as opposed to everything we have in us (p. 375)." And Johnson's comments about difficulties faced by singers and pianists who perform Faur's music without proper preparation can be frank: [I]t is a disaster if the French repertoire, and Faur in particular, is approached in the Germanic way with all those liedersinging faculties aching to lay siege to the music of another, less co-operative, culture. The singer and pianist who approach Faur have to start again and learn a new language-in the sense that French is not only a different language from German, but a different language of thought and behavior. (p. 387) Such clarity brings trust and critical orientation only someone of Johnson's authority can provide. And of course, occasional humor, like Johnson's breezy characterization of the original key of Faur's early song "Mai" (1862?) as "squeak-inducing for the soprano voice" (p. 41), or his caution about "Automne" (1878) that "[t]he landscape is as much internal as external; a windy autumn day is no excuse for a wild operatic outburst underscored with left-hand trombones!" (p. 408), impart readily appreciated levity. At times, however, questionable liberties emerge. Perhaps readers should be prepared to accept a certain amount of opining in a manual like this, but dismissive characterizations of Faur's early song "Chant d'automne" (1871) as "a magnificent failure" (p. 79) and "La fe aux chansons" (1882) as "shy and neglected" (p. 142) are unnecessary and arguable. And while we might allow Johnson's proposition that "[a] positive advantage for British artists is that their own song culture (of the voice and piano variety) is a shyer and younger art than the song traditions of either Germany or France" (p. 385), his gratuitous generalization that "[t]he same applies to American singers, who have a well-deserved reputation in the singing of French music, but whose natural ebullience and tendency to dramatize on the platform-an underestimation of the extent to which emotion has to be controlled by form-has sometimes to be moderated by

the salutary pouring of cold water on over-heated enthusiasm" (p. 385), seems eligible for excision. More objectionable within a guidebook like this is Johnson's proclivity for psychological analysis. While such inference might be acceptable in a scholarly article, it annoys and distracts in a pedagogical volume like this. For instance, the statement, "[w]e might well wonder whether a failure of bonding between mother and son resulted in Gabriel's lifelong lack of self-esteem, as well as the early development of a selfprotective shell (whereby 'nothing matters') to shield him from the pain of that rejection" (pp. 17-18) should discomfit most readers, probably prompting unintended random speculation. And it is not clear why, after a fine discussion of Faur's three-song cycle Pome d'un jour (1878) (pp. 115-19), lurid light then suffuses the work: "Faur's affairs were, on the whole, 'pomes d'un jour (or 'de quelques semaines'), with what must have been an inbuilt exit strategy. He must have been adept at charm (the first song), showing just enough glints of genuine passion (the second), followed by something like the elegant veiled retreat of the third" (p. 119). Yet it is the tabloidic pursuit of Faur's characteristic and admirable broadmindedness that may irk most: "Faur was not homosexual himself, but he seems to have been perfectly comfortable with those who were.... One cannot help feeling that Tchai kovsky, with his almost tender regard for Faur's music (the two composers first met in 1886), was not insensible to the physical attraction of his colleague five years younger" (p. 159; see pp. 160, 202-05, 215, and 365 for more needless conjecture). Such musing about personal matters certainly is superfluous and quite out of place in the context of this otherwise instructive book, an unfortunate trait that needlessly diverts impressionable novices from more important issues and surely is foreign to the discreet natures of this thoroughly French art and quiet artist. Nevertheless, surprising tidbits offer a little compensation for such indulgences. We learn, for instance, that "Aprs un rve (1877) was arranged for every conceivable instrumental combination: as late as 1954 One Golden Dream by 'Faur and Lou Shuk' was dedicated to Frank Sinatra" (p. 102). Of "Les berceaux" (1879) we discover that [t]here is a filmed version of this song made in the 1930s where [Ninon] Vallin, dressed up in rustic costume, was required to rock a cradle at the side of the piano while cinematic vistas of ocean waves projected behind her were visible through a false window on the set. The few facial shots that we get of this great singer at work (albeit in uncomfortable, contrived circumstances) are unforgettable. (p. 409) Finally, who will not be moved upon encountering the admission "I have spent an entire career playing the Faur songs, many of them more obviously 'beautiful' and 'accessible' than this music of the last period. But I confess that it is when listening in the audience to a rare performance of Le jardin clos (1914) that tears of admiration and gratitude are never far away" (p. 342)? Perhaps with such an ardent champion of Gabriel Faur as Graham Johnson, we must allow more leeway. With the recent inauguration of OEuvres compltes de Gabriel Faur, that long awaited twenty-nine-volume monument prepared under the general editorship of Jean- Michel Nectoux, published by Brenreiter, and supported by France's cultural agency Musica Gallica, Gabriel Faur: The Songs and Their Poets will generate welcome anticipation for the new critical editions of the composer's mlodies that ultimately will appear. In

the meantime, however, Johnson's book should foster the more authentic performance practice that this superb music merits. Without question, Gabriel Faur: The Songs and Their Poets ought to be on the shelves of all music libraries, singers, voice instructors, and accompanists, as it will become a frequent reference for anyone interested in French music and will be read cover-to-cover by all Faurans. Author affiliation: JAMES WILLIAM SOBASKIE Mississippi State University Read more: http://www.faqs.org/periodicals/201009/2119579661.html#ixzz1RVFV0fVD