Faure: La Bonne Chanson - Faure stealing from Faure

1/15/11  La Bonne Chanson (Gabriel Faure)

Good artists borrow.  Great artists steal.

- Pablo Picasso

            Faure is one of those composers I was exposed to a great deal in college.  Partially because he was indeed a great composer (although that still doesn’t merit singing his Requiem two consecutive years in Grand Chorus,) but also because his solo vocal music is some of the easiest for non-native French speakers to handle.  I must have sung a dozen or so Faure chanson during my years at UNT.  And none of them are from this particular collection.  Or so I thought.

            Of the nine songs comprising La Bonne Chanson, one I keep coming back to is entitled “Puisque l’Aube Grandit,” or “Since Dawn is Breaking.”  Mostly because there is a melodic fragment in one of the opening phrases that sounds too familiar – like I’ve sung it before.  It isn’t until that same phrase returns in the accompaniment of the next song, “La Lune Blanche Luit Dans le Bois,” that I recognize where this particular musical fragment comes from.  If you haven’t guessed by now, it’s from a third song by Faure from a separate song cycle entirely.  The opening melody from the vocal of “Lydia” makes multiple appearances now throughout La Bonne Chanson, including the final phrases of the last piece, “L’Hiver a Cesse” (Winter is Over.)

That particular Faure piece (Lydia) left a peculiar impression on me as I thought it an especially whittily written melody.  You see, the opening phrase is written around the notes F,G,A, and B-natural, placing it in a Lydian scale.  “Lydia.”  In Lydian.  Yes, I think about these things and find them amusing.  I may have missed my calling in the combined fields of comedy and music theory.  (But if you ever see any job openings for a comic music theorist, send ‘em my way.)

Upon further listening, the first one may be coincidental, but the second is unmistakable.  By the third and final time, it’s enough of an established motif that it’s no longer surprising.  Now, I have had a melody running through my head before and wrote it into a piece before, only to recognize the original source, but never from my own work.  And furthermore, I rewrote that section as soon as I realized it.  But self plagiarism – really?  I began to wonder if “Lydia” were actually based on the reoccurring motif in La Bonne Chanson and not the other way around, but sure enough, LBC was far later in Faure’s career.  Different songs, different song cycles, even different poets, but the similarities are undeniable.

Speaking of texts, Faure’s lyrics are taken from a collection of 21 poems by the same name written by Paul Verlaine.  Described by some as “a musician’s poet,” Verlaine’s words are a wonderful fit for Faure’s melodies; vivid images of love presented through metaphors in nature that would appeal to any impressionistic painter as well as French late Romantic composers.  This collection is the first set of pieces in this project that is in neither English nor liturgical church Latin.  Faure, being a French composer of the Romantic Era, was only naturally concerned with the marriage of the text and the music, but this is harder to appreciate outside of one’s native tongue.  Sure, I found some resources with well written translations, but it’s difficult to listen, read, and write about a song at the same time.  To that end, I’m already fearing for opera day next week… Wagner, no less.  Wish me luck…

Tomorrow – Diz and Getz (Dizzy Guillespie and Stan Getz)

Next week – Wagner: Das Rheingold