Faure: Melodies/Lieder/Songs (complete)

PARTED TONGUES

Thank goodness my French is adequate enough for this set, because my Dutch most certainly is not. I should say at the outset that these four discs are a musical experience about as near perfection as any of us are likely to encounter in this imperfect human scene. However before I get round to my own song of praise let me point out some idiosyncrasies in the production.

The French text of all the poems is provided in the leaflet without translation, and you can find the authors of the poems, the timings and the opus numbers of the songs on the reverse of the four envelopes containing the discs. I have not attempted to verify the accuracy of the latter information except that I happened to spot that two songs on the first disc appear as op5 no2, which I presume can't be right. The French texts are mainly accurate, and the dozen or so misprints that I noticed are trifles that any French-speaker will detect in an instant (plus two minor changes made by the singers). Occasionally the composer does not set the full text of this or that poem, and the editors have attempted to draw attention to this by means of square brackets and the digit `1', which refers us to a note (in English) `not set by Faure'. Thankyou kindly for that. However there are cases which the editors have not noticed at L'Aurore and Chant d'automne on the first disc, and the digit 1 with its message pop up inscrutably after Pleurs d'or on the third disc, referring to nothing that I can see. More significantly, in the one song with an English text, Melisande's Song on the third disc, the words are not given at all, and as luck would have it Ameling's English is not as distinct as her French, although further familiarity will presumably help. This number is apparently a translation of Maeterlinck by J W Mackail, well known to me from half a century ago as the author of a noddy-guide to Latin literature. What have these editors got against English? The liner note, which for all I know may be fine and illuminating, was originally in French, but as I have it here it is not in French, nor yet in English, but in Dutch. Perhaps not all copies are like this - ik hoppe.

Of the 105 songs here, 101 are regular solos, one is a wordless vocalise, one is a duet for the two soloists, and two are duets for two sopranos. No credit is given to a second singer here, and I suspect that Ameling has been dubbed over herself. I imagine that the sequence in which they follow here is at least approximately their order of composition, and they give a fascinating picture of Faure's musical style as it developed, from the comparative simplicity of his earlier harmonic style to the unique and mandarin subtlety and refinement of his later. To get the best out of the set I would actually recommend anyone, unless he or she knows these songs thoroughly already, to play it through from start to finish without listening to any other music between times. That way, I find, the real stature, significance and originality of the later songs makes its full impression. The range of sentiments expressed in the poems and mirrored in the music is not very wide. The song that stands out as an exception is C'est la paix! on the last disc, referring I suppose to the end of WWI. Brahms wrote his terrific Triumphlied to celebrate the battle of Sedan, Handel turned out his colossal Te Deum for the comic-opera victory at Dettingen, but it takes a lot to get Faure to raise his urbane voice even to this extent. Even in this song as in all the others the tone is lyrical and thoughtful. Many of the poems are love-lyrics, but there is no erotic Wagnerian feel to the rapture however intense. Nature and the deity are invoked frequently, but I get no religious sense from the music which seems to me deeply humanist in tone. The amount of symbolism is enough to keep the literary criticism industry in business for a long time yet, I guess, and I don't see it as my own task in a short review to try to plumb the subtleties that any of us can sense from the outset in these wonderful songs, and for whose full comprehension one lifetime may not be enough.

Faure was really an `absolute' musician in the sense that Bach, Chopin and Brahms were that. Even when he is composing to words, the only response he gives is the response that is best in purely musical terms. In a sense that makes his interpreters' task a little easier, but that is not to belittle what has been achieved here. The three artists have only one very unified and consistent style to master, but mastered it they have, and more than mastered. Quite apart from the musicianship, intelligence and sensitivity that they display without a hint of a lapse or of uncertainty from beginning to end, these are two of the most beautiful voices that the 20th century ever gave birth to. I have no `highlights' or any such vulgarity to point out, only a sublime consistency, reflecting the composer's own. The songs are all to much the same pattern, without word-repetition except when a certain verse is used as a refrain or the final phrase of a poem is repeated as an envoi. The singing is likewise all in much the same style, with a sense of power in reserve behind the lyric façade, but the tone unfailingly beguiling to the ear, and well served by the recording which applies (to my ears rightly) just a touch of `edging' of its own, as well as by the outstandingly beautiful work of Dalton Baldwin.

Ca suffit. Now can we please have their Wolf Italian Songbook reissued? January 4, 2007

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