Download BE NOT AFRAID

CANTIQUE DE JEAN RACINE
Gabriel Faure Born May 12, 1845 in Pamiers, Ariège, France
Died November 04, 1924 in Paris, France
When Gabriel Fauré was a boy, Berlioz had just written La damnation de Faust and Henry David
Thoreau was writing Walden. By the time of his death, Stravinsky had written The Rite of
Spring and World War I had ended in the devastation of Europe. In this dramatic period in
history, Fauré strove to bring together the best of traditional and progressive music and, in the
process, created some of the most exquisite works in the French repertoire. He was one of the
most advanced figures in French musical circles and influenced a generation of composers
world-wide.
Fauré was the youngest child of a school headmaster and spent many hours playing the
harmonium in the chapel next to his father's school. Fauré's father enrolled the 9-year-old as a
boarder at the École Niedermeyer in Paris, where he remained for 11 years, learning church
music, organ, piano, harmony, counterpoint, and literature. In 1861, Saint-Saëns joined the
school and introduced Fauré and other students to the works of more contemporary composers
such as Schumann, Liszt, and Wagner. Fauré's earliest songs and piano pieces date from this
period, just before his graduation in 1865, which he achieved with awards in almost every
subject. For the next several years, he took on various organist positions, served for a time in
the Imperial Guard, and taught. In 1871 he and his friends -- d'Indy, Lalo, Duparc, and Chabrier
-- formed the Société Nationale de Musique, and soon after, Saint-Saëns introduced him to the
salon of Pauline Viardot and Parisian musical high society. Fauré wrote his first important
chamber works (the Violin Sonata No. 1 and Piano Quartet No. 1), then set out on a series of
musical expeditions to meet Liszt and Wagner. Throughout the 1880s, he held various positions
and continued to write songs and piano pieces, but felt unsure enough of his compositional
talents to attempt anything much larger than incidental music. Fauré's pieces began to show a
complexity of musical line and harmony which were to become the hallmarks of his music. He
began to develop a highly original approach to tonality, in which modal harmony and altered
scales figured largely. The next decade, however, is when Fauré came into his own. He was
named composition professor at the Paris Conservatoire in 1896. His music, although
considered too advanced by most, gained recognition amongst his musical friends. This was his
first truly productive phase, seeing the completion of his Requiem, the Cinq Mélodies, and the
Dolly Suite, among other works. Using an economy of expression and boldness of harmony, he
built the musical bridge over which his students -- such as Maurice Ravel and Nadia Boulanger -would cross on their journey into the twentieth century. In 1905, he was named director of the
conservatory and made several significant reforms. Ironically, this position gave his works more
exposure, but it reduced his time for composition and came when he was increasingly bothered
by hearing problems. Fauré's works of this period show the last, most sophisticated stages of
his writing, streamlined and elegant in form. During World War I, Fauré essentially remained in
Paris and had another extremely productive phase, producing, among other things, Le Jardin
clos and the Fantaisie for piano and orchestra, Op. 111, which show a force and violence that
make them among the most powerful pieces in French music. In 1920 he retired from the
school, and the following year gave up his music critic position with Le Figaro, which he had
held since 1903. Between then and his death in 1924, he would produce his great, last works:
several chamber works and the song cycle L'horizon chimérique. ~ AMG, All Music Guide
Opus 11
andante
cantabile
quarter note = 80
5 flats – key of Db
legato
ppp, pp, p, mf, f
subito
sempre
dolce
poco rall
triplet
cresc / crescendo
French language
IMPRESSIONISM
Are concerts meant to simply entertain? OR, might they also educate.
It is now time for your music history lesson.
Throughout history, people attempt to give definition to everything, to categorize in order
to make sense of an undefined world. This is true of historians of art and culture. They
attempt to sort thru our cultural world and place all similar sights and sounds of life,
specifically art, music, literature, architecture, and cultural events into labeled boxes –
usually grouped together by time and assigned a name.
However, these categories serve that purpose best if we remember that they are just
labels, and, like labels on a box, we can discard the label once we have opened the box
and become acquainted with its contents.
Our next selection by Gabriel Faure, comes out of a box labeled ROMANTICISM, dated
1820-1900. The box contains straits of art defined by freedom, movement, passion, and
the endless pursuit of the unattainable. The box follows its predecessor labeled,
CLASSICAL. Classical music was about perfect form, symmetry, and balance. The
difference between the two can be visualized terms of a garden. The classical garden:
cultivation, formal arrangement vs. the romantic garden: natural, untouched landscape.
(The English Garden came about during that same time; a garden designed to give the
impression of natural growth, rather than one that was manicured.)
Classical – perfect, ideal, a standard to which all else is compared. vs.
Romantic – the actual pursuit toward the human ideal.
Are you still with me? You can see how easily one can get caught up in defining and
categorizing and labeling our chaotic world. Ok, back to Faure.
Within the “Romantic’ box exist a group of composers from France that, at the very end
of the era…the “Post Romantic Era”, they contrasted romantic emotion and expression
with a more simple form called “IMPRESSIONISM.” Impressionism was a very muted
subtle form of the dramatic. This French art form explored the simple rather than the
complex, the reserved rather than the grand and was less concerned about delivering a
message and more about capturing a moment. It’s style is still Romantic because it still
captures humanity, but less from the heart and more from the soul.
A listener will fail to comprehend this music unless he is sensible to quiet statements,
nuance, detail, and an ability to distinguish calmness from dullness, wit from jollity,
inspiration from beauty.
What captures you more completely, the drama of this painting…
or the depiction of a moment in time.
They are both Romantic paintings. The French!
So now you know why this next song may capture you, or bore you.
It is not wrong to have likes and dislikes. It is only wrong to not understand WHY you
like or dislike.
It is an example of French Impressionism from the Romantic box. Listen for the melody.
It weaves in and out thru the song: It exists sometimes in the violin and piano, and
sometimes in various voice parts. Sometimes it is complete and sometimes incomplete.
Sometimes it is prominent and obvious, but sometimes it fades and is hidden. It is pure
and simple “Impressionistic”, rather than dramatic, Romantic.
I hope you “HEAR” Gabriel Faure’s “Cantique de Racine”.