Gabriel Faure (1845-1924)<\/p>\n
Suite from Pell\u00e9as et M\u00e9lisande<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Possibly no single literary work after Romeo and Juliet had such a prodigious impact on the world of music as Maeterlink\u2019s symbolist drama, Pell\u00e9as and M\u00e9lisande. Within a few years of its publication in 1892 the play had inspired the creation of four genuine masterpieces by some of the leading composers of the time- Faur\u00e9, Debussy, Sibelius and Schoenberg, a tally challenged perhaps only by Goethe\u2019s Faust.<\/p>\n
Each of these composer\u2019s response to the drama tells us something about them as men as well as musicians- Sibelius fascination with the natural world comes through in his eerie depiction of the sea and the park, \u00a0while Debussy found in it a text through which he could attempt to exorcise the ghosts of Tristan and Isolde and escape the shadow of Wagner, and Schoenberg saw in it a deeply compelling character study of Golaud as a true tragic hero- destroyed by jealousy and then overcome with remorse.<\/p>\n
Faur\u00e9\u2019s was the first of the four musical responses to the play, written in 1898, and in many ways his incidental music (composed for a production of the play at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London) is the most quintessentially French take on the drama. In Faur\u00e9\u2019s incidental music, everything is expressed with sublime understatement and refinement. Where Schoenberg finds high drama and Sibelius finds dread and despair, Faur\u00e9 evokes longing and mystery.<\/p>\n
In converting the incidental music into a concert suite, Faur\u00e9 excerpted the two longest dramatic scenes, Golaud\u2019s discovery of M\u00e9lisande in the forest and the death of M\u00e9lisande, and the shorter, lighter scene of M\u00e9lisande at the spinning wheel. Amazingly, the most famous movement in the suite, the Siclienne, was originally written as part of unpublished incidental music for Le bourgeois gentilhomme<\/em> , and \u00a0has no direct relation to the drama, even if it\u2019s gentle mood seems of a piece with the rest of the suite.<\/p>\n c. 2007 Kenneth Woods<\/p>\n