| Vous me demandez de ma taire, | You ask me to be quiet, |
| De fuir loin de vous pour jamais, | To flee far from you forever |
| Et de m’en aller, solitaire, | And to depart alone |
| Sans me rappeler qui j’aimais! | Without thinking of the one I loved! |
| Demandez plutôt aux étoiles | Rather ask the stars |
| De tomber dans l’immensité, | To fall from the sky, |
| À la nuit de perdre ses voiles, | Or the night to lift its veils, |
| Au jour de perdre sa clarté, | Or the day to lose its brightness! |
| Demandez à la mer immense | Rather ask the immense ocean |
| De dessécher ses vastes flots, | To dry up its vast waves, |
| Et, quand les vents sont en démence, | And the madly raging winds |
| D’apaiser ses sombres sanglots! | To calm their dismal sobbing! |
| Mais n’espérez pas que mon âme | But do not hope that my soul |
| S’arrache à ses âpres douleurs | Can ever tear itself from its sorrow |
| Et se dépouille de sa flame | And shed its flames |
| Comme le printemps de ses fleurs! | Like the spring sheds its flowers! |
The suave arpeggios of “Rencontre” return here as violent waves, crashing on the weak beats. The melody again begins with an impetuous double upbeat but now stretched into emphatic quarter notes. The harmony of “Toujours” also follows the same wayward path as “Rencontre,” plunging immediately to the submediant, D major.
Indeed, the third relations that ruffled the surface of “Rencontre” usurp the tonal structure itself in “Toujours.” The middle section is the most audacious harmonic passage Fauré had yet composed and will require a detour into some rather complex technical analysis (see example 2.3). In Grandmougin’s second and third stanzas, the poet unleashes a barrage of similes whose hyperbolic rhetoric reverberates in Fauré’s harmony. The passage rotates through a complete minor-third cycle, rising a third with each new poetic conceit: after a half cadence in F♯ minor, the passage modulates to A major (m. 12), C major (m. 16), D♯ major (m. 20), and back to F♯ minor (m. 24). Moreover, another symmetrical formation, the augmented triad, governs the progression at a lower level. The modulation from A to C major in mm. 12–16 hinges on the augmented triad [B♯ E G♯]. The progression begins with an E-major triad, V of A major; the fifth of the triad, B, rises a semitone, producing the augmented triad; the third, G♯, then sinks a semitone to yield a C-major triad. Fauré repeated the same maneuver in mm. 17–20, moving between G and D♯ triads through another augmented triad [D♯ G B]. The final modulation back to F♯ minor in mm. 21–24 passes from E♯ major to F♯ minor via the augmented triad [C♯ E♯ G
EXAMPLE 2.3. Modulation by Weitzmann regions in Fauré, “Toujours,” Poème d’un jour mm. 11–25.
EXAMPLE 2.3. (continued)
EXAMPLE 2.4. Weitzmann region in Fauré, Introït, Requiem, op. 48, mm. 50–61. Derived from Cohn, Audacious Euphony, 55.
This passage demonstrates the alternative diatonic syntax explored by neo-Riemannian theory in which chromatic voice-leading, rather than root progression, governs the movement between triads. Richard Cohn has located a similar passage in the Introït of Fauré’s Requiem, composed ten years after Poème d’un jour (see example 2.4).28 The augmented triad [A C♯ F], spelled in various ways, provides a pivot between F♯-minor, B♭-minor, F-major, and D-minor triads. All four triads belong to a single “Weitzmann region,” Cohn’s term for the six consonant triads that result from displacing the notes of an augmented triad by one semitone: lowering any note by a semitone yields a major triad, while raising any note produces a minor triad.29 Fauré exploited three of the four possible Weitzmann regions in “Toujours,” using three different augmented triads to modulate through the minor-third cycle. In the first two modulations, he reached the second triad in the rotation by lowering the fifth of the augmented chord (G♯ → G, B → B♭). He broke out of the pattern in the third modulation (mm. 22–24), raising the fifth of the augmented triad [A C♯ E♯] to lead back to F♯ minor (E♯ → F♯).
“Toujours” thus presses the harmonic dialectic of “Rencontre” to the breaking point, abandoning traditional tonality altogether. The first song had drifted into keys a major and minor third from the tonic; the second song uses these same intervals to construct an alternative harmonic system. The tonal structure becomes literally rootless, like the isolated poet. Located at the heart of Poème d’un jour, this astonishing passage threatens the disintegration of the musical language.
The final song, “Adieu,” must resolve these tensions and rebuild the harmonic structure on more solid foundations. Grandmougin’s poem is a paragon of Parnassian verse:
Comme tout meurt vite, la rose
Déclose,
Et les frais manteaux diaprés
Des prés;
Les longs soupirs, les bienaimées,
Fumées!
On voit dans ce monde léger
Changer,
Plus vite que les flots des grèves,
Nos rêves,
Plus vite que le givre en fleurs,
Nos cœurs!
À vous l’on se croyait fidèle,
Cruelle,
Mais hélas! les plus longs amours
Sont courts!
Et je dis en quittant vos charmes,
Sans larmes,
Presqu’au moment de mon aveu,
Adieu!
How quickly all dies, the rose
In bloom,
And the fresh iridescent mantles
Of the meadows;
The longs sighs, the beloveds,
Up in smoke!
One sees in this world how lightly
Change,
More quickly than the waves against the shores,
Our dreams,
More quickly than the frost on the flowers,
Our hearts!
One believed you to be faithful,
Cruel one,
But, alas! the longest loves
