surging accompaniment.26 The third and fourth phrases reiterate the two-bar figure, compressing and intensifying the motivic development across the second half of the song. The fourth phrase ends by leaping a fifth to the climactic high A♭, unleashing the full energy of Fauré’s heraldic figure. The “Mai” motive also acquires fresh harmonic colors with each new variation. In the first phrase, it perches atop a tonic triad, colored by a descending inner line. In the second phrase, a subdominant inflection shades the harmony deliciously. The third phrase ventures into more distant keys as the motive repeats, depicting Hugo’s image of “The path that ends where the road begins.” Finally, the fourth phrase presents the motive in the relative minor with a faintly modal coloration.
EXAMPLE 1.4. Fauré, variation of a head motive across the first strophe of “Mai.”
a. First phrase, mm. 3–4.
b. Second phrase, mm. 11–12.
c. Third phrase, mm. 19–22.
d. Fourth phrase, mm. 27–31.
With his persistent, subtly varied motive, Fauré captured something of Hugo’s verve. New versions of the motive continually sprout from the melody like the poem’s cornucopian imagery. This sort of concentrated motivic development is absent from Fauré’s other Hugo settings and does not resurface until the 1870s when the composer turned to more serious verse. The motivic work in “Mai” exceeds the polite norms of song composition, gesturing toward the chamber and symphonic genres. We catch another glimpse of an elevated style behind the façade of the salon romance.
GENRE AND COUNTERPOINT
In “S’il est un charmant gazon,” his fifth song from Les chants du crépuscule, Fauré explored the expressive potential of counterpoint. Counterpoint here signifies not only the combination of melodic lines but also the relationship between the two performers. For the first time in Fauré’s songs, the piano ritornello plays a truly integrated role, becoming an inseparable part of the musical-poetic design. At a deeper level still, “S’il est un charmant gazon” presents a counterpoint of genres that crystallizes a particular moment in the history of French song.
Motivically, the ritornello and strophes of “S’il est un charmant gazon” are closely interrelated (see example 1.5). The piano and vocal melodies both fall into two-bar subphrases that descend to an accented passing tone, a sighing figure that permeates the entire song. The rising arpeggio in m. 2 also resembles a similar figure in the second half of the vocal strophes (see mm. 19 and 21). Yet the pentatonic piano arpeggio is obviously related to the common motive from “Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre” and “Mai,” which follows at the end of the ritornello. Clearly, Fauré did not compose the piano ritornello of “S’il est un charmant gazon” as an afterthought, as in the earlier songs. The ritornello develops material from previous songs and is integrated motivically with the vocal strophes.
The ritornello and strophes share another less noticeable structural feature. Fauré wrote the entire ritornello in strict four-part counterpoint, paying close attention to voice-leading. The first bar contains a voice exchange between the melody, which descends from F4 to D4, and the tenor voice in the left hand, which ascends from D3 to F3 in even quarter notes. The same voice exchange returns twice, each time a fifth higher, as the two-bar model repeats sequentially. The inner voice also returns at the cadence, where the alto line rises from D4 to F4.
We might overlook this voice-leading detail did it not return so strikingly in the strophes. The first two phrases begin with a voice exchange between the descending vocal line (C5 to A4) and the ascending alto line in the piano (A3 to C4). The bass line, meanwhile, rises in contrary motion against the voice as it falls from C5 to F4. The bass only climbs a fourth in the first phrase, reversing direction on B♭2, but in the consequent phrase it reaches C3, mirroring the singer’s fifth descent. This contrapuntal “consummation” immediately precedes the rhapsodic arpeggios, as if the rising bass line had released a new energy in the melody.
EXAMPLE 1.5. Fauré, “S’il est un charmant gazon,” mm. 1–24.
EXAMPLE 1.5. (continued)
The expressive meaning behind this contrapuntal design becomes clear in the third stanza, where Fauré departed from the strophic form. In the first two strophes, the staccato accompaniment consists of a bass line and offbeat chords, imitating a mandolin or guitar. In the third strophe, an emphatic new voice joins the serenade (see example 1.6). This inner voice begins with a series of descending octaves leaps, foregrounded with heavy accents. The falling interval is, of course, an inversion of the vocalist’s octave leap, which follows immediately in the fifth bar. The contrary motion introduced in the piano ritornello has thus expanded from a third to a fifth to a full octave. During the modified consequent phrase, the new tenor voice descends chromatically, shadowing the singer’s melody in parallel tenths (mm. 65–68). Fauré clearly wanted to call attention to the counterpoint in this stanza, but why? The answer lies in the fifth and sixth lines:
EXAMPLE 1.6. Fauré, “S’il est un charmant gazon,” mm. 57–68.
| Un rêve que Dieu bénit | A dream that God blesses |
| Où l’âme à l’âme s’unit . . . | In which soul with soul unites . . . |
The contrapuntal lines depict this union of souls as they crisscross, mirror, and parallel one another. This is no facile pictorialism or isolated effect. Fauré has baked the contrapuntal design into every bar of the song, in both the piano ritornello and vocal strophes.
Yet the poetry and music of “S’il est un charmant gazon” are hardly soul mates. In fact, poetic and musical syntax are at loggerheads in Fauré’s peculiar setting. Hugo’s poem has a markedly hypotactic structure like that of “Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre.” Each stanza consists of a single complex sentence that begins with a series of subordinate clauses and does not reach closure until the last two lines:
| S’il est un charmant gazon | If there is a pleasant lawn |
| Que le ciel arrose, | That heaven waters, |
| Où naisse en toute saison | Where at each season spring |
| Quelque fleur éclose, | Blossoming flowers, |
| Où l’on cueille à pleine main | Where one gathers abundantly |
| Lys, chèvrefeuille et jasmin, | Lily, honeysuckle, and jasmine, |
| J’en veux faire le chemin | I would make a path |
| Où ton pied se pose! | Where your foot might tread! |
The rhyme scheme also has a nested structure, ababcccb, in which the b rhyme encloses the whole stanza. Moreover, Hugo used the same b rhyme (-ose) in all three stanzas, knitting together the entire poem. If the construction of “Mai” suggests headlong enthusiasm, “S’il est un charmant gazon” has the effect of a tautly organized argument.
In
