Concert II:
The Piano Quintets: “Pie Jesu Domine, Dona Eis Requiem”
“Pie Jesu Domine, dona eis requiem” translates as “pious Jesus, give them rest” and is the opening line to the fourth movement of Fauré’s Requiem.
No. 1, op. 89 (1887–1905) in D minor
Dedicated to Eugène Ysaӱe
Molto moderato | Adagio | Allegro moderato
The only work of the four presented in this concert series that does not contain a scherzo, it is nonetheless a substantial composition. As the years have passed, the same features observed in the piano quartets have matured and there is substantial continuity of style between all four works in the sequence, but new traits are also found. Melodies in octaves based on modal scales are still presented in the strings accompanied by piano arpeggio figurations, as in the opening to the first movement, but, if anything, the melodies are now longer and more sustained and the figuration more intense. With a fourth stringed instrument now available to support the theme, its broad unison sweep is yet more grand, and Fauré seems generally less reluctant to allow the strings to play as an ensemble unsupported by the piano. Chromatic chords, cunningly situated, punctuate the flow, as for example a diminished seventh chord in this opening melody.
The contrasting theme when it comes is first heard in the second violin over a rippling piano accompaniment. The other strings soon join, and the internal counterpoint between them is even more swirling and the individuality of the part-writing even more sophisticated than hitherto in the piano quartets. The density and complexity of interweaving, as well as the swiftness of discourse between seemingly unrelated harmonies all effortlessly generated, together with their necessary accoutrement, a tapestry of inharmonic notes, is almost unnerving in its brilliance. D major is reached relatively early in the movement, some halfway through, and supplies a sense of otherworldliness that is at times reminiscent of the celebrated Requiem.
The virtuoso display of compositional wizardry continues into the second movement (in G major), with both themes introduced in quasi-fugal expositions in close canon between pairs of voices. As a suitable contrast to this complexity, when the climax of the movement is reached, all four strings are in unison with the opening theme and, with the cello high up on the instrument, the effect is of searing intensity.
The finale, which is entirely in D major, makes up for the omission of the scherzo by employing an opening theme in the piano of pastoral simplicity accompanied by pizzicato strings. Round and round inside a narrow compass it winds, like a folk tune over a drone accompaniment and devoid of any chromatic notes. The only notes in it alien to the D major scale are first a C♮ and then a G♯. Both are modal inflections: the C♮ cancels out the C♯ that is the normal seventh degree of the scale of D major and its leading note that “leads” up to the tonic, thus turning the scale into Mixolydian mode or the white-note scale formed with G as its tonal centre, though here transposed into D; even more exciting, with the C♯ back in place, the G♯ sharpens the fourth degree from its more usual G♮ and gives the music a flavour of the Lydian mode, which is the white-scale starting on F, again here transposed into D major.
Such modal simplicity does not last, and slowly but surely, as the chromaticism envelops it, we realise that this is now the cusp of the 19th into the 20th centuries and, although Wagner is still the principal compositional wellspring, influences from folk music are seeping in, even into the organist Fauré’s oeuvre, though it should be remembered that the quasi-pentatonic theme of the first movement of the first piano quartet had already revealed this tendency.
No. 1, op. 115 (1919–1921) in C minor
Dedicated to Paul Dukas
Allegro moderato | Allegro vivo | Andante moderato
The opening to this quintet reveals many familiar traits of Fauré’s chamber music with piano: pattering arpeggio piano accompaniment underpinning modal melodies in the strings sumptuously unfolded. Here, the solo viola holds the theme initially, but the other instruments then enter with the same melody as imitative voices. The theme itself contains a surprising number of leaps, rather than being composed principally of the scales that are Fauré’s more usual preference. Similarly, the contrasting theme, which is heard first in the piano, is composed of intervals of a seventh, falling and then rising, a new angularity perhaps appropriate to a world scarred by the Great War. That said, the movement closes in a more optimistic and even triumphant C major.
An advocate of the study of Palestrina at the Conservatoire, this has clearly had an influence on his own compositional style, and close imitation of small thematic motifs just as are employed in 16th-century polyphony is much more common than in the earlier piano chamber music. It is as if, returning after a long day persuading reluctant undergraduates to appreciate the finesse of honing their contrapuntal skills, he found solace in seeking out the opportunity to deploy his own in such a masterly fashion.
In an unrelated E flat major, the scherzo is also more complex than those of the piano quartets. There is much more filigree passagework, particularly in the piano, around which the accented stabs and pizzicato of the strings are particularly disjointed. The “scherzo” is clearly no longer a “joke”. Contrasts with more sustained legato sections are thus all the more marked, though there is significant blending between the two different musical components. No longer a lightweight relief composed at a whim and inserted between more serious movements, here is an original formal structure.
The viola again takes the lead role in serving the musical feast in the slow movement (in G major), joined soon after by the other strings, but the piano is absent for several bars. Twice in answer to the viola salutation, the strings expand and swell the chromatic harmony and dense texture before subsiding, until at last the piano enters in dialogue with the ensemble. The contrasting melody, when it comes, rises in a pleasing semplice and is played by the piano supported by uncomplicated figuration. The contrapuntist at heart, on this Fauré superimposes violins and viola with a unison descending counter-theme. Even so, the opening material dominates and recurs several times, the point of departure and arrival against which all other ideas are merely subsidiary.
In the finale (starting in C minor, but ending in C major), again it is the viola that has pride of place at the opening and introduces the principal theme. Although a simple arch form and with all its notes coming from the scale of the home key, the arch is now high and vaulted, and replete with leaping intervals – gone are the stepwise scalic melodies of yesteryear! Its piano accompaniment is a hemiola pattern that juxtaposes 2/4 metre over the 3/4 metre indicated by the time signature. The contrasting theme, again first heard in the viola, is more conventionally couched in 3/4, formed of much longer notes, and contained inside a narrow compass. Whereas in the other works discussed here the opening theme has tended to dominate the musical argument, in this movement it disappears in the latter stages of the composition. The hemiola accompanying pattern to it does not, however, and, together with the second theme, forms a motivic core that hurtles the music forward to its inevitable dramatic close.
In the face of the German spring offensive of 1918 that threatened to wipe out the Allies, Marshal Foch answered with (in translation): “I will fight in front of Paris, I will fight in Paris, I will fight behind Paris”, which presages Churchill’s “We shall fight on the beaches” speech to Parliament in 1940. The war over and won, Fauré’s answer was to take German musical language and traditions and mould them into his own unique style: still chromatic but more piquant and more cognisant of folk traditions, still motivic but no longer a collection of leitmotivs, still contrapuntal but now reinvigorated by the wellspring of Renaissance polyphony, still developmental but more sophisticated than mere reiteration, still abstract but no longer slavishly subservient to the principles of sonata form, still complex but willing to revert to simplicity, still climactic but no longer a celebration of Germanic mythology, sensual but not flagrantly, subtle but not obscure, richly-flavoured but not ear-jarring, energised but not robotic, tonal and not expressionist, French and not German.
Ernest Robin