Fauré's Nocturnes are much more than more evocative night pieces. They show musical introspection of considerable expressive depth, and only in a few of them (mainly the earlier ones) is the magic of a moon-lit landscape the composer's actual subject-matter. In most cases, Fauré favour the nocturnal hour for their quietness and loneliness. When the noise and bustle of diurnal life has subsided, man remain alone, facing his dreams or problems. Thus, the Nocturne, in the hands of Fauré, become a mean of musical selfexamination of all the Noctumes are quiet or retrained in their expression. Some of them rise to great dramatic tension of a kind not to be found in the Nocturnes of Chopin.
Nor does the tempo always remain slow or moderate. As early as in the First Nocturne, this dramatic element asserts itself with great power. and it remains present right to the end, disturbing the lofty meditations of old age through recollections of youth of heart-aching intensity (No. 13) or through outbursts of defiant despair (No. 12). These thirteen pieces show an astonishing variety in form and contents, and while all of them are not of equal value, they add up to a perfect cycle, a worthy diary through the composer's long life. The first three Nocturnes appeared together under a single opus number, but they are strikingly different from each other. The First Nocturne, in E flat minor, the most extended of the three, is probably the most personal and most significant Piano work in the whole of Fauré's first period, with the possible exception of the Ballade, While the keyboard writing cannot conceal its Chopinesque sources, some of the harmonies are already strikingly Faurean. The general mood is dark and passionate, reaching a great intensity in the expression of acute grief, with a faint echo of the celebrated La Chanson du Pecheur in the coda. The piece's ternary form, with a more agitated central section, forecasts that of many a later Nocturne, in particular the Thirteenth. Neither the Second Nocturne, in B major nor the Third, in A flat major, quite recapture the lnusical and expressive qualities of the First. They are serene and charming love-scenes of great melodic appeal, in which the solitude of night is happily shared by the soul of the beloved. Even the agitated Allegro section that unexpectedly interrupts the refined interplay of dissonances in the Second Nocturne lacks any dramatic significance, and rather appears as a picturesque or evocative contrast. The Third Nocturne is the most immediately appealing and possibly the least profound of the series, a piece of excellent drawingroom music, but "saved" by Fauré's unerring elegance and refinement. There are three different melodic ideas, and their rhythmic accompaniment shows a most exquisite subtlety.
The next two Nocturnes, written in close succession. while not breaking any decisive new ground, nevertheless witness a psychological evolution towards a greater depth of feeling. Like the Third, the Fourth Nocturne, in E flat major, is a picture of happiness and reciprocated love, and the clarity of its beguiling melodies is enhanced through an accompaniment that suggests distant bells, especially in the central section. The Fifth Nocturne, in B flat major, shows a progress towards greater periodic and rhythmical freedom, and its mood of prevailing graceful sensuousness ch,anges rather abruptly during the agitated mIddle section into a dramatic tension more atmospheric than really involved.
A new world opens with the Sixth Nocturne, in D flat major, the most celebrated in the series, and admittedly one of the most important and beautiful. When asked as to where he had found the inspiration to its wonderful opening, Fauré is said to have replied: "In the most unlikely of places, in the Simplon tunnel!" This anecdote is either spurious, or Fauré must have meant it as a joke, for the Simplon tunnel was not opened until 1905, eleven years after the completion of the work! Be that as it may, the Sixth Nocturne is FaunS at his greatest, and achieves a perfect balance between the claims of an enhanced depth of expression and those of a keyboard writing that retains much of the brilliancy of Lhe former pieces. This, added to the work's inventive wealth (it is one of the most extended of the Nocturnes), explains its exalted position, which reconciles the opinion of the wider public and of the more refined connoisseurs. Alongside with the Theme and Fariatiolls. which belongs to the same period, it marks a point of perfect balance before the beginning of the sublime ascesis of the last period. In mood and style, it stands closest to La BOl1ne Chanson, written just before. Again. Fauré uses a broad and freely handled tenary form, with a middle section full of pathos reaching a great intensiy of feeling, and a quiet conclustion recapturing the serene mood of the opening.
The Seventh Nocturne, in C sharp minor, is laid out along spacious lines similar to those of ie predecessor and witnesses a comparable wealth and beauty of invention. while striking even deeper into the recesse of the human soul. While it is more passionate and darker. it is also more elliptic and more enigmatic in its fast harmonic change, more austere in its instrumental garb, and this accounts for its less popular appeal. it is also one of Fauré's most difficult piano pieces in performance. and in every respect a decisive milestone on the threshold of ultimate maturity. Its psychological contents, while still cast in a ternary scheme, revere the procedure of the Sixth Nocturne, for here it is the middle part that brings the light of true solace, a light eventually retained in the luminous closing bars.
The Eighth Nocturne. the shortest and least complex of the series, in D flat major like the Sixth, did not receive an independent Opus number. but was integrated into the set of 8 Pièces Brèves. which it closes as Opus 84 No 8. While it does not attempt to match its neighbours' splendour and depth, it still presents us with an intinlate moodpicture of great chann, an evocation of twilight rather than night. enlivened by distant bells. It unfolds a single melodic line, dispensing with a contrasting middle-section.
The following four Nocturnes (Nos. 9 through 12) are much more concentrated and restrained than their predecessors, forsaking their tonal and instrumental wealth and reaching a distilled purity of utterance which has few, if any equivalents in the whole of piano music. The Ninth Nocturne, in B minor, at once introduces us into the hortus conclusus (Le Jardin clos is one of Fauré's most admirable late song cycles!) of the ageing and deaf master's inner life. The tonal and harmonic idiom, always highly individual, has become at once elliptic and recondite, with enharmonic short-cuts of deceptive evidence and subtle shufflings between modality and tonality. The rhythms, with their heavy reliance on syncopation, are more elusive than before, while the melodic invention has become at once more concentrated, more sharp-edged and less immediately appealing. The instrumental writing, lastly, is a model of efficiency and economy, dispensing with anything but the bare essentials, in spite of which the music never sounds thin or harsh. Fauré's late piano music, his Preludes, his last Nocturnes and Barcarolles, are a unique treasure of Western culture. the true importance of which is still hardly recognized. As to the Ninth Nocturne, it develops a single idea of poignant beauty through a progression of growing intensity, until its tension is released in a serene conclusion in the tonic major. The Tenth Nocturne, in E minor, written during the composition of the first Act of Penelope , is closely related to the preceding one, following a similar plan, but with even more nobility and restraint with even greater stylistic and tonal refinement. The Eleventh Nocturne, in F sharp minor, is the most secret (one would like to say, the most silent) of them all, one of the shortest and at the same time one of the most moving. Few notes, indeed, but all of them essential. It is a funeral piece, written in memory of Noemie Lalo, the wife of the music critic Pierre Lalo, and owes its peculiar expressive impact to the original use of Dorian cadences. A perfect stele of the purest hellenic marble, the worthy counterpart to Debussy's Canope, written at exactly the same time. On the contrary, the Twelfth Nocturne, in E minor, is one of the most dramatic of the series. A dark and agitated picture of a nightly sea-storm (a striking counterpart to the passionate diurnal seascape of the opening movement of the ten just after! ), it hesitates until its very last chord between the major and the minor mode, the latter having the last word at the end of a tormented and chaotic progression enhanced by dissonnant seconds of a harshness quite unusual for Fauré. The Thirteenth Nocturne , in B minor, completed on the last day of 1921 , stands as a fitting climax to Fauré's whole pianistic output. The only works that came after it were the Piano Trio and the String Quartet. It is set along larger lines than any Nocturne since the Seventh, and in no other one is the musical and dramatic contrast between the middle and outer sections so striking and so heart-rending. The sublime opening, whose part-writing attains a density and purity worthy of the loftiest music of Bach, is a deeply moving picture of old age. The central B major Allegro tries to escape reality by a passionate evocation of happy and youthful recollections long since vanished. But the unrelenting present keeps the upper hand: the ending is nothing but ashes, the icy grip of impending death ...
Harry HALBREICH
Marinkyo's School > Gabriel Fauré > Harry Halbreich > Gabriel Fauré / THE NOCTURNES
