(in progress)

‘Harmonic Sculpture’
in Fauré Art Song

by Stephanie E. Leotsakos

A case study of:

PREFACE

i This case study aims to observe the harmonic workings of two of Gabriel Faure’s songs: ‘Après un rêve’ Op.7 No.1 (1877) and ‘En sourdine’ Op.58 No.2 (1891)—written 14 years apart and resembling Fauré’s second period compositional style—using an original graphical method of analysis derived from a Tonnetz. This method uses color and maps the geometric “shape” of harmonies to observe pattern in progressions and imagine harmonic movement in space, thus forming ‘harmonic sculptures’.  Though this type of analysis is difficult to portray in a two-dimensional plane, viewing and conceiving of musical ‘space’ in this way might expand our conception of harmonic directionality and provide a fundamental structural background when analyzing tonal musical works. To do so, we must contemplate a view of ‘Western’ tonality either partially, or entirely, outside the bounds of traditional linear notation, and perhaps imagine the mechanisms of music as the makings of a physical sculpture of color and sound.

BIOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND

1 Gabriel Urbain Fauré (1845-1924) was a highly influential composer of the late 19th and early 20th century. He is regarded as “the most advanced composer of his generation in France” and is widely regarded as “the greatest master of French song.” From the age of nine (1854) Fauré studied at the Ecole Niedermeyer for 11 years on scholarship, under the tutelage of Niedermeyer himself, as well as Clément Loret, Louis Dietsch, and Xavier Wackenthaler. Upon Niedermeyer’s death in March of 1861, Fauré continued his piano studies with Saint-Saëns, who was just ten years his senior, but whom Fauré came to admire and become great friends with. Saint-Saëns introduced Fauré and his other pupils to contemporary music outside the school curriculum including the music of Schumann, Liszt and Wagner which influenced the compositional style of Fauré’s first period.

2 After his studies at the Ecole, Fauré frequented salons in Paris, where, through Saint-Saëns, he met many other contemporaries, including Liszt, as well as his first love, Marianne Viardot, with whom he became engaged after five years of courtship. Marianne, however, broke off their engagement in 1877 and Fauré became extremely depressed in the years to follow. Usually good natured, this break up led to a shift in his character and brought out a mean streak in him, but was also a very fruitful compositional time in his youth. In these years he wrote three early masterpieces: his First Violin Sonata, First Piano Quartet and his Ballade for piano. In 1883, Fauré married Marie Fremiet but was not faithful to her. To support her and his two sons (Emmanuel, born Dec. 29, 1883 and Philippe, born Jul. 28, 1889) he worked tedious jobs, composed mainly in the summers, and cheaply sold off the rights to his music directly to publishers. The majority of his compositions during his depressed decade, between 1880 to 1890, were piano pieces and numerous songs, including those of his second collection (1879–87). “Après un rêve” Op.7 No.1, published in 1877, was composed just two years prior as part of his first collection, and is a unique stylistic exception that points to the Fauré to come, while the majority of other pieces are considered nothing particularly unique outside the bounds of classical romanticism.[1]

3 In the decade following however, the 1890’s (age 45 to 55), Fauré’s life dramatically shifted and that was reflected in his compositional output. In 1891, a trip to Venice and Florence inspired the Cinq mélodies Op.58 (of which ‘En sourdine’ is No.2). From 1892 to 1896, he traveled all over France formally inspecting national conservatories in the provinces. In 1896 he became the master organist of the Madeleine, and he succeeded Massenet as composition teacher at the Paris Conservatory.  Among his pupils at the conservatory were Ravel, Florent Schmitt, Koechlin, Louis Aubert, Roger-Ducasse, Enescu, Paul Ladmirault, Nadia Boulanger and Emile Vuillermoz. It was during the years after 1896 that, over the age of 50, Fauré began to gain grand acclaim and recognition. In 1905, Fauré succeeded Théodore Dubois as director of the Paris Conservatory, where he initiated many reforms. He was also bestowed many honors by French Government.[2] Aaron Copland, in 1924, calls him the “Brahms of France” and refers to Georges Auric, spokesman for Les Six, calling him the “Master” of them all.[3] Fauré retired from his position at the Paris Conservatory in 1920, 15 years after his appointment, as his health declined, and he lost his hearing. Fauré died just four years later in 1924.[4]

[1] Jean-Michel Nectoux. "Fauré, Gabriel." Grove Music Online. (2001); https://www-oxfordmusiconline-com.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000009366, 1-6.
[2] Nectoux, 3-6.
[3] Aaron Copland. "Gabriel Fauré, a Neglected Master." The Musical Quarterly 10, no. 4 (1924). http://www.jstor.org/stable/738475. 573-575.
[4] Nectoux, 1-6.

STYLE & HARMONY

4 In his entry on Fauré in Grove Music Online, leading Fauré scholar and author Jean-Michel Nectoux writes, “Fauré’s stylistic development links the end of Romanticism with the second quarter of the 20th century, and covers a period in which the evolution of musical language was particularly rapid.” His opus of art songs, also known as French mèlodies, are typically grouped into three collections – 1879, 1897, and 1908 – each containing 20 pieces. “The first includes romances and songs from his youth [in which] the influence of Niedermeyer and Saint-Saëns is clear, though Fauré’s association with the Viardots from 1872 to 1877 inclined him temporarily towards an Italian style (Après un rêve, Sérénade toscane, Barcarolle, Tarentelle for two sopranos).”[1] ‘Après un rêve’ (Op. 7, No. 1), a late piece from his first collection (pre-dating his second period by just two years) is considered an exception in his first collection, one which foreshadows the unique stylistic changes that permeated his second collection.

5 Fauré’s art songs are much like song-paintings that fuse a late-Romantic and early-Impressionist style of musical illustration, through both increasingly chromatic melodic writing and also expanded tonality in harmonic writing. Between 1877-1879, the years during which Après un rêve was composed (1877) and published (1878), Fauré began developing his stylistic individuality, especially using “elements of the whole tone scale and anticipated Impressionism” that now permeates his legacy.[2] Nectoux writes:  

Much of [Fauré’s] individuality comes from his handling of harmony and tonality. Without completely destroying the sense of tonality, and with a sure intuitive awareness of what limits ought to be retained, he freed himself from its restrictions. Attention has frequently been drawn to the rapidity of his modulations: these appear less numerous if they are viewed according to the precepts of Fauré’s harmonic training, contained in the Traité d’harmonie (Paris, 1889) by Gustave Lefèvre, Niedermeyer’s son-in-law and successor. This harmonic theory can be traced back to Gottfried Weber, whose ideas had been disseminated in France by Lefèvre and Pierre de Maleden, the teacher of Saint-Saëns. Their concept of tonality was broader than Rameau’s classical theory, since for them foreign notes and altered chords did not signify a change in tonality, 7th and 9th chords were no longer considered dissonant, and the alteration of the mediant was possible without a change of tonality or even of mode. So a student of Fauré’s harmony (with its delicate combination of expanded tonality and modality) must consider entire phrases rather than individual chords…  His familiarity with the church modes is reflected in the frequently modal character of his music…facilitating both modulation to a neighbouring key and the pungent use of the plagal cadence… the flexibility of the modulations to remote keys and the sudden short cuts back to the original key are unprecedented aspects of Fauré’s originality.[3]

6 Fauré’s handling of harmony and tonality mentioned above, including frequent use of 7th and 9th chords, mediant alterations often mode-mixing major and minor tonalities, frequent modulation to neighboring keys, whole-tone progressions, short-cuts back to the originally key, and plagal (IV – I) cadences can be observed in just the opening nine measures of ‘Après un rêve’ and the opening sixteen measures of ‘En sourdine’. In addition, meandering tonalities using circle of fifths progressions and chromaticism, help evidence his clearly late-Romantic style alongside his budding Impressionist tendencies.

7 His second collection begins to see more impressionistic developments in the way Fauré maneuvers and interplays harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic textures. Harmonic and formal ‘novelty’ in Fauré’s song writing came about especially as of 1981 with his two song cycles: Cinq mélodies Op.58 (‘En sourdine’ is No.2) and La bonne chanson Op.61. Both include a literary organization with their selection and arrangement of texts as a story and their music based on recurring themes throughout the cycle. According to Nectoux, “the free and varied vocal style and the importance of the piano part seemed to exceed the proper limits of the song.”[4] Many of the songs of the second collection use ABA scheme while the boldest pieces anticipate the formal invention of his third collection. It was in his third collection in which prosody, melody, harmony and polyphony achieved its most matured balance, though Nectoux writes it is “regrettable” that the works of his third collection are lesser known.[5]

8 According to Eduard A. Phillips in “Smoke, Mirrors and Prisms: Tonal Contradiction in Fauré” it was in Faurés second period that the expected dominant-tonic relationships found in his earlier Romantic-style pieces began to weaken and push history forward towards an expansion and use of harmony that became characteristic of the French Impressionist style. His second-period songs also anticipate many of the stylistic changes that marked his third-period, and may have even foreshadowed the transition from tonality to atonality in the later 20th century, although that is a broad claim. [6]  

9 Phillips draws particular attention to the idea of a foreground, middle-ground, and background in Faure’s second-period songs. They are magnified by the ways in which he clouds basic tonal dominant-tonic relationship with specific techniques that originate near the foreground but that affect harmonic structure in the background.

“Various analytical investigations of the tonal/post-tonal transition in music of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have documented the increased use of atonal sonorities at different levels of structure in music. However, there has been little discussion of exactly how the basic organizational principle of tonality – the harmonic axis – was effectively abandoned for other musical structures. The idea that tonality was broken under the ever-increasing weight of foreground chromaticism… is a notion which ignores (or, at least, confuses) levels of musical structure and which analysts working from a Schenkerian perspective have rejected. Rather, it is almost a truism to say that for there to have been any real transition from one method of tonal organization to another, the basis for the older one – the dominant-tonic relationship – had to have been weakened in specific was at both deep middleground and background levels… Fauré’s music often clouds this basic tonal relationship with specific techniques which may, in a historical sense, originate near the foreground but which come to affect structures that are more fundamental.”[7]

10 ‘Après un rêve’ Op.7 No.1, set in the key of c-minor, the relative minor key of Eb-major in which ‘En sourdine’ Op.58 No.2 is set, makes a case study on these two pieces an interesting juxtaposition. Their tonal areas and harmonic spaces could overlap, and we can compare how Fauré actively sculpts with his harmonies across these two examples. We can also observe developments in the compositional style of his second period, with ‘Après un rêve’ (1877) written near its beginning, just prior to his second collection (1879-1896) and ‘En sourdine’ (1891), written 14-years later near its end.

[1] Nectoux, 9.
[2] Nectoux, 6.
[3] Ibid., pg. 7-8
[4] Nectoux, 10.
[5] Nectoux, 10.
[6]Edward R. Phillips. "Smoke, Mirrors and Prisms: Tonal Contradiction in Fauré." Music Analysis 12, no. 1 (1993). doi:10.2307/854073, 20.
[7] Phillips, 20.

ANALYSIS

 “Après un rêve” Op.7 No.1 (1877)

11 Overview: Fauré’s harmony in ‘Après un rêve’ is functional. It is organized around a ‘magnetic’ pull from the dominant to the tonic though its route towards the dominant is often lengthy and circuitous (ex. tonic in bar 2, with dominant not reached until bar 7, with an intervening circle of fifths… Additional interest is provided by the use of secondary dominants, especially during the circle of fifths bars in 3-7. Most chords are in root position or 1st inversion. The part-writing and use of chromatic alterations generate a variety of complex chords, including dominant 7ths (mm.7-8) and minor 7ths (mm.11), diminished 7th (mm.11) and half-diminished 7th (ii7 in mm.6), dominant 9ths (mm. 3, 4, 5) sometimes with 4-3 suspensions as in bar 5, and dominant minor ninth (mm.5), augmented triad (mm.6 and 16) and the Neapolitan 6th (flat supertonic, Db-Major, ex. mm.27). ‘Après un rêve’ also features modal characteristics (as previously discussed) that tend to loosen the functional pull of the music. These maneuvers include avoiding raising the leading tone (ex. mm. 2 and 7), major and minor ambiguity (ex 1. mm.14-15 the melody appears to be approaching a cadence in Eb-minor, but instead cadences in the major; ex.2 mm. 27-28 same effect but with c-minor and C-Major), and lastly by way of false relations as in measure 7, where B-natural and B-flat sound together.[1]

[1] Pearson. “39. Fauré Après un rêve” Pearson Edexcel Online (2013).  https://qualifications.pearson.com/content/dam/pdf/A%20Level/Music/2013/Teaching%20and%20learning%20materials/Unit3-39-Faure-Apres-un-reve.pdf, 1-6.

12 The opening nine measures of ‘Après un rêve’ shows how Fauré progresses in his harmonic writing, both in how he manages its literal progression on the page and also how he stylistically progresses in the last years of his first period. Through use of triadic extension, mostly through various types of 7th and 9th chords and Neapolitan 6th chord, Fauré is able to subtly connect preceding harmonies to forthcoming harmonies and paint a larger picture. These changes are perceived as subtle chromatic changes in the foreground, but, as Phillip’s would note, affect structural movement in the background and deeply affect our perception of tone-color, namely as major and minor mode-mixtures and cross-relations. The following illustrations (Figures 1 - 3) reveal that despite the subtlety in the activity of harmonic progression, the piece as a whole remains harmonically self-contained within the frame of c-minor, never traveling far from this key (Figure 4). It is also interesting that the harmonies used in the first eight measures make up the majority of harmonies used in the rest of the 48-measure long song, making the opening eight measures proportionally a 1/6th-sized snapshot. Analysis of this snapshot is therefore a close reflection of the whole, mapping the containment of its overarching tonal area and style of harmonic progression (Figures 3 & 4).

13 Though set in c-minor, the opening nine measures borrow harmonies from its parallel key, C-Major—something the entire piece will do. In fact, the opening two bars of accompaniment leave the initial minor key quite quickly and open up into meadow of major by bar 3. Figure 1.1 shows that such a turn of view, or change of shade, is frequently done through a harmonic ‘arm’ reaching out towards the next sonority, extending the base triad into a 7th or a 9th chord, and most usually with the remnants of at least one common-tone or shadow of the previous chord. Measures 1 through 4 are an example of this. The first c-minor (C-Eb-G) chord in mm.1 becomes an EbM7 (Eb-G-Bb-D) chord. Eb remains the common tone with the previous cm chord (leaving behind the shadow of C), but at the same time the EbM7th extends out with its M7th arm (the D) towards an F-sonority. However, at this point (the end of the second measure), the audience does not yet know if the EbM7 sonority will resolve to F-Major or f-minor and we are left with a moment of thick anticipation of an emotional unknown, harmonically speaking. The melodic vocal line gives us no hints either about whether we are about to leave c-minor either, as the G  C  D sequence (Sol-Do-Re) wants to resolve to Eb (Me), which would be the dominant 7th of either F or fm. Resolving to f-minor would make sense, as it is the minor pre-dominant (iv chord) of the tonic (i) key. Alas, it is the text, and its foreshadowed painting thereof, that resolves Fauré’s choice of shade. « Dans un sommeil que charmait ton image, je rêvais le bonheur, ardent mirage… » translates to « In a sleep made sweet by a vision of you, I dreamed of happiness, fervent illusion… » This sweet, happy sleep takes us to major in the accompaniment, by turn of an illusory harmonic hand, while the melodic vocal line remains ambiguous through omission of either A or Ab in the first phrase (Figure 1.1).

14 Looking ahead, we observe more extensions, more outreaches, to subsequent harmonies by way of 7th and 9th chords. Across measures 3 – 5 (Figures 1.1 - 1.2), first the outreach is by way of full 9th then settling into a 7th. This ‘reach-ahead’ gesture followed by ‘small-retreat’ is like a jellyfish propelling itself forward then naturally retreating slightly while preparing for its next propel in an invisible sea of water. It perhaps describes the nature of potential and kinetic energy or is analogous the changing nature of love/pleasure and hurt. Whichever metaphor we choose, Fauré often subverts our musical expectations with his exploratory harmonic style, thus illustrating both Romantic artistry and Impressionist tendencies in setting illusory French poetry.  

FIGURE 1.1: A linear, chord-by-chord illustration of mm. 1-4 in ‘Après un rêve’; Includes score excerpts, measure numbers, chord names, a graphical construction of each chord structure constructed from a colored Tonnetz, and arrows as well as letters indicating the Circle-of-5ths sequence in the bassline.

FIGURE 1.2: A linear, chord-by-chord illustration of mm. 5-6 in ‘Après un rêve’; Includes score excerpts, measure numbers, chord names, a graphical construction of each chord structure constructed from a colored Tonnetz, and arrows as well as letters indicating the Circle-of-5ths sequence in the bassline.

FIGURE 1.3: A linear, chord-by-chord illustration of mm. 7-9 in ‘Après un rêve’; Includes score excerpts, measure numbers, chord names, a graphical construction of each chord structure constructed from a colored Tonnetz, and arrows as well as letters indicating the Circle-of-5ths sequence in the bassline.

FIGURE 2: A linear, chord-by-chord illustration of mm. 1-9 in ‘Après un rêve’; Includes measure numbers, chord names, a graphical construction of each chord structure constructed from a colored Tonnetz, and arrows as well as letters indicating the Circle-of-5ths sequence in the bassline.

FIGURE 3: A consolidated illustration of harmonic sculpting in ‘Après un rêve’ mm. 1-9 constructed from a colored Tonnetz.

FIGURE 4: ‘Harmonic Sculpture’ of the entire ‘Après un rêve’ song, reducing all harmonies and enharmonic spellings found within the piece into a consolidated tonal area framed by the tonic key of c-minor (and its parallel key, C-Major, from which the song borrows sonorities). In other words, all the chords in the song exist within this sculpture. Added to the sculpture are Roman Numerals, used in traditional theoretical analysis, as they are related to the tonic key of c-minor. Chords existing within the natural key of c-minor are in black text, and chords existing outside the key, or in the parallel major key, are in lighter grey text. The dominant V chord is a darker grey, as the Major V chord is commonly borrowed from the parallel major key and used in the minor key. Included also is the Neapolitan chord (labeled ‘N’).

“En sourdine” Op.58 No.2 (1891)

15 As a late-Romantic composer, Fauré wrote his earlier art songs with solid foundations in the harmonic language of the Classical period. While he did not reject or break from these foundations, nor did he feel constrained by them, as he matured, his writing style expanded and became more progressive. In other words, he became less-and-less constrained by harmonic boundaries, especially those situated in expected dominant-tonic relationships, as Phillips notes.

16 A new style of complexity therefore arises in Fauré’s sculpting of ‘En sourdine’ written 14 years later. It is set in a warm major key (Eb), is expanded in its harmonic outreach, is textured and coloristic, makes use of whole-tone scale fragments, and uses arpeggiated gesture throughout the number that change in type and maneuver harmonic rhythms along with the sentiment of the text. Fauré masterfully sets the speech-like rhythm of the text into song, with a limited range, focusing less on vocal acrobatics and more on courting the voice and piano as a duet, instead of the piano being backgrounded as simply accompaniment as was used in ‘Après un rêve’. The piano is thus foregrounded, and envelops the vocal lines with swirling, wave-like extended harmonies which illustrate the dream-like nature of the text. The poetry of text and music together paint an experience of surrender to a dream of love and sensual experience amidst a night in the natural, recalling the poetic atmosphere also established in ‘Aprés un rêve’.

17 According to Roy Howat and Emily Kilpatrick in “Gabriel Fauré's Middle-Period Songs, Editorial Quandaries and the Chimera of the 'Original Key” the piano parts of his songs from the late 1880s and on “carry a much greater part of the melodic content and character, while voice and piano overlap, alternate and intertwine in more complex ways, making register and balance a crucial consideration in performance.” This is in contrast to the more straightforward accompaniments of his most early songs, as in ‘Aprés un rêve’. The authors note that these piano parts become “particularly striking” in the “extraordinary suppleness” in the ‘Venetian’ songs of 1891, of which ‘En sourdine’ is the second number.[1] According to Nectoux, “‘En sourdine’ is the incontestable masterpiece of the cycle, a song of intense and tender lyricism, mirroring the spiritual and carnal link which unites the lovers.”[2]

[1]Roy Howat and Emily Kilpatrick. "Gabriel Fauré's Middle-Period Songs, Editorial Quandaries and the Chimera of the 'Original Key'." Journal of the Royal Musical Association 139, no. 2 (2014). http://www.jstor.org/stable/43303376, 313.
[2] Nectoux, Jean-Michel. Gabriel Fauré: A Musical Life. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2004, 179.

18    Let us expand further on Phillips’ idea of foregrounding, middle-grounding, and backgrounding in ‘En sourdine.’ Listen to the piano part excerpted of the first 16 measures of the song. The piano’s arpeggiated harmonic texture creates a sonic soundscape for which the vocal melody can swim within, while also bringing melodic lines of its own which act in duet with the vocal line. In measures 1-5 (Figure 7.1-7.2) the vocal line anticipates special notes in the harmony, leading the vocal-piano duet. In measure 6 (Figure 7.3) they switch, and the piano momentarily leads the voice in melodic movement with the appearance of the A-natural on beat 2 before the voice’s entrance on A-natural. They join on Bb on beat 4, and switch again in measure 7, the voice leading the piano on F#, and then coming together again on beat 3. Immediately afterwards, the piano reaches forward with A-natural and Bb on beat 1 of measure 8 and anticipates the voice’s Bb. They continue in homophonic duet for the remainder of measure 8 into 9 and eventually break apart into polyphonic duet in the second half of measure 9 through measure 16—the top voice in the piano frequently soaring above the vocal line. Thus, like an ever-growing, natural organism, the piano part envelops the vocal line.

FIGURE 7.1: A linear, chord-by-chord illustration of mm. 1-3 in ‘En sourdine’; Includes score excerpts, measure numbers, chord names, and a graphical construction of each chord structure constructed from a colored Tonnetz.

FIGURE 7.2: A linear, chord-by-chord illustration of mm. 1-3 in ‘En sourdine’; Includes score excerpts, measure numbers, chord names, and a graphical construction of each chord structure constructed from a colored Tonnetz.

FIGURE 7.3:

FIGURE 8.1: Reduced harmonic sculpting in '‘En sourdine’ mm. 1-16. Constructed horizontally from a colored Tonnetz.