The 10 Most Beautiful Piano Quintets in Classical Music

by Hermione Lai, Interlude 

A piano quintet is generally a composition for piano and four other instruments. Composers throughout the ages have combined a variety of instruments to play along with the piano, but the standardised form of instrumentation features the string quartet.

Piano Quintet

Interestingly, piano quintets are less common than keyboard chamber music for smaller ensembles, probably because of the challenges of clearly defining the relationship between piano and strings. Piano quintets had been written before, but it was only by the middle of the 19th century that this particular genre took on the seriousness of other prestigious chamber music genres.

Are you ready to explore the 10 most beautiful piano quintets in standardised scoring? Once again, we do have a rather substantial number of works on offer, and all playlists of this kind are subject to personal taste. However, one thing we can probably agree on is that the Schumann E-flat Major Piano Quintet is one of the greatest works in this genre.

Robert Schumann: Piano Quintet in E-flat major, Op. 44 

Robert Schumann (1810-1856) was rather severely harassed by his sceptical father-in-law. In order to prove potential earnings from composition, Schumann wrote over one hundred songs in 1840. In 1841, he wrote nothing but symphonic works, and in 1842, he turned his attention towards chamber music. To prepare, he studied quartets by Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, and composed a piano trio, three string quartets, a piano quartet, and the Piano Quintet Op. 44.

Dedicated to his wife Clara, Schumann featured a complete string quartet with added piano. The opening “Allegro brillante” features a bold and sparkling musical idea that organically expands. Almost immediately, however, this is contrasted by a soft and tender dialogue between the viola and the cello. In due course, both themes are extensively fragmented and subjected to far-reaching modulations. The second movement unfolds in the manner of a funeral march, with a dark and mysterious melody accompanied by sobbing musical rhythms.

Robert Schumann, 1850 © pianolit.com

The “Scherzo” joyously and exuberantly presents ascending and descending major scales, contrasted by two “Trios,” which sound a lyrical canon and Hungarian gypsy music, respectively. Schumann’s contrapuntal and expressive prowess emerges in the concluding “Allegro”, as he blends strict canonic and fugal passages with passages of nervous lyricism. The coda is cast as a double fugue and breathtakingly combines the main themes of the first and last movements.

Johannes Brahms: Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34 

In terms of the Piano Quintet, it is difficult to say Schumann without also saying Brahms. However, the marvellous Brahms Piano Quintet started out as a quintet for two violins, viola, and two cellos. Clara Schumann was enthusiastic and praised that “inner strength and richness written for the instruments.” However, when Brahms sent it to Joseph Joachim, the famous violinist had reservations and suggested that it “lacked charm and sounded artificial in spots.”

Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms

Not entirely confident in his abilities, Brahms reworked the piece as a piano sonata for two pianos. When he played it with Clara, she was overwhelmed by the music’s grandeur but refused to call it a sonata. As Clara wrote, “it is so full of ideas that it requires an orchestra for its interpretation.” Brahm once again started to transform the work, and it was the conductor Hermann Levi who suggested that it should be recast as a piano quintet.

In the end, the piano quintet is a hybrid of two earlier versions, combining Brahms’ youthful exuberance with sophisticated musical textures and a logical way of constructing motives and their subsequent development and continuation. When Levi heard the finished composition in 1865, he wrote, “The quintet is beautiful beyond measure; Out of the monotony of the two pianos a model of tonal beauty has arisen; a restorative for every music-lover, a masterpiece of chamber music.”

Gabriel Fauré: Piano Quintet No. 1 in D minor, Op. 89 

Not unlike Brahms, it took Gabriel Fauré a number of years before he came to terms with his first Piano Quintet. First published in 1906, drafts for the work actually date from 1887. Four years later, Fauré contemplated the addition of a second violin to what might have been a third piano quartet. After drafting two movements, he put the work aside once more and only returned to work again in 1903. The composer referred to the work as “this animal of a quintet”, and the piece was finally completed towards the end of 1905.

John Singer Sargent: Gabriel Fauré, 1896

The work is dedicated to Eugène Ysaÿe, and a first performance in Brussels with the Ysaÿe Quartet in March 1906 was repeated in Paris the following month. Commentators heard a “strangely inward melancholy” possibly connected to some medical problems the composer experienced during the 1880s. Fauré experienced dizziness and severe headaches, and suffered from depression possibly related to the death of his father in 1885. He also started to experience hearing loss, which began to affect him in earnest in 1902. Fauré grew tired “of repeating himself endlessly in his music,” but the Op. 89 Piano Quintet stands apart from his other chamber works, including his 2nd Piano Quintet, Opus 115.

Jean Sibelius: Piano Quintet in G minor

Jean Sibelius

On 19 January 1890, Ferruccio Busoni performed the Piano Quintet in E minor, Op. 5 by the Norwegian composer Christian Sinding at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig. In the audience, by invitation from Busoni, was Jean Sibelius. It has long been suspected that this occasion provided the impulse for Sibelius to start work on his own five-movement Piano Quintet in G minor. The work was completed in April 1890, and the first concert performance took place in Helsinki, with Busoni playing the piano part.

While Busoni greatly admired the composition, Sibelius’ former composition teacher, Martin Wegelius, was highly critical of the piano writing, especially in the first movement. As he commented, “his curious whims and fancies have obscured his real self.” Surprisingly, the “Finale” was never performed during the composer’s lifetime, and it first sounded in public only in 1965. A scholar writes, “maybe Sibelius feared that it would never actually be performed and wished to salvage some of its musical material; or perhaps he felt that he had not exhausted the potential of its themes.” In the event, the Piano Quintet is one of the most impressive chamber works by Sibelius, with the composer “striving for a new ruggedness and severity of mood.”

Antonín Dvořák: Piano Quintet in A Major

Following in the footsteps of his idol Johannes Brahms, Antonín Dvorák (1841- 1904) exhibited a heightened sense of musical insecurity. The Piano Quintet in A Major, published as Op. 5 in 1872, makes a convincing case in point. Although received enthusiastically by critics and audiences alike, Dvorák remained highly dissatisfied with the work and destroyed the manuscript soon after its premiere.

Dvořák in New York, 1893

Fifteen years later, the composer reconsidered and began to make extensive revisions to the work. However, rather than submitting the revised work for publication, he cast it aside for good and instead worked on a brand new quintet in the same key. The resulting Piano Quintet in A Major, Op. 81 not only secured Dvorák’s international reputation but also produced a distinctive masterpiece of Nineteenth-Century chamber music.

The gently flowing piano accompaniment provides the colouristic background to one of Dvorák’s most expressive and lyrical melodies, stated in the cello. However, this sense of tranquillity is suddenly interrupted by a rhythmically animated transition in the minor mode that propels the music forward. This process is once repeated before the viola sings another lyrical melody. Subsequently, both themes are thoroughly developed—relying predominantly on the first and second violin—before a rhapsodic recapitulation feeds into a sparkling and virtuosic coda. The second movement invokes a Ukrainian lament, known as “Dumka,” and the ”Scherzo” is cast in the style of a Bohemian folk dance called “Furiant.” Not to be outdone, the “Finale” presents yet another vigorous dance, a Polka.

Edward Elgar: Piano Quintet in A minor, Op. 84

Edward Elgar was born in a small village and initially earned his living by working in the office of a local solicitor. He received no formal musical training, but nevertheless succeeded his father as organist and played the violin in an orchestra at Birmingham. His early attempts at composition are patterned after the music of Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms and Wagner, but plans to attend the Leipzig Conservatory were never realized.

Edward Elgar

With his A minor quintet, one of three chamber compositions dating from the concluding years of WWI, Elgar returned to the themes and musical aspirations of his youth. Unwilling to participate in modernist musical experimentations, Elgar provided a summary review of 19th-century European musical practices from a distinctly English perspective.

The first movement opens with a hauntingly beautiful introduction that canvasses a slow-moving melodic fragment played by the piano against a rhythmically animated commentary given by the strings. Sounding at once rhapsodic and almost improvisatory in nature, Elgar himself described the introduction as “ghostly stuff.” The opening movement clearly pays homage to Brahms’s musical personality, while the “Adagio” explores the musical tensions of an extended emotional narrative. The final movement, which also relies on a slow musical introduction, provides the fitting nostalgic conclusion to Elgar’s musical gesture of resignation.

Béla Bartók: Piano Quintet in C Major 

Let’s now turn to Béla Bartók (1881-1945), one of the most influential figures in the history of classical music. Composer, performer, educator, and ethnomusicologist, Bartók powerfully shaped the way subsequent generations approached and listened to music. Bartók displayed great musical talent at an early age. He could distinguish between different tunes and rhythms before he started talking, and by age 4 he had roughly 40 pieces in his piano repertory.

Béla Bartók in New York, 1944

Bartók composed the four movements of his Piano Quintet in 1903 and 1904, and thematically, they are reminiscent of the music of Johannes Brahms and Richard Strauss. Yet, Bartók was not slavishly following traditional compositional standards. In the final two movements, we find early inclusions of folk elements, resulting in a distinctive Hungarian flavour.

A tightly organised formal structure builds on the continual repetition and variations of themes and unfolds within a highly flexible tonal space. The consistent use of asymmetrical rhythms completes a vocabulary of stylistic features that would soon become familiar elements of Bartók’s expressive language. For one reason or another, Bartók had to be persuaded not to destroy this composition. Thankfully, he took the manuscript with him to the United States, where it was published after his death.

Dmitry Shostakovich: Piano Quintet in G minor, Op. 57 

My list of top 10 Piano Quintets must necessarily include the G-minor work by Dmitry Shostakovich. It was composed during the summer of 1940 and written for the Beethoven Quartet and himself. The work followed on the heels of his Sixth Symphony, a work that received a rather mixed reception. The success of the Piano Quintet, however, was unqualified and long-lasting. In fact, the composition was awarded a Stalin Prize of 100,000 rubles.

Dmitry Shostakovich, 1925

Robert Matthew-Walker writes, “a glance at the list of movements might lead one to imagine that this is a neoclassical work, but its direct emotional power and thematic integration place it on altogether a higher level than mere pastiche.” The opening movement titled “Prelude” opens with a declamatory three-note cell that provokes an impassioned response from the strings. The four-voiced “Fugue” begins with a strict exposition by muted strings that build into an elegiac web of sound, eventually joined by the piano adding a bass line.

The music continues immediately with a whirlwind “Scherzo,” with the piano presenting a witty theme that interacts with the strings. The first trio sounds a gypsy-like air, while the second involves playful pizzicato. A cool and relaxed “Intermezzo” unfolds over a walking bass accompaniment in the cello, with the remaining strings sounding a bitter-sweet counterpoint. In the “Finale,” the piano sounds a gentle theme over an animated accompaniment. Once the mood quietens, the work returns to the impassioned beginning but ends in a quiet and contented close.

Nicolai Medtner: Piano Quintet in C Major 

Nicolai Medtner, who died in London on 13 November 1951, was one of the very last Romantic composer-pianists. Overshadowed by his contemporaries Scriabin and Rachmaninoff, Medtner made the piano the focus of his creative activity and frequently tempered a Russian spirit with music firmly rooted in the Western classical tradition. A scholar writes, “Fully developed almost from the time of his first published works, his musical idiom changed very little throughout his career, and his entire output is remarkably consistent in quality.”

Sadly, the Piano Quintet in C Major was Medtner’s final composition on which he had worked intermittently for almost 45 years. Initial sketches date from 1904 and 1905, and the work was completed towards the end of 1948. A severe heart attack prevented the composer from rehearsing and recording it. Jeremy Lee writes, “Fervent, sincere, personal, and above all intensely soulful, Medtner’s Piano Quintet certainly is one of the most deeply satisfying works ever written.”

Grażyna Bacewicz: Piano Quintet No.1 

Let me conclude my list of the 10 most beautiful piano quintets with a work by the Polish violinist, pianist, and composer Grażyna Bacewicz (1909-1969). One of the most significant voices in European music of the twentieth century, she studied with Nadia Boulanger and the violinists André Touret and Carl Flesch. Her compositional development initially focused on clarity, wit and brevity, while her works from the time of World War II “show a greater muscularity and daring disregard for traditional classical structures.”

Grażyna Bacewicz

Her first piano quintet dates from 1952, and it presents a sound world that mediates between folkloric impulses “and the developmental rigour of classical principles.” It is a highly personal work, and you can hear the use of folk materials directly and indirectly. I hope you enjoyed my selections, but for every piano quintet featured, I had to sadly neglect some equally wonderful choices. The Borodin quintet is fantastic, as are the piano quintets by Rubinstein, Franck, Bruch, Suk, Vierne, Granados, Reger, Amy Beach, Bax, Dohnányi, Milhaud, and many others; would you like to see some of them featured?

10 More Dazzling and Awe-Inspiring Piano Quartets

by Hermione Lai, Interlude

A couple of years ago, Interlude published a blog on the 10 most beautiful piano quartets. Once again, featuring just 10 works in that particular genre is simply not enough. So, we decided to present a follow-up, highlighting 10 more dazzling and awe-inspiring piano quartets.

As a quick recap, you get a piano quartet when you add a piano to a string trio. The standard instrument lineup for this type of chamber music pairs the violin, viola, and cello with the piano. In its development, the piano quartet had to wait for technical advances of the piano, as it had to match the strings in power and expression.

© serenademagazine.com

Piano quartets are always special because the scoring allows for a wealth of tone colour, occasionally even a symphonic richness. The combined resources of all four instruments are not easy to handle, and the number of works in the genre is not especially large. However, a good many of the extant piano quartets are very personal and passionate statements. 

When talking about chamber music, and specifically chamber music with piano, it is difficult to avoid Johannes Brahms (1833-1897). Lucky for us, Brahms wrote three piano quartets, and his Op. 60 took its inspiration from his intense relationship with Clara Schumann. However, it took Brahms almost twenty years to complete the work. The origins date back to around 1855 when Brahms was wrestling with his first piano concerto.

Brahms put this particular piano quartet aside and only showed it to his first biographer in the 1860s with the words, “Imagine a man who is just going to shoot himself, for there is nothing else to do.” Thirteen years later, Brahms took up the work and radically revised it. He probably wrote a new “Andante” and also a new “Finale.” In the end, the work finally premiered on 18 November 1875 with Brahms at the piano and the famous David Popper on cello.

Brahms and the Schumanns

The emotional distress of his relationship with Clara is presented in a mood of darkness and melancholy. A solitary chord in the piano initiates the opening movement, with the string presenting a theme built from a striking two-note phrase. Some commentators have suggested that Brahms is musically speaking the name “Clara” in this two-note phrase. The second theme is highly lyrical but quickly develops towards the dark mood of the opening. The “Scherzo” is also in the minor key, and the deeply felt slow movement is a declaration of love for Clara. The dark opening returns in the final movement, and while the development presents some relief, the work still ends on a note of resignation, albeit in the major key.

Heinrich von Herzogenberg: Piano Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 95

Heinrich von Herzogenberg

The intensely emotional and meticulously crafted compositions by Brahms served as models for a number of composers, among them Heinrich von Herzogenberg (1843-1900). As he writes, “Brahms helped me, by the mere fact of his existence, to my development, my inward looking up to him, and with his artistic and human energy.” While Brahms respected Herzogenberg’s technical craftsmanship and musical knowledge, he never really had anything to say.

Herzogenberg was undeterred and never stopped composing. In 1897, he wrote to Brahms, “There are two things that I cannot get used not to doing: That I always compose, and that when I am composing I ask myself, the same as thirty-four years ago, ‘What will He say about it?’ To be sure, for many years, you have not said anything about it, which is something that I can interpret as I wish.”

A few days before Brahms’ death, Herzogenberg presented him with his probably best and most mature work, the Piano Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 95. The gripping “Allegro” is full of unmistakably Brahmsian character, constructed with compositional economy. An introductory chord develops into the motific core of the entire movement. The “Adagio is full of dreamy intimacy, while the capricious “Scherzo” eventually transports us into a pastoral idyll. Three themes, including a folkloric principle theme, combine in a spirited and temperamental “Finale.” 

When Richard Strauss (1864-1949) left college and moved to Berlin to study music at the age of 19, he suddenly discovered a new model in Johannes Brahms. Strauss would meet his current idol personally at the premiere of Brahms’ 4th Symphony in 1885. Under the influence of Brahms, the teenaged Strauss completed his Piano Quartet in C minor in 1884, and a good many commentators believe it to be Strauss’ “greatest chamber work.”

Richard Strauss

Op. 13 is a large work fusing “the sobriety and grandeur of Brahms with the fire and impetuous virtuosity of the young Strauss.” The work opens quietly, and the deceptively simple motif returns in various disguises. However, the music quickly explodes with superheated energy, and its dark sonorities and dramatic scope drive it to a virtually symphonic close.

Finally, the “Andante” introduces a measure of calm, with the piano sounding a florid melodic strain that gives way to a lyrical second subject in the viola. Both themes are gracefully extended while bathing in a delicate and charmed atmosphere. The concluding “Vivace” returns to the mood of the opening movement, and the rondo design also features a serious refrain and a spiky fugato. The work won a prize from the Berlin Tonkünstler, Strauss, however, would say goodbye to chamber music and explore orchestral virtuosity in his great tone poems. 

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) seems another surprising entry into a blog on the piano quartet. However, a single movement from his student days at the Vienna Conservatory does survive. Mahler took piano lessons from Julius Epstein and studied composition and harmony under Robert Fuchs and Franz Krenn. Mahler left the Conservatory in 1878 with a diploma but without the coveted and prestigious silver medal given for outstanding achievement.

Gustav Mahler’s Piano Quartet

Although he claimed to have written hundreds of songs, several theatrical works, and various chamber music compositions, only a single movement for a Piano Quartet in A minor survived the ravages of time. Composed in 1876 and awarded the Conservatory Prize, it is strongly influenced by the musical styles of Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms.

Conveying a sense of passion and longing, Mahler presents three contrasting themes within a strict formal design. The opening theme possesses an ominous and foreboding character, while the contrasting second—still in the tonic key—is passionately rhapsodic. To compensate for this tonal stagnation, the third theme undergoes a series of modulations. Thickly textured and relying on excessive motivic manipulation, this movement nevertheless provides insight into the creative processes of the 16-year-old Mahler. 

Antonín Dvorák (1841-1904) is another composer who, for a time, took his bearings from Johannes Brahms’s music. Dvorák had always been strongly drawn to chamber music, as his first published works are a string quartet Op. 1 and a string quintet Op. 2.

Dvořák in New York, 1893

Apparently, he composed his D-Major piano quartet in a mere eighteen days in 1875. It premiered five years later, on 16 December 1880. Surprisingly, this piano quartet has only three movements, as the composer combines a scherzo and Allegro agitato in alternation in the Finale. The opening “Allegro” sounds like a rather characteristic Czech melody, initiated by the cello and continued by the violin. By the time the piano takes up the theme, the tonality has shifted to B Major.

The melody of the slow movement, a theme followed by five variations, is introduced by the violin. Dvorák skillfully presents fragments of the theme in various meters and textures. The cello, accompanied by the piano, takes the lead in the final “Allegretto.” After the violin has taken up the theme, the piano takes us into the finale proper.

Béla Bartók: Piano Quartet in C minor, Op. 20

Béla Bartók

To his contemporaries and critics, Johannes Brahms looked like a bastion of musical conservatism. Surprisingly, it was Arnold Schoenberg, in his celebrated Radio address entitled “Brahms the Progressive”, who suggested that Brahms was “a great innovator in the realm of musical language and that his chamber music prepared the way for the radical changes in musical conception at the turn of the 20th century.”

Just one year after Brahms’ death, the teenage Béla Bartók (1881-1945) embarked on the composition of a four-movement piano quartet. For years, this score was believed to have been lost, but it was rediscovered by a member of the “Notos Quartet,” who also prepared the edition following the composer’s autograph score. What is more, they also presented a world premiere recording in 2007.

The opening “Allegro” immediately evokes the harmonic and sensuous soundscape of Johannes Brahms. And like his model, Bartók’s musical prose does not follow a predictable pattern as the boundaries and distinctions of theme and development are blurred. Brahms’ rhythmic shapes are the topic of a blazing “Scherzo,” with the “Trio” sounding a sombre lyrical contrast. The “Adagio” sounds like a declaration of love for Brahms, while the “Finale” brims with spicy Hungarian flavours. 

Camille Saint-Säens introduced Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) to Pauline Viardot in 1872. Her youngest daughter, Marianne, immediately stole his heart, and Fauré courted her for four painful years. In July 1877, she finally agreed, and the engagement was announced. However, the relationship only lasted until the late autumn of 1877, when Marianne suddenly broke off the engagement.

Pauline Viardot

The exact reasons remain unclear, and Fauré was deeply distressed, with friends reporting that his “sunny disposition took a dark turn.” He started to suffer from bouts of depression, and the Clerc family helped him to recover. At this point, Fauré composed the masterpieces of his youth, among them the piano quartet in C minor.

It might well be considered an early work, however, the composer was already over forty. The opening “Allegro” is pervaded by a sense of optimism, urged on by a strong rhythmical gesture. The E-flat Major “Scherzo” opens with plucked strings and the piano making a light-hearted contribution. The sombre character of the “Adagio” provides an unexpected contrast, and that mood is taken over in the “Finale.” The asymmetrical piano accompaniment continues throughout and brings the work to an emphatic conclusion in the major key.

Théodore Dubois: Piano Quartet in A minor

Théodore Dubois in 1905

Théodore Dubois (1837-1924) was highly influential on the French musical scene. Early on, he was known as a composer-organist with a large oeuvre of sacred music to his name. As a pedagogue, he is still famous as the author of the most common music theory textbooks, and as an administrator, he gained notoriety by denying the famed Rome prize to Maurice Ravel on multiple occasions.

Once Dubois retired from the directorship of the Conservatoire, he worked on a chamber music project. A scholar writes, “If they are not progressive works of genius, we can still enjoy their faultless design and beauty of sonority as documents to help us understand the world and spirit in Paris before, around and after 1900.”

Dubois’ piano quartet in A minor appeared in 1907 and features a conventional four-movement design. The opening “Allegro” begins with a cautious drama but quickly transitions to a lyrical melody. The sense of melodic dominance is taken over in the “Andante,” followed by an “Allegro” replacing a scherzo. Essentially a character piece in the style of Mendelssohn, it is followed by a “Finale” of sophistication and balance.

Mélanie Bonis: Piano Quartet No. 1 in B-flat Major, Op. 69

Mélanie Bonis, 1908

Mélanie Bonis (1858-1937) was born into a Parisian lower-middle-class family and initially discouraged from pursuing music. Undeterred, she taught herself how to play the piano, and only at the urging of a family friend and with help from César Franck was she admitted to the Paris Conservatoire.

To conceal her gender during a time when compositions by women were not taken seriously, she shortened her first name to “Mel.” A good many of her late compositions have still not been published, and as she wrote to her daughter, “My great sorrow is that I never get to hear my music.”

Her first piano quartet was written between 1900 and 1905, and stylistically, it is cast in a post-Romantic tradition. Bonis explores the various possibilities of harmony and rhythm, infused with a dash of Impressionism. A good many passages show the influence of César Franck with long developments and rigorous counterpoint. At the work’s first performance, a surprised Camille Sain-Saëns declared, “I would never have believed a woman capable of writing that. She knows all the tricks of the trade.” 

Joaquín Turina (1882-1949), together with his friend Manuel de Falla, helped to promote the national character of 20th-century Spanish music. At first, influenced and inspired by Debussy, Turina soon developed a distinctly Spanish style, “incorporating Iberian lyricism and rhythms with impressionistic timbres and harmonies.”

Jacinto Higueras Cátedra: Bust of the composer Joaquín Turina, 1971 (Madrid: Escuela Superior de Canto)

While his Op. 1 Piano Quintet in G minor emerged from his study with Vincent d’Indy, the Op. 67 piano quartet in A minor is “music without the slightest need of any explanations.” The three-movement work is carefully constructed in cyclical form, and “the juxtaposition of contrasting themes give the overall shape a rhapsodic structure.”

The fundamental musical idea is introduced in the opening movement and transformed and modified throughout the work. Of particular lively interest is the central “Lento,” where Turina transformed Andalusian elements without abandoning the gestures, temperament and uniqueness of his native lands. I hope you have enjoyed this further excursion into the realm of the piano quartet, and I can already promise one more article on the subject with music by Mozart, Taneyev, Hahn, Brahms, Copland and others.

Composers and their Poets: Ernest Chausson

 by Maureen Buja ,  Interlude

  

French Chansons Composed by Ernest Chausson

Ernest Chausson, by Guy & Mockel, Paris (ca. 1897)

French composer Ernest Chausson’s early death in a bicycle accident cut short a career just as it was beginning to flourish. His position as secretary of the Société Nationale de Musique for 13 years put him at the centre of France’s active music networks. He studied with Massenet and César Franck at the Paris Conservatoire, which he attended at the relatively advanced age of 24, was friends with Vincent d’Indy, and many other composers including Henri Duparc, Gabriel Fauré, Claude Debussy, and Isaac Albéniz. He also knew the poet Mallarmé, although he never set any of his poetry, and the painter Monet.

Chausson, standing, turning pages for Debussy (1893)

The poets he set include Camille Mauclair (1872-1945), Jean Richepin (1849-1926), Alfred de Musset (1810-1857), Leconte de Lisle (1818-1894), Maurice Bouchor (1855-1929), and Maurice Maeterlinck (1849-1949), among others. If we look just at his contemporaries, Camille Mauclair, Maurice Bouchor, and Maurice Maeterlinck, we have three poets of very different sensibilities.

Camille Mauclair by Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer (1896)

Camille Mauclair (the pseudonym of Séverin Faust) was not only a poet but also a novelist, biographer, travel writer, and critic. He was an admirer of Mallarmé and was most famous for his roman à clef, Le Soleil des Morts (1898). For his contemporaries, it was brilliant portrait of the leading actors in the arts of his day, including writers, artists, critics, and musicians. For us, it has become an important historical document about the French avant-garde at the end of the nineteenth century. One of the most musically relevant portraits in the novel is that of Debussy at the premiere of “Prélude à L’Après-midi d’un faune”. Chausson appears in the book as ‘Rudolphe Méreuse’ and is the dedicatee of the novel. He is, in the novel, praised as ‘ …the composer whose symphonies, with those of César Franck, were the only original works to appear since Wagner.’

Mauclair provided the words for Chausson’s Op. 27 lieder. The first song, Les heures, casts us directly into the shadowy decadent world of the French fin du siècle: the piano provides a mordent background to the poet, ‘singing until death’ the pale hours of the night. 

Maurice Bouchor

Maurice Bouchor was a poet and playwright with an interest in music. He worked with the musician Julien Tiersot to preserve French folk songs and published a book of them for use in schools.

His poetry was set extensively, and Chausson set it a number of times, most memorably in his Op. 8 set. This set of four poems describes love in all aspects: from the young love in the first poem, the memory of a former lover in the second, to the broken heart of ‘Printemps triste’ and the memories of the happy past in ‘Nos souvenirs’. 

Maurice Maeterlinck

The Belgian playwright, poet and essayist Maurice Maeterlinck was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911. At the end of the 19th century and into the early 20th century, he was a source of musical inspiration: Debussy set his Pelléas and Mélisande, and it inspired Gabriel Fauré, Arnold Schoenberg, Jean Silbelius and others. 13 of his other plays were also made into operas, inspired symphonic poems, or had incidental music written for them by some 40 composers. His plays forged a new style, an example of which can be seen in Pelléas and Mélisande: the setting is lean and spare and the characters have no foresight and a limited view and understanding of themselves and the world they inhabit. The forces that compel people, not the emotions that drive them, was the centre of his style.

Maeterlinck’s first collection of poetry, Serres chaudes (Hothouses) (1889), was the source for Chausson’s Op. 24 song cycle. The second song, ‘Serre d’ennui’ (Hothouse boredom), seems to capture the overly humid confines of a hothouse, where boredom is blue but is captured within a green world where all is still. 

Chausson set poetry by many other poets, including Verlaine, Baudelaire, Leconte de Lisle, and Gautier. In his brief life, Chausson brought the French chanson forward out of the Romanticism found in composers such as Massenet and Franck and closer to the more introspective world found in Debussy’s work.