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 For us, it has become an important historical document about the French avant-garde at the end of the nineteenth century.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.

Who was Lili Boulanger?

 Meet the inspiring composer who died tragically young

Lili Boulanger was one of the most talented composers of the 20th century, until her untimely death at the age of 24. Picture: Alamy

By Classic FM

@ClassicFM

 

Lili Boulanger was one of the most exciting composers of the early 20th century, until she died at just 24. Here’s everything you need to know about her life, music, and how her influence lives on today. 

Born on 21 August 1893, Marie-Juliette Olga ‘Lili’ Boulanger was one of the 21st century’s brightest stars in music and the arts.

A promising talent from a very early age, Boulanger was a multi-instrumentalist and pioneering composer, who shared her musical genius with the world right up to her untimely death in 1918, at just 24 years old.

Lili was part of the musically-gifted Boulanger family

Lili Boulanger was born to a prodigious family of musicians, so it’s no wonder she followed the family tradition with several generations’ worth of musical talent flowing through her veins.

Her mother, Raissa Myshetskaya, was a Russian princess who studied at the Paris Conservatoire. It was there that she fell in love with her teacher, Ernest Boulanger.

Boulanger himself was a conductor and composer, and the descendant of fine musical stock: his father, Frédéric was an acclaimed cellist, and his mother, Juliette, was a singer.

Lili Boulanger (right), with her sister Nadia (left). Picture: Alamy

Lili Boulanger was a child prodigy

Lili Boulanger was just two years old when she began to be noticed for her musical prowess. The great composer Gabriel Fauré, a friend of the family, spotted that she had perfect pitch, and the tot was able to sing melodies by ear. 

Her parents nurtured her abilities and encouraged a prestigious music education. Before the age of five she was accompanying her older sister, Nadia, to lessons at the Paris Conservatoire. Later she would attend independently, taking classes in music theory and the organ.

Boulanger also played piano, violin, cello and harp, as well as singing.

The first woman to win the Prix de Rome

In 1912, Lili Boulanger entered the Prix de Rome – the most prestigious honour for artists at the time. First awarded in the 17th century, the prize allowed the winner to live in Rome for three to five years, all expenses paid.

With categories in painting, sculpture, architecture and engraving, the first prize for musical competition was awarded in 1803 to Albert Androt.

Among its winners are some of Europe’s finest composers: Georges Bizet, Hector Berlioz, Claude Debussy, and even Lili’s own father, Ernest, in 1835 at the age of 20.

However, her 1912 entry was ill-fated. Boulanger collapsed from illness during her performance, and was unable to complete her entry. Not easily discouraged, Boulanger attempted once more in 1913, then aged 19, and won.

Her victory made her the first woman to win the Prix de Rome, though the judges couldn’t quite bear to let her enjoy the honour on her own. So they also awarded first prize that year to Claude Delvincourt.

Lili Boulanger: D'un matin de printemps / Cristian Măcelaru and Seattle Symphony

She wrote the cantata ‘Faust et Hélène’ in just four weeks

Faust et Hélène is the piece that gave the Prix de Rome judges no choice but to give her the award.

The rules of the competition stated that the piece had to be written in four weeks – so that’s what the precocious 19-year-old Lili did.

The cantata is 30 minutes long and is written for a full orchestra, telling the story of Faust, the man seduced by the power offered by the demon Mephistopheles.

Boulanger’s retelling of the German legend contains flavours of Wagner and Debussy, and it’s no surprise it won the most prestigious prize of its day. Just listen to this:

Boulanger: Faust et Hélène - Radio Filharmonisch Orkest o.l.v. Karina Canellakis - Live concert HD

A prolific composer and diligent worker, Boulanger continued writing music on her sickbed. Her final piece, a haunting and evocative ‘Pie Jesu’, was completed in her 24th year in 1918.

Initial sketches of the work have been found in the composer’s composition book, used between 1909 and 1913. It was completed with the help of her sister Nadia, who wrote out the work as it was dictated to her.

Lili Boulanger’s illness and death

Much of Lili Boulanger’s short life was afflicted by tragedy. At just two years old, she contracted bronchial pneumonia, an infection of the lungs.

Boulanger recovered, but her immune system was irrevocably weakened by the illness and she suffered from chronic illness for the remainder of her life.

In 1900, when she was just seven years old, her father, who had been 77 at her birth, died. His death affected Boulanger, who was very close to her father, greatly, and much of her work would deal with themes of loss.

In 1918, Boulanger died from intestinal tuberculosis which arose from her life-long health complications. She was buried in the Cemetery of Montmartre, where she was joined by her sister, Nadia, in 1979, as well as both of their parents.

Lili Boulanger’s legacy

Despite such a brief career, cut short by her premature death, Lili Boulanger’s legacy lives on today through both her own music, and that of many other eminent composers.

Lili’s sister, Nadia, who was a fine composer in her own right, was so affected by her sibling’s death that she deemed her own works “useless” and turned her complete attention to teaching, hoping to continue her sister’s legacy through pedagogy.

Nadia Boulanger, pictured with her student Leonard Bernstein. Picture: Getty

Over a lifetime of nurturing young musical talent, Nadia Boulanger’s students became some of the 20th century’s most famous composers and conductors, from Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein to Quincy Jones and Daniel Barenboim.

So although Lili Boulanger’s young death may have robbed us from plenty of brilliant music, perhaps if she had lived we may never have had West Side Story, ‘Fanfare for the Common Man’, or the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.