THE HYPERION FRENCH SONG EDITION
Songs by
Reynaldo Hahn
FELICITY LOTT · SUSAN BICKLEY
IAN BOSTRIDGE · STEPHEN VARCOE
GRAHAM JOHNSON
CONTENTS
TRACK LISTING
ENGLISH
Sung texts and translation
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page 3
page 4
page 10
THE HYPERION FRENCH SONG EDITION
Songs by
Reynaldo Hahn
(1874–1947)
1 Si mes vers avaient des ailes HUGO Felicity Lott [2'11]
2 Paysage THEURIET . . . . . . . . . . . Stephen Varcoe [2'20]
3 Rêverie HUGO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Felicity Lott [2'32]
4 Offrande VERLAINE . . . . . . . . . . . . Susan Bickley [2'46]
5 Mai COPPÉE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stephen Varcoe [1'58]
6 Infidélité GAUTIER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Felicity Lott [2'13]
7 Seule GAUTIER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Susan Bickley [2'14]
8 Les Cygnes RENAUD . . . . . . . . . . . Stephen Varcoe [4'04]
9 Nocturne LAHOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Felicity Lott [1'24]
bl Trois jours de vendange DAUDET Stephen Varcoe [3'03]
bm D’une prison VERLAINE . . . . . . . . . . Felicity Lott [2'41]
bn Séraphine HEINE . . . . . . . . . . . . Stephen Varcoe [2'16]
bo L’heure exquise VERLAINE . . . . . . . . Felicity Lott [2'33]
bp Fêtes galantes VERLAINE . . . . . . . . Susan Bickley [1'47]
bq
br
bs
bt
bu
cl
cm
cn
co
cp
cq
cr
3
Douze Rondels
Le Jour DE BANVILLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Choir [3'42]
Je me metz en vostre mercy D’ORLÉANS . . Varcoe [1'26]
Le Printemps DE BANVILLE . . . . . . . . . Felicity Lott [1'37]
L’Air DE BANVILLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Susan Bickley [3'19]
La Paix DE BANVILLE . . . . . . . . . . . Stephen Varcoe [2'11]
Gardez le trait de la fenêtre D’ORLÉANS . . . . Choir [1'37]
La Pêche DE BANVILLE . . . . . . . . . . . . Felicity Lott [1'59]
Quand je fus pris au pavillon D’ORLÉANS . . Varcoe [1'13]
Les Étoiles DE BANVILLE . . . . . . . . . . . Felicity Lott [3'00]
L’Automne DE BANVILLE . . . . . . . . . . Susan Bickley [1'52]
La Nuit DE BANVILLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Choir [2'41]
Le souvenir d’avoir chanté MENDÈS Stephen Varcoe [1'56]
cs Quand la nuit n’est pas étoilée HUGO Bickley [3'37]
ct Le plus beau présent MAGRE . . . Stephen Varcoe [2'10]
cu Sur l’eau PRUD’HOMME . . . . . . . . . Susan Bickley [3'16]
dl Le rossignol des lilas DAUPHIN . . . . Felicity Lott [1'57]
dm À Chloris DE VIAU . . . . . . . . . . . . Stephen Varcoe [2'39]
dn Ma jeunesse VACARESCO . . . . . . . . . Susan Bickley [2'37]
do Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre HUGO Stephen Varcoe [4'28]
dp
dq
dr
ds
dt
du
el
em
en
eo
Études latines DE LISLE
Lydie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ian Bostridge, Choir [2'20]
Néère . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stephen Varcoe [3'24]
Salinum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ian Bostridge [2'10]
Thaliarque . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Choir [2'33]
Lydé . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stephen Varcoe [3'06]
Vile potabis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ian Bostridge [1'40]
Tyndaris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ian Bostridge [1'40]
Pholoé . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stephen Varcoe [1'31]
Phidylé . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stephen Varcoe, Choir† [2'31]
Phyllis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stephen Varcoe [2'45]
ep La Nymphe de la Source ANON . . . Susan Bickley [3'13]
eq Au rossignol DE SAIX . . . . . . . . . . . . Felicity Lott [2'05]
er Je me souviens DE SAIX . . . . . . . . . Susan Bickley [4'03]
es Air de la lettre from ‘Mozart’ GUITRY . . . Felicity Lott [2'36]
et C’est très vilain d’être infidèle . . . Felicity Lott [2'53]
from ‘O mon bel inconnu’ GUITRY
eu C’est sa banlieue ‘Y a des arbres …’
Felicity Lott [2'57]
from ‘Ciboulette’ DE FLERS, DE CROISSET
fl Nous avons fait un beau voyage
Susan Bickley [2'54]
from ‘Ciboulette’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stephen Varcoe
fm La Dernière Valse
.............
Felicity Lott [4'14]
from ‘Une Revue’ DONNAY, DUVEMOIS
† with CHRIS GOULD piano (4-hands, with Graham Johnson)
A
LTHOUGH HE WROTE AND SPOKE in exquisite French, Reynaldo Hahn’s first language was Spanish, and his
surname was German. His mother was a Venezuelan Catholic. His Jewish father, Carlos Hahn, was born in
Hamburg and had moved to Caracas as a young man to make his fortune in Latin America. (The family
name is thus pronounced with the aspirate H, not in the French manner as ‘Ann’.) Reynaldo used to tell the following story
about his homeland: when God created Venezuela he made such magnificent flowers, birds, fruits, trees, gold, diamonds
and so on that the angel Gabriel asked the Lord if He wasn’t giving the country too much. ‘Have patience,’ replied the
Creator. ‘I haven’t created the Venezuelans yet!’
Reynaldo, the youngest of twelve children, was only three years old when his family left Caracas to settle in Paris. The
vicissitudes and intrigues of South American politics made it prudent for his father, who was a brilliant engineer, inventor
and businessman, to leave the country while the going was good. Don Carlos Hahn, as he was known, had worked hard,
had made a lot of money, and could now enjoy his early retirement in the most elegant town in the world. Hahn père was
particularly fond of light music and one of Reynaldo’s earliest musical memories was of being bounced on his father’s knee
while fragments of operetta were hummed in his ear. It was thus that the composer first heard the music of Offenbach.
Hahn later wrote:
I believe that when I was three, and about the same height as the piano stool, I already knew how to use my fingers on
the keyboard. At five, I remember perfectly, I was playing for the pleasure of my family. At eight I was composing. An
Italian lady piano teacher had taught me to write music when I was very young. And as melodies were already singing in
my young brain, I wrote them down, with that pride one has in fixing something lasting on to paper.
Little Reynaldo had scarcely climbed down from his father’s knee when he became something of a child prodigy: he used to
sing airs by Offenbach to the delight of his family. He made his ‘professional’ debut aged six, dressed in a new suit of black
velvet, at the salon of that grand old eccentric the Princesse Mathilde de Metternich who was the niece of Napoleon. (‘If it
wasn’t for my uncle,’ she said, ‘I would still be selling oranges in Ajaccio.’) The great poet Gautier had reigned supreme at
these gatherings before Reynaldo was born; it was typical of the composer’s empathy with resonances of the past that he
was later to introduce the song Infidélité, with its touching poem by Gautier, at this salon. At the age of ten, Hahn entered
the Paris Conservatoire which was under the directorship of Ambroise Thomas. Cortot and Ravel were among his fellow
students in the piano class. Gustave Charpentier was among the older pupils in the class who were astonished at the
precocity of the little Venezuelan in his large white collar and knee-length breeches.
Du do premier au final do
From the first C to the last C
Glissent les doigts de Reynaldo.
Glide Reynaldo’s fingers …
Giants of the future were his companions, but giants of the past also took an interest in him. Hahn had been entranced by
Gounod’s Faust almost since babyhood. As a result of a special gift Reynaldo had to attract important people to his side
(everyone testified to his enormous charm) the venerable Gounod gave the young man composition lessons. Some of this
composer’s songs were very much part of Reynaldo’s repertory some years later when he sang to such memorable effect in
the grand salons of Paris. Maid of Athens sung in Hahn’s deliciously inflected English to his own piano accompaniment is
one of the classic recordings of French song.
Apart from this link with Gounod, Reynaldo’s professor of composition at the Conservatoire was Massenet, a man to
whom he was to stay loyal throughout his life despite the declining fashion of that composer’s music.
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Massenet was very good to me. He never lost a chance to introduce me to influential people, to speak to me of his
friends—to invite me out—he was absolutely charming. He even sang one of my songs for my composition exam at
the conservatoire and it was quite a success with the judges.
At the age of thirteen Reynaldo composed the immortal Hugo setting Si mes vers avaient des ailes which was published a
little later by Le Figaro and became an instant favourite. In 1890 Alphonse Daudet invited the young composer to provide
the music for the play L’Obstacle. The famous writer invited Reynaldo to come and sing to him in order to allay the painful
sufferings of a spinal disease brought on by syphilis. He referred to Reynaldo’s music as his ‘chère musique preferée’. It
was at the Daudets’ house in 1893 that the famous singer Sybil Sanderson performed Reynaldo’s songs to the texts of
Verlaine. Edmond de Goncourt, who normally disliked music, wrote of them in his journal as ‘de vrais bijoux poétiques’.
These were the Chansons grises (recorded by Martyn Hill on Hyperion CDH55040). Verlaine himself was present on this
occasion. Although prematurely aged and ill he was able to hear these old verses of his receive a musical life which he
could understand. Indifferent to Fauré’s settings of his poems, Verlaine wept to hear Hahn’s songs. No less a poet than
Mallarmé was moved to write the following lines on that occasion:
The tear that sings in the poet’s
Le pleur qui chante au langage
Du poète, Reynaldo
words, Reynaldo
Hahn, tendrement le dégage
Hahn gently releases,
Comme en l’allée un jet d’eau.
like a fountain on a pathway.
By the age of nineteen Reynaldo had written quite a number of songs about love, but his worldly sophistication in the fields
of music, literature and painting hid a great shyness about his private feelings. As one can tell by his gallant courting of old
divas, women adored him, and there was one, three years older than him, who was according to him his ideal. Her name
was Cléopatre-Diane de Mérode and he wrote: ‘I worship her as a great and perfect work of art’. He loved her at a distance
all his life. The other woman friend of Hahn was more colourful—none other than the grande horizontale Liane de Pougy,
celebrated beauty and courtesan. (She was once discovered in flagrante delicto by one of her husbands—a soldier—and
he shot her in each buttock in revenge. ‘Will this be seen, doctor?’ she asked anxiously. ‘Madame,’ said the doctor bowing,
‘that depends entirely on you’. It is certain that Reynaldo never even glimpsed these wounds of love.) Liane de Pougy wrote
to him: ‘You are the only man to whom I’d give myself and you won’t have me … I don’t want to ask you to come to me:
that’s something that will happen of its own accord if it is to happen at all. No, my Reynaldo, we shan’t pluck the fruit of
love, we’ll stay with its pretty blossom, we’ll stay at the stage of desire. My Reynaldo, you are quite right, I was your
momentary distraction, you are the passer-by and nothing more.’
The similarities of this situation to that described in Ravel’s song L’Indifférent are indicative of the combination of
delicacy and frankness with which the subject of homosexuality was broached in fin de siècle France. This was the epoch of
Huysmans’ A rebours and Wilde’s A Picture of Dorian Gray. Wilde’s own disgrace was just around the corner and it is
significant that he sought refuge in France after he had served his gaol sentence in England. In 1894 at Réveillon, the home
of the painter Madeleine Lemaire, Hahn met a man three years older than himself—a writer (it would perhaps be more
accurate to say an aspiring writer) who was much less well-known than Reynaldo. He was highly strung and snobbish this
Marcel Proust, and people doubted whether he would ever do anything worthwhile with his life. The two men shared a love
of painting; Reynaldo knew about literature, Marcel was an avid fan of music, particularly Fauré’s. They collaborated on a
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work for reciter and piano about painters, they went on holiday together in Brittany and to Venice where the composer
wrote his enchanting Venezia cycle (recorded by Anthony Rolfe Johnson on Hyperion CDH55217). During this period Hahn
developed his own literary skills. He was to become, and remain, one of the best of all writers about music and musicians,
particularly in the field of vocal studies. Actors and singers fascinated him, although he always preferred to be in touch with
celebrated names from the past and was highly critical of his contemporaries. When asked what he thought of the famous
tenor van Dyke (who was one of Chabrier’s favourite singers) he replied ‘I prefer his paintings’. Sarah Bernhardt was at first
his idol (he was taken to see her act when he was six or seven) and he became her friend and wrote a book about her.
Another older legend was Pauline Viardot, opera singer, daughter of Garcia, sister of Malibran, friend of Berlioz and mistress
of Turgenev:
In she comes, rather round-shouldered, very affable. Her famous ugliness is toned down by age. Her white hair is soft,
thick and pretty. Her eyes are touched with eye-shadow. She still has all her teeth, which must once have been dazzling;
even now they’re yellow they still have some shine about them. Big mouth brimming with laughter, voice of a healthy
old woman, low and sonorous. She’s eighty, but everything about her except her almost sightless eyes is full of life and
fire. We chat, and straightaway she says ‘They tell me you’re Spanish!’ And then she starts to talk delightful Andalusian
with extraordinary speed and purity of accent. ‘Well,’ she said to me, ‘am I not Spanish? And haven’t I spoken Spanish
all my life with my sister, my daughters, my father?’ Besides, Madame Viardot has always had the reputation of being a
polyglot—she speaks all languages of course, including Russian. She tells me that in Granada, where she sang Norma,
the enthusiastic public, after the performances, had clamoured for Spanish songs. One of her partners had to have a
piano brought on stage so that she could sing vitos and peteneras still in her Druid costume.
Pen portraits such as these abound in Hahn’s books of reminiscences, and they show almost a Proustian skill in evoking
the feel of a person with the use of seemingly unimportant details (those ‘yellow shining teeth’!). Proust and Hahn were
lovers for the first two years of a friendship which lasted until the author’s death twenty-eight years later. From 1895 to
1899 Proust wrote Jean Santeuil, an autobiographical novel in which Hahn figures as the eponymous hero. Though
unfinished and ill-constructed, it shows awakening genius and foreshadows À la recherche du temps perdu. Those idyllic
two years were perhaps the only time that either artist had a relationship with a real equal. Proust left Reynaldo for the next
young man, Lucien Daudet, but as the writer shook off his dilettante way of life and worked obsessively on his great novel,
Hahn remained a friend. This was highly unusual in the author’s usual pattern of exiling his former lovers from his life.
Reynaldo was the only person who was allowed into Proust’s cork-lined room unannounced by his watch-dog housekeeper
Céleste. The elegant and lightweight companions of their later lives were to prove no match for either of them; the lack of
intellectual stimulus in a loving relationship was to be keenly felt by both composer and writer. The rest of Hahn’s life was
not without distinction, but there is a decided feeling of anticlimax. He became a noteworthy conductor (Maggie Teyte
averred that he was the greatest of all Mozartians) and was willing to accompany the handful of singers he admired as
correctly schooled (his books on singing show a merciless impatience with anything but the highest technical
accomplishment) and he broadened his compositional thrust. As a youngster he had measured himself as a composer of
mélodies against Massenet, Saint-Saëns and Fauré but as the bandwagon of the avant garde rolled ruthlessly through the
twenties and thirties leaving him far behind (although there was a musical flirtation with Diaghilev) he took refuge in show
business. As there seemed to be less and less interest in his own serious music he turned to the world of operetta which
6
has a timeless appeal and which turns the clock back with impunity. He was now spoken of in the same breath as Messager
and Yvain, masters of operetta. He had some of his greatest successes in the twenties and thirties collaborating with famous
names like Sacha Guitry and Yvonne Printemps, but nothing could bring back the times when great poets had likened him
to a young Apollo. Bit by bit he turned into a crusty old bachelor. Modern life seemed increasingly to fill him with bile;
nothing could match the achievements and standards of his youth.
Hahn had always loved travel and his journeys from country to country are documented in his diary. Whether he was
in Salzburg conducting Mozart’s operas, accompanying the soprano Ninon Vallin on a tour of Germany, with the Romanian
royal family in Bucharest, or in Italy on a camping holiday, his expert responses to the painting and sculpture of each
country were meticulously noted. The art of ancient Rome moved him to write the Études Latines and one of many return
visits to Venice inspired him to write a full-length opera on Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. It is as if a certain
melancholy in the composer made him prefer to be somewhere else in his mind. His first opera L’ile du rêve had been set
as far away as Tahiti, and a number of his other works are set in historical contexts—sixteenth-century Milan, eighteenthcentury France, England in the Regency period, Mozart’s Vienna and so on. Just like his exact contemporary Fritz Kreisler,
Hahn had a deft skill in evoking or suggesting different periods in musical history. The publisher Heugel told him that a
provincial organist had written asking for information about the seventeenth-century composer Reynaldo Hahn of whom he
had never heard. On one occasion the composer was attempting to explain the historical content of one of his works to one
of Queen Victoria’s daughters at Buckingham Palace:
Reynaldo: ‘It’s a ballet, Madam—an evocation of former times.’
The Princess: ‘I understand, Mr. Hahn—let me help you—you mean as the French say, a sort of pistache?’
Reynaldo: ‘Exactement, Madame.’
Renowned for his charm and manners, the composer was paying a high personal price for his unruffled outward
demeanour. Unlike Proust, Reynaldo had no great confessional novel with which to exorcise his feelings. Conservative by
nature, it seems that it was far from easy for him to accept himself and his way of life—years later he was still secretive:
As to my sorrows, there is no one in the world who can know the reason for them, because nobody in my circle of
friends knows the person who has caused them. From now on my life will be poisoned by an incurable regret: but if
anyone has any affection for me, there is only one way of proving it, namely never mentioning my troubles.
And with this fastidious and melancholy statement made from within what today might be termed ‘the closet’, the central
tragedy of Reynaldo’s life is made apparent. For him, life was never more exciting than during the glorious successes of his
youthful years when his alluring charm was a passe-partout to every great house. Of course he remained welcome and
valued wherever he went, but the beautiful young men who were once to be found admiring the singers and courting the
older ladies more assiduously than the younger were now themselves young enough to be his children; they went to jazz
clubs and took opium. With the passing of time and the decline in his looks Reynaldo was no longer the centre of a beau
monde; society had so completely changed that a beau monde scarcely existed—at any rate not one within which he felt
comfortable. Fashionable society now belonged to the young Poulenc’s generation. In a far less creative way than Proust,
Reynaldo became obsessed with the past and increasingly hostile to the new in music, painting and writing. For him, Fauré
was the last of the great composers; even Debussy was not above stringent criticism. The ascendancy of Stravinsky in the
years before the First World War, and Les Six soon afterwards, must have been anathema to him. Reynaldo was never truly
7
to belong to the twentieth century: he cocooned himself in memories. The great successes in the world of operetta in the
twenties and thirties made his name more of a household word than ever, but he was all too aware that as a composer he
was functioning far from centre-stage. He was too intelligent to confuse commercial success with the artistic respect given
to great creators, an artistic respect that he had taken for granted, and so enjoyed, in his youth. Forced to leave Paris during
the Nazi occupation because he was Jewish, he made a brief return to the public arena in 1945 when he was appointed the
first director of the Paris Opera after the war. He died soon afterwards without being able to execute the reforms for which
his supporters had hoped. One should not forget that the composer was renowned as an organiser of formidable intellect.
This might have been a grand new phase in his career.
Reynaldo Hahn freely acknowledged that Fauré was a greater master of song; indeed he knew perfectly well that he
himself was petit maître. At times he wished he was more, and there are a number of bigger works where he almost
convinces us that he deserves a greater appellation. But the qualities that he did have in plenty, where literary sensibility
and elegant charm did not preclude deep feeling, seem rarer than ever in our own days (this last phrase sounds an
authentically conservative and Reynaldian note). He represents for us more than a sum of his musical parts: his music
evokes a Paris, indeed a way of life, forever gone and, like Proust’s world, retrievable only in precious moments where taste,
sight or the sound of a musical phrase provoke the memory, or even perhaps the collective unconscious. Most of us are far
too young to have memories of that Paris. Europe is now homogenised and the banality of a tunnel removes the effort, and
thus the magic, of the journey between the hitherto opposing worlds of the Anglo-Saxon and the Gaul. If we long to travel in
time as well as space, Eurostar will just not do; we need the power of a ‘petite phrase’ to set the journey in motion. But who
might be the composer of this music both elusive and allusive? Those who, at the turn of the century, like Proust hankered
after the Second Empire and La Belle Epoque found the muse of Reynaldo an indispensable vade-mecum. That Hahn’s
melodies can continue to open the doors of that Parisian past is the reason why these songs have never lost their audience,
and why Reynaldo is regarded by his devotees as very special: one is somehow fond of him, this most charming of guides,
and grateful. We understand the astonished affection that was felt for him by Proust who left us with this pen-portrait which
has remained posterity’s image of this composer, languid and insouciant, suffused with a world-weary sophistication that
could not disguise a loving heart:
When he takes his place at the piano, with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, everyone is quiet and gathers around
to listen. Every note is a word or a cry. His head is slightly tilted back: his mouth is melancholy and rather scornful.
Thence emanates the saddest and warmest voice you can imagine. This instrument of genius, by name Reynaldo Hahn,
moves our hearts, moistens our eyes, cures us one after the other in a silent and solemn undulation. Never since
Schumann has music painted sorrow, tenderness, the calm induced by nature, with such brush strokes of human truth
and absolute beauty.
Recorded on 6 January, 4–6 August, 21–22 December 1995
Recording Engineers ANTONY HOWELL, JULIAN MILLARD
Recording Producers MARK BROWN, ARTHUR JOHNSON
Cover Design TERRY SHANNON
Executive Producers JOANNA GAMBLE, EDWARD PERRY
P & C Hyperion Records Ltd, London, MCMXCVI
Front illustration: Two Angels (c1870) by Charles Sellier (1830–1882)
8
SOME DATES IN THE LIFE OF REYNALDO HAHN
Only some of the composer’s works are noted here. There was scarcely a year that was not productive of music—
particularly incidental music for the stage which was a constant source of Hahn’s income.
1875 RH born in Caracas on 9 August
1878 The Hahn family moves to Paris (6, rue du Cirque) and
RH commences piano studies
1885 Enters Paris Conservatoire
1887 Commences his studies with Massenet. He begins
composing the Chansons grises (Verlaine) which are
completed three years later
1888 Begins the composition of his Premier Recueil de
Mélodies, completed in 1896
1890 He writes the incidental music for Daudet’s L’Obstacle
1891 Begins his first opera L’ile du rêve. He finishes it in 1893.
(It is performed in 1898)
1894 Meets Marcel Proust at Réveillon, the home of Madeleine
Lemaire
1896 Meets Sarah Bernhardt. Composes Portraits de peintres
to Proust texts [speaker and piano]
1897 RH’s father dies. The family moves to 9, rue Alfred de
Vigny
1898 Begins the composition of the Deuxième Recueil de
Mélodies, completed in 1920. Begins the composition of
Douze Rondels (completed 1899)
1899 RH becomes the music critic of La Presse. Begins Études
Latines. Composes his opera La Carmélite, performed at the
Opéra Comique in 1902
1900 Journey to Rome. Completes Études Latines
1901 Begins the song cycle Feuilles blessées (completed
1906). Composes the song set Venezia
1905 Writes Le Bal de Béatrice d’Este
1906 Invited to conduct Don Giovanni at Salzburg
1910 Becomes the music critic of Le Journal
1912 Hahn becomes a naturalised Frenchman. Premiere of Le
Dieu Bleu, ballet written for Diaghilev to a scenario of
Cocteau
1913 Military service
1914/6 RH a soldier at the front, serving in the 31st R.I., 10th
Division
9
1917 Promoted to corporal
1918 Transferred to the Ministry of War in clerical position
1919 Becomes the music critic of L’Excelsior
1920 Invited by Alfred Cortot to be professor of interpretation
and singing at the newly founded École Normale de Musique
1921 Works on his book on Sarah Bernhardt
1923 Hugely successful premiere of Ciboulette at Les Variétés.
The lead roles were taken by Edmée Favart and Jean Périer,
the first Pelléas
1924 Made an officer of the Légion d’honneur
1925 Sacha Guitry invites him to collaborate on Mozart
1926 First performance of Une Revue
1928 First performance of Violin Concerto
1930 Piano Concerto written, as well as Brummell
1932 O mon bel inconnu
1933 Ciboulette is filmed. He becomes music critic of Le
Figaro
1935 Conducts a number of performances of Die Zauberflöte.
Composes the operetta Malvina. His own Shakespeare opera
Le Marchand de Venise is given its first performance at
l’Opéra
1936 Conducts Die Entführung. He publishes his book
L’oreille au guet
1937 Conducts Figaro at the Opéra-Comique
1940 Flees Paris for the south of France where he conducts at
Cannes
1942 Production of Ciboulette in Paris forbidden by the Nazis
as Hahn is half Jewish. Begins his last operetta Le Oui des
jeunes filles which was to be given at the Opéra-Comique in
1949
1945 Returns to Paris from Monte Carlo. He leaves Le Figaro
as critic and takes up the direction of L’Opéra. Elected to
l’Institut on 26 March. His last work, Concerto provençal
1946 Embarks on a European tour with Magda Tagliaferro and
Ninon Vallin
1947 Dies on 28 January after a brief illness
THE SONGS 1888 –1896
There are twenty songs in Hahn’s first Recueil—the most famous of his collections of mélodies perhaps, from which we
perform thirteen on this album. The exclusions include the celebrated L’Enamourée and L’Incrédule (already available on
CDH55040), although it is worth noting that the last song in the volume, Phidylé, is the penultimate song of the Études
Latines which are performed in their entirety.
Like every other French song composer of the time, Reynaldo was drawn to the poetry of Victor Hugo who relished the
use of the most epic canvases both in his poetry and his novels. Like Goethe, Hugo was capable of small and unpretentious
lyrics of the greatest tenderness, and his importance in the development of the mélodie cannot be over-estimated. Although
Hahn placed Si mes vers avaient des ailes as the second item in his volume, it opens our recital because it has become
his motto song. The youthfulness of the composer (he was thirteen) makes its perfection seem all the more extraordinary.
The distinguishing marks of Hahn’s style are all there: an accompaniment which undulates in the background like the slow
unfurling of a skein of sumptuous material, a background of seemingly little import which nevertheless shapes the melody
as if the accompanist wielded the lightest of hands on a potter’s wheel; a vocal line which is derived from the intimacy of
speech but which contains in it the seeds of a wonderful melody truly to be sung; the use of unexpected intervals and
cadences (the leaps are sometimes large) which transport us suddenly from a conversational tone in the middle of the
stave to the swoon-inducing delight of a cunningly placed mezza voce. Right from the beginning Hahn was writing for
singers who could cast sensual spells. Although the composer’s debts to Massenet are obvious, this music has a depth of
feeling which that composer was seldom to attain in his songs.
1 Si mes vers avaient des ailes
Mes vers fuiraient, doux et frêles,
Vers votre jardin si beau,
Si mes vers avaient des ailes,
Des ailes comme l’oiseau.
Ils voleraient, étincelles,
Vers votre foyer qui rit,
Si mes vers avaient des ailes,
Des ailes comme l’esprit.
Près de vous, purs et fidèles,
Ils accourraient, nuit et jour,
Si mes vers avaient des ailes,
Des ailes comme l’amour !
If my verses had wings
My verses would flee, sweet and frail,
To your garden so fair,
If my verses had wings,
Like a bird.
They would fly, like sparks,
To your smiling hearth,
If my verses had wings,
Like the mind.
Pure and faithful, to your side
They’d hasten night and day,
If my verses had wings,
Like love!
VICTOR HUGO (1802–1885)
Perhaps more typical of the Massenet style is Paysage. Of all the poets in the first Recueil André Theuriet (1833–1907) is
the least remembered although he was very famous in his time as a novelist and playwright (Sarah Bernhardt appeared in
his Jean Marie, and he was elected to the Académie Française to replace Dumas). He was known as a poet of the provinces
and this little Breton picture captures the mood of a gentle autumn where nothing much is happening far from the bustle
of city life. Hahn complements this with a repetitive melody that is exchanged between piano and voice, the vocal line
sometimes soaring, at other moments murmuring on a monotone. The accompaniment breaks into semiquavers at
mention of the fountain and into limpid triplets at mention of the stream. The ending, which attempts the grandiose, is less
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successful for the poet and also, in consequence, for the composer. But this type of peroration, verging on sentimentality, is
impeccably within the confines of salon style.
2 Paysage
A deux pas de la mer qu’on entend bourdonner
Je sais un coin perdu de la terre bretonne
Où j’aurais tant aimé, pendant les jours d’automne,
Chère, a vous emmener !
Des chênes faisant cercle autour d’une fontaine,
Quelques hêtres épars, un vieux moulin desert,
Une source dont l’eau claire à le reflet vert
De vos yeux de sirène …
La mésange, au matin, sous la feuille jaunie,
Viendrait chanter pour nous …
Et la mer, nuit et jour,
Viendrait accompagner nos caresses d’amour
De sa basse infinie !
A Landscape
Close by the booming sea,
In Brittany I know a sequestered spot
Where in autumn I would so have wished,
My love, to go with you!
Oaks encircling a fountain,
Scattered beech, an old abandoned mill,
A well whose clear waters reflected
The green of your Siren’s eyes …
The bluetit, each morning, among yellowed leaves
Would come to sing for us …
And the sea, night and day,
Accompany our loving caresses
With its boundless bass!
ANDRE THEURIET (1833–1907)
Rêverie is another Hugo setting and, if less famous than Si mes vers, it has always had its admirers. The theme is
unforced, dreamy charm; the piano’s vamping (alternating legato with staccato) at first seems almost comic in its
accommodating will to please, and then strikes us as ever so slightly cheeky—an antidote to the romanticism of the words.
The elegant onrushing of triplets against a background of steady duplets gives a delightful elasticity to the vocal line if the
singer knows how to make use of the rhythmic freedom. In a cadential phrase like ‘Donne un baiser’ the composer, young
as he is, is able to suggest not only the pleasure of entering into an emotional attachment but also the possibility of pain
and uncertainty. It is this suggestion of a lifetime’s experience which makes Hahn’s precocious achievements so
remarkable. At a similar cadence the phrase ‘De mes chansons’ (with a long-held note on the final syllable) suggests the
sound of love songs of the past melting into thin air.
3 Rêverie
Puisqu’ici-bas toute âme
Donne à quelqu’un
Sa musique, sa flamme,
Ou son parfum;
Puisqu’ici toute chose
Donne toujours
Son épine ou sa rose
A ses amours ;
Puisqu l’air à la branche
Donne l’oiseau ;
Que l’aube à la pervenche
Donne un peu d’eau,
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Reverie
Since here on earth each soul
Gives someone
Its music, its ardour,
Or its perfume;
Since here all things
Will always give
Their thorns or roses
To those they love;
Since the breeze gives
To the branch the bird;
And dawn to the periwinkle
Gives of its dew;
Puisque, lorsqu’elle arrive
S’y reposer,
L’onde amère à la rive
Donne un baiser ;
Je te donne, à cette heure,
Penché sur toi,
La chose la meilleure
Que j’aie en moi !
Reçois donc ma pensée,
Triste d’ailleurs,
Qui, comme une rosée,
T’arrive en pleurs !
Reçois mes vœux sans nombre,
O mes amours !
Reçois la flamme et l’ombre
De tous mes jours !
Mes transports pleins d’ivresse,
Purs de soupçons,
Et toutes les caresses
De mes chansons !
Since when they come
To settle there,
The briny waves
Give the shore a kiss;
I give you, at this hour,
Inclining over you,
The finest things
I have in me!
Accept, then, my thoughts,
Sad though they be,
Which like drops of dew
Come to you as tears.
Accept my countless vows,
O my loves!
Accept the flame and the shade
Of all my days!
My frenzied rapture,
Devoid of all distrust,
And all the caresses
Of my songs.
VICTOR HUGO (1802–1885)
Offrande is one of Hahn’s great melodies; it stands as a proud alternative to the settings of Debussy (1888) and Fauré
(1891), both of which use Verlaine’s original title Green. It is unlikely that Hahn knew either of those songs when he wrote
his setting. A footnote to the edition states that the song is published with the permission of MM—who was the poet’s wife,
Mathilde Mauté. This might have suggested that this song dates from 1896, the year of the Verlaine’s death (after which
Mathilde would have exercised the droit moral over her late husband’s work) when the composer was twenty-two. In fact
this authorisation refers only to the year of the song’s publication. The manuscript itself is dated ‘1891 in spring’, and the
composer was only sixteen. The song is mysteriously dedicated ‘to ***’. However great the Fauré and Debussy songs are as
pieces of music (more complex than Offrande by far), Hahn, despite his tender years, has profoundly understood the
poem’s background: the melancholy and masochism inherent in Verlaine’s homosexual passion for Arthur Rimbaud.
Debussy and Fauré, with the confidence of men destined to win fair ladies with ease, composed fast songs which offer
baskets of fruit and bouquets of flowers with breathless delight. In Hahn’s empty accompaniment of listless minims, and a
vocal line that is all but a monotone, we hear the helplessness of a man who knows that he will be treated unkindly by the
object of his passion, who knows his offering will be scornfully rejected, and that nowhere will he find sympathy for his
plight. Here is the state of depression which descends when love dares not speak its name. It is little wonder perhaps that,
with the composer’s empathy for his words, Verlaine was said to have wept on hearing Hahn’s earlier settings of his poems,
the Chansons grises.
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4 Offrande
Voici des fruits, des fleurs, des feuilles et des branches.
Et puis voici mon cœur qui ne bat que pour vous :
Ne le dechirez pas avec vos deux mains blanches
Et qu’à vos yeux si beaux l’humble présent soit doux.
J’arrive, tout couvert encore de rosée
Que le vent du matin vient glacer à mon front.
Souffrez que ma fatigue, a vos pieds reposée,
Rêve des chers instants qui la délasseront.
Sur votre jeune sein, laissez rouler ma tête
Toute sonore encore de vos derniers baisers,
Laissez-la s’apaiser de la bonne tempête,
Et que je dorme un peu puisque vous reposez.
An Offering
Here are flowers, branches, fruit and fronds,
And here too my heart that beats just for you.
Do not tear it with your two white hands
And may the humble gift please your lovely eyes.
I come all covered still with the dew
Frozen to my brow by the morning breeze.
Let my fatigue, finding rest at your feet,
Dream those dear moments that will give it peace.
On your young breast let me roll my head
Still ringing from your recent kisses;
After its sweet tumult grant it peace,
And let me sleep a while, since you rest.
PAUL VERLAINE (1844–1896)
Mai is a delicious waltz-song which is prophetic of Hahn’s gift in the realms of lighter music. The setting of ‘inconsolée’ at
the end of the first verse, with its descending pattern followed by an upward leap of a seventh, is typical of this composer’s
vocal writing. It was this type of song that Ravel set out to compose when he wrote Fascination, selling it to Marchetti rather
than lose his reputation as a serious master. (It is recorded by Stephen Varcoe in ‘La Procession’, CDA66248). François
Coppée, a Parnassian poet, was a friend of both Verlaine and Sarah Bernhardt. He was more distinguished in Hahn’s day
than his present-day reputation would suggest, and he was celebrated for understanding the emotions of unimportant
working Parisians, and giving them a poetic voice. To the modern ear, however, the poetry sounds rather portentous.
5 Mai
Depuis un moi, chère exilée,
Loin de mes yeux tu t’en allas,
Et j’ai vu fleurir des lilas
Avec ma peine inconsolée.
Seul, je fuis ce ciel clair et beau
Dont l’ardent effluve me trouble,
Car l’horreur de l’exil se double
De la splendeur du renouveau.
En vain le soleil a souri,
Au printemps je ferme ma porte,
Et veux seulement qu’on m’apporte
Un rameau de lilas fleuri !
Car l’amour dont mon âme est pleine
Y trouve parmi ses douleurs
Ton regard, dans ces chères fleurs,
Et dans leur parfum ton haleine !
FRANÇOIS COPPÉE (1842–1908)
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May
It is a month, dear exile,
Since you vanished from my gaze,
And I have watched the lilacs bloom
With my sorrow unassuaged.
Alone, I avoid these lovely clear skies,
Whose blazing rays disquiet me,
For an exile’s dread increases
With the splendour of nature’s renewal.
In vain the sun has smiled;
I close my door to the spring,
And wish only to be brought
A lilac branch in bloom!
For Love, which fills my heart to overflowing,
Finds among its sorrows
Your gaze in the midst of those dear flowers,
And in their fragrance your sweet breath!
Infidélité is a perfect pastel, like Offrande a portrait of a tentative love that is doomed to disappointment and
incomprehension. The accompaniment oscillates, a quaver chord in each hand. Harmonies change only with the greatest
subtlety in the right hand, the left maintaining a pedal on a succession of open fifths for up to fifteen bars at a time. The
vocal line seems caught within a small circle of notes as if to reflect the unchanging constancy of the narrator. The calm
atmosphere of the evening is beautifully caught, and the whole song seems redolent of the perfumes of ebonies and lilacs.
All of this is to set up the poignant change of harmony on ‘vous’ at the end, masterfully preceded by an unaccompanied bar
where the voice is released from the strait-jacket of those gently pulsating quavers. I have in my possession a copy of this
song (with a drawing of the stone bench, of course) inscribed by ‘R.H.’ to Madeleine Lemaire—‘Souvenir de Réveillon’. As
Reynaldo met Proust at Réveillon it is all too tempting to wonder whether it was the failure of this relationship that the
composer had in mind when inscribing this song for his hostess.
6 Infidélité
Voici l’orme qui balance
Son ombre sur le sentier :
Voici le jeune églantier,
Le bois où dort le silence.
Le banc de pierre où le soir
Nous aimions à nous asseoir.
Voici la voûte embaumée
D’ébéniers et de lilas.
Où, lorsque nous étions las,
Ensemble, ô ma bien aimée !
Sous des guirlandes de fleurs,
Nous laissions fuir les chaleurs.
L’air est pur, le gazon doux …
Rien n’a donc changé que vous.
Infidelity
Here is an elm that sways
Its shadow on the path;
Here is the young wild rose,
The woods where silence sleeps;
The stone bench where, at evening,
We would love to sit.
Here is the fragrant canopy
Of ebony and lilac trees,
Where, when we were tired,
Together, my beloved,
Beneath garlands of flowers,
We would let the heat waft by!
The air is pure, sweet the grass …
Nothing has changed but you!
THÉOPHILE GAUTIER (1811–1872)
Seule (like Infidélité, the text is by Gautier) shows the influence of Fauré’s early mélodies. Indeed Fauré had published a
setting of this poem as early as 1871. Hahn does not permit himself to copy the manner of Fauré’s song; indeed he goes to
the opposite extreme of consciously avoiding any similarity to Fauré’s rather static setting. Rather is this moto perpetuo
inspired by the turbulence of a song like Toujours from the Poème d’un jour. Like Wolf, who chose not to set poems that
he felt had been put into music for all time by Schubert, Hahn tended to avoid poems that he felt had been truly
understood by Fauré. (We have to remember that Hahn’s Chansons grises predate Fauré’s La Bonne Chanson by some
years.) In this case we have to judge Hahn’s Seule a greater success than the older composer’s. The third strophe with its
mournful recitative (in contrast to the hectic opening) is particularly successful, as is the sombre depth of the vocal line at
‘morne et profonde’. The return of the flowing triplets for ‘Sombre Hellespont’ gives a watery flow to the final page.
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7 Seule
Dans un baiser, l’onde au rivage
Dit ses douleurs :
Pour consoler la fleur sauvage,
L’aube a des pleurs ;
Le vent du soir conte sa plainte
Aux vieux cyprès.
La tourterelle au thérébinthe
Ses longs regrets.
Aux flots dormants, quand tout repose,
Hors la douleur,
La lune parle, et dit la cause
De sa pâleur.
Ton dôme blanc, Sainte-Sophie,
Parle au ciel bleu,
Et, tout rêveur, le ciel confie
Son rêve a Dieu.
Arbre ou tombeau, colombe ou rose,
Onde ou rocher,
Tout, ici-bas, a quelque chose
Pour s’épancher …
Moi, je suis seul, et rien au monde
Ne me répond,
Rien que ta voix morne et profonde,
Sombre Hellespont !
Alone
In a kiss, the wave to the shore
Voices its grief;
To console the wild flower
Dawn has its tears;
The evening breeze tells its sorrow
To the ancient cypress,
The turtle-dove to the terebinth
Its endless regrets.
To the sleeping waves, when all is quiet
But pain,
The moon speaks, explaining why
It is pale.
Your white dome, Santa Sophia,
Speaks to the blue sky,
And, lost in dreams, the sky confides
Its dream to God.
Tree or tomb, dove or rose,
Wave or rock,
Everything here below
Has something to pour out …
But I am alone, and nothing on earth
Ever responds to me,
Nothing but your deep and gloomy voice,
Sombre Hellespont!
THÉOPHILE GAUTIER (1811–1872)
Les Cygnes is vintage Hahn in his most expansive mood. It is dedicated to the poet Jean Lahor (Henri Cazalis) who provided
Duparc with the texts of three songs—Chanson triste, Sérénade florentine and Extase (see below). He also wrote the
poems set by Saint-Saëns as Danse macabre. Saint-Saëns also had a connection with Armand Renaud, poet of Les Cygnes
and now all but forgotten: Renaud provided Saint-Saëns with the texts of his song cycle Mélodies persanes. The success of
this song (marked ‘calme et tres blanc’) is largely due to Hahn’s skill in inventing a limpid accompaniment suggestive of
the ever-widening ripples to be seen on a large lake in the wake of the swans’ royal progress across the water. The very
hands of the pianist seem to move with a type of breast-stroke movement in the playing of it. Above this gliding moto
perpetuo the composer writes a vocal line of some nobility. If his actual melodic invention is not equal to that of some of
the other masters of the mélodie, his deployment of his musical resources is extremely cunning. Note the way that
touching modulations sometimes take the place of organic development or longer-breathed melodies. As always, Hahn is a
master of placing a certain key word (normally at the end of the song as in the final ‘vous’ in Infidélité) on the most
exquisite cushion as if it is to be presented to the public like a precious jewel. A wonderful example of this is the song’s
final word: after the long phrase an octave lower which precedes it (‘Vois, comme ils en font le tour de ton …’), the word
‘âme’ seems suddenly to float star-like in the watery heavens.
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8 Les Cygnes
Ton âme est un lac d’amour
Dont mes désirs sont les cygnes …
Vois comme ils en font le tour,
Comme ils y creusent des lignes …
Voyageurs aventureux
Ils vont les ailes ouvertes …
Rien n’est ignoré par eux
Des flots bleus aux îles vertes …
Bruyants et pompeux, les uns
Sont d’un blanc que rien n’égale,
Désirs, nés dans les parfums
Parun soleil de Bengale !
Les autres, muets et noirs,
Ont comme un air de mystère …
Désirs nés pendant les soirs
Où tout s’endort sur la terre …
Sans nombre sont ces oiseaux
Que ton âme voit éclore !
Combien déjà sur les eaux
Et combien à naître encore !
Ton âme est un lac d’amour
Dont mes désirs sont les cygnes …
Vois, comme ils en font le tour de ton âme !
The Swans
Your soul is a lake of love
Whose swans are my desires …
See them drifting round the lake,
Furrowing its surface …
Intrepid travellers,
They move with wide-spread wings …
Nothing is unknown to them,
Neither blue waves nor green isles …
Clamorous and stately, some
Have a whiteness beyond compare,
Desires, born during evenings,
Beneath a Bengal sun!
Others, silent and black,
Are wreathed in mystery,
Desires born from perfumes.
Where all on earth falls asleep.
These birds, that your soul sees forming,
Are without number!
How many already on the waters!
And how many still to be born!
Your soul is a lake of love,
Whose swans are my desires …
See, see how they drift round your soul!
ARMAND RENAUD (1836–1894)
Nocturne is a Lahor setting and it sets out to challenge Duparc in the way that he chose to set the words of his famous
Extase. It cannot be rated a serious rival, for it does nothing to replace Duparc’s haunting music (inspired by Träume from
Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder) in the ear of the listener. Nevertheless it is a highly effective song, striking that note of
exquisite decadence that we find so often in Reynaldo’s music. The shade of Wagner is banished in favour of home-grown
composers like Massenet. By minimising the importance of the bass line Hahn even aims at a sort of rather modern
harmonic ambiguity as if to emphasise the disorientating nature of sleep.
9 Nocturne
Sur ton sein pâle mon cœur dort
D’un sommeil doux comme la mort …
Mort exquise, mort parfumée
Au souffle de la bien aimée …
Sur ton sein pâle mon cœur dort …
Nocturne
On your pale breast my heart is sleeping
A sleep as sweet as death …
Exquisite death, death perfumed
By the breath of the beloved …
On your pale breast my heart is sleeping …
JEAN LAHOR (1840–1909)
Trois jours de vendange is one of the few songs by Hahn which tells a story; it does so in three clear stages, as the title
makes plain. It was no doubt composed as a tribute to its poet, Alphonse Daudet, who had been so kind both to Hahn and
16
to Proust. The merry acciaccaturas and staccato chords are as near as Reynaldo ever got to painting merry country life in
his mélodies. The effect of heartiness is of course set up to be knocked down in the final verse where the beautiful girl,
stricken by illness in the second verse, dies and is buried. The whole song seems to owe something to the narrative ballads
of Saint-Saëns, in particular Le pas d’armes du roi Jean which also seeks to unify a varied story in different sections within
a larger musical structure. The last page with its tolling bells and monotone incantations seems to have something in
common with the spellbinding coda of Debussy’s De soir (Proses Lyriques) which also has bare octaves accompanying a
vocal line similarly suggestive of medieval church ritual. Debussy’s modernity was largely inimical to Hahn and it seems
curious that the Proses Lyriques were exactly contemporary with the publication of Reynaldo’s first Recueil. It must be
remembered, however, that some of the Hahn songs had been written up to eight years earlier.
bl Trois jours de vendange
Je l’ai rencontrée un jour de vendange,
La jupe troussée et le pied mignon,
Point de guimpe jaune et point de chignon,
L’air d’une bacchante et les yeux d’un ange.
Suspendue au bras d’un doux compagnon,
Je l’ai rencontrée aux champs d’Avignon,
Un jour de vendange.
Je l’ai rencontrée un jour de vendange,
La plaine était morne et le ciel brûlant.
Elle marchait seule et d’un pas tremblant,
Son regard brillait d’une flamme étrange …
Je frissonne encore en me rappelant
Comme je te vis, cher fantôme blanc,
Un jour de vendange.
Je l’ai rencontrée un jour de vendange,
Et j’en rêve encore presque tous les jours :
Le cercueil était couvert en velours,
Le drap noir portait une double frange.
Les sœurs d’Avignon pleuraient tout autour.
La vigne avait trop de raisin …
L’Amour avait fait la vendange.
Three Days of Vintaging
During the vintage I met her one day,
Skirt tucked in, dainty feet,
No yellow veil, no coiled-up hair,
A maenad with an angel’s eyes,
Leaning on a sweet friend’s arm.
I met her at Avignon in the fields,
During the vintage one day.
During the vintage I met her one day,
The plain was bleak and the sky ablaze.
She was walking alone, with faltering steps.
Her face was lit by a curious glow …
I still shudder as I remember
How I saw you, dear white spectre,
During the vintage one day.
During the vintage I met her one day,
And still almost daily I dream of it:
The coffin draped in velvet,
The black shroud with its double fringe.
The Avignon nuns wept all around it!
The vine had too many grapes …
Love had gathered its harvest.
ALPHONSE DAUDET (1840–1897)
D’une prison was composed in 1892. Fauré’s immortal setting of this poem (Prison) was not published until 1896, so we
cannot blame Hahn for lèse-majesté in deciding to set it. The Fauré song contains all the pent-up anguish and regret which
is missing here. Instead of a man who sees his life ruined we have the gentle and regretful musings of a gentleman (or a
lady) temporarily down on his luck. We can be sure that these thoughts of a misspent youth are accompanied by a gentle
spiral of cigarette smoke floating upwards. The oscillations of the accompaniment cleverly suggest not only the slow passing
of time (a musical version of a very smooth ‘tick-tock, tick-tock’) but the type of suspended animation felt by the prisoner
when he is ‘doing time’. One could argue, pace Fauré, that Hahn saw the words ‘si bleu, si calme’ as the key to the song’s
17
mood. Provided one wishes to be ravished rather than have one’s withers wrung, the song is a fine one, and has long been
a favourite with the public. This musical haze which softens the text from tragedy into gentle melancholy has something in
common with Vaughan Williams’s setting, The sky above the roof, which dates from 1908.
bm D’une prison
Le ciel est, par-dessus le toit,
Si bleu, si calme !
Un arbre, par-dessus le toit,
Berce sa palme.
La cloche, dans le ciel qu’on voit,
Doucement tinte.
Un oiseau sur l’arbre qu’on voit
Chante sa plainte.
Mon Dieu, mon Dieu ! la vie est là,
Simple et tranquille.
Cette paisible rumeur-là
Vient de la ville.
—Qu’as-tu fait, ô toi que voilà
Pleurant sans cesse,
Dis, qu’as-tu fait, toi que voilà,
De ta jeunesse ?
From a prison
The sky above the roof,
So blue, so calm!
A tree, above the roof,
Waves its crown.
The bell, in the sky I watch,
Gently rings.
A bird, on the tree I watch,
Plaintively sings.
My God, my God, life is there
Simple and serene.
That peaceful murmur there
Comes from the town.
O you, O you, what have you done
Weeping without end,
Say, O say, what have you done
With all your youth?
PAUL VERLAINE (1844–1896)
Séraphine is another twilit evocation of the kind in which Hahn excels. The original Heine poem (‘Wandl’ ich in dem Wald
des Abends’) is from a collection called Verschiedene (‘Sundry Women’). For two bars the vocal line continues on one
note—this, combined with the formula of the undulating arpeggios, provides a neutral background, like the anonymous
murmurings of nightfall. And then on the word ‘rêveuse’ the voice plunges down a fifth and once again Hahn has worked
his spell of seeming to create a real tune out of very little. A minimum amount of movement in the voice part seems to
spin a line of the greatest eloquence—a type of trompe l’oreille where a complete musical picture is created with only a
few deft strokes of outline.
bn Séraphine
Quand je chemine, le soir,
Dans la forêt rêveuse,
Toujours chemine à mon côté
Ta tendre image.
N’est-ce pas là ton voile blanc ?
N’est-ce pas ton doux visage ?
Ou bien, ne serait-ce que le clair de lune
Qui brille à travers les sombres sapins ?
18
Seraphina
When at evening I walk
Through the dreamy forest,
Always at my side
Your sweet image walks too.
Is that not your white veil?
Is that not your gentle face?
Or might it be but the moonlight
Gleaming through the dark pines?
Est-ce mes propres larmes
Que j’entends couler doucement ?
Ou se peut-il, réellement,
Que tu viennes, pleurant à mes côtés ?
Are these my own tears
That I hear gently flowing?
Or might it really be you,
Coming to weep by my side?
HEINRICH HEINE (1797–1856)
L’heure exquise from the Chansons grises competes with Si mes vers as the composer’s most famous mélodie. Many of
the typically Hahnian features that we have noted in the songs already heard on this disc here come together to achieve a
rare perfection of utterance. A flowing accompaniment which starts in the bottom of the left hand’s stave and flows to the
upper reaches of the keyboard sets up a hypnotic pattern. Over this the voice begins a gentle melody which is hardly a
melody at all, rather a recitation with a ghost of a tune. Modulations in the interlude are eloquent beyond all measure of
their sophistication, or even ingenuity. At ‘Ô bien-aimée’ the voice soars a sixth, and as it does so, our hearts skip a beat.
Absolute calm returns for the second strophe; once again the voice climbs high at ‘Rêvons’ and plunges into the silky
depths for ‘c’est l’heure’. At the third strophe the sense of calm is so great that the vocal line is beset by the most exquisite
languor as if the singer scarcely has the energy to move from note to note. At the end, with a jump of a seventh, the singer
launches his line into the unknown on ‘C’est l’heure exquise’. This excursion, perilously unaccompanied (has a mere D
sharp—on the third line of the treble stave—ever seemed so unattainably high?) seems to reverberate in infinite space.
Out of utterly ordinary, even hackneyed, ingredients, Hahn has created a masterpiece. He has also demonstrated his
stunning ability to use time and space (rather than melody and harmony alone) as essential ingredients in the creation of a
song’s magic. Vistas of calm space and twilight grandeur seem effortlessly evoked.
bo L’heure exquise
La lune blanche
Luit dans les bois ;
De chaque branche
Part une voix
Sous la ramée …
O bien-aimée.
L’étang reflète,
Profond miroir.
La silhouette
Du saule noir
Où le vent pleure …
Rêvons, c’est l’heure.
Un vaste et tendre
Apaisement
Semble descendre
Du firmament
Que l’astre irise …
C’est l’heure exquise.
PAUL VERLAINE (1844–1896)
19
The Exquisite Hour
The white moon
Shines in the woods;
From every branch
There comes a voice
Beneath the bower …
O my beloved.
The pool reflects,
Deep mirror,
The silhouette
Of the black willow
Where the wind is weeping.
Let us dream, it is the hour.
A vast and tender
Consolation
Seems to fall
From the firmament
Iridescent with stars …
Exquisite hour.
Fêtes galantes is another Verlaine poem which many a French composer has felt obliged to set. There is the Watteau-like
elegance—somewhat laid back—of Fauré’s song, entitled Mandoline. Debussy’s early setting of the same title is
breathless and piquant, a whirl of activity in a froth of swirling skirts. Hahn’s combines attributes of each without quite
being as successful as either. In his hands there is something (deliberately?) banal about these exchanges of courtly
pleasantries. Fauré suggests the artifice of studied self-control, but here we have the small-talk of Louis XV’s Versailles
exchanged by the mindless courtiers and hangers-on. The left hand in the treble clef sounds the twanged note of the
mandoline, the right is preoccupied with a the circular repetition of a high and tinkling phrase in double thirds which is
cheekily repeated until the entry of the voice. ‘L’éternel Clitandre’ gets a raised eyebrow of impatience and boredom with a
sudden plunge in the bass. At ‘Leurs courtes vestes de soie’ Hahn introduces an individual touch, unusual in his writing:
descending semitones in the vocal line are followed by upward jumps of an octave; these are abetted by deft piano arpeggios
in the same direction. Accompanying the final word ‘brise’ two chromatic scales in contrary motion usher in a final
ritornello. There is a real impression of emptiness at the end of it all, and this gay superficiality may well have been exactly
what the composer intended.
bp Fêtes galantes
Les donneurs de sérénades
Et les belles écouteuses
Échangent des propos fades
Sous les ramures chanteuses.
C’est Tircis et c’est Aminte,
Et c’est l’éternel Clitandre,
Et c’est Damis qui pour mainte
Cruelle fait maint vers tendre.
Leurs courtes vestes de soie,
Leurs longues robes à queues,
Leur élégance, leur joie
Et leurs molles ombres bleues
Tourbillonnent dans l’extase
D’une lune rose et grise.
Et la mandoline jase
Parmi les frissons de brise.
The serenading swains
And the fair listening ladies
Exchange sweet nothings
Beneath singing boughs.
Tircis is there, Aminte is there,
And the tiresome Clitalidre too,
And Damis who for cruel maids aplenty
Writes many a tender song.
Their short silken doublets,
Their long trailing gowns,
Their elegance, their joy
And their soft blue shadows
Whirl madly in the rapture
Of a grey and roseate moon,
And the mandolin babbles on
Amid the quivering breeze.
PAUL VERLAINE (1844–1896)
DOUZE RONDELS
Like many another composer of conservative leanings, Hahn was fascinated by the past and the strict rules that governed
the art of former times. In this set of twelve songs he was able to enter into the spirit of the literary discipline which governs
the making of the rondel. This is a thirteen-line poem consisting of two quatrains and one cinquain. There are only two
rhymes permitted, and there are three appearances of a fixed refrain: at the beginning, middle and end of the poem. The
rhyme scheme is as follows (the capital letters indicate refrains which almost always incorporate the title of the poem
itself): A B b a a b A B a b b a A.
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CHARLES D’ORLÉANS (1391–1465) was one of the great masters of the rondel and probably the best of the fifteenthcentury poètes courtois. He was taken prisoner at Agincourt and remained in prison in England for twenty-five years. On
returning to France he lived at Blois where his court was a centre of the arts. His use of the rondel form (in a way a verbal
prison where one’s choices of rhyme are confined by the form) is only one indication of Charles’s great technical skill in
these later years.
THÉODORE DE BANVILLE (1823–1891) was also renowned for his technical skill; he was a modern master of old
poetic forms such as the triolet, ballade, villanelle, virelai and of course rondel. He was famous for his facility for rhyme.
In 1873 he published ballades in the manner of Villon, and part of the Poésies of 1875 was a section entitled Rondels a la
manière de Charles d’Orléans. In Banville’s volume on French versification there is a chapter on poetic license, albeit a
short one. In fact it consists of one line: ‘II n’y en a pas’—‘There isn’t any.’ How Hahn must have relished this!
The composer had the idea of juxtaposing Banville’s latter-day rondels with three of Charles d’Orléans originals (the
second, sixth and eighth songs of the cycle). At the end there is a rondel by Catulle Mendès which, with its reference to
singing, may well have been written as a closing item for this cycle at Reynaldo’s request. Hahn’s lavish musical plan
included the use of a chorus in the first, sixth and eleventh items; this makes modern-day performance of the work on the
concert platform expensive and unlikely. The musical style of the Banville settings is more or less in the ‘modern’ style of
the composer’s second Recueil of mélodies (some of the piano parts are as difficult as anything he wrote for the
instrument) while in contrast the Charles d’Orléans settings bring out Hahn’s gifts as a pasticheur. There had been a long
tradition in the composers of mélodie (Gounod and Fauré were the greatest, but by no means the only examples) of
matching early poetry with music in ‘madrigal’ style evocative of earlier times. The use of this time-travelling in film music
has rather debased the coin (despite Walton’s splendid music for Olivier’s Henry V) and after hearing ‘early’ music
churned out by the yard in costume dramas, listeners no longer regard pastiche as serious composition. It was, however,
something on which Reynaldo was increasingly to rely for the visitations of his muse. In any case, at the turn of the century
even a giant like Debussy (in his Villon ballads and his own settings of Charles d’Orléans) was not above the use of archaic
colour in his songs to suggest the fifteenth-century provenance of the words. Ravel too had an early success with his
Pavane pour une infante défunte.
The cycle opens appropriately enough with Le Jour, a sunrise. A piano ritornello of solemn simplicity alternates with
unaccompanied choral writing of neo-classical fluency. The mention of murmuring waters prompts sextuplets in the piano,
and what has begun tentatively ends in a blaze of light. There is a long postlude for the piano.
bq Le Jour
Tout est ravi quand vient le Jour
Dans les cieux flamboyants d’aurore.
Sur la terre en fleur qu’il décore
La joie immense est de retour.
Les feuillages au pur contour
Ont un bruissement sonore;
Tout est ravi quand vient le Jour
Dans les cieux flamboyants d’aurore.
21
Day
All is delight when day breaks
In the blazing skies of dawn.
On the flowering earth it beautifies
Endless joy is back again.
Sharply silhouetted leaves
Are rustling loudly;
All is delight when day breaks
In the blazing skies of dawn.
La chaumière comme la tour
Dans la lumière se colore,
L’eau murmure, la fleur adore,
Les oiseaux chantent, fous d’amour.
Tout est ravi quand vient le Jour.
THÉODORE DE BANVILLE (1823–1891)
6
Cottage no less than tower
Is tinged with light,
Water murmurs, flowers are fragrant,
Birds sing, madly in love.
All is delight when day breaks.
Je me metz en vostre mercy is a courtly ballad in gentle 8 rhythm. The vulnerability of the words is beautifully caught and
the piano writing, as befits the words, is a model of shy lucidity with its lack of accidentals and its ‘white note’ modality.
br Je me metz en vostre mercy,
Très belle, bonne, jeune et gente ;
On m’a dit qu’estes mal contente
De moy, ne sçay s’il est ainsy.
De toute nuit je n’ay dormy,
Ne pensez pas que je vous mente !
Je me metz en vostre mercy,
Très belle, bonne, jeune et gente.
Pour ce, tres humblement vous pry
Que vous me dittes vostres entente :
Car d’une chose je me vente
Qu’en loyauté n’ay point failly :
Je me metz en vostre mercy.
I submit to your mercy
Most fair, kind, young and noble lady;
I hear you are displeased
With me, know not if that is so.
All night long I have not slept;
You must not think I He.
I submit to your mercy,
Most fair, kind, young and noble lady.
Thus I beseech you most humbly
To tell me your intent,
For I pride myself
That in loyalty I have never failed.
I submit to your mercy.
CHARLES D’ORLÉANS (1394–1465)
In complete contrast, Le Printemps ranks as one of the composer’s most exuberant songs. At the top of the music Hahn
writes the words ‘Viens enfant, la terre s’eveille’—the opening lines from Gounod’s Chanson de printemps (recorded on
Hyperion CDA66801/2). From that mélodie he adopts the ceaseless semiquavers of the accompaniment. The song is
marked ‘Animé. Avec enthousiasme, avec ivresse.’ It is rare that we find this mood of exuberant intoxication in Hahn’s
music for voice and piano which is usually introvert rather than extrovert. This is truly a song for a high voice of some
power, and both singer and pianist are challenged by its élan.
bs Te voilà, rire du Printemps !
Les thyrses des lilas fleurissent.
Les amantes, qui te chérissent
Délivrent leurs cheveux flottants.
Sous les rayons d’or éclatants
Les anciens lierres se flétrissent.
Te voilà, rire du Printemps !
Les thyrses des lilas fleurissent.
Couchons-nous au bord des étangs,
Que nos maux amers se guérissent !
22
Smiling Spring, you have arrived!
Sprays of lilacs are in bloom.
Lovers who hold you dear
Unbind their flowing hair.
Beneath the beams of glistening gold
The ancient ivy withers.
Smiling Spring, you have arrived!
Sprays of lilacs are in bloom.
Let us lie alongside pools
That our bitter wounds may heal!
Mille espoirs fabuleux nourrissent
Nos cœurs émus et palpitants.
Te voilà, rire du Printemps !
A thousand fabled hopes nourish
Our full and beating hearts.
Smiling Spring, you have arrived!
THÉODORE DE BANVILLE (1823–1891)
The accompaniment to L’Air could not be more different; it takes its inspiration from a phrase by Barbey d’Aurevilly—‘a
hammock of harmonies’. Mezzo staccato quavers (bathed and softened by both pedals) seem plucked out of thin air as
they move from the bottom of the stave up into the stratosphere. This accompaniment (if something so insubstantial may
be termed such) cradles a vocal line which is scarcely a tune, more of a recitative high in the voice. We are already familiar
with Hahn’s ability to evoke atmosphere so strongly that we do not even notice the lack of a real melody. This song
demonstrates a debt to the impressionists; it seems that the influence of Debussy has seeped into Hahn’s consciousness. It
reminds us forcefully that behind the songs of both Debussy and Hahn lies a figure of common inspiration—the ethereal
muse of Massenet. The mysterious and rarefied world of half-light evocation is to be found time and again in the work of
that composer.
bt L’Air
Dans l’Air s’en vont les ailes.
Par le vent caressées ;
Mes errantes pensées
S’envolent avec elles.
Aux cieux pleins d’étincelles,
Dans la nue élancées,
Dans l’Air s’en vont les ailes
Par le vent caressées.
Vers des terres nouvelles,
Sur les rayons bercées,
Vous fuyez, dispersées,
Ô blanches colombelles ;
Dans l’Air s’en vont les ailes !
Air
Wings cleave the air,
Caressed by wind;
My wandering thoughts
Take wing with them.
Towards star-teeming skies
And high clouds,
Wings cleave the air,
Caressed by the wind.
Towards new lands,
Cradled on moonbeams,
You scatter in all directions,
O young white doves;
Wings cleave the air!
THÉODORE DE BANVILLE (1823–1891)
It is one of Hahn’s traits to invent mélodies which begin on the repetition of a single note. In La Paix this is carried to its
logical conclusion: there is only one note in this song, an A which is sung over a hundred times; perhaps this is meant to
denote security and stability of place. Accompanying this there is a solemn march in measured and noble style. It is in this
mood (marked by the composer ‘un peu majestueux’) that we can feel what it must have been like to live at the turn of the
century. As Stefan Zweig describes in his autobiography, writers felt that war was a thing of the past. On the threshold of the
new century the burgeoning glories of science promised ever-increasing prosperity. The great powers felt secure in their
imperial dominion, and only the very far-sighted could imagine the devastating conflict to ravage Europe only fourteen years
later. In La Paix, far from Hahn’s best music, we hear the complacency of the Edwardian age in music where a sunset is
mistaken for a sunrise. It is no coincidence that Elgar was capable of writing similar (if better) marches across the channel
at exactly the same time. It is certain that both composers were genuinely moved by patriotic emotions, and both were
convinced that peace had permanently triumphed over war, in Europe at least.
23
bu La Paix
La Paix, au milieu des moissons,
Allaite de beaux enfants nus.
A l’entour, des chœurs ingénus
Dansent au doux bruit des chansons.
Le soleil luit dans les buissons,
Et sous les vieux arbres chenus
La Paix, au milieu des moissons
Allaite de beaux enfants nus.
Les fleurs ont de charmants frissons.
Les travailleurs aux bras charnus,
Hier soldats, sont revenus,
Et tranquilles, nous bénissons
La Paix, au milieu des moissons.
Peace
Peace, in the midst of the harvest,
Suckles lovely naked children.
All around, simple choirs
Dance to the sweet sound of songs.
The sun gleams in the bushes.
And beneath the old hoary trees
Peace, in the midst of the harvest,
Suckles lovely naked children.
Flowers tremble delightfully.
Labourers with plump arms,
Soldiers but yesterday, have returned,
And serenely, we bless
Peace, in the midst of the harvest.
THÉODORE DE BANVILLE (1823–1891)
Gardez le trait de la fenêtre for SATB returns to a gracious madrigal style. Hahn lets us know that he is aware of the
techniques of old music by writing ‘Mode Hypodorien’ under the title. It is perhaps here that we can best imagine Reynaldo
as a composer of film music—this would accompany a scene of dancing at court in a most effective way, with the tenors
and sopranos given alternating lines followed by the introduction of altos and basses. All four lines then combine in elegant
manner. A choreographer would enjoy the possibilities of this music in grouping and re-grouping a troupe of dancers
costumed in tights and wimples.
cl Gardez le trait de la fenêtre
Gardez le trait de la fenestre
Amans, qui par ruez passez :
Car plus tost en serez blessez
Que de trait d’arc ou d’arbalestre.
N’allez à destre ne à senestre
Regardant ; mais les yeulx baissez :
Gardez le trait de la fenestre
Amans, qui par ruez passez :
Se n’avez médicin bon maistre
Se tost que vous serez navrez
À Dieu soyez recommandez.
Mors vous tiens ; demandez le prestre :
Gardez le trait de la fenestre.
Beware the arrow from the window
Beware the arrow from the window,
You lovers who pass along the street:
For they will wound you sooner
Than any bow or crossbow.
Neither look to the right nor the left,
But walk with lowered gaze:
Beware the arrow from the window,
You lovers who pass along the street.
If you do not have a good doctor,
As soon as you are wounded,
Commend your souls to God.
Death awaits you, call the priest:
Beware the arrow from the window.
CHARLES D’ORLÉANS (1394–1465)
La Pêche catapults us into another world; it does seem that Hahn has planned this set to underline contrasts—here is the
difference not only between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries but also between courtly life and the work of a fisherman
outdoors. Swirling arpeggios (marked ‘forte’—there is nothing at all ethereal about this song!) depict the act of the
24
fisherman emptying his nets. Shimmering pentatonic arpeggios paint the profusion of fish on his deck, their own
multicoloured scales gleaming in the sunlight. The vocal line is bold, almost guttural, in the manner of folksong. A few
years later Joseph Canteloube was to publish the first of his arrangements of the Chants d’Auvergne. The exuberance and
earthiness of Hahn’s music seems prophetic of this style.
cm La Pêche
Le pêcheur vidant ses filets,
Voit les poissons d’or de la Loire
Glacés d’argent sur leur nageoire
Et mieux vêtus que des varlets.
Teints encor des ardents reflets
Du soleil et du flot de moire,
Le pêcheur vidant ses filets,
Voit les poissons d’or de la Loire.
Les beaux captifs, admirez-les !
Ils gisent sur la terre noire,
Glorifiant de sa victoire,
Jaunes, pourpres et violets,
Le pêcheur vidant ses filets.
Fishing
The fisherman, emptying his nets,
Sees the golden fish of the Loire
With streaks of cold silver on their fin
And better dressed than a valet-de-chambre.
Tinged still with fiery reflections
Of sun and moiré waves,
The fisherman, emptying his nets,
Sees the golden fish of the Loire.
Admire the handsome captives!
They shine on the black earth,
Glorifying the victory,
Yellow, crimson and violet,
The fisherman emptying his nets.
THÉODORE DE BANVILLE (1823–1891)
The return to Charles d’Orléans is for the most often performed song of the Rondels—perhaps because it is to be found in
the second Recueil. Quand je fus pris au pavillon is one of Hahn’s most celebrated pastiches. Indeed it ranks with À Chloris
as one of the most successful songs in this quasi-ancient style by any composer. It is dedicated to Lucien Fugère who was
among the most famous singers of the day, and certainly the one destined to have the longest career. This is a delicious
poem with just a touch of the risqué about it, and Fugère was noted for his buffo roles. Hahn’s music, with its leaping
staccato basses, is utterly delightful—note the jaunty melisma on the word ‘belle’ in the second verse. The main melody
comes in the piano and the vocal line, as is so often the case with this composer, is a descant which gives the impression of
blossoming into memorable melody without actually doing so—with the exception perhaps of the final exuberant ‘Quand
je fus pris au pavillon’.
cn Quand je fus pris au pavillon
De ma dame, très gente et belle,
Je me brûlai à la chandelle
Ainsi que fait le papillon.
Je rougis comme vermillon,
À la clarté d’une étincelle,
Quand je fus pris au pavillon
De ma dame, très gente et belle.
Si j’eusse été esmerillon
Ou que j’eusse eu aussi bonne aile,
25
When in her pavilion I lost my heart
To my most beautiful and noble lady,
I burnt myself in the candle’s flame,
As the moth does.
I flushed vermilion
In the brightness of a spark,
When in her pavilion I lost my heart.
To my most beautiful and noble lady.
If I had been a merlin
Or had wings as strong,
Je me fusse gardé de celle
Qui me bailla de l’aiguillon
Quand je fus pris au pavillon.
I should have shielded myself
From her who stung me,
When in her pavilion I lost my heart.
CHARLES D’ORLÉANS (1394–1465)
Les Étoiles is Hahn at his most sumptuous; it is certainly one of the most sophisticated of his mélodies, and his own
feelings about its stature seem indicated by the choice of not one but two sidereal quotations at its head by Ovid and Victor
Hugo. This song too is to be found in the second Recueil. The piano writing consists of alternating chords in both hands
spaced a semiquaver apart. When these chords are played softly enough, and smoothly between the hands, they produce a
shimmering effect of grandeur and heavenly repose. Dotted semibreves high in the treble are pricked out by the little finger
of the right hand; as each of these notes sounds we hear a new star emerge from the swirling heavens with a clear pencilpoint of audible light, each a part of a magisterially-ascending pentatonic scale. In the vocal line Hahn writes more of a tune
than is often the case with atmospheric songs of this genre. The melody is long-breathed and spacious and makes its effect
over a long span. Towards the end there is an imposing climax at ‘ces fournaises de diamants’ which is probably the
grandest moment in any of the composer’s mélodies. This is one of the songs that it would have been out of the question
for the composer to have sung himself—it is simply too difficult for all but the most accomplished of professionals.
Whereas Reynaldo had written most of the songs of his first Recueil to perform himself (the tessitura shows this) the later
songs reflect an increasing acquaintance with great singers who used his songs in recitals. There is a famous recording of
Les Étoiles with Ninon Vallin whom Reynaldo was to accompany a great deal in later years. However, she was still in her
cradle when this song was written.
co Les Étoiles
Les cieux resplendissants d’Étoiles
Aux radieux frissonnements,
Ressemblent à des flots dormants
Que sillonnent de blanches voiles.
Quand l’azur déchire ses voiles,
Nous voyons les bleus firmaments,
Les cieux resplendissant d’Étoiles,
Aux radieux frissonnements.
Quel peintre mettra sur ses toiles,
Ô dieu ! leurs clairs fourmillements,
Ces fournaises de diamants
Qu’à nos yeux ravis tu dévoiles,
Les cieux resplendissants d’Étoiles ?
The Stars
The heavens resplendent with stars,
Glittering and shimmering,
Are like slumbering waves
Streaked with white sails.
When the azure breaks through its veils,
We see the blue firmament,
The heavens resplendent with stars,
Glittering and shimmering.
What painter will capture on canvas,
O God, this limpid teeming,
These diamantine furnaces
You unveil to my enraptured eyes,
The heavens resplendent with stars?
THÉODORE DE BANVILLE (1823–1891)
26
L’Automne is dedicated to the extraordinary Jane Bathori who was more or less to sight-read the first performance of
Ravel’s Shéhérazade and who was to accompany herself in recordings of songs from the same composer’s Histoires
naturelles. Hahn has envisaged a stately dance but to distinguish it from the ‘old’ music of Charles d’Orléans it is written in
7
a more modern 4 (4 beats + 3 beats). The mood of the whole remains courtly, however, and is much closer to the Orléans
settings than to the other Banville songs. The main melody, which begins high in the stave, is announced in the piano at the
beginning and the voice follows suit a bar later. There is a pleasing sense of pomp and circumstance, as if autumn was
indeed a guest of some grandeur. The song is also somehow suffused with a feeling of regret for the passing of sunnier
days.
cp L’Automne
Sois le bienvenu, rouge Automne.
Accours dans ton riche appareil,
Embrase le coteau vermeil
Que la vigne pare et festonne.
Père, tu rempliras la tonne
Qui nous verse le doux sommeil ;
Sois le bienvenu, rouge Automne,
Accours dans ton riche appareil.
Déjà la Nymphe qui s’étonne,
Blanche de la nuque à l’orteil,
Rit aux chants ivres de soleil
Que le gai moissoneur entonne,
Sois le bienvenu, rouge Automne.
Autumn
Welcome, russet Autumn.
Hurry in your rich apparel,
Embrace the bright red hillside
Decked and festooned in vines.
Bacchus, fill the barrel
That dispenses gentle sleep for us;
Welcome, russet Autumn,
Hurry in your rich apparel.
The astonished nymph,
White from head to toe,
Smiles at the sun-drunk songs
The happy harvester intones,
Welcome, russet Autumn.
THÉODORE DE BANVILLE (1823–1891)
This cycle has opened with daybreak so it is fitting that to all intents and purposes it should close with nightfall. La Nuit is
set for three-part chorus (without the basses) and is a gently flowing lullaby with artful mingling of the voice parts and
discreet support from the piano. There is a climax at ‘Un flot d’astres frissonne et luit’ where the piano suddenly abandons
its sober minims and crotchets and takes wing with demisemiquaver figurations sweeping across the keyboard like meteors
flying through the sky. This is followed by a gentle reprise of the rather haunting opening melody. A better-known setting of
the poem is the duet by Chausson of the same title (1883).
cq La Nuit
Nous bénissons la douce Nuit,
Dont le frais baiser nous délivre.
Sous ses voiles on se sont vivre
Sans inquiétude et sans bruit.
Le souci dévorant s’enfuit,
Le parfum de l’air nous enivre ;
Nous bénissons la douce Nuit,
Dont le frais baiser nous délivre.
Pâle songeur qu’un Dieu poursuit,
Repose-toi, ferme ton livre.
27
Night
We bless the sweet night,
Whose cool kiss sets us free.
Beneath its veils we feel we live
Without noise or anxiety.
Devouring care slips away,
The fragrant air enraptures us;
We bless the sweet night
Whose cool kiss sets us free.
Pale dreamer whom a god pursues,
Rest, and close your book.
Dans les cieux blancs comme du givre
Un flot d’astres frissonne et luit,
Nous bénissons la douce Nuit.
In the heavens as white as rime
A stream of stars quivers and shines,
We bless the sweet night.
THÉODORE DE BANVILLE (1823–1891)
The Rondels finish with Le souvenir d’avoir chanté. Even at the age of twenty-four Reynaldo is tempted to look back at his
golden days of the past with regret and a rueful smile. It is true that by 1899 the love affair with Proust (the most important
emotional relationship of his life) was already over. The song is dedicated to Madeleine Lemaire who introduced Reynaldo
to Marcel. The poem is perhaps the weakest of the set; the reference to the old gypsy (gitane) who has sung in the sun
sounds, to modern ears, uncomfortably like a life of singing ruined by smoking. Mendès always had a gift (as his libretti
show—particularly that of Gwendoline for Chabrier) for anachronism and an unhappy turn of phrase. Like La Paix this is
one of Hahn’s ‘spacious’ songs with rich chords and a sense of a pilgrim’s march in the rhythm. Fervent music of this kind
suggests that the ghost of Cesar Franck presides over Reynaldo’s work from time to time: the song is reminiscent of an
organ voluntary with choral descant.
cr Le souvenir d’avoir chanté
Au soleil, sous l’azur céleste,
Est l’infini trésor qui reste
Aux cigales après l’été.
Quel est, vieux gitane éreinté,
Ton recours quand tout te moleste ?
Le souvenir d’avoir chanté
Au soleil sous l’azur céleste !
Quand un autre aura ta beauté,
Mésange, et ton rire et ton geste,
Mon cœur, en son ombre runeste,
Gardera, comme une clarté,
Le souvenir d’avoir chanté.
The memory of singing
In the sun beneath the heavens’ blue,
Is the cicada’s priceless delight
When summer has ended.
Old, exhausted gypsy, what solace
Do you seek, when life oppresses you?
The memory of singing
In the sun beneath the heavens’ blue!
When your beauty, O Mesange, passes
To another, and your laughter and gestures—
My heart, in its gloom,
Shall preserve, like a ray of light,
The memory of singing.
CATULLE MENDÈS (1841–1909)
THE SONGS 1898 –1920
We perform seven of the twenty songs in the Deuxième Recueil de Mélodies published by Heugel. Three of the Rondels
were included in that collection, and Les Fontaines and La chère blessure are to be found on Martyn Hill’s Hahn recording
(Hyperion CDH55040).
The second Recueil opens, like the first, with a setting of Victor Hugo. Quand la nuit n’est pas étoilée is an earlier
work than many other songs in this collection. Its low tessitura suggests the laconic crooning style of the composer himself
(at least in the opening pages) and Hahn has invented a marvellous accompanying pattern with triplets in the right hand
and duplets in the left which suggests the gentle tug of sea currents. Hugo’s poem is immense in its imagery and this
rhapsodic setting rises to the challenge. The vocal line is more melodically memorable in its own right than many a Hahn
song of this type. There is a real sense of inevitable recapitulation just before ‘Toi, demande au monde nocturne’ with the
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return of one of the composer’s best tunes. The most typical of Reynaldo’s songs are more intimate than this, but as in Les
Étoiles he takes his brush to a larger canvas and succeeds.
cs Quand la nuit n’est pas étoilée
Viens te bercer aux flots des mers ;
Comme la mort, elle est voilée,
Comme la vie, ils sont amers.
L’ombre et l’abîme ont un mystère
Que nul mortel ne pénétra ;
C’est Dieu qui leur dit de se taire
Jusqu’au jour où tout parlera !
D’autres yeux de ces flots sans nombre
Ont vainement cherché le fond !
D’autres yeux se sont emplis d’ombre
À contempler ce ciel profond !
Toi, demande au monde nocturne
De la paix pour ton cœur désert !
Demande une goutte à cette urne !
Demande un chant à ce concert !
Plane au-dessus des autres femmes,
Et laisse errer tes yeux si beaux
Entre le ciel où sont les âmes
Et la terre où sont des tombeaux !
When night is not studded with stars
Come, rock yourself on the ocean waves;
Night, like death, is veiled,
Waves, like life, are bitter.
The dark and the abyss hold mysteries
Unfathomed by human kind;
It is God who summons them to silence
Until the day when all shall speak.
Other eyes have in vain
Sought to sound these depths!
Other eyes have filled with dark
In scanning the deep sky.
You—O ask the nocturnal world
To shed peace on your forsaken heart!
Entreat a drop from this urn,
From this harmony entreat a song!
Soar above all other women,
And let your beautiful eyes roam
Between heaven with its souls
And earth with its tombs!
VICTOR HUGO (1802–1885)
Le plus beau présent could not be more different; it dates from much later (1917). It has the same air of masochistic
melancholy that we find in the Verlaine Offrande updated by thirty years of amatory experience and disappointment. The
poem by Maurice Magre is magazine verse, but Reynaldo seems to empathise with this story of the man who has everything
from his amourette except an acknowledgement of love. The adjectival endings show us that the object of the poet’s
adoration is a girl with plenty of money, but it is not hard to imagine Reynaldo longing for a sign of emotional depth
or commitment from a spoiled and rich young man of his acquaintance. The accompaniment is an incessant quaver
movement shared between the hands which is reminiscent Infidélité. This and the limited range of the vocal line
emphasise both the obsessional nature of the attachment and its secrecy. There is something decadent about this music,
as if the relationship is somehow unhealthy and doomed. The postlude ends in a distant key as if what is to happen in the
future remains an unanswered question.
ct Le plus beau présent
Tu m’as donné un coussin de soie,
Un brûle-parfums d’un art persan ;
Tu m’as donné ton rire et ta joie,
Ta peau jeune où court ton sang.
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The Loveliest Gift
You gave me a silken cushion,
A Persian perfume-brazier;
You gave me your laugh and your joy,
Your young flesh and your coursing blood.
Tu m’as donné tes jours de vacances,
Des larmes d’adieu en me quittant,
Des lettres d’amour sans innocence,
Des portraits compremetants,
Tu m’as donné tes bouquets de roses,
Ton long corps blond sur mon lit défait
Je suis confus de toutes ces choses,
Accablé de tes bienfaits.
O chère enfant, généreuse et folle,
Tu m’as tout donné, je le sais bien,
Sauf la toute petite parole
Qui m’aurait fait tant de bien !
You gave me your vacations,
Tears as you bade me farewell,
Knowing letters of love
And compromising portraits.
You gave me bouquets of roses,
Your tall white body on my crumpled bed.
I am perplexed by all these things.
Overwhelmed by all your gifts.
O dear, extravagant child,
You have given me all, well I know,
Except the tiny little word
That would have reaped me such reward!
MAURICE MAGRE (1877–1941)
Sur l’eau is a setting of Sully Prud’homme—a poet one associates more with Fauré (Les Berceaux) and Duparc (Soupir)
than with Reynaldo Hahn in the years of the First World War. The poem actually is more reminiscent of an earlier Fauré
song to a Prud’homme text, Au bord de l’eau, where water imagery is also a central theme. This song is one of the most
experimental on the disc in terms of harmony. It shares with Poulenc’s song C the unusual distinction of being in A flat
minor (seven flats) but it seems to float unanchored both in terms of quay and key, changing harmonic direction with
almost every beat. This is the side of Hahn which was influenced by Fauré’s later songs. There is the familiar limpid
atmosphere and exquisite deployment and husbanding of basically limited resources of invention, but the music is
definitely more modern, and seems to come, for once, from the twentieth century. The song’s final pages abandon the
6
rocking 8 piano figurations in favour of much more simple accompanying chords. Read in personal terms the text seems to
be a reaffirmation of Reynaldo’s own emotional inscrutability and ambiguity in the eyes of the world. The harmonic
ambivalence illustrates the watery indecision inherent in the text.
cu Sur l’eau
Je n’entends que le bruit de la rive et de l’eau,
Le chagrin résigné d’une source qui pleure
Ou d’un rocher qui verse une larme par heure,
Ou le vague frisson des feuilles de bouleau.
Je ne sens pas le fleuve entraîner le bateau,
Mais c’est le bord fleuri qui passe, et je demeure;
Et dans le flot profond, que de mes yeux j’effleure,
Le ciel bleu renversé tremble comme un rideau.
On dirait que cette onde en sommeillant serpente,
Oscille et ne sait plus le côté de la pente:
Une fleur qu’on y pose hésite à le choisir.
Et, comme cette fleur, tout ce que l’homme envie
Peut se venir poser sur le flot de ma vie,
Sans désormais m’apprendre où penche mon désir.
SULLY PRUD’HOMME (1839–1907)
30
On the Water
The sound of bank and water is all I hear,
The sad resignation of a weeping spring
Or a rock that hourly sheds a tear,
And the birch leaves’ vague quivering.
I do not see the river bear the boat along—
The flowering shore flits past, and I remain;
And in the watery depths that I skim,
The reflected blue sky flutters like a curtain.
Meandering in their sleep, you might say the waters
Waver, no longer sure where the bank lies:
And the flower thrown in hesitates to choose.
And like this flower, all that man desires
Can settle on the river of my life,
Without teaching me which way my wishes lie.
Le rossignol des lilas is a rondel (a form with which the listener to CD1 is already familiar) and might easily have been
included in the Douze Rondels had Hahn wanted to issue an updated edition (Treize Rondels?) of that work in 1913. As in
the settings of Banville (but to much less of an extent than in the settings of Charles d’Orléans) Hahn employs enough of
the pasticheur’s art to suggest the elegance of a fifteenth-century poetic form at the same time as using the full resources of
the piano to engender a romantic warmth. This song is one of Hahn’s loveliest creations—and most unusual in that the
vocal line and the piano are welded together throughout (the one frequently doubling the other). The composer’s usual
custom is to invent an accompanying figuration (often wherein lies the most interesting of the song’s tunes); once this is
established the vocal lines are made to weave in and out of the piano’s texture often in the manner of speech. But here the
plan is different: this is something like an aria, a real melody for the voice supported throughout, almost quaver for quaver,
by the piano. The song has a middle section at ‘Nocturne ou matinal’ and a ravishing postlude derived from the main
melody. The shape of the song shows beyond doubt Hahn’s experience in the world of operetta where the voice has to carry
the main melody, which has to be instantly memorable.
dl Le rossignol des lilas
Ô premier rossignol qui viens
Dans les lilas, sous ma fenêtre,
Ta voix m’est douce a reconnaître !
Nul accent n’est semblable au tien !
Fidèle aux amoureux liens,
Trille encor, divin petit être !
Ô premier rossignol qui viens
Dans les lilas, sous ma fenêtre !
Nocturne ou matinal, combien
Ton hymne à l’amour me pénètre !
Tant d’ardeur fait en moi renaître
L’écho de mes avrils anciens,
Ô premier rossignol qui viens !
The nightingale among the lilac
O first nightingale to appear
Among the lilac beneath my window,
How sweet to recognise your voice!
There is no song like yours!
Faithful to the bonds of love,
Trill away, divine little being!
O first nightingale to appear
Among the lilac beneath my window!
Night or morning—O how
Your love-song strikes to my heart!
Such ardour re-awakens in me
Echoes of April days long past,
O first nightingale to appear!
LÉOPOLD DAUPHIN (1847–?)
À Chloris is beyond doubt the summit of Reynaldo Hahn’s art as a pasticheur, and it ranks as perhaps the most successful
example of musical time-travelling in the French mélodie repertoire (if one excludes that peerless masterpiece of the
madrigal style, Fauré’s Clair de lune). À Chloris has charm, elegance, gravity and the ability to move audiences—what
more could one ask of a song, whether or not it is a pastiche? The fact that it is based on the striding bass line of Bach’s ‘Air
on the G-string’ seems irrelevant: one smiles at the composer’s audacity at the beginning, but one stays to listen to the
music, Hahn’s music, in its own right. It uses one of his favourite devices where the accompaniment is a piano piece with
its own momentum; over this the voice embroiders an inspired overlay which seems half sung and half spoken, moving
with conversational grace between whispered confidences and declarations of love in full voice. Here is a different world
from the Charles d’Orléans settings—this is seventeenth-century France where the medieval has ceded to the baroque. All
the grace of Louis XIII’s epoch seems encapsulated here, but there is also an undertone of sadness.
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Théophile de Viau was born a Protestant and converted to Catholicism, but this was not the only schism in his life. A
brave soldier renowned for his dashing personality and freedom of thought he incurred the enmity of the Jesuits. Théophile
(for thus is he also known in literary history, without his second name) was a bisexual and was denounced and imprisoned
on morals charges and for writing licentious poetry. At that time there was a death penalty for homosexual practices. He
died at the age of thirty-six, broken by the uncertainty about his future as his trial dragged on, and by years of
imprisonment at the Châtelet. One can be certain that Reynaldo knew all about this fellow-sufferer when he came to choose
this text. Théophile is best remembered today as the author of an exceptional work for the theatre, Pyrame et Thisbé,
familiar as a subject to English readers as the humorous play within a play in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
dm À Chloris
S’il est vrai, Chloris, que tu m’aimes,
Mais j’entends, que tu m’aimes bien,
Je ne crois point que les rois mêmes
Aient un bonheur pareil au mien.
Que la mort serait importune
À venir changer ma fortune
Pour la félicité des cieux!
Tout ce qu’on dit de l’ambroisie
Ne touche point ma fantaisie
Au prix des grâces de tes yeux.
To Chloris
If it be true, Chloris, that thou lovst me,
(And I understand that thou dost love me well),
I do not believe that even kings
Could know such happiness as mine.
How unwelcome death would be,
If it came to exchange my fortune
With the joy of heaven!
All that they say of ambrosia
Does not fire my imagination
Like the favour of thine eyes.
THÉOPHILE DE VIAU (1590–1626)
Ma jeunesse. It seems highly likely that Reynaldo chose to set this poem by Hélène Vacaresco in 1918 because of the final
verse with its reference to vanished youth and the presence of a thousand sad memories. He had taken part in a terrible
war (he was forty-three) and had lost many friends and seen much carnage. The music seems disorientated, mournful and
lost; it is complicated by syncopations in the accompaniment which, like similar instances in the later songs of Schumann,
are more comprehensible and interesting on paper than to the ear. The piano writing seems disjointed, an obsessively
repeating pattern which begins on the second quaver of each bar. The vocal line is as usual in the Hahn style a mixture of
recitative and arioso. This is a strange fruit of the composer’s muse, but it is not without its own sad beauty.
dn Ma jeunesse
Ma jeunesse, toujours brisée,
Comme une forêt par le vent,
Garde encore assez de rosée
Pour briller au soleil levant.
Ma jeunesse, toujours remplie
Par l’amour ou le désespoir,
Garde encore assez de folie
Pour aimer leur mortel pouvoir !
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My youth
My youth, ever broken,
Like a forest by the wind,
Still preserves enough dew
To glisten at sunrise.
My youth, ever filled
With love or despair,
Still preserves enough folly
To love their fatal power.
Ma jeunesse, aux fleurs finissantes,
Garde encore, malgré les jours,
Ce charme frêle des absentes,
Qui semblent être là, toujours.
My youth of fading flowers
Still preserves, despite the days,
This fragile charm of absences,
Which seem ever to be there.
HELENE VACARESCO (1864–1947)
We end this survey of Hahn’s Deuxième Recueil with Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre. This setting of Hugo is the nearest
Reynaldo ever came to writing a Lied. The influence of the whimsicality of Schumann can be heard relatively often in his
work, but here for the first time we detect in the composer an ambition to write a really profound song in the German
manner. The result seems to have something in common with the Hugo Wolf of such Mörike settings as Lebewohl and the
Peregrina songs. In any case, Hahn’s scrupulous prosody and his preference for vocal lines which follow the contours of
speech (both lifelong characteristics of his work) link him to the work of the Austrian master no matter how different the
musical results. Hahn has paid unusual attention to the two-part writing between the vocal and bass lines; the function of
the right hand is mainly to fill in the harmony. The Wolfian impression is strengthened by a chromaticism that is restless to
the point of confusing the ear, as well as the appearance of an extended interlude between the verses and an even longer
postlude. Another influence may be detected in the writing for piano in the passage beginning ‘Je puis maintentant dire aux
rapides années’: we can hear at this point the harmonic world of late Fauré—Paradis from La Chanson d’Eve comes
strongly to mind. Once again the choice of poem seems to reflect melancholy of a deep and nameless nature; a key phrase
for this composer seems to be ‘J’ai dans l’âme une fleur que nul ne peut cueillir !’
do Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre …
Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre à ta coupe encore pleine ;
Puisque j’ai sur ton front posé mon front pâli ;
Puisque j’ai respiré parfois la douce haleine
De ton âme, parfum dans l’ombre enseveli ;
Puisqu’il me fut donné de t’entendre me dire
Les mots où se répand le cœur mystérieux ;
Puisque j’ai vu pleurer, puisque j’ai vu sourire
Ta bouche sur ma bouche et tes yeux sur mes yeux ;
Je puis maintenant dire aux rapides années :
–Passez ! passez toujours ! je n’ai plus à vieillir !
Allez-vous-en avec vos fleurs toutes fanées ;
J’ai dans l’âme une fleur que nul ne peut cueillir !
Votre aile en le heurtant ne fera rien répandre
Du vase où je m’abreuve et que j’ai bien rempli.
Mon âme a plus de feu que vous n’avez de cendre !
Mon cœur a plus d’amour que vous n’avez d’oubli !
VICTOR HUGO (1802–1885)
33
Since I’ve pressed my lips …
Since I’ve pressed my lips to your still brimming cup;
Since on your brow I’ve laid my pale brow;
Since at times I have caught the sweet breath
Of your soul, fragrance in the shrouded shade;
Since I’ve been favoured to hear you utter
Words poured from a mysterious heart;
Since I’ve seen tears, since I’ve seen smiles,
Your mouth on my mouth, your eyes on mine;
I can now say to the swift years:
Roll on, roll ever on! I can age no more!
Away with you and your withered flowers;
In my soul I’ve a flower that none can gather!
Should your wing jolt it, nothing will spill
From the vessel where I drink and which I have filled
My soul has more fire than you have ashes!
My heart has more love than you oblivion!
ÉTUDES LATINES
The poetry of Leconte de Lisle (1818–1894) had a large influence on the world of the mélodie. His first important
collection (published in 1852) was Poèmes antiques and turning the pages of that book we find the beginnings of much
delightful music. In the section entitled Poèmes écossaises we find the poems for Chausson’s Nanny, Fauré’s Nell,
Debussy’s piano piece La fille aux cheveux de lin (as well as his early song Jane) and Ravel’s Chanson du rouet. Here in
its full glory (with six extra strophes cast aside by the composer) we have the very Phidylé (one of several poems of that
title) that made Duparc world-famous. The section entitled Odes anacréontiques was later to inspire Albert Roussel to a
volume of songs.
The Études Latines is a group of eighteen poems, ten of which Hahn chose to set for his cycle. He begins with
Lydie—the poem with which Leconte de Lisle opens his set—but after that rearranges the order at will. As an act of piety
he excluded the poem Lydia which Fauré had set once and for all as early as 1871. But it is the Attic tone of that
masterpiece—sparing of notes, pure in spirit—which Reynaldo wished to emulate. This is pastiche of quite a different
kind to À Chloris for example. At least we know what seventeenth-century music sounded like. The music of the ancients
has remained a much more mysterious proposition and gives the composer a free hand in imagining a world of musical
calm where modes replace scales and shepherd pipes replace the piano. This type of evocation has very much a fin de
siècle feel to it (as does the Debussy cycle about the Greek girl Bilitis, for example) and a host of images of a fey and fake
antiquity come to mind: the classical paintings of Alma-Tadema, countless early photographs of young girls and comely
youths posed in white tunics, the barefoot dancing of Isadora Duncan and so on. For the purposes of this ‘revival’ the words
‘Greek’ and ‘Roman’ seem fairly interchangeable and there is no sign that composers differentiated between the two (very
different) cultures when transporting us to a sort of all-purpose antiquity. There is no doubt that the re-exploration of the
ancient world was fashionable among the aesthetes; homosexual love between man and boy, misunderstood and persecuted
in modern times, was thought of as an accepted fact of everyday life in distant centuries (we now know this to be an
oversimplification of the historical facts). The ideals of classical purity were thus tinged with a delicious decadence. (For
Pierre Louÿs, the author of Chansons de Bilitis, it was an epoch inhabited by teenage nymphs in the briefest of chitons,
and no less delicious.) Reynaldo finished the composition of this cycle during a visit to Rome in 1900.
Hahn employs a chorus in three of these songs (numbers I, IV and IX). The opening chorus with tenor solo entitled
Lydie dp has the energy of youthful games; perhaps Hahn has the famous Degas painting of ‘The Young Spartans’ in mind,
the girls facing the boys and sexual tension in the air. The piano ostinati propel the vocal line without adding much to the
musical argument. Indeed, throughout this cycle the piano’s contribution is kept to a minimum as if to keep an obvious
anachronism in the background.
Both Néère dq and Lydé dr are beautiful songs in the manner of late Fauré (Dans la Nymphée and Diane, Séléné
come to mind). Crotchets in the piano, almost monotonous, change the harmonies discreetly while the vocal line weaves its
spell in quavers. The first of these songs is hypnotically gentle and personal, the second is grander and more in the manner
of an oration or religious ceremony.
Salinum ds is a free recitative accompanied by flute; this is Hahn at his most minimalist. Thaliarque dt, the least
Fauréan of the cycle’s songs is nevertheless dedicated to that master. It is a duet between two choruses—‘Jeunes filles’ and
‘Jeunes hommes’. A flowing tune is rendered slightly more piquant by a hemiola in the accompaniment which sets up a
rhythmic conflict between voices and piano.
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Vile potabis du—a tenor solo in this performance—is a drinking song with a heart, a gentle and unexceptional
fragment.
The jewel of the cycle is undoubtedly Tyndaris el. It is here that Hahn finds the perfect pasticheur’s voice to evoke
this dream of distant antiquity. The limpidity of the quasi-modal accompaniment (who else would make something so
beautiful of a simple downward scale at the song’s opening?) and the unforced prosody of a vocal line which seems to flow
from the heart combine to ravishing effect. Here is a song as fresh and unspoiled as Hahn imagined the civilisation which
inspired it to be. Distance has truly lent enchantment. Pholoé em has a grave beauty of its own. Less winning than Tyndaris,
it has a measured grace and sacerdotal manner which is at one with the sacred mood planned by Hahn for some of these
pieces. After this essay in the aeolian mode the composer allows himself the mischievous luxury of a tierce de picardie at
the final cadence. Phidylé en—quite a different poem from that set by Duparc—is the song in the cycle which calls for the
largest forces: six sopranos, four tenors, a solo bass, and piano duet accompaniment. The steady progress of unexceptional
dotted quavers in the accompaniment is the background to a depiction of a religious ceremony. The beautiful Phidylé
makes the offering under the watchful eye of the officiating priest. The dedication reads ‘À mon ami Marcel Proust’. The
final song of the set, Phyllis eo, was chosen as such by the composer because of the final words: ‘Ô belle fin de mes
amours.’ This suggests that the protagonist, after a life of many lovers, has at last found his ideal. The song is headed
9
‘serieux et tendre’ and the music lives up to this marking. The opening refrain in a lilting 8 binds the song together in the
best Hahnian manner, its repetitive nature making the point of undying love. The poems of Leconte de Lisle can sometimes
be impossibly grand and marmoreal. Sometimes they defeat Hahn and the result seems affected and cold, but here the
flexibility of the vocal line and Reynaldo’s empathy with the words warm the images into life.
dp Lydie
La jeunesse nous quitte, et les Grâces aussi.
Les désirs amoureux s’envolent avec elles,
Et le sommeil facile. A quoi bon le souci
Des Éspérances éternelles ?
L’aile du vieux Saturne emporte nos beaux jours,
Et la fleur inclinée au vent du soir se fane ;
Viens à l’ombre des pins ou sous l’épais platane
Goûter les tardives amours.
Ceignons nos cheveux blancs de couronnes de roses ;
Buvons, il en est temps encore, hâtons-nous !
Ta liqueur, ô Bacchus, des tristesses moroses
Est le remède le plus doux.
Enfant, trempe les vins dans la source prochaîne,
Et fais venir Lydie aux rires enjoués,
Avec sa blanche lyre et ses cheveux noués
À la mode Laconienne.
35
Lydia
Youth abandons us, the Graces too.
Desire takes flight with them,
And easy sleep. What does the worry
Of eternal expectation avail?
Old Saturn’s wing bears off our palmy days,
And the flower, drooping in the evening breeze, fades
Beneath shady pine or dense plane, come
And taste late-flowering love.
Let us wreathe white locks with roses;
Let us imbibe; quick, there is still time!
Your potion, Bacchus, for sullen sadness
Is the sweetest remedy of all.
Immerse the wines, child, in the nearest spring,
And send for Lydia with her playful laugh,
With her white lyre and tresses fastened
A la Laconienne.
dq Néère
II me faut retourner aux anciennes amours :
L’Immortel qui naquit de la Vierge Thébaine,
Et les Jeunes Désirs et leur Mère inhumaine
Me commandent d’aimer toujours.
Blanche comme un beau marbre, avec ses roses joues,
Je brûle pour Néère aux yeux pleins de langueur ;
Venus se précipite et consume mon cœur :
Tu ris, ô Néère, et te joues !
Pour appaiser les Dieux et pour finir mes maux,
D’un vin mûri deux ans versez vos coupes pleines ;
Et sur l’autel rougi du sang pur des agneaux
Posez l’encens et les verveines.
dr Salinum
Le souci, plus léger que les vents de l’Épire,
Poursuivra sur la mer les carènes d’airain ;
L’heure présente est douce : égayons d’un sourire
L’amertume du lendemain.
La pourpre par deux fois rougit tes laines fines;
Ton troupeau de Sicile est immense ; et j’ai mieux :
Les Muses de la Grèce et leurs leçons divines
Et l’heritage des aïeux.
ds Thaliarque
Neaera
I must return to the loves of old:
The Immortal One, born of the Theban Virgin,
And youthful Desires and their cruel Mother
Command me to love anew.
White as beautiful marble, with her pink cheeks,
It is Neaera I burn for with her languishing look;
Venus rushes up and consumes my heart:
You laugh, O Neaera, and frolic!
To appease the gods and end my woes,
Fill your goblets with two-year-old wine;
And on the altar, stained with lambs’ pure blood,
Set the incense and verbena.
Salinum
Care, lighter than the winds of Epirus,
Shall pursue on the sea the brazen hulls;
Sweet is the present hour: let us smile away
Tomorrow’s bitterness.
Purple dye has reddened twice your fine wool;
Your Sicilian flock is huge; and I have better:
The Muses of Greece and their sacred lessons
And the heritage of ancestors.
Thaliarque
tenor solo ROBERT BURT soprano solo JENNIFER SAUNDERS
Ne crains pas de puiser aux réduits du cellier
Le vin scellé quatre ans dans l’amphore rustique ;
Laisse aux Dieux d’apaiser la mer et l’orme antique,
Thaliarque ! Qu’un beau feu s’égaye en ton foyer !
Pour toi, mets à profit la vieillesse tardive :
Il est plus d’une rose aux buissons de chemin.
Cueille ton jour fleuri sans croire au lendemain ;
Prends en souci l’amour et l’heure fugitive.
Les entretiens sont doux sous le portique ami ;
Dans les bois où Phœbé glisse ses lueurs pures,
Il est doux d’effleurer les flottantes ceintures
Et de baiser des mains rebelles à demi.
dt Lydé
Viens ! C’est le jour d’un Dieu. Puisons avec largesse
Le Cécube clos au cellier.
Fière Lydé, permets au plaisir familier
D’amollir un peu ta sagesse.
36
Do not fear to fetch from the cellar’s recesses
The four-year-old wine in the rustic amphora;
Leave the gods to appease the sea and ancient elm,
Thaliarque! Let a fine fire brighten your hearth!
Put tardy old age to good account:
Wayside bushes have more than one rose.
Gather your flowering day with no fear of the morrow
Attend to love and passing time.
It is sweet to talk under the friendly porch;
In the woods where Phoebus darts his pure rays;
It is sweet when flowing girdles touch
And sweet to kiss half-resisting hands.
Lyde
Come! The day is god-like. Let us drink liberally
Of Caecuban wine from the cellar.
Proud Lyde, allow domestic pleasure
To diminish a little your modesty.
L’heure fuit, l’horizon rougit sous le soleil,
Hâte-toi. L’amphore remplie
Sous Bibulus consul, repose ensevelie :
Trouble son antique sommeil.
Je chanterai les flots amers, la verte tresse
Des Néréides ; toi, Lydé,
Sur ta lyre enlacée à ton bras accoudé
Chante Diane chasseresse.
Puis nous dirons Vénus et son char attelé
De cygnes qu’un lieu d’or guide,
Les Cyclades, Paphos, et tes rives, ô Gnide !
Puis un hymne au ciel étoilé.
du Vile potabis
En mes coupes d’un prix modique
Veux-tu tenter mon humble vin ?
Je l’ai scellé dans l’urne Attique
Au sortir du pressoir Sabin.
II est un peu rude et moderne ;
Cécube, Calès ni Falerne
Ne mûrissent dans mon cellier ;
Mais les Muses me sont amies,
Et les Muses font oublier
Ta vigne dorée, ô Formies !
el Tyndaris
Ô blanche Tyndaris, les Dieux me sont amis :
Ils aiment les Muses Latines ;
Et l’aneth et le myrte et le thym des collines
Croissent aux prés qu’ils m’ont soumis.
Viens ! mes ramiers chéris, aux voluptés plaintives,
Ici se plaisent à gémir ;
Et sous l’épais feuillage il est doux de dormir
Au bruit des sources fugitives.
em Pholoé
Oublie, ô Pholoé, la lyre et les festins,
Les Dieux heureux, les nuits si breves, les bons vins
Et les jeunes désirs volant aux lèvres roses.
L’âge vient : il t’effleure en son vol diligent,
Et mêle en tes cheveux semés de fils d’argent
La pâle asphodèle à tes roses !
37
Time passes, the horizon reddens the sun,
Make haste. The amphora, filled
When Bibulus was consul, rests in its tomb:
Disturb its ancient slumber.
I shall sing of the briny deep, the Nereids’
Green tresses; you, Lyde,
On your lyre that nestles in your arms,
Shall sing of Diana the Huntress.
Then we shall invoke Venus and her swan-drawn
Chariot with golden reins,
The Cyclades, Paphos, and your shores, O Gnidus!
And hymn the starry sky.
You will drink …
Into my goblets of modest price
Will you lure my humble wine?
I sealed it in the Attic urn
As it left the Sabine presses.
It is a little coarse and young;
Caecuban, Calenian, Falernian wines
Do not mature in my cellar;
But the Muses are friends of mine
And the Muses make one forget
Your golden vines, O Formiae!
Tyndaris
Oh, white Tyndaris, the gods are friends to me:
They love the Latin Muses;
And dill and myrtle and thyme from the hills
Thrive in the meadows they gave me.
Come! My beloved ring-doves, delighting in grief,
Here are pleased to moan;
And beneath dense leaves it is sweet to sleep
To the sound of running springs.
Pholoë
Forget, O Pholoe, lyre and banquet,
Contented gods, brief nights, good wine,
And young desires flying to rosy lips.
Age advances: brushes you in its swift flight,
And mingles in your silver-stranded hair
The pale asphodel with your roses!
en Phidylé
Offre un encens modeste aux Lares familiers,
Phidylé, fruits récents, bandelettes fleuries ;
Et tu verras ployer tes riches espaliers
Sous le poids des grappes mûries.
Laisse, aux pentes d’Algide, au vert pays Albain,
La brebis, qui promet une toison prochaine,
Paître cytise et thym sous l’yeuse et le chêne ;
Ne rougis pas ta blanche main.
Unis au rosmarin le myrte pour tes Lares.
Offerts d’une main pure aux angles de l’autel,
Souvent, ô Phidylé, mieux que les dons plus rares,
Les Dieux aiment l’orge et le sel.
eo Phyllis
Depuis neuf ans et plus dans l’amphore scellé
Mon vin des coteaux d’Albe a lentement mûri ;
II faut ceindre d’acanthe et de myrte fleuri,
Phyllis, ta tresse déroulée.
L’anis brûle a l’autel, et d’un pied diligent
Tous viennent couronnés de verveine pieuse ;
Et mon humble maison étincelle joyeuse
Aux reflets des coupes d’argent.
Ô Phyllis, c’est le jour de Vénus, et je t’aime !
Entends-moi ! Téléphus brûle et soupire ailleurs ;
Il t’oublie, et je t’aime, et nos jours les meilleurs
Vont rentrer dans la nuit suprême.
C’est toi qui fleuriras en mes derniers beaux jours :
Je ne changerai plus, voici la saison mûre.
Chante ! les vers sont doux quand ta voix les murmure,
Ô belle fin de mes amours !
Phidyle
Offer a little incense to the Lares Familiares,
Phidyle, fresh fruit, fillets of flowers;
And you shall see your lush espaliers bend
Beneath the weight of ripened clusters.
On the slopes of Algidum, on Alba’s green land,
Let the ewe, soon to be fleeced, remain
To browse cytisus and thyme beneath ilex and oak;
Do not tinge with red your white hand.
Offer your Lares rosemary and myrtle
With unsullied hand at the altar’s edge.
Often, O Phidyle, rather than gifts more rare,
The gods will favour barley and salt.
Phyllis
For nine years and more in the sealed amphora
My Alban Hills wine has been slowly maturing;
We must garland with acanthus and flowering myrtle,
O Phyllis, your unfastened locks.
Anise burns on the altar, and all hasten along,
Crowned with godly verbena;
And my humble abode sparkles with joy
At the reflection of silver goblets.
0 Phyllis, it is the day of Venus, and I love you!
Listen! Telephus burns and sighs for another;
He forgets you, and I love you, and our finest days
Shall return in our final night.
It is you who shall blossom in the fair days left me:
I shall change no more, the ripe season is here.
Sing! Poetry is sweet when uttered by you,
O fair conclusion of my loves!
As something of an appendix to the songs of the two Recueils and the two cycles, we are including on this disc three songs
from a collection entitled Neuf Mélodies Retrouvées and published in 1955, eight years after the composer’s death. This
posthumous collection includes songs from different times in Hahn’s life. La Nymphe de la Source (in the unlikely key of
C flat major) belongs to the world of the Études Latines from the point of view of the writing for the voice, but the delightful
accompaniment (flowing water music which reaches high above the treble stave) seems more ornate. The nymph has a
source, but sadly the poem does not. The music is headed by the words ‘Texte par … X’.
38
ep La Nymphe de la Source
Si tes pas t’ont conduit vers l’heureuse vallée
Où la source murmure au milieu des roseaux,
Souviens-toi, voyageur, que sa paix embaumée
Est due à la fraîcheur qu’y répandent mes eaux.
Ce sont elles qui font les fleurs douces éclore
Et verdir l’arbre vaste agréable à tes yeux ;
Et si, dormant auprès de son âme sonore,
Tu vois nue à tes pieds la Nymphe de ces lieux,
Vénère-là. Reprends ton chemin sans offense,
Contente-toi de l’ombre où tu t’es abrité,
Du bruit mélodieux qui s’ajoute au silence
Et de la coupe bue à mon flot argenté.
The Water Nymph
If your steps lead you to the happy valley
Where the spring murmurs amid the reeds,
Remember, traveller, that its balmy peace
Is caused by my fresh waters flowing there.
It is they who make the sweet flowers bloom
And the great tree grow green that you love to watch.
And if, asleep by its murmuring soul,
You see the native Nymph naked before you,
Be reverent. Go on your way without offence;
Be content with the shade that gives you shelter,
With the melodious sound that enhances the silence,
With the cup that you drank from my silvery waves.
‘TEXTE PAR … X’
Au rossignol sets a poem by Guillot de Saix whose name we find at the end of the second Recueil in one of Hahn’s worst
songs, La douce paix, an overblown thanksgiving for the end of the First World War. Here the same poet treating the same
theme leaves bombast behind and inspires the composer to write one of his most simple and touching songs. The image of
a nightingale singing of peace seems to touch the composer (and therefore us) far more than the visions of massed choirs
evoked in the larger song.
eq Au rossignol
Viens tout près et chante, Ô cher rossignol,
Car ta voix enchante Le ciel et le sol.
Le bois et la plaine Rêvent de ton chant,
Car ta voix est pleine D’un amour touchant,
Si touchant. Le val se recueille
Comme, au bois épais, La plus humble feuille.
C’est la douce paix, c’est la paix …
To the Nightingale
Come close to me, Dear nightingale,
For your voice enchants Both heaven and earth.
Wood and plain Dream of your song,
For your voice brims With a touching,
So touching love. The valley meditates
Like, in a dense wood, The humblest leaf.
Sweet peace, peace …
GUILLOT DE SAIX (1895–1964)
The third item from this collection is by way of a transition into the world of Hahn’s songs for the theatre. It is another
Guillot de Saix setting, a slow melancholy waltz entitled Je me souviens with the subtitle: ‘Un soir, au reçu d’une lettre
bleue.’ This denotes a telegram and it is possible that in this scenario it contains news of a lover’s death, perhaps during
the 1914–18 War. Here is something for those listeners (and they are in the majority) who are disappointed to see our
composer quit the world of Fauré in favour of that of Messager. The piano here begins to stand in for a missing orchestra.
This is of course another type of Hahn, without literary pretensions or ambitions but infinitely willing (and able) to touch
us. And without casting aspersions on this composer’s important contributions to the mélodie, this is also the purest and
most natural Hahn; a side of his nature that was profoundly at home in the theatre. Once again he could be little Reynaldo
entertaining the great and the good, the Reynaldo who could both write and sing (not to mention play!) a ‘hit’.
39
er Je me souviens
Je me souviens, je me souviens
Des beaux jours de notre tendresse,
Des clairs instants, des entretiens,
Dont le rappel m’oppresse.
Je me souviens, je me souviens,
Tous nos rêves étaient les mêmes,
Tous tes bonheurs étaient les miens—
Bonheur de ceux qui s’aiment.
Te souvient-il encor De ce subtil accord ?
Brodé sur un thème Si faible et si fort,
Quand nos lèvres un soir
Où vibrait notre espoir,
Unirent dans l’ombre leurs fièvres ?
Suprême au revoir ;
Pour moi les ans ont passé.
Rien ne semble effacé.
Je me souviens, je me souviens,
Tout semblait un heureux présage,
Nos souvenirs sont nos seuls biens,
Ils ont un frais visage.
Je me souviens, je me souviens !
Pour qu’en toi je me reconnaisse.
Quel sortilège est donc le tien ?
Vers toi je viens, je viens Retrouver ma jeunesse.
Ah ! pourrai-je bannir
Tous nos étranges souvenirs !
Je crois entendre L’écho lointain
De ta voix claire et tendre,
Quand nos cœurs sans détours
Cherchaient à deux, Cherchaient l’Amour !
I remember
I remember, I remember
The halcyon days of our love,
The serene moments, the conversations,
The memory of which now oppresses me.
I remember, I remember:
All our dreams were the same,
All your happiness was mine,
The happiness of those in love.
Do you still remember That subtle harmony?
Embroidered on a theme So faint and strong
That our lips—one evening
When our hopes were vibrant—
Met passionately in the dark?
O final farewell.
Though years have passed,
Nothing to me seems faded.
I remember, I remember—
Everything seemed to augur well.
Memories are our only asset,
They have a fresh complexion.
I remember, I remember!
That I might collect myself in you.
What is this spell you weave?
I draw near to you To find again my youth.
Ah! could I but banish
All those strange memories!
I seem to hear The distant echo
Of your bright and tender voice,
When our hearts quite openly
Both were seeking, Seeking Love!
GUILLOT DE SAIX (1895–1964)‘Un soir, au reçu d’une lettre bleue …’ (One evening, on receiving a telegram)
It is not our aim here to document the great contribution made by Reynaldo Hahn to the French musical theatre; that
would take a volume in itself, so important a part did he play as a composer of operas and operettas as well as countless
pieces of incidental music for plays over a number of decades. The five items on this disc are by way of encores after a
recital; they round out a picture of Reynaldo and show that his skills as a melodic composer are often the same skills which
he deployed in the field of light music.
Firstly, two songs which stem from Reynaldo’s collaboration with Sacha Guitry. Air de la lettre is from Guitry’s Mozart
(1925) and was written for the great singing actress Yvonne Printemps who was also the writer’s wife. Between 1920 and
1932 this was the golden couple of Paris, capable of ravishing audiences with an astonishing succession of plays both light
40
and serious, musicals and revues. Amongst these successes, Andre Messager had written the music for L’Amour masqué in
1923 and Oscar Straus was to write the music for Mariette in 1928. It is difficult to analyse why this little letter song should
be so affecting. Mozart (Printemps en travesti) writes to his wife Constanze and we hear something of his child-like
vulnerability in Guitry’s words. Hahn knows exactly how to use time to depict in musical terms the composition of a letter
(as Mozart does himself in Figaro) and there is, as usual, just enough of a suggestion of a melody to enchant us, and yet
not too much to distract us from the words. The slow curtain which followed this air found many of the audience in tears.
es Air de la lettre
from ‘Mozart’ Act 2
« Depuis ton départ, mon amour,
Depuis, hélas, de si longs jours,
Ma pensée ne te quitte pas. »
C’est de ma fiancée
Que j’ai laissée là-bas.
« Porte-toi bien, travaille bien
Et puis aussi amuse-toi, certainement.
Mais, je t’en prie, quand tu m’écris,
Dis-moi toujours que tu t’ennuies
Horriblement !
Dépuis ton depart, mon amour,
Ta pensée ne me quitte pas. »
Sa pensée ne me quitte pas !
‘Since you left, my love,
Alas, so many days ago,
I think of you ceaselessly.’
So writes my fiancée
Whom I have left down there.
‘Keep well, work well,
And be sure to have good fun.
But I beg you, when you write to me,
Tell me that life
Is deadly dull!
Since you left, my love,
I think of you ceaselessly.’
She thinks of me ceaselessly!
SACHA GUITRY (1885–1957)
C’est très vilain d’être infidèle is from Guitry’s musical play Ô mon bel inconnu given at the Théâtre des BouffesParisiens in October 1933. Printemps did not figure in this production (she and Guitry were soon to part) although it did
feature the immortal Arletty as well as Hahn’s friend and companion, Guy Ferrand. It is amazing how much atmosphere
and charm the composer could spin without writing so much as a tune. Indeed this ‘song’ seems very near to speech, the
better to emphasise the risqué and sophisticated nature of the words. The song is sung by the character of Antoinette
Aubertin (an unhappily married 39-year-old), a role created by Suzanne Dantès.
et C’est très vilain d’être infidèle
It is very bad to be unfaithful
from ‘O mon bel inconnu’ Act 2
C’est très vilain d’être infidèle,
C’est infâme et c’est révoltant,
Voilà la chose sur laquelle
On est d’accord depuis longtemps.
Bien entendu.
D’ailleurs, c’est plus que révoltant!
C’est défendu …
C’est bien pour ça que c’est tentant.
41
It is very bad to be unfaithful.
It’s unspeakable, it’s revolting,
on that, all have long since
been agreed.
Of course.
Besides, it’s more than revolting!
It’s forbidden …
And that is why it’s tempting.
Ah ! pauvres femmes que nous sommes.
Bien plus à plaindre qu’à blâmer,
Toujours à la merci des hommes,
Nous ne désirons qu’être aimées ;
Et c’est ce qui nous fait parfois tomber
Sur Dieu sait qui !
Et c’est pour ça que c’est exquis !
Les consequences de la chose—
Chagrins, remords, honte et douleur—
Auxquels l’infidèle s’expose.
Ah ! Nous le connaissons par cœur.
Et nous savons ce que bien souvent nous perdons
Quand nous tombons.
Mais c’est pour ça que c’est si bon !
Combien de femmes à ma plac’,
Courageuses, ont resisté,
Mais qui plus tard, trop tard, hélas !
Cruellement l’ont regretté !
Car les saisons, ça passe, passe
Et rien ne peut les arrêter,
Et c’est en vain qu’on crie : Hélas !
L’automne vient après l’été.
Moi, je ne veux pas vous connaître, pleurs
Superflus et vains regrets,
Je ne veux pas, un jour, peut-être me dir’:
« Pourquoi ne l’ai-je pas fait ? »
Ce serait trop bête, en effet …
Et c’est pour ça que je le fais.
Ah, poor women that we are!
Much more to pity than to blame,
ever at the mercy of men,
we only desire to be loved;
and that is what makes us sometimes
fall in love with God knows who!
And that is why it’s so exquisite!
The consequences of the deed—
sorrow, remorse, shame and pain—
to which the faithless lover is exposed
Ah, we all know it by heart.
And we know that we very often lose
when we fall.
But that is why it’s such fun!
How many women in my place
have courageously resisted,
but have later—too late, alas—
most cruelly regretted it!
For the seasons hurry past
and nothing can halt them,
and it’s in vain you cry ‘Alas!’
Autumn follows summer.
I do not wish to know you,
superfluous tears and vain regrets;
I do not wish to ask myself one day:
‘Why did I not do it?’
That, indeed, would be too foolish …
And that is why I do it!
SACHA GUITRY (1885–1957)
The next two songs come from the work which is perhaps Hahn’s greatest claim to popular fame—the operetta Ciboulette
which was premiered at the Théâtre des Variétés in April 1923. The composer was far too great an expert on the popular
music of the past to be interested in writing an ordinary romantic story. Instead, with the librettists Robert de Flers and
Francis de Croisset, he worked out a story rich with allusion and quotation which would incorporate a homage to his
beloved models Offenbach and Hervé as well as permitting himself an affectionate parody of Massenet. The composer
Olivier Métra appears as a character in the work. The role of Duparquet is in fact the same Rodolphe who has loved Mimi in
La Bohème—we have to imagine him thirty years older. C’est sa banlieue is a touching little number, sung by Ciboulette
in the second act, which touches a familiar vein in this composer’s music—that of the sad waif, the wounded heart which
suffers bravely in silence.
42
eu Y a des arbres … (C’est sa banlieue)
There are trees …
from ‘Ciboulette’ Act 2
Y a des arbres, des maisons,
Y a l’église et la mairie,
Y a des filles, des garçons—
Y a tout c’ qui faut pour qu’on s’ marie …
On n’y jargonne aucun patois,
La grand’ ville est à quelques lieues,
Mi-Parisien, mi-villageois,
C’est pas Paris, c’est sa banlieue.
Quand on s’ aim’ c’est pour toujours ;
La campagn’ c’est pleine d’innocence,
Mais parfois ça n’ dur’ pas huit jours,
La grand’ vill’ c’est plein d’inconstance.
Alors ça fait un compromis ;
On cultiv’ la p’tit’ fleur bleue,
On la cueille en changeant d’ami …
C’est pas l’amour, c’est sa banlieue.
Pourtant, y a bien des rancœurs,
Plus d’un pleure et s’mont’ la tête …
A la campagn’ les pein’s de cœur
Dur’nt plus longtemps, car on s’embête.
Mais c’est si près, si gai, Paris,
Que l’souci fait tête à queue
Sam’di l’on pleur’, dimanch’ l’on rit ;
C’est pas l’ chagrin, c’est sa banlieue.
There are trees, houses;
church and town hall;
girls, boys—
and all you need to get married.
No more patois now;
the city is several leagues away!
Half Parisian, half rustic,
it’s not Paris, it’s the banlieu.
When two people love, it’s for ever—
the countryside is full of innocence!
But sometimes it won’t last a week—
the city’s full of inconstancy!
So a compromise is made—
you tend the little blue flower,
you pluck it while changing friends—
It’s not love, but it’s the banlieu.
Yet there’s bitterness in plenty;
there’s more than one who weeps and frets;
In the countryside the heart’s sorrows
last longer, for life is dull!
But Paris is so near, so cheerful,
That sorrow wheels round.
Saturdays you weep, Sundays you smile!
It’s not sorrow but it’s the banlieu.
ROBERT DE FLERS (1872–1927) & FRANCIS DE CROISSET (1877–1937)
The duet Nous avons fait un beau voyage is simply one of the national treasures of French operetta. It is a rollicking waltz
(which is also suffused with real Hahnian tenderness and delicacy), an outdoor breeziness and innocence combined with
sophisticated double entendre—drunk country yokels played by worldly Parisians with love and understanding. It is little
wonder that this song has played its part in making Reynaldo immortal with a public who would never have heard of the
Chansons grises.
fl Nous avons fait un beau voyage
We’ve had a lovely trip
from ‘Ciboulette’ Act 2
Nous avons fait un beau voyage
Nous arrêtant à tous les pas
Buvant du cidre à chaque village
Cueillant dans les clos des lilas !
43
We’ve had a lovely trip,
stopping at every step,
drinking cider in every village,
picking lilac in every garden!
Nous avons rencontré Des dindons emphatiques,
Des lapins prolifiques, Des chapons, Vieux garçons,
Nous avons rencontré
Des oies très distinguées, Des poules intriguées
Et des chœurs de pinsons :
Nous avons rencontré
Monsieur l’Maire et l’Curé,
La mercièr’ Et son frèr’, Le r’ceveur Et sa soeur.
Nous avons fait un beau voyage,
C’est le premier jour du printemps ;
Les oiseaux se mett’nt en ménage,
Chacun voudrait en faire autant.
Nous avons fait des découvertes
Tous les ruisseaux ont rajeuni,
Les bois ont mis leur robe verte
Et l’on dit que c’ n’est pas fini.
Nous avons rencontré Des abeill’s enfiévrées,
Des cigal’s inspirées, Des lézards couchés tôt.
Nous avons rencontré, Des vach’s en rob’ de bure,
Des chèvres en fourrure, Des moutons en manteau.
Nous avons rencontré, L’ sacristain Et son chien.
La barone Et sa bonn’ Le bedeau Et son veau !
Nous avons fait des découvertes
On refus’ du monde dans les nids.
Une seule rose s’est offerte
A vingt papillons réunis.
Nous avons fait un beau voyage
C’est le premier jour du printemps
Les oiseaux se mett’nt en ménage,
Tout l’ monde voudrait en faire autant.
We have come across some rather pompous turkeys,
some prolific rabbits, and confirmed old bachelor capons;
We have come across
some distinguished geese, some curious young hens
and choirs of finches.
We have come across
the mayor and the vicar,
the haberdasher and her brother, the tax-collector and his sister.
We’ve had a lovely trip;
it is the first day of spring;
birds are moving in together,
and all would like to do the same.
We’ve discovered a thing or two:
every little stream’s got younger,
the woods have put on their green dresses
and they say yet more’s to come.
We have come across some busy bees
some inspired cicadas, and lie-abed lizards.
We have come across some cows in sackcloth robes,
some goats in fur coats, some sheep in woollen cloaks.
We have come across the sexton and his dog,
the Baroness and her maid, the verger and his calf!
We’ve discovered a thing or two:
there’s no more room in the nests,
a single rose offered herself
to a throng of twenty butterflies.
We’ve had a lovely trip,
it is the first day of spring;
birds are moving in together,
and all would like to do the same.
ROBERT DE FLERS (1872–1927) & FRANCIS DE CROISSET (1877–1937)
The disc ends with La Dernière Valse, taken from Une Revue (1926). There is an unforgettable 78rpm record of this by
Ninon Vallin with a Busby Berkeley-type backing chorus. This music is in the great tradition of the valse chantée (Satie’s Je
te veux and Poulenc’s Les chemins de l’amour are other such waltzes by ‘serious’ composers) and it shows Reynaldo’s
ability to write a memorable popular tune when he wishes to do so. As the title suggests, there is more than a whiff of
nostalgia about music and text. Who better to provide this than Reynaldo Hahn? He was the great master of charms, the
prince of evocation, and the grand guardian of memories of a France now long forgotten … except by those who are able to
rediscover it in almost Proustian fashion by the sound of music in the ear.
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fm La Dernière Valse
The Last Waltz
from ‘Une Revue’
Les feuilles tombent, c’est l’automne.
Tu pars, tout est fini !
Ecoute le vent monotone
Dans la forêt sans nid.
Dans sa tristesse la nature Révèle à ma raison
Que l’amour est une aventure Qui dure une saison.
Mais ce soir valsons ensemble,
C’est pour la dernière fois.
Presse encor ma main qui tremble,
Que j’entende encor ta voix,
Et si tu vois des larmes Qui brillent dans mes yeux,
Peut-être alors mes yeux Auront des charmes délicieux.
Pour m’étourdir dans ma détresse,
Valsons comme aux beaux jours,
Quand tu jurais à ta maîtresse
De l’adorer toujours.
Valsons, valsons, ton bras me serre
Bien fort contre ton cœur ;
Et je pense : était-il sincère
Ou bien toujours menteur ?
Mais ce soir, valsons ensemble
C’est pour la dernière fois,
Presse encor ma main qui tremble,
Que j’entende encor ta voix !
Et si tu vois des larmes
Qui brillent dans mes yeux,
Peut-être alors mes yeux
Auront des charmes mystérieux.
Dernier baiser, dernière étreinte,
Tu pars ! voici le jour !
Une étoile s’est éteinte
Dans le ciel de l’amour.
Cruel, cruel, tu vois les larmes
Qui coulent de mes yeux !
Mais les larmes n’ont plus de charmes
Pour les cœurs oublieux.
The leaves fall; autumn is come.
You depart; all is ended!
Listen to the droning wind
in the nestless forest.
Nature, in her sadness, tells me
that love’s an affair which lasts one season.
But this evening let us waltz together.
It will be for the final time.
Press my trembling hand once more;
once more let me hear your voice,
and if you see tears glistening in my eyes—
perhaps my eyes will sparkle with charm.
To ease the pain of my distress
let us waltz as we did in halcyon days,
when you swore to your mistress
to love her always.
Let us waltz, you hold
me close against your heart;
and I think: Was he sincere
or lying once again?
But this evening let us waltz together;
it will be for the final time.
Press my trembling hand once more;
once more let me hear your voice.
and if you see tears
glistening in my eyes—
perhaps my eyes
will sparkle with mystery.
A final kiss, a final embrace,
you depart! Day now dawns.
A star has gone out
in the firmament of love.
Cruel one, you see the tears
flowing from my eyes!
But tears no longer charm
forgetful hearts.
MAURICE DONNAY (1859–1945) & HENRI DUVERNOIS (1875–1937)
Notes by GRAHAM JOHNSON © 1996
Song translations by RICHARD STOKES © 1996
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THE HYPERION FRENCH SONG EDITION
‘Musical jewels surface with delightful
consistency’
‘There are major discoveries to be made
here’
‘As ever in Hyperion’s song surveys, the
piano accompaniments and the written
documentation are immaculately
presented’
‘If you like French song this album is a
treasure trove’
‘It sounds as if Hyperion is inviting us to
embark on what will become a deeply
satisfying voyage’
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www.hyperion-records.co.uk