MARCO GAGGINI

Trois Romances sans paroles op. 17 [N 52]

 

Date: 1863?

1st edition in collection: Paris, Hamelle, 1907

 

Romance sans paroles n. 1, op. 17 n. 1, in Ab major

Manuscript: missing

Dedication: À Mme Félix Lévy

1st performance: Paris, Société nationale de musique, 25 February 1882, (piano: Pauline Roger)

1st edition: Paris, Hamelle, November 1880, engraving and printing C.G. Röder, Leipzig

 

Romance sans paroles n. 2, op. 17 n. 2, in A minor

Manuscript: missing

Dedication: À Mlle Laure de Leyritz

1st performance: Paris, Société nationale de musique, 25 February 1882, (piano: Pauline Roger)

1st edition: Paris, Hamelle, November 1880, engraving and printing C.G. Röder, Leipzig

 

Romance sans paroles n. 3, op. 17 n. 3, in Ab major

Manuscripts: 

• Coll. H. J. Roulleaux Dugage. Autograph, dated 9 October 1864. The manuscript has significant differences from the version published in 1880.

• Coll Famille de Leyritz - Coll. Laurent Ceiller - Coll. Malo Ceiller - Paris: F-Pn Musique: Rés Vma ms. 2203. Copy (compliant with the Hamelle's edition) of Laure de Leyritz, Fauré's friend and pupil in Rennes. 

Date: Manuscript 1, 1864

Dedication: manuscript 1: à Suzanne Garnier; manuscript 2: à Florent Saglio (as in the first edition)

1st performance: Paris, Société nationale de musique, 19 January 1889, (piano: Mlle Kasa Chatteleger)

1st edition: Paris, Hamelle, 1880, engraving and printing C.G. Röder, Leipzig

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Score: download​

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Audio: 

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Literature:

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Jean-Pierre Bartoli

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"[...] The title chosen is an obvious reference to the Lieder ohne Worte form invented by Mendelssohn and rendered in early French editions as "Romance sans paroles" by reference to the eighteenth-century French strophic song for voice and guitar, harp, harpsichord, or piano. [...]

At the dawn of his career, Fauré thus situated himself within this tradition, well established in France, where it was cultivated by elders in homage to the German inventor of the genre. The purpose of those pieces is to render on the keyboard the unadorned vocal line of a Lied, with a piano accompaniment eschewing all virtuoso or spectacular flourishes. The third even suggests a vocal duet with the repeat of the theme as a canon. The skill required from the performer consists in to distinguish between the two or three aural levels evolving in parallels lines, the accompaniment supposedly occupying the two hands of the pianist and that of the vocal soloist(s). Comprising a few exquisite harmonic touches, the pieces are typical of the luminous language of Fauré's early songs dating from the same period. More virtuosic and more profound, the second is closer to the piano style of Mendelssohn and even more to that of Schumann - two composers Fauré was indefectible attached."​

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(Gabriel Fauré, Œuvres complètes VI/3, Kassel, Bärenreiter, 2020, edited by Jean-Pierre Bartoli, pp. XXIII-XXIV)

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Alfred Cortot

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"Les trois "Romances sans paroles" qui dénoncent de manière si délicate la juvénile personnalité de leur auteur et qui, comme nous l'avons dit, ne sont cependant publiées qu'en 1880 - M. Fauré alors a trente-cinq ans — sont déjà tout emplies du parfum pénétrant qui émane de ses œuvres définitives.

Dans la première, qui a la grâce mélancolique et légère d'un colloque sentimental, la voix médiane s'applique amoureusement à suivre les inflexions mélodiques de la partie supérieure et l'accompagne, note pour note, d'un accent prenant et tendre. La seconde, involontairement mendelssohnienne, s'émeut d'une impatience et d'une ardeur charmantes qu'active le rapide murmure de l'accompagnement. Et dans la troisième, si tendrement résignée, avec quel charme s'insinue la discrète imitation qui prolonge la mélodie initiale et quelle pureté dans le dessin qui fleurit sur les deux dernières cadences et les infléchit doucement.

Ce ne sont là que des esquisses, sans doute, mais, pour brèves et menues qu'elles soient, ces notations s'isolent dans le genre facile auquel elles appartiennent par leur naturelle et poétique perfection et on y peut déjà sentir, sous l'apparence de l'improvisation, le souci de la forme achevée et du détail heureux qui s'inscrira dans les œuvres ultérieures de manière si personnelle".​

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(Alfred Cortot, La Musique française de piano, Paris, Presse universitaires de France, 1944, pp. 142-143) 

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Charles Koechlin:

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"The three Romances sans paroles are early Fauré (1882), they take us back to the time of le Ruisseau. The young musician in the naivety of his inspiration made no attempt to avoid Mendelssohn or Schumann. Moreover, he is recognisable already, by unmistakeable signs; especially in the third of these pieces, whose "romantic" character will doubtless appear somewhat facile to the proud who would like to admire only the sublime, something worthy of themself.But, as with the good Chabrier, it is here so in place, and done so felicitously, that the evocation of this "autrefois sentimental" is one charm more. Happy the soul of the artist who knows not the fear of his first utterances being sincere and naive!"​

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(Charles Koechlin, Gabriel Fauré, Paris, Plon, 1927; eng. transl. Gabriel Fauré, translated by Leslie Orry, London, Dennis Dobson LTD, 1945, p. 33)

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Jean-Michel Nectoux:

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"It was in all probability during his years at the Niedermeyer School that Fauré composed his three Romances sans paroles, op. 17 for piano, in self-evident homage to a composer whose works and style he admired all his life: Felix Mendelssohn". ​

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(jean-Michel Nectoux, Gabriel Fauré. Les voix du clair-obscur, 2ª ed. revised, Paris, Fayard, 2008; eng. transl. (from the first edition, Paris, Flammarion, 1990), Gabriel Fauré. A musical life, translated by Roger Nichols, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 11)

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Robert Orledge:

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"Also from this period come the three Romances sans paroles (op. 17, 1863?), whose title and content recall Mendelssohn. They quickly became popular after their publication in 1880. The first contains an echo of the right-hand melody by the left which creates a gentle harmonic haze around the pristine purity of the theme. The second Romance is particularly Mendelssohnian in its arpeggio figuration divided between the hands. In the third we encounter Schumann and Chopin, and the reprise of the opening theme (p. 4) is a canon at the octave at the distance of one crotchet, the first example of a technique to which Faure returned increasingly in later years in such unacademic creations as Tendresse from the Dolly suite. Although slight, the Romances sans paroles do not  deserve to be dismissed as the sort of "indiscretions every young composer commits" (Copland, 1924, p. 579). Indiscretion of another kind also occurred to Marcel Proust in the context of op. 17, and he joked irreverently to Robert de Montesquiou that, for ‘a mixture of lechery and litanies’ he knew nothing to beat them: they were the sort of music ‘a pederast might hum when raping a choirboy’!"

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(Robert Orledge, Gabriel Fauré, London, Eulenburg, 1979, pp. 47-48]

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Marcel Proust (probabilmente a proposito della 3ª Romanza):

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"Quant au mélange de litanies et de foutre dont vous me parlez, l'expression la plus délicieuse que j'en connaisse est dans un morceau de piano déjà un peu ancien mais enivrant, de Fauré, qui s'appelle peut-être Romance sans paroles!. Je suppose que c'est cela que chanterait un pédéraste qui violerait un enfant de chœur". 

 

(Letter to Robert de Montesquiou, 1912, cit. in Gabriel Fauré, Correspondance, ed. Jean-Michel Nectoux, Paris, Flammarion, 1980, p. 206)