As the world watched Paris open the Olympics Friday night, I thought about my own associations with the City of Light. While the cancan was charming, and I do love “Hymne à l’amour,” for me, Paris has always been my dream city of nuance, of poetry and music, a city for a writer.
I’ll admit I’m not a big sports fan, but I respect the discipline and talent of athletes. We had a lovely time watching the ceremony here at La Muse.
In honor of my own personal emblems of Paris, this week I’d like to discuss Gabriel Fauré’s “Clair de lune” (1887), a mélodie set to Paul Verlaine’s poem.
Verlaine is one of my all time favorite poets. Set to song by many brilliant composers, his work has always been closely associated with music. It exudes a fine attention to sound, and unsurprisingly, the first line in his famous poem “Art poétique” reads “Music above all!”
“Clair de lune” is the first of twenty-one poems in Verlaine’s Fêtes galantes. Inspired by the 18th century paintings of Antoine Watteau, the collection depicts characters from the Italian commedia dell’arte who celebrate at an aristocratic fête galante, a luxurious outdoor party. Watteau’s The Embarkation for Cythera (1717) gives a rich visual.
For me, “Clair de lune” reads like an overture at the opera, an immediate, moving representation of a world we’re about to discover, a microcosm of the whole. The poem describes masked revelers who sing and play music, yet are “almost” sad beneath their disguises. Meanwhile, the moon casts a calm, somber light on the trees and marble statues surrounding them. Fêtes galantes sits in the emotional space between the festive and the sorrowful, teetering between the two in a subtle, nuanced orchestration.
I just love its opening line:
Votre âme est un paysage choisi
Your soul is a chosen landscape
There is something about Verlaine’s poetry that just escapes full understanding: it exists in the suggestive world of “almost.” I personally love this liminal positioning, as it rings true to my experience as a human being and invites more questions than answers.
In Fauré’s “Clair de lune,” the vocal line and piano seem to be doing entirely different things, yet somehow work together. At the start, there are eleven bars of gorgeous piano; the vocalist slips in on the third beat of the twelfth. It’s a rather unexpected entrance, yet it isn’t an event; there is something smooth and cool about it, like the delicate arrival of moonlight.
With this divided yet united composition style, Fauré ingeniously mirrors that in-between Verlainian space, which makes for a surprising and fresh listening experience. There are so many things to listen to—it may be impossible to listen to everything all at once—leaving us with that feeling of something that just escapes us.
In terms of genre, I see the piece as a beautiful example of how a mélodie can really be fifty percent piano and fifty percent voice: one is not more important than the other, and both can (and should) be listened to.
In the poem’s last two lines, Verlaine writes of fountains “sobbing” water amid marble statues, creating an elegant contrast of movement and stillness, perhaps of life and death, in close proximity. As the vocalist sings “among the marble statues,” Fauré gives the pianist a relatively dramatic three rests. The vocal line crescendoes and decrecsendoes, rising in pitch before descending into the unmoving “marble.” The piano restarts on this word with two solitary chords before returning to its opening melody.
There is something disturbing yet beautiful about this moment, like a cry out into an empty space. When Fauré brings the melody back, we are reminded of our ability to keep going on with our lives in melancholy moments, or perhaps that our lives go on regardless of our despair. The circularity can be cruel or uplifting, depending on how you look at it.
I sang “Clair de lune” at our Paysages Choisis recital (hence our program title), as well as the lesser known “Les Présents,” the two comprising Fauré’s Deux mélodies, op. 46. Mysterious and subdued, working on the cycle taught me that a work of art can hold multiple emotional states and interpretations—even contradictory ones.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on Verlaine and Fauré, on your associations with Paris. Are the poètes maudits part of your Paris landscape?
Have a great week all, et à la prochaine !
Rachel