Ernest Chausson - La légende de Sainte Cécile, Op. 22 (1891)
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 14 окт 2024
- Amédée-Ernest Chausson (20 January 1855 - 10 June 1899) was a French romantic composer who died just as his career was beginning to flourish.
Please support my channel:
ko-fi.com/bart...
La légende de Sainte Cécile, Op. 22 (1891)
Drame en trois actes
Libretto: Maurice Bouchor (1855-1929
Isabelle Vernet, François Le Roux, Ensemble Orchestral de Paris conducted by Jean-Jacques Kantorow
Description by Adrian Corleonis [-]
Though almost wholly forgotten today, Chausson's old law school chum Maurice Boucher articulated Romanticism's "dying fall" -- the era known as "the Nineties," though it extends a decade either way -- in a manner paralleled by Lionel Johnson and Ernest Dowson across the Channel. Chausson's "answer" to the Liebestod, for instance, drew on two poems by Boucher describing the efflorescence and death of a seaside romance for his sumptuously impassioned soprano vehicle, the Poème de l'Amour et de la Mer, which occupied him from 1882 until 1890, and which he continued to revise into the 1890s. Indeed, Chausson's first composition seems to have been a setting of Boucher's "Lilas." Boucher's verse also offered matter for the characteristic Quatre mélodies, Op. 8, composed through the 1880s, while his translations were set in the four Chansons de Shakespeare, Op. 28, which followed through the 1890s. And it was Boucher's translation of The Tempest, produced at the Théâtre des Marionettes in 1888, for which Chausson provided an extensive score of exquisite, ravishing incidental music. Boucher's involvement with the suddenly fashionable Théâtre des Marionettes prompted a translation of Aristophanes' The Birds in 1889 (with music for flute and harp by Chausson) and several more or less original plays -- Le Mystères d'Eleusis, Tobie, légende biblique in 1889 (music by Casimir Baille), and Noël, ou le Mystère de la Nativité in 1890 (music by Paul Vidal). For La Légende de Sainte Cécile, Chausson, though less than enthusiastic (finding the subject "enormously tedious...I smell a fiasco..."), was tapped once more and began to compose the incidental music at Civray on July 10, 1891, completing the score by September 28.
The collaboration went far less smoothly than before and strained the friendship of these two highly strung artists as Boucher failed to keep in touch with the theater personnel, or with Chausson, but demanded changes as the piece went into rehearsal. Three sopranos were tried out as poet and composer quarreled over individual numbers. The chorus was poor, the sets mediocre, and the costumes ugly. Scored for small orchestra -- with, as in the Tempête music, a prominent part for celesta -- of the 15 numbers, most are melodramas. There is a canticle for Cecilia in praise of the Virgin, and several angelic choruses. Chausson's biographer Jean Gallois praised the music's "magnificent tone of celestial purity and intense mysticism," though one may also find the bulk of the score muted and self-effacing. The premiere, on January 30, 1892, garnered equally divided reviews.
C'mon Mr Bartmans. Its not like you to omit the names of the orchestra and choirs and dates. Who??? When??? Where??? Because its all beautifully done. I really enjoyed the notes you supplied. Ernest Chausson has been completely off the radar For almost all of my life until recent weeks thanks to you. Even though I have a degree in classical music from Liverpool University, I hardly ever heard his name even mentioned. Of course, he died too young before his career really took off. But still, his music is RAVISHING. I absolutely adore his Poem de L'Amour the Piano Quintet and the Piano Quartet. Thanks to you putting them on youtube. I am deeply indebted to you. Thank you for your service to beautiful music
This video is from my old Bartje11 channel which got terminated along with all the info of this video.
@bartjebartmans ahhh what a pity. Techhnology!!! So you lost the information. Forgive me. You are doing a tremendous service sharing all this beautiful music. I an a great fan of your channel
Absolutely lovely work that should be better known...
Un vrai plaisir musical.
👍Altes Frankreich ❤
Chausson first used celesta in his Tempest music in 1888, predating Tchaikovsky by four years.
Beautiful.
!!!! BELLÍSIMOOOO !!!!
The use of celesta and choir remind me of Alfred Newman’s music for the Song of Bernadette in the vision scene.
Will hear Bernadette right now....Thanks from México!
Große Sendung, danke!
Very Chausson and lovely, though I feel his choral writing is not as mesmerising as his instrumental and solo vocal work. A sacred counterpart to "L'amour et la mer"?
Chausson was ahead of his times creatively-
I fully agrre with you. Unfortunately, this is a melodrama (spoken texte and music), a genre totally neglected nowadays. Rhis is for instance the case of "l"Arlésienne" by Bizer, which was saved by his friend Guiraud through two faous and autstandingly orchestrated bt his friend Guiraud. Here, no reochtesration is needed. The music could be plated as weitten without rg spoken text or rearranged such as L'Arlésienne or Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé if the croirs were considered as unmanageable. By any means, this misoc hes to ba saved. Another example is Eésurrection by César Franck, whicn is known only by one orchestral excerpt, but is an outstanfing masterpiece when integrally heard