Les nuits d'été
Les nuits d'été (on German summer nights ) op. 7 is a collection of art songs by Hector Berlioz based on poems by Théophile Gautier , which, through their compositional processing, are clearly related to the song cycle . Peter Cornelius arranged a singable translation in German .
Texts
Théophile Gautier did not write the texts of the Nuits d'été as a coherent, self-contained work, as was the case, for example, with Schubert's Winterreise by Wilhelm Müller . The texts come from Gautier's collection of poems La Comédie de la mort (The Comedy of Death) , published in 1838 . It was published as a volume of 56 poems that Gautier had divided into two parts. These were first published in 1838 and included:
- (No. 55) Villanelle rythmique
- (No. 27) Le specter de la rose
- (No. 28) Lamento: La chanson du pêcheur
- (No. 37) Absence (the last 5 stanzas have been deleted)
- (No. 43) Au cimetière (Lamento)
- (No. 44) L'île inconnue (barcarolle).
Gautier and Berlioz were both neighbors and friends. It is possible that Berlioz saw the lyrics before they were published and selected his favorites for a setting. Thematically, the romantic poems are about love, from the happy and playful beginning and its enthusiastic, passionate intimacy to the death of the beloved, the long lasting grief that follows and the willingness to embrace a new love.
In addition to the feelings described, descriptions of the landscape are used, both as a background for the thinking and feeling of the lyrical self and as a metaphor for the mood of the moment, which is reflected on the outside. In the Villanelle rythmique , the fresh morning forest is described as an idyllic place for a rendezvous, Lamento: La Chanson du pêcheur (Lamento: The fisherman's song) chooses the night sea under a dark sky as the setting for his desperation over the death of his beloved Absence makes use of the landscape that one would like to see on a long journey on horseback and the path of which seems to never end, in the lament the spooky atmosphere of the nocturnal cemetery is captured, in which the once beloved walks around as a ghost, and in the barcarolle again uses the sea as a foil for the feelings of the lyrical self, but this time as a starting point for the freedom to travel with the addressed beauty in all possible countries and directions - except for the land of eternal love, which nobody knows.
A special case is Le specter de la rose (The Spirit of the Rose), which is the only poem that dispenses with a description of the environment and at the same time indicates that the person addressed could be asleep or in a dream . The lyrical self describes itself as the happily amorous spirit of the rose, which she wore on her dress the entire evening at the ball. Like Lamento (Berlioz: Au cimetière ) , the poem thus questions reality and its laws, which are never called into question in the other texts. In Lamento , Gautier also uses clear elements of contemporary black romanticism with ghosts and spooky apparitions, melancholy, longing for death and night scenes , which, however, cannot apply to all of the selected poems.
Only in the first, second and last poem chosen by Berlioz is there a counterpart for the lyrical self; in the remaining texts it is alone. There is no theological twist, the grieving self is thrown back on itself and its own feelings and receives no further outside support from friends, family, acquaintances or unknown persons, the landscape described does not offer any consolation. The supernatural figure that the lyrical ego encounters in the lament makes it more likely to remember its own mortality and thereby let go of the tormenting memory of the beloved.
If you perceive the collection of poems as a cycle, the end is open, the young beauty addressed in the barcarolle (barcarole) does not give the skipper an answer as to whether she will actually come with him on his voyage. Berlioz did not add a positive or negative confirming final poem.
Emergence
Gautier's previous publications contained only individual poems, and Berlioz put them together as a group himself. The Villanelle was set to music by Xavier Bosselot in 1837 under the title Villanella . Le specter de la rose appeared in the magazine Don Quichotte on May 7, 1837 as a stand-alone poem. Hippolyte Monpou wrote, also in 1837, a composition on Lamento: Chanson du pêcheur , which he renamed Sur la mer . Also Allyre Bureau was inspired by a verse Gautierschen inspired and shaped the Barcarolle in a song to which the title Mirage received and 1835 in Rameau d'or appeared.
Berlioz finally selected those poems by Gautier from the collection printed in 1838 that seemed most suitable for setting and gave them the title Les nuits d'été , which may have been an allusion to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream . Even Alfred Musset's Les nuits or Donizetti's Nuits d'été à Pausilippe may have been inspired models. There is nothing in Berlioz's memoirs or in his letters about the exact selection and creation process. However, the end of his first marriage to actress Harriet Smithson and the beginning of his liaison with his later second wife Marie Recio coincide with the same time.
Berlioz rearranged the order of the pieces. The titles of the poems were also changed: Berlioz shortened the Villanelle rythmique to Villanelle , Lamento: Chanson du pêcheur became Sur les lagunes: Lamento , the poem originally called Lamento , Berlioz changed to Au cimetière , and the Barcarolle became L ' île inconnue . He also rearranged the order of the pieces.
| number | original order | final order |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Villanelle | Villanelle |
| 2 | Absence | Le specter de la rose |
| 3 | Le specter de la rose | Sur les lagunes |
| 4th | L'île inconnue | Absence |
| 5 | Sur les lagunes | Au cimetière |
| 6th | Au cimetière | L'île inconnue |
The composition extended over a period of several years, from 1834 to 1840. In September 1841 the works were published for the first time in the piano version. In 1834 Berlioz orchestrated the absence , in 1856 the other songs followed. In 1851 Berlioz summarized them as his Opus 7. The American musicologist Dallas Kern Holoman numbered it in his catalog as No. H81.
music
Villanelle
An easy summer song written entirely in staccato in continuous eighth note chords . The driving, fresh, but in the dynamics always quiet rhythm is maintained throughout the strophic song. Above this lies the melody of the singing voice, which has only a few variations in the different stanzas and is reminiscent of a simple folk song in its nature .
Le specter de la rose
The most famous song in the collection, a poetic and enthusiastic confession of love, breaks up the stanza form of the original poem in favor of a fully composed version. In the orchestral version, this is the only song that requires a harp .
Sur les Lagunes (Lamento)
The fisherman's song describes a lonely nocturnal sea voyage and uses numerous metaphors of pain and darkness. Musically, this is implemented through a deep tessitur and a steady 6/8 rhythm, which can only be heard in the exclamations "Ah! Sans amour, s'en aller sur la mer" ("Ah! To go out to sea without love!" ) is interrupted. The minor key is only changed at the end, when the recognition of the loss is clearly formulated. Then the song falls back to its original rhythm.
Absence
The Absence has a rondo-like structure. The core of the song is the refrain, which is repeated three times unchanged
- Reviens, reviens, ma bien-aimée!
- Comme une fleur loin du soleil
- la fleur de ma vie est fanée,
- loin de ton sourire vermeil.
The music thus represents a significant intervention in the original poem, in that one stanza is raised to the refrain, while five others have been deleted from the original. Between the wistful exclamations in the piano that the beloved may return, there are emotional and external descriptions of the state of the lyrical self, which are musically enhanced by an ever higher pitch in the singing voice and louder dynamics. These steadily building outbursts of despair are interrupted by the refrain and at the same time returned to their place of origin, the insoluble problem of the absent lover.
Au cimetière
Berlioz uses peculiar musical means to implement the haunted scene in the cemetery. The 3/4 time set at the beginning , whose emphasis traditionally takes place on the first beat, is overridden by Berlioz with different syncopations in the singing voice. At the beginning the singing voice is high-pitched and used in the piano , in the vocal score of the orchestral version there is even the note à un quart de voix , so at the beginning it should not only be sung with half a voice in the mezza-voce , but with a quarter of the same. In addition, the accompaniment provides a harmonious background that progresses in regular quarters. The voice thus imitates the plaintive song of the dove described in the text, which has taken its place on the top of the yew tree in the cemetery and utters a tender, pathological manner that one cannot escape. In the further course of the song, Berlioz's use of dissonances to characterize the ghostly appearance becomes interesting .
L'île inconnue
A dialogue between a seafarer and a young beauty takes place in which the seafarer praises his ship and at the same time expresses his invitation to go wherever she wants. She asks about the country where love will live forever, he replies that this country does not exist and repeats his invitation. This song is also composed through and follows the content of the conversation in a musically illustrative manner. The accompaniment is - in contrast to the standstill of the previous piece - in constant motion. The contrast to Sur les Lagunes is also noticeable, in which the sea is also depicted, but in a completely different mood. Here the accompaniment contains a significantly faster tempo, a variety of melodies and also rhythmic variance.
Orchestration
According to Berlioz 'standards, orchestration with a chamber orchestra is rather modest. There are no drums and the line-up is limited to strings , two flutes , two clarinets , two bassoons , an oboe , three horns and a harp . The orchestral and piano versions differ in some details, e.g. For example, in Le specter de la rose the orchestra presents the first theme completely before the voice starts, while in the piano version the introduction is much shorter.
Performance practice
During the composer's lifetime, the song collection was never performed as a whole, only in parts. The dedication of the piano version belonged to a single lady, Louise Bertin , the daughter of the publisher Louis-François Bertin the Elder, who composed various operas and wrote poems. Berlioz had written several articles for his Journal des Debats . The orchestrated version has a different dedicatee for each individual song. It was singers who premiered Berlioz's songs on his trip to Germany (1843). That is why there are different authorized transpositions of the same melodies. Contemporary performances are usually sung by a single voice, mostly mezzo-soprano or soprano . Performing with a tenor or dividing the collection between different singers is less common . Pierre Bernac believed that the absence would best suit a warm lyrical soprano , and for other songs he made no comments about the vocal subject . In general, the orchestral version is preferred to the piano version in recordings and concerts. The performance lasts about half an hour.
Marie Recio performed the absence as the first orchestrated song in 1843 at a concert in Leipzig. After the orchestration and world premiere in Germany, the work fell into oblivion on the concert stage and was only rediscovered in the 20th century. Les nuits d'été is one of the most famous works of classical song singing today.
Recordings
literature
- Axel Bauni et al .: Reclam's song guide. Philipp Reclam jun., Stuttgart 2008, pp. 492-497.
- Pierre Bernac: The Interpretation of French Song. Gollancz Ltd., London 2015, ISBN 0-575-02207-8 , pp. 37-41.
- Peter Bloom: In the shadows of "Les Nuits d'été" . In: Berlioz studies . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge / New York 1992, pp. 80–111 ( books.google.de ).
- Julian Rushton: "Les nuits d'été". Cycle or collection? In: Peter Bloom (Ed.): Berlioz Studies . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge / New York 1992, pp. 112-135 ( books.google.de ).
- Ian Rumbold: Mélodies pour voix haute et piano = Songs for high voice and piano = songs for high voice and piano . tape 2 : Les nuits d'été… . Bärenreiter, Kassel / New York 2006, OCLC 755278159 (English, French, German, in the foreword).
Web links
- The LiederNet Archive: Hector Berlioz: Les Nuits d'Été.
- Les nuits d'été op.7 (Berlioz) : Sheet music and audio files in the International Music Score Library Project
- BR Classic 2017: Hector Berlióz: Les Nuits d'été. ( br-klassik.de )