Classical Music | Music for Viola

Recorded on 09/17/2010, uploaded on 03/27/2011

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Après un rève (“After a dream”) is one of the most beloved of Fauré’s vocal creations. It is the first song of his Trois mélodies, op. 7 and was composed, with its companions, between 1870 and 1878. Fauré did not intend the songs to form a coherent set and their grouping and designation as his opus 7 did not come about until their publication nearly twenty years later in the 1890s.

The author of the original Italian poem is unknown but the rather free translation into French which Fauré used was provided by the poet and singer Romain Bussine. In the poem, the narrator tells of a romantic meeting with a lover in a dream-world. The features of his lover are amplified in this ethereal realm (“your eyes were softer, your voice pure and resonant”) and she illuminates it by her very presence (“you shone like a sky lit up by the dawn”). He admits that he was beckoned to her and, after returning to reality, begs to return to this happy state even though he knows none of it is real (“O night, give me back your lies”).

Fauré’s setting is, at first glance, rather simple, but through this simplicity achieves a breathtaking surreal beauty. The piano provides a consistent, pulsing accompaniment of chords which underpin the vocalist’s richly lyrical and emotional melody. Set in C minor, suggesting the ultimate fatality of the poem, the harmonies and tonality waver between the minor and major modes to emphasize the juxtaposing blithe dream-world and the knowledge of reality.      Joseph DuBose