4 Songs

Fauré’s Op. 39 collection of songs dates from 1884. Three of them set poems by Parnassian poet Paul Armand Silvestre, a member of a group regularly inspired by the ancient world and whose poetry Fauré often set in his mélodies (French art songs). The last—“Les Roses d’Ispahan”—sets a poem by Silvestre’s fellow-Parnassian, Leconte de Lisle. In the first song, “Aurore” (“Dawn”), the singer compares the light of coming dawn to the emotions burgeoning in his heart, which fly to the feet of his beloved only to die—presumably rejected—with the daylight. The discarded flower of Fleur jetée represents another love that has been thrown away: as the flower withers, so may the singer’s heart. The setting expresses a kind of furious anger in its heavy chords and unstoppable motion. In “Le Pays des rêves”, the singer invites his beloved to travel with him to the land of dreams whose location only love can know. The song’s constant rocking motion has been compared to the back-and-forth movement of a swing. The evocation of Isfahan—a city in ancient Persia (modern Iran) of legendary beauty—would have suggested to artists of Fauré’s day the most Romantic imagery, and in his case some musical associations with the orientalist manner beloved of late 19th-century French composers. In de Lisle’s poem “Les Roses d’Ispahan” (“The Roses from Isfahan”), its flowers and scents are compared to those of the beloved Leïlah.