3 Songs

These songs, like the three published as Op. 19, set texts by two different poets who were members of the Parnassian group concerned with art for art’s sake, taking inspiration from the ancient world. Armand Silvestre—a frequent source of song texts for Fauré—is represented by the second and third songs in Op. 23 (c.1879-81), “Notre amour” (“Our Love”) and “Le secret” (“The Secret”). The first, “Les berceaux” (“The Cradles”), is the work of Sully Prudhomme, who was in 1901 the first recipient of the Nobel Prize for literature. Prudhomme’s text for “Les berceaux” links the cradles rocked by mothers with the mighty ocean-going vessels on which their sons will eventually leave for distant horizons. The use of a minor key and the constant rocking motion in the accompaniment chart the sadness of maternal loss while the song as a whole expresses the mothers’ fatalism. Silvestre’s text for “Notre amour” considers the singer’s love from the point of view of both himself and his partner. It is at the same time light, charming, sacred, infinite and eternal—a rapture perfectly expressed in the wondrous delight in which the words and notes bubble over one another in quicksilver motion. “Le secret” refers to the singer’s love for the beloved: a secret in part, but already admitted to both the night and the day. Fauré’s thoughtful setting makes use of slow chords, their harmonies moving in unexpected directions as the singer contemplates the importance of the secret he longs to tell.