L'horizon chimérique

The four songs of L’horizon chimérique form Gabriel Fauré’s farewell to the genre of song cycle. It was written in 1921, during his Indian summer of masterpieces that followed his enforced retirement after 16 years as director of the Paris Conservatoire. He was, for the first time ever, able to devote himself solely to composition, and his late quest for a new musical language astonished his listeners with its youthful spirit. L’horizon chimérique is no exception. Fauré dedicated it to the baritone Charles Panzéra, whose lyrical warmth had impressed him at the Conservatoire. The poet, Jean de la Ville de Mirmont, had been killed very young during the First World War. Each poem evokes a spiritual voyage through subtle images of travels at sea, the atmospheres filled with water, breezes, light and air. Fauré’s wholehearted response begins with an upward-striving melody in “La mer est infinie”; the second and fourth songs share a pliant sense of flow with some of his piano barcarolles; and “Diane, Séléné” is a rapt nocturnal landscape. Ultimately, the composer, aged 76, must have shared the poet’s lament in the last song: “I have great journeys unsatisfied within me.”