Clair de lune (Fauré)

"Clair de lune", ("Moonlight") Op. 46 No 2, is a song by Gabriel Fauré, composed in 1887 to words by Paul Verlaine. The pianist Graham Johnson writes that it closes Fauré's second period and opens the doors into his third. Johnson notes that it is "for many people the quintessential French mélodie".^[1]

The lyric is from Verlaine's early collection Fêtes galantes (1869). It inspired not only Fauré but Claude Debussy who set it in 1881 and wrote a well known piano piece inspired by it in 1891.^[1] Fauré's 1887 setting is for piano and voice, but he later orchestrated it for his incidental music Masques et bergamasques, Op. 112.

French

English

Clair de lune Votre âme est un paysage choisi Que vont charmant masques et bergamasques Jouant du luth et dansant et quasi Tristes sous leurs déguisements fantasques. Tout en chantant sur le mode mineur L'amour vainqueur et la vie opportune, Ils n'ont pas l'air de croire à leur bonheur Et leur chanson se mêle au clair de lune, Au calme clair de lune triste et beau, Qui fait rêver les oiseaux dans les arbres Et sangloter d'extase les jets d'eau, Les grands jets d'eau sveltes parmi les marbres.

Moonlight Your soul is a chosen landscape Where charming masqueraders and bergamasquers go Playing the lute and dancing and almost Sad beneath their fantastic disguises. They all sing in a minor key About triumphant love and fortunate life, They do not seem to believe in their fortune And their song blends with the light of the moon, In the calm moonlight, sad and beautiful, Which has the birds dreaming in the trees And the fountains sobbing in ecstasy, The tall fountains, slender amid marble statues.[2][n 1]

Notes and references

Notes

1. ^ An anonymous rhyming English version reads:

   Your soul is as a moonlit landscape fair,
   

   Peopled with maskers delicate and dim,
   

   That play on lutes and dance and have an air
   

   Of being sad in their fantastic trim.

   The while they celebrate in minor strain
   

   Triumphant love, effective enterprise,
   

   They have an air of knowing all is vain,—
   

   And through the quiet moonlight their songs rise,

   The melancholy moonlight, sweet and lone,
   

   That makes to dream the birds upon the tree,
   

   And in their polished basins of white stone
   

   The fountains tall to sob with ecstasy

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Johnson, Graham (2005). Liner notes to Hyperion CD CDA 67334
2. ^ French text, public domain; English translation checked against translations at The Reader Organisation, accessed 29 January 2011, and Johnson, Graham (2005), Liner notes to Hyperion CD CDA 67334