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‘Under the Gallic Spell’: Boston's Embrace of Gabriel Fauré, 1892–1924
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 March 2021
Abstract
French influence on American twentieth-century music has long been central to historical narratives, particularly in relation to Nadia Boulanger and her pupils from the 1920s onward. Yet the much earlier impact of Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924), Boulanger's own teacher, has been largely ignored. While most American audiences around the turn of the century were largely unfamiliar with Fauré, Boston embraced his music enthusiastically. By the 1890s, a growing Francophile aesthetic reflected in the city's musical life encouraged performances of French repertoire, and a remarkable number of Fauré's compositions were introduced, some heard frequently enough to become well known to local audiences. Many of Boston's most influential critics, educators, performers and patrons admired Fauré and advocated for him as a representative modern French composer. That his music was so warmly welcomed in Boston at the end of the nineteenth century without any overt self-promotion by the composer has not been widely known until now. Although Fauré never visited the United States, his music found a home away from home in Boston, both while he was still living and well beyond.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Nineteenth-Century Music Review , Volume 19 , Special Issue 2: French Criticism , August 2022 , pp. 255 - 272
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press
References
1 Not to be confused with the English festival by the same name.
2 This essay is drawn from a larger study of Gabriel Fauré's critical reception in Boston. See Heather de Savage, ‘The American Reception of Gabriel Fauré: From Francophile Boston 1892–1945, to the Broader Postwar Mainstream’ (PhD diss., University of Connecticut, 2015). I have presented portions of this research at the North American Conference on Nineteenth-Century Music (Merrimack College, 2015), American Musicological Society, New England (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2016) and Effable and Ineffable: Gabriel Fauré and the Limits of Criticism (University of Washington, 2015). I am grateful to Dr Alain Frogley, Dr Carlo Caballero and Dr Ralph Locke for offering their invaluable comments at various stages of this essay's composition.
3 Knight, Ellen, ‘Boston's French Connection at the Turn of the Twentieth Century’, in Perspectives on American Music, 1900–1950, ed. Saffle, Michael (New York: Garland, 2000)Google Scholar. For a discussion of the events surrounding Muck's departure from the BSO see de Savage, ‘American Reception of Gabriel Fauré’, 61–7.
4 See McCullough, David, The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011)Google Scholar. This topic has been widely addressed in other literature as well.
5 Traveling Americans were often engaged to submit articles to newspapers or journals at home to share their experiences.
6 Elson, Louis C., European Reminiscences (Chicago: Manual Publishing Company, 1891)Google Scholar. From the 1920s onward, Nadia Boulanger was one of the most sought-after composition teachers for American students.
7 Walter Damrosch's New York Symphony Orchestra also performed French music, although the critical response was less favourable than in Boston. See de Savage, ‘American Reception of Gabriel Fauré’, 132–3.
8 H.E.K. [Henry Krehbiel], ‘End of the Worcester Festival – Mr. Chadwick's New Symphonic Poem’, New-York Tribune, 30 September 1905, 7. The full quote from Krehbiel is in reference to Franz Kneisel's conducting of French works (Fauré, Delibes and Dukas) at the Worcester Music Festival of 1905: ‘[Kneisel] has, it would seem, fallen under the Gallic spell under which Boston is temporarily resting’.
9 Fauré's style in particular was for many emblematic of the elusive qualities of modern French music. Philosopher Vladimir Jankélévitch has famously discussed Fauré's music as existing just beyond the reach of one's full understanding of it. See Jankélévitch, Vladimir, Gabriel Fauré et ses mélodies (Paris: Plon, 1938)Google Scholar, expanded and reprinted as Gabriel Fauré, ses mélodies et son esthétique (Paris: Plon, 1951) and as Gabriel Fauré et l'inexprimable (Paris: Plon, 1974; repr., Paris: Presse Pocket, 1988). See also Jankélévitch, Vladimir, Music and the Ineffable, trans. Abbate, Carolyn (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003)Google Scholar.
10 Edward Burlingame Hill, ‘The Rise of Modern French Music’, The Etude 32 (April 1914): 253–54, and ‘Significant Phases of Modern French Music’, The Etude 32 (August 1914): 489–90.
11 Edward Burlingame Hill, Modern French Music (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1924), ‘Gabriel Fauré's Piano Music’, The Musician 16/8 (1911): 511, 561, ‘Vincent d'Indy: An Estimate’, The Musical Quarterly 1/2 (1915): 246–59, and ‘Maurice Ravel’, The Musical Quarterly 13/1 (January 1927): 130–46.
12 ‘Doesn't Like d'Indy’, The New York Times, 19 December 1905, 8.
13 Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande had its American premiere at the Manhattan Opera House on 19 February 1908.
14 See de Savage, ‘American Reception of Gabriel Fauré’, 91–2.
15 For a list of known public performances of Fauré's music in Boston during this period, see de Savage, ‘American Reception of Gabriel Fauré’, 311–23. Fauré's music has been documented in earlier salon performances in Boston and is presumed to have been heard in other undocumented private contexts. For editions of Fauré selections published in Boston during this period, see de Savage, ‘American Reception of Gabriel Fauré’, 307–10.
16 Students of the Curtis Institute, Philadelphia Museum of Art (19 April 1931). Boulanger directed the BSO premiere in Symphony Hall (18–19 February 1938).
17 For a discussion of these performances see Knight, Ellen, Charles Martin Loeffler: A Life Apart in American Music (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993): 93Google Scholar; and Locke, Ralph P. and Barr, Cyrilla, eds, Cultivating Music in America: Women Patrons and Activists Since 1860 (Berkeley: University of Berkeley Press, 1997): 122Google Scholar.
18 This performance is discussed in Knight, Charles Martin Loeffler, 67.
19 For an account of one such meeting between Fauré and Loeffler, see Knight, Charles Martin Loeffler, 145. Their correspondence from 1905 through 1921 appears in Jean-Michel Nectoux, Gabriel Fauré, His Life through His Letters, trans. J. A. Underwood (London: Marion Boyars, 1984): 256–7, 259, 312–13, 316–17, 324–5. Correspondence between Gardner and Fauré is held in Isabella Stewart Gardner Papers, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Archives, Boston, Massachusetts.
20 See Nectoux, Jean-Michel, Gabriel Fauré: A Musical Life, trans. Nichols, Roger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991): 425Google Scholar; and Knight, Charles Martin Loeffler, 204–05.
21 Nectoux, A Musical Life, 80.
22 ‘Une sonate’, Le journal de musique 45 (7 April 1877): 3. The original French text is given in Michel Duchesneau, ‘Triumph of a Genre’, in Regarding Fauré, ed. Tom Gordon (Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach, 1999): 65, at n15.
23 Nectoux discusses the composition, early performances and first edition of the sonata (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1877), in Nectoux, A Musical Life, 80–84.
24 Copland, Aaron, ‘Gabriel Fauré, A Neglected Master’, The Musical Quarterly 10/4 (1924): 573–86Google Scholar, at 582.
25 Gabriel Fauré, Sonata for Violin and Piano, Opus 13, ed. Ch. M. Loeffler (Boston: Boston Music Co., 1919).
26 Louis C. Elson, ‘Musical Matters: The Baermann Chamber Concert’, Boston Daily Advertiser, 29 January 1892: 5.
27 Elson, ‘Musical Matters’, 5.
28 Elson, ‘Musical Matters’, 5.
29 Elson, ‘Musical Matters’, 5.
30 Elson, ‘Musical Matters’, 5.
31 Elson, ‘Musical Matters’, 5.
32 For a discussion of these performances see de Savage, ‘American Reception of Gabriel Fauré’, 73–7.
33 The American String Quartet of Loeffler's time (sometimes given as the ‘American String Quartette’) is unrelated to today's ensemble of the same name, active since 1974. Loeffler's involvement with Marshall's quartet is addressed in Ellen Knight, ‘The American String Quartette: Loeffler's “Feminine Flonzaleys”’, The Sonneck Society for American Music Bulletin 18/3 (September 1992): 98–101.
34 H.K.M. [Kenneth Macgowan], ‘Music and Musicians’, Boston Evening Transcript, 26 March 1912, 28.
35 H. K. M., ‘Music and Musicians’, 28.
36 See de Savage, ‘American Reception of Gabriel Fauré’, 311–23.
37 For a history of the Worcester Music Festival, see Raymond Morin, The Worcester Music Festival, Its Background and History 1858–1976 (Worcester, MA: Commonwealth Press, 1976). The Worcester performance is discussed more fully in de Savage, ‘American Reception of Gabriel Fauré’, 101–23.
38 The accompaniment would not be orchestrated until 1895. Following its premiere, Vénus quickly gained popularity within Fauré's circle through numerous private performances in Paris and London. The composition and performance history are discussed in Robert Orledge, Gabriel Fauré (London: Eulenburg Books, 1979): 67–9, and Carlo Caballero, ‘Gabriel Fauré’, in Nineteenth-Century Choral Music, ed. Donna M. di Grazia (New York: Routledge, 2013): 284–304.
39 Gabriel Fauré, La Naissance de Vénus (Paris: Hamelle, 1883); Gabriel Fauré, The Birth of Venus Op. 29, trans. Theodore Baker (New York: Schirmer, 1900; repr. by Nabu Press, 2012). (A vocal score without accompaniment of an earlier English translation by Adela Maddison had been published by Hamelle in 1898.) A critical edition of La Naissance de Vénus appears in Gabriel Fauré, Musique vocale profane, ed. Hugh MacDonald, Gabriel Fauré Œuvres completes, Série II, Vol. 1 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2019).
40 The 1901 festival had resulted in a deficit of $2,158.86 (nearly $64,000 today), thus the continuation of the annual event relied largely on the success of the 1902 festival. See Earnings and Expenses Log, Worcester Musical Festival. Held in the Worcester Musical Festival Archives, Worcester, Massachusetts.
41 For a discussion of America's fondness for ‘mammoth orchestras and Gargantuan choruses’ during this period see David Ewen, Music Comes to America (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1942): 9.
42 Charles M. Bent, Public Bulletin, Worcester Music Festival 1902, 22 August 1902. Held in Worcester Music Festival Archives, Worcester, Massachusetts.
43 Worcester Music Festival meeting notes, 24 April 1902. Held in Worcester Music Festival Archives, Worcester, Massachusetts.
44 Bent, Public Bulletin.
45 Also performed: Berlioz's Roman Carnival Overture, arias by Verdi, Tchaikovsky, Puccini, Strauss and Stern, a portion of Rubinstein's Hungarian Vine ballet and Wagner's Tannhäuser Overture. This concert held the highest individual ticket price of the festival at $2.50 (approximately $73.00 today) compared to the other concert tickets ranging between $1.00 and $2.00, and rehearsal tickets at $.50 each. See Bent, Public Bulletin.
46 Nectoux, A Musical Life, 282, and Orledge, Gabriel Fauré, 68–9.
47 H.E. Krehbiel, ‘The Worcester Festival in America’, The Musical Times (1 November 1902): 748–9, at 749.
48 R.R.G., ‘Worcester Music Festival: Brilliant Finale of a Week of Music’, Boston Evening Transcript, 4 October 1902, 24.
49 R.R.G., ‘Worcester Music Festival’, 24.
50 Philip Hale, ‘“Artists” Night, the Future of Worcester Festivals’, Boston Morning Journal, 4 October 1902, 5.
51 Hale, ‘“Artists” Night’, 5.
52 ‘New Honors Won by Participants in the Festival on Artists’ Night’, Worcester Daily Spy, 4 October 1902, 1, 5, at 5.
53 See de Savage, ‘American Reception of Gabriel Fauré’, 119.
54 Librarian's Records, Worcester Music Festival. Held in Worcester Music Festival Archives, Worcester, Massachusetts.
55 ‘Music and Musicians: Programs of the Week’, Boston Daily Globe, 1 April 1923: 53.
56 La Naissance de Vénus was not recorded until 1999 (Cantillation, with the Sinfonia Australis, dir. Antony Walker) and only three versions are in the current discography, in contrast with numerous recordings of the Cantique and the Requiem.
57 See de Savage, ‘American Reception of Gabriel Fauré’, 311–23.
58 In response to a New York Philharmonic performance of Fauré's Pelléas suite in 2005, Bernard Holland referred to Maeterlinck's play as one that ‘attracted composers like flies to flypaper’. Bernard Holland, ‘Sorrowful Soliloquies from a Versatile American Voice’, The New York Times, 21 January 2005, B4. In addition to the works by Debussy and Fauré, other notable musical responses to the play include Jean Sibelius, Pelléas och Mélisande (incidental music, 1904–1905; suite, 1905), Arnold Schoenberg, Pelleas und Melisande, Op. 5 (symphonic poem, 1902–1903) and Cyril Scott, Overture to Pelleas and Melisande, Op. 5 (ca. 1912).
59 The ‘Sicilienne’, which Fauré added to the suite in 1909, has been arranged for numerous solo instruments, and has long been performed as a stand-alone work.
60 Nectoux observes that Gabriel Fabre (1858–1921) often is mistaken for Fauré in discussions of Pelléas et Mélisande. Nectoux, A Musical Life, 149. The performance history of Campbell's production with Fauré's music is discussed in de Savage, ‘American Reception of Gabriel Fauré’, 125–28.
61 ‘Maeterlinck's Problem Play’, The New York Times, 29 January 1902, 8; ‘Pelleas and Melisande’, Boston Daily Globe, 13 April 1902, 4.
62 Fauré's suite originally included three movements: ‘Prélude’, ‘Fileuse’ and ‘La mort de Mélisande’. The BSO retained this structure in other performances, even after Fauré added a fourth movement (‘Sicilienne’) several years later.
63 NEC students had performed the Pelléas suite earlier that year. BSO Symphony Orchestra Archives Collection, concert programs (1904–1905): 498 (available at archives.bso.org; henceforth BSO concert programs). Hale's BSO programme notes include a biographical sketch of Fauré, a summary of Maeterlinck's play and a brief description of the music. BSO concert programs (1904–1905): 508–14.
64 ‘Musical Matters’, Boston Daily Globe, 18 December 1904, 41; ‘Eighth Concert an Interesting One’, Boston Journal, 19 December 1904, 6.
65 Lourié, Arthur, Sergei Koussevitzky (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1931): 186–92Google Scholar, and 207–16.
66 Koussevitzky conducted the American premieres of several French works during his first season: Arthur Honegger, Pacific 231, Henri-Joseph Rigel, Symphony in D, Albert Roussel, Symphony in B-flat and Alexis-Roland Manuel, Sinfonia from Isabel et Pantalon. For Koussevitzky's early performances with the BSO, see De Wolfe Howe, M.A. and Burk, John N., The Boston Symphony Orchestra, 1881–1931 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1931): 152–72Google Scholar.
67 For a discussion of this event, see de Savage, ‘American Reception of Gabriel Fauré’, 147–55.
68 The BSO acknowledged Roussel's death (23 August 1937) with a performance of his Third Symphony in G Minor on 4 November 1937; a memorial biography was included in the programme. BSO concert programs (1937–1938): 7–9. The concert ‘In Memory of Maurice Ravel’ was given in late-January 1938 (he died 28 December 1937) and was more in keeping with the scale and emotional depth of the Fauré concert. For a list of works performed, see BSO concert programs (1937–1938): 631.
69 The first draft of the programme included the prelude and the Élégie (as performed), but also Pietro Antonio Locatelli's Funeral Symphony, the orchestrated version of Ravel's ‘Alborada del Gracioso’ from Miroirs and Scriabin's Third Symphony (‘The Divine Poem’). For a discussion of this change in programme, see de Savage, ‘American Reception of Gabriel Fauré’, 150–52.
70 ‘Hill's Music Grasps Spirit of Childhood’, Boston Daily Globe, 29 March 1919, 2.
71 P.R., ‘Fauré Honored at Symphony Concert’, Boston Daily Globe, 6 December 1924, 2.
72 ‘Music and Musicians’, Boston Daily Globe, 7 December 1924, 45.
73 P.R., ‘Fauré Honored at Symphony Concert’, 2.
74 P.R., ‘Fauré Honored at Symphony Concert’, 2.
75 BSO concert programs (1924–1925): 512–16.
76 BSO concert programs (1924–1925): 516–20.
77 Hale's first biography of Fauré appears in Philip Hale and Louis Elson, eds., Famous Composers and Their Works, vol. 1 (Boston: J.B. Millet Co., 1900), and a discussion of Fauré in Philip Hale, ed., Modern French Songs (Boston: Oliver Ditson Company, 1904).
78 P.R., ‘Faure Honored at Symphony Concert’, 2.
79 The first documented American radio broadcast to include Fauré's music (‘Après un rêve’) was a recital by soprano Edith Bennett with Marie Peyer, piano, broadcast by WJZ, Newark, NJ, on 19 April 1922. See ‘Today's Radio Program’, The New York Times, 19 April 1922, 28. Incidentally, ‘Après un rêve’, sung by tenor J.F. Braun, was the first of Fauré's music known to be recorded, in 1903 (Victor, B-576, 78, 1903). By 1950, Alfred Cortot, Eugène Ysaÿe, Pablo Casals, Jascha Heifetz, Lily Pons and other noted soloists had all recorded selections by Fauré. Koussevitzky's recordings with the BSO include Fauré's Élégie, with Jean Bedetti (RCA Victor, 14577, 78, 1936), and the Suite Pelléas et Mélisande (RCA Victor, M-941, 78, 1940).
80 Copland, ‘Gabriel Fauré, A Neglected Master’, 586.
81 Hill, Modern French Music, 83.
82 Carlo Caballero has discussed Fauré's influence on Walter Piston in ‘Fauré chez Piston: Nadia Boulanger and the Bequest of a Style’, paper presented at Nadia Boulanger & American Music: A Memorial Symposium, University of Colorado, Boulder, 8 October 2004. I am grateful to Dr Caballero for making available to me a copy of this paper. For a broader discussion of the role of Harvard in this context, see de Savage, ‘American Reception of Gabriel Fauré’, Chapters 6 and 7.