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Le Plus doux chemin

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Elderly man with white hair and large white moustache. He is seated, with a cigarette in his left hand
Fauré by Nadar, 1905.

"Le Plus doux chemin" ("The Sweetest Path"), Op. 87, No. 1, is a song by Gabriel Fauré, composed in 1904. It was originally for voice and piano accompaniment, and was later arranged by the composer for voice and full orchestra.

Composition

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In this song Fauré set words by the poet Paul Armand Silvestre.[1] It was composed in 1904 for the amateur singer Emilie Girette after her marriage to the pianist Édouard Risler.[2] Originally for voice and piano, it was later orchestrated by Fauré as part of his incidental music for Masques et bergamasques (1919). Fauré composed the song in the key of F minor, but it was first published (Hamelle, Paris, 1907) in E minor.[3]

When Fauré orchestrated the song for Masques et bergamasques he wrote to his wife that it was not at all well known: "for just as pianists play the same eight or ten of my pieces, so singers all sing the same songs".[4] The pianist Graham Johnson calls it an "enchantingly mournful serenade of a persistent, if unsuccessful lover … Fauré distilled to the essentials".[3] Both Johnson and Vladimir Jankélévitch find an autumnal quality in the song, despite the reference to "la saison nouvelle".[3] The Fauré expert Jean-Michel Nectoux rates it among the composer's most inspired songs, and groups it with "Le Ramier", Op. 87, No. 2 and "Chanson", Op. 94 as "a kind of homogeneous triptych … a cheerful but nostalgic farewell, the last sparks of the galant madrigal which Fauré had practised for so long".[2]

Analysing the song, Johnson describes it as a madrigal with an accompaniment evoking "the gentle plucking of a lute, although the strength of the bass line, almost a counter-melody in itself, depends on the legato tone of a piano to make its effect."[3]

Text

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References

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  1. ^ Nectoux, p. 551
  2. ^ a b Nectoux, p. 302
  3. ^ a b c d Johnson, p. 28
  4. ^ Jones, p. 179

Sources

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  • Johnson, Graham (2005). Notes to Gabriel Fauré: Dans un parfum de roses – Mélodies. London: Hyperion Records. OCLC 690608417.
  • Jones, J. Barrie (1989). Gabriel Fauré – A Life in Letters. London: B T Batsford. ISBN 978-0-7134-5468-0.
  • Nectoux, Jean-Michel (1991). Gabriel Fauré – A Musical Life. Roger Nichols (trans). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-23524-2.