Faure - Apres un reve

Background information and performance circumstances

• Gabriel Faure (1845-1924) - one of the three great masters of French melodie
• 'Apres un reve' was an early work, published in 1878
• many households owned a piano, and solo songs were a popular form of domestic entertainment that found a ready market with publishers
• Faure sold his songs - consequently made little from their subsequent popularity

Performaning forces and their handling

• vocal line is marked 'voix' (voice)
• range of an eleventh
• vocal part has room for flexibility but avoids extremes
• piano part sets up a single rhytmic pattern that is maintained throughout the song, with right-hand chords of three or four notes and a bass line in single notes or octaves
• right hand part with a range of less than two octaves, never rises more than an octave above middle C
• the accentuation and expression of the words:
  • accentuation of French is very different from spoken English - English has a set accent
  • speakers in French emphasise the last syllable within a word
  • Faure matches these accents precisely in the music

Structure

Modified strophic form (A A1 B)

• structure matches content of poem - verses 1 and 2 describe the dream; an ecstatic imagined elopement into the great blue yonder, in verse 3 the singer has awoken, but 'cries to dream again'
  • 'A' section: bars 2-15 (preceded by one bar of piano introduction)
  • 'A1' section: bars 17-30 - a varied repeat of bars 2-15, after a single transitional bar for piano (bar 16). there are modifications from bar 26 onwards
  • B section: bars 30-48 - the material is related to the previous sections but the treatment is new

Varied phrase lengths

• the shifting sense of the dream-scene is evoked by varied phrase lengths (leaving aside the piano-only bars) the structure is as follows:
  • bars 2-15: 3+4 bars, 3+4 bars
  • bars 17-30: 3+4 bars, 3+2+2 bars - the shortening of the phrases builds up tension at the end of the verse, which leads into the next section with no piano interlude
  • bars 30-47: 4+4+4+5 bars

Tonality

Chromaticism

• Faure includes frequent small chromatic alterations in the accompaniment, which often produce secondary dominants, or play on the contrast of major and minor chords
• his harmonic excursions are carefully prepared and resolved, and he ensures that even his most dramatic effects feel inevitable in their context

Tonality

• C minor - perfect cadence in C minor in the final bars (45-47). Until then, Faure avoids clear-cut perfect cadences in the home key
• Imperfect cadences in C are reached at principle phrase-ends: bars 6-8, 21-23, and 36-38
• there is one structural modulation, marked by the perfect cadence in Eb major (bars 14-15) at the end of the first section
• tonality passes through a number of transient modulations, such as movement through F minor, Bb minor and Ab major in bars 28-34

Harmony

• Faure's harmony is broadly functional
• organised around the 'magnetic' pull from the dominant to the tonic
• the route towards the dominant is often  lengthy and circuitous (eg. tonic…