Pièces pittoresques
Encyclopedia
Picturesque pieces are a set of ten pieces for piano
by Emmanuel Chabrier
. Four of the set were later orchestrated
by the composer to make his Suite Pastorale.
), Chabrier composed what were to be called Pièces pittoresques.
Both Alfred Cortot
(in La musique française de piano, PUF, 1932) and Francis Poulenc
(Emmanuel Chabrier, 1961) discuss these short works enthusiastically. César Franck
, at their premiere in 1881, remarked that those present had "just heard something exceptional. This music links our own time to that of Couperin
and Rameau
".
The manuscript
in the archive of Litolff publishers was destroyed by an air-raid on Brunswick
in 1942.
The first performances of individual pieces took place on different dates: 9 April 1881 for Sous-bois, Idylle, Danse villageoise, Improvisation, Menuet pompeux, Scherzo-valse (Marie Poitevin); Mélancolie on 24 December 1887 (Marie-Léontine Bordes-Pène
); others unknown.
D flat major, 2/4; Allegro non troppo – vivo (dedicated to La comtesse de Narbonne-Lara)
For Poulenc
, Paysage portrayed a landscape where life was to be enjoyed. The middle section is a voluble depiction of agitation calmed by the return of the main theme.
Paysage opens the cycle with a straight perfect cadence to the tonic D flat, downgrading what textbooks would tell us should be reserved for a more conclusive moment. Paysage is riddled with rhythmic and harmonic games, not least the absence throughout of a single clear four-bar phrase; the piece's opening section, all in three-bar phrases, makes two teasing feints a four-bar phrases, both thwarted. Poulenc suggests that the piece should be played with "allegresse et tendresse".
Mélancolie (Melancholy)
G major, 9 & 6/8; Ben moderato senza rigore et sempre tempo rubato (dedicated to Marie Pillon)
About Mélancolie, Cortot was moved to write that its 'nostalgic charm and discreet perfection' defied analysis. Ravel
saw the soul of Manet
's Olympia in Mélancolie. The alternating 9/8 and 6/8 bars create an atmosphere of wandering tenderness and uncertainty; the piece closes with a canon at the double octave then in lows fifths.
Mélancolie is a sophisticated blend of textural inversion, canon and rhythmic compression that essentially determines the piece's outer envelope. Poulenc suggests that the piece should be played with "allegresse et tendresse".
Tourbillon (Whirlwind)
D major, 3/4; Allegro con fuoco (dedicated to Marie Meurice)
At first echoing the animated rhythms of Berlioz
's Béatrice et Bénédict
, it evolves into a more complex beat, avoiding the bar-line. Its almost aggressive force is perhaps a reminder of the possibilities of Chabrier's own playing. The final bars juxtapose a Mendelssohnian
passage with one ironically in the manner of Offenbach
.
Sous-bois (Under the trees)
C major, 2/4; Andantino (dedicated to Marie de la Guèronnière)
Economy of means, a sense of movement even in immobility and constantly changing harmonies (from C major to remote and unlikely tonalities) in the right-hand and the weaving bass over which a broken melody.
Poulenc wrote that Ravel had often spoken to him of this piece with enthusiasm, considering it one of the great moments in Chabrier’s output.
Mauresque (Moorish)
A minor, 3/4; Moderato (dedicated to Madame Charles Phalen)
Written before Chabrier's visit to Spain but colourful and with modal touches, muted effects and plucked notes – a precursor of Debussy
's Soirée dans Grenade. Poulenc compared it to the Forlane from Ravel's Le tombeau de Couperin
.
Idylle (Idyll)
E major, 4/4; Allegretto (dedicated to Jeanne Monvoisin)
‘Allegretto avec fraîcheur et naïveté’ albeit with some artfulness – a song ('bien chantée'), accompanied by a pizzicato
effect ‘un sentiment assez campagnard’. Poulenc wrote that when he heard this piece for the first time in February 1914 he was overwhelmed: “un univers harmonique s’ouvrait soudain devant moi et ma musique n’a jamais oublie ce premier baiser d’amour”. He added that the piece should be played at the metronome marking, without rubato.
Danse villageoise (Village dance)
A minor, 2/4; Allegro risoluto (dedicated Yvonne de Montesquieu)
Danse villageoise, in a more traditional ternary form
, provides a slightly heavy-footed contrast and illustrates the rustic spirit of Chabrier yet with precise polyphony (with some elements of Beethoven
's Piano Sonata No. 25
). The decisive scherzo is in A minor while the hesitating trio in the major.
Improvisation
B flat major, 6/8, 2/4; Andantino – Appassionato e con impeto – molto con impeto – moderato (dedicated to Marguerite Gagne)
‘Fantasque et passionnée’ with the greatest variety of rhythms, the hints of methods which become common in Debussy (e.g. four dotted quavers in a bar of 6/8): the bars become at times ¾ or 2/4. Although entitled an improvisation, it is in fact in a strict sonata form
.
Menuet pompeux (Pompous minuet)
G minor, 3/4; Allegro franco – meno mosso e molto dolce e grazioso (dedicated to Gabrielle Petitdemange)
Menuet pompeux, despite some arresting harmonies, shows Chabrier looking backward rather than forward. If the minuet is more like an Auvergnat dance, the G major trio is a nod to the 18th century.
Scherzo-valse
D major, 9/16, 3/8; Vivo (dedicated to Mina de Gabriac)
A spirited conclusion to the set, although again the trio allows a respite from the energy of the infectious joie de vivre of the main section. Poulenc criticised those who take this piece faster than dotted crotchet = 192 (as Ricardo Viñes
played it).
The titles appear not to be Chabrier's own, but were provided by his publishers.
, conducted by Chabrier himself.
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
by Emmanuel Chabrier
Emmanuel Chabrier
Emmanuel Chabrier was a French Romantic composer and pianist. Although known primarily for two of his orchestral works, España and Joyeuse marche, he left an important corpus of operas , songs, and piano music as well...
. Four of the set were later orchestrated
Orchestration
Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra or of adapting for orchestra music composed for another medium...
by the composer to make his Suite Pastorale.
Background
In 1880, while on a convalescent holiday at the coastal resort of Saint-Pair (near GranvilleGranville, Manche
-Sights:The old town preserves all the history of its military and religious past. The lower town was partly built on land reclaimed from the sea. The upper part of the old town is surrounded by ramparts from the fifteenth century...
), Chabrier composed what were to be called Pièces pittoresques.
Both Alfred Cortot
Alfred Cortot
Alfred Denis Cortot was a Franco-Swiss pianist and conductor. He is one of the most renowned 20th-century classical musicians, especially valued for his poetic insight in Romantic period piano works, particularly those of Chopin and Schumann.-Early life and education:Born in Nyon, Vaud, in the...
(in La musique française de piano, PUF, 1932) and Francis Poulenc
Francis Poulenc
Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc was a French composer and a member of the French group Les six. He composed solo piano music, chamber music, oratorio, choral music, opera, ballet music, and orchestral music...
(Emmanuel Chabrier, 1961) discuss these short works enthusiastically. César Franck
César Franck
César-Auguste-Jean-Guillaume-Hubert Franck was a composer, pianist, organist, and music teacher who worked in Paris during his adult life....
, at their premiere in 1881, remarked that those present had "just heard something exceptional. This music links our own time to that of Couperin
François Couperin
François Couperin was a French Baroque composer, organist and harpsichordist. He was known as Couperin le Grand to distinguish him from other members of the musically talented Couperin family.-Life:Couperin was born in Paris...
and Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau was one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the Baroque era. He replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of French opera and is also considered the leading French composer for the harpsichord of his time, alongside François...
".
The manuscript
Manuscript
A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...
in the archive of Litolff publishers was destroyed by an air-raid on Brunswick
Braunschweig
Braunschweig , is a city of 247,400 people, located in the federal-state of Lower Saxony, Germany. It is located north of the Harz mountains at the farthest navigable point of the Oker river, which connects to the North Sea via the rivers Aller and Weser....
in 1942.
The first performances of individual pieces took place on different dates: 9 April 1881 for Sous-bois, Idylle, Danse villageoise, Improvisation, Menuet pompeux, Scherzo-valse (Marie Poitevin); Mélancolie on 24 December 1887 (Marie-Léontine Bordes-Pène
Marie-Léontine Bordes-Pène
Marie-Léontine Bordes-Pène was notable French pianist, who premiered major works by César Franck, Vincent d'Indy and others....
); others unknown.
Description of the pieces
Paysage (Landscape)D flat major, 2/4; Allegro non troppo – vivo (dedicated to La comtesse de Narbonne-Lara)
For Poulenc
Francis Poulenc
Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc was a French composer and a member of the French group Les six. He composed solo piano music, chamber music, oratorio, choral music, opera, ballet music, and orchestral music...
, Paysage portrayed a landscape where life was to be enjoyed. The middle section is a voluble depiction of agitation calmed by the return of the main theme.
Paysage opens the cycle with a straight perfect cadence to the tonic D flat, downgrading what textbooks would tell us should be reserved for a more conclusive moment. Paysage is riddled with rhythmic and harmonic games, not least the absence throughout of a single clear four-bar phrase; the piece's opening section, all in three-bar phrases, makes two teasing feints a four-bar phrases, both thwarted. Poulenc suggests that the piece should be played with "allegresse et tendresse".
Mélancolie (Melancholy)
G major, 9 & 6/8; Ben moderato senza rigore et sempre tempo rubato (dedicated to Marie Pillon)
About Mélancolie, Cortot was moved to write that its 'nostalgic charm and discreet perfection' defied analysis. Ravel
Maurice Ravel
Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...
saw the soul of Manet
Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet was a French painter. One of the first 19th-century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism....
's Olympia in Mélancolie. The alternating 9/8 and 6/8 bars create an atmosphere of wandering tenderness and uncertainty; the piece closes with a canon at the double octave then in lows fifths.
Mélancolie is a sophisticated blend of textural inversion, canon and rhythmic compression that essentially determines the piece's outer envelope. Poulenc suggests that the piece should be played with "allegresse et tendresse".
Tourbillon (Whirlwind)
D major, 3/4; Allegro con fuoco (dedicated to Marie Meurice)
At first echoing the animated rhythms of Berlioz
Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts . Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a...
's Béatrice et Bénédict
Béatrice et Bénédict
Béatrice et Bénédict is an opera in two acts by Hector Berlioz. Berlioz wrote the French libretto himself, based closely on Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing....
, it evolves into a more complex beat, avoiding the bar-line. Its almost aggressive force is perhaps a reminder of the possibilities of Chabrier's own playing. The final bars juxtapose a Mendelssohnian
Felix Mendelssohn
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...
passage with one ironically in the manner of Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....
.
Sous-bois (Under the trees)
C major, 2/4; Andantino (dedicated to Marie de la Guèronnière)
Economy of means, a sense of movement even in immobility and constantly changing harmonies (from C major to remote and unlikely tonalities) in the right-hand and the weaving bass over which a broken melody.
Poulenc wrote that Ravel had often spoken to him of this piece with enthusiasm, considering it one of the great moments in Chabrier’s output.
Mauresque (Moorish)
A minor, 3/4; Moderato (dedicated to Madame Charles Phalen)
Written before Chabrier's visit to Spain but colourful and with modal touches, muted effects and plucked notes – a precursor of Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...
's Soirée dans Grenade. Poulenc compared it to the Forlane from Ravel's Le tombeau de Couperin
Le Tombeau de Couperin
Le tombeau de Couperin is a suite for solo piano by Maurice Ravel, composed between 1914 and 1917, in six movements. Each movement is dedicated to the memory of friends of the composer who had died fighting in World War I...
.
Idylle (Idyll)
E major, 4/4; Allegretto (dedicated to Jeanne Monvoisin)
‘Allegretto avec fraîcheur et naïveté’ albeit with some artfulness – a song ('bien chantée'), accompanied by a pizzicato
Pizzicato
Pizzicato is a playing technique that involves plucking the strings of a string instrument. The exact technique varies somewhat depending on the type of stringed instrument....
effect ‘un sentiment assez campagnard’. Poulenc wrote that when he heard this piece for the first time in February 1914 he was overwhelmed: “un univers harmonique s’ouvrait soudain devant moi et ma musique n’a jamais oublie ce premier baiser d’amour”. He added that the piece should be played at the metronome marking, without rubato.
Danse villageoise (Village dance)
A minor, 2/4; Allegro risoluto (dedicated Yvonne de Montesquieu)
Danse villageoise, in a more traditional ternary form
Ternary form
Ternary form, sometimes called song form, is a three-part musical form, usually schematicized as A-B-A. The first and third parts are musically identical, or very nearly so, while the second part in some way provides a contrast with them...
, provides a slightly heavy-footed contrast and illustrates the rustic spirit of Chabrier yet with precise polyphony (with some elements of Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
's Piano Sonata No. 25
Piano Sonata No. 25 (Beethoven)
The Piano Sonata No. 25 in G major, Op. 79, was written by Ludwig van Beethoven in 1809. It consists of three movements:#Presto alla tedesca#Andante#Vivace...
). The decisive scherzo is in A minor while the hesitating trio in the major.
Improvisation
B flat major, 6/8, 2/4; Andantino – Appassionato e con impeto – molto con impeto – moderato (dedicated to Marguerite Gagne)
‘Fantasque et passionnée’ with the greatest variety of rhythms, the hints of methods which become common in Debussy (e.g. four dotted quavers in a bar of 6/8): the bars become at times ¾ or 2/4. Although entitled an improvisation, it is in fact in a strict sonata form
Sonata form
Sonata form is a large-scale musical structure used widely since the middle of the 18th century . While it is typically used in the first movement of multi-movement pieces, it is sometimes used in subsequent movements as well—particularly the final movement...
.
Menuet pompeux (Pompous minuet)
G minor, 3/4; Allegro franco – meno mosso e molto dolce e grazioso (dedicated to Gabrielle Petitdemange)
Menuet pompeux, despite some arresting harmonies, shows Chabrier looking backward rather than forward. If the minuet is more like an Auvergnat dance, the G major trio is a nod to the 18th century.
Scherzo-valse
D major, 9/16, 3/8; Vivo (dedicated to Mina de Gabriac)
A spirited conclusion to the set, although again the trio allows a respite from the energy of the infectious joie de vivre of the main section. Poulenc criticised those who take this piece faster than dotted crotchet = 192 (as Ricardo Viñes
Ricardo Viñes
Ricardo Viñes was a Spanish pianist. He first publicly performed many important works by Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, Erik Satie, Manuel de Falla, Déodat de Séverac and Isaac Albéniz. He was also the piano teacher of composer Francis Poulenc and pianist Léo-Pol Morin.He was born in Lleida,...
played it).
The titles appear not to be Chabrier's own, but were provided by his publishers.
Suite Pastorale
Between 1881 and 1888 Chabrier orchestrated Idylle, Danse villageoise, Sous-bois and Scherzo-valse to form the Suite Pastorale. The suite was first performed on 4 November 1888 by the Association artistique d'AngersAngers
Angers is the main city in the Maine-et-Loire department in western France about south-west of Paris. Angers is located in the French region known by its pre-revolutionary, provincial name, Anjou, and its inhabitants are called Angevins....
, conducted by Chabrier himself.