Ex. 11-9: L'Heure exquise

No. 5 from Hahn's Chansons grises (Grey Songs), his first important song cycle, composed between 1891 and 1892. Published in 1893 when Hahn was only 19. The cycle sets seven poems by Verlaine drawn from four different collections.

The poem is Verlaine's "La lune blanche" (The White Moon), from La bonne chanson. It paints a moonlit evening of perfect calm between two lovers, and the song's title, "L'heure exquise" (the exquisite hour), comes from its closing words. The title Chansons grises ("Grey Songs") comes from a line in Verlaine praising the "grey song," where the vague and the precise blend together.

In 1893, at a gathering at the home of the writer Alphonse Daudet, the soprano Sybil Sanderson sang songs from the Chansons grises. Verlaine, by then old and in poor health, was there, and Hahn's music moved him to tears — though he was reportedly unmoved by Fauré's settings of the same poems. The poet Stéphane Mallarmé, also present, wrote a few lines of verse in Hahn's honor.

Hahn wrote these songs while still a student at the Paris Conservatoire, where his fellow pupils included Maurice Ravel and the pianist Alfred Cortot.

It was while performing the Chansons grises at Mme Lemaire's salon in the spring of 1894 that Hahn met Marcel Proust, who was among the guests. The two became lovers, and stayed close friends for the rest of Proust's life; Proust later drew on Hahn's world in his novel In Search of Lost Time.

From the album Douce France by Anne Sofie von Otter and Bengt Forsberg (2013)
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