Ex. 12-6: Nell

No. 1 of Fauré's Trois Mélodies (Op. 18), composed in 1878. The poem is by Leconte de Lisle. Leconte de Lisle wrote it in imitation of the Scottish poet Robert Burns; like Burns's "A Red, Red Rose," it opens with a deep-red rose newly out in June. The name Nell comes from Burns too: Nell Kirkpatrick was his teenage first love, the girl behind his first song.

At the end, the singer says the singing sea will fall silent before her face fades from his heart — reworking Burns's promise to love "till all the seas run dry."

The song is in G-flat major, and from the first bar to the last the piano ripples in steady sixteenth-note chords, like a harp. This suggests summer light and the sea; the surface stays calm, but the harmony under it keeps shifting, almost beat by beat.

Fauré dedicated Nell to Mme Camille Saint-Saëns, the wife of his teacher and close friend. For the Saint-Saëns family, 1878 was a year of loss: their two small sons died within weeks of each other.

The same set of Burns-inspired poems gave other composers songs too: Debussy set "Jane," and from another of them wrote his famous piano piece "The Girl with the Flaxen Hair"; Chausson set "Nanny," which is also in this app. (Ex. 9-5: Nanny by Ernest Chausson)

From the album Mélodies by Barbara Hendricks and Michel Dalberto (1989)
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