Ex. 2-8: Lydia

From Fauré's "Deux mélodies" (Op. 4), composed around 1870. The poem by Leconte de Lisle, from "Poèmes antiques" (1852), is a sensuous ode to a woman named Lydia. This was the first of several Leconte de Lisle poems Fauré would set to music.

The title is a musical pun: the Lydian mode — an ancient scale with a raised fourth degree — appears in the melody, evoking the classical antiquity of the poem's subject. The closing line, "let me die forever," uses the traditional literary metaphor of death as ecstasy.

Track 4 from the album Nuit d'étoiles - Mélodies françaises by Véronique Gens and Roger Vignoles (2000)
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