Ex. 12-8: Green

No. 3 of Fauré's Cinq mélodies "de Venise" (Op. 58), composed in 1891. The poem is by Paul Verlaine. In it, a lover brings fruits, flowers, leaves and branches, still wet with the morning dew, and lays them — with his heart — before the one he loves. The title "Green" is Verlaine's own — he gave this poem an English name, one of a group in Romances sans paroles that he titled in English, from a period he spent in England.

Fauré began the set in Venice in 1891, as the guest of Winnaretta Singer, whose family made the Singer sewing machines — later Princesse de Polignac. He dedicated the whole set to her. She set aside a quiet room with a piano for him, but Fauré loved cafés: he did his writing at a marble table at the Café Florian, out in the crowd on St. Mark's Square.

The set is nicknamed "de Venise" only because he started it there. The poems have nothing to do with Venice, and Fauré finished most of them, including Green, after returning to Paris.

Debussy set the same Verlaine poem as No. 5 of his Ariettes oubliées. (Ex. 14-10: Green by Claude Debussy) Both composers set many of Verlaine's poems, though each was critical of the other's music. Two other songs from Op. 58 are also in this app. (Ex. 3-12: Mandoline by Gabriel Fauré, Ex. 6-11: En sourdine by Gabriel Fauré)

Fauré loved Verlaine's poetry, and when the poet died in 1896, Fauré played the organ at his funeral, at the church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont in Paris.

Op. 58 was Fauré's first step toward a song cycle: its last song brings back themes from the earlier ones, tying the set together. A few years later he took the idea further in La bonne chanson (Op. 61), another set of Verlaine poems.

From the album My Garden: Songs for Soprano & Piano by Felicity Lott and Graham Johnson (1997)
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