Ex. 7-4: Villanelle

No. 1 from Berlioz's song cycle Les Nuits d'été (Summer Nights, Op. 7), composed around 1840 to six poems by his friend and neighbour Théophile Gautier, from the collection La comédie de la mort (1838). The title "Summer Nights" was Berlioz's invention — it is not clear why he chose it, since this opening song is set in spring.

Originally for voice and piano (published 1841), the piano version was dedicated to the composer Louise Bertin. Berlioz orchestrated the fourth song in 1843 for the singer Marie Recio, who later became his second wife. The publisher Rieter-Biedermann, impressed by the premiere, urged Berlioz to orchestrate the rest, which he completed in 1856. This was one of the first orchestral song cycles — a form that had few successors until Mahler.

Despite the title, this song celebrates spring: a couple picking lily of the valley, listening to blackbirds, whispering "forever" on a mossy bench, and returning home with baskets of wild strawberries.

Berlioz wrote the cycle around 1840, while his marriage to the actress Harriet Smithson was falling apart and he was drawn to the singer Marie Recio. Strangely, although he usually wrote about his music at length, he said almost nothing about Les Nuits d'été in his memoirs or letters.

When he orchestrated all six songs in 1856, Berlioz wrote each one for a different type of voice and dedicated each to a different singer — so one singer performing the whole cycle is not quite what he prescribed. The orchestral Villanelle is dedicated to the singer Louise Wolf. Another song from the cycle is also in this app. (Ex. 13-4: Absence by Hector Berlioz)

From the album Berlioz: Les Nuits d'été by Véronique Gens with Louis Langrée and the Lyon National Opera Orchestra (2000)
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