CDH55040 - Disc 1 Track 8 - Douze Rondels - Hyperion Records

Douze Rondels

composer

Reynaldo Hahn (1874-1947)

Douze Rondels

Like many another composer of conservative leanings, Hahn was fascinated by the past and the strict rules that governed the art of former times. In this set of twelve songs he was able to enter into the spirit of the literary discipline which governs the making of the rondel. This is a thirteen-line poem consisting of two quatrains and one cinquain. There are only two rhymes permitted, and there are three appearances of a fixed refrain: at the beginning, middle and end of the poem. The rhyme scheme is as follows (the capital letters indicate refrains which almost always incorporate the title of the poem itself): A B b a a b A B a b b a A.

The composer had the idea of juxtaposing Banville’s latter-day rondels with three of Charles d’Orléans originals (the second, sixth and eighth songs of the cycle). At the end there is a rondel by Catulle Mendès which, with its reference to singing, may well have been written as a closing item for this cycle at Reynaldo’s request. Hahn’s lavish musical plan included the use of a chorus in the first, sixth and eleventh items; this makes modern-day performance of the work on the concert platform expensive and unlikely. The musical style of the Banville settings is more or less in the ‘modern’ style of the composer’s second Recueil of mélodies (some of the piano parts are as difficult as anything he wrote for the instrument) while in contrast the Charles d’Orléans settings bring out Hahn’s gifts as a pasticheur. There had been a long tradition in the composers of mélodie (Gounod and Fauré were the greatest, but by no means the only examples) of matching early poetry with music in ‘madrigal’ style evocative of earlier times. The use of this time-travelling in film music has rather debased the coin (despite Walton’s splendid music for Olivier’s Henry V) and after hearing ‘early’ music churned out by the yard in costume dramas, listeners no longer regard pastiche as serious composition. It was, however, something on which Reynaldo was increasingly to rely for the visitations of his muse. In any case, at the turn of the century even a giant like Debussy (in his Villon ballads and his own settings of Charles d’Orléans) was not above the use of archaic colour in his songs to suggest the fifteenth-century provenance of the words. Ravel too had an early success with his Pavane pour une infante défunte.

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Details for CDH55040 track 8

L'automne

Artists

Martyn Hill (tenor)

Graham Johnson (piano)

ISRC

GB-AJY-81-04508

Duration

1'20

Recording date

28 December 1981

Recording venue

Art Workers Guild, Queen Square, London, United Kingdom

Recording producer

Andrew Keener

Recording engineer

Antony Howell

Hyperion usage

Hahn: Chansons Grises & other songs (CDA66045)
Disc 1 Track 8
Release date: May 1988
Deletion date: March 2000
Superseded by CDH55040
Hahn: Chansons grises & other songs (CDH55040)
Disc 1 Track 8
Release date: March 2000
Helios (Hyperion's budget label)