Chabrier, Emmanuel

Emmanuel Chabrier – Suite pastorale for Orchestra (1881-88)

(b. Ambert, Puy-de-Dôme, 18 January 1841 – d. Paris, 13 September 1894)

«The Prelude was about to begin, and silence and darkness reigned in the theater when we heard quite near us what sounded like someone trying to stifle a hiccough … it was Chabrier sobbing … The person sitting next to him turned round to inquire whether he was feeling ill, and our good Chabrier replied, between two sobs: ‘I know it’s stupid, but I can’t help it … I’ve been waiting for ten years of my life for that A on the cellos.»

This celebrated incident from summer 1880, faithfully recorded by Vincent d’Indy, was to mark a turning point in the life of Emmanuel Chabrier. At last, after ten years of anticipation, he had arranged a leave of absence from his bureaucratic job at the French Ministry of the Interior and traveled to Munich to hear a performance of Tristan und Isolde. From that moment on the gifted but uncommitted musician, already nearing forty, resolved to take up the career of a professional composer. In November he tendered his resignation at the ministry and embarked on the most productive years of his remarkable career.

Chabrier’s famous encounter with Tristan has left him with the unjustified reputation of being a French Wagnerian. In fact, as he remarked after leaving the theater, he knew that his path must lead elsewhere: «There’s music there for a hundred years; he hasn’t left us chaps anything to do. Who would dare?» Chabrier dared by turning out music that was quintessentially French – buoyant and allusive, exotic and expertly crafted. He thereby left a deep impression on his fellow composers: Debussy, Lalo, Ravel, Duparc, Dukas – all sensed that a new voice had entered French music and pointed to Chabrier as the first of the moderns.

Revealingly, the first important work that Chabrier composed after his Damascus road experience in Munich – the piano cycle Dix pièces pittoresques (1880) – was as far removed from Wagner as could possibly be. These ten nature studies, memorably described by Chabrier’s biographer Roger Delage as “the musical prolongation of his native Auvergne,” are not less significant for having virtually disappeared from today’s concert platform. To Francis Poulenc, who published a loving memoir of Chabrier in 1961, they marked the beginning of modern French music: “Without hesitation I declare that the Pièces pittoresques are as important for French music as Debussy’s Préludes … Not one of these pieces but shows the mark of complete originality.” Ravel, a lifelong admirer of Chabrier, took the Menuet pompeux (no. 9) as the starting point for his own Menuet antique (1895) and later orchestrated it for a London performance of the Ballets Russes (1919). The music strikes listeners today as completely fresh and non-derivative, although it is hard to pinpoint exactly what marks its novelty. Perhaps Poulenc came closest when describing its innovative harmony: “Even today some people are moved to contest the harmonic relevance of the Pièces pittoresques. I have never believed it possible to demonstrate innovation with a pencil in hand, particularly when the composer is one to whom no rules apply. To say that some piece of music breaks new ground because it uses certain boldly juxtaposed intervals is too little, and too vague, where Chabrier is concerned. His interest lies in the unexpected choice of tonal groupings, and exists much more in the spirit than in the letter.”

Hardly had Dix pièces pittoresques received its première in August 1881 than Chabrier concocted the idea of turning four of its numbers into an orchestral suite. Writing in Novem-ber to his preferred conductor, Charles Lamoureux, he claimed, with a characteristic combination of whimsy and understatement: “I would like to make you listen to four tutus for orchestra, a sort of suite … Having scrutinized them in full face, from the back, and in profile, I believe I have succeeded in convincing myself that they are not much uglier than many others applauded by a bourgeois but multitudinous public.”

As it happened, the new suite was not completed until 1888, when it was premièred at a popular concert of the Association Artistique in Angers on 4 November, conducted by the composer. The pieces Chabrier chose to orchestrate were Idylle (no. 6), Danse villageoise (no. 7), Sous-bois (no. 4), and Scherzo-Valse (no. 10), in that order. Each is remark-able in its own way: Idylle for its throbbing rhythm and subtle harmonies (Poulenc, recalling his initial hearing of this piece in 1914, confessed that “my music has never forgotten that first kiss”), the Danse villageoise for its bumptious non-tonal unison melody and comically irregular phrase lengths, Sous-bois (Ravel’s favorite) for its unusual, hypnotic bass pattern and harmonic side-slips, and Scherzo-Valse for its madcap triplet subdivisions. No less remarkable, however, is Chabrier’s handling of the orchestra, which reveals a delicacy worlds apart from any alleged Wagnerian leanings. Roger Delage was certainly right to call it “an orchestration without precedent, yet not without consequences,” and to stress its impact on the Ravel of Le tombeau de Couperin (1919).

Although thoroughly successful at its première, the Suite pastorale was overshadowed by some of the other Chabrier pieces on the same program (notably the exhilarating España), and its publication had to wait until 1897, when it was posthumously issued by Enoch & Cie. in Paris. Since then it has held a tentative but estimable place in the concert repertoire and has been recorded by such luminaries as Ernest Ansermet, Jean Martinon, Armin Jordan, and John Eliot Gardiner. Surprisingly, Chabrier’s arrangements have spurred others to try their hand at the same game, most notably Jean Françaix, who rescored movements 2 to 4 for ten instruments in 1984, and Guy de Cheyron, who published wind-quintet arrangements of all four movements in 2005. These competing versions repay close study, to which our miniature score, the first to appear in print, will hopefully serve as a useful aid as well as a goad to performance.

Bradford Robinson, 2007

For performance material please contact the publisher Ennoch, Paris. Reprint of a copy from the Musikbibliothek der Münchner Stadtbibliothek, München.

Deutsches Vorwort > HERE