Mélodies sur des Poèmes Francais (Score & critical report)
Description
August De Boeck was one of Belgium's leading composers in the first half of the last century. He became well-known with, among other works, five operas, including Winternachtsdroom (1902), Reinaert de Vos (1907-09) and La Route d'Émeraude (1913-1920). Furthermore he composed a number of brilliant symphonic works, cantatas, religious music, songs and a series of works for various instruments.
In De Boeck's oeuvre his songs to French poems occupy a prominent place. They were written over a period of almost half a century, between 1889 and 1937. In these songs De Boeck succeeds in evoking deep emotions with an infallible melodic intuition and very personal harmonies. With simple means he sometimes achieves sublime results; an example of this is his song L'Église paysanne, which mostly became famous in a Dutch version by Maurits Sabbe. For a number of songs, such as the Cuisinier-songs, the Stances à Marylyse, La dernière lettre or the compelling C'est en toi, bien-aimé, he wrote beautifully detailed piano accompaniments. Yet one can tell that De Boeck was first and foremost an organist. This is evident, for instance, from the way he treats basses (sequences of octaves in Le Passant), or from the use of series of lying chords (in Crépuscule, On s'en allait dans la forêt, etc.). As a pupil of his friend Paul Gilson, De Boeck was above all a masterful orchestrator. Both had personal contacts with Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, who greatly appreciated their orchestral works. The colourful orchestral accompaniments De Boeck made for a number of his songs clearly illustrate this.
In the choice of his poets De Boeck was not always very selective. He was only inspired by well- established poets on a few occasions, such as Alfred de Musset, Pierre Louÿs, François Coppée or Charles Van Lerberghe. The poems by the promising Émile Polak, who died young, were a lucky choice. It is no coincidence that De Boeck has set music to a few poems from Polak's collection Les Sentiers du Silence, singing the praises of the purity and fragility of the children’s world. But mostly it was largely forgotten poets who provided him with the verses. For example, poems written in wartime by women poets who are now completely forgotten (Marie-Jeanne Huysmans and Nicole Raymond Hubert) moved him to write two poignant songs (Frissons de fleurs, Petite église de campagne). But it is above all seven songs to texts by Jeanne Cuisinier that are the high point of his song oeuvre. Around her twentieth birthday, this later world-famous ethnologist wrote a series of poems that reflect a hopeless love. Here, De Boeck's music is highly charged, with a tragic or resigned undertone.
In the early 1930s August De Boeck composed another remarkable short song cycle consisting of six love songs to verses by Georges Verrycken, Stances à Marylyse - à la manière des Tankas. The Japanese tanka is a short lyrical poem, in a certain sense a precursor of the haiku. In fact, they are lamentations set to a simple and pithy tune.
De Boeck was very pragmatic in choosing the persons to whom he dedicated his songs. Often they were prominent vocalists who regularly performed his songs.
Unfortunately August De Boeck was very careless with his manuscripts. In libraries there are worn- out autographs of his songs. Only recently the incomplete autograph of La dernière lettre was discovered, and the authenticity of some copies could only be confirmed thanks to a thesis written in 1952 by musicologist René De Maeyer.
In the meantime, important De Boeck collections, such as those of the Brussels publisher Georges Vriamont, have ended up in different places and can no longer be located. Yet Vriamont was one of De Boeck's most important promoters. Once he showed Maurice Ravel some songs, including Mystère and Pour tes dents de nacre. After he had read them Ravel spontaneously expressed his appreciation with the words: 'C'est aussi beau que du Fauré'.
It is gratifying that after years of research a complete edition has finally been made of this important part of August De Boeck's oeuvre, now more than eighty years after his death.
De Boeck wrote almost fifty French songs, nineteen of which are published here for the first time. The order is chronological; for some songs this was only possible thanks to indirect references.
Often faulty Dutch versions, with the exception of Het Kerksken van te lande (L'Église paysanne), were not taken from the original editions. Two versions of Pour tes dents de nacre were published during De Boeck's lifetime, both are included in this edition. The spelling used in all titles and in the texts of the poems is that of the original editions or of the manuscripts.
Special thanks to Jan Dewilde and Hannah Aelvoet (Centre for the Study of Flemish Music), Simon De Paepe (digitizing the sheet music), Frank Teirlinck (archivist August De Boeck Committee), Peter François (den AST; vzw Servais), Johan Eeckeloo (librarian Royal Conservatory Brussels), Guy A.J. Tops and Marie Steffens (translation of the Walloon poem).