Sprinkled throughout the catalogue of Florent Schmitt’s compositions are a goodly number of shorter orchestral pieces. They range in their moods from contemplative to joyous to stormy.
One of these orchestral miniatures that I find particularly compelling is Rêves, Op. 65 (Dreams), a work that Schmitt began composing in 1913. He prepared a piano version of the score in that year, and the orchestration was completed two years later.
The composer had just finished putting the final touches on the score when he was called up for World War I military service. It was a period of time in Schmitt’s life that he would later characterize, in a letter to fellow composer Igor Stravinsky, as “two less-than-amusing years of militarism.”
Rêves is a short work, lasting under ten minutes in duration. But despite its brevity, it is a concentrated, intense piece even in its quiet moments.
The Symbolist poet Léon-Paul Fargue (left), pictured with Maurice Ravel (near left) and other members of “Les Apaches.”
Indeed, the reveries in this music are not “sweet dreams” at all. Rather, it’s more like a fitful, hallucinatory experience for the listener.
It helps for understanding to know that Schmitt took a poem written by the French symbolist poet Léon-Paul Fargue (1876-1947) as inspiration for this work.
Fargue was a fellow member of Les Apaches, a group of Parisian musicians, artists and writers that was a precursor to Les Six. Fargue’s verses would serve as inspiration for other Schmitt compositions as well, such as the “Solitude” movement from the composer’s piano suite Crépuscules.
Fargue’s words that head the music score translate into English roughly as follows:
“Watch our days and our dreams passing;
Old accomplices show them to us, as we look at these pictures.
They distinguish the nocturnal screen;
They come forward with the suspended steps of those who love us, when mystery chimes on the threshold of feverish nights.”
I think the essayist and music critic Benoît Duteurtre puts it rather well when he describes how the music in Rêves unfolds “like a free commentary.”
Schmitt scored the work for his customary large orchestra, including full winds and brass, an entire battery of percussion instruments, plus celesta and two harps.
As in a feverish dream, the music swells and abates in successive waves — and is often quiet rather than loud. The writing is dense in texture — and very rich in its changing sound colors.
In its near-suffocating mood and intensity, I find that Rêves shares similarities with Schmitt’s very next opus number, the Légende, Op. 66 for saxophone (or viola) and orchestra. That work was completed in 1919, and if you compare the two pieces of music, I think you’ll hear same kind of intense, unsettled atmospherics.
Is it possible that World War I, and Schmitt’s experiences in it, informed the nature of these two works? There are no explicit indications to that effect. Moreover, Rêves was completed before Schmitt’s military service started (although the war had been going for some months by then). And the Légende would not be composed until after the end of the war.
Still, it’s hard not to think that wartime circumstances contributed in some manner to the general flavor of both compositions. Certainly, any “resolution” that we may hear at the end of either piece doesn’t come across as anything particularly definitive or cathartic.
Rêves received its first performance in November 1918 in Paris, in a combined Lamoureux/Colonne Orchestra concert under the direction of Camille Chevillard. But the first recording of the piece wouldn’t come along until nearly 70 years later.
First recording: Leif Segerstam and the Rhineland-Pfalz State Philharmonic (1987).
To my knowledge, there have been just two commercial recordings ever released of Rêves. The first one, made in 1987 by Leif Segerstam and Rheinland-Pfalz State Philharmonic Orchestra, originally appeared on Cybelia, a short-lived French record label with only limited distribution in the United States.
That performance was later reissued by NAXOS/Marco Polo, and it remains available today.
Second recording: David Robertson and the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic (1993).
The second recording was made in 1993 by David Robertson and L’Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo, and was released on the Valois label.
Compared to the Segerstam interpretation, Robertson’s is a more broadly expansive reading — adding a full minute to the recording time.
I find that both interpretations serve the music quite well, even if my own personal preference goes to the slightly more taut Segerstam approach.
You can hear the Segerstam recording for yourself, as that one has been uploaded to YouTube.
Give it a listen. See if you don’t agree that Schmitt has conjured up a highly effective hallucinatory dream-sequence — one that contains a healthy dose of ominous foreboding to go along with the magical atmosphere.
