Seven - Collaboration and Creative Process

Summary

It is impossible now to know the full extent of Maurice Bagès's repertoire of contemporary French song. Table 7.1 below lists the mélodies that are identified on Société nationale programmes and in newspaper reports of his salon performances (of which over one hundred are documented). However, this must represent just a small fraction of the songs he performed: not all salon concerts were reported, and most newspaper accounts do not give specific work titles (listing simply ‘mélodies de …’ or even just ‘mélodies’). No documentation attests to Bagès performing four of seven songs dedicated to him, for example (see Table 7.2).

There were doubtless hundreds more informal gatherings, chez Duparc, Chausson, Saint-Marceaux, and others, at which Bagès would have performed or read through other mélodies again. His only documented performance of any of Chausson's songs is the SNM concert of 2 February 1889, but in the letter quoted on p. 131 above Paul Poujaud writes of Bagès having sung through a number of others at Chausson's home. ‘I love them all and sing them all’, Bréville recalled Bagès telling Fauré of his songs, on their first meeting. A small collection of Bagès's scores of Fauré's songs, now in the library of the Conservatoire Royale (Brussels), includes a professional hand copy of Spleen (op. 51, no. 3), a song for which no formal première (or any performance by Bagès) is documented, as well as early prints of La rose, Nell, Prison, Soir, Le parfum impérissable, and ‘Chanson’ (Shylock). Several of these show annotations such as breathing indications and some red-pencilled corrections, indicating that they were used for performances now untraced.

The songs dedicated to Bagès, which were likely composed for his voice, suggest that he had great flexibility in his upper register and fluid control across the passaggio (the ‘break’ between chest and head voices). Fauré's La rose, Bréville's 1883 Bouchor settings, Chausson's Sérénade, and Charles Bordes's Chanson show similar vocal demands: a relatively high tessitura, with some lower phrases that demand speech-like clarity to penetrate; and beauty of tone in high, quiet notes. In its first published version, La rose concluded with a decrescendo to piano on a” (see Ex. 7.5a below); the last line of ‘En sourdine’, the second of Fauré's op. 58 ‘Venetian’ songs (which Bagès premiered), features a heart-stopping ascent to what for Bagès would have been a pianissimo top A♭ (Ex. 7.1).