L'art de la flûte française

Prélude

Some albums entail more than meets the ear.¹ In the Age of Ravel and In the Age of Debussy surround representative works of Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) and Claude Debussy (1862–1918) with contextualizing selections from contemporaries. Compellingly rendered by Ransom Wilson and François Dumont, these discs document six decades of innovation. They also illuminate intriguing connections as well as fascinating contrasts among familiar and unfamiliar works. And each celebrates the art of the French flute. But there's more.

These releases demonstrate that certain violin works from the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth can expand the flute's repertoire.² Their performances also illustrate shared values and principles – the Symbolist aesthetic – which inspired many French composers during the half century surrounding the Franco-Prussian and Great Wars.³ Indeed, poetry's influence is evident.⁴ Hints of recitation even arise.⁵ And singing qualities emerge.⁶ But there's still more.

The music on In the Age of Ravel and In the Age of Debussy elicits imaginative responses from receptive listeners.⁷ More specifically, these compositions stimulate cognitive contribution. How? Art historians and a neuroscientist offer insight.

In the mid-twentieth century, art historian Ernst Gombrich (1909–2001) often discussed what he called ‘the beholder's share’ – contributions made by a viewer to the experience of a painting.⁸ For example, during his A.W. Mellon Lectures in 1956, Gombrich declared:

There is an increasing awareness of the fact that what we enjoy is not so much seeing these works from a distance as the very act of stepping back, as it were, and watching our imagination come into play, transforming the medley of color into a finished image … The willing beholder responds to the artist's suggestion because he enjoys the transformation that occurs in front of his eyes. It was in this enjoyment that a new function of art emerged gradually, and all but unnoticed during the period we have discussed. The artist gives the beholder increasingly ‘more to do’, he draws him into the magic circle of creation and allows him to experience something of the thrill of ‘making’ which had once been the privilege of the artist. It is the turning point which leads to those visual conundrums of twentieth-century art that challenge our ingenuity and make us search our own minds for the unexpressed and inarticulate.⁹

More recently, neuroscientist Eric R. Kandel identified the source of the ‘beholder's share’ idea within the work of art historian Alois Riegl (1858–1905):

In studying the group paintings of seventeenth-century Holland, such as Frans Hal's A Banquet of the Officers of the St. George Militia Company and Dirck Jacobsz's Civic Guards (Figs. 8–14 and 11–2), Riegl discovered a new psychological aspect of art: namely that art is incomplete without the perceptual and emotional involvement of the viewer. Not only does the viewer collaborate with the artist in transforming a two-dimensional likeness on a canvas into a three-dimensional depiction of the visual world, the viewer interprets what he or she sees on the canvas in personal terms, thereby adding meaning to the picture. Riegl called this phenomenon the ‘beholder's involvement’ (Gombrich later elaborated on it and referred to it as ‘the beholder's share’). This conception – that art is not art without the direct involvement of the viewer – was elaborated upon by the next generation of Viennese art historians, Ernst Kris and Ernst Gombrich.¹⁰

Accordingly, cognitive contributions evoked by an artistic experience may be subliminal and spontaneous, or they may be conscious and controlled. Some responses are retrospective, others prospective. Predisposition, preparation and practice play roles. For Riegl, Gombrich and Kandel, rewarding encounters with significant art are not passive and receptive, but active and productive.

If an evocative painting induces ‘a beholder's share’ from an engaged viewer, then surely an expressive composition inspires a ‘listener's share’ from an engaged auditor. The works on In the Age of Ravel and In the Age of Debussy, influenced by the Symbolist aesthetic and animated by allusion and nuance, offer telling evidence. Cognitive contributions to aural art like this may involve images, but they are not restricted to the visual domain. Indeed, the suggestions and implications of Symbolist music may evoke many kinds of responses, all quite personal, which are dependent upon prior experience, awareness of context and one's own creative imagination.

This review essay surveys how the music on these compact discs may elicit creative cognitive contributions from engaged listeners today. It also addresses how – and how well – the performers’ interpretations enable and enhance that interactive process. Departing from what's usually found in the CD Reviews section of Nineteenth-Century Music Review, the present contribution is more exploratory and hermeneutic, responding to the recordings with illuminative context, structural analysis and personal reflection. In turn, notions of advocacy, influence and intertextuality distinguish several of the compositions’ discussions. The sequence of these scrutinies, which departs from album orderings, emphasizes significant relationships.¹¹

In the Age of Ravel

Ravel's Vocalise-étude en forme de habanera (1907) opens its disc, and it could not be better placed. Marked ‘Presque lent et avec indolence’, the work alludes to other media, intimates an earlier era, hints of a distant place, suggests a sensuous scene and implies physical motion – all within about three minutes. If a listener perceives any of these, such responses represent cognitive contributions to the composition's experience. Through its audition at the CD's start, contribution becomes a premise, reaction and habit as listening continues.

Commissioned in 1907 by A.L. Hettich, singing professor at the Conservatoire, Ravel's Vocalise-étude joined contributions by Gabriel Fauré, Paul Dukas and Vincent d'Indy, plus many others, within what became a large series of pedagogical volumes.¹² It became a popular instrumental solo, as well as a singer's étude, soon after its publication.¹³ Wilson's phrasing shapes the seemingly improvisatory gestures within Ravel's carefully crafted lines with warmth, sensitivity and energy characteristic of a chanting voice. Simultaneously, Dumont's discriminating touch imparts guitar-like timbres through the accompaniment's octave ostinatos, plus flashes of colour in its parallel chords and occasional strums. Yet the smooth flow of a violin bow also sometimes seems suggested by the flute's neighbour-note motives, and its rasp may be sensed during repeated-note figures, where Wilson's breath adds an envelope of friction. Similarly, occasional bell-like sounds from Dumont's piano offer resonant contrasts as they provide harmonic ambience. Allusions abound, stimulating association and speculation, both conscious and intuitive. Appropriately applied interpretive nuances personalize the rendition.

Of course, Ravel's early twentieth-century piece also evokes the nineteenth-century Cuban dance, associated with the then-recently ended Spanish colonial period that's signalled by its title. Multilocational and multitemporal, this music prompts listeners, wherever situated, to imagine the Caribbean island, perhaps in humid twilight sometime in the past, and prompts them to perceive sensations of physical movement within a social scene. Symbolist poetry often sought to suggest distant temporal and locational contexts like this, and here, Ravel offers a stimulating musical analogue. Beyond all of that, the Vocalise-étude may motivate other kinds of recollection and connection, perhaps reminding of Ravel's contemporaneous Rapsodie espagnole (1907) – whose third movement is a ‘Habanera’ – or of passages in Ravel's opera l'Heure espagnole (1911), and maybe even ‘L'amour est un oiseau rebelle’, famously sung by the title character in Georges Bizet's Carmen (1875). But that's not all, for this music also enthrals via two kinds of allusions within its tonal structure.

Ravel's Vocalise-étude prolongs the dominant of G for over half its length, simultaneously conveying a range of modal suggestions, including Phrygian and Dorian, as well as G minor, as it elicits expectation, builds tension and simulates momentum toward resolution.¹⁴ Meanwhile, a rising registral ceiling in the flute part climbs from F5 in bar 7, to G5 in bar 18, and on to A5 in bar 19, hinting that the ascent may continue upward after the dominant finally resolves to tonic in bar 39.¹⁵ Yet that last rise never arrives, and the striking G♭5 (enharmonic to F#5) of bar 48 enables the repeated G5 in bars 54–56 to provide contextual closure. Wilson and Dumont deftly manipulate the work's engaging process, drawing anticipation out of thin air. A listener's tonal and registral expectations regarding this registral ascent, intuitively perceived and complemented by those associated with the corresponding precursive prolongation, represent cognitive contributions to the composition's experience.

Gabriel Pierné's Canzonetta, Op. 19 (1888), an Andantino moderato (♩.= 60) originally scored for clarinet and piano, sounds a P5th higher here in B-flat major, as Roger Nichols relates in his helpful liner notes for In the Age of Ravel (p. 4).¹⁶ Pierné's title may represent a strategic distraction, perhaps intended to prompt recollection of the light-hearted, Renaissance-era vocal genre, or Joseph Haydn's late-career, English-language songs that use the term Canzonetta as a subtitle, or even the melancholic middle movement of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto, Op. 35 (1878), which bears the same name.¹⁷ Yet for many of us, audition of Pierné's Canzonetta prompts perception not of song, but of dance.¹⁸ Once underway (and past the title's distractive ploy!), it clearly seems a fine fit for Wilson's flute, whose timbrally distinctive registers and effortless agility accentuate timbral contrasts and expansive flourishes to portray graceful and playful physical motion suggestive of ballet. The Canzonetta falls into four-bar units – save for the five-bar span that introduces a contrastive piu lento section, and the elision that enables the reprise to surprise by entering a bar ‘early’, plus the ending extension that provides satisfactory closure through agogic stress. Through this readily perceived hypermetric structure, the Canzonetta's stimulates vicarious sensations of lithe human movement without depicting specific images. Listeners contribute to their experiences personally and privately as their imaginations allow.

At over 21 minutes, Gabriel Pierné's Sonate pour Piano et Violon, Op. 36 (1900), represents a third of In the Age of Ravel, and it poses unyielding yet rewarding challenges for listeners as well as performers.¹⁹ Its three movements, Allegretto, Allegretto tranquillo and Andante non troppo – Allegro un poco agitato, might recall the violin sonata (1886) of Pierné's maître, César Franck, via their chromaticism and cyclicism. However, the aesthetic of Pierné's sonata is not Romantic, but Symbolist, which makes his Op. 36 a product of the Modern Age.

For instance, the initial Allegretto projects temporal fluidity through polymetre (e.g., 6/8 and 2/4 over 10/16, as well as 2/4 over 6/8), changing metres (e.g., 2/4 followed by 3/4 followed 10/16), varying phrase lengths, shifting tempi, polyrhythms (e.g., septuplets and octuplets in 10/16), hemiola, syncopation and layered phasing effects, that frustrates finding a steady pulse and suggests a state of transcendence. Similarly, its sonata design, which begins in D minor and has a second theme and tonal area conventionally set in F, confronts experienced auditors’ expectations regarding the traditional design via concentrated and continuous motivic superimposition that enhances structural unity while attenuating thematic contrast. This encourages analytical and predictive activity whose cumulative effect is heightened tension. The opening Allegretto sustains its interpretive challenge through an unexpectedly calmer and texturally clearer passage within the exposition that communicates interiority, as well as temporal transcendence. Another, even more extended lyrical span arises within the development, whose relaxation is appreciated yet whose meaning is not immediately clear. Even the recapitulation, which begins ‘low’ in D-flat major before slipping up into closural D major, sustains a subliminal sensation of momentum by sustaining anticipation. Obviously, that's a lot for the artists to manage, and at times, greater metric clarity and thematic projection would have been desirable. But this recording will whet interest for live performance, where spatial separation and dynamic differentiation enable fuller appreciation of the movement's contrapuntal interactivity – its dynamic musical dialogue.

The following Allegretto tranquillo simulates a mélodie en duo for flute and piano, subtly shaped by poetic delivery and influenced by vocal lyricism … albeit with an enormous range and impossibly long tones! Pierné's meticulously notated articulation, which includes brief legato gestures as well as detached notes, plus slurred staccato, tenuto and upper-neighbour graces, is enhanced by Wilson's own shadings, stresses and vibrato, plus Dumont's equally sensitive interpretation, to communicate what strikes as poetically phrased verbal exchanges unfolding within a state of reverie. A gentle respite between more dynamic and closely related companion movements, the Andante tranquillo functions as an extended parenthesis within a broad and continuing narrative that promotes an imaginative response.

Its successor, the Andante non troppo – Allegro un poco agitato, concludes the ongoing drama, returning motivic elements and thematic statements in a quickly complex cyclic collage initiated by an arresting introduction marked ‘come recitativo largamente’. Yet the movement's determinedly non-Romantic climax eventually occurs through simplification rather than struggle – achieved, it would seem, via the contents and recalled effects of the earlier unexpectedly calmer spans in the sonata. Signalled by eight rising trilled tones supported by a slowly clarified dominant harmony, the movement's dénouement is convincing because of the coordination and commitment of its performers. Admirably advocative, this ardent performance of Pierné's sonata stands out on In the Age of Ravel most memorably.

Wilson and Dumont's rendition of Maurice Ravel's Mouvement de sonate (1897), an Allegro variously also known as the composer's ‘Sonate n°1 pour violon et piano’ and ‘Sonate Posthume’, may be the first globally distributed flute recording of this early work.²⁰ Composed around the time Ravel joined Gabriel Fauré's composition class at the Conservatoire, and before his attempts to win the Prix de Rome (1900–1905), the Mouvement holds hints of the modal suggestions, harmonic oscillations, timbral contrasts, textural layering and conversational exchanges that would come to be associated with his mature style. It also projects determined complexity, initially exemplified by the nine metre signatures of the opening nine bars, which dare us to relax!²¹ At times its dramatic argument might be challenging to follow, but this presentation – which represents more artistic advocacy – demonstrates that flutists can be effective champions of this youthful essay too.

Unassuming intimacy distinguishes Fauré's Berceuse, Op. 16 (N 50; 1879), an Allegretto moderato originally for violin and piano and set in D major, but performed here in F.²² For many young flutists, this ‘lullaby’ is their ‘first Fauré’ – appealing and accessible music without daunting digital demands.²³ Yet Ransom Wilson goes beyond a mere reading to imbue this interpretation with emulable detail as well as sincere expression. For instance, while its compound duple ‘rocking’ rhythm certainly contributes to impressions of forward flow, so do its transient tonicizations of A minor and C major, as well as its even more fleeting allusions to G minor, B-flat major and D minor, all of which allude to tonic's eventual return.²⁴ Wilson and Dumont distinguish the different tonal moves, subtly manipulating the expectations they elicit to produce subliminal anticipation perceptible as forward momentum.²⁵ This is particularly apparent near the beginning, where three 4-bar phrases lead to a 9-bar span that tonicizes the dominant, followed by two 4-bar phrases that precede a 10-bar Fauréan ‘long line’²⁶ linked to an 8-bar span that tonicizes the relative major. Special attention is paid to the articulation, shaping and shading of the melody's internal gestures, accomplished within the context of a determinedly steady tempo, which is essential to realizing rhythmic subtleties within the composer's lyrical strands. All contribute to an expectation-eliciting contextual process within which a rising registral ceiling ultimately reaches a satisfying sustained D6 at the end of the piece in bars 108–111, coordinated with cadential confirmation of tonic.

Pedagogical purpose also appears to have influenced the interpretation of Fauré's Fantaisie pour flûte et piano, Op. 79 (N 141) on this disc. Commissioned by Paul Taffanel as the set piece for the 1898 flute concours at the Conservatoire, which was won that year by Gaston Blanquart, the Fantaisie consists of a brisk Andantino fused to a scherzo-like Allegro.²⁷ Wilson and Dumont eschew Romantic rubato and superimposed sentimentality in the former to project rhythmic nuances and timbral differences, and they pursue a light and graceful delineation in the latter to express effervescent energy. Yes, the last half might have been faster, but aspiring students need the detail and definition that this recording provides.

Jouers de flûte, Op. 27 (1925), by Albert Roussel (1869–1937), honours four figures associated with pipe- and flute-playing. Its constituents – which represent ‘Pan’, the Greek god of nature, ‘Tityre’, a shepherd mentioned in Virgil's Eclogues, ‘Krishna’, the Hindu god, and ‘Monsieur de la Péjaudie’, a character in Henri de Régnier's novel ‘La Pecheresse’ (1920) – were dedicated to four flutists well known to Parisian audiences – Marcel Moyse, Gaston Blanquart, Louis Fleury and Philippe Gaubert.²⁸ If one accepts the notion of a ‘listener's share’, Roussel surely gives auditors ‘a lot to do’ in perceiving the eponymous figures within these pieces while discerning embedded evidence of their dedicatees. Ransom Wilson's conscientious intonation helps, as does his projection of timbral gradations. Likewise, his close coordination with François Dumont assures that frequent changes in metre, tempo, dynamics, articulation and texture contribute to the images within these pieces.

That same attention to ensemble also serves Roussel's purposes in the duo's interpretation of his Andante et Scherzo (1934), which is dedicated to flutist Georges Barrère. Although not commissioned for the annual flute concours at the Conservatoire, Roussel's work features the slow/fast/fused format that would characterize many set pieces like Fauré's Fantaisie. While some listeners will be drawn to the introspective lyricism of the first half and the nervous energy of the second, others will be attracted to its technical demands and moved to imagine how the music might have been conceived to illuminate a performer's prowess. We perceive what we will within such suggestive structures, contributing to their experiences.

In the Age of Debussy

For many readers of this journal, the most familiar composition on In the Age of Debussy may prove the most provocative. Surely it demonstrates the premise and power of what I have called the ‘listener's share’. Claude Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (1894), a musical response to Stéphane Mallarmé's Symbolist poem, L'après-midi d'un faune (1865, rev. 1875–77), begins with what must be the most famous flute melody of the nineteenth century. Returning in increasingly elaborate variations within a complex configuration whose structural multiplicity derives from diverse factors, including texture, rhythm, centricity, spatiality and silence, the familiar opening theme's contour, chromaticism, durations and timbral sweep transfix auditors.²⁹ While the composition was inappropriately associated with the visual art movement of Impressionism³⁰ – an attribution rejected by the composer³¹ – Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune exemplifies Modernism and the Symbolist aesthetic.³²

However, most readers of this journal know the Prélude so well that any arrangement is apt to invoke memories of the symphonic original.³³ Elicited recollections, in turn, cue critical comparison and cognitive contribution. During audition of this disc's track, listeners might be prompted to imagine – intuitively or intentionally – the original's instrumentation and timbral spectra, the range and types of orchestral textures, the strands and masses of sound, plus tiny details – like the delicate crotale strokes that signal closure – as well as some of the spatial nature of Debussy's masterwork perceived when heard in a concert hall. Yet here, with the flute assigned most of the foreground lines, and the piano primarily allotted middleground and background components, our focus is apt to tighten, shifting to counterpoint, rhythm and the play of expectation. And within this context, the variational nature of the Prélude comes through particularly well, thanks to Wilson's attention to detail and discreet adjustments during thematic returns. So do the unifying roles of middleground melodies and background motives, ably projected by Dumont. But for some of us, the Prélude's climactic passage (bars 63–73) may seem to lack its anticipated dramatic impact. Whether attributable to the arrangement, or the mixing process, or even the tempo, we're reminded that this recording offers an opportunity to complete the intertextual experience however we wish, as well as hear Debussy's essay anew. And surely it belongs on In the Age of Debussy to prompt such contribution.

Intertextuality appears via the increasingly audible echoes of the Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune that resound within La plainte, au loin, du faune … by Paul Dukas.³⁴ Originally published in 1920 as a piano solo within a memorial issue of La Revue musicale dedicated to Debussy, the flute-featuring arrangement heard here encourages recollection of the earlier work through the melodic projection and timbral associations afforded by Wilson's instrument.³⁵ Long-sustained tones, descending chromatic steps, initially vague references to gestures and rhythms from the Prélude that seem to become more like those we remember, plus familiar fluctuations in dynamics and tempo – all of which increase in frequency and urgency – motivate us to focus on details, make connections and recognize motivic evolution. Composed a quarter century after Debussy's Prélude, Dukas’ La plainte, au loin, du faune … captures a poignant mixture of nostalgia, despair and gratitude – at least readily apparent to this listener, as it must have been to the Parisian listening community of its day – even as it shows how far French music had come after the Great War.

The six short pieces of ‘Bilitis’ pour flute proceed from Claude Debussy's Six Epigraphes antiques (1915) for two pianos.³⁶ The latter, in turn, relate to the Musique de scène pour Les Chansons de Bilitis (1901) – incidental music for a set of tableaux vivants – and the even earlier Chansons de Bilitis (1898) song cycle.³⁷ All six, which bear evocative titles, express intertextual relationships with those predecessors as well as with the poetry (1894) of Pierre Louÿs and its complicated literary backstory.³⁸ However, dwelling on those connections may be less rewarding at first than just responding to the rich sonority of these pieces, which unfold via two to four pages of score.

For instance, the modal fabric of ‘Pour invoquer Pan, dieu du vent d'été’, which is set in the signature of one flat and lacks chromaticism, features a pentatonic theme that nostalgically evokes a pastoral past, even as it embodies early twentieth century touches and values. Multitemporality, a common pursuit of Symbolist poetry, dominates here, with Wilson's gentle, fluid and nuanced flute part rendering retrospectivism, while Dumont's piano part, often quite spare and yet at times orchestral in conception, providing progressivism. In striking yet complementary contrast, ‘Pour un tombeau sans nom’ pursues intense and imaginative melodic development of the tritone interval within a sonorous context that exploits the lower half of the piano keyboard and seems to have been conceived for the distinctive registral differentiation characteristic of the straight-strung Érard pianos of Debussy's day. Its effect seems both timeless and transcendent, qualities also dear to Symbolist poets. ‘Pour que la nuit soit propice’ communicates energy, colour and freedom. Its Lydian theme, differentiated articulation, stepwise grace ornamentation and anacrustic gestures keep listeners riveted in the present moment, experiencing anticipation within a nocturnal context. The fourth piece, ‘Pour la danseuse aux crotales’, which is set in triple metre, conveys physicality and spatiality more so than visuality, through sensitive interpretation of Debussy's rhythm, articulation, dynamics and dynamics. One perceives cultivated gestures, steps, momentum and distances. ‘Pour l'Égyptienne’, also in triple metre, features stratified textures, long-sustained basses, syncopated pedal tones, plus sustained and planed harmonies featuring fourths and fifths, supportive of a wide-ranging, mostly modal melody marked librement expressif. Unified by a comprehensive rising registral ceiling (C6→D♭6→E♭6→F6→G♭6), the composition fascinates via its chant-influenced melody. Finally, ‘Pour remercier la pluie au matin’ proves surprisingly short, offering closure via a brief reprise of material from the opening movement.

Lili Boulanger (1893–1918), Prix de Rome prize-winner in 1913 and younger sister of Nadia Boulanger, composed her spirited D'un matin de printemps (1917) for violin and piano. Even so, the published score already included an alternative flute part. Soon arranged for string trio (1917), and then orchestrated during what would become her final year, the essay actually seems ideally suited to the incarnation heard here, as if originally inspired by the flute. Structured as a five-part rondo plus coda, its refrains feature two distinctive gestures – an anxious oscillation within a fourth, plus an upward-darting octave-span – supported by repetitive piano clusters, which animate the modal fabrics of the reprises. While the work's vitality transfixes listeners moment-to-moment, an unfolding contextual process involving non-adjacent upper-register pitches guides the dramatic flow. A gradual rise from E6 (bar 6) to F6 (bar 15) to F#6 (bar 20) in the opening bars later pushes up to G6 (bar 87) but skips A♭6 and A6 before stalling at B♭6 (bar 89). A seemingly more determined upward rise occurs later, starting lower at C#6 (bar 170) and ascending to D6 (bar 174), to E6 (bar 176), to F#6 (bar 178), to G6 (bar 180), before pushing up through A6 (bar 181) on up to B♮6 (bar 182), just prior to the climactic section of the work (bars 183–198, marked ff brilliant) and the coda (bars 199–214). This listener's contributions to his artistic experience? Anticipation, prediction and exhilaration!

The Rêverie et Petite Valse (1897) of André Caplet (1878–1925), conceived for flute with piano and dedicated to Georges Barrère, were written before their composer won the Prix de Rome in 1901, and before he became a friend and professional associate of Debussy. One might be tempted to listen for echoes of Debussy's Rêverie and Valse romantique, piano pieces from 1890, or perhaps for resonances from the Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune. However, what's within these two ternary works reminds more of Fauré and Ravel, and surely reflects the freedom found during the fin-de siècle through the then-still-spreading Symbolist aesthetic. In the former, poetically shaped conversation, full of nuanced individuation and intimate exchanges, surely impresses most, while in the latter, witty repartée, full of graceful gestures as well as extravagant surprises, certainly delights and rewards. For me, Caplet's pieces, both so very ‘verbal’, along with Boulanger's energetic D'un matin de printemps, have proven to be the most fascinating ‘finds’ on In the Age of Debussy.

A tradition of flutists performing Gabriel Fauré's four-movement Première Sonate pour violon et piano en la majeur, Op. 13 (N 44; 1876) arose and flourished during the past four decades.³⁹ Paula Robison and Ruth Laredo's interpretation of Fauré's sonata, recorded in 1985 and released on compact disc in 1992, appears to have been the first featuring a flutist.⁴⁰ Robert Stallman's flute edition of Fauré's Op. 13 offered timely encouragement and enabled practical access.⁴¹ New recordings of the sonata followed, increasing in recent years.⁴² In the Age of Debussy sustains, reinvigorates and renews this advocative tradition.⁴³

The forms within Fauré's composition – sonata-allegro, rondo, compound ternary and rondo again – along with the work's publication date – 1876 – might lead some of us to regard it as conservative, even reactionary.⁴⁴ But its interpretation of those designs, plus the sonata's embodiment of the Symbolist aesthetic, as well as its elegant yet inconspicuous manner of eliciting ‘the listener's share’, made the music progressive in its day. Ransom Wilson and François Dumont recognized this and skilfully exploited the sonata's inherent allusions and incorporated expressive nuances to make it captivating.

For instance, Fauré attenuates rhythmic, dynamic and registral contrasts between the first, second and closing themes in the opening Allegro molto to enhance continuity and flow. Nevertheless, Wilson and Dumont have individuated the three themes’ internal motivic and gestural components, encouraging us to lean in and appreciate subtleties – the vocality of their articulation. Indeed, purely musical conversation characterizes much of Fauré's sonata, and here, its interactivity engrosses – we listen for echoed shaping and shading in responsive gestures. The Allegro molto's recapitulation is not an exact repeat, and care has been taken to project its changes, prompting our intuitive comparison with what's been retained in memory. Perhaps most remarkably, Fauré's voice-leading fabric systematically delays satisfactory cadential confirmation of the movement's structural tonic until bar 356 – 8.03 into this 9.01 recording – via an expansive precursive prolongation.⁴⁵ Taking advantage, the duo cultivates it to elicit expectation perceptible as forward momentum.

In the following Andante, a compound triple-metre barcarolle that moves from repressed tragedy to determined optimism, instrumental dialogue again holds sway.⁴⁶ Reifying generalized personae – virtual agents – flute and piano sensitively respond to one another, reflecting recognition of one another's inflections, particularly in the many melodic appoggiaturas (incomplete upper neighbour tones) that serve as surface motives.⁴⁷ Textual inversion plays a significant role in this movement, enabling the pair to simulate paraphrasing. Here, flutist and pianist present an intimate musical tête-à-tête.

In contrast, their performance within the following movement presents the effect of a physicalized musical ‘game’ describable as ‘tossing’. The Allegro vivo initially features flute and piano ‘back-and-forth’ short gestures at a brisk tempo before each ‘holds possession’ of the foregrounded melody for longer spans. It demands precise coordination, involving quickly contrasting articulations, skittering energy and dry staccato in the framing sections, plus long-breathed lyricism and fluctuant dynamics in the centre, where the ‘hand-offs’ are even longer. A little more edge on the many accented off-beats within the A and A′ sections, plus a little more fullness on the songful effusions of the B section, might have been desirable, but the musicians deliver – it's genuinely playful.

If the preceding Allegro vivo hadn't provided plenty of proof that Fauré's Sonata in A demands athleticism from flutists in the form of capacious lungs and a tireless embouchure, surely the ‘long lines’ of the finale will convince. Several instances in this Allegro quasi presto stretch 17 bars without a break, one lasts 26, and the coda (bars 345–75) features a 31-bar ‘long line’. These protracted utterances focus our attention, eliciting dramatic tension like those produced by enjambments in Symbolist poetry. Here, they're played fleetly and eloquently, all in fine form. Gabriel Fauré, who performed this sonata with many violinists throughout his life, would have been pleased to have been so well understood.⁴⁸

Postlude

In the Age of Ravel and In the Age of Debussy offer opportunities to observe and assess responses elicited during engaging experiences of aural art, what I have called the ‘listener's share’. Their audition demonstrates how this music moves us to contribute to and to collaborate in completing the communicative circle binding composer, performers and listeners. These albums also avail insights into the Symbolist aesthetic via their thoughtfully prepared and persuasively executed performances. Ransom Wilson and François Dumont exploit allusions embedded within the music, investing appropriate interpretive nuances to personalize its expression. Is another release warranted, perhaps an In the Age of Fauré? If so, what might serve such a project?

Gabriel Fauré's Deuxième Sonate pour violon et piano en mi mineur, Op. 108 (N 181; 1917), reimagined for flute and piano, would be revelatory. The three movements of Maurice Ravel's Sonatine (1905), plus selections from Le Tombeau de Couperin (1917), if idiomatically arranged, could contextualize. Favourites and worthies from Philippe Gaubert, Charles Koechlin and Jacques Ibert can complement. And an In the Age of Fauré album might offer Ransom Wilson an opportunity to revisit the Sonate pour flûte et piano (1957) of Francis Poulenc (1899–1963).⁴⁹ While the artistic relationship between these two composers is complex, Poulenc's flute sonata most surely holds some of Fauré's lyrical spirit.⁵⁰ I would not be alone in welcoming such a CD.