Lalo’s Fiesque

Jacek Blaszkiewicz

Notes, Volume 70, Number 3, March 2014, pp. 525-529 (Article)

Published by Music Library Association

DOI: 10.1353/not.2014.0025

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http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/not/summary/v070/70.3.blaszkiewicz.html

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Music Reviews 525

three beamed eighth-notes, printed as dot-
ted quarter followed by a single flagged
eighth-note plus two beamed eighths—may
be disconcerting to readers familiar with
Brahms’s score. In the arrangement of the
Second Serenade, the removal of “redun-
dant” dynamic indications (acknowledged,
however, in the critical notes) fails to recog-
nize their role as signals of a newly entering
instrumental voice. Brahms’s arrangements
of ensemble works also include such multi-
ple indications.
What this reviewer wished for most when
examining this volume was a more compre-
hensive reading of the musical texts of the
principal sources. We learn, for example,
that the autograph of the Second Serenade
arrangement contains “Numerous correc-
tions in black ink and pencil throughout”
(source description, p. 87), but it is not
possible to tell whether the “earlier read-
ings” transcribed in the critical notes were
emended in pencil or in ink, in one pass or
several, and by whom. Kregor draws atten-
tion to changes in mm. 64–66 of the first
movement that he suspects are by Brahms
(see pp. xvi–xvii and example 7); he de-
scribes these as in blue pencil, but they are
in regular lead pencil. But he seems not to
have developed a reading of this manuscript
that would allow him to differentiate be-
tween markings by Schumann and sugges-
tions by Brahms or possibly others. On
page 9 of the autograph, shown in plate 3,
an alternative reading in pencil for mm.
90–93 of the second movement is written
on blank staves below the last line of score.
Kregor identifies this hand as belonging to
someone other than Clara Schumann (p. xix,
n. 50), and hints obliquely that it might be
Brahms’s—a suggestion with which this re-
viewer is inclined to agree. But given that
there are other pencil entries in the manu-
script, even in the passage immediately pre-
ceding the alternative reading on page 9
(mm. 83–89)—a number of them consist-
ing of cross-outs and other markings that
would be difficult to assign on their own
merits to any particular person—it is cru-
cial that the editor develop and communi-
cate to the reader an interpretation of the
manuscript evidence as a whole that serves
as a framework for his editorial decisions.
These concerns do not take away from
the fact that this volume is a fascinating ad-
dition to the literature on piano arrange-
ments, and contains much that will be new
even to scholars specializing in closely re-
lated areas. That Clara Schumann ac-
quainted herself with Brahms’s new music
through his four-hand arrangements,
played them both inside and outside the
home with Brahms or family members or
friends, and included some of his virtuosic
solo arrangements in her programs is fairly
well known. Now it is possible to study and
play her own solo renditions of several of
his orchestral movements. Kregor’s discus-
sion (p. xv) of the verse in Plattdeutsch that
Schumann wrote into her autograph of the
arrangement of the Menuetto I/II from
the First Serenade (presumably at the time
she wrote out the manuscript) opens a
fresh perspective on her view of Brahms’s
music that may reward further investiga-
tion. The lieder arrangements constitute a
largely unfamiliar effort on her part to
shape Robert’s legacy. In this respect they
can be examined alongside her judicious
programing of his compositions in her con-
certs and her work on the collected edi-
tion, another collaboration with Brahms.
The present volume illustrates the role of
her arrangements as music for perfor-
mance, honoring a colleague, winning new
audiences to her husband’s compositions,
personal study, and playing in the home.
Above all it gives us a sense of the tactile
and sonic experience Clara Schumann en-
joyed as she re-created this music at the
keyboard. And it allows us to bring the
music to life, too.
Valerie Woodring Goertzen
Loyola University New Orleans

LALO’S FIESQUE

Édouard Lalo. Fiesque: Grand opéra en trois actes. Édition de Hugh

Macdonald. Édition du livret de Vincent Giroud et Paul Prévost.
(L’opéra français.) Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2012. [Foreword in Fre., Eng.,
Ger., p. vii–viii; introd. in Fre., Eng., Ger., p. ix–xx; libretto, p. xxi–xxxiv;
table des morceaux, p. 1; personnages/orchestre, p. 2; score, p. 3–581;
526
appendix, p. 585–601; crit. report, p. 603–15; facsims., p. 619–21. ISMN
979-0-006-53046-5; pub. no. BA 8703. i623.]
Édouard Lalo’s Fiesque is an opera in
three acts, composed between 1866 and
1868, but never performed in the com-
poser’s lifetime. In fact, Fiesque had its
world premiere only in 2006, in a concert
performance with Roberto Alagna in the ti-
tle role and Alain Altinoglu conducting;
the performance was recorded and issued
in 2011 by Deutsche Grammophon, and to
date remains the sole recording of the work
(DG 476 454-7). Although Lalo is perhaps
best known for his virtuosic Cello Concerto
and the Symphonie espagnole, this earlier dra-
matic work laid the foundation for the vig-
orous rhythmic drive pervading his later
compositions. The opera’s long journey
from a scandal-ensuing third-place finish in
an 1869 competition to Hugh Macdonald’s
elegant critical edition for Bärenreiter’s
L’opéra français series is worth briefly re-
counting here.
Lalo was forty-three when his second wife
Julie-Marie-Victoire Bernier de Maligny,
herself a singer, seems to have persuaded
her husband to compose a stage work. Lalo
chose Charles Beauquier, an anti-Imperial
politician and writer, as the librettist. As
Macdonald notes in the edition’s introduc-
tion, it was probably Beauquier’s and Lalo’s
shared republican leanings that drew them
to Schiller’s Die Verschwörung des Fiesco zu
Genua (1782–83) as the material for an
opera.
Schiller’s tragedy is based on the conspir-
acy led by Giovanni Luigi di Fieschi, Count
of Lavagna, against the Genoese ruling
family of Doria in 1547. Beauquier reduced
the main action of the opera to three con-
flicts: the republican Fiesque and his col-
leagues are determined to overthrow the
ruling Dorias, although the actual reasons
for the overthrow are only briefly stated at
the onset of the opera (p. xvi). Verrina, a
zealous republican one generation older
than Fiesque, distrusts his younger compa-
triot’s motives and is determined to prevent
his rise to power. Finally, Léonore,
Fiesque’s wife, is jealous of her husband’s
involvement with Julie, daughter of Andrea
Doria. The Moor Hassan, a basso buffo, ap-
pears as the comic character in both
Schiller’s tragedy and Beauquier’s libretto.
Hassan is ready to do anyone’s bidding for
Notes, March 2014
money, changing allegiance at the toss of a
seguin. As Macdonald observes in an
earlier publication entitled “A Fiasco
Remembered: Fiesque Dismembered” (in
Slavonic and Western Music: Essays for Gerald
Abraham, ed. Malcolm Hamrick Brown and
Roland John Wiley [Ann Arbor, MI: UMI
Research Press; Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1985], 163–85), Lalo characterizes
6
through a staccato vocal line in 8 or
3Hassan
4 , over a lightly textured accompaniment
(see for instance, act 2, pp. 334–44). His
rapid-fire syllabic declamations recall those
of Bartolo in Il barbiere di Siviglia, or—to
mention an exotic precedent—those of
Osmin in Die Entführung aus dem Serail.
Political revolution served as operatic
subject matter even before the Second
Empire, in such successful, albeit contro-
versial, works as Rossini’s Guillaume Tell and
Auber’s La muette de Portici. However, poli-
tics could not have been the only determin-
ing factor for Beauquier’s and Lalo’s
choice of story; Macdonald notes that in
1864 Jules Barbier had written a Fiesque li-
bretto for Charles Gounod that was never
set to music (p. xiii). Lalo was friendly with
the older composer, even calling upon him
to vouch for a production of Fiesque in
Brussels. However, nothing came of
Gounod’s interventions; in a letter to Lalo’s
mother-in-law Gounod explained that “a
theatre director is in a way constrained to
bet on a sure thing; instead of having faith
in the public, he caters to them. In other
words, it is no longer the operator who con-
trols the machinery, but the machinery that
controls the operator” (Édouard Lalo,
Correspondance, ed. Joël-Marie Fauquet
[Paris: Aux Amateurs de Livres, 1989], 200;
my translation). Despite this connection
with Gounod, the relationship between the
two Fiesque librettos is left unexplored in
Macdonald’s introduction.
Lalo was a year into composing Fiesque
when Camille Doucet, an administrator of
Parisian theaters, announced an opera
competition for the three subsidized opera
houses. As Lalo had already begun an
opera, he chose the Théâtre-Lyrique, which
allowed a free choice of libretto. Fiesque fin-
ished third, while the second and first
prizes went to Gustave Canoby’s five-act La
Music Reviews
coupe et les lèvres and Jules Philipot’s one-act
Le magnifique, respectively. Thinking this re-
sult dubious, the composer Paul Lacôme
wrote a critique of the competition in L’art
musical. But Lacôme’s article was nothing
compared to Beauquier’s virulent open let-
ter to the competition’s director. In it he
complained that the director of the
Théâtre-Lyrique chose Philipot’s one-act
opera because he “desired to draw the cur-
tain only once during the production,”
rather than choose a larger, more expen-
sive production. The letter was widely dis-
cussed in the press (Macdonald cites rele-
vant articles in footnotes on p. xiv), but
Beauquier had written it without Lalo’s
consent—and to his chagrin.
Lalo failed to secure productions of
Fiesque in Paris, Hamburg, and Brussels,
and instead oversaw performances of the
overture and selected scenes. In 1872 Lalo
published the vocal score out-of-pocket
(source C in Macdonald’s edition), which
included a German translation by Arthur
Levysohn that was, in the end, never used
in performance. In 1880 Lalo gave Durand
the rights to the vocal score, who printed a
reissue under the Durand, Schoenewerke
& Cie imprint (available on International
Music Score Library Project, http://www
.imslp.org; Macdonald does not consider it
separately from the originally published vo-
cal score). Durand had also published the
overture in score and parts in 1875, along
with a four-hand transcription (source B in
Macdonald’s edition).
Lalo eventually gave up prospects of see-
ing Fiesque on stage; in 1887 he wrote to
d’Indy stating that “Fiesque belongs to me
and will never be performed because I
don’t like the opera” (p. xvi). Nonetheless,
Fiesque was a central node in Lalo’s compo-
sitional output: the composer drew on ear-
lier composed works while writing it, while
he reused sections of the opera in many
later compositions. This borrowing and re-
cycling of musical material was the main
project of Macdonald’s aforementioned
“Fiesque Dismembered” article. Much of this
article’s content was reworked into the in-
troduction to the present edition. Nonethe-
less, the interested reader is encouraged to
have a look at the earlier study, which fea-
tures a scene-by-scene “dismemberment”
detailing where musical material originates,
how it functions in Fiesque, and where it ap-
527
pears in the composer’s subsequent output.
The most substantial borrowings, Macdonald
notes, are found in the choral pantomime
Néron and in the unfinished opera La
jacquerie. However, I wish to highlight the
one number that links Lalo’s first opera
with his more familiar theater work, Le roi
d’Ys.
In act 2, scene 2, of Fiesque, the epony-
mous hero, alone, recalls his love for his
wife Léonore. He then recounts how a vi-
sion of glory has fired his ambition; he
dreams of power and of becoming doge,
acclaimed in triumph by the people. Lalo
biographer Georges Servières has noted
that “Le rêve de Fiesque” is dramaturgically
similar to Jean de Leyde’s dream of glory in
act 2 of Meyerbeer’s Le prophète (Georges
Servières, Édouard Lalo, Les musiciens
célèbres [Paris: Henri Laurens, 1925], 28).
But neither Macdonald nor this reviewer
find any musical ideas that were borrowed
from Meyerbeer.
Macdonald has located two full-score ver-
sions of Fiesque’s monologue; the earlier
version is reproduced in the volume’s ap-
pendix. Additionally, Lalo produced two
transposed versions of this scene, one for
contralto (!) and one for bass (sources
AC[Rêve]1 and AC[Rêve]2). These latter
two sources exist only as unpublished auto-
graph vocal scores. As Fiesque’s act 2
monologue is one of the truly remarkable
numbers of the opera, one would have
wished to see at least one of these versions
among the facsimiles at end of the volume.
Lalo later reworked the first part of the
monologue (beginning on p. 296, m. 38)
into act 3 of Le roi d’Ys as a marital duet
for Rozenn and Mylio. In a letter to
A. B. Marcel from May 1889, Lalo explains
his decision to recycle material from his first
opera: “I agreed to insert a duet . . . but
time was short; I was tired, irritated, and
unable to compose a single note, so I took
a passage from Fiesque. It is the only conces-
sion I made to the singers and I regret it to
this day, since the duet serves no purpose”
(p. xv). This recycling of musical material
begs an old question: does a composer’s
reuse of an earlier written fragment of mu-
sic undermine that composer’s integrity, or
should we allow the fragment to speak for
itself in its newly adopted context? Lalo
might have claimed to borrow from himself
out of convenience, but he used the
528
melody in a fundamentally distinct dra-
matic situation in his later opera. In Fiesque,
the G-major melody appears as a soliloquy;
the hero recounts a dream he had the
night before (“Dans le livre de mes
amours”). In Le roi d’Ys, the melody ap-
pears, also in G major, during Rozenn and
Mylio’s duet, but here the two lovers are ex-
changing vows; they take turns singing the
melody, as if it represented the exchange
of marital bands (“À l’autel j’allais rayon-
nant!”). This instance of melodic borrow-
ing suggests that in opera, the efficacy of a
musical passage is intimately related to its
dramaturgical context.
Macdonald’s introduction (given in
French, English, and German) offers a
thorough, if brief (four-page) exposition of
Lalo’s Fiesque in gratifying detail. Then fol-
lows the libretto, only in French, which was
restored based on the sung text according
to the score. The lines are numbered for
easy reference. Space likely prevented the
printing of the libretto in translation, but
the reader may turn to the liner notes of
the Deutsche Grammophon recording for
an English translation by John Tyler Tuttle.
Macdonald retains the scene divisions from
the Durand vocal score: acts, tableaux, and
Arabic numerals for each scene (overture =
no. 1, etc.), making it easy to compare this
critical edition with the earlier vocal score.
The critical edition’s score layout is elegant
and readable, and can as easily sit on a con-
ductor’s podium as on a library table. The
page never looks cluttered, even in the most
texturally dense moments in the opera
(e.g., the final chorus of act 2, pp. 401–3).
There are no variants or footnotes in the ac-
tual body of the score, perhaps to stream-
line the score’s presentation for perfor-
mance needs (Bärenreiter has parts
available on hire). Corrections and alterna-
tions, of which there are few of major sig-
nificance, are instead found in the critical
notes.
Macdonald does not categorize his criti-
cal notes by emendations, ambiguities, or
sketch discrepancies, as he has previously
done in the New Berlioz Edition as the editor-
in-chief. Nevertheless, the critical notes are
logically presented and intuitively orga-
nized. Four pages detail the various sources
that were consulted (most of which were
found in Stockholm at the Stiftelsen
Musikkulturens Framjände, Nyadahl
Notes, March 2014
Collection). Macdonald organizes the
notes using the aforementioned numeral
system of scenes, while the presence of
measure numbers and score excerpts make
jumping from the commentary to the score
easy. Three facsimiles follow these notes,
but as they are uncaptioned, it is unclear
why these three leaves were chosen over
others.
The student or music lover may wonder
if one can easily follow Macdonald’s score
along with the Deutsche Grammophon
recording. The answer is, unfortunately,
no. There are many cuts in the recording
(at least twenty-five), ranging from a few
measures to entire scenes. For example, the
second tableau, no. 5a (“Choeur dansé,”
pp. 88–112) is entirely omitted from the
recording. Lalo does have a tendency to
dwell on scene-setting choral numbers such
as no. 5a, which merely serves to set the
scene of the masquerade where Léonore
will confront Fiesque. Other substantial
cuts, however, are more pertinent to the
dramatic action and musical development.
In act 3, scene 1 (no. 17, p. 453), Fiesque,
Verrina, and three groups of conspirators
are preparing for combat. Léonore sud-
denly appears, and all fall silent. Fiesque,
seeing her, orders all the conspirators
to leave them alone. He tries to calm
Léonore, who is alarmed by the prepara-
tions, and tells her to hide, as another
woman is due to arrive shortly. Lalo writes
the scene as accompanied recitative, in
which diminished-seventh tremolo chords
pervade in the strings. In no. 18 (p. 455),
Léonore, alone, guesses that it must be her
rival Julie who is due to arrive. Her aria, in
a tranquil C major, expresses her longing
for her husband’s love. Lalo later trans-
posed this aria for a concert performance
given on 1872 at the Société nationale
(Macdonald’s Source A[Air]). This aria,
along with the entire episode between
Fiesque and his wife, is cut from the record-
ing without any explanation in the compact
disc’s liner notes.
But these cuts are of no fault of the pres-
ent edition. Macdonald’s dedication to re-
covering this obscure opera is formidable,
beginning with his 1985 article on musical
borrowing in Fiesque, and culminating in
this handsome volume. In placing this edi-
tion within the larger context of Bären-
reiter’s proposed thirty-five volume L’opéra
Music Reviews 529

français project, of which Fiesque is the
second completed publication, we may
wonder: “for whom is this series meant?”
According to the foreword, written by edi-
torial director Paul Prévost, the series is
“based on the model of the great anthologi-
cal collections,” and it proposes “critical
editions of operas composed between the
[French] Revolution and the First World
War. It includes works that are important
from a musical and theatrical point of view,
or characteristic of a style or genre. The
volumes meet both the scholarly standards
of a critical edition and the practical needs
of theaters and performers.” Prévost con-
cludes by claiming that “works nearly for-
gotten today owing to the lack of available
editions will be published in company with
masterpieces of French opera whose texts
have often been altered over the years”
(p. vii). Indeed a wide range of familiar
and not-so-familiar operas will be issued;
the first published opera in the series was
Adolphe Adam’s Le toréador ; future projects
include Carmen, Samson et Dalila, and Faust.
If we are to take Macdonald’s edition of
Fiesque as an example of the scholarly cal-
iber of Bärenreiter’s L’opéra français proj-
ect, then conductors, scholars, singers, and
lovers of French opera should eagerly antic-
ipate the publication of each volume.
Jacek Blaszkiewicz
Eastman School of Music

TRANSCRIPTIONS OF EARLY RECORDED JAZZ

Sam Morgan’s Jazz Band. Complete Recorded Works in Transcription.

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In April and October 1927 Sam Morgan’s ful thinking was wishful thinking. As
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recorded works of Sam Morgan’s Jazz Band Scores: A Repertory of Western Music, ed.
is a model of how the musicological tradi- Joscelyn Godwin [New York: Schirmer
tion of scholarly critical editions might be Books, 1975], 414–22); three Duke Elling-
applied to jazz. In the 1970s, scholars in- ton pieces in the Smithsonian Jazz Master-
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sicology and jazz were hopeful that eventu- (Daybreak Express: 1933, Jazz Masterworks
ally there would be many such volumes Editions, 1 [Washington, DC: Smithsonian
functioning as parallels to editions of Institution, 1993], Take the “A” Train, Jazz
Western art music, whether complete Masterworks Editions, 2 [Washington, DC:
works, anthologies of study scores, or criti- Smithsonian Institution, 1993], and
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