Gabriel Fauré - Pelléas et Mélisande, Op. 80 (1898/1901)

Gabriel Urbain Fauré (12 May 1845 – 4 November 1924) was a French composer, organist, pianist and teacher. He was one of the foremost French composers of his generation, and his musical style influenced many 20th-century composers. Among his best-known works are his Pavane, Requiem, Sicilienne, nocturnes for piano and the songs "Après un rêve" and "Clair de lune". Although his best-known and most accessible compositions are generally his earlier ones, Fauré composed many of his most highly regarded works in his later years, in a more harmonically and melodically complex style.

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Suite from Pelléas et Mélisande, Op. 80 (1898/1901)
Dedication: Winnaretta Singer (suite)

1. Prélude (0:00)
2. Fileuse (6:05)
3. Sicilienne (8:26)
4. La mort de Mélisande (11:51)

Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by David Zinman

In early 1898, Fauré was commissioned to write incidental music to Maeterlinck's 1892 play for a production to be given later that year in London by the British actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell (who would star as Mélisande) in an English translation by John William Mackail (1859-1945). Given the very tight deadline, Fauré inserted some pieces from abandoned or unsuccessful projects - most famously the Sicilienne originally composed for a failed 1893 production of Molière's Le Bourgeois gentilhomme. Along with using previously composed music, the new score was largely orchestrated by his student Charles Koechlin (1867-1950). Campbell's production was fairly successful and was given not only in London but in Boston and other American cities, in Paris (in a French adaptation), and Brussels. Other productions also made use of Faure's score through the years, but the composer's orchestral suite exceeded all else in popularity and ended up being the only thing widely performed and published.

For the suite, Fauré revised Koechlin's 1898 orchestration (which he supervised to a great degree) and enlarged the orchestra by adding additional parts for oboe and bassoon. Hamelle published the suite in score and part in 1901. Even the suite has a somewhat complicated story as it originally contained only three numbers - the Prélude, Fileuse, and Molto adagio (La mort de Mélisande), with the Sicilienne only added in 1909 and at first published separately. The four-movement suite known today was performed soon after the 1909 premiere of his revised Sicilienne orchestration but did not appear in printed form for a number of years.

As for the other things from the 1898 score, only the Chanson de Mélisande made it into print - with Mackail's English text - as Melisande's Song. Hamelle issued as voice and piano reduction based on the composer's manuscript in 1937, along with an expanded orchestration by Koechlin on rental. Nectoux assigns this item a separate catalog number (N 143) due to the fact that Mackail's translation is based on additional text added by Maeterlinck a year after the play's initial publication (1892).