D’un soir triste

In its original version for violin, cello, and piano, this piece is the first of a diptych, preceding D’un matin de printemps. The title D’un soir triste suggests a melancholy piece, an understatement that conceals its true scope: funeral lament, premonition of death, revolt, solitary complaint, retreat into the world of dreams, an attempt to ward off fate through a surge of vitality, and then the faintest glimmer of light. Such is the outline of this astonishing score, composed at a time of distress.

The work opens like an elegy, in a mood of a certain austerity. Little by little the tempo quickens, the writing grows more agitated, the harmony more strained. The introverted tone gives way to intense pain. Clarity and light surface for a moment, but the dramatic progression continues, leading to a very brief climax: a violent, dry chord, followed by a slow, mysterious, funereal episode, like a sudden vision of hell from which distant, mournful weeping seems to rise. What follows is wholly unexpected: an ostinato takes hold, shimmering with rare and colorful harmonies that carry us into a world of dreams and memories. The melody gradually climbs into the upper register and gains in intensity, then the dream fades. The writing suddenly turns theatrical and menacing (a short passage left unfinished, which Nadia Boulanger reconstructed). The recapitulation begins in an atmosphere of weariness and discouragement, yet moves toward a climax whose euphoria is shattered by chords of great harshness. The elegiac character returns to close the piece, its sorrow interrupted for an instant by a clear, luminous harmony. But the work ends without hope, leaving to D’un matin de printemps, the piece that follows it, the chance for the starkest contrast: a turn to joy, however fleeting.

© Durand 2007

Current editions of the trio version contain numerous errors and inaccuracies. A revised edition is in preparation.

© Anthony Girard