Songs
L'heure exquise
L'heure exquise
La lune blancheLuit dans les bois;De chaque branchePart une voixSous la ramée...Ô bien aimée.L'étang reflète,Profond miroir,La silhouetteDu saule noirOù le vent pleure...Rêvons, c'est l'heure.Un vaste et tendreApaisementSemble descendreDu firmamentQue l'astre irise...C'est l'heure exquise.
Exquisite hour
The white moonGleams in the woods;From every branchThere comes a voiceBeneath the boughs...O my beloved.The pool reflects,Deep mirror,The silhouetteOf the black willowWhere the wind is weeping...Let us dream, it is the hour.A vast and tenderConsolationSeems to fallFrom the skyThe moon illumines...Exquisite hour.
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Composer
Poldowski was born Régine Wieniawski, daughter of the Polish violinist and composer Henryk Wieniawski. Her famous father died when she was ten months old. Poldowski moved among the musical aristocracy from an early age and performed her own music publicly when still a teenager.
In 1896 she and her mother moved to London, where her first works were published under the name ‘Irène Wieniawska’. After her marriage in 1901 to Sir Aubrey Dean Paul, she was also known by many combinations of her married and maiden names. Her legacy is further complicated by her cosmopolitan background, since her mother Isabelle Hampton was English and she was born in Brussels. After the death of her first child, her marriage eventually collapsed and she moved to Paris for further studies. She took the pseudonym ‘Poldowski’. Two songs are associated with her child’s death: ‘Soir’ and ‘Berceuse d'Armorique’; the former opens with ambiguous, oscillating chords before the plangent oboe d’amore joins and the song unfolds into a hearfelt lament. Tragically, both her surviving children were drug addicts.
Poldowski enjoyed a successful career as a composer and pianist in the 1910s, her music championed by a range of figures including the pianist Lazare Lévy and the conductor Henry Wood. Her songs were championed by stars like Gervase Elwes, who sang her Verlaine settings and regularly championed her music until his untimely death in 1921.
In 1919-22, Poldowski lived in the USA. Her opera Silence was premiered in London in 1920. Upon her return to London she moved within powerful musical circles. She ran important concert series in New York and London in the early 1920s which attracted international artists, as well as a fashion boutique. Her work was regularly performed during the 1910s and 1920s in Belgium, the Netherlands, London and Paris, by singers like Elwes, Maggie Teyte and Jane Bathori-Engel. She developed pneumonia and died in London aged 52.
Poldowski is particularly important for her 22 settings of Verlaine, which are among the finest in existence. She also set texts by William Blake, W. B. Yeats, Alfred, Lord Tennyson and of her own composition. Her style reflects the full range of early 20th-century French trends, with a subtle approach to harmony and text and a unique voice. Her Blake setting, ‘Song’, creates an austere, medieval atmosphere which recurs, transformed, in ‘Dans la musette’. She creates glowing, sparkling textures in ‘Sérénade’ and ‘Mandoline’, Wolfian demonism in ‘Cortège’, and guileless lyricism in ‘L’heure exquise’. ‘Effet de neige’ shows her harmonic assurance in its unfathomable, dark opening chords, as do the searching ‘À Clymène’ and the sublimely contoured ‘Dimanche d’avril’ and ‘Bruxelles’. There are many discoveries to be enjoyed here.
© Natasha Loges, 2022
See Full Entry
Poet
Paul-Marie Verlaine was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the fin de siècle in international and French poetry.
Born in Metz, Verlaine was educated at the Lycée Impérial Bonaparte (now the Lycée Condorcet) in Paris and then took up a post in the civil service. He began writing poetry at an early age, and was initially influenced by the Parnassien movement and its leader, Leconte de Lisle. Verlaine's first published poem was published in 1863 in La Revue du progrès, a publication founded by poet Louis-Xavier de Ricard. Verlaine was a frequenter of the salon of the Marquise de Ricard (Louis-Xavier de Ricard's mother) at 10 Boulevard des Batignolles and other social venues, where he rubbed shoulders with prominent artistic figures of the day: Anatole France, Emmanuel Chabrier, inventor-poet and humorist Charles Cros, the cynical anti-bourgeois idealist Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Théodore de Banville, François Coppée, Jose-Maria de Heredia, Leconte de Lisle, Catulle Mendes and others. Verlaine's first published collection, Poèmes saturniens (1866), though adversely commented upon by Sainte-Beuve, established him as a poet of promise and originality.
Taken from Wikipedia. To view the full article, please click here.
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Sorry, no further description available.
Previously performed at:
L'heure exquise
Exquisite hour
If you would like to use our texts and translations, please click here for more information.
Composer
Poldowski was born Régine Wieniawski, daughter of the Polish violinist and composer Henryk Wieniawski. Her famous father died when she was ten months old. Poldowski moved among the musical aristocracy from an early age and performed her own music publicly when still a teenager.
In 1896 she and her mother moved to London, where her first works were published under the name ‘Irène Wieniawska’. After her marriage in 1901 to Sir Aubrey Dean Paul, she was also known by many combinations of her married and maiden names. Her legacy is further complicated by her cosmopolitan background, since her mother Isabelle Hampton was English and she was born in Brussels. After the death of her first child, her marriage eventually collapsed and she moved to Paris for further studies. She took the pseudonym ‘Poldowski’. Two songs are associated with her child’s death: ‘Soir’ and ‘Berceuse d'Armorique’; the former opens with ambiguous, oscillating chords before the plangent oboe d’amore joins and the song unfolds into a hearfelt lament. Tragically, both her surviving children were drug addicts.
Poldowski enjoyed a successful career as a composer and pianist in the 1910s, her music championed by a range of figures including the pianist Lazare Lévy and the conductor Henry Wood. Her songs were championed by stars like Gervase Elwes, who sang her Verlaine settings and regularly championed her music until his untimely death in 1921.
In 1919-22, Poldowski lived in the USA. Her opera Silence was premiered in London in 1920. Upon her return to London she moved within powerful musical circles. She ran important concert series in New York and London in the early 1920s which attracted international artists, as well as a fashion boutique. Her work was regularly performed during the 1910s and 1920s in Belgium, the Netherlands, London and Paris, by singers like Elwes, Maggie Teyte and Jane Bathori-Engel. She developed pneumonia and died in London aged 52.
Poldowski is particularly important for her 22 settings of Verlaine, which are among the finest in existence. She also set texts by William Blake, W. B. Yeats, Alfred, Lord Tennyson and of her own composition. Her style reflects the full range of early 20th-century French trends, with a subtle approach to harmony and text and a unique voice. Her Blake setting, ‘Song’, creates an austere, medieval atmosphere which recurs, transformed, in ‘Dans la musette’. She creates glowing, sparkling textures in ‘Sérénade’ and ‘Mandoline’, Wolfian demonism in ‘Cortège’, and guileless lyricism in ‘L’heure exquise’. ‘Effet de neige’ shows her harmonic assurance in its unfathomable, dark opening chords, as do the searching ‘À Clymène’ and the sublimely contoured ‘Dimanche d’avril’ and ‘Bruxelles’. There are many discoveries to be enjoyed here.
© Natasha Loges, 2022
See Full Entry
Poet
Paul-Marie Verlaine was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the fin de siècle in international and French poetry.
Born in Metz, Verlaine was educated at the Lycée Impérial Bonaparte (now the Lycée Condorcet) in Paris and then took up a post in the civil service. He began writing poetry at an early age, and was initially influenced by the Parnassien movement and its leader, Leconte de Lisle. Verlaine's first published poem was published in 1863 in La Revue du progrès, a publication founded by poet Louis-Xavier de Ricard. Verlaine was a frequenter of the salon of the Marquise de Ricard (Louis-Xavier de Ricard's mother) at 10 Boulevard des Batignolles and other social venues, where he rubbed shoulders with prominent artistic figures of the day: Anatole France, Emmanuel Chabrier, inventor-poet and humorist Charles Cros, the cynical anti-bourgeois idealist Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Théodore de Banville, François Coppée, Jose-Maria de Heredia, Leconte de Lisle, Catulle Mendes and others. Verlaine's first published collection, Poèmes saturniens (1866), though adversely commented upon by Sainte-Beuve, established him as a poet of promise and originality.
Taken from Wikipedia. To view the full article, please click here.
See Full Entry
Sorry, no further description available.