“Chanson triste” by Henri Duparc – Jean Lahor: in search of artistic perfection

Abstract

Statement of the problem. The specifics of Henri Duparc’s ideal of artistic perfection conditioned by the uniqueness of his personality, have so far remained outside the scope of scientific interests of researchers. However, the perfectionist beliefs of the French composer, on the one hand, led to his stellar achievements, and on the other, caused the tragedy of his life and artistic heritage. Therefore, the study of the details of Duparc’s creative life and his aesthetic beliefs is of significant research interest, which is enhanced by the connection of his views with the general context of the artistic life of France at the end of the 19th century, with its attraction to refined aestheticism, when perfectionism acquires the importance of a creative method in advanced literary and artistic circles. Evidently, the mélodie genre in principle corresponded to Duparc’s ideas about perfection in musical and poetic art, because it was with him that he connected his creative inspiration for many years. Objectives, methods, and novelty of the research. The scientific novelty of this study is determined by its purpose: based on the analysis of the first Duparc’s mélodie “Chanson triste” (“Sad song”) on Jean Lahore’s verses and the historical context of its creation, to reveal the essence of perfectionism as a creative method of musical and poetical arts of the fin de siècle era, as well as the specifics of individual manifestation perfectionism in both artists, and also to reveal the features of the French composer’s artistic ideal. The realisation of the research purpose required the introduction of such methods as historical and contextual, biographical, axiological, genre and style. The biographical method as a leading used to identify the features that led the authors of the “Chanson triste” to perfectionism. It involves the generalisation of knowledge about the life and creative circumstances that accompanied the forming the “biographical scenario” (Savytska, 2009). The latter was carried out according to the laws of a drama, the three acts of which are correlated as prologue – culmination – epilogue (Roshchenko, 2019). As for the creative path of H. Duparc, the function of the prologue was played by studying with S. Frank, the culmination – the creation of masterpieces, and the epilogue – the author’s revising of already written works. The study of Duparc’s personality and vocal heritage from this standpoint involves not only the analysis of artistic texts, but also biographical data. Research results and conclusion. The example of “Chanson triste” by Henri Duparc on Jean Lahore’s poem demonstrates the specificity of perfectionism as a means of achieving faultlessness, in the sense that was characteristic of the French musical and poetic art of the second half of the 19th century. This is, first of all, the ideal of a harmonious synthesis of words and music, which manifests itself in poetry as the “musicalization” of the verbal text, while in music – in flexible intonation expressiveness, which emphasizes the beauty and meaning of a poetical word. According to the convictions of outstanding artists of the word of this era, in particular the poets of the symbolist circle (“Parnassian school”), the rationalization of the creative process that manifests itself in special attention to all the details of the poetic form for conveying the subtlety and ambiguity of poetic images, allows to achieve this ideal. In Duparc’s “Chanson triste”, the effectiveness of this method is clearly demonstrated: the artistic perfection of the work is achieved thanks to the organic combination of words and music, manifested in the peculiarities of prosody; in filling the poetic text with greater sensuality and new meanings thanks to music; the latter is facilitated by the method of generalization through a genre (for example, the musical semantics of nocturne enhances the “night” flavor of Lahore’s poem); in the principle of economy of artistic text (“through” intonations, rhythmic unification of accompaniment); in overcoming the strophic nature of the poem due to the absence of literal repetitions of the musical material of couplets-quatrains and “through” musical and dramaturgical development. If for Lahore, the perfectionism did not have harmful consequences, then for Duparc, who created outstanding examples of French mélodie, the thirst for perfection, having acquired painful forms (endless self-censorship), turned into a kind of self-ruining. This led to the destruction of a number of finished talented works as not corresponding to the perfectionist views of the composer. If the desire for perfectionism is usually only a certain period in the life and work of most composers, for Duparc the creation of masterpieces became an unchanging desire. This internal need and increased demands for one’s own music led to the greatness and tragedy of both, Henri Duparc himself and the works written by him.