Arthur Honegger - durand-salabert-eschig

Prélude,
Fugue,
Postlude
from Amphion
(1948)
As suits the chosen subject and the personality of the author
poet, Amphion, the first (preceding Sémiramis) of two
collaborations between Honegger and Paul Valéry, is a score
that has a notably more classical though no less powerful
language. It is essential that the complete score be one day
rediscovered. Composed in 1929 for Ida Rubinstein who
first performed the title role at the Paris Opera on 23 June
1931, this is forty-minute work for reciter, solo baritone,
vocal soloists, chorus and orchestra that recounts the double
creation of Music and Architecture by Amphion, playing on
the lyre given to him by Apollo.
I should like here to draw attention to the purely orchestral
triptych that Honegger, much later, in 1948, extracted
from the last three scenes under the title Prélude, Fugue,
Postlude. This is one of the composers finest symphonic
pieces, an ideal concert opener, and yet it is never heard
and was only recorded two times, in 1952 and in 1991.
The language here is tonal though it has an unparalleled
mobility of modulation, linking dominants with ease and
freshness. The Prélude is divided into two parts, the first
slow, the great ‘sidereal’ chords of the opening soon making
way for a long expressive saxophone melody, the second
composed in the manner of a toccata, the counterpoint
endlessly varied with simple scales at different speeds (for
the creation of Music) and soon crowned by the glorious
return of the broad opening melody. There then follows
without a break the Cyclopean Fugue (the creation of
Architecture, the stones joining in the call of Music), one
of the most powerful and skilful in all the symphonic
repertory, worthy of comparison with that of the finale of
Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony, which it at times recalls. An
athletic main subject of no fewer than seven bars, with
choppy rhythms and wide intervallic leaps, is joined by
two countersubjects with superb melodic profiles, that are,
subsequently, developed on their own. The Fugue leads to
a grandiose broadening out, pushing back imperceptibly
to the Postlude, of penetrating melancholy (once more we
have the so expressive voice of the saxophone!), in the course
of which Amphion lets himself be led on by the mysterious
silhouette of a veiled woman: Love or Death, who knows?
The bitter conclusion of the poet and the composer is that,
once the work is over, the creator is no longer of interest.
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