Musiques sur l’eau

According to his Souvenirs de ma vie and the catalogue of his manuscripts, Théodore Dubois composed his song-cycle Musiques sur l'eau in two stages: the first two pieces in 1904 at his country home in Rosnay, the other four in 1910 in Paris, where the cycle was published that same year by Heugel. All of the songs are settings of texts by the Symbolist poet Albert Samain (1858-1900), most of them taken from Au jardin de l’infante (1893). Dubois did not always adopt the actual titles of the poems; in some cases he used instead quotations from the text: the poem “Musique sur l’eau”, for instance, became “Écoute la symphonie”, and “Accompagnement” became “La lune s’effeuille sur l’eau”. This foray into modernity, unusual in the composer’s career, was very favourably received by Camille Bellaigue, writing in 1912 in the Revue des deux mondes: “The harmonies are original and precise, and so closely bound up with the melody as to make them inseparable. The song flourishes among the branches and leaves of the accompaniment, or rather of an ingenious consonance. The rhythms and metres are free, the music responds to the slightest variation in thought, feeling, or speech. All this shows most youthful artistry. […] There is poetry, sensitivity, even emotion, and also profound tenderness and melancholy here. Occasional touches of pathos enhance the gentleness of these songs, which, like water, sometimes flow smoothly, and sometimes are peaceful and still. Landscape, mood, everything is understood, everything is expressed in these pieces.”