22 FAURÉ ∙ NOCTURNES Most of Fauré’s nocturnes were composed at the end of the nineteenth century. What do they owe to Romanticism? Some of the nocturnes have a digital dexterity akin to Chopin. I’m thinking of the very first ones, but also of the reminiscences of Romanticism in the central section of the Fifth Nocturne, and the lyrical breadth of the Allegro passage in the Seventh. In my opinion, however, the Germanic influence, that of Schumann, is more clearly perceptible. At the start of the Sixth Nocturne, does the ambivalence between duple and triple time not remind us of Schumann’s style? His recurrent use of syncopation and offbeats too! For me, Fauré and Schumann have the ability to make us forget the passage of time. Both have a similar way of suspending time in the moment. The composition of the nocturnes spread over almost half a century. They spanned Fauré’s youth, his maturity and finally his extreme old age. The First dates from 1875; the Thirteenth, his last piano piece, was composed in 1921. Over that same period, he wrote his thirteen barcarolles. Is there a kinship, a link between these two types of piece? The nocturnes and the barcarolles can be seen as doubles. Fauré often composed a barcarolle soon after a nocturne, or vice versa. But there’s little generic distinction between the two. The First Barcarolle might have been called a nocturne, while the Twelfth Nocturne, with its swaying triple-time rhythm, could have been included among the barcarolles, as could the Fourth.
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