A Very Masculine Approach...

We are not concerned here with noc­turns (no final e), which are, in the Catholic Church, divisions of the matins services that, musically speaking, consist of a cer­tain number of psalms, lessons, antiphons, and responsaries, depending on the occa­sion. They were so called because they used to be sung in the smaller hours of the night, though now, what with union regu­lations and the emancipation of the work­er, they are more common in the after­noon and so should be called pomerid­ians. Nor have we to do with the notturno. Largely an 18th-century phenomenon, this was one of the many variants of the di­vertimento, serenade, cassation, etc.: out­door music in several movements to sup­ply the muz.ak or aural wallpaper at an evening bash.

The nocturne-with-a-final-e came a cen­tury later, almost certainly with the Irish pianist-composer John Field (1782-183 7), who wrote 19 piano pieces so designated. Initially Field was not sure that that's what they were and published them as ro­mances, but later, realizing that the night was made for love, he changed his mind and labeled them nocturnes (i.e. night pieces, notturni, Nachtmusik, etc.) Grove defines such a composition as "a piece suggesting night," which (recalling some nights I've spent) doesn't help much. My desk dictionary is less dogmatic, saying that a nocturne contains music "thought appropriate to night," thereby putting the burden of proof on the consumer. My old Harvard Dictionary calls it a "Romantic character piece for the pianoforte, written in a somewhat melancholy or languid style," but the Grove writer correctly points out that none of that is necessarily so, for some nocturnes are scherzo-like and some are for flugelhorn or orchestra.

The fellow who made the nocturne famous was of course Chopin, though he almost certainly borrowed the idea from Field. F.E. Kirby (A Short History of Keyboard Music, New York 1966) describes the nocturne, as Chopin found it, as "a simple lyrical melody over a simple pat­terned accompaniment;' a pattern that the Pole developed. But there is no set form for the genre, and a nocturne by any other name would most likely sound as sweet.

Despite the popularity of Chopin's noc­turnal efforts, there was no great subse­quent run on the genre, though there were scattered examples by Liszt and some of the Russians. The first significant compos­er to take the nocturne seriously after Cho­pin seems to have been Gabriel Faure who, over a period of nearly 50 years, managed 13 of the things. Among turn-of-the­century French writers for the piano, Faure probably ranks close to Debussy and Ravel, but he is far less well known. On the surface he appears more conservative and less adventurous than they His music does not boast catchy titles--is, in fact , ex­tremely abstract-and eschews fireworks. According to Paul Crossley, too many lis­teners write the man off as a composer of diddly-poo salon pieces. But Faure is in his own way quite individual, especially in his subtle modulations and harmonic shifts.

I don't apologize for my digressiveness here: this is presumably the first of at least six records, necessitating a doctoral disser­tation for the project. As far as I can tell, Crossley (perhaps to disprove the salon notion) takes a very masculine approach to these works, but my review tapes were de­fective and bore only so much listening.