Jacques Leguerney's "Le Clair de Lune"

Today's project was working through Jacques Leguerney's work for voice, Flute, Violoncello and Piano Le Clair de Lune on a rather romantic poem by Aloysius Bertrand (1807-1841). The text is as follows :

Oh ! qu'il est doux, quand l'heure tremble au clocher,
la nuit, de regarder la lune qui a le nez fait comme
un carolus d'or !

Deux ladres se lamentaient sous ma fenêtre, un chien
hurlait dans le carrefour, et le grillon de mon foyer
vaticinait tout bas.

Mais bientôt mon oreille n'interrogea plus qu'un silence
profond. Les lépreux étaient rentrés dans leurs chenils,
aux coups de Jacquemart qui battait sa femme.

Le chien avait enfilé une venelle, devant les pertuisanes
du guet enrouillé par la pluie et morfondu par la bise.

Et le grillon s'était endormi, dès que la dernière bluette
avait éteint sa dernière lueur dans la cendre de la cheminée.

Et moi, il me semblait, - tant la fièvre est incohérente ! -
que la lune, grimant sa face, me tirait la langue comme
un pendu !

Leguerney's setting is very clearly influenced by Ravel's Chansons Madécasses both in terms of instrumentation and general musical atmosphere. The harmonic writing flirts with a rather stylized atonality that is surprising, given the rather Faurean atmosphere of some of Leguerney's works around the period of Poèmes de la Pléiade, which are later (1943-44) rather than earlier, as would usually be expected. It is not surprising that Nadia Boulanger, who was Leguerney's composition teacher briefly, would have been impressed enough by this work and its companion piece Épitaphe Guerrière to arrange for the work's première.

The basic musical idea, as in much of Leguerney's work, is an inherent conflict (in this case, the juxtaposition of five beats over four) which remains unresolved. I believe that this is one of Leguerney's most original works, on any number of levels. The performers who are currently preparing this works US première in Cincinnati next Summer (at the Grandin Festival, under the direction of Mary Dibbern, the World's Leguerney expert) are going to have to work hard to find the right balance between the inherently conflicting rhythmic and harmonic aspects in this work.