Masques et Bergamasques, Op. 112

• Masques et bergamasques, Op. 112, started life as a theatrical work or comédie musicale for voices and orchestra with a scenario by René Fauchois. Fauré’s score includes many recycled earlier compositions.¹
• Masques et Bergamasques premiered in Monte Carlo in on April 10, 1919, to great acclaim.²
• The title Masques et Bergamasques is taken from a line in Paul Verlaine’s poem “Clair de Lune,” from the poetry collection Fêtes galantes.³

Your soul is a chosen landscape
Bewitched by masquers and bergamasquers,
Playing the lute and dancing and almost
Sad beneath their fanciful disguises.

From “Clair de lune” by Verlaine⁴

• Faure also set this poem as an art song in (1887).⁵
• The poem also inspired Debussy’s Suite bergamasque, particularly its famous movement Clair de lune. ⁶
• In 1920, Fauré published a four-movement orchestral suite of music taken from the original theatrical version.⁷

Movements

1. Overture
2. Menuet
3. Gavotte
4. Pastorale⁸

1. Jean-Michel Nectoux, “Fauré, Gabriel,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed September 26, 2019, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000009366.
2. Jean-Michel Nectoux, trans. Roger Nichols, Gabriel Fauré: A Musical Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 522.
3. Phillip Huscher, “Program Notes: Suite from Masques et bergamasques, Op. 112,” Chicago Symphony orchestra, accessed September 26, 2019, https://cso.org/uploadedfiles/1_tickets_and_events/program_notes/042910_programnotes_faurq_masques-bergamasques.pdf.
4. Paul Verlaine, trans. Richard Stokes, “Clair de lune (1891) L80,” Oxford Lieder (2019), accessed August 28, 2019, https://www.oxfordlieder.co.uk/song/2827.
5. Nectoux, “Fauré, Gabriel,” Grove Music Online.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. “Masques et bergamasques (Fauré,Gabriel),” IMSLP, accessed October 12, 2021, https://imslp.org/wiki/Masques_et_Bergamasques%2C_suite%2C_Op.112_(Faur%C3%A9%2C_Gabriel).