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Tempo for Les Fleurs et les Arbres by Camille Saint-SaensDate: July 10, 2012 by Carol Zeven  Views: 1839
I am preparing Saint-Saens "Les Fleurs et les Arbres" and am wondering what tempo others have used. The score I have, editor Coeur Joie, is marked allegretto moderato, which I find rather fast in light of the text. Other editions have no tempo marking or the same marking. One gives MM 60 for a half note, although it seems more likely to be directed in two than in one. My score lists the text as written by Saint-Saens himself; others list the text as anon. If the composer himself wrote the text, then it seems to me he must have been thinking about the two young children he had lost just a year before writing this song and its companion piece. It doesn't seem likely to me that he would have set such serious thoughts in a dance like tempo. Does anyone know if the tempo marking has been added by the editor or if the composer wrote in the marking? I find myself leaning toward 80-90MM, which admittedly doesn't make a contrast to "Calme des Nuits", its companion piece.
David Janower on July 10, 2012 2:47pm
These two pieces are tough nuts to crack. I have a few recordings of each with wildly different tempi. Given room, choir, and all that, I find Calme des Nuits often too slow for me, but maybe I'm just impatient. There's not enough harmonic motion/hrmonic rhythm to allow it to move too slowly.
For Les Fleurs I think you are right on the money. I just clocked it in my head and got 84-86.
Of course I'll changde my mind tomorrow!
Good luuck!
David
on July 10, 2012 8:42pm
I'm not familiar with this Saint-Saens work, but there's a rule you can apply -- a simple rule, though its application may likely be complex and difficult -- to find the right tempo for any piece.
The correct tempo is one in which the horizontal motion (the rate at which the musical phenomena are experienced) is in perfect balance with the vertical forces (the complexity of the harmonic processes), such that the listener's consciousness is able to appropriate the entirety of the musical functions without the experience of the overall arc of the work being disturbed by ephemeral details and "effects."
This rule can be applied equally to music, such as Bach's, to which no tempo indications are attached, and music, such as Bartok's, chock full of elaborately detailed tempo instructions.
Best regards,
Jerome Hoberman
Music Director/Conductor, The Hong Kong Bach Choir & Orchestra
on July 12, 2012 4:44am
In the brasband world there is a mantra that goes"if it sounds right them it is right"
I'm finding in choral settings this is true also in as much as there is a comfort level for songs whether because learnt at that tempo or it just went that way and sounded right.
I am probably going to be up against it with my new choir as they have tended to sing everything at the same speed and volume whatever the peace has been and there jhas been no use of markings etc so I'll stick wirth the mantra above (at least for the time being.)
on July 13, 2012 4:35am
Hmm. Intrigued by this discussion, I've dug out my scores of Les fleurs... and Calme... to see if I had any helpful marks. They're both the old Durand editions with no metronome markings. I see that I've marked it "In 2" and I'm sure I conducted in 2 for at least two measures before floating off into One at something around Half=60 or even faster.
If I remember correctly, tempo - though important, and somewhat elusive - is not the real point in this piece... I think the real issue is how one handles the rubato. The opening tenor figure seems to ask for a slight fermata (which is all about the cresc-dim.) before a tempo is established - one which needs to sort of fall forward from one appoggiatura figure to the next, expressing the 'list' of nature and art words: flowers, trees, bronzes, marbles, golds, enamels, seas, fountains, etc., etc.
I don't see the words as either sad nor serious. Yes, each sentence contains both positive and negative elements - solace/ills, beauty/suffering, laughter/tears - but the focus seems to be on the first of each pair rather than the second. The point seems to be that the beauties of both nature and art lift us up over all aspects of human nature. Indeed the soprano figure at meas. 62 is literally uplifting. Hence, perhaps, Saint-Saëns' tempo marking of Allegretto moderato. You've got to figure he knew what he wanted!
But I'm pretty sure that success in the piece is to be found in the ebb and flow of the (rather subtle) rubato. It's a real conductor's piece!
Jon Washburn, Vancouver
Applauded by an audience of 2
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