Philippe Gaubert (1879 - 1941)
Complete Works for Flute, Volume 2
In the mid-nineteenth century the German jeweller, goldsmith
and flutist Theobald Boehm applied his considerable talents to the improvement
of the flute. The result, after several decades of research and
experimentation, was an instrument with greatly improved intonation and a
versatile, dependable mechanism. It could be built with a tube of either wood
or metal – typically silver. The Boehm flute had a wider compass and a wider
dynamic range, and was capable of greater virtuosity than its predecessors,
thus providing the greater brilliance and carrying power required in
ever-larger orchestras and concert halls.
Especially
when built of silver, the Boehm flute was also found to be more responsive to
subtle shadings of timbre, colour, and intensity, characteristics first
exploited by the French. The sinuous, slowly unfurling solo line of Debussy’s
L’après-midi d’un faune, first given in 1894, proved the flute capable of a
radically new range of expression. Debussy and his compatriot Maurice Ravel,
the great orchestral colourists of the early twentieth century, developed and
expanded the capabilities of the instrument in a wealth of memorable orchestral
passages. Each also contributed to the repertoire of the flute in more intimate
settings, Debussy most notably with the incidental music to Les chansons de
Bilitis (1901), the famous Syrinx for solo flute (1913), and the Sonata for
flute, viola and harp (1915), and Ravel with Trois poèmes de Mallarmé and
Chansons madécasses.
This heady climate of flute innovation coincided with the
early maturity of the distinguished French flutist, composer, conductor and
pedagogue Philippe Gaubert. Born in 1879, the fifteen-year-old virtuoso earned
his first prize for flute at the Paris Conservatoire just months before the
première of L’après-midi d’un faune. In 1903 he received a first prize in
fugue, and just two years later he won the Prix de Rome, distinguishing himself
from the many competent if unexceptional flutist-composers produced by the
Conservatoire. Despite his later professorship at the Paris Conservatoire and
his conducting commitments at the Opéra and Société des Concerts, Gaubert
composed throughout his lifetime, producing dozens of chamber and orchestral
works, several ballets and other stage works, and a large corpus of chansons.
Although Gaubert’s strongest compositional influence was
Fauré, he soon incorporated the innovations of Debussy and Ravel in such flute
pieces as Soir païen and Médailles antiques (Volume I of this series) and Deux
esquisses (Vol. III). Honegger, Koechlin, Ibert, and a few others contributed
flute pieces in a similar vein, but Gaubert created almost single-handedly a
repertoire of sonatas, chamber works and shorter pieces that reflect the
revolution in flute playing initiated by Debussy’s L’après-midi d’un faune.
In the Sonata of 1917 Gaubert takes the unusual step of
prescribing specific qualities of sound in certain passages. At the beginning
of the first movement the flute is to play avec une sonorité très claire, and
at the beginning of the second avec une sonorité calme et pénétrante. The
opening theme of the Sonata is followed immediately by a pair of graceful
arabesques built on the whole-tone scale, an exotic device made more familiar
by its deployment in L’après-midi d’un faune. Throughout the work Gaubert’s
many meticulously notated manipulations of tempo, phrasing, and dynamics, and
his free elaboration and development of his melodic material give this Sonata,
despite its clear forms, a feeling of improvisational freedom and spontaneity.
Borrowing a successful device of César Franck, Gaubert brings the work to a
satisfying close by paraphrasing, at the end of the last movement, the
beginning of the first. The piece is dedicated à la mémoire de mon cher maître
Paul Taffanel, who had died in 1908. Gaubert had published several works with
flute in the intervening years, but perhaps he felt that this fine sonata was
his first effort to be fully worthy of his mentor, collaborator and friend.
The Second Sonata is likewise dedicated to a great and
influential flutist, Marcel Moyse. With its pastoral style, restrained
dynamics, moderate tempos, long melodic lines, and simple formal layout, the
mood of this genial piece is more Apollonian than Dionysian. In the first
movement particularly, the music has a smooth surface that calls to mind the
mature chamber works of Fauré.
The long lines present quite a challenge to the breath
control and interpretive ability of the player. In the classic Taffanel and
Gaubert Méthode complète de flûte Gaubert explains, in the section on style,
that breaths are sometimes required by the music even when not needed by the
performer, and that conversely, in contexts where the music wants to continue
uninterrupted, the performer sometimes needs to breathe, and so must
incorporate the interruption as unobtrusively as possible. In his edition of
the Second Sonata Gaubert gives no suggestions as to when and where this is to
be done. This writer (and performer) would like to point out that although
digital editing has of course been used in the production of these CDs, it has
not been used to spirit away any of the breaths actually taken.
Gaubert’s three flute sonatas all share a three-movement
format. Each has faster outer movements flanking a reflective interlude. The
three sonatas together repeat this pattern, with the Apollonian Second Sonata
flanked by the more outgoing First and Third.
The Third Sonata is the most dramatic of the three, and reverts
to the freely improvisatory style of the first. Its third movement is downright
rambunctious as it chases the simple four-bar subject through no fewer than
eight different tonalities before finally deciding that it is, after all, in G
major. This sonata is dedicated to Jean Boulze, solo flutist of the Paris Opéra
and the Concerts Lamoureux.
The Sonatine is the last of Gaubert’s works for flute and
piano, and is dedicated to Georges Barrère, Gaubert’s Conservatoire classmate,
who had moved to the United States in 1905 to become solo flutist of the New
York Symphony Orchestra. The second movement is unique among his flute works in
its dedication to a composer (Hommage à Schumann). It opens with a theme of
Schumannesquely yearning chromaticism, followed by three variations and an
extended coda. Both movements, with their wide variety of tempo and mood,
effectively convey the feeling of improvisational freedom suggested by the
subtitle quasi fantasia. Although it is shorter than the sonatas, the Sonatine
continues Gaubert’s lifelong development of expressive and dramatic power.
Fenwick Smith