Jacques Ibert
(1890-1962)
Piano Music
The French composer Jacques Ibert spent much of his career as director
of the Académie de France in Rome. His own earlier education was at the Collège
Rollin and he taught in Paul Mounet's Conservatoire classes for dramatic
declamation before becoming a student of harmony there under Ravel's former
teacher, Emile Pessard, and under Gédalge and Paul Vidal. His studies at the
Paris Conservatoire were interrupted by war service in 1914 as a naval officer
but on his return in 1919, with the encouragement of Nadia Boulanger and
Roger-Ducasse, he won the Prix de Rome for his cantata Le poète et la fée (‘The
Poet and the Fairy’). Ibert's compositions in Rome included an orchestral work
based on Oscar Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol, performed at the Colonne
concerts in 1922, and the symphonic suite Escales, later arranged for
solo piano, the result of travel not only in Italy, but also in Spain and
Tunis. Among the works he submitted from Rome, in accordance with the terms of
the prize, were an opera, Persée et Androméde, based on Jules Laforgue.
On his return to Paris Ibert enjoyed an active career as a composer,
writing music for the theatre and cinema, chamber music and orchestral
compositions, some of the last adapted for concert performance from earlier
incidental music. In 1937 he returned to Rome to take charge of the Académie de
France, retaining the same position until 1960, even with the important
appointment in 1955 as Administrator General of the French National Lyric
Theatres, a position relinquished the following year. A versatile and prolific
composer, he combined technical assurance with a certain elegance and precision
and with prolific versatility. He has much in common with the group of
composers known in the 1920s as Les Six, in his piano music often
seeming to share in an idiom familiar from the music of Poulenc and other
contemporaries.>
The Scherzetto of 1917 is a work of characteristic charm,
followed here by the aptly named Pièce romantique, building up to a
romantic climax. The 1929 Toccata sur le nom d'Alhert Roussel (‘Toccata
on the Name of Albert Roussel’) is a brief tribute to that composer, dominated
by its opening motif.
L'espiègle au village de Lilliput (‘The Prankster in the Village of Lilliput’),
dedicated to the distinguished pianist Marguerite Long, was written for the
Great Exhibition of 1937, one of a series to which seven other composers
contributed, including Poulenc, Auric and Milhaud. Française, written in
1926, was originally for guitar, as is apparent from its figuration. It is
followed by the evocative Le vent sur les ruines (‘The Wind over the
Ruins’), written in 1915 in Champagne, during Ibert's war service.
Ibert's Petite Suite en quinze images (‘Little Suite in Fifteen
Pictures’) was written in 1943, during the course of a second war. It opens
with a Prélude of simple texture, followed by Ronde, in clear
tripartite form. Le gai vigneron (‘The Gay Wine-Grower’) is suitably
cheerful, relaxing into Berceuse aux étoile, (Lullaby under the Stars). Le
cavalier Sans-Souci (‘Carefree Knight’) prances happily away, while Parade
brings a little march. The seventh piece, La promenade en traîneau (‘Sleigh
Ride’) moves swiftly on, Romance is in a smoothly expressive A major
almost suggesting Schumann, and Quadrille recalls the music-hall as much
as the ball-room. Sérénade sur l'eau (‘Serenade on the Water’) has a
gentle sway to it, La machine á coudre (‘The Sewing-Machine’) buzzes on
and L'Adieu bids a tender farewell. Les crocus (‘The Crocus’) has
a charm of its own, Premier bal (‘First Ball’) is an attractively
syncopated little waltz and the work ends with a cheerfully emphatic Danse
du cocher (‘Cabman's Dance’).
Histoires, written in 1922, is a set of ten character pieces. The first of these, La
meneuse de tortues d'or, (‘The Leader of the Golden Tortoises’) moves
slowly on to the well known Le petit âne blanc (‘The Little White
Donkey’), with its musical braying. To this Le vieux mendiant (‘The Old
Beggar’) provides a contrast of mood, while what Ibert describes as an English
sentimental romance is reflected in A giddy girl. Dans la maison triste (‘In
the Sad House’) at first offers a plaintive melody over a sustained pedal-note,
before its gentle chords and sombre, hushed ending. There is a certain faded
grandeur about Le palais abandonné (‘The Abandoned Palace’) and the
Spanish title of Bajo la mesa (‘Under the Table’) suggests at once its
mood and idiom. The delicate La cage de cristal (‘The Glass Cage’) leads
to La marchande d'eau fraîche (‘The Fresh Water Seller’), in a now
familiar toccata style and the work ends with the informal nonchalance of Cortège
de Balkis
(‘Procession
of Balkis’), jaunty rather than formal, before it skips away.
Les rencontres, petite suite en forme de ballet (‘Encounters, Little
Suite in the Form of a Ballet’), written in 1924, served as the score for a
ballet by Nijinska in the following year. The first movement of the suite, Les
bouquetières (‘The Flower Girls’), carries the direction in a Second Empire
ballet style and is dominated by its characteristic opening rhythm. It is
followed by Les créoles (‘The Creoles’), with its mysterious central
section, framed by music marked by a recurrent rhythmic figure. Les
mignardes (‘The Precious Girls’) gives initial prominence to the open
chords of the left hand, decorated by delicate embroidery above, in music that
seems to continue the tradition of Debussy. Les bergères (‘The
Shepherdesses’) offers simpler textures and the suite ends with Les bavardes
(‘The Chatterboxes’), its staccato figuration framing grander gestures.
Keith Anderson