ABSTRACT
The most remarkable fact about Mirages is that everything — from the printing of the poems to the first performance of the complete, published song cycle — took place in a single year, 1919, when Fauré was seventy-four. 1 Although the texts may be illusory and self-indulgent, Fauré had very few second thoughts as he transcended them in a single summer month in music of consummate craftsmanship, subtlety, and restraint. Indeed, when one considers the opportunities offered by the text for florid word-painting and musical excesses, that restraint is virtually absolute. If the cycle has suffered in terms of performance, it is rather due to its placing between the two great van Lerberghe cycles and the less interiorized L’Horizon chimérique, than to any sort of musical deficiency. Moreover, Mirages provides a better example of Fauré’s unique blend of modality and tonality than L’Horizon chimérique; it is shorter and more concentrated than the van Lerberghe cycles; and, like Le Jardin clos, it also remains in the major mode until its final song. If its first three songs do all happen to be poèmes chantés at virtually the same slow speed, with Danseuse in exactly double time, then its unified conception and consistency of inspiration more than compensate for any absence of superficial variety.
