Baudelaire and the Musical Scene: Introduction
Grand escalier du Nouvel Opéra
Photographic print.
[S.l. : s.n., 1877?]
John Hay Library Starred Books Collection
“…the generation of Verlaine and Mallarmé…embraced Baudelaire’s oeuvre most passionately. In the salons of the Third Republic the heavy scent of his evil flowers was to hang over a whole community of modern artists, affecting writers no less than musicians. Commenting on this influence in 1921, Koechlin went so far as to assert that if Baudelaire had not existed, it would have been necessary for modern French music ‘to invent him.’ His poems (brought out in complete edition by 1870) were treated to memorable settings by Duparc, Fauré, Chabrier, d’Indy; Debussy completed the extraordinary Cinq poèmes de Baudelaire in 1889 and left among his many unfinished theatre works an opera based on Baudelaire’s translation of Poe’s ‘The Fall of the House of Usher.’
Baudelaire’s only other contribution to the world of music comes in the form of a long essay on Wagner (published in 1861 after the Paris performance of Tannhäuser), in which his attempt to describe the experience of Wagner’s music leads him to speculate on the vast system of ‘reciprocal analogy’ governing all creation. While this theory of correspondence may not transform our understanding of Romantic art, the essay on the whole offers a remarkable opportunity for us to rehear Wagner through the ears of one of the century’s most imaginative listeners.”
— K. Bergeron: “Baudelaire, Charles,” Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy; accessed July 11, 2007, http://www.grovemusic.com