投稿者: Classical Music Through Human Connections #13
Gabriel Fauré’s Sicilienne, Op. 78, is cherished for its gently lilting rhythm and a melody that seems at once graceful and tinged with nostalgia. Familiar to cellists and flutists alike, it sounds perfectly at home as a short concert piece. Yet it was not originally conceived as an independent instrumental work.
Its story begins in 1893, with music intended for a production of Molière’s Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (The Bourgeois Gentleman). The theatre closed before the production could take place, leaving Fauré’s incidental music unfinished and unheard in its intended setting.
Five years later, the Sicilienne emerged as a piece for cello and piano. It also found a place in a new theatrical production of Pelléas et Mélisande and eventually became part of Fauré’s celebrated orchestral suite. Along the way, the music was shaped by a chain of connections involving Camille Saint-Saëns, the cellist William Henry Squire, and Fauré’s pupil Charles Koechlin.
1893: A Commission Passed from Saint-Saëns to Fauré
The story began with a proposed production of Molière’s Le Bourgeois gentilhomme at the Éden-Théâtre in Paris. Camille Saint-Saëns had initially been approached to write the incidental music. Occupied with other work, he passed the commission to Fauré.
This was more than a professional recommendation. Saint-Saëns had taught Fauré at the École Niedermeyer, where a relationship began that continued long after Fauré’s student years. The teacher who had helped shape Fauré’s musical education now opened the door to a new theatrical project.
But the production never reached the stage. The Éden-Théâtre closed in 1893, and the planned performances were cancelled. The incidental music remained incomplete, and the Sicilienne was left without the theatrical setting for which it had been written.
A manuscript from March 1893 survives in the Music Department of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Preserved under the shelfmark MS-17779, it provides a tangible link to the piece’s earliest history, before its later transformations into the versions heard today.
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Music Department, MS-17779.
Saint-Saëns’s relationships with performers also shaped the fortunes of his own music. Our article Saint-Saëns’s The Swan — From a Private Musical Gathering to the World Stage explores how the cellist Charles-Joseph Lebouc helped another familiar melody reach a wider audience.
1898: A New Life for Cello and Piano
Fauré returned to the Sicilienne in 1898 and prepared a version for cello and piano. Published that year as Op. 78, it allowed the piece to stand on its own, no longer dependent on a production of Molière’s play.
The published score is dedicated to the British cellist and composer William Henry Squire (1871–1963). The dedication is a documented connection between composer and performer, although the surviving evidence does not establish exactly how they first met. It is possible that they became acquainted during one of Fauré’s visits to England.
The chamber version appeared in 1898 through Metzler in London and J. Hamelle in Paris. Fauré’s autograph of the cello-and-piano version is dated April 16, 1898; the published scores contain some differences from that manuscript. The Hamelle edition represents a later stage of the musical text authorized by the composer, as discussed in the preface to G. Henle Verlag’s Urtext edition.
The cello’s singing tone brings an intimate character to the gently swaying melody. What had begun as music for the theatre could now travel independently through printed scores and concert performances.
A Return to the Stage: Pelléas et Mélisande
In the same year, Fauré received another theatrical commission. Maurice Maeterlinck’s play Pelléas et Mélisande was being prepared for an English-language production at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London, and Fauré was asked to provide the incidental music.
Pressed for time by his many commitments, Fauré turned to his pupil Charles Koechlin (1867–1950) for help with the orchestration. The Sicilienne, originally intended for an entirely different play, was reworked for the new production. Koechlin’s contribution allowed the music to take on a theatrical orchestral form.
The London production opened on June 21, 1898, with Fauré conducting. The Sicilienne accompanied the scene in which Pelléas and Mélisande meet beside a fountain, where Mélisande loses her ring. The melody’s delicate charm sits alongside a moment that will have consequences later in the drama.
There is a striking symmetry in the piece’s journey: a commission passed from teacher to pupil led to its creation, and another collaboration between teacher and pupil helped return it to the stage. Saint-Saëns, Fauré, and Koechlin each had a part in the chain of events that shaped the music’s history.
The same Maeterlinck play also inspired Claude Debussy to compose his opera Pelléas et Mélisande. Debussy’s opera and Fauré’s incidental music are separate works, each offering a different musical response to the drama.
How the Sicilienne Became the Suite’s Third Movement
Fauré later selected music from Pelléas et Mélisande to form a concert suite, Op. 80. At its first performance in 1901, the suite consisted of three movements: Prélude, Fileuse (The Spinning Girl), and La mort de Mélisande (The Death of Mélisande). The Sicilienne was not yet included.
The orchestral Sicilienne was published separately in 1909, with its own plate number. It subsequently became the third movement of the four-movement suite. Although the separate publication dates from 1909, G. Henle Verlag notes that the four-movement version was incorporated into a new edition of the suite in 1920. These dates refer to different stages in the music’s publication history.
In the orchestral suite, the flute carries the famous melody, giving it a different color from the cello-and-piano version. A piece that had once been stranded by a theatre’s closure had found a lasting place in both the chamber and orchestral repertoire.
Listening to the Sicilienne: A Gentle Dance with Hidden Depth
A sicilienne is a pastoral, dance-like musical form often associated with a flowing rhythm in 6/8 or 12/8 time. Fauré’s piece is in 6/8, and its gentle motion is central to its unmistakable character.
The opening melody seems simple and immediately approachable. Yet its expressive power comes from more than the tune alone. Subtle changes in harmony create passing shadows, allowing the music to suggest both tenderness and melancholy without losing its graceful movement.
For performers, the challenge lies in the quality of the phrase: how the shorter notes lead into the longer ones, how the melody breathes, and how the dance-like pulse can remain alive without becoming rigid. Because the texture is relatively transparent, every detail of tone and timing can be heard.
Comparing the cello version with the orchestral version reveals how instrumentation changes the music’s character. The cello offers warmth and an almost vocal intimacy; the flute brings lightness and clarity to the same melodic line.
From an Abandoned Production to an Enduring Classic
The history of the Sicilienne reminds us that a composition’s future is not always determined by the circumstances in which it was created. Its original theatrical purpose vanished when the Éden-Théâtre closed, but the music itself survived.
Through Fauré’s own adaptation, its dedication to Squire, and Koechlin’s work on a new theatrical production, the piece found new listeners and new musical settings. What began with an unrealized commission in 1893 became a familiar work for cello, flute, and orchestra.
It is a story of how music can continue to grow through the people who compose it, perform it, arrange it, and bring it to new audiences.
Play Fauré’s Sicilienne as a Flute Duet
Japan Duo Notes offers an arrangement of Fauré’s Sicilienne for two flutes, with no piano accompaniment. The arrangement allows two players to explore the relationship between melody and accompaniment while bringing out the piece’s lyrical character.
View the sample score, listen to the performance, and find the PDF sheet music on our English-language product page:
▶ Sicilienne (Fauré) — Flute Duet Sheet Music | No Piano
If you enjoy Fauré’s lyrical writing, you may also like our arrangement of Après un rêve for two flutes. Both pages include options for international customers to purchase the PDF sheet music.
Related Articles and Editions
- Saint-Saëns’s The Swan — From a Private Musical Gathering to the World Stage — Another story of a celebrated melody shaped by the relationship between a composer and a cellist.
- Après un rêve (Fauré) — Flute Duet Sheet Music — A lyrical Fauré work arranged for two flutes.
- Sicilienne (Fauré) — Flute Duet Sheet Music — Sample score, performance, and purchasing options.
- 日本語版：フォーレ《シチリアーノ》――上演されなかった劇音楽が名曲になるまで — Read this article in Japanese.
Sources and Further Reading
- Bibliothèque nationale de France — Catalogue record for Fauré’s early Sicilienne manuscript.
- G. Henle Verlag, Sicilienne, HN 1019 — Urtext preface discussing the versions, sources, publications, and dedication.
- IMSLP: Sicilienne, Op. 78 — Manuscripts and early editions.
- IMSLP: Pelléas et Mélisande, Op. 80 — Incidental music and orchestral suite.
- Musikproduktion Höflich: Pelléas et Mélisande — Editorial introduction to the orchestral suite.