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Updated: May 18, 2025
There is nothing that M. d'Indy has made more his own than the art of painting landscapes in music. There is one page in Fervaal at the beginning of Act II which calls up misty mountain tops covered with pine forests; there is another page in L'Étranger where one sees strange lights glimmering on the sea while a storm is brooding.
But even when this influence is most apparent it is only superficial: his true spirit is remote from Wagner's. You may find in Fervaal a few trees like those in Siegfried's forest; but the forest itself is not the same; broad avenues have been cut in it, and daylight fills the caverns of the Niebelungs. This love of clearness is the ruling factor of M. d'Indy's artistic nature.
By turns it gratefully and warmly received M. Bruneau's Le Rêve , M. d'Indy's Fervaal , M. Gustave Charpentier's Louise all of which seemed like works of liberation. But, as a matter of fact, these lyric dramas were by no means free from foreign influences, and especially from Wagnerian influences.
Of the younger men the most prominent are Vincent d'Indy, Gustave Charpentier, and Claude Debussy. Vincent d'Indy's 'Fervaal' was produced at Brussels in 1897 and was given in Paris shortly afterwards.
The dramatic parts of the opera suggest nothing but a brilliant exercise in the Wagnerian style, but in the lyrica scenes, such as the last act in its entirety, there are evidences of an individuality of conspicuous power and originality. 'L'Étranger' hardly bore out the promise of 'Fervaal, in spite of much clever musicianship.
It is a story of the Cevennes in heroic times, somewhat in the Wagnerian manner, and the music is defiantly Wagnerian from first to last Clever as 'Fervaal' unquestionably is, it is valuable less as a work of art than as an indication of the real bent of the composer's talent.
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