Aeneas, ballet in 1 act, Op. 54

• Date: 1935
• Composer: Albert Roussel
• Period: Modern (1910-1949)

Review

Æneas, Roussel's last major work for the stage as well as for orchestra, was composed in March-April 1935 at the request of conductor Herman Scherchen, for a World Exposition that same year in Belgium. Unlike Roussel's two previous ballets, The Spider's Banquet (1912) and Bacchus et Ariane (1930), he wrote Æneas to a libretto by the Belgian poet Joseph Weterings that included texts for chorus, and ended with a "Final Hymn: The Roman People." By 1935, however, Rome was the capital of Mussolini's Fascist dictatorship. Typically of the French (Berlioz and Saint-Saëns had suffered a similar fate), Paris didn't produce Æneas until 1938 -- three years after the Brussels premiere, one year after the composer's death, and one year before the outbreak of World War II. Hymns to the Roman People (even the poet Virgil's) were insufferable until the late 1940s, by which time Pierre Boulez and André Hodeir had begun their campaign in France to discredit tonal music, and Neo-Classicism in particular. Æneas languished despite its manifold musical strengths, unrecorded until 1969, and then only once, by Jean Martinon and the R.T.F. National Orchestra and chorus, on Erato.

Just as Bacchus et Ariane followed on the heels of Roussel's Third Symphony in the same exultantly athletic style, Æneas followed the Fourth (and final) Symphony of 1934. Continuing in the Neo-Classic mold that Roussel individualized and polished after World War I, these were subtler, more contemplative, even more concentrated, scores than the Third Symphony and Bacchus, although hardly less muscular. They were also the culmination of an era. No one after Roussel wrote nobly Neo-Classic music in the between-wars French manner, although Stravinsky's and Hindemith's respective styles continued to be imitated on both sides of the Atlantic until a Franco-German consortium demolished tonality by adopting and espousing Total Serialization and musique concrète.

Despite Roussel's characteristic contrapuntism, chromatic dissonance, and extended passages in minor keys, Æneas is rooted in C major, as Bacchus was in A major. It is the danced and sung story of the trials, travail, and ultimate triumph of Virgil's hero over vainglory. Structurally, Roussel wrote a reiterative Interlude before each major happening, but always in a different key and with its own variation, following a spooky opening scene in the Cumaean Sibyl's cave, where Æneas' future is revealed to him. Before tragedy and loss forge a man who finally "casts off his personality, like a worn vestment," the hero moves from somber solitude in A minor to a section depicting the "Fatal Joys" of life's traditional stages -- youth, love, springtime. But the sad fate of Dido follows in D minor -- the work's lyrical epicenter -- while the chorus chants "Carthage must burn! Destroy Carthage!" Next, Æneas must reject the pleas of his former comrades-in-arms to join them (a scarifying dance in rondo-form accompanied by male chorus) to be purged of his former self. Only then can he found Rome and begin his work there, culminating in the C-major paean to the city's historic achievements. ~ Roger Dettmer, Rovi

Albums with Complete Performances of the Work

Title	Date
Albert Roussel: Le Festin de l'araignée; Suite in F; Bacchus and Ariadne; Pour une Fète de Printemps; etc.	1998
Albert Roussel: Psalm 80; Aeneas; Fanfare; Le Bardit des Francs	2004

Previous:	Aeneas zu Dido for voice & piano/harp
Next:	Aenema