Cimetière

Cimetière is a short mélodie for voice and piano that Jean Absil composed in 1927​. The title, meaning “Cemetery,” comes from the poem by Jean Moréas (called Le Cimetière), which Absil set to music. Though brief – only about two minutes in performance – the song is significant as an early example of Absil’s shift from late-romantic expression towards a more modern harmonic idiom. In Cimetière, one can hear the influence of French Impressionism and expressionism intertwined. The piano part opens with haunting, slowly tolling chords that establish a funereal atmosphere, while the vocal line unfolds in a free, recitative-like manner over subtly shifting harmonies. Absil’s harmonic language at this stage was exploratory: he employs extended tonal harmonies and mild polytonality, creating poignant dissonances that never completely sever ties to a tonal center​.

The mood is somber and introspective, reflecting the poem’s meditation on death. Yet within the short span, Absil introduces a surprising intensity – at the song’s climax the voice rises and the piano harmonies grow more complex, hinting at an anguished resignation before the piece subsides into quiet final chords. Musicologically, Cimetière shows Absil’s early interest in mélodie form as a field for innovation. The influence of Darius Milhaud (one of Absil’s mentors in polytonality) can be detected in the layered chords, and echoes of the Second Viennese School appear in the way the vocal melody sometimes avoids conventional tonal resolution​. Despite these modern traits, the song maintains a lyrical continuity and clarity of text setting that root it in the French song tradition stemming from Fauré and Ravel.

This song was composed when Absil was 34 years old and still establishing his voice as a composer. In 1927 he was a recent graduate of the Brussels Conservatory and beginning to experiment beyond the Wagnerian and Strauss-influenced style of his student years​. Cimetière appears to have been part of a set of songs or a competition entry – some sources suggest it was written for a vocal contest piece at the Conservatory, though concrete evidence is scant.

The choice of a Moréas text is notable: Jean Moréas was a symbolist poet, and Absil likely encountered the poem through the French literary influence permeating Belgian arts at the time. The first performance of Cimetière is not documented, but it was probably sung in a student or faculty recital in Brussels in the late 1920s, perhaps by a mezzo-soprano from Absil’s circle (the song is suited to a middle voice). It was not published immediately; like many of Absil’s early works, it remained in manuscript until later.

Critically, Cimetière did not make a large contemporary impact on its own, but in hindsight scholars see it as an indicator of Absil’s developing style. Modern assessments (for example, by musicologist Graham Johnson) note that this song “shows the polytonal influence of Absil’s mentor Milhaud, as well as his interest in the Second Viennese school”​. Indeed, Cimetière bridges the lush late-Romantic harmony of early 20th-century song and the emerging modernist currents. In performance, it presents a concise emotional narrative – a quality that has attracted a few singers to program it in recitals of Belgian art song. While not a repertory staple, it has been recorded as part of complete surveys: a notable recording is included in the anthology Mélodies belges oubliées (Forgotten Belgian Songs) released by Cyprès in 2005, performed by mezzo-soprano Bernadette Degelin, which brought Cimetière to light for a new generation. Reviewers of that recording pointed out the song’s dark, atmospheric piano writing and how Absil’s setting intensifies the natural rhythms of Moréas’s verse. In sum, Cimetière occupies an important place as an early milestone in Jean Absil’s compositional journey, foreshadowing the stylistic directions he would pursue in the 1930s​