Lili Boulanger D’un jardin clair for guitar
From Trois Morceaux pour Piano (1914), arranged for solo classical guitar. A succinct impressionistic piece, capturing a vivid moment in time.
Sheet music PDF.
Edition notes
During her studies at the Conservatoire de Paris, Boulanger won the Prix de Rome for composition - the prize being a scholarship to the French Academy in Rome, at the Villa Medici. D’un jardin clair was written in 1914 during her stay there. The piece is dedicated to her friend Ninette Salles, daughter of the civil engineer Gustave Eiffel.
The gentle and reflective music unfolds from a four-note motif in the opening two bars, drawing on an Impressionist sound-world with stacked-4th harmonies and parallel chord planing.
For this guitar arrangement I have transposed down a 5th, from B major to E major. A happy discovery was that this allows the opening phrase to climb all the way to the top of the standard guitar range, b″, then drop down to the low E at the start of the next phrase. I have tried to retain colours from the complex harmonies whilst reducing the number of notes - usually by thinning out the lower parts of chords more than the upper reaches. I have kept the original tempo marking Assez Vite (‘fast enough’), but I think this works on guitar at a somewhat slow pace (the crossed-out marking on the manuscript is ‘not too fast’).
The manuscript is headed “morceau pour Piano Nº 4”, with the title “D’un jardin clair” added in pencil, along with pedalling marks and other revisions. I have reinstated bar 23 from the manuscript, not present in the 1918 Ricordi-Paris edition. This may have been intentionally removed by the composer later in the editing process, but I like the additional build-up this allows for the crescendo.
The manuscript of D’un jardin clair is dated Friday 19 June 1914. Less than two weeks later, Archduke Franz Ferdinand would be assassinated, prompting the July Crisis that led to the outbreak of World War I.
Links
D’un jardin clair autograph manuscript, 1914. Catalog entry at Bibliothèque nationale de France https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b55014490m.
D’un jardin clair Ricordi-Paris edition, 1918. Catalog entry at Bibliothèque nationale de France https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k3242439
The piece was republished as the 2nd of Trois Morceaux pour Piano by G. Schirmer in 1979, available on IMSLP https://imslp.org/wiki/3_Morceaux_(Boulanger,_Lili).
Edition summary
| Title | D'un jardin clair ('Of a bright garden') |
| Composer | Lili Boulanger |
| Instrument | Guitar |
| Original key | B major |
| Arranger | Jonty Dawson |
| Edition date | 2024-01-25 |
| Page count | 2 |
| Edition PDF | boulanger-lili-d-un-jardin-clair-guitar.pdf |