Jacques Ibert's La Mort de Don Quichotte : in between two worlds
A perhaps lesser known song cycle for baritone recounting the tales of Don Quixote de le Mancha, Jacques Ibert’s Chansons de Don Quichotte have thankfully recently triggered more interest and gained more traction on international recital stages.
Composed in 1932 to be the soundtrack of the 1933 movie Don Quichotte starring Feodore Chaliapin, the cycle is comprised of four songs: Chanson du départ, Chanson à Dulcinée, Chanson du duc and Chanson de la mort de Don Quichotte.
These were composed to poems different from Maurice Ravel’s Don Quichotte à Dulcinée cycle, and the one this article focuses on, Chanson de la mort de Don Quichotte, was composed on a poem by Alexandre Arnoux, a French screenwriter who also published a number of poems and a was a prolific novelist.
While Ravel’s work focuses on the (fantasy) love affair between the protagonist and his dame, Jacques Ibert chose poems which unveil a more thorough overview of the Cervantes novel, Don Quichotte’s travels and ultimately in the last song, his mental state and feelings.
Chanson de la mort de Don Quichotte is a two-page trove of insights into Don Quichotte’s mind and heart and a direct testimony to Arnoux and Ibert’s sympathy for the character.
The piano accompaniment is supportive without intruding or interrupting the character’s thoughts, and Don Quichotte’s flow is truly the driving force of this song. The piano refrains from any commentary, which speaks to the respect Ibert had for Don Quichotte: we are simply here to listen.
In this poem, Don Quichotte reaches out from beyond to his squire, Sancho Panza, and reflects on his imprint on the living world. The island Don Quichotte now finds himself on is a reference to Sancho and Don Quichotte’s original promise to him: that he would make Sancho king of his own island after their adventures were over. In life or in death, we can surmise that the promise of this island, of this calm, faraway oasis was more to Don Quichotte than just a place, but the prospect of an environment where he could be himself, without the constraints of reason and his peers.
It is fitting and somehow reassuring to us listeners that after death, Don Quichotte finally finds himself in that place, free and safe to be himself. The first part of the poem is infused with positivity and a comforting tone, supported by Ibert with the constancy of triplets, steadfast and stable pillars as Don Quichotte sings about the marvel of the beyond: in a happy island where everything is pure and without lies. The irony of this last statement does not escape us as we know he was the one perceived to be living in a lie, in a fantasy world based on romance and chivalry books he was obsessed with.
In the island finally found, […] in the desired island: here Don Quichotte’s exhaustion is blatant; that exhaustion that can be felt from living in a world which simply does not understand you. Whether we are of the mind that Don Quichotte was actually mentally unstable or that he was pretending to be, the longing for a haven of peace where one is able to finally rest and feel safe is a universal desire that connects each of us to Don Quichotte. In this sentence, the singer must find that feeling of finally coming home, and deliver it with a steady peace supported by the heart flutter-like piano accompaniment.
What is also obvious is the caring Don Quichotte has for Sancho and we should not lightly witness the fact that Arnoux has Don Quichotte call Sancho “mon ami” (My friend).
One of the novel’s most impacting moments for me has always been the burning of the books; not only because of what such acts have meant throughout history but also because it shows the clear disregard and misunderstanding of Don Quichotte’s mental condition by the people around him, who are supposed to care for and about him. Once again, a universal feeling we may all have experienced at one time or another in younger years (or later) around our caretakers and/or people whose love for us professes to imply true care. Ibert’s pianissimo setting of the memory of the books being burned is a testament to the pain these betrayals can bring, even later in life (here, after) and the melodic line is tainted with a distinct disbelief: the books have been burned and form a pile of ashes.
If breaking the fourth wall was ever Arnoux’s intention, he could not have done it better than with the following sentence: if all the books have killed me, all it takes is one for me to live on. Is it hope that a single chivalry book survived? Or is it really the character recognizing the only one that matters is the one telling his own story? Don Quichotte steps into our reality through this phrase and asks the questions: does it matter how I lived… or does it matter how they tell my life? Does it matter that I lived? Or does it matter that they tell my life? The bitterness of that realization is apparent in Ibert’s last fermata on the word “d’un” (all it takes is one for me to live on).
Arnoux gives Don Quichotte a voice he does not have in the novel, and Ibert carries that voice with his music, no matter how uncomfortable the subjects it brings forth are. When Don Quichotte reflects, in the poem’s last sentence, on his imprint as a Ghost in life, and real in death, so is the strange fate of the poor Don Quixote, one cannot help but feel a pang of the shame society as a whole should feel as it overlooks individuals with mental illness. Dismissed, misunderstood, ignored and sometimes mocked are all attitudes Don Quichotte was a victim of during his life. They all lead to him feeling that the most alive he is able to be is in the book recounting his adventures, not as a person, whose mental state and/or approach to life prompted people to look the other way. The stories are more real than we want the person they speak of to be. We are often more interested in the stories than we are with understanding and accepting the individual.
In the final bars of the song, Don Quichotte, through Ibert’s music, expresses once more the paradox of his existence, or lack thereof: the long, wailing “A” is both a release and the deploring of how things must be. The release and relief of death as the end to misunderstanding and the beginning of peace, and deploring death as the only mean one’s existence - or the part we are comfortable with - comes to life.
The platform both Arnoux provided to Don Quichotte in this song, and more largely the one Ibert provided throughout the cycle is tremendous and carries so much love, respect and openness into a character which we often mock or pity. However, one does not need to have dissociative personality disorder and ever perhaps a touch of Peter Pan syndrome to understand the pain behind feeling alone and not of this world. We must understand the deeper issues and universal feelings at stake and connect them to our own history. Only then will we be able to give the most honest performance and pay our most humble homage to the works. We may even learn something about ourselves in the process.