Dolly (Fauré)

The Dolly Suite, Op. 56, is a collection of pieces for piano four-hands by Gabriel Fauré. It consists of short pieces written or revised between 1893 and 1896, to mark the birthdays and other events in the life of the daughter of the composer's mistress.

An orchestral version of the suite was scored in 1906 by Henri Rabaud, and has, like the original piano duet version, received several recordings. The best-known section of the suite, the Berceuse, has been arranged for several combinations of instruments. In Britain it became famous as the play out tune to Listen with Mother.

The suite, consisting of six short pieces, each with its own title: Berceuse, Mi-a-ou, Le jardin de Dolly, Kitty-valse, Tendresse and Le pas espagnol. The complete suite takes about fifteen minutes to perform.

Fauré wrote or revised the pieces between 1893 and 1896, for Hélène Bardac (1892–1985), known to her family as Dolly (she was later Madame Gaston de Tinan). She was the young daughter of the singer Emma Bardac, with whom Fauré had a long-running affair. He was in the practice of sending pieces of music, in manuscript, to mark Dolly's birthdays and other family occasions.

In a marked departure from his customary practice, Fauré gave each of the six movements a descriptive, sometimes whimsical, title. Ordinarily he disliked fanciful titles for musical pieces, and maintained that he would not use even such generic titles as "barcarolle" if his publishers did not insist on them. His son Philippe recalled, "he would far rather have given his Nocturnes, Impromptus, and even his Barcarolles the simple title Piano Piece no. so-and-so".

Allegretto moderato. The Berceuse, marking Dolly's first birthday, was a very early piece, composed in 1864 for Suzanne Garnier, the daughter of a family friend. In 1893 Fauré made some small amendments and changed its title from "La Chanson dans le jardin" to "Berceuse" – that is, a cradle song.

Allegro vivo. "Mi-a-ou" was written for Dolly's second birthday in June 1894. The title does not refer to a pet cat, as has often been supposed, but to Dolly's attempts to pronounce the name of her elder brother Raoul, who later became one of Fauré's favourite pupils. The young Dolly called her brother Messieu Aoul, which Fauré took as the original title for the piece. In his finished manuscript the title is shortened to "Miaou" (without hyphens). The Fauré scholar Robert Orledge writes that the title "Mi-a-ou", like that of the "Kitty-valse" later in the suite, is the responsibility of Fauré's publisher, Hamelle.

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