The Dolly Suite is a set of six short character pieces for piano duet which Fauré composed over the years 1893 to 1896. The set is dedicated to Hélène Bardac ("Dolly"), daughter of the singer, Emma Bardac, with whom Fauré enjoyed a brief relationship in the 1890s. Mme. Bardac would go on to become the second wife of Claude Debussy in 1905; Debussy composed his own homage to domesticity, the Children's Corner Suite, for their daughter together, Claude-Emma.

Hélène and her family are at the center of the Dolly Suite, which begins with "Berceuse," a peaceful nursery song. "Mi-a-ou"—sometimes taken to be a playful evocation of a cat—was originally intended as a portrait of Hélène's brother Raoul (the title comes from Hélène's attempt to pronounce her brother's name). Fauré wrote the third movement, "Le jardin de Dolly," as a New Year's present for Hélène in 1895. The sly "Kitty Valse" was likewise a present for her, this time for her birthday in 1896. The "Kitty" of the title is brother Raoul's pet dog. The Suite concludes with the romantic "Tendresse" and a spirited bit of Spanish music, "Le pas espagnol."

The Dolly Suite displays the refinement, charm, and harmonic transparency that characterizes much of Fauré's piano music, while also maintaining a somewhat childlike naïveté. Unlike some music for piano, four hands, the suite is very light in texture, rarely exploring the depths of sonority that are available with two players at the keyboard. The Dolly Suite is also frequently heard in an orchestral arrangement made in 1906 by Henri Rabaud.

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The Berceuse opening Fauré's Dolly, a suite of six pieces (his only composition for piano, four hands) is often praised for its elegant simplicity and immediate lift into the enchanted demesne of childhood, with a gloss on the composer's infatuation with Emma Bardac—a wealthy banker's wife who would become the second Madame Debussy in 1908—the femme inspiratrice of his exquisitely vernal Verlaine cycle of mélodies, La Bonne chanson. Inspired by, and dedicated to, Bardac's daughter Hélène, five of the numbers for Dolly were composed between 1893 and 1896 and are contemporary with La Bonne chanson (1892-1894). But less often remarked is that the Berceuse, already in its four-hand layout, dates from Fauré's 18th year—the manuscript, dedicated to Mlle. Suzanne Garnier, the daughter of a family friend of whom nothing more is known, is titled La Chanson dans le jardin and dated January 12, 1864. Its publication 30 years later—Hamelle, 1894 (and as part of Dolly, Hamelle, 1897)—entailed only the most minuscule alterations. Great composers are born with essential personality intact and are vibrant from the beginning. When the disavowed and discarded Messe solenelle by the 20-year-old Berlioz—a far different composer—was discovered and performed in 1993 it revealed, with the familiar flamboyance, an astounding number of oddments, from whole movements to mere phrases, which would find their seemingly rightful placement in works composed only many years later. Likewise, tracing Fauré's self-borrowings over a long career is an involved and complex endeavor. An idea from an uncompleted and discarded violin concerto composed in the late 1870s, for instance, furnishes a theme for his final work, the spare but radiant String Quartet of 1924, while—perhaps the most disarming instances—the Ouverture, Menuet, and Gavotte from the witty and nostalgic 1919 divertissement Masques et bergamasques, which seem to capture Fauré at his lightest, ripest, and most old-masterly, are lifted from unpublished symphonic works dating from the 1860s. If the Berceuse is perhaps the least of these self-borrowings, it is nevertheless prophetic—or redolent—of that vein of suavely fluent charm that would mark his productions into the twentieth century, the engaging, evenly spaced melody, floating above an undulant broken chord figure, of its opening and closing sections in E, enclosing a winsome variant in C. As part of the Dolly Suite, the Berceuse was first heard under the auspices of the Société Nationale de Musique, April 30, 1898, performed by Edouard Risler and Alfred Cortot.

© All Music Guide

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The Berceuse opening Fauré's Dolly, a suite of six pieces (his only composition for piano, four hands) is often praised for its elegant simplicity and immediate lift into the enchanted demesne of childhood, with a gloss on the composer's infatuation with Emma Bardac—a wealthy banker's wife who would become the second Madame Debussy in 1908—the femme inspiratrice of his exquisitely vernal Verlaine cycle of mélodies, La Bonne chanson. Inspired by, and dedicated to, Bardac's daughter Hélène, five of the numbers for Dolly were composed between 1893 and 1896 and are contemporary with La Bonne chanson (1892-1894). But less often remarked is that the Berceuse, already in its four-hand layout, dates from Fauré's 18th year—the manuscript, dedicated to Mlle. Suzanne Garnier, the daughter of a family friend of whom nothing more is known, is titled La Chanson dans le jardin and dated January 12, 1864. Its publication 30 years later—Hamelle, 1894 (and as part of Dolly, Hamelle, 1897)—entailed only the most minuscule alterations. Great composers are born with essential personality intact and are vibrant from the beginning. When the disavowed and discarded Messe solenelle by the 20-year-old Berlioz—a far different composer—was discovered and performed in 1993 it revealed, with the familiar flamboyance, an astounding number of oddments, from whole movements to mere phrases, which would find their seemingly rightful placement in works composed only many years later. Likewise, tracing Fauré's self-borrowings over a long career is an involved and complex endeavor. An idea from an uncompleted and discarded violin concerto composed in the late 1870s, for instance, furnishes a theme for his final work, the spare but radiant String Quartet of 1924, while—perhaps the most disarming instances—the Ouverture, Menuet, and Gavotte from the witty and nostalgic 1919 divertissement Masques et bergamasques, which seem to capture Fauré at his lightest, ripest, and most old-masterly, are lifted from unpublished symphonic works dating from the 1860s. If the Berceuse is perhaps the least of these self-borrowings, it is nevertheless prophetic—or redolent—of that vein of suavely fluent charm that would mark his productions into the twentieth century, the engaging, evenly spaced melody, floating above an undulant broken chord figure, of its opening and closing sections in E, enclosing a winsome variant in C. As part of the Dolly Suite, the Berceuse was first heard under the auspices of the Société Nationale de Musique, April 30, 1898, performed by Edouard Risler and Alfred Cortot.

© All Music Guide

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The Dolly Suite is a set of six short character pieces for piano duet which Fauré composed over the years 1893 to 1896. The set is dedicated to Hélène Bardac ("Dolly"), daughter of the singer, Emma Bardac, with whom Fauré enjoyed a brief relationship in the 1890s. Mme. Bardac would go on to become the second wife of Claude Debussy in 1905; Debussy composed his own homage to domesticity, the Children's Corner Suite, for their daughter together, Claude-Emma.

Hélène and her family are at the center of the Dolly Suite, which begins with "Berceuse," a peaceful nursery song. "Mi-a-ou"—sometimes taken to be a playful evocation of a cat—was originally intended as a portrait of Hélène's brother Raoul (the title comes from Hélène's attempt to pronounce her brother's name). Fauré wrote the third movement, "Le jardin de Dolly," as a New Year's present for Hélène in 1895. The sly "Kitty Valse" was likewise a present for her, this time for her birthday in 1896. The "Kitty" of the title is brother Raoul's pet dog. The Suite concludes with the romantic "Tendresse" and a spirited bit of Spanish music, "Le pas espagnol."

The Dolly Suite displays the refinement, charm, and harmonic transparency that characterizes much of Fauré's piano music, while also maintaining a somewhat childlike naïveté. Unlike some music for piano, four hands, the suite is very light in texture, rarely exploring the depths of sonority that are available with two players at the keyboard. The Dolly Suite is also frequently heard in an orchestral arrangement made in 1906 by Henri Rabaud.

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