Servais - Fantaisie Caractéristique sur deux célèbres Romances de Lafont, Op. 8 (Urtext Edition, Piano Version)

Servais’s Fantaisie caractéristique sur deux célèbres romances de Lafont is based on two songs by the virtuoso violinist Charles Lafont: “C’est une larme” and “Le Départ du jeune Marin.” Lafont’s songs also attracted the attention of other nineteenth-century composers, including Franz Liszt and Henri Herz. According to Servais scholar Peter François, Servais had close contact with Lafont in 1834 during his extended stay in Paris.

The first known performance of the Fantaisie caractéristique took place in Vienna on 20 February 1842, with documented performances continuing through the 1840s and 1850s. The work also circulated abroad: Anton Hekking performed it with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on 21 January and 20 May 1891, and with the Boston Pops on 9 July 1891. The piece is dedicated to Nicolas de Wladimiroff, Nikolay Vladimiroff, an aristocrat and amateur cellist from St. Petersburg.

The work is cast in double-variation form, though it focuses primarily on “C’est une larme.” The introduction presents the song in a D-minor version, leading through a virtuosic cadenza into the D-major theme and two variations. “Le Départ du jeune Marin” then appears, followed by a B-flat-minor variation built largely on broken octaves, a passage that likely influenced David Popper’s Etude No. 38 from Hohe Schule des Violoncello-Spiels, Op. 73. The minor-key introduction returns in F-sharp minor before a final D-major variation on “C’est une larme” brings the fantasy to a brilliant close.

This is one of Servais’s most impressive lyrical-virtuoso fantasies, combining song transcription, double variation, operatic rhetoric, and dazzling cello figuration.

ASTA Level: 6