"Meme les anges": Julia's song

Speranza

"MEME LES ANGES"

ORIGIN: English
USE: English
SOURCE: English
NOTES: English


(1922?)

"Fallen Angels" (play), 1923 (Julia's song)
Unpubl. MS

The song, "Meme les anges succombent a l'amour" comes quite early in Act I, just after the departure of Fred and Willy.

There is the stage direction:

"Julia begins to sing lightly".

It also recurs right at the end of the play.

There is the sound of music in the apartment above, and Maurice's voice can be heard singing the last phrase of the song,

"Je t'aime, je t'aime, je t'aime".

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The song may well have preceded and provided the play’s title, since its opening lyrics are:

“Meme les Anges succombent a l’amour” - ‘Even angels fall in love’.

Or else the play somehow came to be titled ‘Fallen Angels’ and the song’s French lyrics were *later* designed to tie in with this title. -- which I find hard to believe.

But now there is no certainty which was the chicken and which the egg.

We do not know who wrote down the MS, but it is certainly not in Elsie April’s hand, and may therefore be *earlier* than 1923.

However, doubt as to the early origins of the song, "Meme les anges", start to creep into one's mind on account of moments of

quite “advanced” chromatic harmonisations

and an unusually (for that period of Noel Coward’s work) neat and pianistic accompaniment.

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An odd situation exists with this song,
as Noel Coward's own music for the song
has NOT been heard in recent years.
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But then, the Noel Coward Estate archives apparently lost the song for a time.

The song, "Meme les anges" was rediscovered only in the early 1990s.

The song was carefully noted and filed by Joan Hirst.

However, by then various people had obviously got fed up with the non-appearance of the original and had decided to compose NEW music.

There is at least one version with music by someone else which ALSO ended up in the Noel Coward Estate archives.

Even for the recent successful "centenary" London production of "Fallen Angels" -- starring Felicity Kendal and Frances de la Tour -- the song had NEW MUSIC (!) composed by one Ewan Anderson!

Sir Noel 's original is neatER, gentleR and more romantic.

It also has some stylistic similarities with

‘Melanie’s Aria’

from Conversation Piece, if you care to know, particularly the fact that the melody rests on

the sharpened fifth

of

the dominant seventh chord

in its second bar.

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Ah well.