Hébé Op.2 No.6 (1882)

Le Charme Op.2 No.2 (1879)

Sérénade Op.13 No.2 (1887)

Le Colibri Op.2 No.7 (1882)

Le temps des lilas from Poème de l’amour et de la mer Op.19 (1887)

In 1889, at the beginning of a period of disillusionment with the mélodie, Chausson declared his dissatisfaction with all the songs he had written up to that point, “except Hébé perhaps and 15 bars of Nanny.” Hébé is, in fact, unassailable in its perfection. Reflecting Louise Ackermann’s evocation of Hebe, goddess of youth and cupbearer to the gods, Chausson sets the poem in a Greek Phrygian D and retains modal purity by introducing not one incidental in the twelve lines of the song. If this discipline seems unduly severe in theory, in fact it is no obstacle to an eloquent expression of regret for lost youth by way of a four-note descending phrase which enters the piano part at about half-way through and the vocal part in the last line.

If the composer could approve of at least part of Nanny, a Leconte de Lisle setting of 1880, he could surely take some pride in at least the last stanza of Le Charme, which transcends the Massenet influence of the first part of the song with a brief but poignant divergence from the prevailing tonality. As an admirer of the songs of Duparc, Chausson should not have been embarrassed by the echoes of Wagner in Sérénade which, while the pianist’s right hand sustains its sensitive contrapuntal dialogue with the vocal line, betrays comparatively distant memories of the Wesendonk Lieder. In Le Colibri, which is more Wagnerian in concept than in sound, the humming bird is a symbol of the late-romantic association of love and death. After hovering in an exotically supple quintuple time over piano chords in an even rhythm, it sinks to its death on a sensual downward curve of linear figuration in the pianist’s right hand. The last stanza makes the metaphor entirely explicit.

In its profound sense of loss and its melodic beauty Le temps des lilas is one of the most inspired of all Chausson’s songs. The concluding item of the orchestral cycle Poème de l’amour et de la mer – but frequently performed separately, as on this occasiion, in the composer’s own exquisite piano arrangement –    it is unusual among his mélodies in that, in the outer sections, the vocal line is sonorously doubled in the piano part. The quicker middle section most effectively offsets the elegiac reflections on either side.