Two Duets, Op.11

La Nuit

Réveil

Although they were not published until twenty-five years after his death, without a third item that was apparently meant to go with them, the two duets of Chausson’s Op.11 are among the most delightful of all his songs. Written in 1883 to words by Théodore de Banville, one of his “Rondels à la manière de Charles d’Orléans,” La Nuit is a highly poetic expression of nocturnal bliss with its two voices linked mostly in voluptuous thirds and its caressing downward arpeggios in the piano accompaniment. Réveil, set to words by Honoré de Balzac three years later, is not a too rude awakening. The piano part is more eventful and the partnership between the two singers is contrapuntal rather just harmonic but the atmosphere of calm and joy in nature is sustained throughout this song too.