La chanson de Florian (also known as Chanson d’Estelle)

Far more popular in his lifetime than his slightly older contemporary Emmanuel Chabrier, Godard is in danger of being remembered today only as the object of one of his colleague’s celebrated shafts of wit. “What a pity, my dear Emmanuel,” said Godard to Chabrier, “that you came to music so late!” “What a pity, my dear Benjamin,” said Chabrier to Godard, “that you came to music so early!” It might well have been because of his early, comparatively effortless success that even in his maturity Godard’s music rarely exceeded the facile. Not that facility of that kind is necessarily a disadvantage in song writing. It would have been a mistake to make much of an effort in setting Florian’s disingenuous little Chanson d’Estelle, which requires no more than Godard gives it, with a vocal line simple enough and yet attractive enough for a pretty eighteenth-century shepherdess and a naively repeated tambourin rhythm to accompany her. If it lacks the harmonic interest of Chabrier’s not entirely dissimilar L’Enfant, that is in the nature not only the two composers but also of the verse they were setting.