Si mes vers avaient des aîles

From insect wings to metaphorical wings: Hugo’s dream of flying his verses directly to the object of his devotion inspired in a thirteen-year-old composer a song that was never to be eclipsed in popularity by anything else he wrote. While it clearly owes more than a little to Mendelssohn’s Heine setting Auf Flügeln des Gesangs (On Wings of Song) Reynaldo Hahn’s Si mes vers avaient des ailes is an astonishingly assured in its word-setting, in the economy of its harmonies and in its control of a heaven-sent melodic line.