Réponse d’une épouse sage from Deux Poèmes chinois Op 35 (1927)

Le bachelier de Salamanque from Deux Mélodies Op 20 (1919)

Among Roussel’s forty or so mélodies are three sets of Deux Poèmes chinois, all of which are precious tokens of the composer’s long-term interest in the culture of the Far East. Based on Henri-Pierre Roché’s French versions of Herbert Giles’s English translations from the ancient Chinese, over the years between them they become less conspicuously oriental in their language - from the overt pentatoncism of Op.12 in 1908 to the spare chromaticism of Op 47 twenty-four years later - and ever more crystalline in expression. Perhaps the most inspired of them, or even of all Roussel’s songs, is Réponse d’une épouse sage from the Op 35 set, which is a concise but illuminatingly truthful character study. The discreet exoticism allied to the formality of the first few lines suggests an erotic vulnerability which, after the severe scolding of the middle section, is most touchingly confirmed when the opening is recalled with a shift of emotional emphasis at the end.

In Le bachelier de Salamanque, one of two settings of poems by René Chalupt written eight years earlier in 1919, Roussel is similarly discreet in his use of local colour. The influence of guitar figuration on the piano part is clear enough but its effect is ironic rather than atmospheric. Its purpose is to offset the characteristically restrained but poignant moment of pathos towards the end. The piano, however, refuses to be drawn into the sentiment.