page_title: Songs of Emmanuel Chabrier
section_title: The developing songwriter
hierarchical_section_title: Songs of Emmanuel Chabrier / The developing songwriter
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait photograph of Victor Hugo
context_page_description: The French composer Emmanuel Chabrier wrote music in many genres, including opera and operetta, piano, orchestral music, and songs with piano accompaniment. The songs cover most of his creative years, from the early 1860s to 1890, when the illness which would kill him prevented much composition. He came late to music as a profession, but – although being an exceptional pianist – he had no trappings of a formal training: no conservatoire studies, no Prix de Rome, "none of the conventional badges of French academic musicians, by whom he was regarded as an amateur".
  There are forty-three published songs by Chabrier. He began composing these mélodies when he was about twenty-one; the first nine were written between 1862 and 1866. Chabrier never set any verse by his friend Verlaine, but among the better-known poets whose verse Chabrier did set in these early songs were Théodore de Banville and Alfred de Musset.
context_section_description: Le pas d'armes du roi Jean –  « Ça! qu'on selle » ("Right, saddle-up") (1866) – words by Victor Hugo (Ballade XII from Odes et Ballades, 1826).
  
  The song is about a page who falls in a tournament. The young Saint-Saëns set fourteen of Hugo's 32 verses in 1852; Chabrier set eight. "One must admire Saint-Saëns's skill in making a long and effective piece out of unpromising material [...] how much better Chabrier captures, right from the start, the spirit of the festive joust with music which rattles jovially between the hands", Johnson comments. Chabrier regularly sang this song at the Marquise de Ricard's Parnassian salon. It evokes the galop of a horse and plays on ambivalence between modal and tonal harmony, creating new and strange effects.
  Ivresses! Grande Valse – « Viens! je veux les caresses » ("Come, I want your caresses") (1869) – words by Léon Labarre. 
  
  The song is about uncontrollable physical love with wild and impassioned pleas for wine and kisses; Delage describes the words of this song as "improbable" (« invraisemblables ») but Chabrier manages through two gay and rhythmic waltzes to evoke the world of the café-concert. The music reappears subsequently in his Suite de valses of 1872. After a vivace introduction, interrupted by a mysterious andante, the first waltz mimes musically an ardent, unbuttoned love. The second waltz 'espress. Ed appassionato' starts after a short recitative like passage ; the first waltz returns with new harmonies. Notes on the score (cymbal, timpani, violins) indicate that Chabrier had an orchestration in mind. Steven Huebner notes that Chabrier's melodies (instrumental and vocal) are frequently combined with chromatic decoration, citing as an example 'Ivresses'.
  L'invitation au voyage (1870) – « Mon enfant, ma sœur, songe à la douceur d'aller là-bas » (Call to expedition : "My child, sister, think how sweet to go over there") words by Charles Baudelaire (from Les Fleurs du mal, 1855, 1857), set at the same time by Duparc (two verses only). This is about lovers escaping to a place of luxury, calm and sensuality. Chabrier's longest song contains an obbligato part for bassoon. Chabrier savoured the richness of full 9th harmonics; the phrase "d'aller là-bas vivre ensemble" in this song is "set to a succession of 9th chords with root movement by a 5th. The whole song is a study in such harmonies where Chabrier pays particular attention to the colour of the 9th in different registers of the keyboard and even the voice".
  Sérénade de Ruy Blas – « À quoi bon entendre les oiseaux des bois ? » ("Why listen to the birds from the woods" – the most tender bird sings in your voice...) (1873, published in 1913) words by Victor Hugo (from Act II of Ruy Blas, 1838; off-stage voices of laundrywomen). Set in 17th century Spain; the music follows the text closely. It features a lively ritournelle between the verses and a close of softness and mystery, briefly and unexpectedly turning to the sub-dominant, very typical of the composer. A rich and lavish accompaniment sets out it apart from the typical French romance, ranging – with embellishments, shades of modal hue and chromaticism – across the whole keyboard. Composed in the same year as Chabrier's ground-breaking Impromptu for piano, Roy Howat writes that it could easily pass for Wolf.
caption: Victor Hugo
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