Songs of Emmanuel Chabrier

The French composer Emmanuel Chabrier (1841–94) wrote music in many genres, including opera and operetta, piano, orchestral music, and songs with piano accompaniment. The songs of Chabrier 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” (in the best sense). 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 (although they did collaborate on two opéras-bouffes Fisch-Ton-Kan and Vaucochard et fils Ier), but among the better-known poets whose verse Chabrier did set in these early songs were Théodore de Banville (“Lied”) and Alfred de Musset (“Adieux à Suzon”). Chabrier gave up his job at the Ministry of the Interior in 1880; as a full-time composer he set texts by Victor Hu