Ex. 1-10: Madrigal

This song was published in Paris in 1886, when Chaminade was in her late twenties. Later it was printed in her first book of twenty songs, about 1892, together with La Fiancée du soldat and Sur la plage.

The poem is by Georges Vanor (1865–1906), whose real name was Georges Van Ormelingen. He was only about 21, a young writer of the new Symbolist movement in Paris. Three years later he published a short book that explained its poetry. Chaminade set another of his poems in the same year, and Massenet later set three more.

The poem says that the loved one's sweet kisses are birds, which fly to the singer's lips and sing there. Its first line keeps coming back.

The New York edition printed English words that are not a translation. They are a new poem about rain and roses, with no birds in it. Two sopranos of the Metropolitan Opera in New York recorded the song, in 1912 and 1922.

From the album Mélodies de la Belle Époque (2010), sung by Märta Schéle with Olof Höjer, piano
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