Ex. 14-13: La Fiancée du soldat

This song was published in Paris in 1887, when Chaminade was about 30. It was printed alone, with the subtitle "folk song." She wrote it in the manner of a village song, with a nonsense refrain, "lon lon la." Five years later it went into her first book of twenty songs, with Madrigal and Sur la plage.

A village girl named Jeanne sings about the man she is going to marry, who has gone away to serve as a soldier. He writes to her faithfully, and she sings her sadness to the woods and fields. In the second verse she waits in vain for news. If he has died, she wants to be buried by the little wood where they kissed. Each verse still ends with the cheerful refrain.

The poem is by Charles Grandmougin (1850–1930), a poet and playwright in Paris, who came from eastern France. It is said that he volunteered for the army at 20, when war began in 1870. Franck and Massenet set his words, and so did Fauré, in Rencontre. The next year he wrote the words of Chaminade's large work for choir and orchestra, Les Amazones.

In New York in 1893 the song came out with English words, as "The Soldier's Betrothed." The French poem is about ordinary army service, not a war, but the English words say "Off to the wars."

From the album Chaminade: Saisons d'amour (2023), sung by Katharina Kammerloher with Johann Blanchard, piano
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