Ex. 4-12: Sur la plage

This song was published in Paris in 1892, when Chaminade was in her mid-thirties, and in New York the next year. In those years she had to earn her living, and she had promised her publisher twelve songs a year. It is the last song in her first book of twenty songs, which also has Madrigal and La Fiancée du soldat.

The poem is by Édouard Guinand (1838–1909). He wrote poetry beside his work as a government official, and it is said that he spent his working life in the offices of the French navy. Chaminade set more than twenty of his poems, among them her best-known song, L'Été. He also wrote the words of L'Enfant prodigue (The Prodigal Son), the piece that won Debussy the Prix de Rome in 1884.

A woman has been left by her lover. The waves never stop bringing their sad sound to the shore, and she hears her own sorrow in them.

From the album Women of Music Songs (2019), sung by Urszula Kryger with Agata Górska-Kołodziejska, piano
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