Ex. 5-8: Romance

No. 1 of Debussy's Deux Romances (Two Romances), L. 79, published in 1891. It is usually called "L'âme évaporée" (The Vanished Soul) after the poem's first words. The poem is by Paul Bourget, a friend of Debussy, from his collection Les Aveux (Confessions, 1882).

Debussy probably wrote the song around 1885, during his first year at the Villa Medici in Rome, where young French artists stayed after winning the Prix de Rome. The poem remembers a lost love through the fading scent of lilies, and asks whether anything of that past happiness remains.

From the album Chanson d'Amour by Sabine Devieilhe and Alexandre Tharaud (2020)
Spotify

This song has also been reimagined as jazz. The album Monsieur Claude (A Travel with Claude Debussy) (2018) was the Italian jazz pianist Enrico Pieranunzi's tribute to Debussy on the 100th anniversary of his death, reworking Debussy's themes with blues, modal harmony, and improvisation. Pieranunzi (born 1949) is one of Italy's leading jazz pianists, long associated with the American trumpeter Chet Baker. On this album, the singer Simona Severini sings with Pieranunzi. Her own first album was a tribute to another French composer, Gabriel Fauré.
Spotify