Ex. 9-7: C'est l'Extase Langoureuse

No. 1 from Debussy's Ariettes oubliées (Forgotten Songs, L. 60), a set of six songs composed mainly in Rome and Paris in 1886–87, setting poems by Paul Verlaine from Romances sans paroles (1874). The set is often considered a turning point in Debussy's vocal writing.

Debussy had a personal link to Verlaine. As a boy, he took his first real piano lessons from Madame Mauté de Fleurville, who was Verlaine's mother-in-law. The connection came about by chance: Debussy's father was jailed for taking part in the 1871 Paris Commune, and in prison he met Charles de Sivry — the son of that same piano teacher. De Sivry arranged for the nine-year-old Claude to play for his mother, who took him on as a pupil and helped him reach the Paris Conservatoire.

The set first appeared in 1888 under a longer title. Debussy renamed it Ariettes oubliées for a new edition in 1903, taking the words from Verlaine's own poems. He dedicated this edition to the soprano Mary Garden — the first Mélisande in his opera Pelléas et Mélisande. Fauré set the same poem, "C'est l'extase," as the last of his Cinq mélodies de Venise (Op. 58, 1891).

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