Ex. 13-9: Quand je fus pris au pavillon

No. 8 of Reynaldo Hahn's Rondels, a set of 12 songs published in 1898. The poem is by Charles d'Orléans (1394–1465), a French prince and poet. The English captured him at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 and held him prisoner for about 25 years, and he wrote much of his poetry during that time. He wrote this rondel later, after his release, when he kept a court of poets at his castle in Blois.

The poem is light and playful. A man is caught by the beauty of his lady in her pavilion, and he burns himself at the candle like a moth. He wishes he had the wings of a small falcon, so he could have flown away from the sting of her love.

Hahn set this 15th-century poem in a deliberately old-fashioned style, as if the music itself came from long ago. He did the same thing, even more famously, fourteen years later in À Chloris. (Ex. 9-12: À Chloris by Reynaldo Hahn) Other composers liked this poet too: Debussy set three of Charles d'Orléans's poems for choir around the same years.

In the 1890s Hahn was a favorite of the Paris salons. He would sit at the piano and sing his own songs in a soft, sweet voice, often with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth.

From the album La Belle Époque: The Songs of Reynaldo Hahn by Susan Graham and Roger Vignoles (1998)
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