from Folk Songs to the Present Day
Sung by HELEN HENSCHEL '
FRANCE has an important place in the story of song, for it was the home of the Troubadours, and the great Emperor Charlemagne, King of the Franks, may be called the first collector of folk-songs. Some of these traditional songs are to be heard later in the week. In the first three evenings Miss Henschel is giving us examples of art-songs by modern French Composers.
Those represented to-night cover just about a century—1818 (Gounod's birth year) to 1921 (when Saint-Saens died)
All these four Composers struck out on distinat and varied lines.
French people know something of Delibes
Operas, but he is best known here by his Balkt music, which listeners hear very frequently.
Neither Gounod nor Saint-Saens needs any introducing to Opera lovers. Both composed a great many songs, Saint-Saens sometimes writing his own words, as he did for the song Guitares and Mandolines that we are now to hear.
Chabrier, who belongs to the latter half of last, century, was a lively-spirited Composer, whose Joyous March, often broadcast, gives a good impression of one side at least of a picturesque personality.