Sung by HELEN HENSCHEL
S.B. from Newcastle
Old French Songs :
OLD popular songs of France were cast in many different styles. There were narrative songs, satirical songs, pastorals and love ballads, legends of the saints, and a great many other varieties.
Prominent among collectors of those old songs are Weckerlin and Tiersot. The former's work is to-night represented by his arrangement of Paris est au Roi, an eighteenth century Minuet tune. Weckerlin began life as a chemist. Later he became a Professor of Singing, and Librarian at the Conservatoire.
A KINGLY Composer figures in to-night's programme. In earlier days monarchs not infrequently amused themselves with composition. Our own Henry VIII found time, among his many other activities, to write Motets and some capital songs. Louis XIII 's song is a ' Romance.' The title designates one of the earliest and most charming of the characteristic French song styles, in which the subject was the tender sentiments of love. Such songs, invented by the Troubadours, seven or eight hundred years ago. were never long out of favour, and Louis XIII (1601-1643), whose music-master was a famous composer of ' Romances,' wrote a number of such pieces.