Songs
Lamento
Lamento
Connaissez-vous la blanche tombeOù flotte avec un son plaintif L’ombre d’un if?Sur l’if, une pâle colombe, Triste et seule, au soleil couchant,Chante son chant;Un air maladivement tendre,A la fois charmant et fatal,Qui vous fait malEt qu’on voudrait toujours entendre,Un air, comme en soupire aux cieuxL’ange amoureux.
Lament
Do you know the white tomb,Where the shadow of a yewWaves plaintively?On that yew a pale dove,Sad and solitary at sundownSings its song;A melody of morbid sweetness,Delightful and deathly at once,Which wounds youAnd which you’d like to hear forever,A melody, such as in the heavensA lovesick angel sighs
Translation © Richard Stokes, author of A French Song Companion (Oxford, 2000)
If you would like to use our texts and translations, please click here for more information.
Composer
Prince Edmond Melchior Jean Marie de Polignac was a French aristocrat and composer. His grandmother had been a close friend of Marie Antoinette.
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Poet
Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, and art and literary critic.
While Gautier was an ardent defender of Romanticism, his work is difficult to classify and remains a point of reference for many subsequent literary traditions such as Parnassianism, Symbolism, Decadence and Modernism. He was widely esteemed by writers as diverse as Balzac, Baudelaire, the Goncourt brothers, Flaubert, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Henry James, Proust and Oscar Wilde.
Taken from Wikipedia. To view the full article, please click here.
See Full Entry
Sorry, no further description available.
Previously performed at:
- 24 Oct 2018: A French Songbook: Véronique Gens & Susan Manoff
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Lamento
Lament
If you would like to use our texts and translations, please click here for more information.
Composer
Prince Edmond Melchior Jean Marie de Polignac was a French aristocrat and composer. His grandmother had been a close friend of Marie Antoinette.
See Full Entry
Poet
Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, and art and literary critic.
While Gautier was an ardent defender of Romanticism, his work is difficult to classify and remains a point of reference for many subsequent literary traditions such as Parnassianism, Symbolism, Decadence and Modernism. He was widely esteemed by writers as diverse as Balzac, Baudelaire, the Goncourt brothers, Flaubert, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Henry James, Proust and Oscar Wilde.
Taken from Wikipedia. To view the full article, please click here.
See Full Entry
Sorry, no further description available.
Previously performed at:
- 24 Oct 2018: A French Songbook: Véronique Gens & Susan Manoff
About Oxford Lieder
Oxford Lieder is one of the world's leading promoters of song and the winner of a prestigious Royal Philharmonic Society Award. The focal point of each year is the two-week Oxford Lieder Festival in October.
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