Cécile Chaminade songs, Part 2

"La fiancée du soldat" was included in a two volume edition of songs published by G. Schirmer in New York (1892-93) with translations by several writers. The original French publication was in 1890. This song is in the first volume, which opens with "Ritournelle," still the best known of Chaminade's songs, which were quite popular in her lifetime but by no means to the same extent as her many piano compositions.

The music aptly expresses the woman's alternating moods of happiness and fear with minor/major contrasts between verses, but the expression isn't so simple as that sounds. Note below, for example,  that the shift from minor to major is to the text "Lon lon la, je chante ma peine."  The two segments of the poem, btw, become two verses in the music, each designed as A A ( = repeat) B1 B2 ( = varied repeat of the first phrase of B1). The beginning of the example also shows the importance of the fourth interval C5-F5, and of ^8 (F5) as focal tone.

The second part of B1 consists of a rising line from C5 to F5, followed by the first segment of the descending line from the beginning of B1.

The ending expresses the fourth interval in still another way.

The close of the song—the repetition of B2—varies this ending slightly to draw attention equally to C5 through the chromatic neighbor note Db5.