Pièces pittoresques

; Chabrier at the piano, Adolphe Julien, Arthur Boisseau, Camille Benoît, Edmond Maître, Antoine Lascoux, Vincent d'Indy and Amédée Pigeon grouped around. In 1880, while on a convalescent holiday at the coastal resort of Saint-Pair (near Granville), Chabrier composed what were to be called Pièces pittoresques. Both Alfred Cortot (in La musique française de piano, PUF, 1932) and Francis Poulenc (Emmanuel Chabrier, 1961) discuss these short works enthusiastically. César Franck, at their premiere in 1881, remarked that those present had "just heard something exceptional. This music links our own time to that of Couperin and Rameau". The manuscript in the archive of Litolff publishers was destroyed by an air-raid on Brunswick in 1942. The first performances of individual pieces took place on different dates: 9 April 1881 for Sous-bois, Idylle, Danse villageoise, Improvisation, Menuet pompeux, Scherzo-valse (Marie Poitevin); Mélancolie on 24 December 1887 (Marie-Léontine Bordes-Pène); others unknown. Several of the movements were incorporated by Constant Lambert in the 1934 ballet Bar aux Folies-Bergère. ==Description of the pieces==

;Paysage (Landscape) D-flat major, 2/4; Allegro non troppo – vivo (dedicated to La comtesse de Narbonne-Lara) For Poulenc, Paysage portrayed a landscape where life was to be enjoyed. The middle section is a voluble depiction of agitation calmed by the return of the main theme. Paysage opens the cycle with a straight perfect cadence to the tonic D-flat, downgrading what textbooks would tell us should be reserved for a more conclusive moment. Paysage is riddled with rhythmic and harmonic games, not least the absence throughout of a single clear four-bar phrase; the piece's opening section, all in three-bar phrases, makes two teasing feints at four-bar phrases, both thwarted. Poulenc suggests that the piece should be played with "allegresse et tendresse". ;Mélancolie (Melancholy) G major, 9 & 6/8; Ben moderato senza rigore et sempre tempo rubato (dedicated to Marie Pillon) About Mélancolie, Cortot was moved to write that its 'nostalgic charm and discreet perfection' defied analysis. Ravel saw the soul of Manet's Olympia in Mélancolie. The alternating 9/8 and 6/8 bars create an atmosphere of wandering tenderness and uncertainty; the piece closes with a canon at the double octave then in lows fifths. Mélancolie is a sophisticated blend of textural inversion, canon and rhythmic compression that essentially determines the piece's outer envelope. The titles appear not to be Chabrier's own, but were provided by his publishers. ==Suite pastorale==

Between 1881 and 1888 Chabrier orchestrated Idylle, Danse villageoise, Sous-bois and Scherzo-valse to form the Suite pastorale. The suite was first performed on 4 November 1888 by the Association artistique d'Angers, conducted by Chabrier himself. The instrumentation is 2 flutes (one doubling piccolo), 1 oboe, 2 clarinets in B♭ and A, 2 bassoons - 2 horns in F and E, 2 cornets à pistons in C, 3 trombones (Scherzo-Valse only) - timpani, bass drum, triangle - harp, strings. ==References==