This is one of the more popular selections from Joseph-Marie Canteloube's arrangements of French folk music for voice and orchestra. In the langue d'oc in which Canteloube's Chants d'Auvergne are sung, "Brezairola" simply means lullaby. This is the cradle song of a mother more fatigued than her child, imploring sleep to fall upon her restless baby. She does this for two full verses, each of a different melodic contour over languid, sighing figures from the woodwinds and muted solo strings. The child finally falls asleep in the third verse, musically a reprise of the first but with a more string-dominated orchestration, and the mother herself seems to drift off with a weary, relieved "Ah!"

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Here's a cynical little look at marital life, the title translating as Unhappy He Who Has a Wife. But the full lyrics offer a more complicated picture, with women having the final advantage:

Unhappy he who has a wife,

Unhappy he who has none!

He who has none wants one,

He who has one wants none!

Happy is the woman

Who has the man she needs!

But she is still more happy,

The one who hasn't any!

Canteloube gives the lyrics a merry 3/4 swing, the two verses separated by an orchestral interlude with a related theme played by solo woodwinds and sleigh bells. As usual in this series, the rich, bright orchestration draws as much attention as the vocal line, although Canteloube is careful to rein in the orchestra during the song's vocal sections.

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This is one of the most moving of the folks songs from the Auvergne that Joseph Canteloube arranged. The lyrics, in the langue d'oc, the language used by the troubadors, tell the story in only ten lines, with a repeating refrain, but the orchestration, added by Canteloube, add immense levels of detail and characterization, in a manner that recalls the Romantic composers. The song displays the strong spirit of pride and independence that often appears in the Chants d'Auvergne. The song's title translates "the hunchback, " and describes the encounter between a hunchback and a girl, Dzanetou (pronounced Jeanne-tu). She is resting in the shade of an apple tree, and the hunchback passes, and asks her to be his. She replies that he had better cut off his hump, and he tells her he's keeping his hump. The lyrics are simple and repetitive (only the first two lines of each verse is original), the last three lines are repetitions of the second), and the vocal line is almost a monotone, but the orchestration, as noted above, is dramatic and almost operatic, in the hunchback's plea and his angry response to her mockery.

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Lo Fiolaire has, like most of Canteloube's arrangements of folk songs of

the Auvergne region, the theme of pastoral love and courtship. In this

song, the girl sings that when she was little, she guarded the sheep

while she spun. A shepherd helped keep an eye on the sheep, and in payment,

asked for a kiss. Since she is no ingrate, she gave him two.

The song follows the rhythms of a spinning wheel in both the vocal and

the orchestral part, and after every two lines, the performer sings

various nonsense syllables that imitate the sound of the wheel. This

imitation is particularly accurate, as there are little grace notes and

ripples that depict the occasional changes of speed of the wheel, and

also, at the very end, sound like the wheel stopping while the shepherd

receives his payment.

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"Come through the meadow, my beauty," croons the singer to the beloved in the Auvergnat dialect. "I shall go through the woods/When you get there, pretty one/Wait for me if you wish." Canteloube precedes this first verse with several lines, slow but almost swaggering, sung on the syllable "lo" while arpeggios sweep through the orchestra as if it were a giant guitar or mandolin. When the actual lyrics begin, the first half of each line melodically rises and the second half falls, like the intake and release of breath in a gentle sigh. Canteloube repeats these patterns in the second verse:

We will talk, little girl,

We will talk together.

It is love of you, little one,

That makes me so happy.

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