While studying composition at the Paris Conservatory with Paul Dukas (in whose memory, some years later, he would compose the dramatic Tombeau), the twenty-one year old Olivier Messiaen wrote a trio of songs for voice and piano which—though hardly hinting at the profundity of works like The Quartet for the End of Time or the vocal timbral genius of Harawi and Cinq Rechants—suggested the composer's careful ear for text/music nuance, and astute literary skills. As in many of Messiaen's vocal works, the texts here (with the exception of the second song) are the composer's own; this allows for a high level of coordination between word and line.

The first poem, "Pourquoi?" ("Why?"), is quite simple in its scope and imagery. The speaker wonders aloud why beauty of nature—the birds, the clouds, the changing of the seasons—no longer charms him. The melodic line follows each gentle ascent and plateau, and each subsequent dénouement implied by the poetry, in neat, three-bar phrases. There is no musical ambiguity here; the accompaniment sets up and supports each phrase, its colorful chords never obscuring the song, and consistently doubling it in the uppermost line (a luxury that singers of Messiaen's later vocal works would doubtless envy). The body of the poem is set in straight duple meter until, with a small but expressive gesture, a 5/4 bar adds a gentle pause and weight to the final line: "Pourquoi, ah! Pourquoi?" The remainder of the song, in triple time, is given over to the piano: fortissimo chords answered with quiet, twittering figures, and more echoes of "Why?" from the singer.

Though not written by the composer, the second text in the set is still close to his heart; Messiaen chose it from among the poems by his mother, Cécile Sauvage. An exercise in concision and focused, intimate expression, "Le sourire" ("The Smile") is composed entirely of the smallest of poetic and musical gestures. Sparse chordal accompaniment in the left hand sustains the gentle, almost recitative-like slope of the melody, here doubled without additional harmonic color in the right hand. The song begins pianissimo and grows even quieter from there, suggestive of the "certain whispered word" that elicits the eponymous reaction.

Messiaen reclaims the poet's pen for the longest and last of the three songs, "la fiancée perdue" ("The Lost Fiancée"). The poetry moves mostly in steady half and quarter notes, the piano filling in the texture with undulating figures. The reiterated question in "Pourquoi?" is answered here, as the beauty of the lost love supplants the beauties of nature one by one. Messiaen is not above a little tone painting: the accompanimental pattern is interrupted by scalar ascents and tremolos on the phrase "She is the wind blowing through the flowers." The song and the cycle end with a bittersweet benediction, as the speaker asks for a divine blessing upon the distant object of his affection.

© Jeremy Grimshaw, All Music Guide