Drawn from Alphonse de Lamartine's Meditations poetiques from 1820, Gounod's setting of Le soir (The Evening) dates from his years at the Villa de Medici as a winner of the Prix de Rome. Written when the composer was still in his early twenties, Le soir is the quintessential Gounod melodie: a long, slow, rapturous song that is at once sensuous and chaste, humane, spiritual, and above all, romantic in expression and classic in form. Strophically setting Lamartine's six-verse poem, Gounod's legato melody effortlessly floats above the chromatic harmonies of the piano, blending the two together in an indissoluble unity. Gounod went on to compose dozens of other songs, but he never composed a better song. In 1866, he rewrote Le soir as one of his Romances sans paroles for piano.

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