This is one of the most beautiful and deeply felt of the 165 songs by French composer Francis Poulenc (1899 - 1963). The song is so polished and lovely that it seems a spontaneous outpouring from the heart. The three greatest themes in Poulenc's output of songs are love, Paris, and peace. In 1938, the world seemed poised for war. (And so it was; the crisis of 1938 was averted only through a craven capitulation by the Western Allies to Hitler's demands against Czechoslovakia. The 11-month delay of war this bought only succeeded in allowing Hitler to strengthen his military machine.) At the height of the tension, the Paris newspaper Le figaro on September 28 published a poem by Charles d'Orleans (1391 - 1465) in the form of a prayer to the Virgin Mary for peace. "Pray for peace, gentle Virgin Mary....Make your address to your Son...that he may please to look upon his people, whom he wished to redeem with his blood, banishing war which disrupts all. Do not cease your prayers..."

Charles, the Duke of Orleans fell into English hands at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. They held him hostage in England for 25 years. Aside from losing his freedom, it was not an onerous captivity: His jailors treated him as the royalty he was and provided him with a court where artists of all sorts flourished. Charles became one of the great French poets of the Medieval era and continued writing poetry after he was freed in 1440. Although Poulenc was often given to relegating poems that appealed to his subconscious, sometimes taking years for the right music for each line to emerge before he finished them, Charles' heartfelt lines obviously struck him deeply and he wrote the song almost immediately. Poulenc had just composed his first religious work, Litanies à la vierge noire. Until then, Poulenc's basic style was influenced by the breeziness of the Paris boulevards and the sound of the city's popular music. But in connection with this song, as Poulenc wrote in his vital commentary on his own vocal music, Journal de mes mélodies, his religious music "turns its back" on this Parisian style and he again becomes a child of the country near Aveyron, where he grew up. He adds, "Faith is strong in all the Poulencs." This is a prayer, he says, "to be spoken in a country church." As such, the song is quiet, simple, and reverent in a manner that is filled with awe at the seriousness of the prayer. "I have tried here to give a feeling of fervor and above all of humility (for me the most beautiful quality of prayer)," Poulenc writes. He counsels singers to keep an even tempo, not altering it when the voice enters. Poulenc's singing partner, Pierre Bernac, adds that the tempo must be one quarter note per second (quarter note = 60), a direction omitted from the score.

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