This is a cycle of six settings of poems written by Théophile Gautier. Though their subjects have little direct connection, each possesses the sultry, scented charm implied by Berlioz's title. The songs were composed in 1832 and published in 1841. Except for "Absence," which was orchestrated in 1843, the orchestral versions of the remaining songs were completed in 1856.

Aside from their immediate appeal, they suggest that, before the rise of a new school of composers such as Fauré, Duparc, Debussy, and Ravel, Berlioz was reacting to a demand for songs of a distinctively French character, compared with the then-widely popular German lied. However, the American musicologist Alfred Einstein's assertion that Berlioz "sowed the seeds for the entire musical lyricism of the nineteenth century in the French language" is surely an exaggeration: he was too much an admirer of German music to do such a thing. Indeed, the first song "Villanelle" is almost strophic, only the third stanza showing any real harmonic or melodic changes in the vocal line, a device which makes it reminiscent of Schubert.

Singers tend to pick and choose among the songs performed but, since all easily stand on their own merits, this does not matter a great deal. "Absence," a call for the return of the beloved, would, for example, make an impressive opening to the cycle. "Le spectre de la rose" (I am the ghost of the rose you wore at the ball) is operatic in character and avoids the obvious waltz rhythms used in the ballet music that was also inspired by this poem. "Sur la lagunes," a lament for a dead lover, was also set by Fauré under the title Chanson de pêcheur. Berlioz makes it into a barcarolle, with a flowing accompaniment and echoes of Spain and Italy. "Au cimetiere" (the churchyard where the beloved lies) is a lament, with the added dimension of modern-sounding semitone changes and enharmonic modulations—evidence of Berlioz's constant search for ways to distance himself from conventional tonality. The final song, "L'ile inconnue," a light serenade, (where will you go, fair one in my magic boat) is—apart from one rather awkward cadence just before the lady replies—similarly progressive in its tonality. The tenderly expressive qualities of these settings makes one wish that Berlioz had continued his dedication to French poetry.

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1.Villanelle

In the decade of the 1830s, Berlioz established himself as a composer of grand, audacious works that still largely define Romanticism—the Symphonie fantastique (1830), Harold en Italie (1834), the Requiem (1837), Benvenuto Cellini (1838—a fiasco with the public but a succès d'estime among the cognoscenti), Roméo et Juliette (1839), and the Symphonie funèbre et triomphale (1840). And on the strength of those works he moved beyond Parisian celebrity to become an artist of European reputation. But matters were far from well as he headed into the 1840s. Though busier than ever, he would undertake no more large-scale compositional projects until beginning La Damnation de Faust—in the midst of a European concert tour—in 1845. Having married his femme inspiratrice, Irish actress Harriet Smithson, in 1833, his marriage was failing and by 1841 he had embarked upon a liaison with Spanish-French mezzo Marie Recio, who was to become his wife in 1854. The vicissitudes of his personal life are reflected in works from the 1840s, for instance, La Mort d'Ophélie (1842) and the Marche funèbre pour la dernière scène d'Hamlet (1844)—Berlioz had first glimpsed Smithson as she made a stunning, unforgettable entrance as Ophelia in an English production of Hamlet on the stage of the Paris Odéon in September 1827. And it is not unreasonable to hear in the six songs, to poems from Théophile Gautier's "La Comédie de la mort" (1838) that he sent to printer in 1841 as Les Nuits d'été, an examination of Romantic love on an intimate but richly worked scale. The first of these, the sprightly, allegretto Villanelle, composed on March 23, 1840, evokes an innocent spring scene of sweethearts going hand-in-hand into the woods to pluck lilies and strawberries. In its initial version, the Villanelle is scored for mezzo soprano or tenor and piano. Berlioz orchestrated it in March 1856 with a dedication to "Melle Wolf, artiste de la chapelle Ducale de Weimar"—that is, Louise Wolf, an active participant in music-making at Weimar in the 1850s, during Franz Liszt's tenure as Kapellmeister to the Weimar court and creator of the role of Ascanio in the Weimar production of Benvenuto Cellini in 1852. And though a German version of the work was made by Peter Cornelius in 1856, it seems not have been performed in any version during Berlioz's lifetime. With the other songs of Les Nuits d'été, it opens the composer's own Collection de 32 Mélodies, compiled in 1863.

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