The Trois Chansons de Charles d'Orléans (Three Songs of Charles d'Orléans}) falls into a sparsely populated category of Debussy's output—that of unaccompanied choral music. In fact, discounting unpublished and unfinished works, it is the only such piece he composed. For that reason alone, these songs are valuable in the study and understanding of the composer's works; apart from such academic and personal considerations, this music has broad appeal as well.

The three songs are settings of poems by Charles Duc d'Orléans (1394-1465). The first is entitled "Dieu! qu'il la fait bon regarder!" (God! but she is fair!). The music is ethereal and subdued, and features at times a religiosity of mood, the whole offering a mixture of Renaissance and modern sounds and putting an interesting and rare retrospective spin on the composer's harmonic thinking. The next song, "Quand j'ai ouy le tambourin" (When I heard the tambourine), is also somewhat ethereal, but the music is livelier and a bit more colorful, too. The contrapuntal writing here—and in fact throughout the set—is quite effective. The last song, "Yver, vous n'estes qu'un villain" (Winter, You're Naught but a Rogue), is also colorful and quite spirited. In the end, the three pieces in this collection are all worthwhile and must be ranked as important efforts in Debussy's output. The first and last songs date from 1898, and the middle from 1908, the year the collection was published.

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