Fauré's Opus 1 was the only one of his collections of songs where, unless setting a cycle of poems, he set texts to only one poet's work, in this case that of Victor Hugo, whose poetry Fauré favored early in his career. After his Opus 10, Fauré never set Victor Hugo poems again. While these songs do not show the musical sophistication that was to come later, they do display the beginnings of Fauré's ability to create a mood, and without direct word-painting, create a visual impression through text and music.

The first song, "Le papillon et la fleur," is one of Fauré's simplest and most direct. The repetitive, lilting vocal lines are almost folklike in their simplicity and immediate hummability, and the quick, dance-like accompaniment, with the sudden runs suggesting the butterfly's flight, are, like the poem, charming and very slightly rueful. The second, "Mai," is equally direct, though not in the same style; it is somewhat closer to his later works, lyrical but not especially tuneful. While it doesn't display a large amount of musical imagination, it is a pleasurable indication of what was to come.

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1.Le Papillon et la fleur

Le papillon et la fleur (The Butterfly and the Flower) dates from very early in the career of Gabriel Fauré and was, in fact, his first published composition (Op. 1/1, 1965). The song, or mélodie, as Fauré took to calling them, is clearly a skillful rendering of Victor Hugo's poignantly quaint poem, but follows largely after the Germanic style of mid-century and only hints at Fauré's later, more languorous style. The poem depicts the amorous entreaties of a flower to the butterfly that visits it, the former bemoaning how widely the latter roams free, untethered by roots in the soil, visiting countless other flowers. The poem unrolls in a singsong manner, with clear rhyme and meter, suggesting a similarly straightforward setting. Fauré is thus limited in the extent to which any particular sentiment or feature of the text can find resonance with the music, although his simple strophic structure is certainly not lacking in charm. Indeed, the sturdy bassline underscoring the melody and the cascading figure in the right hand that serves as an interlude between strophes aptly conveys the coy romantic humor of the poet's transparent metaphor. Fauré's later mélodie, of course, become more harmonically complex, structurally varied, and intellectually engaging, but not necessarily more endearing.

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