Un Colloque Sentimental (Piano/Vocal)

The score to Matthews' song cycle, Un Colloque Sentimental.

Colin Matthews’ song cycle for medium voice Un Colloque Sentimental sets four poems in the original French by Charles Baudelaire, Gérard de Nerval, and Paul Verlaine; the latter provides the title poem, which frames the others in its 20-minute span. Matthews’ piano writing spins out moods of sensual abandon, listless longing, and gnawing anxiety. Composed over several years, it was only when Matthews set Verlaine’s poem that the cycle came together in 1978. “My aim”, Matthews said, “was to try to find a twentieth-century musical language that might suit the particular characteristics of a poetic spirit which has no real parallel in English poetry.”