André Caplet’s Deux sonnets (published together in 1925) set some words of two of the ‘Pléiade’, a self-termed constellation of poets who appeared in the sixteenth-century skies over France, including Joachim du Bellay and Pierre de Ronsard. While the literary language is elevated (although oddly only one of the poems is in fact a ‘sonnet’) and multifaceted (e.g. ‘verses by Joachim du Bellay expressing the state of a soul’), the music is by contrast direct and expressive. André Caplet was never much one for trend-following and his voice remains distinctive and imaginative.

from notes by Alison Nicholls © 2008