Louis Vierne

Organiste-titulaire of Notre-Dame de Paris for nearly forty years, Louis Vierne composed over sixty songs, including a set of five Baudelaire songs, Cinq Poèmes de Baudelaire, published in 1921. This analysis covers: (a) the context of composition; (b) the connections established between selected poems; (c) the statistical data generated from the adhesion strength tests; and (d) how the data shape an evaluation of Vierne’s settings of Baudelaire. Findings reveal how the poetic line is minimally disrupted in these songs, as the vocal line remains very independent of the piano. As a result, the bonds between poem and music are largely abhesive, which means it is possible to recover the poem intact from the song score. As complex mélodies, the lack of interference with the fabric of Baudelaire’s versification, together with limited musical-semantic interpretation, means that Vierne’s music remains attentive towards Baudelaire’s poetic vision, offering an accretive outcome overall.