"Composed between 1893 and 1896, Dolly owes its title to the Christian name of the daughter of my friend Madame Bardac. This was the happy lot of this delightful woman for whom in 1892 Fauré had written La Bonne Chanson and who ten years later would be the noble companion of Claude Debussy. Dolly, who now is Madame de Tinan, was then a little blonde girl of charming behaviour and feminine precocity. The music which Fauré wrote for her is quite in her image. It is the only time that the composer used titles other than those of a musical genre. The album consists of six pieces: in the Berceuse one can perceive the musician's feelings in front of such childlike grace. Miau is not, as Emile Vuillermoz wrote, the name of the household cat that used to jump about mischievously, but the nickname that young Dolly gave to her brother Raoul Bardac, who was later himself a pupil of Fauré and Debussy. Le Jardin de Dolly is the garden in an enchanted dream, full of perfumed flowers, while Kitty-Valse illustrates the whirling leaps of a favourite dog. Tendresse makes clear its meaning in its delicate figurations. Finally, the Pas Espagnol is the transposition in music of the bronze equestrian statue of Frémiet, Fauré's father-in-law, which stood on a mantlepiece in Madame Bardac's house and which was much admired by young Dolly."