"The songs are, beyond doubt, the crown of his art. They extend throughout his lifetime and form in themselves an interesting historical study of a composer, himself somewhat reclusive, slowly and with constant ingenuity reacting to changing accents in the world outside his window. The suave, chaste elegance of the early songs (of which "Dans Les Ruines d'un abbaye" and the Schumann-esque, exalted "Après un Reve" are the best known), through a quiet struggle of conscience with Wagnerian harmony (most of all in the settings of Verlaine from the 1890s), to a bashful nod toward musical Impressionism in the very last cycle, L'Horizon chimerique of 1922. Not a song in this vast output is less than exquisite; the fashion I have sometimes encountered, of not taking this music seriously, ought to be put to rest by the evidence these two albums contain."