This is, so far as I know, the first book in English on the life and work of Henri Duparc. But it is intended to serve as an introduction to the study of his songs rather than as a full-length biography. For that would call for the intimate knowledge of someone like his sole surviving son, M. Henri Charles Duparc; or his distinguished friend, M. P. de Breville; or, as a beginning at any rate, the translation of Dr Charles Oulmont's Musique de l'amour. To each of these I would here like to express my deepest obligations in the preparation of the present essay.
The form of the book calls for very little explanation and, I hope, no apology. It is designed to fulfil a certain logical principle in the study of song-the appreciation of the song-writer as a musician and as a man, the study of his poets as poets and, finally, the critical and interpretative analyses of the songs themselves. That is what has been attempted here.