the Suite pastorale. The trip to Spain that inspired España also gave Chabrier the material for a Habanera (1885) which became one of his most popular piano works. Among Chabrier's works for four hands is Souvenirs de Munich. Although Wagner's Tristan und Isolde had made a deep impression on him, his irreverent nature led him to arrange five themes from the opera into a comic quadrille. Poulenc called it "irresistibly funny … Tristan's principal themes with false noses and added beards." Vincent d'Indy wrote, after studying the Trois valses romantiques and playing them with the composer: "I thus worked on these three waltzes con amore, doing my best to perform all the indications marked with the greatest precision... and there are many of them! In rehearsal, which was at Pleyel's, Chabrier stopped me dead in the midst of the first waltz, and, addressing me a look that was both amazed and arch, said: "But my dear boy it's not that at all!..." And, as not quite knowing how to react, I asked for explanations, he retorted: "You play that as if it were music by a Member of the Institute!..." And then I had a marvellous lesson in playing alla Chabrier; contrary accents, pianissimi to the point of extinction, sudden fire-crackers bursting out in the middle of the most exquisite softness, and also indispensable gesturing, giving over the body, too, to the intention of the music". Chabrier was an important influence on Debussy, as he was later on Ravel and Poulenc; Howat has written that Chabrier's piano music such as "Sous-bois" and "Mauresque" in the Pièces pittoresques explored new sound-worlds of which Debussy made effective use 30 years later. Songs There are forty-three published songs by Chabrier. He began writing songs – mélodies – when he was about twenty-one; the first nine were written between 1862 and 1866. Johnson comments that it is strange that in all his songs Chabrier never set anything by his friend Verlaine, but among the well-known poets whose verse Chabrier set in the early songs were Théodore de Banville ("Lied") and Alfred de Musset ("Adieux à Suzon"). In 1888 Chabrier made sixteen arrangements of French folk songs for an anthology called Le plus jolies chansons du pays de France. He was among the first important composers to work with folk songs, a pioneer for Ravel, Bartók, Britten and others. Johnson writes that Chabrier's touch in