artist". In The Oxford Companion to Music (2011), Denis Arnold and Roger Nichols write that Chabrier's lack of a formal musical education at one of the major conservatoires allowed him the freedom to "bypass the normal paths of French music of the 1860s, and to explore a new harmonic idiom and especially a novel way of writing for the piano". Chabrier's musical language introduced several striking features. Among them, Huebner singles out a liking for melodies of wide range with large leaps from one note to the next; frequent doubling of melodies by the bass or in octaves; a mixture of orthodox and unorthodox chromatic decoration; and frequent use of cross-rhythms and syncopation. Chabrier is reported to have said, "My music rings with the stamp of my Auvergnat clogs", and the pianist and scholar Roy Howat points to examples of this in fast stamping rhythms in the Bourrée fantasque, the Joyeuse marche and several of the Pièces pittoresques. Orchestral Duparc and Ravel both had reservations about Chabrier's skills as an orchestrator in his early works; Poulenc disagreed, feeling that Chabrier was a master of orchestration from an early stage. Poulenc wrote, "The fact that Chabrier always composed at the piano – as did Debussy and Stravinsky – did not prevent him from finding a rare orchestral colour: a unique achievement at a time when Franck, d'Indy and Saint-Saëns hardly ever emerged from well-worn paths". The work for which Chabrier is best known is his rhapsody España, which became popular internationally (except in Spain, where it was not a success). The rhythmic verve of España is found also in the Joyeuse marche, which goes further in orchestral invention. Not all of Chabrier's orchestral pieces are in this exuberant vein: his Lamento (1874), unpublished in his lifetime, is an unusually poignant work. A few of Chabrier's piano works were later orchestrated. The composer arranged the four movements of the Suite pastorale from the ten Pièces pittoresques. Chabrier began an orchestration of Bourrée fantasque in 1891 (completed in 1994 by Robin Holloway) but his friend and champion Felix Mottl orchestrated it in 1898, proving popular; he did the same for Trois valses romantiques in 1900, and in 1917–18 Ravel arranged the "Menuet pompeux" from the Pièces pittoresques. Stage works Chabrier's ebullient orchestral works have always been popular with the public and critics, but there is less agreement about his serious stage works, and