This collection includes songs from pretty well the whole of Debussy’s composing life, some of them well-known and acknowledged masterpieces, and some of them much less familiar though no less worthy of inclusion. Most of them, though, date from the 1880s and early 90s. Nuit d'étoiles is in fact Debussy's first published composition, dating from 1880 when he was eighteen. The Trois Ballades de François Villon date from 1910.

Christopher Maltman sings them all with his now familiar stylishness and sensitivity to words.