The poetic current of symbolism met with success in aristocratic salons thanks to the genre of French mélodies. Many composers turned to the scholar Albert Samain; amongst these was Dubois himself, who imbued his texts with either heartfelt melancholy or communicative joy.

In the hierarchy of repertoires, the French mélodie stands at the summit. Its fair assessment requires great understanding of poetry and appreciation of detail. Symbolist thoughts or, at the other extreme, lines borrowed from Ronsard or Villon, make it into a genre that is above all literary. The art of a composer such as Théodore Dubois enables us to reassess its progression and the stages in its maturation, at the intersection of two radically different but closely related worlds: those of the romance and of the mélodie itself. Born in 1837, Dubois could not ignore the specificities of the romance that was performed in the salons. Having appeared in the late eighteenth century, it had become more theatrical during the period of the July Monarchy. The romance was then a strophic genre implying frequent repetition of the same music. More lyrical in substance, supported by a piano accompaniment that is more closely related to the text, the French mélodie is first and foremost a literary genre. It is often presented in cycles, which may be narrative or more evocative. Dubois is a perfect representative of the most “Romantic” period of the French mélodie – the period that was unceremoniously swept aside by the symbolism of Debussy, who regarded it as outdated and superficial. Yet judging by Dubois’s literary choices, he held this repertoire in particularly high esteem, readily colouring it with genuine sadness or infectious joy.