Suite pastorale: Sous bois

• This is the third movement of Chabrier’s Suite pastorale.
• According to Collins French-English Dictionary, Sous bois means “undergrowth,” as in the little plants and bushes that grow beneath the trees in a forest.

“Sous-bois! How often Ravel used to talk to me ecstatically about it! For him it was one of the high-water marks of Chabrier’s work.”

Francis Poulenc¹

1. Francis Poulenc, trans. Cynthia Jolly, Emmanuel Chabrier (London: Dennis Dobson, 1981), 38.