Jocelyne Binet's Cycle de Mélodies: Unearthing a Forgotten Song Cycle

Montreal composer Jocelyne Binet's "Cycle de Melodies sur des Poemes de Paul Eluard" was programmed in 1955 by the French baritone Gerard Souzay in a performance that was most likely the world premiere. Unfortunately, Binet's song cycle never was published, and the work soon was forgotten. In the fall of 2016, the author discovered Bineet's original handwritten manuscript pages in holdings of Bibliotheque et Archives Nationales du Quebec and began the process of reconstructing the score. This article discusses the editorial journal undertaken when resurrecting Binet's forgotten song cycle, which was subsequently published in 2018 by Classical Vocal Reprints.