“Thanks to the latest technological improvements, lawnmowers have become robust and practical machines”, said one agricultural machinery exhibition in 1913. Darius Milhaud used texts from this exhibition in his 6 pastoral songs Machines agricoles, although the music has no hint of irony or distance. Rather, it owes much to the simple elegance and blithely earnest naturalness of the “beauty of these great colourful metal insects” (Milhaud).