A substantial proportion of Ravel's output was vocal. His early works in that sphere include cantatas written for his unsuccessful attempts at the Prix de Rome. His other vocal music from that period shows Debussy's influence, in what Kelly describes as "a static, recitative-like vocal style", prominent piano parts and rhythmic flexibility. By 1906 Ravel was taking even further than Debussy the natural, sometimes colloquial, setting of the French language in "Histoires naturelles". The same technique is highlighted in "Trois poèmes de Mallarmé" (1913); Debussy set two of the three poems at the same time as Ravel, and the former's word-setting is noticeably more formal than the latter's, in which syllables are often elided. In the cycles "Shéhérazade" and "Chansons madécasses", Ravel gives vent to his taste for the exotic, even the sensual, in both the vocal line and the accompaniment.