La Chanson Française
French Music
Course 1 · Chapter 6 · La Chanson Française
If one kind of French music is known around the world, it is the chanson: a song in which the voice, the words and the mood are everything. It grew out of the café-concerts and music halls of the nineteenth century, reached its peak in the middle of the twentieth, and remains the standard against which French pop is still often measured. This chapter follows the tradition through six artists who defined it. As the first chapter said, the course quotes lyrics only briefly and in translation, and it names songs rather than reproducing them. Names, dates and attributions are given from general knowledge and flagged where they should be checked.
From Café-Concert to Music Hall
In the nineteenth century Paris had a thriving trade in places where people could eat, drink and watch performers: the café-concert, and later the larger music hall. Singers, comedians and dancers performed in an informal setting, and songs were short, topical and easy to remember (check the details). Famous venues of the era include the Moulin Rouge and, later, the Olympia, which became the Paris hall where a singer's reputation could be made or broken (check). The recording industry and the radio came next, and carried these songs well beyond the capital.
Six Voices
| Artist | Known for | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Édith Piaf (1915 to 1963) | "La Vie en rose", "Non, je ne regrette rien" | Intense, dramatic voice; the great symbol of French song abroad (check the dates of the songs) |
| Charles Trenet (1913 to 2001) | "La Mer", "Y'a d'la joie" | Light, jazz-influenced, cheerful; wrote his own songs (check) |
| Georges Brassens (1921 to 1981) | Songs with guitar and double bass | Poetic, witty, anti-authoritarian; set his own words and some classic poems to music (check) |
| Jacques Brel (1929 to 1978) | "Ne me quitte pas" | Belgian-born; theatrical and emotional performances |
| Charles Aznavour (1924 to 2018) | Hundreds of songs, many he wrote himself | Of Armenian descent; a very long career and international following (check) |
| Serge Gainsbourg (1928 to 1991) | Provocative songs and concept albums | Moved from jazz-flavoured chanson through pop to experiments; his work was often controversial (check) |
The performer's voice
Piaf did not write most of her own songs, but her way of singing them made them hers. In chanson the interpreter can be as important as the author.
The poet with a guitar
Brassens and Brel are the models for the auteur-compositeur-interprète, the artist who writes the words, the music and sings them.
The Left Bank scene
After the Second World War, small cabarets and clubs in Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris gathered singers, poets and philosophers (check the details).
The long career
Many of these artists performed for decades, which let French audiences follow a singer's development as they might a novelist's.
Piaf
Édith Piaf was born in Paris in 1915 (check) and became famous in the 1930s after being discovered singing in the street by a nightclub owner, who gave her the nickname "la môme Piaf" (roughly "the little sparrow", check the details). Her songs about love, loss and defiance became the sound that foreigners think of as French. As with many performers of her era, her biography is surrounded by legend, including stories of her childhood that cannot all be confirmed (check). The safest approach is to separate what is documented from what has been told and retold.
Brassens, Brel and the Poet-Singers
Brassens, from the southern port of Sète, accompanied himself on guitar with a double bass and was known for songs that mocked authority and hypocrisy with great skill (check the details). Brel, born in Belgium and working in Paris, gave performances of great intensity (check). Together with figures such as Léo Ferré, they set a standard for the song as literature. Their influence reached beyond France; Brel's songs, for example, were widely translated into English and covered by many other artists.
Aznavour and Gainsbourg
Charles Aznavour began in the 1940s and continued performing for more than seventy years (check). He is often named as one of the great all-round figures of French song. Serge Gainsbourg started as a jazz-influenced songwriter and moved through pop to records that mixed rock, funk and spoken word, including the concept album Histoire de Melody Nelson (1971, check). His work often provoked controversy, and critics are still divided on parts of it. He wrote for many singers, and his influence on later French and international musicians is large.
Exercises
Explain how the café-concert and music hall led to the chanson tradition, and name two venues or institutions connected with it.
Distinguish an interpreter such as Piaf from an auteur-compositeur-interprète such as Brassens or Brel, and say why both count as chanson.
Choose one chanson artist from this chapter, read a translation of one of their songs, and write three sentences on what the words add to the music.
Quick Reference
- Roots: the café-concert and the music hall; the Olympia
- Piaf: the great interpreter; "La Vie en rose"
- Trenet: light, jazz-flavoured, wrote his own songs
- Brassens and Brel: poet-singers; Brel was Belgian
- Aznavour: a very long career; Armenian descent
- Gainsbourg: jazz to pop to concept albums; controversial
- Key idea: the lyric is treated as literature
- Check: song dates, biographical legends
Next chapter: Yéyé & the French Pop Boom, which covers the teen pop of the 1960s and the rise of radio and Eurovision.