The term ‘chanson’ covers a variety of different forms of expression, both literary and musical: from epics to short lyric poems; from anonymous folk-songs with simple, traditional refrains [see Popular song] to settings of Symbolist poems by late 19th-c. composers [see Words and Music, 2]. The adjective ‘française’ in recent times has served to distinguish from these other forms the modern French popular song that emerged at the end of the 19th c., as exemplified by such figures as Bruant, Piaf, or Brassens. It can be linked to the growth of a mass popular culture and the development of the electronic media, which distinguish it from the folk-song and cabaret tradition out of which it evolved.
Several features mark this transition: the creation of ‘star’ performers, with their own style and audience, in the context of the music-hall and café-concert. Some of these also composed their own songs, reinforcing the ‘star’ persona: Bruant is an early example of this. During the 19th c. writers of popular lyrics, such as Béranger and Pottier, escaped from their earlier anonymity, but were not usually known as performers.
The songs thus created differ from the art-song or lied not only in the relative simplicity of their musical form, but also in the fact that the lyrics take precedence over the music. Whereas the lyric of the art-song, however literary its origins, is used as the pretext for a musical composition, in the popular song the music serves rather as a support for the lyric. Indeed, in the chansonnier tradition the music was often not an original composition, but a well-known folk-tune: in this way, the term chansonnier has come to mean ‘comedian’ or ‘satirist’, rather than singer or songwriter.
The French popular song has always played an important role as a vehicle for social comment, and as a rallying point for political causes. It also has much closer links with literature than its English-language counterpart, and quite apart from the art-song it has been fairly common for poems to be turned into popular refrains or for literary figures to turn their hand to lyric-writing: the repertoires of Guilbert or Greco bear witness to this. In broad terms, one can distinguish two general currents of chanson française: one a vehicle for free-wheeling social commentary, political satire, or protest; the other a personal expression of feeling of a poetic kind, including the perennial love-song.
At the end of the 19th c., with the development of the modern popular chanson, some further distinctions can be made. On the one hand, there is the cabaret song, as practised in the 1890s by Bruant, Jules Jouy, or Mac Nab in places such as the Chat Noir in Montmartre: satirical, individualistic, with some literary and intellectual pretentions. This style underwent a revival in the cellars of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in the 1940s and 1950s, with the emergence of such figures as Greco, Ferré, Vian, Brassens, and Brel. On the other hand, there are the songs of the music-hall, café-concert, or revue, popular in the commercial sense, less controversial: the repertoires of Mistinguett, Chevalier, Josephine Baker, or Piaf. A similar distinction, but not a symmetrical one, can be drawn between singer-songwriters who create their own repertoire, such as Bruant, Trenet, or Barbara; and the many teams of professional songwriters producing songs for others: André Willemetz and Henri Christiné, for instance, who were responsible for Chevalier's ‘Valentine’, Mistinguett's ‘En douce’, and musical comedies such as Phi-phi (1918).
In the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s the phonograph gradually replaced sheet music as the principal form of song publishing. This process was speeded up by the growth of radio broadcasting, which tended to identify songs with particular singers. In the 1950s and 1960s the arrival of television further increased the emphasis on charismatic performers such as Piaf or Brel, and the development of the long-playing record allowed modern troubadours such as Brassens to create albums of songs analagous to collections of poems. The 1970s saw the eclipse of the cabaret and the music-hall as venues for the live performance of chanson: only the Olympia in Paris survives. Their place has been taken by giant concert halls such as the Zénith at La Villette or the Palais des Sports at Bercy, with a corresponding decline in the dramatic subtlety available to performers. At the same time new media resources have opened up, in the form of video. Live performances can be recorded and distributed, providing a permanent record of an ephemeral occasion, and the video-clip, despite the production costs, provides a new dimension in the dramatic presentation of a song, and can be used to good effect by television programmes. It is too early to say what effect these new media will have on the chanson tradition, but it is clear at the end of the 1980s that the indigenous style is in danger of being swamped by the international marketing of British and American products, whose influence had hitherto been assimilated in a creative way by singers like Souchon, Gainsbourg, or Renaud.
The chanson française none the less represents a distinctively French phenomenon, and has developed through the electronic media into a kind of parallel literary tradition. It is commonplace, with the blessing of the Academie Française, to treat Brassens or Brel as major poets: they have taken their place in the pantheon of cultural monuments.
[Peter Hawkins]
Bibliography
- C. Brunschwig, L.-J. Calvet, J.-C. Klein, Cent ans de chanson française (1981).
- L. Rioux, 50 ans de chanson française (1993)
