The Mediating of Chanson
Title | The Mediating of Chanson PDF eBook |
Author | Adeline Cordier |
Publisher | |
Pages | |
Release | 2008 |
Genre | National characteristics |
ISBN |
Jacques Brel, Georges Brassens and L?o Ferr? are three emblematic figures of post-war French song, who have been seen by critics, journalists, and the public, as the epitome of chanson, and more generally of?Frenchness?. The starting point of this study is the observation that the legacy of the systematic association of Brel, Brassens, and Ferr?? crystallised in Cristiani?s 1969 interview and in Jean-Pierre Leloir?s photograph of the interview? has enjoyed a prosperity which seems disproportionate to the actual relevance of the comparison between the three artists. In 1969, the three singers were significant figures of French song, but they were not the only ones. Bringing them together was therefore a promise of media success, but it was in no way expected to start a legend; and yet, the myth of the interview has today taken over its reality, to the extent that the Com?die Fran?aise is presently, almost thirty years later, turning it into a play which was staged in May 2008. The photograph of the three singers smoking and drinking around a table is, today, and for a vast majority of people, the only thing that they know about the famous interview, if not about the singers. The lack of obvious grounds to justify the exclusivity of the trio suggests that there is more to it than a musical trinity. By taking into consideration the oral dimension of song, the socio-cultural context in which the trio emerged, and the mediation of their celebrity, this study aims to identify the factors of cultural and national identity that have held together the myth of the trio since its creation. Besides shedding new light on the significance of the three artists individually, this study proposes to demonstrate that each singer embodies qualities with which the French people likes to be associated, and that the trio Brel-Brassens-Ferr? can therefore be seen as an arbitrary sketch of a certain?Frenchness?. In particular, this thesis focuses on the trio illustrating the popular representation of a key issue of French national identity: the paradoxical aspiration to both revolution and the status quo. By taking the cultural icon?Brel-Brassens-Ferr?? as a case study through which to address questions of popular and national identity, this study contributes to cultural studies in two different ways. Firstly, through theorising the implications of the oral dimension of songs, it demonstrates the necessity of taking into consideration factors such as performance, the media, and the socio-historical context, when studying artists as societal phenomena. Secondly, it evidences the importance of the study of forms of popular culture, such as iconic singers or music, when investigating the ways in which a society perceives its own national identity.
Music, Text and Translation
Title | Music, Text and Translation PDF eBook |
Author | Helen Julia Minors |
Publisher | A&C Black |
Pages | 242 |
Release | 2013-05-23 |
Genre | Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | 1441173080 |
Explores the roles that translation plays in a musical context, questioning the transference of sense between music and text.
Sounds French
Title | Sounds French PDF eBook |
Author | Jonathyne Briggs |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Pages | 249 |
Release | 2015-03-02 |
Genre | Music |
ISBN | 0190266643 |
Sounds French examines the history of popular music in France between the arrival of rock and roll in 1958 and the collapse of the first wave of punk in 1980, and the connections between musical genres and concepts of community in French society. During this period, scholars have tended to view the social upheavals associated with postwar reconstruction as part of debates concerning national identity in French culture and politics, a tendency that developed from political figures' and intellectuals' concerns with French national identity. In this book, author Jonathyne Briggs reorients the scholarship away from an exclusive focus on national identity and instead towards an investigation of other identities that develop as a result of the increased globalization of culture. Popular music, at once individual and communal, fixed and plastic, offers an illuminating window into such transformations in social structures through the ways in which musicians, musical consumers, and critical intermediaries re-imagined themselves as part of novel cultural communities, whether local, national, or supranational in nature. Briggs argues that national identity was but one of a panoply of identities in flux during the postwar period in France, demonstrating that the development of hybridized forms of popular music provided the French with a method for expressing and understanding that flux. Drawing upon an array of printed and aural sources, including music publications, sound recordings, record sleeves, biographies, and cultural criticism, Sounds French is an essential new look at popular music in postwar France.
Stereo: Comparative Perspectives on the Sociological Study of Popular Music in France and Britain
Title | Stereo: Comparative Perspectives on the Sociological Study of Popular Music in France and Britain PDF eBook |
Author | Philippe Le Guern |
Publisher | Routledge |
Pages | 325 |
Release | 2016-04-01 |
Genre | Music |
ISBN | 1317050010 |
The term 'Popular Music' has traditionally denoted different things in France and Britain. In France, the very concept of 'popular' music has been fiercely debated and contested, whereas in Britain and more largely throughout what the French describe as the 'Anglo-saxon' world 'popular music' has been more readily accepted as a description of what people do as leisure or consume as part of the music industry, and as something that academics are legitimately entitled to study. French researchers have for some decades been keenly interested in reading British and American studies of popular culture and popular music and have often imported key concepts and methodologies into their own work on French music, but apart from the widespread use of elements of 'French theory' in British and American research, the 'Anglo-saxon' world has remained largely ignorant of particular traditions of the study of popular music in France and specific theoretical debates or organizational principles of the making and consuming of French musics. French, British and American research into popular music has thus coexisted - with considerable cross-fertilization - for many years, but the barriers of language and different academic traditions have made it hard for French and anglophone researchers to fully appreciate the ways in which popular music has developed in their respective countries and the perspectives on its study adopted by their colleagues. This volume provides a comparative and contrastive perspective on popular music and its study in France and the UK.
Post-War French Popular Music: Cultural Identity and the Brel-Brassens-Ferré Myth
Title | Post-War French Popular Music: Cultural Identity and the Brel-Brassens-Ferré Myth PDF eBook |
Author | Adeline Cordier |
Publisher | Routledge |
Pages | 188 |
Release | 2016-04-08 |
Genre | Music |
ISBN | 1317077148 |
Jacques Brel, Georges Brassens and Léo Ferré are three emblematic figures of post-war French popular music who have been constantly associated with each other by the public and the media. They have been described as the epitome of chanson, and of 'Frenchness'. But there is more to the trio than a musical trinity: this new study examines the factors of cultural and national identity that have held together the myth of the trio since its creation. This book identifies the combination of cultural and historical circumstances from which the works of these three singers emerged. It presents an innovative analysis of the correlation between this iconic trio and the evolution of national myths that nurtured the cultural aspirations of post-war French society. It explores the ways in which Brel, Brassens and Ferré embody the myth of the left-wing intellectual and of the authentic 'Gaul' spirit, and it discusses the ambiguous attitude of post-war French society towards gender relations. The book takes an original look at the trio by demonstrating how it illustrates the popular representation of a key issue of French national identity: the paradoxical aspiration to both revolution and the maintenance of the status quo.
Words and Music
Title | Words and Music PDF eBook |
Author | J. G. Williamson |
Publisher | Liverpool University Press |
Pages | 272 |
Release | 2005-07-01 |
Genre | Music |
ISBN | 1781386889 |
Word and music studies is a relatively young discipline that has nonetheless generated a substantial amount of work. Recent studies in the field have embraced music in literature (word music, formal parallels to music in literature, verbal music), music and literarature (vocal music) and literature in music (programme music). Other positions have been defined in which song exists as an analysable category distinct from words and music and requiring its own grammar. Much of the literature has tended to focus on readings of the literary text, pushing theoretical and analytical concerns in music to one side, a trend that is as apparent among musicologists as among literary historians. The essays presented here from the third Liverpool Music Symposium seek accordingly to redress this situation. Contributors tackle the study of words and music from a number of standpoints, examining artists as diverse as Eminem, Patti Smith and Arnold Schoenberg.
Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Music
Title | Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Music PDF eBook |
Author | Hugo Riemann |
Publisher | |
Pages | 924 |
Release | 1908 |
Genre | Music |
ISBN |