“The virtuoso does not serve the music;
he uses it”, said Cocteau.
In this perhaps lies the specificity of the songwriters of French song.
Brassens, Berger, Goldman, Sanson… All have made the French language resonate to the rhythm of chords.
They sang it, offered to the public who at any time of the day are still surprised to sing their refrains.
To discover
Find all the results of the legislative elections
To read also
These words of Serge Gainsbourg which marked the French song
The first forms of French song appeared in the Middle Ages, where troubadours and trouvères wrote poems in “vulgar language” before putting them to music, says Brigitte Buffard-Moret in Précis de versification.
But it was during the 20th century that the genre flourished.
He is influenced by musical currents such as rock, jazz and Anglo-Saxon pop.
The vocabulary used is diversified.
From neat worms to yé-yé soup, the evolution is considerable.
In 1981, Renaud chanted in verlan, slang of working-class neighborhoods: "He had a date / in Paris with a girl' / […] He would miss more than doing it / stop by the cops'", while Sheller parodies the "songs that have the style / Baby I love you I love you".
The origins of writing
Whether it is intended to spread a message or to sublimate a feeling, "a song is a form of popular memory which is transmitted directly by the heart", explains to Figaro Yves Duteil, artist with 50 years of career.
For him, the writing of a text is imperatively done in silence.
"We can then decide to let ourselves be carried away by the beauty of a sentence heard - the verse of his eponymous song "There are days where we are no longer nobody" came to him out of a dream - , by the musicality of an expression, or by the subject of which one wants to speak".
In 1997, he dedicated a song to his great-uncle, Captain Dreyfus and, as always, opted for the choice of simple, correct words.
“You can write clichés believing you are doing poetry, but the most beautiful poetry is that of everyday words”.
An opinion shared by the young singer-songwriter Vanille, for whom music is a family affair.
Daughter of Julien Clerc, as a child, she met artists and lyricists, Etienne Roda-Gil in particular, who shaped her taste for writing.
Later, literature plays a big role.
“Françoise Sagan sparked this passion in me, thanks to her voice.
When you read it, it's music.
It's the same for Duras and her very astonishing punctuation which defines her”.
When the music rings
Handling the French language is not easy.
To adorn it with a beautiful dress, it is necessary to respect certain constraints of rhyme, of versification.
However, French does not have the reputation of “sounding” well, of being too monotonous.
The baritone and director of the International Center for French Melody in Tours, François Le Roux, explained in an interview with the review Champ psychosomatique: “It is not correct to say that the French language is a language without accentuation.
[…] There are at least two tonic accents in a word: the first and the last;
and then there is a third one in the middle who presses, […] in order to 'drive the sentence', to express its phrasing”.
Is it then for the text to adapt to the music, or is it the opposite?
For Vanille, respecting the metrics of the melodies she composes is imperative.
“You have to work, rework your text knowing what goes best, what is the most elegant, and what goes straight to the heart”.
Yves Duteil, for his part, made the opposite choice in order to grant himself more freedom and to enrich his subject.
Because in writing a song, what matters is ultimately to touch the hearts of people who listen.