French traditional music traces its history back centuries, evolving alongside France’s multiculturalism as it encountered new populations.
Renaissance polyphony advanced, with composers like Guillaume de Machaut and Josquin des Prez abandoning any rigid musical forms as instruments became the primary component of their compositions.
Chanson
Chanson is a form of French music featuring several types of song with lyrics, making it an excellent way to learn language. Chanson singers tend to enunciate their words clearly so listeners can easily understand what’s being said.
French chanson literally translates to “song”, but was also used to refer to a particular genre of music composed by composers in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance who were commonly known as chantniers. Chanson songs could either be performed unaccompanied or with accompaniment from instruments; typically composed for one, two, or three voices.
Guillaume Dufay and Gilles Binchois of the 14th-century wrote Burgundian chansons with relatively straightforward forms, known as forme fixes. Josquin Desprez and Johannes Ockeghem later extended this genre by producing work less constrained by these forms.
Musette
Hollywood movies set in Paris often feature the music of Musette – accordion-driven music which is associated with its romantic aura. Yet before becoming an industry standard, musette was actually used by Paris’ criminal underclass – killers, pimps and prostitutes to express themselves musically.
Joseph Bechonnet (1821-1900) of Effiat, Puy-de-Dome in Central France designed and created the Musette Bechonnet bagpipe with bellows around 1890. Like its seventeenth and eighteenth-century predecessors, it features a chanter and drone connected by a parallelepiped to its stock; both boast conical bores with double reeds; while its drone boasts a short cylindrical housing various possible and tunable drone reeds; plus it can be mouth blown.
Hotteterre’s Methode de Musette contains a wealth of music composed for two musettes (grand and petit), but some songs may also be played using an hurdy-gurdy or transverse flute.
Folk
Folk refers to an identity shared among a group of individuals. It usually has strong regional and cultural ties – for instance, French folk artists often perform chanson-inspired chansons while simultaneously performing alongside ensembles that showcase various regions across France.
Scholars during the late 19th and early 20th centuries were fond of collecting folk songs and adding new harmonic accompaniments, with this undertaking often having nationalist overtones as they attempted to restore lost traditions.
Contrast that with contemporary folk musicians who embrace a more global outlook; often open to including elements from jazz or other world music styles in order to make themselves more approachable for audiences.
Classical
French traditional music reveals an intricate tapestry of evolution and cultural depth, from the sublime beauty of Gregorian chants to Renaissance France’s intricate polyphony; from its longstanding composers such as Bach or Liszt. A legacy of timeless compositions from France stands the test of time.
In the 1860s, France witnessed a musical nationalist movement. Amid Germany’s more sophisticated musical offerings than France’s own, France made strides towards musical deepness by rejecting frivolous and superficial styles of performance (effeminate).
French orchestras from the classical period, like the Vingt-quatre Violons du Roi, established new standards of discipline and rigor during this time. Music by composers such as Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel painted an innovative canvas of harmony and texture through their work; rural France witnessed folk traditions including regional dances as well as bagpipes and hurdy-gurdy instruments like these continue to thrive throughout rural regions like Brittany and Limousin.
Opera
French opera has a rich tradition that blends lyrical beauty with dramatic storytelling. Beginning as church chants during medieval church services to lavish court theatre productions during Renaissance court theatre and today’s highly successful productions, French opera has left an indelible mark on France’s cultural legacy.
Jean-Baptiste Lully established a tradition of tragedy en musique operas in France during the 17th century by crafting works that combined music and poetry together. Additionally, his style featured expressive recitatives that mirrored spoken French.
Composers such as Claude Debussy and Giacomo Puccini advanced Wagnerian harmony by expanding its scope with dissonance and chromaticism in 19th-century works such as Gaspare Spontini’s Fernand Cortez ou la Conqueste du Mexique (Hernan Cortes or the Conquest of Mexico), which featured well-known historical events as its inspiration.