From Vocal Poetry to Song

Towards a Theory of Song Objects

Jean Nicolas De Surmont, Anastasija Ropa

• Publisher: Ibidem Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9783838270722
• Topic: Médias et arts de la scène
• Subtopic: Histoire et critiques de la musique

Although the song is often the subject of monographs, one of its forms remains insufficiently researched: the vocalized song, communicated to the spectator through performance. The study of the song takes one back to the study of vocal practices, from aesthetic objects to forms and to plural styles. To conceive a song means approaching it in its different instances of creation as well as its linguistic diversity. Jean Nicolas De Surmont proposes ways of research and analysis useful to musicians, musicologists, and literary critics alike. He takes up the issue of vocal poetry in addition to examining the theoretic aspects of song objects. Rather than offering an autonomous model of analysis, De Surmont extends the research fields and suggests responses to debates that have involved everyone interested in vocal poetic forms.

Chapter 1
Vocal poetry in mountains and dales

Si on extrait une musique et des paroles notées,

elle est exsangue: ce n’est plus qu’une partition.

Enfin, musique supprimée, c’est un résidu, un corps

mutilé. Aussi doit-on admirer que de rares textes

(tels ceux de Brassens ou de Brel) résistent à une telle

opération, et faut-il renoncer à traiter les « paroles »,

fussent-elles écrites par Trenet ou par Ferré , comme

s’il s’agissait d’oeuvres littéraires. Même la désaffection que connaît aujourd’hui l’oeuvre de Béranger résulte de ces opérations réductrices. Publier les textes de

chansons ainsi dépouillés, les commenter comme s’il

s’agissait de poèmes d[e] [Paul] Éluard, d’Aragon, de

[René] Char – ou même de Prévert, de Vian, auteurs

d’admirables supports à chansons –, c’est leur rendre

un très mauvais service.

(Alain Rey 1984)

[If one takes out the music and writes down the word, its life is lost: only a spectre remains. Without music, it is a remnant, a dead, mutilated body. Should we wonder at the rare texts (like those of Brassens or Brel) which survive the operation, should we reject treating the ‘words’, even those written by Trenet or Ferré, as if they had been works of literature. Even current disenchantment with Béranger’s works comes from these reductionist operations. Publishing the texts of songs which had been thus stripped, commenting on them as if these had been the poems of [Paul] Éluard, Aragon, [René] Char – or even Prévert, Vian, authors who have written magnificent song bases – means rendering them very poor service.]

Historical approaches

In France, as is the situation in the Romance-language philology globally, the most studied type of song is certainly chanson de geste. The lines of enquiry changed in the course of time. Thus, classical philology was pre-occupied with establishing the texts of chanson de geste, while later philology was concerned with analysing the links between the latter and contemporary developments (crusades, feudal rights, etc.). As a result, different aspects have been studied: symbolism, textual variation in manuscripts, thematic, poetic meter and history, even cartography and epistemology of certain cycles (for instance, by Joseph Bédier). A long poem that celebrates in an epic style warrior’s deeds, chanson de geste was publically performed by a minstrel. Chanson de geste is just one of numerous medieval sung genres, among which are also the pastourelle, aube, virelai, rondeau, romance, ballad, lay, descort, sirventes, pastorela, dansa, etc.1 Latest studies were conducted by Romance scholars and medievalists, such as Pierre Bec, Paul Zumthor, Ardis Butterfield, as well as some folklorists – or, as they are known since the 1950s, ethnomusicologists – such as Conrad Laforte and Patrice Coirault. These members of the learned community are the ones who are most interested in medieval lyric literature. There are numerous studies, all which we are unable to consider, on chanson de geste.

Polyphonic song, classified in musicology under the category secular vocal music, is thus the object of university studies concerned with the themes of war and nature, rhythm, musical semiology, etc.2 Drawing on the syntagmatic constructions secular vocal music and emphasising its linguistic component without over-stressing singers’ vocal performances, we will speak of vocal poetry.

Medieval songs and the songs produced after the French Revolution constitute the two most studied periods in the history of French song, the former considered by philologists and musicologists, the latter by researchers from different fields (sociologists, journalists, self-educated people and even university students). The study of modern song (after the French Revolution) often focuses on the biography of performers and mediators rather than on song itself. Louis-Jean Calvet (1981, 10) rightly affirms that continuing work on the definition of song (more or less alike from the Littré to Robert) testifies to stagnation in the theoretical study of sign during the period.

The French language has been associated with the genre of song from time immemorial; the reputation of trouvères is not specific to the history of French literature and music. The influence of troubadours and the langue d’oc is equally pronounced in Spanish, Italian and German poetry. In 1802, A. Demandre confirms that ‘Of all European nations, the French are the one with the most natural inclination to this kind of poetry’.3

Meanwhile, the study of contemporary song in all of its forms remains marginalised. It is the subject of numerous publications outside the academe, by music lovers, which probably reflects the common assumption that the study of a discredited subject is not worthwhile (Morin, 1965, 1). According to Louis-Jean Calvet, Lucien Rioux was the first to study song from sociological standpoint in France.4 Traditional songs were generally examined among other branches of oral literature by ethnomusicologists and anthropologists from the time when these disciplines were scientifically established. The manner of study also differed considerably from the study of urban and signed songs, as in the latter case the issue of author’s origin dominated study throughout the nineteenth century (unknown origin of the majority, learned background of certain individuals, etc.). Collections of French and Quebec songs were published regularly. Luxembourg (Tresch 1929), Switzerland and Belgium, the former French colonies in America and Asia, overseas departments and territories, in short, all Francophone communities, to use Senghor’s term, remained poor relations to the documentation on French-language song.

Subject of polysemiotic study

Song is the subject of polysemiotic study (different semiotic layers). ‘Plurimediality’ of its access (Roy 1992, f. 17) and, to take up Jean Vignes’s unhappy expression, the ‘field of bastard research’ it represents (Vignes 1997, 40) results in fruitful reflection on the subject. Song can be approached, following Christian Marcadet, who borrows Marcel Mauss’s concept from classical anthropology, popular in the humanities, as a total social fact. Indeed, it involves such sign discourses as shadow, light, voice, clothes, gesture and audience. In the introduction to the first collective study of the Quebec song, Robert Giroux defines the landmarks of his subject:

Cette grille [d’analyse] révèle la chanson comme un objet tout à la fois textuel (les paroles), musical (les instruments, la mélodie), technique (les arrangements en studio par exemple), esthétique (les typologies chansonnières), social (les différents publics et lieux de réception), politique (les fonctions de la chanson, ses utilisations), et enfin un objet économique (les lois du marché auxquelles obéit l’industrie culturelle …).

[The [analytic] scheme shows that the song is simultaneously a textual (words), musical (instruments and tune), technical (for instance, studio recordings), aesthetic (song types), social (different audiences and places of reception), political (functions and uses of song) and economic (market laws which culture industries obey) object.]5

The following year, Giroux produced a methodological study of popular (French) song, where he continues to elaborate theoretical tools to enable research into the complex nature of multiple interrelated phenomena, including

[…] la structuration d’une chanson isolée: étude des paroles, de la musique, de l’interprétation; la typologie préalable de laquelle elle s’inspire ou qu’elle transgresse […] ; les unités constitutives et la grammaire propre à chaque réseau d’organisation du produit culturel qu’est la chanson […]. (Giroux 1985b, p. 28)

[[...] the structuring of an individual song: study of words, music and performance; preliminary typology by which song is inspired and which it oversteps [...]; constituent units and grammar proper to each system of organisation for the cultural product which is the song [...].]6

Indeed, the song can be studied as a cultural product (written song, according to Calvet 1981, 34): score, listening statistics, consumption, reception, teaching use,7 history, themes ...8 In this case, the song is approached from a social and/or historical standpoi...

Table of contents

• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Note to the reader
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Vocal poetry in mountains and dales
• Chapter 2 Parallel linearities: Poetry and music
• Chapter 3 Componential mutations of the song object
• Chapter 4 Popular song and its ‘popular’ epithet
• Chapter 5 Moral and aesthetic divisions
• Conclusion
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Copyright