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The term French is used here in its broadest
cultural sense to include all geographical areas within the
influence of the French language and some composers of non-French
origin who worked in France.
The earliest French influence on Western music is found in
the plainsong of the Christian Church. It is believed that
Gregorian chant as it is known today is an 8th- or 9th-century
Gallican interpretation of Roman chant, but it is difficult
to distinguish the Gallican ornamentation from its Roman basis.
It has been suggested that the basic idea of the trope (an
interpolation in a preexistent chant) is Gallican and that
the surviving body of medieval tropes and sequences had a
French influence.
During the later Middle Ages France led in the development
of European music in all its forms. Some of the earliest manuscripts
containing organum (the earliest form of polyphony) are found
from the 10th century in Chartres, Montpellier, Fleury, Tours,
and other French cities. Especially important was the group
of musicians active during the 10th and 11th centuries at
the Abbey of St. Martial in Limoges. In the late 12th century
a brilliant group of composers emerged who were associated
with the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. The most notable
of these were Leonin and Perotin. From this group came some
of the earliest motets as well as a number of theoretical
treatises on music.
Medieval secular music in France consisted almost entirely
of the songs of the troubadours and trouveres, poet-musicians
who flourished from the late 11th until the 13th century.
Among them was the famous ADAM DE LA HALLE. They created such
musical forms as the lai and the ballade (setting of a poem
with the refrain at the end of each stanza). Active during
the same period were the jongleurs, roving minstrels who performed
the courtly love lyrics of the troubadours.
The music of the 14th century took its name, Ars Nova, from
a treatise by Philippe de VITRY (1291-1361), who codified
an improved system of musical notation. Vitry is credited
by some scholars with the invention of the isorhythmic motet,
one of the most important musical forms of the century. Guillaume
de MACHAUT (c.1300-1377), master of all 14th-century forms
and the leading poet of his time, brought the medieval motet
to its highest peak.
With the beginning of the Renaissance style in the 15th century,
the center of musical activity shifted from Paris to Burgundy,
then a separate state. Active there were Guillaume DUFAY,
Gilles BINCHOIS, and the Englishman John DUNSTABLE; all wrote
in a new, expressive style. The chief musical forms of this
period were the motet--now little resembling its medieval
ancestor--and the cyclic mass.
By the late 15th century musical supremacy was taken over
by Flemish musicians; never again was French music to dominate
as it had during the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, many French
composers were active during the Renaissance--for example,
Jean Mouton (c.1475-1522) and Pierre Certon (c.1510-72)--but
their music was overshadowed by that of the Flemish and Italians.
The most important French contribution to the Renaissance
was the CHANSON, a secular, polyphonic song, usually light
in style. It was later adapted by the Italians into the keyboard
canzona.
The Reformation in France took the form of Calvinism, which
allowed only the singing in unison of metrical French translations
of the Psalms. The tunes composed by Louis Bourgeois (c.1510-c.1561)
and others went with the Calvinist Psalter to Scotland and
found their way into English hymnody where several still exist.
Polyphonic settings of the Psalter tunes were composed for
nonliturgical use by Claude Goudimel (c.1505-72) and Claude
Le Jeune (1528-1600), but they had little impact on church
music in general.
The 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries were a time of Italian
and German dominance in music. Opera was the ruling 17th-century
form, and French composers wrote operas of a uniquely French
type. Beginning with Balthasar de Beaujoyeux's Ballet comique
de la reine (1580), French composers combined elements of
opera, ballet, and spoken drama in a form sometimes called
opera-ballet. The arias were simple and songlike, in contrast
to the long, florid arias of Italian music, and the influence
of Italian recitative is slight. The foremost French operas
in the 17th century were those of Jean Baptiste LULLY and
in the 18th century those of Jean Philippe RAMEAU. Ballet,
spoken dialogue, and the absence of the Italian-style recitative-aria
remained characteristic of French opera comique through the
19th century.
French harpsichord music of the baroque period was of high
quality. It consisted mostly of suites of dance movements
and short character pieces (often with descriptive titles)
rather than the longer preludes and fugues, toccatas, and
fantasias cultivated by the Germans. Representative composers
were Jacques Champion de CHAMBONNIERES, Louis Couperin, Francois
Couperin, and Rameau. All, but especially Francois Couperin,
influenced the development of keyboard fingering and technique.
Rameau also wrote theoretical treatises, and his theory of
harmony has influenced the teaching of the subject to the
present day. He was the first to introduce the clarinet into
the orchestra, and it was adopted by the composers of the
MANNHEIM SCHOOL and by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Francois Joseph
GOSSEC became the pioneer composer of symphonies in France.
The period from about 1750 to 1850 was a fallow one in French
music.
The turmoil of the Revolution and the Napoleonic wars did
not encourage artistic activity. Nevertheless, during this
time the Paris Conservatory and the national Opera were established.
In the early 19th century, Paris was a center for musicians
from other countries, such as Frederic Chopin and Franz Liszt.
Music by French composers consisted mostly of inferior operas
or empty, virtuosic salon pieces. A notable exception were
the works of Hector BERLIOZ, the greatest of the French Romantics,
who expanded the orchestra and whose grand style influenced
Richard Wagner.
The late 19th century saw an increase of quality in French
music. Camille SAINT-SAENS worked for the establishment of
a French instrumental style based on the classical tradition,
and Cesar FRANCK helped restore the quality of French organ
and church music. The works of Georges BIZET, Charles Gounod,
and Jules Massenet brought a new spontaneity and color to
French opera. IMPRESSIONISM, as seen in the music of Claude
DEBUSSY and the early works of Maurice RAVEL, blossomed toward
the end of the century. The movement, inspired by the work
of French impressionist painters and poets, was anti-German
and anti-Romantic in that it attempted to give music a more
improvisatory character with subtle and understated coloristic
effects. The body of "art songs" produced by Debussy,
Ravel, Gabriel FAURE, Henri DUPARC, and others is outstanding.
Between the two world wars, French music--such as the later
work of Albert Roussel--was often written in "neo-classical"
style: it was direct, simple, and accessible. Erik Satie was
a major composer of the time, as were several of the group
of young musicians who gathered around him and were known
as "Les Six": Arthur HONEGGER, Darius MILHAUD, Francis
POULENC, Georges Auric, Germaine Tailleferre, and Louis Durey.
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