What Is Chanson?

2 minutes

People often imagine “chanson” like this: in a dim café, over a glass of wine or coffee, you look at faded photographs on the wall while a French song plays on a wood-and-brass record player. It stirs a longing for romantic love and memories of time gone by.

In fact, chanson is simply the French word for “song.” Compared with court opera or church hymns, chansons were secular folk songs—popular, everyday music.

As early as medieval France, troubadours traveled between castles and marketplaces with their old instruments, singing romantic tales of knights and beautiful ladies. By the late nineteenth century, composers were writing art songs in large numbers. After 1900, during France’s Belle Époque, chanson flourished in styles ranging from art song and dance music to jazz and folk. So chanson is not one precise musical genre; it is a broad term for French popular song. What these songs share is poetic lyrics supported by beautiful melodies.

Now, please enjoy Edith Piaf singing “Sous le ciel de Paris” (“Under the Paris Sky”):