Documents found
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35.More information
Critical discussions of the song frequently focus exclusively on the lyrical text, thereby placing an unjustifiable limitation on the object under study. Drawing on a number of instances from the work of Georges Brassens, this article examines how meaning is constructed in the song through the convergence of linguistic (textual), melodic, rhythmic and orchestral elements, te lay the foundations for a semiology of the song.
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36.More information
Song (what Paul Zumthor calls « oral poetry set to music») is an offspring of the medieval fixed form lyric. No wonder, indeed, that we still find the villanelle and the ballade with envoy among the works of Gilles Vigneault,the most medieval of Quebec's singers. This being so, it is not surprising that the song as genre should borrow a good deal from the figures of rhetoric: enumeration, repetition, chiasmus, opposition, anaphora, and so forth; above all, that it should retain the lapidary succinctness of its origin. As a form, of lyrical poetry, the song exploits rhythm, musicality and above all figuration. It reconciles the musical with the literary text, uniting them and bringing them into fertile opposition to ensure their reciprocal efficacy and power. In this sense, as the evolution of the song across the centuries demonstrates, it is discourse and possesses a rhetorical power sufficient to fit it for its role both as sung poetry and as a vehicle for ideological argument.The present article examines these aspects of the song with special reference to a composition by Jacques Brel.
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38.More information
This article deals with the singular case of the circulation of the song J'attendrai in the 1940s. The analysis of the different versions of the song allows us to reveal the changing relationship between these versions and musical genres, the tastes and practices of the public, and the way they fit into national cultures. This analysis also allows us, in places, to explore the evolution of social relationships between genders as presented in the different versions of the song. This way, our analysis of this case of cultural transfer is guided as much by the artistic, cultural, social and intimate aspects of the song, as by a search for the vectors explaining the cultural circulation of a successful song.