Chanson et musique populaires devant l'Histoire à la fin de l'Ancien Régime

Abstract

Rolf Reichardt and Herbert Schneider : Popular songs and History in late 18th-century France. This article considers the neglected subject of old French historical and political songs as a semi-oral cultural field for interdisciplinary studies linking the history of popular literature, musicology, ethnology and history. A serial study of all the songs given with their tunes in the Mémoires secrets from 1762 to 1787 shows the politicisation not only of the texts but also of the music ; this process is backed up by the ' semantic ' character of certain tunes and by a change of melodic structure which gives greater importance to the refrain. This transformation, in which comic opera and vaudeville played an important role, prepared the ground for the songs of the French Revolution.