FR on Music Theory Print

Franco-Flemish School

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Term and controversy#

Several generations of Renaissance composers from the region loosely known as the Low Countries (Imperial and French fiefs ruled in personal union by the House of Valois-Burgundy in the period from 1384 to 1482)—i.e. present-day Northern France, Belgium and the Southern Netherlands—are grouped under “Franco-Flemish School”, though a teacher-student-relationship between them rarely existed. Most of these musicians were born in the thriving Burgundian provinces of Artois, Flanders, Brabant, Hainaut, or Limburg. Others were born in Northern and Southern France, like Guillaume Faugues, Simone de Bonefont and Antoine Brumel who was one of the most influential composers of his generation. During periods of political and economic stability, the courts of the Burgundian dukes were a centre of cultural activity in Europe. Franco-Flemish composers had their origins in ecclesiastical choir schools such as at the cathedrals and collegiate churches of Saint-Quentin, Arras, Valenciennes, Douai, Bourges, Liège, Tournai, Cambrai, Mons, Antwerp, Bruges, and Ghent, although they were famous for working elsewhere. Numerous musicians established themselves in French court or moved to the European courts in Italy where they were called “I fiamminghi” or Oltremontani (“those from over the Alps”) and Spain—notably in the Flemish chapel (capilla flamenca) of the Habsburgs, or to towns in Germany, and other parts of Europe—Poland, the Czech lands, Austria, Hungary, England, Sweden, Denmark, Saxony—carrying their styles with them. The exact centres shifted during this time, and by the end of the sixteenth century the focal point of the Western musical world had moved from the Low Countries to Italy. The expression “Franco-Flemish” (as well as the more biased term “Dutch school”) are still the subject of some controversy among musicologists. They were not in use at that time and seem to cover only part of the linguistic, political, territorial and historical reality.

Frat rap

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

The subgenre of frat rap was invented by Asher Roth with the release of his song “I Love College” in 2009. The subgenre grew rapidly and achieved commercial success within hip hop by 2010. In 2010, 18-year-old Mac Miller released two mixtapes K.I.D.S. and Best Day Ever that made him an overnight success and launched him to the forefront of the frat rap phenomenon. In 2011, Aer’s debut EP What You Need debuted atop the iTunes Hip-Hop/Rap albums chart, and Mac Miller drawing more than 50,000 fans to Government Center in Boston. Many of the most successful frat rap artists rejected the title and culture of frat rap and went on to release music that departed from the subject matter and sound of frat rap, being commercially successful in mainstream hip hop. Originally starting out in frat rap, Mac Miller later changed his sound and later became the most successful former frat rapper in mainstream hip hop, with a review of Rolling Stone stating that Miller had shed his frat rap reputation with the release of his album Swimming.

Freak folk

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Etymology#

The etymology of “freak folk” is unclear. According to Stereogum, the term “freak folk” had been in informal use for decades before solidifying into a genre. In Seasons They Change: The Story of Acid and Psychedelic Folk (2010), author Jeanette Leech claims that contemporary usage of the term is likely a bastardization of the term “free folk.” For a short period of time, the terms were to a degree used interchangeably, but by 2006 “free folk” was no longer in mainstream use. In a 1998 review of Beck’s Mutations, Joshua Clover, writing for music magazine Spin, described the music as “some old-fashioned freak-folk”. In early 2003, music magazine Arthur, one of the earliest outlets to profile freak folk artist Devendra Banhart, called him a “freaked folknik” on the cover of its second issue. On April 1, 2004, Arthur ’s Bastet imprint released the Banhart-compiled various artists album The Golden Apples of the Sun. According to Pitchfork, the compilation “assisted greatly” in defining the term “freak folk”, while Stereogum notes the aftermath of its release as “the moment when a descriptive phrase solidified into a genre”. However, according to Stereogum, by 2005 the term “freak folk” had already become oversaturated.

Freakbeat

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Etymology#

In 1986, English music journalist Phil Smee would coin the term “freakbeat” when compiling the Rubble series of compilations. AllMusic writes that “freakbeat” is loosely defined, but generally describes the more obscure but hard-edged artists of the British Invasion era.

Compilations#

Much of the material collected on Rhino Records’s 2001 box-set compilation Nuggets II: Original Artyfacts from the British Empire and Beyond, 1964–1969 can be classified as freakbeat. The English Freakbeat series is a group of five compilation albums, released in the late 1980s, that were issued by AIP Records. The LPs featured recordings that were released in the mid-1960s by English rock bands in R&B and beat genres. The series served as a follow-up to the Pebbles, Volume 6 LP, itself subtitled The Roots of Mod, which was the only album in the Pebbles series that was devoted to English music. When the English Freakbeat series was reissued as CDs in the 1990s, the Pebbles, Volume 6 LP was adapted into the English Freakbeat, Volume 6 CD.

Free improvisation

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Characteristics#

In the context of music theory, free improvisation denotes the shift from a focus on harmony and structure to other dimensions of music, such as timbre, texture, melodic intervals, rhythm and spontaneous musical interactions between performers. This can give free improvised music abstract and nondescript qualities. Although individual performers may choose to play in a certain style or key, or at certain tempos, conventions such as song structures are highly uncommon; more emphasis is generally placed on the mood of the music, or on performative gestures, than on preset forms of melody, harmony or rhythm. These elements are improvised at will as the music progresses, and performers will often intuitively react to each other based on the elements of their performance. English guitarist Derek Bailey described free improvisation as “playing without memory”. In his book Improvisation, Bailey wrote that free improvisation “has no stylistic or idiomatic commitment. It has no prescribed idiomatic sound. The characteristics of freely improvised music are established only by the sonic musical identity of the person or persons playing it.” Free music performers from disparate backgrounds often engage musically with other genres. For example, Italian composer Ennio Morricone was a member of the free improvisation group Nuova Consonanza. Anthony Braxton has written opera, and John Zorn has written acclaimed orchestral pieces.

Free jazz

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Characteristics#

Free jazz was a reaction to the convolution of bop. Conductor and jazz writer Loren Schoenberg wrote that free jazz “gave up on functional harmony altogether, relying instead on a far ranging, stream-of-consciousness approach to melodic variation”. The style was largely inspired by the work of jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman. Some jazz musicians resist any attempt at classification. One difficulty is that most jazz has an element of improvisation. Many musicians draw on free jazz concepts and idioms, and free jazz was never entirely distinct from other genres, but free jazz does have some unique characteristics. Pharoah Sanders and John Coltrane used harsh overblowing or other extended techniques to elicit unconventional sounds from their instruments. Like other forms of jazz it places an aesthetic premium on expressing the “voice” or “sound” of the musician, as opposed to the classical tradition in which the performer is seen more as expressing the thoughts of the composer. Earlier jazz styles typically were built on a framework of song forms, such as twelve-bar blues or the 32-bar AABA popular song form with chord changes. In free jazz, however, the dependence on a fixed and pre-established form is often eliminated, and the role of improvisation is correspondingly increased. Other forms of jazz use regular meters and pulsed rhythms, usually in 4/4 or (less often) 3/4. Free jazz retains pulsation and sometimes swings but without regular meter. Frequent accelerando and ritardando give an impression of rhythm that moves like a wave. Previous jazz forms used harmonic structures, usually cycles of diatonic chords. When improvisation occurred, it was founded on the notes in the chords. Free jazz almost by definition is free of such structures, but also by definition (it is, after all, “jazz” as much as it is “free”) it retains much of the language of earlier jazz playing. It is therefore very common to hear diatonic, altered dominant and blues phrases in this music. Guitarist Marc Ribot commented that Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler “although they were freeing up certain strictures of bebop, were in fact each developing new structures of composition.” Some forms use composed melodies as the basis for group performance and improvisation. Free jazz practitioners sometimes use such material. Other compositional structures are employed, some detailed and complex. Rejection of the bop aesthetic was combined with a fascination with earlier styles of jazz, such as dixieland with its collective improvisation, as well as African music. Interest in ethnic music resulted in the use of instruments from around the world, such as Ed Blackwell’s West African talking drum, and Leon Thomas’s interpretation of pygmy yodeling. Ideas and inspiration were found in the music of John Cage, Musica Elettronica Viva, and the Fluxus movement. Many critics, particularly at the music’s inception, suspected that abandonment of familiar elements of jazz pointed to a lack of technique on the part of the musicians. By 1974, such views were more marginal, and the music had built a body of critical writing. Many critics have drawn connections between the term “free jazz” and the American social setting during the late 1950s and 1960s, especially the emerging social tensions of racial integration and the civil rights movement. Many argue those recent phenomena such as the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, the emergence of the Freedom Riders in 1961, the 1963 Freedom Summer of activist-supported black voter registration, and the free alternative black Freedom Schools demonstrate the political implications of the word “free” in context of free jazz. Thus many consider free jazz to be not only a rejection of certain musical credos and ideas, but a musical reaction to the oppression and experience of black Americans.

Free tekno

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Tekno evolved in tandem with the teknival movement in the early 1990s since many of the teknival organisers and DJs were also making music. At first the music took off from acid house and then drew on influences such as hardcore, jungle, early hardcore and techno, with the producers taking the sound in a darker direction. Spiral Tribe was the first to start making and widely disseminating this genre, taking it to France and Eastern Europe after the Criminal Justice act was implemented in the UK. An emphasis is placed on samples from TV shows, films and popular culture which are placed at strategic moments in the tracks. The music was produced with whatever was available: drum machines, synthesisers and keyboards as well as computer programs such as audio/MIDI sequencers and Trackers, sometimes even hitting a random table with a pen. Starting from year 2001 there has been a trend using laptop and laptops for live performances, because the capabilities of both the hardware and software were improving very quickly. Many artists, however, still use hardware for live performance and create a unique track at every freeparty. The sounds are lot simpler making them sound more oldschool and easier to dance to. The main genre that is still played with hardware, is tribe, a relatively underground subgenre of tekno. With the evolution of the genre it has come to be known by a number of names, including spiral tekno, hardtek, tribetek, tribe and lately evolved in many other subgenres like pumping tek, hardfloor and Frenchcore which is a sort of mixture between mainstream hardcore and hardtekno, with funny and pumping samples taken from different media sources. Artists within this genre usually follow a very different ideology when compared to more modern and mainstream producers: * Artists often use many pseudonyms, as they are not interested in mainstream success or recognition * Most are not interested in profit * They also support the free distribution of their works, as they do not see it as their own material, but as something that belongs to the fans and the community This is described as “returning to the roots”.

Freedom song

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Notable songs from the civil rights movement#

Some 100 or so songs were commonly sung during the Civil Rights Movement protests of the 1960s. Some of the best-known or the most-influential songs are: * “A Change Is Gonna Come (song)”: Composed and performed by Sam Cooke; #12 on the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list of Rolling Stone magazine * “Oh, Freedom”: a spiritual dating back to slavery times * “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ‘Round” * “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize” * “Certainly Lord”: based on a spiritual * “Hold On” (also known as “Keep Your Eye On The Prize”): Based on a spiritual * “How I Got Over” * “I Love Everybody”, the most important song in the civil rights movement according to SCLC’s James Bevel and Andrew Young, sometimes sung for an hour at a time. * “If You Miss Me at the Back of the Bus”: Adapted from a composition by Chico Neblett * “I’m Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table”: Adapted from a Spiritual * “I Woke Up This Mornin’”: Adapted from a Spiritual * “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing”: Composed by James Weldon Johnson * “This Little Light of Mine”: Originally a spiritual, associated with Fannie Lou Hamer. * “We shall not be moved”: Also, likely originally, a labor union song. * “If I had a hammer”: A labor union song by Pete Seeger and Lee Hays. * “Hymn to Freedom”: Composed and performed by Oscar Peterson on the album Night Train

Freestyle music

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1982–1987: Origin#

Freestyle music developed in the early 1980s, primarily simultaneously in the Hispanic (mainly Puerto Rican/Latin) communities of Upper Manhattan, Brooklyn, and The Bronx and in the Italian-American communities in Brooklyn, the Bronx, other boroughs of New York City, New Jersey, Westchester County and Long Island. It initially was a fusion of synthetic instrumentation and syncopated percussion of 1980s electro, as favored by fans of breakdancing. Sampling, as found in synth-pop music and hip-hop, was incorporated. Key influences include Afrika Bambaataa & Soul Sonic Force’s “Planet Rock” (1982) and Shannon’s “Let the Music Play” (1983), the latter was a top-ten Billboard Hot 100 hit. In 1984, a Latin presence was established when the first song recorded in the genre by a Latin American artist, “Please Don’t Go”, by newcomer Nayobe (a singer from Brooklyn and of Cuban descent) was recorded and released. The song became a success, reaching No. 23 on the Billboard Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart. In 1985, a Spanish version of the song was released with the title “No Te Vayas”. By 1987, freestyle began getting more airplay on American pop radio stations. Songs such as “Come Go with Me” by Exposé, “Show Me” by the Cover Girls, “Fascinated” by Company B, “Silent Morning” by Noel, and “Catch Me (I’m Falling)” by Pretty Poison, brought freestyle into the mainstream. House music, based partly on disco rhythms, was by 1992 challenging the relatively upbeat, syncopated freestyle sound. Pitchfork considers the Miami Mix of ABC’s single “When Smokey Sings” to be proto-freestyle, despite that version being released in 1987. Many early or popular freestyle artists and DJs were of Hispanic or Italian descent, including Jellybean, Tony Torres, Raul Soto, Roman Ricardo, Mickey Garcia (who is of both Italian and Puerto Rican descent), Lil Suzy, and Nocera, which was one reason for the style’s popularity among Hispanic Americans and Italian Americans in the New York City area and Philadelphia.

Freestyle rap

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Original definition#

In the book How to Rap (2009), Big Daddy Kane and Myka 9 note that originally a freestyle was a spit on no particular subject – Big Daddy Kane said: " I n the ’80s, when we said we wrote a freestyle rap, that meant that it was a rhyme that you wrote that was free of style… it’s basically a rhyme just bragging about yourself." Myka 9 adds: “back in the day, freestyle was bust ing a rhyme about any random thing, and it was a written rhyme or something memorized.” Divine Styler says: “in the school I come from, freestyling was a non-conceptual written rhyme… and now they call freestyling off the top of the head, so the era I come from, it’s a lot different”. Kool Moe Dee also refers to this earlier definition in his 2003 book, There’s a God on the Mic: There are two types of freestyle. There’s an old-school freestyle that’s basically rhymes that you’ve written that may not have anything to do with any subject or that goes all over the place. Then there’s freestyle where you come off the top of the head. In old school hip-hop, Kool Moe Dee claimed that improvisational rapping was instead called “coming off the top of the head”, and Big Daddy Kane stated: “off-the-top-of-the-head rapping , we just called that ‘off the dome’when you don’t write it and you say whatever comes to mind.” Referring to this earlier definition (a written rhyme on non-specific subject matter), Big Daddy Kane stated, “that’s really what a freestyle is” and Kool Moe Dee refers to it as “true” freestyle, and “the real old-school freestyle”. Kool Moe Dee suggests that Kool G Rap’s track “Men At Work” is an “excellent example” of true freestyle, along with Rakim’s “Lyrics of Fury”.

French classical music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Definition#

Classical music usually refers to music produced in, or rooted in the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 9th century to present times. The central norms of this tradition became codified between approximately 1600 and 1900, which is known as the common practice period. Classical music, including that from France is largely distinguished from many other non-European and popular musical forms by its system of staff notation, in use since about the 16th century. Western staff notation is used by composers to prescribe to the performer the pitch, speed, meter, individual rhythms and exact execution of a piece of music. This leaves less room for practices, such as improvisation and ad libitum ornamentation, that are frequently heard in non-European art music (compare Indian classical music and Japanese traditional music), and popular music.

French electronic music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Phonautograph (1857)#

The earliest known sound recording device was the phonautograph, patented in 1857 by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville.

Ondes Martenot (1928)#

In 1928, the Ondes Martenot was invented by Maurice Martenot, who debuted it in Paris. This electronic musical instrument was most famously used in the Turangalîla-Symphonie by Olivier Messiaen as well as other works by him. The Ondes Martenot was also used by other composers such as Andre Jolivet, Pierre Boulez, Arthur Honegger, Charles Koechlin, Darius Milhaud, Gilles Tremblay and Edgard Varèse.

French folk music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Auvergne#

Auvergne is known for cabrette bagpipes. The cabrette (little goat in Auvergnat) is a bagpipe made of goatskin (goats being an integral part of Auvergnat traditional life) and without drones, blown by elbow-driven bellows. Some famous old players : Martin Cayla, Jean Bergheaud, Marcel Bernard, Antoine Bouscatel, Joseph Costeroste, Georges Soule, and some modern players: Dominique Paris, Victor Laroussinie, Didier Pauvert, Stéphane Charpentier, Michel Esbelin, François Lazarevic. They play both regrets (slow airs), bourrées (typical auvergne danse) and swift, 3/8 dance music. Joseph Canteloube was a well-known composer from Auvergne in the early 20th century, and produced a famous collection of folk music called Songs of the Auvergne.

French hip-hop

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Beginning of French hip-hop: 1970s–1980s#

By 1982 and 1983, a number of hip-hop radio shows had appeared on Paris radio, including “Rapper Dapper” (hosted by Sidney Duteil) and “Funk à Billy” (hosted by DJ Dee Nasty). In November 1982, the New York City Rap Tour traveled around France, featuring Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmixer DST, Fab 5 Freddy, Mr Freeze, and the Rock Steady Crew. When Afrika Bambaataa came to France, he was overwhelmed by the great importance of African culture coming from Africa and the Caribbean. The first major star of French hip-hop was MC Solaar. Born Claude M’Barali in Dakar, Senegal, he moved as a child to France in 1970 and lived in Villeneuve-Saint-Georges. His 1991 album, Qui sème le vent récolte le tempo, was a major hit. The European Music Office’s report on Music in Europe said that the French language was well-suited for rapping. He set many records, including being the first French hip-hop recording artist to go platinum. Some artists claim that the French language hip-hop style was influenced by the music of French singer Renaud. Following MC Solaar’s breakthrough, two broad styles emerged within the French hip-hop scene; artists such as Solaar, Dee Nasty, and Lionel D championed a more mellow, sanguine style, while more hardcore performers such as Assassin and Suprême NTM assumed a more aggressive aesthetic. Many such artists found themselves at the heart of controversies over lyrics that were seen as glorifying the murder of police officers and other crimes, similar to outcries over violent lyrics in American gangsta rap. The cases include Ministère AMER’s “Sacrifice de poulet”, NTM’s “Police” and later Lunatic’s “Le crime paie”.

French house

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History and influences#

French house was influenced by American dance music, Euro disco, and the space disco music styles. Space disco was popular in France during the late 1970s and early 1980s, especially with artists such as Cerrone and Sheila and B. Devotion. American P-Funk also influenced the genre’s sound, especially the work of George Clinton and Bootsy Collins. P-Funk was played alongside disco in many French discothèques, notably after Disco Demolition Night took place in the United States. The French duo Motorbass were among the first in France to produce house tracks largely based around samples and filtered loops and released their seminal album, Pansoul in 1996. Parisian producer St. Germain also produced jazz-inspired house tracks. Other known French producers during this time period, such as François Kevorkian and Laurent Garnier, remained distant from the emerging French house label. UK dance music and European DJs first recognized French house experiments in the mid-1990s with commercial success occurring in 1997. The emergence of the French sound coincided with dance music’s popularity in the UK market, which was also experiencing a surge of interest in general electronic music.

French jazz

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Following World War I, a number of American expatriates settled in Paris and began to build up a jazz scene. France did not suffer from racial discrimination as much as the US, so a mixture of musical styles from different cultures began to emerge. As with Brazil, the French were at first concerned it was too American of an influence before “making it their own”. Although in the case of the French, the adjustment proved faster, as by the 1930s, jazz had become acceptable. Between the 1930s and 1950s, the biguine, a style of jazz from the French Caribbean was popular among dance orchestras. Lacking recognition at home, several biguine artists from Martinique moved to mainland France, where they achieved greater popularity in Paris, especially in the wake of the colonial exhibition in 1931. Early stars like Alexandre Stellio and Sam Castandet became popular in Paris. An important event in that it is the creation of the Quintette du Hot Club de France in 1934. This is among the most significant jazz groups in European history. Starting in the late 1940s, the Le Caveau de la Huchette would become an important place for French and American jazz musicians. Many American jazz artists have lived in France from Sidney Bechet to Archie Shepp. For example, Sidney Bechet settled in France in 1949 and played with Claude Luter and André Réwéliotty. These Americans would have an influence on French jazz, but at the same time, French jazz had its own inspirations as well. For example, Bal-musette had some influence on France’s form of Gypsy jazz. Similarly, the violin, and to an extent the guitar, were traditionally more popular in French jazz than American. Related to that, Jean-Luc Ponty and Stéphane Grappelli are among the most well-respected violinists in the history of jazz. That stated, the violin is also popular in Eastern European jazz.

French opera

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The birth of French opera: Lully#

The first operas to be staged in France were imported from Italy, beginning with Francesco Sacrati’s in 1645. French audiences gave them a lukewarm reception. This was partly for political reasons, since these operas were promoted by the Italian-born Cardinal Mazarin, who was then first minister during the regency of the young Louis XIV and a deeply unpopular figure with large sections of French society. Musical considerations also played a role, since the French court already had a firmly established genre of stage music, , which included sung elements as well as dance and lavish spectacle. When two Italian operas, Francesco Cavalli’s and , proved failures in Paris in 1660 and 1662, the prospects of opera flourishing in France looked remote. Yet Italian opera would stimulate the French to make their own experiments at the genre and, paradoxically, it would be an Italian-born composer, Lully, who would found a lasting French operatic tradition. In 1669, Pierre Perrin founded the Académie d’Opéra and, in collaboration with the composer Robert Cambert, tried his hand at composing operatic works in French. Their first effort, , appeared on stage on 3 March 1671 and was followed a year later by . At this point Louis XIV transferred the privilege of producing operas from Perrin to Jean-Baptiste Lully. Lully, a Florentine, was already the favourite musician of the king, who had assumed full royal powers in 1661 and was intent on refashioning French culture in his image. Lully had a sure instinct for knowing exactly what would satisfy the taste of his master and the French public in general. He had already composed music for extravagant court entertainments as well as for the theatre, most notably the inserted into plays by Molière. Yet Molière and Lully had quarrelled bitterly and the composer found a new and more pliable collaborator in Philippe Quinault, who would write the libretti for all but two of Lully’s operas. On 27 April 1673, Lully’s – often regarded as the first French opera in the full sense of the term – appeared in Paris. It was a work in a new genre, which its creators Lully and Quinault baptised , a form of opera specially adapted for French taste. Lully went on to produce at the rate of at least one a year until his death in 1687 and they formed the bedrock of the French national operatic tradition for almost a century. As the name suggests, was modelled on the French Classical tragedy of Corneille and Racine. Lully and Quinault replaced the confusingly elaborate Baroque plots favoured by the Italians with a much clearer five-act structure. Each of the five acts generally followed a regular pattern. An aria in which one of the protagonists expresses their inner feelings is followed by recitative mixed with short arias () which move the action forward. Acts end with a , the most striking feature of French Baroque opera, which allowed the composer to satisfy the public’s love of dance, huge choruses and gorgeous visual spectacle. The recitative, too, was adapted and moulded to the unique rhythms of the French language and was often singled out for special praise by critics, a famous example occurring in Act Two of Lully’s . The five acts of the main opera were preceded by an allegorical prologue, another feature Lully took from the Italians, which he generally used to sing the praises of Louis XIV. Indeed, the entire opera was often thinly disguised flattery of the French monarch, who was represented by the noble heroes drawn from Classical myth or Mediaeval romance. The was a form in which all the arts, not just music, played a crucial role. Quinault’s verse combined with the set designs of Carlo Vigarani or Jean Bérain and the choreography of Beauchamp and Olivet, as well as the elaborate stage effects known as the machinery. As one of its detractors, Melchior Grimm, was forced to admit: “To judge of it, it is not enough to see it on paper and read the score; one must have seen the picture on the stage”.

French organ school

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Characteristic forms and nomenclature#

French organ composers cultivated four major genres: masses, hymns, suites and noëls. Noëls are variations on Christmas carols, whereas the first three genres were all realized as collections of brief pieces in various characteristic forms. Such forms included the following: * Récit: a piece in which a single voice emerges soloistically above all others by means of special registration. The latter is usually indicated in the title, i.e. in a Récit de Cromorne the solo voice would be played using the cromorne stop. Cromorne, cornet, tierce, nasard, trompette and voix humaine are the most commonly encountered solo stops. The titles of such compositions frequently omit the word “récit” and simply indicate the registration (Cromorne, Cornet, etc.) and/or the position of the solo voice. Typical combinations include the following: : Dessus de Cromorne: the solo voice is in the soprano (dessus), played using the cromorne stop : Tierce en taille: the solo voice is in the tenor (taille), played using the tierce stop : Basse de Trompette: the solo voice is in the bass (basse), played using the trompette stop * Dialogue: a piece which constantly alternates between two different registrations. A Dialogue sur les grands jeux would be alternatively played on the Grand orgue (Great) and the Positif. * Fugue: usually, three- or four-voice polyphonic pieces that adhere more or less strictly to the imitative style. The designation Fugue grave indicates a piece of a serious character, whereas the Fugue gaie (or gaye) is its opposite. Rarely, four-voice fugal pieces bear the title Quatuor (“quartet”). Nicolas de Grigny cultivated five-voice fugues. * Echo: phrases are played twice, quieter on the second time, giving the impression of an echo. This impression is heightened in echos that repeat only the endings of phrases. Such pieces used specially designed echo divisions. * Prélude: mostly homophonic pieces in duple or quadruple meter. They are almost invariably used as introductory movements. Additionally, a number of standard registrations may be indicated by the following designations: * Plein jeu: combination of the organ’s principals and flutes, with the mixtures also included. * Grand jeu: a loud combination, based on the reed stops, frequently used in homophonic sections of larger pieces or standalone movements. The designations dessus, taille and basse stand for “soprano”, “tenor” and “bass”, respectively. A rarely used type of voicing is haute-contre (or haulte contre), “high tenor”. Such designations are used to point to the position of the solo stop in a récit (see examples above), or of the chant melody in a setting (i.e. the title Kyrie en basse indicates that the chant itself is in the bass).

French overture

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French pop music

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History#

The first distinct French pop music styles that emerged were the French rock and the yé-yé, which originated in France during the 1960s. They were influenced by the American rock & roll of the 1950s. In the early days, this style of French pop music was easily distinguishable from the earlier category of French music called chanson in English. Eventually the early French pop music and the chanson styles crossed over and combined.

French popular music

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French punk

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The 1970s#

By the early 1970s, Les punks, a Parisian subculture of Lou Reed fans, had already become well established. Initially, two central figures were Marc Zermati, who had founded Skydog Records in Paris in 1972, owned the Open Market record shop, and promoted American and British bands in France; and Michel Esteban, the owner of the Harry Cover rock merchandise shop and founder of Rock News magazine, who had associated with leading punk and new wave musicians in New York City. The first European Punk Rock Festival, organised by Zermati, took place at Mont-de-Marsan on 21 August 1976, and featured French bands Bijou, Il Biaritz and Shakin’ Street, as well as The Damned. Zermati later said: “The real punk movement started in New York, and Paris came before the UK because we were really connected to New York… it was exciting because we thought we were conspiring against the establishment.” He also claimed that he persuaded Malcolm McLaren to call the movement “punk” rather than McLaren’s preferred term, “new wave”. An important influence on the style and content of the movement in the UK was the French Situationist movement, led by Guy Debord. Formed in 1976, Métal Urbain and Stinky Toys were two of the first French punk bands, although at the time most French punk fans preferred English or American punk. Generally regarded as the most original of the early French punk bands, Métal Urbain gave their first performance in December 1976. Stinky Toys’ debut single, “Boozy Creed”, came out in September 1977 and was perhaps the first non-English-language punk rock record. The following month, Métal Urbain’s first 45, “Panik”, appeared. Other French groups formed, such as Abject and Dentist in Nice, Strychnine in Bordeaux, Starshooter in Lyon. In London, French all-girl group The Lou’s were part of the scene, as well as Private Vices, who featured three French members out of four, including Bruno Blum, who at the time wrote for influential French rock magazine Best. Most of these early groups, including Les Olivensteins and The Dogs, can be heard on the 1984 Les Plus Grands Succès du Punk (Skydog) double CD anthology.

French-Canadian music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Frenchcore

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History#

Frenchcore is a product of the rave and freetekno scenes in France dating back to the mid-1990s. The first frenchcore act, Micropoint, was founded by DJ Radium and Al Core in 1992. In 1994, DJ Radium focused on his solo career and became known as the most significant contributor to the genre in the late 1990s. He founded Psychik Genocide, one of the first frenchcore labels. Radium eventually became a touring artist and performed across Europe and in the United States. The genre remained underground for many years, being based mostly in France and Italy with artists as Androgyn Network, The Sickest Squad, Psiko, Maissouille, X-Fly and DOM. In the second half of the 2000s the genre, which initially relied on industrial loops, percussion, vocal chops and rhythmic effects, started to develop an alternative melodic and psychedelic style, influenced by UK hardcore and trance music. This trend, initially experimented with by artists such as The Speed Freak, Hunterwolf and Roms, took a different direction from the classic frenchcore sound pioneered by DJ Radium. The 2010s saw the reinvention of frenchcore, the rise of new artists, and a heavy Dutch influence as the genre became increasingly more popular in the Netherlands. In 2011, the first edition of “Frenchcore S’il Vous Plait” took place in Culemborg; 2012’s edition of Thunderdome, the world’s biggest hardcore festival, had an area dedicated exclusively to frenchcore. In 2014, Defqon.1, the world’s largest hardstyle festival, added a frenchcore stage for the first time. The releases on Peacock Records deepened the shift in the genre to an even more harmonic and modern sound created by younger producers. In 2016, modern frenchcore’s popularity expanded beyond Europe for the first time when Dr. Peacock toured through the United States with performances in New York City, Denver, Phoenix and Pittsburgh. Dr. Peacock also performed in Sydney, Australia, that same year. Several members of Peacock Records started taking more inspiration from hardstyle artists and calling their genre “Euphoric frenchcore” around the year 2016. With the new melodic influence in the genre, the style began to appeal to listeners of hardstyle. Many frenchcore artists began experimenting with the integration of live instruments in their performances, as opposed to performances only using DJ equipment. The genre’s popularity grew rapidly when Dr. Peacock’s 17 year old protégé Sefa released his first album “Leven is Lijden” in 2018. The album introduced many hardstyle fans to frenchcore, and Sefa began to perform at major hardstyle festivals regularly. Frenchcore’s presence at harder styles festivals grew in the year 2018. Dr. Peacock performed on the main stage of Defqon.1 and closed out Qlimax, Q-dance’s yearly indoor event at the Gelredome. He was the first artist to play a frenchcore set in the event’s history. In 2019, Sefa was responsible for the first frenchcore Defqon.1 anthem, and performed the closing set of the festival. The music industry suffered significant losses due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, causing many events to happen virtually. Dr. Peacock performed with live musicians at the Pyramid of Austerlitz as part of the virtual edition of Defqon.1, and Sefa performed in a hot air balloon as part of Mysteryland’s virtual edition. That summer, Masters of Hardcore launched a new euphoric frenchcore label in collaboration with Re-Style, Rapture Records. In the fall of 2020, Q-dance released their first film Qlimax: The Source, which features a frenchcore section produced by Sefa. The film was added to Netflix on December 22. In 2021, Dr. Peacock and Sefa performed with several live musicians on the Dutch sailboat De Vrijheid on the IJsselmeer as part of Defqon.1 at Home. A few days later, they played a 30 minute frenchcore set on Dutch national radio station SLAM!. In the end of the summer, Sefa performed frenchcore sets at multiple Unmute Us protests in Amsterdam in protest of the Dutch government’s treatment of the entertainment sector during the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. The protests filled the streets of Amsterdam with 70,000 protestors. At the Leiden edition of the protests in September, frenchcore and uptempo event organization BKJN Events organised a full lineup of frenchcore and uptempo music at the protest.

Frevo

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Origins of Frevo#

The frevo music came first. By the end of the 19th century, bands from the Brazilian Army regiments based in the city of Recife started a tradition of parading during the Carnival. Since the Carnival is originally linked to Catholicism, they played religious procession marches and martial music, as well. A couple of infantry and cavalry regiments had famous bands which attracted many followers amongst the populace of the state and it was just a matter of time to people start to compare one to another and cheer for their favorite bands. The two most famous bands were the Espanha (meaning Spain), whose conductor was of Spanish origin, and the 14, from the 14th Infantry Regiment. The bands started to compete with each other and also started playing faster and faster, louder and louder. In order to end the violence, the police started to pursue the capoeiras and arrested many during their exhibitions. The latter reacted in a clever way by carrying umbrellas instead of knives and also disguising the capoeira movements as dance movements. Thus the dances evolved into what would be a unique form of dance - the frevo dance.

Frottola

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composers#

Composers of frottole include: * Francesco d’Ana * Giovanni Brocco * Antonio Caprioli * Marchetto Cara * Giacomo Fogliano * Lodovico Fogliano * Erasmus Lapicida * Filippo de Lurano * Rossino Mantovano * Michele Pesenti * Bartolomeo Tromboncino * Michele Vicentino Except for Tromboncino and Cara, who were extremely famous, very little is known about most of these composers; in many cases only their names survive, and those because Petrucci, the prominent Venetian publisher, included their names in collections containing their music.

FR on Music Theory Print

Franco-Flemish School

Term and controversy#

Frat rap

History#

Freak folk

Etymology#

Freakbeat

Etymology#

Compilations#

Free improvisation

Characteristics#

Free jazz

Characteristics#

Free tekno

History#

Freedom song

Notable songs from the civil rights movement#

Freestyle music

1982–1987: Origin#

Freestyle rap

Original definition#

French classical music

Definition#

French electronic music

Phonautograph (1857)#

Ondes Martenot (1928)#

French folk music

Auvergne#

French hip-hop

Beginning of French hip-hop: 1970s–1980s#

French house

History and influences#

French jazz

History#

French opera

The birth of French opera: Lully#

French organ school

Characteristic forms and nomenclature#

French overture

French pop music

History#

French popular music

Further reading#

French punk

The 1970s#

French-Canadian music

See also#

Frenchcore

History#

Frevo

Origins of Frevo#

Frottola

Composers#