Customer Reviews

A French Song Companion

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Pierre Bernac's _Interpretation of French Song_ has long been the indispensable reference volume for singers and coaches of this rich musical literature. The focus of the present volume is somewhat different, more comprehensive in its listings of composers (any composer of significance who set French texts is included, resulting in some surprising listings, Bernstein and Dinu Lipatti, for example), but less didactic in terms of pronounciation and performance. The translations by Richard Stokes are so good that one wishes even more had been included. Graham Johnson's commentaries on composers and songs are readable and full of insight. There are useful indices and suggestions for further reading. Altogether, this is a comprehensive and fascinating volume for both performing musicians and other lovers of French art song.

A French Song Companion

This is a superb book! A wonderful source book for deepening one's knowledge of the French art song repertoire. Although not primarily concerned with helping performers to interpret the songs (unlike Bernac in this respect), it contains extraordinarily perceptive and insightful commentaries on the songs, grouped by composers, and should open many doors to most listeners and performers. I cannot recommend it too highly.

This book is encyclopaedic in its coverage and is an indispensable guide for anyone who is interested in French song, but particularly for singers and accompanists. There are many useful translations of poems - not just the well-known ones but obscure ones too - and honest appraisals of the work of almost every composer who has set the French language to music. The book is constructed in such a way that it is very easy to use, with separate indexes for composer, poet and title. The main part of the book consists of individual articles on each composer, arranged alphabetically from Jean ABSIL to Jean WIENER, describing their oeuvre in general and individual cycles and songs in detail. The length of entries varies in proportion to the composer's (or work's) perceived importance, but there is also a subjective element that takes into account how they rate in the authors' estimation. Thus, Debussy, Fauré and Ravel get enormous entries, as one would expect, but Honegger gets a generous three pages plus several poem translations, whereas Vierne (whose songs have the edge over Honegger's in my view) is only allowed a mere half page and no poems. The style of the writing is always entertaining, never dry, and it is quite unfair that so talented a musician as Graham Johnson should also be such an accomplished writer! Fellow mélodie singers, I guarantee that you will find this thoroughly researched and carefully produced book to be a real treasure trove and an inspiration for expanding your repertoire. It's one of the few books that I own which are permanently in use and never get put back on the shelves my bookcase.

The merits of this collection of French art song lyrics is that it is extremly comprehensive. It contains the English translation of most French art songs. This books is especially useful for those of us that download music since most digital music does not include liner notes and song translations. This book came in particularly when I was listening to the complete Duparc songs.