Interpreting French Art Song

The French attitude about what is called the performing arts, since at least Verlaine, has been to consider that the formal aspect has to do with the meaning of a text, or a situation, and that nothing can be taken as accessory. For performers, the mélodie is, in that sense, at the heart of this concern. Henri Duparc’s celebrated setting of Baudelaire’ “La vie antérieure” provides a case study for the importance of a sensitive, careful, understanding of the poetic text in interpreting French song. Deepening work both on the form and meaning of all songs, whatever the language, without fabricating the sound, is the goal to achieve. The unspoken, the undetermined, in a word, the mystery of the world is what counts; the expression is neither a definition nor an explanation, but a quest. Recitalists are explorers of the unknown!