Medieval

French music history dates back to organum in the 10th century, followed by the Notre Dame School, an organum composition style. Troubadour songs of chivalry and courtly love were composed in the Occitan language between the 10th and 13th centuries, and the Trouvère poet-composers flourished in Northern France during this period. The fiddle was their instrument of choice.^[1] By the end of the 12th century, a form of song called the motet arose, accompanied by traveling musicians called jongleurs. In the 14th century, France produced two notable styles of music, Ars Nova and Ars Subtilior

Renaissance

Burgundy, which was the mostly French-speaking area unified with the Kingdom of France in 1477, had become a major center for musical development in the musical continent Europe. This was followed by the rise of chansons and the Burgundian School.

Baroque[edit]

Influential composers included Jean-Baptiste Lully, Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, Louis Couperin, François Couperin and Jacques Champion de Chambonnières. Jean Philippe Rameau, a prominent opera composer, wrote an influential treatise on musical theory, especially in the subject of harmony; he also introduced the clarinet into his orchestras. In the late Renaissance and early Baroque period, a type of popular secular vocal music called Air de cour spread throughout France.

Opera[edit]

The first French opera may be Akébar roi du Mogol, first performed in Carpentras in 1646. It was followed by the team of Pierre Perrin and Cambert, whose Pastoral in Music, performed in Issy, was a success, and the pair moved to Paris to produce Pomone (1671) and Les Peines et les Plaisirs de l'Amour (1672).

Jean-Baptiste Lully, who had become well known for composing ballets for Louis XIV, began creating a French version of the Italian opera seria, a kind of tragic opera known as tragédie lyrique or tragédie en musique - see (French lyric tragedy). His first was Cadmus from 1673. Lully's forays into operatic tragedy were accompanied by the pinnacle of French theatrical tragedy, led by Corneille and Racine.

Lully also developed the common beat patterns used by conductors to this day and was the first to take the role of leading the orchestra from the position of the first violin.

The French composer Georges Bizet composed Carmen, one of the best-known and most popular operas.

Henri-Montan Berton, son of Pierre, is principally remembered as a composer of operas, most of which were first performed at the Opéra-Comique.

Chélard earned his living for much of his career as a violist at the Paris Opera. His 1827 opera Macbeth was a flop in Paris, but a great success in Munich.

Jeanne-Hippolyte Devismes married the director of the Paris Opéra. Her only known works are a song, "La Dame Jacinthe", and an opera, Praxitėle, which was a success and ran for 16 performances.

Harpsichordist and composer Jacques Duphly contributed to Jean-Jacques Rousseau dictionary, for articles relating to the art of playing the harpsichord.

Romantic era

One of the major French composers of the time, and one of the most innovative composers of the early Romantic era, was Hector Berlioz.

In the late 19th century, pioneers such as Georges Bizet, Jules Massenet, Gabriel Fauré, Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy revitalized French music. The last two had an enormous impact on 20th-century music - both in France and abroad - and influenced many major composers such as Béla Bartók and Igor Stravinsky. Erik Satie was also a very significant composer from that era. His music is difficult to classify.

20th century

The early 20th century saw neo-classical music flourish in France, especially composers such as Lili Boulanger, Nadia Boulanger, Albert Roussel and Les Six, a group of musicians who gathered around Satie. Later in the century, Olivier Messiaen, Henri Dutilleux and Pierre Boulez proved influential. The latter was a leading figure of Serialism while Messiaen incorporated Asian (particularly Indian) influences and bird song and Dutilleux translated the innovations of Debussy, Bartók and Stravinsky into his own, very personal, musical idiom.

The most important French contribution to musical innovation of the past 35 years is a form of computer-assisted composition called "spectral music". The astonishing technical advances of the spectralist composers in the 1970s are only recently beginning to achieve wide recognition in the United States; major composers in this vein include Gérard Grisey, Tristan Murail, and Claude Vivier.

Folk music

Traditional styles of music have survived most in remote areas such as the island of Corsica and mountainous Auvergne, as well as the more nationalistic regions of the Basques and the Bretons. In many cases, folk traditions were revived in relatively recent years to cater to tourists. These groupes folkloriques tend to focus on very early 20th-century melodies and the use of the piano accordion.

Paris

In 1900 in Paris, a new style of waltz emerged, the "Valse musette" an evolution of Bal-musette also known as "French Waltz". Aimable, Émile Vacher, Marcel Azzola, Yvette Horner, André Verchuren were famous accordionists who played valse musette. There is also Yann Tiersen and its Amélie (soundtrack) of Amélie from Montmartre.

West France

The West of France comprises the Pays de Nantes, the provinces of Vendée, Anjou and Maine, and the Poitou-Charentes region. Traditions of ballad-singing, dance-songs and fiddle-playing have survived, predominantly in Poitou and the Vendée. Jérôme Bujeaud collected extensively in the area, and his 2-volume work "Chants et chansons populaires des provinces de l'ouest: Poitou, Saintonge, Aunis et Angoumois" (Niort, 1866) remains the principal scholarly collection of music and songs. In recent decades John Wright and Claude Ribouillault (amongst others) have done much to collect, analyse and promote the surviving traditions.

The Marais Breton of Vendée is noted particularly for its tradition of veuze playing - which has been revived by the bagpipe-maker and player Thierry Bertrand - and for traditional singers such as Pierre Burgaud.

Folk dances specific to the West of France include the courante, or maraichine, and the bal saintongeais. Bourrées in triple time have been noted in the 19th century by Bujeaud, and more recently, in Angoumois. Circle- or chain-dances accompanied by caller-and-response singing have been noted in the West, and also in other regions such as Gascony, Normandy and Brittany.

Notable contemporary folk musicians include Christian Pacher and Claude Ribouillault (Poitou) and the group La Marienne (Vendée.)

Brittany

Distinctly Celtic in character, the folk music of Lower Brittany has had perhaps the most successful revival of its traditions, partly thanks to the city of Lorient, which hosts France's most popular music festival: Festival Interceltique de Lorient.

The documented history of Breton music begins with the publication of Barzaz-Breizh in 1839. A collection of folk songs compiled by Hersart de la Villemarqué, Barzaz-Breizh re-branded and promoted Breton traditions and helped ensure their continuity.

Sonneurs couples, consisting of a bombard and a biniou (bagpipe), is usually played at festoù-noz (Fest Noz) celebrations (some are famous, such as Printemps de Chateauneuf). It is swift dance music and has an older vocal counterpart called kan ha diskan. Unaccompanied call and response singing was interspersed with the gwerz, a form of ballad.

Probably the most popular form of Breton folk is the bagad pipe band, which features native instruments such as biniou and bombard alongside drums and, in more modern groups, biniou braz pipes. Modern revivalists include Kevrenn Alre Bagad and Bagad Kemper.

Alan Stivell is perhaps the most influential folk-rock performer of continental Europe. After 1971's Renaissance of the Celtic Harp, Breton and other Celtic traditional music achieved mainstream success internationally. With Dan Ar Braz, he then released Chemins de Terre (1974), which launched Breton folk-rock. This set the stage for stars such as Malicorne in the ensuing decades.

In later years much has been done to collect and popularize the musical traditions of the Pays Gallo of Upper Brittany, for which the singer Bertran Ôbrée, his group Ôbrée Alie and the association DASTUM must take much credit. The songs of Upper Brittany are either in French or in Gallo.

Modern Breton folk music includes harpists such as Anne-Marie Jan, Anne Auffret and Myrdhin, while singers Kristen Nikolas, Andrea Ar Gouilh and Yann-Fanch Kemener have become mainstream stars. Instrumental bands, however, have been the most successful, including Gwerz, Bleizi Ruz, Strobinell, Sonerien Du and Tud.

Central France

Central France includes the regions of Auvergne, Limousin, Morvan, Nivernais, Bourbonnais and Berry. The lands are the home to a significant bagpipe tradition, as well as the iconic hurdy-gurdy and the dance bourrée. There are deep differences between the regions of Central France, with the Auvergne and Limousin retained the most vibrant folk traditions of the area. As an example of the area's diversity, the bourrée can come in either duple or triple meter; the latter is found in the south of the region, and is usually improvised with bagpipes and hurdy-gurdy, while the former is found in the north and includes virtuoso players.

Bagpipe and Hurdy-gurdy

The hurdy-gurdy, or vielle-à-roue, is essentially a mechanical violin, with keys or buttons instead of a fingerboard. It is made up of a curved, oval body, a set of keys and a curved handle, which is turned and connected to a wheel which bows the strings that are stopped by the keys. There is a moveable bridge, a variable number of drones and optional sympathetic strings. Other forms of the hurdy-gurdy are found all over Europe.

The bagpipe is found in a wide array of forms in France. The cabrette and grande cornemuse from Auvergne and Berry are best known. These forms are found at least as far back as the 17th century. Prominent bagpipers include Bernard Blanc, Frédéric Paris and Philippe Prieur, as well as bandleader Jean Blanchard of La Grande Bande de Cornemuses and Quintette de Cornemuses. Frédéric Paris is also known as a member of the Duo Chabenat-Paris, who use elements such as mixed polyphonic ensembles and melodies based on the bourrée. Bernard Blanc and Jean Blanchard, along with Éric Montbel from Lyon, were among the musicians who formed the basis of La Bamboche and Le Grand Rouge. It was these two bands who did more than anyone to revitalize the traditions of Central France during the 1970s folk revival.^{[citation needed]} The festival of St. Chartier, a music festival held annually near Châteauroux, has been a focal point for the music of Auvergne and Limousin.

The regions of Morvan and Nivernais have produced some traditional stars, including Faubourg de Boignard and Les Ménétriers du Morvan, respectively. The Nivernais collector Achille Millien was also notable in the early part of the 20th century.