With the Ballades of Monsieur Brassens, we did not want merely to thumb through the editions of Ballard or the old airs of Philidor. More to the point, we wanted to force the portals of time, as in a comic strip of Moebius, or one of Poe’s short stories. We have cracked the codes while still venerating the tradition of the chansonniers who teamed up in brotherhoods in cabarets such as the famous ‘Trou de la Pomme de Pin’. Our music, for the most part, goes back to the origins, with the theorbo, viola da gamba, tin whistle and bassoon, reminding us that Brassens, just like his companions of the cabarets known as ‘caveaux lyriques’ liked to make music in a convivial way.
Nonetheless, some melodies play with the art of the palimpsest. Between Mallarmé and Genette, we make impressionism burst out over the Middle Ages. In Villon’s Ballade de merci, for example, there is a fine balance between a tenth-century kyrie and a colourful ostinato of Debussy. Or there is Ronsard’s À son âme, that takes a fifteenth-century chanson, Hellas, je pers mes amours and keeps the groove of a ballade of Bob Dylan.
But do we have to reveal every last little recipe of our cuisine? With these Ballades of Monsieur Brassens we want to offer you a new recording from the Lunaisiens of other major or minor chansons, be they famous or unknown; all, however, echo the extraordinary repertory of Brassens who always wanted to offer his listeners something (to quote Villon) of the “snows of yesteryear”. (Arnaud Marzorati)
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