Léo Ferré (1916 - 1993) was a Monégasque-born French singer-songwriter of the postwar period. He admired French poets, starting with those he had read in secret while at French catholic boarding school just across the border in Italy. Ferré himself was an exquisite poet and wordsmith of the French language. At times his songs took on an accompanied, abundant spoken-text style, a sort of rap avant la lettre.
The content of his songs was colored by the political and cultural movements of his time--the fight of the individual against power and oppression, with a strong sympathy for anarchism and communism, and the sexual revolution expressed in a tender language, very direct and appealing and at times formulating ideas considered taboo today.
He is often mentioned together with Jacques Brel and Georges Brassens, and even Serge Gainsbourg or Charles Aznavour. These highly popular and quintessential French songwriters each hailed from very different regions and backgrounds. (1) With Brel and Brassens Ferré shares a criticism of bourgeois hypocrisy but his texts are often more political. With Gainsbourg he pushes sexual boundaries and an aptitude for sexual twist and double entendre.
Ferré knew classical music. He discovered the polyphony of Palestrina and Victoria as a choirboy at the Monaco Cathedral. As a youngster he went to the Monte Carlo Opera, listened to the bass singer Feodor Chaliapin, watched Toscanini conduct Beethoven's Coriolanus and the Fifth, and during rehearsals was deeply moved by Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges (The Child and the Spells)
He spent eight strict and boring years at a school of the Christian Brothers in Bordighera, Italy. Already showing signs of a lifelong rebellion against power and constraints on individuality, he secretly read Voltaire and the poètes maudits, anathema to the Catholic church, all the while studying music and playing the cornet at school. As a teenager he composed a Kyrie of a three-part mass and set a Verlaine poem. He returned to Monaco to finish his high school degree and became a freelance music critic in the popular and cultural casino and tourist town. He watched famous conductors such as Dorati and Mitropoulos at work and discovered more works of Ravel, a.o. Boléro and Pavane pour une infante défunte, conducted by the composer himself.
With this Ferré's official classical music training and activities came to an end. His father did not want him to continue music studies at the conservatory. Instead he studied law at the École Libre des Sciences Politiques (the current, highly regarded Sciences Po) in Paris and returned to Monaco in 1939, only to be drafted in the World War II effort as an Algerian Tirailleur. Henceforth Ferré relied for his music skills on self-study and a considerable talent.
Ferré composed more than 350 songs. Many of them are settings of French writers and poets, but Ferré was a writer and poet as well and wrote many of his own song lyrics. His songs are preserved in live and studio recordings. The accompaniments are often musically interesting. Their different styles range from classical to jazz, from single instrument to symphony orchestra. The songs contain many references and quotations to classical music throughout the successive periods of his musical career;
Period 1. Early years in Monaco and Bohemian poverty in Paris (1946-1953)
Ferré's war efforts didn't last very long. In 1941 he was back in Monaco. He performed on stage as a singer for the first time at the Théatre des Beaux-Arts of Monte-Carlo and worked at Radio Monte-Carlo. In 1945 Edith Piaf told him to try his chance in Paris. He moved there the following year and first worked as a piano accompanist at the cabaret-bar Le Boeuf sur le Toit. He befriended Jean-Roger Caussimon whose poems and lyrics he would set over the years. In 1947 he undertook a financially disastrous trip to Martinique. During this period he also sympathized with Spanish anarchists in Paris and developed a hatred of Franco. (2)
Ferré met René Baer in the early 1940s in Monaco. Baer was a French writer who sought refuge in Monaco, away from Vichy France. In 1943 Baer furnished lyrics and Ferré wrote music for a half a dozen songs, some of the earliest of Léo Ferré. Among those was La Chambre (The Room) (1943) which describes a dream in which Baer decorates a dark, small [prison?] room consisting of four old walls, with all the things he ever dreamed of and will never have, a.o. Sheherazade's couch and Mozart's harpsichord. It is here sung by Charles Aznavour with Ferré at the piano.
In 1952 Ferré wrote Les amoureux du Havre (The lovers of Le Havre), a ditty of a song which was recorded in 1955. Sung here by the actress and singer Germaine Montero it has a sweet piano and orchestra accompaniment.
Period 2. Cult Left-Bank singer (1953-1960)
In 1949 Léo Ferré sang at Aux Trois Mailletz together with Catherine Sauvage. Sauvage would become one of Ferré's best interpreters. Paris Canaille (Roguish Paris) (recorded 1953) is a romp of a song celebrating all the mischief that goes on in Paris and makes it "so good." It ends with:
The content of his songs was colored by the political and cultural movements of his time--the fight of the individual against power and oppression, with a strong sympathy for anarchism and communism, and the sexual revolution expressed in a tender language, very direct and appealing and at times formulating ideas considered taboo today.
He is often mentioned together with Jacques Brel and Georges Brassens, and even Serge Gainsbourg or Charles Aznavour. These highly popular and quintessential French songwriters each hailed from very different regions and backgrounds. (1) With Brel and Brassens Ferré shares a criticism of bourgeois hypocrisy but his texts are often more political. With Gainsbourg he pushes sexual boundaries and an aptitude for sexual twist and double entendre.
Ferré knew classical music. He discovered the polyphony of Palestrina and Victoria as a choirboy at the Monaco Cathedral. As a youngster he went to the Monte Carlo Opera, listened to the bass singer Feodor Chaliapin, watched Toscanini conduct Beethoven's Coriolanus and the Fifth, and during rehearsals was deeply moved by Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges (The Child and the Spells)
He spent eight strict and boring years at a school of the Christian Brothers in Bordighera, Italy. Already showing signs of a lifelong rebellion against power and constraints on individuality, he secretly read Voltaire and the poètes maudits, anathema to the Catholic church, all the while studying music and playing the cornet at school. As a teenager he composed a Kyrie of a three-part mass and set a Verlaine poem. He returned to Monaco to finish his high school degree and became a freelance music critic in the popular and cultural casino and tourist town. He watched famous conductors such as Dorati and Mitropoulos at work and discovered more works of Ravel, a.o. Boléro and Pavane pour une infante défunte, conducted by the composer himself.
With this Ferré's official classical music training and activities came to an end. His father did not want him to continue music studies at the conservatory. Instead he studied law at the École Libre des Sciences Politiques (the current, highly regarded Sciences Po) in Paris and returned to Monaco in 1939, only to be drafted in the World War II effort as an Algerian Tirailleur. Henceforth Ferré relied for his music skills on self-study and a considerable talent.
Ferré composed more than 350 songs. Many of them are settings of French writers and poets, but Ferré was a writer and poet as well and wrote many of his own song lyrics. His songs are preserved in live and studio recordings. The accompaniments are often musically interesting. Their different styles range from classical to jazz, from single instrument to symphony orchestra. The songs contain many references and quotations to classical music throughout the successive periods of his musical career;
Period 1. Early years in Monaco and Bohemian poverty in Paris (1946-1953)
Ferré's war efforts didn't last very long. In 1941 he was back in Monaco. He performed on stage as a singer for the first time at the Théatre des Beaux-Arts of Monte-Carlo and worked at Radio Monte-Carlo. In 1945 Edith Piaf told him to try his chance in Paris. He moved there the following year and first worked as a piano accompanist at the cabaret-bar Le Boeuf sur le Toit. He befriended Jean-Roger Caussimon whose poems and lyrics he would set over the years. In 1947 he undertook a financially disastrous trip to Martinique. During this period he also sympathized with Spanish anarchists in Paris and developed a hatred of Franco. (2)
Ferré met René Baer in the early 1940s in Monaco. Baer was a French writer who sought refuge in Monaco, away from Vichy France. In 1943 Baer furnished lyrics and Ferré wrote music for a half a dozen songs, some of the earliest of Léo Ferré. Among those was La Chambre (The Room) (1943) which describes a dream in which Baer decorates a dark, small [prison?] room consisting of four old walls, with all the things he ever dreamed of and will never have, a.o. Sheherazade's couch and Mozart's harpsichord. It is here sung by Charles Aznavour with Ferré at the piano.
In 1952 Ferré wrote Les amoureux du Havre (The lovers of Le Havre), a ditty of a song which was recorded in 1955. Sung here by the actress and singer Germaine Montero it has a sweet piano and orchestra accompaniment.
Period 2. Cult Left-Bank singer (1953-1960)
In 1949 Léo Ferré sang at Aux Trois Mailletz together with Catherine Sauvage. Sauvage would become one of Ferré's best interpreters. Paris Canaille (Roguish Paris) (recorded 1953) is a romp of a song celebrating all the mischief that goes on in Paris and makes it "so good." It ends with:
Paris flon flon
Your have the spirit of a party
And millions
For your poets
A few pennies
For my song
It rhymes
And it's so good.
In 1954 Ferré was busy revising his oratorio La Chanson du mal-aimé (the Song of the poorly loved), a setting of a poem by Guillaume Apollinaire. He was also working on a commission by Prince Rainier of Monaco, Symphonie interrompue, À la recherche d'un thème perdu (Interrupted symphony, in search of a lost theme), Ferré's only symphony.
During that year he recorded the album Le Piano du pauvre (The Poor Man's piano). Let's hear the title song. It describes the magical qualities of the 'poor man's piano,' i.e. the accordion. The lyrics are here and some of the text goes--freely translated:
Toscanini doesn't care for its eclectic qualities, but sonata or java, concerto or polka, it plays music... It is the Chopin of Spring... Ravel or ditty, it's already finished; but here it starts again... This is why the affairs of the heart end in music... We have the means and a broken heart when Paderewsky pulls the instrument from its case... The poor man's piano doesn't stop squealing under the bewildered look of local snobs, while bearded fellows from the old Institute put on their spectacles to listen from a distance to the piano in the mill that suits them. The poor man's piano in its box of fibs puts on a marshmallow air, takes itself for Mozart. If it has a gruff air and plays perverse javas without ceremony, it's that it's not just a dog, and well, it has to make commerce work...
In La Vie d'Artiste (An artist's life) (1954) Ferré deplores the break-up with his first wife, due to the couple's penurious circumstances. (3) The words are spoken rather than sung, and the piano accompaniment gives the piece an eery feeling.
La Fortune (Fortune) is the second song of the 1956 album Le Guinche (The Danse). It starts with 'If all pencils sold in Paris wrote songs like Mr. Lully...' Ferré here sings the song at a 1967 recital given at the Bobino theater.
In 1957 Ferré records a series of settings of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal (The flowers of evil). In Harmonie du Soir (Evening Harmony) Baudelaire melds three senses--sight, hearing and smell--in a whirl of images, 'a melancholy waltz and languid vertigo!' As the poem goes on, a sense of malaise sets in, portrayed by Ferré as a slow-moving little waltz that goes on and on almost like a hurdy gurdy.
Also in 1957 Ferré wrote a remarkable Lettre à la Mer (Letter to the Sea). At the beginning of this very long, spoken text, he compares the North Sea with the Mediterranean where he hails from:
Pathetic, I say, the Mediterranean. They have not even been able to make a passable operetta out of it. You [the North Sea], you hooked Debussy... It's true, he had a sacred talent!and mentions towards the end:
Actually, when I think of you without putting you on a postcard or in a symphony, you're only a wet sky, like my eyes,...
Mon sébasto (1957) is a single record in praise of the Boulevard Sébastopol. The lyrics are by Jean-Roger Caussimon. With its slow, jazzy accompaniment Ferré created a beautiful ballad about both the daytime commercial activity and the nightlife of this main artery in Paris. Listen to it here.
La Lune (The Moon) (1958) was not recorded until many years later by Renée Claude. Here it is beautifully sung and played on keyboard by Pierre-Michel Sivadier.
Chanson d'automne (Autumn song) (1959) sets the famous poem of Paul Verlaine. The song begins and ends with the poems first verse: The long sobs of autumn's violins wound my heart with a monotonous languor, although Ferré changes the word 'wound (blessent)' to 'rock (bercent)', making the impact a little softer. In the repeat, however, Ferré uses 'wound (blessent).' Here again Ferré's setting is appealingly pleasant.
By this time, in his mid-40s, Ferré had long left his Bohemian life behind and had recorded a number of successful albums. From now on he was an established star. In my next post we will discover a number of songs written and recorded in the 1960s, during his non-stop period (1968-1973), and after his self-imposed exile in Tuscany with his new family, and we will see whether this commercial success affects his free artistic spirit.
______________________________________________________________________
(1) Brel was Belgian, Brassens was born near Montpellier in the very south of France, Gainsbourg and Aznavour were both born in Paris, the former to Jewish-Ukrainian immigrants, Aznavour to Armenian immigrants. Ferré himself was born in Monaco, the son of a staff manager at the Monte-Carlo Casino and an Italian dressmaker from the northern Piedmont region.
(2) During World War II Spanish anarchists worked hand-in-hand with the French Resistance. They were instrumental in smuggling Jewish families out of Nazi-occupied areas into safety.