chanson

A chanson (UK:, US:; French: chanson française [ʃɑ̃sɔ̃ fʁɑ̃sɛːz], lit. 'French song') is generally any lyric-driven French song. The term is most commonly used in English to refer either to the secular polyphonic French songs of late medieval and Renaissance music or to a specific style of French pop music which emerged in the 1950s and 1960s. The genre had origins in the monophonic songs of troubadours and trouvères, though the only polyphonic precedents were 16 works by Adam de la Halle and one by Jehan de Lescurel. Not until the ars nova composer Guillaume de Machaut did any composer write a significant number of polyphonic chansons. A broad term, the word chanson literally means "song" in French and can thus less commonly refer to a variety of (usually secular) French genres throughout history.

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