(Fr.).
A French poem or song of satirical or epigrammatic character common in the 17th and 18th centuries. Its use in the French theatre (comédie en vaudevilles) led in the 19th and 20th centuries to a broader application of the term as a name for theatrical entertainments similar to modern musical comedy or music-hall variety shows. The term itself is the result of the cohesion and confusion of two genres of French song which have separate origins. The earliest, the vau de vire, was a popular, satirical song originating in Normandy in the 15th century; the voix de ville was a courtly song of Parisian origin, the spelling of which in the earliest known reference (‘vaul-de-ville’, 1507) is already confused with that of the Norman genre. The existence of three villages in Lorraine, all named Vaudeville, adds to the confusion of etymology.
3. Vaudeville in the 17th and 18th centuries.
6. Vaudeville in the 19th and 20th centuries.
CLIFFORD BARNES
Vau de vire literally means ‘valley of Vire’, the place near the city of Vire in Normandy where the song originated. A local genre, concerned with events and personalities of Normandy, celebrated in songs of love, drinking and current events, the vaux de vire were probably created and sung by a society or guild of poet–singers, the ‘bons compaignons du Vau de Vire’ mentioned in the song Hélas, Olivier Basselin. The most notable of them was Olivier Basselin (c1400–50), a semi-legendary figure whose name appears in two 15th-century Norman collections, the Vire manuscript (texts only) and the Bayeux manuscript (texts and melodies). Gasté linked Basselin and his ‘bons campaignons’ with the Norman trouvères of an earlier period.
By 1500 there was a sizable repertory of vaux de vire, which had become very popular and spread all over France as ‘lais des Vaux de Vire’. Francois Briand’s Novels nouveaux (1512) includes a ‘Noël sur une chanson du Vau-de-Vire’, Plaisante fleur. The name remained current for songs of popular, topical satire long after the original and authentic vaux de vire had died out. In 1570 Jean Le Houx published a collection of Vaux-de-Vire nouveaux, intended to revive the earlier style of Basselin, but in fact consisting entirely of drinking-songs. The title of one of Jacques Mangeant’s six collections (Caen, 1608–15), based in part on Le Houx, shows the broad application of the term by this time: Recueil des plus beaux airs accompagnées de chansons a dancer, balets, chansons folâtres et bachanales, autrement dites vaudevires. Cotgrave’s Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (1611) includes this definition: ‘A country ballade, or song; a Roundelay or Virelay; so tearmed of Vaudevire, a Norman towne wherin Olivier Bassel, the first inventor of them lived; also a vulgar proverb; a country or common saying’. This definition appears under ‘vaudeville’, showing that by the early 17th century the more modern term and spelling had replaced the Norman one, and the confusion of origins had begun.
The term ‘voix de ville’ (‘city voices’), current during the 16th century, described a courtly lyric of several strophes and, more particularly, the simple tune repeated to each strophe. Often written by the most famous poets of the day (unlike the 17th- and 18th-century vaudeville), the voix de ville poem covered the full range of courtly poetry, with a preference for love-poems. The music was distinguished by its chordal setting, although Bourgeois wrote in his psalter of 1574 that melismas and short imitations were occasionally used, suggesting the possibility of a style like that of the Parisian chanson of about 1530.
The term ‘voix de ville’ may have originated as a courtly and urban response to the popular and provincial vau de vire. The first known reference to it, in the courtly play La comdamnacion de banquet (1507) by Nicolas de la Chesnaye, occurs in a spelling linking it to the older genre. De la Chesnaye listed the text incipits of 17 songs, some of which are said to be ‘vaul-de-ville’. In spite of the occasional appearance of the spelling ‘vaudeville’ in the 16th century, ‘voix de ville’ was more common, as in Adrien Le Roy’s Le second livre de guiterre, contenant plusieurs chansons en forme de voix de ville (1555; an earlier edition may have appeared in 1551, but it is now lost). This collection, the first known to consist entirely of voix de villes, gives the full texts with their melodies and tablatures for accompaniment. Most of these pieces, which exemplify the mid-century voix de ville, also double as dances (‘Chanson-Gaillard’, ‘Chanson-Branle gay’), a practice widespread in France. Some of the same tunes appear as tenors in polyphonic chansons of the period, e.g. Certon’s Premier livre de chansons (Paris, 1552), and Le Roy’s Premier livre de chansons en forme de vau de ville (Paris, 1573) uses them in the upper voice. Levy has shown that many chansons of Arcadelt and Sandrin, published by Attaingnant in the first half of the century, are really voix de villes in form or style. Levy and Heartz have also traced the relation between certain dance tunes, and the verses written for them by court poets, which appear among the settings in the voix de ville collections.
Chardavoine’s Recueil des plus belles et excellentes chansons en forme de voix de ville (Paris, 1576, 2/1588) contains 200 poems by earlier and contemporary poets and a few folksongs, provided with ‘chants communs’ adaptable for either monophonic vocal or instrumental performance. The variety of dance types used with these verses is shown by a list in the preface: pavanes, gaillards, branles, tourdions, ‘et tant d’autre chansons que l’on dance et que l’on chante ordinairement par les villes’. Le Roy’s publications of 1571 and 1573 alternate the spelling voix de ville and vau de ville; in the preface of his Airs de cour (Paris, 1571) Le Roy wrote that such songs were formerly called ‘voix-de-ville’. St Juliens’ Meslanges historique (1588) uses both voix-de-villes and vaux-de-villes, but the single-word form ‘vaudeville’ was in common use by the end of the 16th century.
After 1600, the term ‘air’ or ‘air de cour’ was generally used for settings of strophic texts, particularly for accompanied solo songs. Vaudeville continued to be used, but with a meaning more limited than before; in his Harmonie universelle (1636–7), Mersenne defined it as the simplest sort of air, using all sorts of verses set syllabically and sung without fixed metre according to the rhythm of the words, making it possible for even the least skilled to sing them. On the other hand, De Sercy made some kind of distinction between air and vaudeville, as is apparent in the title of his Airs et vaudevilles de cour (Paris, 1665–6). During the reign of Louis XIV, however, vaudeville came primarily to mean topical songs in which political and court events were satirized (‘mazarinades’, for example, were vaudeville lampoons of Mazarin). Furetière, in his Dictionnaire universel (1690), defined vaudevilles as ‘chansons du Pont Neuf’, the bridge in Paris where it was customary to sing or recite them.
These songs for dancing, drinking and satire became a national pastime. Since everyone knew the tunes, they were transmitted orally and usually not printed in the numerous 17th- and 18th-century collections of ‘historical’ songs about life in Paris and the court. There are numerous manuscript collections, however, most notably those of Clérambault and Maurepas in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. Vaudeville tunes soon became dissociated from their original words and could be re-used by any rhymer; they were known by an identifying tag or ‘timbre’ which consisted usually of part of a refrain or, often, of nonsense syllables, if these existed in the original text. Sometimes several timbres came to be used for the same tune, and the false ones (faux timbres) complicate finding the original. Occasionally one timbre may refer to different tunes in different centuries.
Between 1627 and 1663 Ballard published numerous volumes of vaudevilles, separating the lighter (Chansons pour dancer et pour boire) from the more serious (Airs). His Meslanges de chansons, airs sérieux et à boire (1674) mixed the two styles, and volumes of this series appeared almost every year thereafter. After the turn of the century, the words ‘parodie’ and ‘brunette’ became associated with vaudeville in the titles of these volumes. Finally, in 1717, Ballard brought out La clef des chansonniers, ou Recueil des vaudevilles depuis 100 ans et plus, in which he gathered together for the first time over 300 pieces. This encouraged the founding in 1733 of the famous singing society Le Caveau, in which the vaudeville was cultivated along with the arts of eating and drinking. Capelle’s La clé de caveau à l’usage des chansonniers (1810), with its later supplements, increased the original Ballard repertory to 2350 tunes. Singing clubs of this kind flourished into the 19th century, and the tradition still continues with the chansonniers in cafés and concerts. Many vaudevilles of 16th- and 17th-century origin remained popular into the 19th and 20th centuries. One of the most stable of these is Réveillez-vous, belle endormie (see ex.1a).
In Grout’s succinct analysis, the musical features of the vaudeville are to be found in a short, folklike melody of narrow range and persistent rhythmic pattern, with occasional irregular phrase structure. Many vaudeville tunes are of dance origin, whether the timbre suggests this or not. Other features are a preference for the keys of G and D, both major and minor, the preservation of the word rhythm of the text, melody in the middle of the vocal range, ornaments carefully placed (the cross, + or ×, is the usual ornament sign) and frequent three-part form (ABA). The minor mode often heightens the sly, humorous effect that characterizes so many of these songs.
Comedy using vaudeville tunes with new words was one of the new theatrical styles that caught the imagination of the Paris public in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Two collections of plays, Evaristo Gherardi’s Théâtre italien (1694), representing the repertory of the Comédie-Italienne, and Le Sage and d’Orneval’s Le théâtre de la foire, ou L’opéra comique (1721–37), provide examples of the gradual evolution of these comedies into a new genre, the opéra comique.
At various times theatres at the annual Paris fairs of St Germain and St Laurent experimented with acrobatic shows, plays with songs and dances, monologues, pantomimes, poster plays and marionettes, all centred heavily on the use of vaudevilles (see Théâtres de la Foire). Some of these types of spectacle arose in response to the restrictions placed on the Théâtres de la Foire by the theatrical monopolies of the Comédie-Française and the Opéra; for example, the poster plays (comédies par écritaux), in which the actors’ lines were displayed on placards or posters while the audience sang the vaudevilles, originated in 1710 as a way of circumventing a prohibition of singing or reciting on stage. Opera parody was also a great favourite, and the Théâtres de la Foire were quick to produce their version as soon after an opera première as possible.
Originally vaudevilles made up the bulk of the music used in these comedies, supplemented by short opera excerpts which quickly invaded the vaudeville repertory, dances and instrumental interludes. Composers were employed to organize a small orchestra, work with the playwrights in selecting appropriate vaudevilles, and eventually to write original songs, called ariettes. Serious attempts were made to select vaudevilles that best represented the emotional state of the play at the point they were to be introduced, either through the tune itself or by recalling or re-using part of the original text. A clever choice could underscore a situation forcefully, or even contradict it in a humorous way. Double meanings abounded.
In writing new words for vaudeville tunes, authors were seldom successful in making all the syllables fall correctly on the musical accents (see ex.1b), but in such light entertainments wit and gaiety were more important than correct declamation. Vaudevilles were also used to carry dialogue, as in ex.1c. Le Sage and his composer-collaborator Gilliers sometimes created continuous musical scenes with several vaudevilles in succession, and in La princesse de Carizme Le Sage cleverly interwove separate phrases of different vaudevilles (because most vaudevilles were written in keys with one or two sharps it was easy to link them by simple modulations).
As the opéra comique developed, more original music was added, beginning with the finales to each act or play, and the vaudevilles were gradually dropped. After 1752 the Querelle des Bouffons and the resulting popularity of the Italian opera buffa style also affected its musical content. However, the French style of comédie en vaudevilles itself had an international influence. It spread to England as the ballad opera and to Germany as the early Singspiel, but the exchange was mutual. Coffey’s ballad opera The Devil to Pay (1731) became Der Teufel ist los (Berlin, 1743) and Sedaine’s Le diable à quatre (1756).
Placed at the end of an act or play, the vaudeville final reassembled on stage all the important characters and allowed each to sing one or more verses of a vaudeville. At times the strophic form of this closing ensemble was made more obvious by having a chorus repeat a refrain line. Sometimes a few dances intervened. This divertissement style was common to both French opera and opéra comique of the period. Beaumarchais’s play Le mariage de Figaro ends with a vaudeville, while Rousseau’s Le devin du village has a vaudeville final. Rameau, along with Gilliers, Mouret, Duni, Monsigny and Philidor, wrote them for the Théâtres de la Foire and Opéra-Comique.
Normally the words of the vaudeville final were still in keeping with the characters singing them, each of whom usually presented some moral to be deduced from the play. The comic lead generally delivered the final verse ‘to the public’: a curtain speech asking for the audience’s indulgence and renewed patronage. Ex.1d comes at the end of a long final scene that opens with 15 stanzas of a different vaudeville final, followed by a short comic scene in place of a ballet and then this short verse asking the audience to return the next day.
Attempts to make the final scene more impressive soon led composers to write an original vaudeville final, chorus and dance music. With this as its starting-point, original music then gradually infiltrated the entire play. The influence of the vaudeville final can also be seen in other genres and continued into later periods, as in Gluck’s Orfeo, Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, Mozart’s Der Schauspieldirektor, Die Entführung aus dem Serail and Don Giovanni, Verdi’s Falstaff, Ravel’s L’heure espagnole and Stravinsky’s Rake’s Progress.
By the end of the 18th century, with opéra comique tending to use more elaborately constructed musical numbers, comedy with sung vaudevilles became separated from it under the names comédie à couplets and comédie-vaudeville. In 1792 Piis and Barré opened the Théâtre du Vaudeville for this kind of entertainment, which at first resembled what is now called musical comedy. Eventually these shows were called simply vaudevilles. Their producers increasingly used satire and variety acts with all kinds of popular music. This lighthearted style of entertainment spread across Europe and by 1890 was patterned after the English music hall, even adopting that name. At the turn of the century in the USA vaudeville achieved great popularity with its combination of songs, dances, pretty girls, rapid-fire comics, skits and acrobatics. Such variety shows are still popular, though less common.
ES (P. Blanchard and others)
FasquelleE (‘Opéra-comique, A. Machabey; ‘Vaudeville’, S. Wallon)
GroveO (M.E.C. Bartlet)
MGG1 (D. Heartz)
P. Capelle: La clé du caveau (Paris, 1810, 4/1847)
A. Gasté: Etude critique et historique sur Jean Le Houx et le vau de vire à la fin du XVIe siècle (Paris, 1874)
J. Tiersot: Histoire de la chanson populaire en France (Paris, 1889//R)
A. Font: Favart: l’opéra comique et la comédie-vaudeville aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1894/R)
G. Cucuel: Les créateurs de l’opéra-comique français (Paris, 1914)
T. Gérold: L’art du chant en France au XVIIe siècle (Strasbourg, 1921/R)
F. Liebstaekl: Das deutsche Vaudeville: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des deutschen Dramas (diss., U. of Vienna, 1923)
F.J. Carmody: Le répertoire de l’opéra-comique en vaudevilles de 1708 à 1764 (Berkeley, 1933)
D.J. Grout: The Origins of the ‘opéra comique’ (diss., Harvard U., 1939)
D.J. Grout: ‘The Music of the Italian Theatre at Paris, 1682–1697’, PAMS 1941, 158–70
J. Gardien: La chanson populaire française (Paris, 1948)
F. Lesure: ‘Eléments populaires dans la chanson française au début du XVIe siècle’, Musique et poésie au XVIe siècle: Paris 1953, 169–84
K.J. Levy: ‘Vaudeville, vers mesurés et airs de cour’, Musique et poésie au XVIe siècle: Paris 1953, 185–202
P. Coirault: Formation de nos chansons folkloriques (Paris, 1953–63)
P. Barbier and F. Vernillat, eds.: Histoire de France par les chansons (Paris, 1956–61)
Chanson & Madrigal, 1480–1550: Cambridge, MA, 1961
H.M. Brown: Music in the French Secular Theater, 1400–1550 (Cambridge, MA, 1963)
A. Verchaly: ‘Le recueil authentique des chansons de Jehan Chardavoine (1576)’, RdM, xlix (1963), 203–19
C.R. Barnes: The Théâtre de la Foire (Paris, 1697–1762): its Music and Composers (diss., U. of Southern California, 1965)
C. Barnes: ‘Vocal Music at the “Théâtres de la Foire” 1697–1762, i: Vaudeville’, RMFC, viii (1968), 141–60
D. Heartz: ‘Voix de ville’, Words and Music: the Scholar’s View … in Honor of A. Tillman Merritt, ed. L. Berman (Cambridge, MA, 1972), 115–35
B. Smith: The Vaudevillians (New York, 1976)
N.L. Rioux: Vau de ville, voix de ville and vau de vire: a Study in Sixteenth-Century Monophonic Popular Music (diss., U. of West Virginia, 1979)
J.O. Whang: From voix de ville to air de cour: the Strophic Chanson, c.1545–1575 (diss., U. of North Carolina, 1981)
L. Matthes: Vaudeville: Untersuchungen zur Geshichte und literatursystematischen Ort einer Erfolgsgattung (Heidelberg, 1983)
H. Gidel: Le vaudeville (Paris, 1986)
F. Nies: ‘Chansons et vaudevilles d’un siècle devenu “classique”’, La chanson française et son histoire, ed. R. Dietmar (Tübingen, 1988), 47–58
N. Wild and D. Charlton: Théâtre de l’opéra-comique: répertoire musical, 1762–1972 (forthcoming)