WHAT THEY DO TO OUR SONGS IN FRANCE.

Evening Star, Issue 9911, 24 January 1896, Page 4

WHAT THEY DO TO OUR SONGS IN FRANCE.

Columbia College's don, Professor Harry Thurston Peck, has an interesting article on ' The Migration of Popular Songs' in the October number of the 'Bookman,' discussing the way in which the ephemeral songs of the day are adopted from one nation by another. The Germans, he says, being a highly musical people, regard the popular songs of England and America, much as we do the sounds produced by a Chinese orchestra. One may hear bits of ' The Mikado ' iu Germany, and perhaps some of Reginald De Koven'a airs, but that is all. On the other hand, we occasionally borrow from Germany. ' Annie Roouey' is taken directly, with a mere change of tempo, from a chorale of Bach, aud ' Down went M'Ginty' is from another—the same source, wonderful a3 it seems, from whicli Wagner derived the so-called bell-motif in 'Parsifal.'

Taking up French songs, Professor Peck says that we take little from them except their military pieces for our bands. "An instance of this,*' hesays, " is the Boulangist chant, ' En r'v'nant de la reque,' first sung by Paulus at the Alcazar d'Ete, and speedily taken up all over France by the partisans of the brav' General. It was at once cabled to this country (a journalistic feat achieved by the New York ' Herald'), and was heard everywhere, but only as an air, no words ever having been written for it iu English, so far as the present writer is informed. A later French success, 'Pere la Victoire,' also 'created' by Paulus at the Eldorado, was at one time a good deal played by military bands in England, where it was also set to new words, but as a song it had no success. " Not many of our popular airs, in fact, are foreign ; but a very great many of ours are caught up by the French, especially those songs whose English words have a jingle that tickles the Gallic ear with a suggestion of eccentricity. " 'The man that broke the bank at Monte Carlo' was a great favorite with the French, and their version of it was a close paraphrase of the English, though it represented the breaker of the bank as a woman and not ■a man. The title of it was ' J'ai fait sauter la banque a Monte Carlo.' As a rule, the music alone is taken, the French words having no reference to the original ones. Thus ' Daisy Bell,'.or as the French usually write it, * Daysey Bell,' furnished the music for a rather amusing set of verse?. "As might be expected 'Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay' exactly suited the 4nglaisistes. It had scarcely appeared in England aud America before a French rendering wa3 rushed into print—in fact, so rapidly that the author of it, M. Fabrice Lemon, failed to notice the exact title of the original, and altered a syllable, his version bearing the name 4 Tha-mara-boum-di-he'; but it was a great success, being sung at one and the same time at four of the principal cafe concerts—the Alcazar, the Horloge, the Ambassadeurs, and the Folies Bergere. Before, however, any French version at all had been made, the present writer, being in a provincial town in Normandy, read one day an announcement of the local theatre to the effect that on the following evening a new one-act play would be presented, with the remarkable title 'Miss Kissmy,' in which the forward manneis of a typical mees Anglaise would be held up to the reprobation of a virtuous French audience. It was also announced as a special attraction that a certain Mdlle.- Dufort would, in the course of the play, sing the celebre chanson Anglaise ' Thara-ra-bounj-der-e.' When the time came, and Mdlle Dufort appeared, she had an immense audience. The first few lines made it evident (not to the audience, however) that this ingenious young woman had shrunk from the task of ' getting up' the lines of the genuine version, but had instead constructed a set of verses of her own by piecing together all the English words she had ever heard.

The first verse then ran something like this :

Ticket tramway clergymen Bifteck vuiusttek rosbif van. Sandwich whitebaits lady lunch (.'heri-gobler, whiskey-ponche; Aoh-ves all right shocking stop Pel-el why-not moton-chop, Plum-kek miousic steamer boxe, Boule-dogue high-live live o'clocks. Tha-ra-ra-boum-der-e, etc.

"It was an immense success. The audience rose at her. They knew that the English was all right, because they themselves recognised a good many of the words. She had an ovation and nine encores, and this was probably the first rendition of the celebre chanson on French soil,"