

Bourrées in triple time have been noted in the 19th century by Bujeaud, and more recently, in Angoumois. The Marais Breton of Vendée is noted particularly for its tradition of veuze playing - which has been revived by the bagpipe-maker and player Thierry Bertrand - and for traditional singers such as Pierre Burgaud.įolk dances specific to the West of France include the courante, or maraichine, and the bal saintongeais.

In recent decades John Wright and Claude Ribouillault (amongst others) have done much to collect, analyse and promote the surviving traditions. Jérôme Bujeaud collected extensively in the area, and his 2-volume work "Chants et chansons populaires des provinces de l'ouest: Poitou, Saintonge, Aunis et Angoumois" ( Niort, 1866) remains the principal scholarly collection of music and songs. Traditions of ballad-singing, dance-songs and fiddle-playing have survived, predominantly in Poitou and the Vendée.

The West of France comprises the Pays de Nantes, the provinces of Vendée, Anjou and Maine, and the Poitou-Charentes region. Main articles: Music of Aquitaine and Music of Gascony The astonishing technical advances of the spectralist composers in the 1970s are only recently beginning to achieve wide recognition in the United States major composers in this vein include Gérard Grisey, Tristan Murail, and Claude Vivier. The most important French contribution to musical innovation of the past 35 years is a form of computer-assisted composition called " spectral music". The latter was a leading figure of Serialism while Messiaen incorporated Asian (particularly Indian) influences and bird song and Dutilleux translated the innovations of Debussy, Bartók and Stravinsky into his own, very personal, musical idiom. Later in the century, Olivier Messiaen, Henri Dutilleux and Pierre Boulez proved influential. The early 20th century saw neo-classical music flourish in France, especially composers such as Lili Boulanger, Nadia Boulanger, Albert Roussel and Les Six, a group of musicians who gathered around Satie. The ballet master and choreographer Marius Petipa. The French composer Georges Bizet composed Carmen, one of the best-known and most popular operas. Lully also developed the common beat patterns used by conductors to this day and was the first to take the role of leading the orchestra from the position of the first violin. Lully's forays into operatic tragedy were accompanied by the pinnacle of French theatrical tragedy, led by Corneille and Racine. Jean-Baptiste Lully, who had become well known for composing ballets for Louis XIV, began creating a French version of the Italian opera seria, a kind of tragic opera known as tragédie lyrique or tragédie en musique - see ( French lyric tragedy). It was followed by the team of Pierre Perrin and Cambert, whose Pastoral in Music, performed in Issy, was a success, and the pair moved to Paris to produce Pomone (1671) and Les Peines et les Plaisirs de l'Amour (1672). The first French opera may be Akébar roi du Mogol, first performed in Carpentras in 1646.
