Jacques Brel Songwriter
A chanson is simply the French word for 'song', thus rendering the name for the most popular, most own style of French vocal art. It often has a poetic-narrative form. A chanson practitioner is called a chancellor in Dutch. Chansons exist in traditional and more modern forms. One of the accompanying instruments of a traditional French chanson is the accordion. Also other language narrative songs are often referred to as chanson. Ernst van Altena attributes the Dutch translation of the word chanson: listener.
Chanson is a very old concept: in the Middle Ages it was used to indicate the songs that sang the troubadours, often as expressions of main love. In the renaissance, the genre also existed and was a polyphonic song with a melodic text and many onomatopees. Also see Literature Footnotes
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