“Plaisir d’amour”, a song originating in a short story from the end of the 18th century and then set to music by a fashionable composer, has since enjoyed uninterrupted success, notably recorded by hundreds of foreign performers.
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In partnership with the exhibition It’s a song that resembles us – Worldwide hits of French-language popular music At the Cité internationale de la langue française in Villers-Cotterêts, these chronicles look in detail at each of the stories presented there.
By what miracle does this end up happening? What leads to the fact that in 2003, on his album Stumble Into Gracethe 20e album of one of the most prestigious careers in country music, Emmylou Harris to record Pleasing love ? You will tell me that it is a magnificent song, certainly. It runs everywhere in the world and in all manners, with famous singers, with artists of the best taste, with sometimes questionable intentions, but always with the same delight: the American Helen Merrill in 1969, then the English King’s Singers in 1992, and the African-American diva Marian Anderson in 1931.
If we have to start at the beginning, know that Celestine, separated from her love and pursued by the bad guys, got lost in the forest. She then hears a voice singing “The pleasure of love lasts only a moment, the sorrow of love lasts a lifetime.“. “Who knows better than me? ? “, cried Celestine, coming out of the cave to speak to the one who was singing. He was a young goatherd, sitting at the foot of a willow and looking with eyes wet with tears at the water that snaked over the stones. And yes, at the start, Pleasing love is sung by a goat herder in Celestine, Spanish short storya short text by the writer Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian, published in 1784. The following year, the song was set to music by Jean-Paul-Égide Martini. And it is this composition that we know today, here with Joan Baez and Georges Shakiris. It has also been covered by Nana Mouskouri and José Carreras.
In this episode of This song reminds me of usyou hear excerpts from:
Emmylou Harris, Pleasing love, 2003
Helen Merrill, Pleasing love, 1969
The King’s Singers, Pleasing love, 1992
Marian Anderson, Pleasing love, 1931
Joan Baez, Pleasing love, 1968
George Chakiris, Pleasing love, 1982
Nana Mouskouri, Pleasing love, 1971
Jose Carreras, Pleasing love, 1994
Sibylla, Pleasing love, 1983
Marianne Faithfull, Pleasing love, 1965
Barbara Hendricks, Pleasing love, 1995
You can also extend this column with the book This song reminds me of us published by Heritage Publishing.
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