Alouette: A Song History

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The Canadian Encyclopedia calls “Alouette” the most popular of Canadian folk songs, and it has become an informal emblem of French Canada.[1] Its earliest known appearance in print is in A Pocket Song Book for the Use of the Students and Graduates of McGill College, put together by a student and issued in Montreal in 1879.[2][3] Where the song began is less settled: Marius Barbeau, and later Conrad Laforte, held that it came from France, yet the first French printing known is a version Julien Tiersot published in Paris in 1893.[1][4] The singer addresses a lark and threatens to pluck it, naming a new part of the bird in each verse and then running back through every part named so far, so each verse is longer than the one before.[3]

Japanese woodblock print of two skylarks among orange primroses, with a poem in Japanese script above

Kubo Shunman, Skylarks and Primroses, from the series An Array of Birds, privately published woodblock print (surimono), ca. 1805–10. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Japanese skylarks, shown for the lark of the song; the print has no connection to it.

Barbeau gathered regional variants of the text in a small book, Alouette!, published in Montreal in 1946.[1][4] Recordings came early: Serge Lacasse’s study of the song on record finds five discs from the acoustic era, starting with what appears to be a 1906 recording by tenor Édouard Le Bel and including one by mezzo-soprano Éva Gauthier in 1917.[4] The Discography of American Historical Recordings lists Le Bel’s “Alouette” as a Victor recording dated 6 November 1906, but its date-and-place entry is flagged as unconfirmed.[5] Concert composers borrowed it too, from H. Maurice Jacquet’s 1925 piano rhapsody to Eldon Rathburn’s 1953 variations and fugue for small orchestra.[1]

Through the twentieth century the song’s name and tune became shorthand for French Canada, attached to a Canadian bomber squadron in 1942 and to Montreal’s football club, and turned to political ends in Félix Leclerc’s “L’alouette en colère,” recorded in 1972.[4] It is also used in the classroom: a French-language teaching unit hosted by Manitoba’s education department pairs it with vocabulary flashcards about the parts of a bird.[6]

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Sources

  1. The Canadian Encyclopedia: "Alouette!" (Hélène Plouffe).
  2. The Canadian Encyclopedia: "College Songs and Songbooks".
  3. McGill Library: "A Pocket Song Book for the Use of the Students and Graduates of McGill College" (1879, digitized).
  4. Serge Lacasse (SQRM): "Itinéraire transphonographique d'une chanson : le cas « Alouette »".
  5. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix E-4002. Alouette / Edouard Le Bel".
  6. Manitoba Education: "Chansons folkloriques : Alouette" (Français de base, 4e à la 8e année).