Aupres De Ma Blonde: A Song History

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"Auprès de ma Blonde," also known as "Le Prisonnier de Hollande," is a French song whose verses tell of a woman whose husband is being held captive by the Dutch.[1][2][3] Because of that storyline it is often connected with Louis XIV's war against the Dutch Republic, which Larousse dates from 1672 to 1679.[1][3][4] When and by whom it was written is uncertain, and sources differ.[1][3][5] A collector's note on a Vendée field recording in the OPCI-Ethnodoc archive, referring to Trébucq, links the words and tune to 1674, to the Dutch War and to a Joubert of Noirmoutier.[5] Other accounts point instead to 1704, which the choral database Musicanet gives as the date the song first appears in its known form.[1][3] Musicanet also suggests the melody may be older than the words.[1]

Painting of Dutch sailing ships at the entrance to a harbor under a cloudy sky

Willem van de Velde II, Entrance to a Dutch Port, oil on canvas, ca. 1665. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). A Dutch harbor of the song’s era, shown for its setting; it has no connection to the song.

By the mid-nineteenth century, verses from the song were also being sung in French Canada.[6] In Chansons populaires du Canada (1865), Ernest Gagnon printed a French-Canadian song, "Gai lon la, gai le rosier," with the same verses about a husband imprisoned in Holland.[6] He suggested that those lines pointed to a European origin, since Canadians had never fought the Dutch.[6] Eugène Rolland's Recueil de chansons populaires (1883) included a version with the familiar refrain, contributed from the Loiret.[2]

The song also became part of the French military repertoire.[7] Writing for the French defense ministry's review Les Chemins de la Mémoire in 2006, army bandmaster François-Xavier Bailleul named it alongside "La marche de Turenne" among France's famous military marches.[7] Early commercial recordings include a Victor disc by mezzo-soprano Eva Gauthier, made in New York on March 12, 1918, and a Columbia disc by Alexandre Desmarteau, recorded in New York around December 1921.[8][9]

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Sources

  1. Musicanet: "Auprès de ma blonde".
  2. Wikisource (E. Rolland, Recueil de chansons populaires, tome 1, 1883): "Auprès de ma blonde".
  3. Wikipedia: "Auprès de ma blonde".
  4. Larousse Encyclopédie: "guerre de Hollande".
  5. OPCI-Ethnodoc, RADdO: "Auprès de ma blonde" (corpus listing).
  6. Internet Archive (Ernest Gagnon, 1865): "Chansons populaires du Canada".
  7. Ministère des Armées, Chemins de mémoire: "La musique militaire. Patrimoine et mémoire".
  8. UC Santa Barbara, Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix B-21573. Auprès de ma blonde / Eva Gauthier".
  9. UC Santa Barbara, Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Columbia matrix 87961. Auprès de ma blonde / Alexandre Desmarteau".