Project Brassens
About this site
ITALIANO
|
This site is a tribute to the work of Georges Brassens (1921-1981) on the occasion of his centenary.
We tried to collect his production of texts and music, also interpreted by other professional musicians, and to propose Italian and English direct translations of
the texts. With a few exceptions, songs by other musical authors that were sung by Georges Brassens are not included in this website.
There are many websites with Brassens’s texts and commentaries. Of special note is the excellent Analyse Brassens, that has become an indispensable resource for those who are interested in Brassens’s work. For this reason we hope it will soon re-open the possibility to add comments to the songs. There are also many websites with translations of some of his texts. Our intention is to provide a single site with Brassens’s entire body of work, with direct translation in both English and Italian. An essential feature of this site is the inclusion of web links to videos or audio recordings of his songs that are available in the public domain (most often YouTube videos). The songs can be played on the same page that displays both the original French text and the translation, in order to facilitate understanding for those who have trouble following the French lyrics without some help. Brassens’s texts are notoriously difficult to translate into other languages. His masterful use of words to convey multiple shades of meanings, combined with the intensity of his poetic images, makes it almost impossible for any translation to do justice to the original text. The translated texts are therefore literal, direct translation of the French text, disregarding rhymes, rhythms or questions of form. Such translation only tries to retain the meaning of the original text as faithfully as possible in order to convey the message that Brassens so skillfully embedded in his songs, and which has universal resonance in peoples’ minds and hearts. The translations do not attempt to propose texts that can be sung to the music of the original song. We thank the editors of Georges Brassens – Œuvres complètes, © Le Cherche Midi, 2007 for granting us the permission to use the book as the primary source of the texts of Brassens's songs. We also thank Serge Cazzani for giving us permission to use and publish the artistic production of Georges Brassens. Work on this site is in progress, and it is regularly updated. Your comments are welcome!! Please see below for the website’s email |