[3] The earliest chansons were the epic poems performed to simple monophonic melodies by a professional class of jongleurs or ménestrels.
The Song of Roland is the most famous of these, but in general the chansons de geste are studied as literature since very little of their music survives.
In its typical specialized usage, the word chanson refers to a polyphonic French song of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance.
Later 15th- and early 16th-century figures in the genre included Johannes Ockeghem and Josquin des Prez, whose works cease to be constrained by formes fixes and begin to feature a pervading imitation (all voices sharing material and moving at similar speeds), similar to that found in contemporary motets and liturgical music.
Beginning in the late 1520s through mid-century, Claudin de Sermisy, Pierre Certon, Clément Janequin, and Philippe Verdelot were composers of so-called Parisian chansons, which also abandoned the formes fixes,[clarification needed] often featured four voices, and were in a simpler, more homophonic style.
During the 17th century, the air de cour, chanson pour boire and other like genres, generally accompanied by lute or keyboard, flourished, with contributions by such composers as Antoine Boesset, Denis Gaultier, Michel Lambert and Michel-Richard de Lalande.
Louis Niedermeyer, under the particular spell of Schubert, was a pivotal figure in this movement, followed by Édouard Lalo, Felicien David and many others.
[9][10] Born of the cafés-concerts and cabarets of the Montmartre district of Paris and influenced by literary realism and the naturalist movements in literature and theatre, chanson réaliste was a musical style which was mainly performed by women and dealt with the lives of Paris's poor and working class.
Maurice Ravel wrote Trois Chansons for choir a cappella after the outbreak of World War I as a return to French tradition, published in 1916.