‘Au Clair De La Lune’: the history of the first song ever recorded
In musical history, several pivotal songs and compositions are immortalised as pioneering artworks, whether stylistically unprecedented or tethered to a compositional or technological innovation. In the case of ‘Au Clair De La Lune’, the music is unique in being the first song ever recorded and is bound to a technological invention that predates the gramophone by three decades.
In March 1857, the French printer, bookseller, and inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville invented the phonautograph. A precursor to modern recording devices, the phonautograph consisted of a diaphragm attached to a stylus that traced sound waves onto a soot-covered surface. As an ancestor to shellac records, the surface stored analogue data in a sequence of impressions.
Using his phonautograph, Scott captured sound data for the first time and following a couple of years of adjustment and development, he recorded a rendition of ‘Au Clair De La Lune’. Though Scott’s 1860 recording of ‘Au Clair De La Lune’ was a monumental achievement, it wasn’t until 2008 that scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory managed to play back the recording successfully.
In the video below, you can hear the muffled, ghostly voice of a bygone era echoing through 16 decades dense with technological evolution.
As we enjoy this grainy artefact, the significance of the song itself is also worth noting. The title translates to “By the Light of the Moon”, and its origins can be traced back to the 18th century. The earliest known publication of the lyrics was in 1808 as part of Louis Emmanuel Félicité Charles’ opéra comique, Les voitures versées. Sadly, its original writer or writers remain unknown, but its impact on European music is incalculably vast.
Most notably, the song inspired the classical composer Claude Debussy, who used the composition as the basis for his song ‘Pierrot’ from Quatre Chansons de Jeunesse. Ostensibly, the traditional composition also inspired the title of his most famous piece, ‘Clair de lune’.
The lyrical narrative of ‘Au Clair De La Lune’ revolves around an encounter between the narrator, Lubin, and two other characters: Pierrot and a “brunette” neighbour. Lubin seeks light by which to write after their candle has gone out. Trying in vain to find suitable light, he struggles under the moonlight.
Deeply poetic, the four verses are thought to be teeming with sexual innuendo. Peeling itself from the lucid narrative, it also appears to reflect the fragility and inequality of life itself.
