The Sunday Listen: 'The Drowned Girl' by Yann Tiersen
This week on the Sunday Listen, we’re looking at Yann Tiersen’s ‘The Drowned Girl’, although in all honestly I could have picked any single track from his 2013 album, ‘The Lighthouse’.
Tiersen is best known for his score for the film ‘Amelie’, including a couple of now ubitiquitous pieces for piano (you’ll know them when you hear them). But Tiersen is a much more interesting and influential figure than I think is credited – not quite a composer, not quite a songwriter, not quite a classical musician. Throughout interviews and his discography, Tiersen resists being boxed into genres like “film composer” or “classical musician.” He’s often said he doesn’t compose music specifically to evoke emotions, but rather explores sound as raw experience. We’ll come back to this…
First off, some introductions. Yann Tiersen was born on the island of Brest, Brittany, France in the early 80s. He began learning music at a young age under the shadow of punk rock, demonstrating a wide-ranging interest across classical, folk and modern instruments such as synths, samplers, and drum machines. This particularly unique combination of his Breton roots, his involvement in 1980s DIY subculture, and the self-taught aspect to his skills and musical explorations will become fundamental to his music-making process.
One many of the things I enjoy about Tiersen is his unfussy and direct way of creating extremely emotionally rich and symphonic music that’s somehow distilled to the runtime of a pop song or a traditional fiddle tune. Punk rock famously rejected mainstream musical conventions and Tiersen similarly defies easy categorization, blending classical, folk, and experimental elements in a way that avoids adhering to genre norms. This disregard for stylistic boundaries mirrors punk's rebellious spirit, and is central to how Tiersen works.
So here we have ‘La Noyee/The Drowned Girl’, which in a neat two and half minutes takes us from the opening groans of the creaking hull of a ship (used ingeniously as a kind of rhythm track), before two accordions introduce the opening melody (the accordion is Tiersen’s hallmark and is central to Breton folk music), followed by an accompanying string section which then continues to spar with the accordions over a steady, looping pattern reminiscent of traditional folk dances, culminating to a frantic finish.
The melodies and harmonies here are not especially complex, and the employment of modes and more complex harmonic choices tends to be very subtle. In fact, you’ll find this sort of slightly melancholy chord progression (“la gwerz” – the Breton lament) appear in various iterations throughout Tiersen's work: it's his signature, a recurring motif which regularly appears in different arrangements and tempos across his many projects and albums. It places the music immediately as part of Tiersen’s musical multiverse, and channels us to certain wistful, imaginary place. Rooted where and in what time, who’s to say? We’re not in Kansas any more, Dorothy.
This lyrical directness, combined with Tiersen’s experimentation with different genres, unusual instruments and sound textures (field recordings, drones, tape delay effects), helps to conjure a highly specific and detailed ‘world’ for the listener to explore, one that feels immediately inviting and encourages us to delve further. The same cannot be said of most classical music. In this way, Tiersen is staying true to his folk/punk roots, putting emotional clarity and authenticity before technical musicianship and compositional novelty, thereby prioritising the connection with the listener.
Throughout this career, Tiersen has be drawn drawn to the often hypnotic beauty of simplicity — melodies and motifs that are minimal but when phrased with a particular character and spirit can be turned into something deeply evocative. It’s the primacy of the “raw” experience of sound on our bodies above clever intellectual expectations and compositional concepts. It’s the rapture and emotional intensity of a piano concerto wrapped in yesterday’s newspaper. No frills – just pure, unfiltered sound experience. I often think about Tiersen’s music as being luxurious, but a sort of affordable luxury, like treating yourself a delicious eclair on a rainy day in Calais. How French indeed.
Happy Easter!
Will