M. Katul wrote:
At the end of the film “The Painted Veil” currently playing in theaters, a group of children, off camera, sang the French children’s song “A La Claire Fontaine”.
How can I find out who made that recording and whether or not it is available for purchase?
Thank you.
M. Katul
The Choir of the Beijing Takah sang “A La Claire Fontaine” in the movie “The Painted Veil”. Unfortunately, the song does not seem to be on the soundtrack CD of the movie. When I checked on Amazon, it’s not listed on the CD and someone specifically said in a review that this song is not on the CD. I also checked iTunes and they are not currently selling the song.
All I can suggest is to either check back at iTunes from time to time in the hope that they will eventually sell this song, or buy the movie on DVD when it comes out, and get the song from the DVD (if that’s possible).
You can find the lyrics and sheet music to “À la claire fontaine” and a clip of what it sounds like, on my Mama Lisa’s World page. It’s not the recording you’re looking for, but it’s something!
If anyone has any other suggestions, please comment below.
I hope this helps!
Lisa
This article was posted on Wednesday, January 24th, 2007 at 6:05 pm and is filed under Children's Songs, China, Countries & Cultures, France, French, French Kids Songs, Languages, Movies, TV & The Internet, Music, Questions, Recordings of Songs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
46 Responses to “Question about a Recording of “A La Claire Fontaine””
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January 24th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
Here you can find a list of the cast and crew of The Painted Veil, including the singers of all the songs. (Click the link.)
March 3rd, 2007 at 2:17 pm
A recording can be found from the Chinese search engine, baidu.com, since the song was sung by Shang Wenjie, the winner of the Chinese singing talent show “’06 Super Female Vocalist” and who recently graduated as a major in French.
The song is called 梦之浮桥(A La Claire Fontaine), from the soundtrack of the film “The Painted Veil(?纱),” and is sung by 尚雯婕 (Shang Wenjie). It is not the same as the one featured in the film, as it excludes the voices of the Choir of the Beijing Takah
Click here to download the mp3 from that site.
March 3rd, 2007 at 7:47 pm
I have just watched the movie, thanks a lot for the link. It is a Quebec folk song, here are the lyrics:
À LA CLAIRE FONTAINE
À la claire fontaine, m’en allant promener,
J’ai trouvé l’eau si belle que je m’y suis baigné.
Il y a lontemps que je t’aime, jamais je ne t’oublierai.
Sous les feuilles d’un chêne, je me suis fait sécher.
Il y a lontemps que je t’aime, jamais je ne t’oublierai.
Sur la plus haute branche, un rossignol chantait.
Il y a lontemps que je t’aime, jamais je ne t’oublierai.
Chante, rossignol, chante, toi qui as le coeur gai;
Tu as le coeur à rire, moi je l’ai à pleurer.
Il y a lontemps que je t’aime, jamais je ne t’oublierai.
J’ai perdu mon ami sans l’avoir mérité.
Pour un bouquet de roses que je lui refusai.
Il y a lontemps que je t’aime, jamais je ne t’oublierai.
Je voudrais que la rose fût encore au rosier,
Et que mon douce ami fût encore à m’aimer
(The last line was different I changed as sang by Shang Wenjie)
March 19th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
At YouTube you can see a video of this being sung in
Chinese and French. Click the link below, it’s nice!
Chinese version “A La Claire Fontaine” by Laure Shang for movie “The Painted Veil” 制作:尚三亲?队
April 10th, 2007 at 11:14 pm
Thank you very much for providing some background to that wonderful song. If you ever find the exact recording as used in the film, please do let us all know.
April 11th, 2007 at 9:19 am
I believe you can find it at YouTube – a very low recording with scenes from the movie. I don’t know how long it will be there, but, here’s the link…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzryZ4EyK5w
June 27th, 2007 at 10:03 pm
Hi Lisa,
I can’t found this song. Do you have?
June 27th, 2007 at 11:58 pm
The lyrics and an mp3 recording of À la claire fontaine are on my site – you can click the link to get to it.
June 28th, 2007 at 6:11 pm
where can i find the french version by her besides youtube?
July 9th, 2007 at 8:08 am
NOTE FROM MAMA LISA BEFORE THE COMMENT – I received this comment below – with a link to download the song – the link is a direct download so if you click on it you’ll be downloading the song. I’m not familiar with the source of the download – so download at your own risk! Though I downloaded it and haven’t had any problems so far. -Mama Lisa
*****
Here is the music, quite perfect. Oh Mom!! ;-)
Click here to download the mp3 from that site
July 11th, 2007 at 10:40 pm
I recently found this download through google.
As you can see, this is the French version of A La Claire Fontaine sung by Shang Wenjie.
It’s the full song. The file seems fine. (Click the link for the download from that site.)
Enjoy.
July 25th, 2007 at 12:44 pm
For those interested I somehow managed to download the original song from Ares just by typing in the search bar ‘a la claire fontaine’. The quality of the file isn’t exactly great and a voice, which I think belongs to Naomi Watts, can be clearly heard. Anyway, if you can’t download it, I’ll kindly send it to those interested in having the song.
August 1st, 2007 at 2:04 am
You can find that and other French folk tunes sung most beautifully by Nana Mouskouri on her album Vieilles chansons de France. Go to Amazon. com and look for ASIN: B00008FJ3X
~ Mark Nelson ~
August 12th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
I finally tracked down the actual recording used in the movie.
Based on this
production notes file
you will see that there are two credits for the song ‘A La Claire
Fontaine’.
The relevant recording comes from
La Compil’ des petits minous – vol 2
.
A sample MP3 is available.
October 29th, 2007 at 1:05 am
Polar Bear is definitely right. It is the exact version played in the movie. However, how can we download or buy it somewhere?
November 20th, 2007 at 5:46 am
If you carefully examine the Musicreche site, you will see that you can
use their on-line ordering system to immediately download an MP3 version
of the entire 2-CD set for 12 Euros (~ $17.58US).
With the help of Google’s on-line language translation tools, I was able
to translate enough of the Web pages to successfully order and download
the MP3 version without knowing any French.
November 25th, 2007 at 9:31 pm
hey polar bear, i have tryed to download/buy it from the musicreche to but i only seam to be able to download/buy the whole album, can you please step by step guid me so i can get only the song.
thank you
December 2nd, 2007 at 11:32 pm
I think he downloaded the whole album but the mp3 version.
I want the song, badly, buy I cannot download it. :(
December 5th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
Actually, I listened to the excerpt on musicreche — and though it’s a lovely version it doesn’t seem to be the same one as in the film — this version is sung by an adult.
December 21st, 2007 at 2:12 am
The movie version with a female adult and children choir trading verses doesn’t seem to be available.
I believe the version from Musicreche is sung by Laure Shang.
Its available on iTunes for 99 cents.
December 21st, 2007 at 8:16 am
Here is an mp3 recording of “a la claire fontaine” with the Choir of Beijing Takah, along with 尚雯婕 (Shang Wenjie, aka Laure Shang), winner of the 2006 China Supergirl Contest.
http://www.netwill.com.br/downloads/ALaClaireFontaine-TheChoirofBeijingTakah.mp3
December 31st, 2007 at 9:58 pm
Anders and Della, yes, I had to download the entire 2-CD set. I did not see any way to download just the single track of interest.
December 31st, 2007 at 10:21 pm
Coletsky, the song I am referring to appears during the burial scene near the end of the movie (near the 01:55:00 mark) and is sung by a single adult female voice with a single child female voice during the refrains. The only instrumental accompaniment is a single piano. A YouTube video clip of the scene is available here.
December 31st, 2007 at 11:28 pm
Gerald, Laure Shang Wen Jie’s version on iTunes is performed by a single female voice accompanied by a single piano. However, there is no additional voice during the refrains as found in the song that appears in the movie. In addition, at least according to iTunes, Shang’s iTunes version is published by Bailin Sporting & Cultural Disseminated Company and not by AKCS (AKCS appears to operate the Musicreche web site).
December 31st, 2007 at 11:35 pm
Izzy D, the MP3 file you refer to is merely an excerpt from the movie soundtrack. You can still hear Naomi Watts’s dialog (“What are you doing?”) at approximately the 00:00:52 mark. I suspect the MP3 file was probably extracted from the YouTube video clip I referenced earlier and was simply incorrectly named when posted on the Internet.
January 1st, 2008 at 12:27 am
Now that I have all this nitpicking out of the way, I just wanted to mention that, in the movie, the song becomes much more poignant once you know the lyrics. This is especially true when you go back and re-watch the two bracketing scenes in the floral shop.
January 28th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Polar Bear, is the recording you downloaded from Musicreche the exact version from the movie? Does it have the single adult, single child, and piano?
January 29th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
HappyD, yes, the audio track I downloaded from the Musicreche site is the exact recording used as the basis for the movie track. There is a single adult female voice accompanied by a single piano with a child female voice joining in during the refrains. The same tempo change in the last refrain is unmistakably the same in both the audio track and the movie track.
Note that the audio track was extended in the movie post-production such that the first two stanzas are repeated at the end of the movie track. This was done, presumably, to lengthen the original audio track to fit the movie sequence. In addition, they sweeten the movie track a bit by adding the faint sound of a nightingale at the end of the movie track. This is a nice touch once you know the lyrics to the song.
May 14th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Hi everyone,
We are the producer of the original song used in The painted veil : A la claire fontaine.
The song is available to download on our website :http://www.musicreche.com/product_detail.aspx?product_id=19
We woud like to thank you all for the interest you’ve shown into our production.
You can also watch the Clipounet of the song on our broadcasting website http://www.clipounets.com.
A bientot,
L’équipe de Musicreche.com
July 14th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
Thank you Musicreche for providing this information, very much appreciated. I loved this version of ‘A la claire fontaine’ and can listen to this song all the time. I thank you.
July 17th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
How do I download the song from the Musicreche website? It seems I can only download the 2 cd album. Is there another way? Instructions in English would be helpful.
October 7th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
this is the exact version found on youtube but not a scene from the movie. this version however is also a karaoke. now you can learn the exact words to the song. this was just aded in response to the scene version of this song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIc3qXC6ONc
enjoy.
November 5th, 2008 at 5:33 am
The link from Willian Medeiros, i think it was, works fine. Yes there is dialogue at around 00:52-00.54, but if you have a sound editing studio you can edit this section out and the song is fine! Voile!
December 15th, 2008 at 5:13 am
does any one have the song sheet or a piano accompaniment to this song? or rather, the link to one? i’d like to teach my children how to sing it in french!
thanks
December 17th, 2008 at 7:30 am
Anna, you can find it on this site right here.
March 19th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Just a quick note, I was able to download the the movie version of the song from iTunes. Search for A La Claire Fontaine and download the version with the artist listed as Les Petits Minous.
August 19th, 2009 at 5:37 pm
Yes – a magical song – you can also find the exact movie version mp3 on amazon.com – A la claire fontaine artist – Les Petit Minous – 89cents.
September 16th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
This song is up on itunes now. I bought it about an hour ago! I absolutely LOVE IT!
October 28th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
I’ve seen the song “French Lullaby” on Youtube. It’s verry good. How can I download the mp3 of this song?
Thanks
Please forgive me for my bad English :D
October 28th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Which song are you trying to download?
November 6th, 2009 at 1:54 am
The first time I heard a version of this song was in a program on the channel HDNet called “InFocus: Visions”, about halfway through an episode entitled “Visions of France: The Riviera”. I wish I knew whose beautiful voice sings this version, which runs 1:40, does not include all verses, and may have been recorded specifically for this 2004 program. The episode is part of a series that presents beautiful helicopter shots set to majestic music, much of it classical. This version of “A La Claire Fontaine” does not sound quite like what others have described here. It features an adult female singer with simple synth strings, electric piano, and bass. Very soothing, with aerial views of the TGV train, St. Raphael, and Ile d’Or. I wish I could share it.
February 12th, 2010 at 1:28 pm
This version of “A La Claire Fontaine” in ‘The Painted Veil’ is NOT sung by the Chinese star Shang Wen Jie. It is by N. POREBSKI/L. DESCAMPS. The children’s part is sung by THE CHOIR OF THE
BEIJING TAKAHASHI CULTURE AND ART CENTRE .
March 28th, 2010 at 4:59 pm
During the funerals, A la claire fontaine is sung by Nicole Porebski and Lila Descamps.
You can find it here :
http://www.musicreche.com/product_detail.aspx?product_id=19
January 20th, 2011 at 12:44 am
Les Petits Minous sold at itunes for .99 A la claire fontaine shang wen jie and beijing takah choir! Finally found it!
August 31st, 2011 at 1:14 am
Anyone know where I can get the sheet music/tabs for the version sung by Shang Wen-jie?
August 31st, 2011 at 9:38 am
Tim, she sings the trad version that we have on Mama Lisa’s World France page (lyrics, English translation, midi, mp3 and sheet music) You can find a score with tabs here