La Mystère Tisné X

I was away on a much deserved vacation.  I never take vacations, but when I do, I don't check phone messages and I don't check email.  Vacation time is the time that I unplug everything.  So, when I got back, I had to emails from something called "Résonances Contemporaines".  If you work in New Music, all you have to do is read these two words and you know exactly what this is about.  These are the "pur et dur" of the New Music field:  the faithful, who still know how to count from zero to eleven.  They had written me because they were doing a radio show on Antoine's music.  They needed someone to interview.  And so they had sent me an email. 

I received the email on Sunday evening and the radio show was to be recorded the following Wednesday.  I immediately wrote back saying that I would be delighted to participate.  Then on Monday, I called.  I talked to a gentleman who said, essentially, that the position had been filled.  They already had someone to talk about Tisné and didn't need another person.  I said that I had something about this music that I to say, that only I knew about and needed to tell.  I told them that I had a letter from Antoine saying that I was the one he wanted to talk about his music;  And I told them about all of the work we had done together  The gentleman then said "well, yes, we also knew Antoine quite well.  We knew him from Bordeaux..." and then he waited.  I didn't know what to say and went on with my spiel.  He told me that this was all about the CDMC presentation in November.  He asked me if I was part of that.  I said that this was the first time that I had heard of it.  He told me that they were doing this to tie into the CDMC presentation.  I asked him who was organizind this and he gave me the name of the directress of the CDMC.

The CDMC or "Centre de Documentation de La Musique Contemporaine" (Contemporary Music Documentation Center) has always been a great mystery to me.  I have never figured what it does or why it exists.  It serves as a sort of Quartier Générale for people who work in New  Music, for composers and for arts administrators.  I first heard about this when I was a featured soloist at the Donne in Musica festival in Italy in 1997.  This was the year in which I was in conflict with the aging pioneer of women's music who ran a recording operation in Eastern Europe, mainly because she hadn't paid my fee.  She had proceeded to tell anyone who would listen that I was a dangerous menace to women everywhere because I was a sex maniac and a serial rapist (she seemed to have missed a few chapters, somehow).  So, I was a HUGE hit at this women's music festival. 

When I met the directress of the CDMC there, it was love at first sight "Ah, so YOU'RE the sex maniac! I've always wanted to met one of those".  We sat together at one of the presentations.  She asked me what composers I liked.  I answered that I was very eclectic and as an example, I had projects going with both Jean Françaix and Antoine Tisné.  "Ah",  she replied, "the two composers whose music I hate the most!"  When she saw my reaction, she said "You won't say anything, will you?"  And I haven't...until now.  But I must admit that I laughed when the CDMC was forced to organize a Françaix exposition after his death.  Françaix would have liked that.  I did however ask her what she liked.  And she replied "well, there was about a minute of piece by X that I heard a few weeks ago that I thought was okay..."  Immediately, a musician can tell which camp somebody else is in.  There are those of us who LOVE music and wallow in the act of writing, performing and listening to it.  And there are those who hate everything that isn't perfectly suited to their World view. I am in the former camp.  She was in the latter.   A misdealt hand.  Oh, well, you can't win them all.

And later, when we started publishing music, Antoine had me take several scores down to the CDMC to deposit them there.  I took them to the very nice clerk who said "We can't take these:  they don't fit our criteria....However, we would like to encourage you to submit other scores".  I didn't quite know what to say and managed to blurt out that Antoine was a Prix de Rome, after all....to which she replied "Second Grand Prix".....as they all do.  And then she said, "well, we can't just take anything.  We have standards, you know....but we would like to encourage you to come back with other works which may fit our standards".  So, I stood there and looked at her for a moment. And then I said "Okay, let me get this straight:  I am supposed to produce scores for you for free and then I am supposed to bring them down here for you to pass judgment on them?".  And she said "yes, that's how we work".  And I said "fine, let's just forget that I ever came here".  And I walked out.   And I never went back there again.   For any reason.

So, the CDMC was organizing an Antoine Tisné seminar.  It just didn't compute.  I went to their site and the directress was no longer the woman I had met long ago.  So, I figured that maybe things were different now;  And so I went to my papers, found the letter and scanned it.  I wrote to the woman in charge and said that I had a message to pass on , something that Antoine had wanted me to say.  I had a responsibility to say something that only I knew.  And then, a few days later I called them.

After the usual adminstrative game of telephone tag, I finally got a person.  She explained to me that a flute player named Christel Rayneau had produced a recording of Tisné pieces for flute.  This seminar was organized to promote the recording.  She gave me Christel Rayneau's email.  And since I was in the middle of organizing an orchestral recording for Thérèse Brenet, I needed to find a flute soloist.  I figured that if Christel Rayneau liked Tisné that I didn't need to convince her to record Brenet.  I called her and gave her a meeting at my usual café, "Le Père Tranquil" at Les Halles. 

And so I met Christel and we started talking about Antoine and his music.  I started talking about the last phase of his life and the simplification of Antoine's style at the end.  I told her about the Five Modal Preludes...and she replied "I'm not interested in teaching pieces".  And then I told her about Antoine's love of film music and wanting to break out of his "serious music" box to write what he really felt.  The response was immediate and without hesitation "I don't think so".  And so I said, "Okay, well read this. "  And I gave her a copy of the letter.  Which she read.  And then she said "you need to participate in the seminar.  I will call the person organizing it.  But you must be there." 

So I wrote to this woman, who was part of something called "L'Observatoire de la Musique Française" attached to the Sorbonne. . . I still don't know what they observe or why this organism exists.  I don't think that French Music really needs to be observed in any way, only appreciated.  But soon, I and Jean-Thierry had an appointment at the CDMC to discuss how we could become part of this project.  Everything had already been planned....or rather it had been put on paper, because I started getting calls from people who were trying to prepare their presentations.  There were no sources and they were looking for information.  These people were only interested in one thing:  that I give them everything I knew about their subject in a fifteen minute phone conversation.  I told them what I could, but I also told them that there was no way that I could ever explain any of this in fifteen minutes.  However, there was one position available:  They had asked Claude Samuel, the former head of Radio France to be the moderator of this event...and, probably because Antoine's words were still ringing in his ears from the "Le Chant des Yeux" he had the good sense and elegance to refuse the invitation.  Would we moderate? We agreed to meet with the directress of the CDMC, this woman and other people to discuss this;

I put the letter, the Prix de Rome Medal and the manuscript into my briefcase.  Jean-Thierry printed out the biography that he written for Antoine, that Antoine loved.  So we took another elevator up to the offices of the CDMC.  We were ushered into a conference room with a white plastic table and plastic chairs.  There was the small, nondescript woman from the mysterious "Observatoire de la Musique Française", the directress of the CDMC who had known Antoine from her days at the French Cultural Ministry and who I believe actually liked him.  And then there was some sort of archivist or a librarian who was clearly extremely, profoundly and totally bored, even before the meeting started.  You can't imagine anyone more bored than this woman;  She did not want to be there.  She had no interest in Antoine Tisné or anything that I had to say.  I don't know what she wanted in life, but it sure as hell wasn't this!

There was discussion about Tisné's papers, which had all apparently destroyed, including the six volumes of his diary and all of the correspondence.  This made no sense to me, as Jean-Thierry and I had always joked about "Antoine had added another document to his papers to be sent to the Bibliothèque Nationale" each time he sent me a card or a letter.  It was clear that he was writing to me, but also for posterity.  What could have happened?  I didn't get it.

So, I got my medal, my manuscript and my letter out of my briefcase.  And I started telling this story.  And clearly, it wasn't of interest.  The directress seemed quite sympathetic, but the woman organizing this seemed quite hostile.  What I had to say did not go with what she had planned.  The librarian said "it's all been planned.  We have no time".  And finally the directress said "you remember the last time, with the seminar about X....you remember all of those people who were angry, who were upset  We can't have that again, can we?".  And I said "I can't promise that I won't be emotional about this, because I've lived this in my bones.  This is part of who I am now and I can't be objective about this". 

And the Observatoire woman said "yes,...well, you know, we need to give as much time as we can to the professionals who are trained musicologists.  People like you are interesting, but they can't really give us the objective view we need to analysis this music.  You must understand that....But we certainly want you to come and be in the audience".  I told her that there was no way that I was going to sit in the audience all day to listen to people tell me things that I already knew or which I knew were wrong.  And I said that it would be much better for them if I wasn't there, since if things were said that I didn't agree with, I was not going to remain silent.  And everyone stopped talking and looked at each other.  So, I put my medal, my letter and my manuscript back into my briefcase and shut my mouth.

So, here we were, being ushered back to the elevator.  And it was something like 16h30 or something like that.  And here I am with this smug little woman in front of me who has just cut me out of her existence and who thought that she had had the last word.  And here I was, at yet anothe elevator.  And I turned to her and was suddenly gripped with a rage unlike any other I have ever felt.

Antoine and I had gotten out.  We had found the one exit, the one that lead to freedom.  We had done this together.  And here was this smug little woman, this musical grave-digger who was using her petty authority to cut the one moment of truth out of this whole action. They were forcibly stuffing Antoine back into his suit, back into his office at the cultural ministry.  The wild magic that we had tried to evoke together was worthless in the face of this administrative bureaucracy.  All of our dreams.  All of our vision. The whole meaning of the story, completely lost.  Even Antoine's letter was useless. 

So, as the elevator doors opened, I looked at this woman with rage, with the whole of my being in pain  And then, as they had so many years ago, the elevator doors closed.  And that was all.

And here, finally is the message that I needed to give to the World.  You can take this or leave it, but here it is. 

Antoine Tisné died a free man.  He found his way out of this intellectually sterile world of calculating music through counting and equations and found his way to a World of pure sound and gestures.  He got back to the origins of music, but because he had put himself through this extreme discipline of complete objective, calculated sound, he found his way into that rare, completely illuminated space where Sound is inhibited by Joy.  Where there is only the pure pleasure of making beautiful sounds.  And when he got there, he was able to leave this Earth with his head up, having done his life's work. 

There is no greater compliment that one can give to a musician.  And even if I am the only person who understands this, I know this to be true.

They gave this seminar.  It's on the web.  You can listen to it if you want.  I won't, ever. They did read Jean-Thierry's biographical sketch of Antoine.  He wonders why.  I think that it's probably because they knew what they had done and were guilty about it.  I don't care, because I have given the message.  You have it now. 

There is a postscript to this story.  A very strange postscript.  One which I did not expect, but which, as everything that concerns Antoine, revealed itself without warning.  After having gone through this whole business of reliving Antoine's life and death though this experience, there was a period of a couple of weeks where I could not sleep. There was something that I needed to understand that I wasn't seeing.  I knew that it was there if I could see it  But I didn't see it.   Maybe I didn't want to see it.

And then one day, I did a websearch on Antoine.  And I came across this video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug6omJMZZh8  There was Nicole Proop....And there was Antoine.  And then there was this thing about "Les Pélérins" D'Arès".  So, one websearch and then it all clicked into place.  There was "Les Voiles de La Nuit", "Ombres de Feu", "Psalmodies", there were the "biblical landscapes".  There were both the cave painters of Altamira and the post-apocalyptic landscape ravaged by nuclear warfare.  

Antoine was part of a religious sect, a very stupid religious sect called "Les Pélérins" D'Arès". There was this guy, a former physicist,  who lived in this village in the Arcachon region of France, just above Bordeaux.  During the 1970s, he had 40 days of visits by Jesus and then a few years later, 5 days of visits by God the Father.  This man created a  kind of a religious cocktail, as if you took Jewish, Christian and Muslim belief and shook them all together to make one big thing. 

One day, Antoine had shown me a very mysterious photo of a place near a pond where he had gone years before....and this also explained why such a large number of strange musicians came from the area of Bordeaux.   It was the kind of thing that Antoine would fall into, hook, line and sinker  And finally, I think that he probably understood that he was being played for a fool.  He probably had been asked to contribute more or something llike that.  Or maybe he thought that these people could heal him....and they couldn't.  So, here he was, with his entire life's work based on this lie....and he couldn't do anything about that.  So, he cleaned it up the best he could. 

When I first understood what all of this meant, I was angry.  I mean, here I had been thinking that I was doing all of these sacred music concerts and finally, it was all about this sect that was maybe sincere... but this is not what I had signed up to do.  I thought of leading all of those people through Erfurt, thinking I was doing one thing, and actually doing something else. 

And then I thought "He might have told me".  I mean, composers are a strange lot most of the time.  I'm used to people who believe in all sorts of things.  And I don't mind at all.  I mean, there is the late French composer that we all know about who was a Raelian.  This doesn't make his music any better or worse.  With Antoine, I could have understood.  It didn't need to be such a big deal. 

And yet, here is the mystery. I think that I knew Antoine Tisné better than anyone, except perhaps David Niemann.  I lead him to his death and am here to tell his story now.  And yet, I never really knew him.  He will always remain a complete mystery to me  But perhaps the greatest clue was given to me by Thérèse Brenet, in the poem by Edgar Alan Poe that she used for her guitar concerto.  "A Dream Within A Dream".

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow —

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone? 

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand —

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep — while I weep!

O God! Can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

My tale is done.  I have given this message to the World.  I thank you all for reading this.

La Mystère Tisné IX

When a French composer dies, his works enter what is called "Purgatory".  This is a ten to twenty year period in which his music is largely forgotten until somebody notices that something is good and isn't being played.  Then it starts to re-enter the repertoire.  This is generally a grace period of a few months after someone's death, where concerts that were planned before their death are going on or memorial concerts are presented. 

Antoine's entrance into purgatory was immediate, abrupt and completely clear.  I remember watching the televised "Victoires de La Musique Classique" awards show in 1998, during which they read the names of the composers and other musicians who had died that year.  Antoine wasn't mentioned.  This shocked me, but he didn't have only friends in the Music World and it would seem that his passing and the act of throwing his music into the trash-bin of history was something that was perhaps convenient for certain people. 

That Fall, I met Niemann for coffee.  We met at a small café near Châtelet.  I hadn't seen him since the funeral.  We were two, very different people and the only real connection we had was Antoine.  I think that I was hoping that maybe he could explain certain parts of who Antoine was to me.  But I understood by his questions that he was as puzzled as I was.  I told him what I could, but I didn't have the answers he needed.  He couldn't answer my questions either.  And there we were with this huge hole of grief between us, with nothing to say.  I knew that we wouldn't become friends.  It just wasn't possible.  I've seen him four or five times since.  I wish him well.  I think that he was the person who was the most hurt by this whole business.  I hope that he has found a way of living with that.

Niemann gave me a  manuscript of a work for piano (not one of the neatly copied manuscripts which were the final product, but a working manuscript with things crossed out, modifications etc) and a black sac.  In it were Antoine's decorations, which he had wanted me to have  When I got the sac home, I took them out and in the bottom of the sac was Antoine's Prix de Rome medal.  It was the one thing that he had prized the most.  It sits on my piano now.

In November, 1998, we played the première of "Offertorium pour Chartres"  It was on a very dark night with mist rising among the spires of the Cathedral.  I have always loved Chartres, feeling a kind of telluric force coming out of those old stones.  There were two premières that night, "Troppi per Chartres" by Gian Paolo Chiti and Antoine's piece. I played with the Chartres Quartet.  The movements were all titled for aspects of Chartres:  Sculputral with it's huge monumental chordal passages in the string quartet and more melodic material in the saxophone.  La Porte des Mystères, which illustrates one of the doors leading into the Church.  The Central "Offertorium" movement which ended with a long unison song in the strings.  The "Temptation" movement altered highly structures histrionics with some beautiful choral writing. And the final "Tree of Jesse", based o the famous stained-glass window which traces the ancestors of Christ from an opening unison in the quartet which opens to a lyrical, yet violent outburst.  It is a gigantic, sprawling work in the image of the Cathedral itself. 

This is not easy music, even for musicians.  As with everything Antoine did, it is entirely without concessions and you have to take it at its own terms.    But the journey, for those who take the entire voyage, is well worth the trip.  I don't think that one can speak of '"success or failure" with a work like this  it simply is.  I'm not sure if we, the musicians completely understood the depths of this piece.  I don't know what the audience thought.  There was warm, but polite applause at the end of the concert.  But i'm not certain if that was more a memorial to Antoine himself rather than a reaction to the piece itself.   I believe a recording was made, but I've never heard it.

The next month, I found myself in another Cathedral.  This time Notre Dame in Paris.  Françoise was to play the complete "Altamira" for organ, a piece which describes the cave paintings in Spain.  This was a unique performance, since Françoise was the person who knew the work the best in the World (I believe that this is probably still the case today!).  And the Great Organ at Notre Dame, rebuilt by Jean-Thierry's father and then by his brother, was one of the few instruments in the World that could do this music justice.  For example, the piece requires that the pedals be split into two registrations and Notre Dame was one of a few organs where this was possible.  It's always been formally forbidden to record the organ at Notre Dame without the permission of the Titular organists.  But we knew that we would never have this kind of chance again, so we bent the rules a bit.  Jean-Thierry had run the Sunday Concert series and knew where the plug for the built-in mics was located.  We plugged our portable TASCAM into this and recorded the whole thing.  We knew that it could never be used, but we wanted to keep a trace of this work.  I still have this recording on CD.

And Jean-Thierry went to Françoise's right on the Great Tribune, helping with the registration.  I was on her left and turned the pages.  It felt like the right thing to do.  When the last final cluster with the  Great Organ with the Chamades roaring, I thought that I had never in my life heard anything so absolutely violent and yet so perfectly suited to the subject matter.  I do hope that someone decides to play the Concerto for organ and strings that Antoine wrote for Cochereau, the late Titular Organist of Notre Dame.  I would love to conduct this...

Without Antoine, the opera project fell through.  We tried to replace him with Joseph-François Kremer, but the organizers lost interest.  The project evaporated, leaving only Pierre Dubranquez's libretto, which I have on my work desk.  It's something that I need to write.

We took Joseph-François with us to Baku, with Françoise and myself.  I think that Antoine, with his obsession with fire in his titles would have felt right at home in the "Land of Fire".  We spoke of him often.  During the final concert at the German Church there, Françoise and I played "Psalmodies" for Saxophone and Organ, our Warhouse.  We were there in late March, during Novruz, the Kurdish New Year Festival.  During this time, people light bonfires and try to jump over them three times for good luck.  So, what happened next was completely surprising, but it also made some sort of sense.  When we began the piece, a fire was lit right outside the Church's windows   As the piece unfolded, the fire burned brightly outside the windows....and as the echo of the piece's final violent outburst disappeared in the shadows of the Apse, the fire went out.  This is the recording that you can hear on the recording that I put out a few weeks ago.  The organ isn't a great instrument by any means, but I think that some of that atmosphere is present. 

And then, Life took it's course.  There is a huge amount of work to be done in French music, work which only a crazy person such as myself would think of doing, because there is no money really to be made.  Well, maybe if you have a lot of it....but promoting New Music is a thankless task and the composers who are alive and need to eat are competing for those same concerts with people who are no longer around to insist on their due.  So, my attention was drawn elsewhere:  Tailleferre, including a year spent reconstructing her Opera "Il était un Petit Navire", Thérèse Brenet, Richard Faith, my younger composers (Carson Cooman, Philip Goddard, David Soomons)....not to mention my own music, finally having decided to stop telling myself stories about not being able to write music and start doing what I had always knew that I should be doing.  I did some of the Monodies in Concert, but it didn't have the same urgency. And quite frankly, it hurt to go to the place where I needed to go to play this music.  I did it less and less.

Before you know it, years pass and you're light years away.  I kept the Prix de Rome medal on my piano.  I kept the letter with my important papers.  I didn't think too much about Antoine, because it was still an open wound.

And then one day I got an email...

La Mystère Tisné VIII

So, Antoine had died.  So we had to arrange the funeral.  Niemann asked me to come back to Paris to perform.  There was the Soprano Soloist for the "Chant des yeux".   I remember her telling me that she thought that she had made Antoine sick one evening when she invited him to her home for some homecooking from the South-West, where both she and Antoine were from.  I assured her that this definitely wasn't the case.   There was Françoise Lévechin.  And I was to play the second Monodie for A Sacred Space.  

So, we played the ceremonie.  Since this was the beginning of August, there were very few mourners.  I remember Suzanne Giraud, who came up to the organ loft to thank the musicians afterwards  The actual buriel was in the Parisian cimetary in Pantin.  It was private and I don't even think that we were invited.  It didn't matter anyway, at this point. 

And after that, I did something that I've regretted since. There was another composer who was quite close to Tisné.  I was aware of that, but at the end of the ceremony at the Church, this composer said "we should start an association to promote the works of Antoine Tisné, to make sure that his works live. ". I must admit, I lost my composure at this point.  After having done just this for months, I couldn't accept that this person (who should have known better, really)  couldn't have understood that something should have been done  before; now now.   It was too late.  Antoine was dead and nothing could change that  So, no there was no "Friends of "Antoine Tisné" association.  This is not to say that there were no "friends" of Antoine Tisné,  It's just not one of us who were the real "friends" of Antoine Tisné had the heart to do what "the friends of X" usually do, which is to take control of the Estate.  We couldn't do this.  Which is not to say that we bad nothing to say.  I'd seen this too many times before not to be so stupid as to be part of this kind of thing.  And I know that Antoine wouldn't have wanted us to do that anyway, independent as he was.

It was clear quite that I would not be able to find the train station, without help.  So Françoise drove me.  I don't know what I would have done otherwise.  I think that I would still be looking for the station, blind with pain.  Somehow  I got on the train to Chateauroux and back to Mouton.  I don't remember exactly how, but somehow the rest of the Summer went by without event. 

La Mystère Tisné VII

So, we were working on this opera about Franz Liszt, on his last night at the Altenburg.  Liszt is all packed and ready to leave...but he is visited (or imagines that he is visited by....) his friend Hector Berlioz.  Berlioz, at the time that Liszt left the Altenburg, thought himself a middle-aged failure.  Everything that he had done, to that point, had been a complete fiasco.  I include the saxophone in that lot, which, inspite of being the most romantic of all instruments, was a complete failure because intrigues against its inventor.  I take full responsibility for the subject matter here:  I've always been obsessed with the near-failures.  I mean, the guys who play jazz saxophone have figured it out enough to get the Girl in the end...but we "classical saxophone" nerds:  we're just complete freaks of nature.  We should not exist, and yet we do.  So, you get Liszt being driven out by the bourgois of Weimar, and Berlioz who is completely washed up in his fifties...and with that loser instrument, the saxophone, in the pit.  I mean, it's a "loser" orgasm right there?

That was my take on all of this:  but not Antoine's.  Antoine loved Liszt. I never once heard him play the piano.  But he told me that he played some Liszt every morning.  And he really, really wanted to write ths piece.  Especially since he had come to know the brilliant libretto of Pierre Dubranquez.   The roles of Liszt and Berlioz were spoken. but the eternal trio of Marguerite, Faust and Mephistopheles were sung.   He wanted to write this piece.  Not only that, he needed to write this piece, because it was an expression of returning to a tradition:  of music that was simply about what he really wanted to express, at the core of his being.  Of finally not worrying about what people were going to think and writing the music he wanted to write.

And at the same time, here I was copying "Offertorum pour Chartres".   We had to start rehearsals in the Spring of 1998, because of everyone's schedules.  And so here I was trying to get this work copied for performance.  And, with Finale 2000, it was just wasn't an easy task.  Because with every note, there was both a dynamic and an articulation.  Yet, it was quite clear to me that this wasn't what was really going on musically  "Offertorium pour Chartres" was a five-movement portrait of Chartres Cathedral.  But down at the micro level, I had to say that getting this work into publishable shape was not a great pleasure.  When you copy the work of another composer, you have to enter the emotional and intellectual space of that person....and you know exactly is going on.  And with our phone calls several times a day, I almost daily pointed out the contradictions between the musical notation and the gestures indicated in the music itself.  I know that Antoine was aware of this, because he told me so.  He apoligized for it, saying that it was too late for him to do otherwise.  I told him that it wasn't so important, since nobody could really follow all of the indications marked in his scores.  I couldn't fault him, since I had seen this before, in the works of both Clostre and Brenet.  Okay, there is such a thing as precise notation..and then there is what we shall call "too much information".  And these composers who were from the Paris conservatory after WWII had been trained to completely control everything.  They couldn't help it.  If you follow what they have to say, there is indeed music contained within this thought.  But you have to REALLY work to get there.

And sometimes I had to call Antoine during the morning. I know that this was when he usually composed.  But, sometimes, and more and more frequently, when I called, he just wasn't there.  It wasn't just that he was in "composer" mode, it was that he was in another state completely.  He was writing something and there was nothing else.  Sometimes, he understood it was me.  Sometimes not and I called him later and it was fine.  But there was a definite panic.  Something had to be done before a certain time.  So, here I was, his publisher, and we were working on the materials for "Offertorium pour Chartres"  Rehearsals had to begin sooner, rather than later.  So, they did.

But sometimes when I called Antoine in the morning to ask about notes or something else, it just wasn't that he wasn't there: it was that he was so much there that there was nothing to be done.   I have never seen his papers, so I have no idea what what going on here;...But there was a point where he was in another place and no one could reach him.  Even I, I couldn't go there.   He was so wrapped up in the act of writing music.  I've wondered since if he was trying to write himself out of his health condition, as if by magic. 

And sometime during this same time, Antoine asked me for a rendez-vous to get an important new score  We meet at "Le Cavalier Bleu" across from the Centre Pompidou.  The score is a new multi-movement piece for "beginning pianists".  It's not true.  It is not a Suite for beginning pianists.  It is a piece that seeks to not embarrass people who know how to play the piano, but which seeks to express Antoine's love for the piano itself.  The piece is called "Les Contes de le Lune Bleue".  it is supposedly a "pedagogical work".  Antoine told me this, but I did not believe him.  I understand that he was hiding behind this term of "teaching" piece to do what he really wants to do.  Yes, they are not difficult to play.  None of these pieces are more difficult than  the Sonatas of Mozart and Haydn.  That's beside the point.  This is about an intersection of writing useful music and enjoying playing the piano!

And one day around the end of February, Antoine and I had a meeting to work on the opera.  I am to arrive at 16h30 at Chatelet. And I arrive at 16h30 on the dot.  To find Antoine completely red and beside himself with anger.  "You were supposed to be here an hour before!"  I showed him my diary with the time marked in red and said "after all of the time that we've worked together, do you think that I would just leave you here for an hour alone like that?".  After calming him down, we had our meeting and I got him back on the metro, or so I  thought.

The next morning, the telephone rang: "Hello, this is Antoine Tisné.  I'm in the hospital.  You won't believe it, but I fell asleep in the metro.  AND the policeman who found me thought that I was DRUNK!".  So, we sidestep aside the whole experience....but what does Antoine really want?  He wants five notebooks similar to those used by children for solfège classes.  And he wants them today, so I get dressed and go buy these kinds of notebooks.

So, here we were in March, Antoine had gotten out of the hospital  Adn we were due to begin the first rehearsals for "Offertorium"....and here I had copied this incredibly complex score....and Antoine wasn't interested in that;  he was only interested in the gestures and characterizations  of the music itself.  And so we had our rehearsal, in a conservatory somewhere in the southern suburbs of Paris.  Antoine needed to hear this piece.  And here we had this incredibly complex score....and the composer said NOT ONE WORD about the notes nor about the rhythms.    It wasn't that he didn't care: he did.  But all of that was beside the point.  There was the gestures that needed to be made;  That's all he wanted.  The rest:  well, let the chips fall where they may. 


From March to May, there was a series of hospitals.  Jean-Thierry went sometimes without me.  I went without him. In Antoine's hospital room, I met people who I had never seen before including the painter Nicole Proop  who had painted the painting which inspired "De la Nuit à L'Aurore.".  I quite liked her....because it was clear that she loved Antoine.  I'm sorry that we only met in this context.   At one point, Antoine was in a rest home.  It was clear that this was quite serious...yet, nobody talked about death or anything like that.  Antoine was charmed by the ladies who he met at tea.  He wore his brown suit and his blue tie. And we all had coffee at his rest home.

And finally he got better. Better enough to get back to composing. And so I met him at his clinic in the 14th.  He gave me a sheet of music paper  And on this sheet of paper was a series of three duos, for flutes, for trumpets and for violins.  Plus a piece for solo flute  The Five pieces in medieval modes. Antoine gave me those pieces in his pajamas, in a hospital bed.  They are in an extremely simple style, deceptively simple.  But they are the kind of concentrated focused writing that only older composers can do.  When Thérèse Brenet gave me "A Thing of Beauty...", I saw this kind of barren, yet focued writing.  Was it the influence of late Liszt that allowed Antoine to get to this place?  Was it a distilled concentration of style by giong back to simple textures after writing so much highly structured music?  I like the second hypothesis the best, myself.  These short, simple pieces are inhibited by a kind of luminous energy which is very difficult to generate even by the most talented of composers.

Later, we worked on corrections for other pieces.   One day, we were working on correction on the Seven "Petites preludes" for organ. And we got to the end of the last prelude   There was a B natural in the pedal.  And there was a C major chord in both hands.   And Antoine looked at me.  And he said "What would it change if this B natural became a C?".  And I said "that's not for me to decide.  but if that 's what you want, so be it"    So, we changed that. 

So, here we were.  I copied things as fast as I could.  And then we did corrections.  In the meantime, there was the "time of Cherries" in France.  At the beginning of May, 1998, Antoine asked me to bring him cherries.  I watched him eat them.  We had never talked about death.  It wasn't even a possibility, even though I knew that this was the final outcome.  It was the unspoken truth between us. 

When I couldn't see Antoine, Jean-Thierry went to visit him....and he has another set of secrets.  It is  not  for me to reveal these. 

All I  can say is that at the end of May of 1998, Antoine could not keep up appearances  And so one week, in the middle of a visit, in which we were trying to pretend that it was completely normal business, he griped my hand.  He looked at me as no one has ever looked at me, before or since, and he said "You are an angel who has been sent to save me".  He fixed me in the eye and said "you will come back tomorrow at 4 o' clock.  You will NOT be late".  And I said that I would.

So, the next day, at EXACTLY the hour which Antoine had given me, the elevator doors opened.   And not only only here I was, but here was Antoine, not in his pajamas but in his gray suit, with his blue tie.  With his hair slicked back perfectly.  And he lead me not back to his hospital room, but to another room next door.  In this room, there were two chairs and a table.  On the table was a piece of paper and an envelope.  And nothing else  Antoine said "I have a mission of confidence to give you" and he asked me to sit in one of the chairs   He signed the letter and asked me to read it.  I did....and then I looked at him with a questioning gaze.  He told me that I should keep this letter...that at some point people would read it and would understand the meaning.  I said that I would.  He put the letter in the envelope and handed it to me.  He lead me back to the elevator.  We shook hands.  The elevator doors closed.  My last view of Antoine was upright in a suit, completely as I had always known him  He did this for me....and I know what it cost him.  But this is how he choose to say goodbye, on his terms.

I never saw him again.

I called Niemann over the remaining weeks, giving him news to pass onto Antoine.   Until the date when we were supposed to go to Poitiers to record "Musiques Pour Un Espaces Sacré".  And so I called and Niemann told me that Antoine had said "it's about time!  At last they've gotten to that".  So, there was nothing more for me to do.  Just to wait until the end.  So, here we were in Poitiers;  set to record the first recording on the organ that Jean-Thierry's brother had restored......and finally, it couldn't be done, for technical reasons.....So we all went back to Jean-Thierry's sister's house, Mouton, tired and depressed that this project was not going to work out....and there was André, Jean-Thierry's brother-in-law, who had a message for me....Antoine had died that day 

That night, in the West wing of the house, there was a huge thunderstorm. As I lay aware watching the lightning and hearing the wind blow through the open windows, I wondered if this had anything to do with Antoine's death. 

La Mystère Tisné VI

There are fish that live at the bottom of the ocean.  These fish live under so much pressure that they explode if you bring them to the surface of the Earth. In many respects,  Antoine was like one of these fish.   I wonder if I wasn't responsible for this state, for this liberation which lead to release...but also to death. Antoine, with his brown suit and his tie, was completely uptight.  And Jean-Thierry and I, we tried to provide a space in which Antoine could feel comfortable.  We always had a great variety of people at our table:  singers, musicians, composers, others...The point was: everyone could be who they were, without judgement.  Without any sort of analysis after the fact.

I think that Antoine understood that he didn't need to prove anything to us.  And yet, I have nothing to say about his "personal life".  Okay, there was the Russian pianist who wanted to become "Madame Tisné".  And any number of other stories.   But, even though Antoine knew that he had nothing to hide from either me or Jean-Thierry, there is nothing to say here.   I believe that Antoine never had a physical relationship in his entire life.  This is not to say that he didn't want to have a physical relationship.  But, I'm convinced that he couldn't.  Maybe it was because he had TB when he was young.  Maybe it was for other reasons.  I don't know.  All that I know that is that while he was alive, I don't think that this kind of relationship was possible.  Maybe I'm wrong.  But I believe that this is true.

During 1997, Antoine did a huge favor to me.   Jean Françaix had died.  Françaix was a musical grandfather to me.  Françaix was not only someone who explained to me what music was, he was someone who explained to me who I was as a musician.   And when he died, it left a huge hole in my life, one which has never really ever been filled.  I still mourn him, and I still have work that I have to do for him, which includes releasing to the World the recording of "L'Horloge de Flore" we made together in 1992, the only time Françaix ever conducted this work.  I still can't really talk about him, although I do frequently.  My work with him was a great pleasure from beginning to end.  And during our numerous phone conversations, I told him about my work with Tisné.   

I had managed to introduce Françaix and Antoine at a reception organized by "Musiques Nouvelles en Liberté" sometime around 1995;  Both of them were reluctant to talk, thinking that the other composer was against their way of thinking.  I convinced both of them that they needed to talk, to at least shake hands, as a symbolic way of putting aside this "tonal verses atonal" feud that had be going on too long.  Their music wasn't fundamentally THAT different.  They both know Madeleine Milhaud very  well and they had the same sort of dry French wit.  They humored me and went along with it, probably just to be nice.  They actually seemed to like each other.  I spoke of Tisné to Français and of Françaix to Tisné after that.  I felt as if I had done something to heal this very profound rift.  I might have been humoring myself, but my friends played along.  So, when Françaix died, Tisné went to his funeral and stood between Jean-Thierry and I.  He knew Françaix's daughter Claude quite well and he asked me to pass on his condolences to her.  I was very grateful that he did this for me.

So, as 1998 started, it looked like we were going towards a very good year:  The première of "Offertorium pour Chartres" was scheduled for November-in Chartres Cathedral itself!-- and the rehearsals were to start in April.  In late July, Françoise and I were to go to Poitiers to record "Musiques pour des Espaces Sacrés" for a friend who was a producer with Sony records.  In the Spring of 1999 the four of us (Jean-Thierry, Françoise, Antoine and I) were to go to Azerbaijan for a masterclass and concerts organized by the French Embassy there.  And then in the Summer of 1999, "La Nuit de L'Altenburg" was to be produced in Weimar as part of the European Cultural  Capital project there.  We thought that we were going in exactly the right direction. 

1998 was also the beginning of Antoine's long-awaited retirement.  Finally he was going to be able to just compose and not have to waste time with administrative work or inspecting conservatory staff.  So, in January of 1998, we had to lot of celebrate and decided to mark the occasion.  Jean-Thierry and I met Antoine for lunch:  not on the left bank but near Les Halles, in OUR territory.  We didn't know exactly where we were going to eat, but we were going to walk around the Marais and choose a place.  Although Antoine had worked in this area for years, he had never actually visited there, only gone to his office and back.  So, the idea was to just explore and stop when we found something interesting.   For those of you who appreciate this word, we were flaneurs before it became so stylish.

We met Antoine in front of the BHV and I immediately saw that something was seriously wrong.  He was completely yellow and looked very drawn.  I asked him if he felt okay.  And he said that I shouldn't talk about it, that I was scaring him, not to mention it;  So, we pretended as if nothing was the matter.  We happened to walk past the Banana Café, a famous gay nightclub which features Gogo boys.  I'm sure that Antoine had no idea what it was, but he suggested that we go there for lunch.  I told him that it wasn't really a lunch place, but we could go some night if he wanted.  I'm sorry that I never got the chance to take him back there.  He might have liked it...or maybe not.  But the Banana Café for Lunch became a kind of "Breakfast at Tiffany's" joke in our household.  Antoine was just so naive about certain things.  In many respects, he was still the young man from Lourdes who was venturing for the first time in the Capital. 

Finally we settled into a nice restaurant and talked about the future:  what he was writing, what things were happening, our mutual friends and concerts that were going on, the progress on the libretto for the new opera.  It was a bright, joyous moment, especially since there was no talk about running back to the office or having to go inspect somebody.  As we walked him back to his metro at Chatelet, he stopped and looked at Jean-Thierry and myself and told us that we were the sons that he had never had;  As someone else who was alone in the World and as someone who will never have a son, I understood what he was saying.  This wasn't just something he said without thinking about it:  it had a specific sense, as did everything he did. 

I remembered my teacher, the great French soprano Renée Mazella who told me to always look for the flame that was passed from generation to generation.  She said that I would be given information to pass on and that I shouldn't take this lightly.  When you're 25, you don't know what this means.  When you're 35 you think that you understand what this means, but you really don't.  This information comes at a price.  You pay with your Soul and part of you never recovers.  But the part that receives and transmits the information is made stronger by the mission conferred by the transmission.  But you have to be prepared to look within the depths of who you are at the core; There is no way around this.  And if you have any flaws, these will come to the surface.  We all have flaws.  And we don't really understand what this means until we go through it.

That day, Antoine decided to give part of his message to me and  another part to Jean-Thierry.   Everything he did after this day was geared towards giving us information to pass on:  about his work, about his view of the World as a musician.....and because there was nothing else in his life, of what his Life meant.

For he was dying.  I think that he already knew this;  And he wanted to die on his own terms, independantly without having to ask for help for others;  And there was something else, something hidden that he didn't want to mix with our own relationship.  I think that he wanted to enjoy this new-found freedom to be free to think, to compose and to say whatever the Hell he wanted to say.   He liked having the freedom to finally, after all of those years of being a suit-wearing functionary to say "Fuck you.  I am not a beginner and I do not need you";   And through our work together, I think that he thought that this was possible.  At the beginning of 1998, it certainly seemed that way. 

And so we made an appointment to continue work on the opera.  And so, Life went on.

La Mystère Tisné V

So, here we were:  in front of this huge artistic success...but which translated into exactly nothing in France.  We couldn't even get ten people to attend our concert in Paris.  I mean, it's about time to throw in the towel, right? 

And it was even worse, because....well, Antoine had burned a lot of bridges over the years.  He had been in an exclusive publishing relationship with Billaudot since he won his Prix de Rome.  It was just that they decided hat they weren't going to publish any more music because....well  Antoine hadn't played the game according to their rules.  So, that was over.  As it happened, I had just produced a recording of two-piano music by Germaine Tailleferre and had made the rounds to all the major houses in Paris;  I had a recording which was being released in the US....and I had corrected and copied Finale files which were ready to go.  I mean, this looks like money on the floor, ready to be picked up, right?  No dice.  Everybody said "no".  All of the major houses passed on this.  So here I was with this stock of music by Antoine which I knew was important....and also this stock of music by Tailleferre that I knew was important.....and nobody would touch it.  So, what to do?

So, what I decided to do was to take the bull by the horns and just start publishing these scores.  I had NO IDEA what this meant at the time I decided to do this.  It's just this:  I had no other choice.  There were no other options, so I had to invent a solution.  So I did;  Luckily, there were people like Ralph Jackson at the other end who understand that something was going on (exactly what, I'm not sure that even I understood, but he seemed to sense that this had to happen.  I would like to thank him for that.) 

So, suddenly, I had another hat to wear:  Music Publisher.  And we had work to do, because the Chartres String quartet had commissioned a work to perform with me:  "Offertorium de Chartres".  And my own saxophone quartet had also commissioned a work for Saxophone Quartet based on the Labyrinth of Amiens Cathedral, Labyrithus Sonoris.  So I had to get these scores out.  Plus the scores which were part of the "Musiques pour des Espaces Sacrés"  So, my relationship with Antoine changed.  Suddenly, we were much more involved with the whole compositional process.   He talked to me about intimate details in the music, about what it meant and about why it had to look certain ways.  Plus, we were working on new projects:  projects which were to take him in a new direction.  The project about Liszt was taking shape.  Jean-Thierry had asked a friend, Pierre Dubranquez, to write the Libretto. Pierre worked at the revue Poésie which was under the tutelage of the great poet Philippe Solars.  I explained my concept to Pierre and he had written an entire libretto.  Jean-Marie Lejude, with whom I had worked on the staging of Jeffrey Stolet's Frankenstein, was to do the staging;  The on stage orchestra was to be saxophone, violin, cello and piano.  Antoine was very excited about this project, but I don't know if any part of it was ever actually written.  Our meetings were full of excitement talking about this.

Our friends from Erfurt came for a visit.  I almost died in the "Port Royal" bomb explosion, as we saw the train that exploded go past on the platform.  Somehow, I made it back home that evening.  We had planned a party that night for our German friends and had invited our clan of musicians in Paris.  We had a three-room apartment in the 20th, but there were about fifty people crammed in 40 square meters.  Antoine was quite happy, as he was the center of attention, with a complete row of adoring female fans who wanted to hear about his music.  As we got him into a taxi that night, he said that no one had ever organized a party for him.  I think that he was happy that night. I certainly hope that was the case.

Antoine started coming over for dinner, with other friends.  We generally had an "open house" kind of atmosphere at our place and in any given evening, we would have people over for dinner.  Antoine came over about once a week.  We would make pasta or some sort of mixed dish.  There was always plenty of wine and a nice dessert.  One night, we were there with another friend and Antoine let his tie go down a bit.  He suddenly told us "You know what I like more than anything?  I like to go to the movies.  Not for the films, but for the MUSIC.  I love film music and I really wish that I could write things like that. I love anything by John Williams and I LOVED the music to Titanic!".  So, we all said "why not?  Why don't you write that?".  And he said "for me, it's too late.  I've got too many reflexes I can't let go of yet.....". 

Antoine had written an Oratorio on a Radio France commission years before.  It was called "Le Chant des Yeux", and it was scored for soprano solo, mixed chorus and orchestra.  The text was by David Niemann.  It was an important work for Antoine and he had to fight to get it done.  As chance would have it, I had a meeting to talk about the Weimar project just after he meet with Claude Samuel, the former head of Radio France.  He was still red with anger...but he had gotten what he wanted.

Antoine had done the unthinkable:  he had told off the head of Radio France in no uncertain terms.  I couldn't fault him because years before, I had told the same person that I would not play a concert if Gian Paolo Chiti's Tenor Saxophone Concertino wasn't programmed.  But Antoine had gone a step further:  yes, he had a contract.  Yes, they did have to do his piece.  But never again would they be required to program any of his music.  He went that far, and then some.  Years later, when somebody asked Samuel to moderate a panel discussion, he had the good grace to decline.  I think that his ears were probably still ringing from what Antoine had told him that day.

I think that Antoine already knew then that he was dying.  And I think that he wanted to hear this piece.  And so he was burning all of his bridges, once and for all  One last burst of glory before leaving this planet.  I can't say that I blame him. 

This was far from my mind when I went to the concert at the Grand Auditorium of Radio France.  There was some sort of Concerto for Viola which opened the concert.  The viola didn't play much.  And what the viola played, it' didn't really work.  Instruments have to sound.  And acoustics work in certain ways.  There is getting around this.  This piece was warmly received. 

And then there was Antoine's work:  the soprano soloist was a woman from the South-east of France, from the same region as Antoine.  The orchestration was opulent and quite clever---I remember especially the two mallet percussion players on each side of the stage giving the work a wash of color.   And towards the end, there was a passage in which I thought "well, the raiders have just found the lost arc".   It was beautiful.  It was what Antoine wanted to do.  I was so proud that he would let that out.

At the end, moderate applause.  And booing.  I saw Antoine briefly afterwards.  He didn't care.  He had heard his piece.  He know what it was.  And that was enough.

La Mystère Tisné IV

So it was obvious that nothing was going to happen in France.  In a way, this was important information for me, as through this experience and other similar experiences, I figured out that the old adage about "Nobody is a prophet in their own land" was at work here.  French composers usually only have success while they are alive to be able to keep the business rolling in, as the careers of Auber and Scribe point out:  yes, they have their streets named for them.  Yes, they were hotshot figures in the musical life of their time.  But they are almost forgotten today.  There is only one solution for a French composer to really establish themselves.  And this is to get their music out of France and establish a presence somewhere else.  I've seen this over and over again.  Milhaud, Poulenc, Messiaen, Dutilleux.  Tailleferre knew this, but her first marriage with an American quickly soured her on the idea of actually living in the States.  But the few recordings which have been produced in the USA (and elsewhere) have done far more to establish her as a composer than nearly everything else done here in France, regardless of who did it and where it was done.

Luckily for me, I had a longstanding relationship with an cultural center in Erfurt, Germany.  One day, i received a phone call out of the blue asking about whether my American Music Ensemble would be able to perform for the European Cultural Center in Erfurt.  A few phone calls later and a letter of engagement, I was on a train with my colleagues to Eastern Germany, only several years after the Berlin Wall had come down.  European Money was flowing into this part of the World and they wanted to create new experiences for the people who had lived outside of the West for so long.  For nearly ten years, I did projects for this Center:  for both the American side of the equation...but also for French composers.  We did the version for saxophone and Cello Octet of Françaix's Danses Exotiques here for the first time (I wasn't terribly happy with it, but Françaix said it could work if the cellists played the notes on the page....).  We did pieces by Gloria Coates, by Libby Larsen, by Steve Reich, by Sidney Hodkinson....and by Antoine Tisné.  One year, there was a French cultural festival.  My friends in Erfurt invited me come perform our double bill of Françaix's L'Apostrophe and my arrangement (my apologies to Maestro Keck!) of Offenbach's La Bonne D'Enfant, both with my saxophone quartet and a group of singers.  I also gave masterclasses about French music for wind players with my pianist....and the people in Erfurt specifically asked that Antoine come for a concert of his music.  I played the version of Ombres de Feu, a duo for Soprano and Baritone Saxophone and the three monodies.  I think that I played fifteen concerts in ten days.  It was madness...but terrific fun!

Antoine arrived at the Erfurt station.  We were all staying in a Protestant Convent, which was quite beautiful.  I remember his beret, his brown suit and his battered old suitcase  which I carried while I showed him the Town, as we walked to the Convent.   I don't remember exactly what we talked about, the weather, his trip, the things I liked about Erfurt (the wurst stand in front of the station, the pickled fish sandwiches on the main street, the best places to go for coffee....)...I had to run off to do another masterclass or something like that.  We met later for dinner and Antoine loved the convent.  He loved the Town which was old, very mysterious and full of churches (including Mesiter Eckhard's ruined church, when Antoine visited the first day).  He was in his element. 

That evening we talked about all sorts of things, including what his music was really about.  Antoine said that he was a Free Mason, but not of the Atheistic variety.  He said that there were two kinds and that he was part of the masons who believed in God.  Not being a Mason myself, I just assumed that he must be referring to one or another of the lodges in France.  What he did say was that his music had a specific function.  It existed to perform a specific role.  And part of that role was being in this part of the World.  I must confess that I didn't quite understand, but I have to admit that he wasn't being completely clear either.  What was clear was that there was some sort of mysterious force involved and that it involved this Town, somehow.  I've dealt with enough composers to know that sometimes you just have to wait to figure these things out.  Plus....well, we were playing his music here tomorrow, so surely he'd say something about this during or afterwards....

So, we did the concert and the organizers were extremely pleased.  They were so pleased that they asked us for another project on the spot.  And so Jean-Thierry, Antoine and I had a planning session the next morning.  And we came up with the concept of "Music for Sacred Spaces".  Jean-Thierry, being the son of the great French Organ builder Robert Boisseau, knew an awful lot about acoustics and how organs interact with them.  And Erfurt was full of Churches:  why, in the center of town, the Catholic and the Protestant Cathedrals were placed side by side.  So, "Music for Sacred Spaces" was not planned as a concert, but as an organized ritual.  On three separate days, we would give three concerts of the same program of music:  The Monodies, Psalmodies for saxophone and organ and Alta Mira for organ.  The crowd would follow us holding candles and participate in the event.  People could move around as they wished.  They could leave or join as they wished.  It was designed to be a completely free event (free in terms of both not involving admission, but also not involving any constrictions on the part of the audience:  if you didn't like it, you could leave at any time and it would be fine. If you were late, that wasn't a problem either....)  The organizers loved the project, and so it was programmed just a few months later.

The only problem was that i didn't have an organist with whom I worked on a regular basis, but after contacting a number of people, Françoise Lévéchin proved to be the ideal choice.  I met her at her home near Paris:  cats, a grand piano, a delicious box of chocolates....We understood each other immediately.  The rehearsals at Saint Roch was a great joy, as I had never been so close to such a great instrument:  the Cavaillé-Coll in Saint Roch is an early instrument, but one that is extremely touching.  I always have the sound of this organ in my ear whenever I write for that instrument.  And these were rehearsals which required almost no discussion.  Françoise understood this music and my playing instantly.  It all just clicked.

So, we finally all got back on the train to Erfurt and there we were back at the Protestant Convent.  Antoine loved this place and the small streets around this part of the town.  We had one day of rehearsals, which proved to be a bit of an ordeal because the Catholic bishop had decided at the last minute that the saxophone was the instrument of the devil (which instantly made me think of Françaix putting the saxophone in the "Orchestre Inférnale" in his monumental "Apocolypse"...."You'll have more fun there anyway", he told me)...So finally we only had access to the Protestant Churches.  But one of the employees at the European Cultural Center fixed all of this business with one of the gentlemen who worked with the Protestant churches...and I believe that they even got married as a result of all of this.  This pastor even wrote a poem about this project later which I have kept.  But finally all of the details were ironed out. 

We did the first stage of the three days on Friday night.  A large crowd followed us around the City, carrying candles, finally finishing in the Protestant Cathedral.  It was very strange, because no one spoke.  No one applauded until the very end.  Everyone was extremely concentrated on the act of experiencing the same music played in three different places.  It was about being in the space....not about the notes (Antoine never once, in all of the years that I worked with him, said ONE word about notes). It was magical.  I've never done anything similar, before or since.

Antoine had asked the organizers for one thing:  he wanted to make a trip to Weimar on Saturday.  He wanted to visit Buchenwald.  And he wanted to visit the Altenburg, the home of Franz Liszt.  They gave us a car to make the trip.  Jean-Thierry drove. We went first to Buchenwald.  I'll never forget the weird shadows and the distorted mishapped form of the trees on the way to the former Concentration Camp.  It was as if Nature had taken on the form of what happened there many years ago.  We arrived at the entrance of the camp and the four of us went in together. The first room was the "examination area".  Françoise and Jean-Thierry took a look at the sinks in every corner and then at the eye chart.  They didn't need to see anything else.  They left to be sick or cry in the parking lot. 

Antoine and I continued the visit.  We walked on the gravel.  Actually not much was left to see, as it had all been destroyed when the Russians came through....but we talked.  We talked about his music.  We talked about this project and what it meant.  And Antoine told me that his entire catalog was meant to be a sort of exorcism:  a way of purifying the World.  For him, this visit was the central axis of the project (3 x 3 = 9 + 1 = 10 ---is it any wonder that I now have no patience for people who use numbers to do magic???)   And he thought that this project was a sign sent to prove that he was doing the right thing.  That his work would take root.  That it would have meaning.

After finding Jean-Thierry and Françoise in the parking lot, who both looked a bit green, we went onto the Altenburg.  Everyone joked about Hummel's house next door, with the peeling paint and the broken windows (I'm told that it's been fixed up since...).  Antoine had been there years before, part of a French Cultural exchange with East Germany.  He signed the guest book, wrote a musical theme....and then paged back to his earlier entry and found that he'd written almost the same thing. We all felt a presence in this house, but a positive one, in contrast to Buchenwald.  Liszt had, after all, been chased from Weimar by the same people who, years later, denied knowing that anything was going on in the forest just above the town.  Seed were planted....and after the project was over, when the organizers asked us for a work for Weimar, an idea was built:  It is Liszt's last night at the Altenburg.  His friend Berlioz comes to visit...and the ghosts of Marguerite, Faust and Mephistopheles come to life.   This idea was born on this same day. 

The rest of the project was magical.  It was the most unconcert-like concert experience that I have ever had.  I think that I have never done anything (except for maybe this orchestral CD for Thérèse Brenet) in which I have known that we had done what we set out to do.  It was, as Duras would say "an evidence". 

So when we all went back to Paris, we decided that we needed to do the program again.  Saint Roch was there and felt like home.  So we did it there.  Before the concert, I spent the entire week before going to various concert halls handing out flyers, including one event which specifically aimed at saxophonists.  When the concert finally happened, we had seven people in the audience:  Antoine, Jean-Thierry, his brother-in-law Georges, Jean-Louis Florentz (Françoise had put a piece by him on the program), his wife and a friend of theirs...and Jean Leduc.  Jean Leduc was quite kind, complimenting me on my performance.  Jean-Louis Florentz (may he rest in peace) much less so, as his piece could not be done on the organ at Saint Roch with his registration...So, Paris just wasn't digging this stuff.  It just wasn't happening.

Antoine was disappointed...but we had the Liszt project.  Plus there was the Chartres String quartet that wanted a piece to play with me. So....the work continues...ever onwards.  Or so we thought...

La Mystère Tisné III

So finally our CD came out.  i think that Antoine thought that it would win a Grand Prix de Disque.  I kind of thought that it might (being the eternal optimist that all Yanks are....), but no dice   I don't remember who won that year, but it wasn't us.   The CD did absolutely nothing.  Yes, we got reviewed in "Le Monde de la Musique".  I think that we got seven stars. out of ten.  Or maybe it was three stars out of five.  They said that they liked the performance by L'Itinéraire....which was interesting because they weren't on the recording.  Guilaubez had included another piece already recorded by the Atélier Musicale de la Ville D'Avray, directed by Jean-Louis Pétit, his "artistic advisor".   In any case, what I didn't know is that the recording wasn't really intended to be sold.  It was intended to be used to collect the various funds available...but neither sales nor promotion were really part of the picture.  The recording company no longer exists and, as far as I know, no one controls the catalog.  Even if they did, they have no contract with me, so they do not control my performances.  The recording only exists because I allow its existence, which is why I've simply put my performances up on Youtube.  

So, dear reader, you must be asking yourself by now exactly what the problem is here.  Because there is obviously a problem.  We're doing all of the right things and this is all going nowhere.  What's going on?

Well, part of the problem was me.  I was, quite simply, not prepared for the work that was on my path.  Yes, I was a very good saxophonist (I would like to think, in spite of what remains of my time at the Paris Conservatory, that I demonstrate that I have a personality and that I do something unique with these works....at least, I hope so.)  But here I was, suddenly projected into the role of an executive producer, negotiating the contracts with the orchestra, music publisher, since I provided the materials for "Ombres de Feu", one of the first projects I did on Finale and also negotiating the various  grants from the Arts agencies in France.  I wasn't equipped to do this, but I suppose I must have figured it out.  This is not to say that I didn't completely screw up other projects along the way;  It's surprising that I didn't run into problems because I went way out on a limb several times.


Most of this was because of what Jean-Thierry calls the "gentil petit Paul".  I was quite simply, too nice.  Especially to any women.  You could simply wrap me around your finger.  i didn't ask the right questions.  I let people get away with things because I didn't think that I had the right to challenge them.  I'm glad that I now have the courage to say "fuck you" when it's merited.  Because sometimes that's the only thing to say.   And finally, it's the only way to put things right.  I'm sorry, but I tried the other way and "fuck you" is sometimes the only thing to say.

The other problem was...Antoine, himself.  And in many ways, we were a mirror image of each other.  Antoine was born in Lourdes, as in "The Song of Bernadette".  And he was ashamed of that, for many reasons.  He didn't have a father.  He lived with his mother, his aunt and his cousin in what always seemed to be pretty desperate circumstances.  He managed to get out through the help of a "rich benefactor" who helped him get to the Conservatory of Tarbes, which he always said was his home.   Through the regional government, he managed to get help to go to Paris, but there was a sword above his head:  he had to win a "Prize de Rome".  So, he worked towards this.....and he did win a "Second Grand Prize de Rome".....when I told the blind man who directed the famous concert series in Paris "Le Triptych" that Antoine was a Grand Prix de Rome, he added the "Second" almost by reflex.  For the purposes of the people funding Antoine's education, it seemed enough.  However, during his studies, he somehow contracted tuberculosis and had to spend several years in a sanitarium, interrupting his studies.   I know nothing of why this happened, nor even if he knew why it happened, but the fact is that it marked him forever. 

So, here was Antoine in his brown or gray suit  You never saw Antoine outside of his suit and certainly NEVER without a tie.  It was his second skin.  It was only when he was really sick much later that I first saw him without a tie.   He was, like me, completely outside of the Parisian musical establishment.  And even if he went to dinner with the Messiaen's or with Madeleine Milhaud, he was still outside of that World.  It didn't matter how many commissions he got or who did his works, he was still Antoine Tisné from...."Tarbes"  And in a way, he was proud of that   He had a kind of "spiritual mission".   He dated this from one work, which was a pivot in his career, a work called "Célébration I" for orchestra which Michael Tilson Thomas directed around 1978 or so.  I have a cassette of this work.  Until this period, Tisné's work had been exclusively serial:  he had used this system to express a certain distance from his material.  I think that he needed this distance, because he couldn't face certain facts about his life.  I know this because I have had to come to grips with certain facets of my own life.  With Serial music, one does not have to claim an emotional response.  So, this pivot point with Célébration I was an important turning point in Tisné's life and works.  Before this point, his works had no direction.  After this, they suddenly had a purpose.

Antoine had a very close relationship with a poet, who he himself named "David Niemann"  (David No one, not the actual name of the person concerned), which dated to around this same time.  He had another name, but he was an orphan.  He became Antoine's adopted son. Many people have pretended that something else was going on, but I can state quite categorically that there was nothing other that a strict filial relationship.  Since Tisné wrote pieces which were based on text, the fact that Niemann was a poet was a point in which they could collaborate directly.  Indeed, I think that almost all of the music that Antoine wrote had Niemann's poetry as a basis.  It is only justice that Niemann is Tisné's heir, because without his poetry, the majority of Tisné's works would not exist.  I would also like to state quite strongly that there was nothing else in Antoine's life.  As far as I know, he had no mistress, he didn't have lovers.  His only love was Music.  There was nothing else, except in working with performers.  And in a way, this was a kind of love:  The performers were the vessels through which his music flowed.  And for me, this was a strong love: a paternal love....but a love none the less.  The work of a collaborative performer with a composer is an act of Love:  you become the composer during the moment of conception of the work.  It is another kind of Love, but it is an act of love. 

The problem with Antoine at the time I met him was that there is a time in the French system when a Prix  de Rome receives commissions and concerts....and then there is a time the Prix de Rome is expected to have established himself....usually around the age of 40 or so.  But Antoine had rebelled against this.  His exist from the Ministry of Culture was, by all reports, quite colorful, with no hope of returning.  I can still remember him saying "I am strongly independent".  And since that was my own device, we completely understood each other here.  We were both outside of the French musical system, but we were inside because of who we were and who we knew  So, we could work together.  And even if we didn't do what we set out to do, it meant that we could produce work.  And we did.  Our next project was to become "Music for Sacred Spaces", which Antoine told me was the culmination of his career.

La Mystère Tisné II

So, a few days later, a package arrived.  In it was the piano reduction and orchestral score for a piece for Alto saxophone and orchestra:  "Ombres de Feu".  The name of a Polish saxophonist was crossed out, and my own name added.  Enclosed with the music was a card from the office of the Inspector for Music of the City of Paris, Tisné's official post.  It was one of many cards that I would receive over the years, always with the same tight handwriting.  This card contained an invitation to lunch at La Coupole in Paris with the composer.  I figured that I was moving up in the World.

La Coupole was a Left-bank institution.  In the 1990s, it had seen better days, but it was the kind of place where you could invite future collaborators to lunch and not feel that you were out of place.  Antoine, with his "Young French Intellectual Prize" from the Sixties, had obviously been going here for a very long time.  And he was welcomed like a longtime client.  We always had a good table, near the terrace.  The food wasn't very good, actually quite ordinary.  Actually, if truth be told!  La Coupole was rather seedy:  with the Dancing in the afternoons, there were gigolos for the older ladies on the Terrace.  There was a great deal of gay cruising as well.  Antoine seemed oblivious to it all.  And really, La Coupole was the only place that he could receive people.  His small apartment on the rue de Cotentin did not process a dining area....and plus, La Coupole seemed to suit him.  It was his element.

Antoine always invited one person to lunch.  There were others who were part of this ritual:  the flutist Marc Zuilli, Dominique Kim the Ondiste, the Poliste Celliste Barbara....and I'm sure many others.  The point was, nobody else knew who Antoine was seeing.  You only had your time one on one.  It was only at the end of his life, when he was dying of cancer, that I started seeing colleagues in his hospital room.  But when you were his guest for lunch, you were the greatest musician in the World.  What was amazing in our own relationship is that is we realized that we were a great tagteam.   He could do things that I couldn't....but I could do things that he couldn't.  And so we decided there, over a confit de canard which was perhaps a bit overdone, to become partners in crime.

So, "Ombres de Feu"...It was easy to set up a performance with piano.  I don't remember exactly how, but something happened and I had a concert at the FNAC in La Defense.  And my regular pianist was free, so we played the première with piano.  Piece of cake, huh?

But the orchestral version proved to be a bit more challenging.  Although Antoine had been a Music Inspector at the French cultural ministry for years, he had left that post in anger because....well, because it was just too much to bear.  I don't blame him:  I couldn't have done that either.  He had, though his political connections, gotten the post of Inspector of Music for the City of Paris.  And he did a very good job, doing the work of two (mainly because his colleague didn't do anything...so Antoine did two jobs for years.....)  But since he didn't have the kind of post that require respect, French orchestras were not longer interested in his music.  When a French musician (such as Jacques Mauger, the brilliant Trombone Virtuoso) called to talk about doing a new piece, it could work out.  The "Amérloque de Service" that I was did not fit the bill.  In once instance, a music director of a prominent regional orchestra hung up on me.  I told Antoine about this during one of our lunches.  I told him what I thought:  that it took just as much work to produce a recording as it did to get a concert done.....We decided to focus on a recording.

The problem was that I didn't completely understand at that point how music publishing worked...nor did I understand how recorded music worked.  This was another World, where some people were businessmen and others were artists.  I was (supposedly) an artist...so I didn't think that I could work as a businessman.  So I made some very stupid mistakes.

I had been to a concert with Laurent Petitgérard's orchestra where a work by Antoine had been premièred "Les Voiles de la Nuit".  The work was published by Eschig, which was directed (at the time) by the very competent Gérard Hugon.  I had a meeting with M. Hugon and spoke of my project.  I wanted to record Ombres de Feu, another work called "De la Nuit à L'Aurore" and also "Les Voiles de la Nuit".  After having worked with the Brno Philmaronic in giving the European première of Alexandre Rudajev's Soprano Saxophone Concerto, I had an agreement with the Brno Philharmonic to record these three works.  Hugon, was very nice, but was very clear that they would not be able to finance the project at all.  They did however agree to give us the rental materials for "Les Voiles de la Nuit" and to publish the two other works. It's been over twenty years, but just try and order these works through your local music store   They aren't available....nor will they ever be available. 

Antoine Tisné told me, over a lunch of overcooked Bœuf Bourguignon and noodles, that I should contact a record company in Lyons called REM.  A certain Monsieur Guillaubdy was the owner of this company.  They agreed to be the producers, but I would still have to find the money.  We had two leads:  Musiques Nouvelles de Liberté, directed by Benoît Duteurtre, and Musique Française d'Aujourd'hui, directed at the time by Pierre Vatteone.  Antoine had set up two meetings with these people.....and my spiel must have been effective because we suddenly had the money to do this project....My fee was paid by the Selmer company...except that Guillaubey of REM called Antoine at the last minute saying that I would have to have the sum due to the orchestra in cash or the project wouldn't work.  So, Antoine decided that he would give me the money in cash. 

Unfortunately, this was during the week when France change the 500 franc note to Pierre and Marie Curie.  So, when I got on the train to Prague, change to Brno and arrive at....Two something in the morning.....my pockets were full of bills that no one had ever seen before....And so here I was in Brno, without a credit card (and that wouldn't have been much help at three in the morning anyway.....) with tons of bills that looked fake to nearly anyone.  Here I was with my suitcase and two saxophones, knowing that I had to record at nine the next morning.....and not knowing how I was going to get to my hotel room.  Luckily, a friendly newsman changed enough money to Czech money to pay for cab fare....

And so here I was, at nine the next morning, recording this piece.  We did "De la Nuit à L'Aurore" that afternoon and then the next day we did "Les Voiles de la Nuit" 

A few weeks later, the DAT arrived.  I managed to get it transfered onto cassette and gave it to Antoine.  He called me that night, in tears.  He said that he had never heard his music like that.  That this was exactly what he had imagined.  It was a shining moment in my life.  This story could have ended here...

La Mystère Tisné

"I want you to play my music.  I hear something in your playing that makes me think that you would play my music well".  Here we were in the Municipal Library of Beauvais.  I had just done another performance of "Variations et Thème" by Alexandre Rudajev for saxophone and cello ensemble.  Antoine Tisné was there because it was the première of "Endic's Events" for cello ensemble.  The concert was over and here I was talking to the composer.  He was a small man, rather simian, not very attractive.  But he wanted me to play his music...and that was a problem.

You see, when I was at the Paris Conservatory, everyone told me that I played Tisné's music horribly. "Espaces Irradiées" was a frequently imposed piece....I was to find out later that it was this way for good reason:  it was a commission of the Gap Saxophone Competition. Serge Bichon himself commissioned the piece. And he gave a list of things for Tisné to include which were technically almost impossible on the saxophone. The piece was meant to be unplayable.  Antoine told me later about being on the jury of this competition, with Marcel Mule as president....and watching Mule jump out of his seat over and over again, every time there was a harmony that was a bit dissonant. 

The first time I passed my Prize exam (the first of three times....except that I didn't care, because I knew that I was going to stay....so one time or three wasn't a problem....), "Espaces Irradiées" was the required contemporary work. Before the exam, I did a recital with my pianist, the late John Gaffney.  The whole piece wasn't imposed:  only the second and fourth movements.  So that's all that we played.  I think that probably the majority of saxophonists have never played the first and third movements. 

Later, when I got to know Antoine very well, he told me that this was the worst possible thing that could happen to his music, because there was a hidden program.  Antoine always started by writing out his pieces in French. This piece was no exception:  the World has been destroyed by a nuclear explosion.  The humans who survive realize where they are living.  They do a ritual to bring life back to Earth.  And in the fourth movement, life returns.   If you don't have the whole progression of musical events, the piece makes no sense.  A+B+C+D = ?  You have to have all four movements or there is no meaning.  And the meaning is the whole point...

So, here I was working on the fourth movement (which is the most difficult technically) with John.  And we come to a fermata. And John rolls the chord and says "YOU CAN'T FOOL ME!  This isn't about Boulez!  This isn't ground zero!  This is BERG!  This is normal music!".  And so there I was, between the whole Paris Conservatory idea about this being "objective, non-emotional music" and John, who was a great musical mind telling me "Don't be fooled".  So, what did I do??? 

I chose to follow what I thought to be the truth.  And so I played the piece as if it had an emotional significance;  and so, I didn't even have a second prize.  I had nothing at all.  Even Deffayet said that I should have had a "Second Prize" at least....which is when I hated him the most, since I'd rather have nothing than a second prize...and he knew exactly what he was doing.

So here I was with Tisné saying that "I want you to play my music".  And I responded with "But, everyone says that I play your music horribly".  To which he answered "Everyone must be wrong:  I want you to play my music". ...to be continued.

Why the upcoming performance of Tailleferre's Concerto Grosso is a milestone for me

Every once in a while---not too often or it becomes bragging, but when you know that it's merited--one can make connections between things that you did in the past and things that are happening now. There are rare moments when you can point to something and say "that wouldn't have happened if I hadn't done that before". Often this is difficult to prove, but there are certain rare events which you can say without any doubt that you put the wheels in motion to make that happen. The performance on March 8th of Tailleferre's monumental work (dubbed by the BBC staff as "Concerto of Many") is one of those moments. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b051zxlk

I first discovered the existence of this work in 1992 at Musicora, the music business convention held in Paris every year. It's become a rather sleepy affair these days, but back in the 90s, it was the place to be. I picked up gigs just walking the aisles, talking to random strangers, gigs that took me as far as the Baltic States back in the days just after the Wall went down in Berlin. Everybody was there and you could run into composers, conductors, and the most famous soloists. I was browsing the racks of the stand of the Provence-Alpes-Côtes d'Azur stand and I came across a document about the three composers of Les Six who were celebrating their centennials that year: Darius Milhaud, Arthur Honneger and Germaine Tailleferre. In the back, there was a catalog of works for each composer, Tailleferre's being the shortest (which is not true...it's just that most of her work remains unpublished, even today....). When I came across the entry Concerto for Two Pianos, Choir, Saxophones and Orchestra, saw the original and very opulent orchestration and then the duration, I said to myself "I've got to hear this piece".

 This was of course the equivalent of pulling on a string which quickly lead me in directions that I wasn't even aware of at the time....and which I don't regret at all because working with Tailleferre's work has given me so much satisfaction over the years. My music publishing, my own compositions, my conducting: all of this leads from that one moment when I decided to defend this work. It really was a turning ponit in my life. Hearing the piece was another thing entirely and took me several years to arrange. The first step was getting a perusual copy of the score, which was fairly easy as those things go. The very nice woman who gave me an appointment at the Art Deco offices of Leduc on the Faubourg St. Honoré confirmed that they also had a very nice set of orchestral parts (which I found out later were all done by Tailleferre herself in pen and ink) and the only problem was the abscence of the solo piano parts. I figured that this was something which could be solved, so I went to work.

The work is in three movements. The opening "Allegro" was described by the critic Gabriel Marcel as "a solar explosion of joy". The voices predominate with the pianos acting as a sort of motor, driving the mass of winds forward. There is a lovely second lyrical theme which is introduced first by the pianos and then by the solo soprano saxophone. The section which follows in 5/4 remains lyrical, but is also driving. The movement is in a sort of modified sonata-form which goes in unexpected harmonic directions. Harmonically, this could only be Tailleferre, using what she herself termed her "harmonies cochonnes" ("obcene harmonies"), although one can see that she had been at the Conservatory during the reign of "Fauré the dreamer."

The second movement is a long songlike work with the indication "mélodie persane" in the composer's hand at the top of the score. Tailleferre often used extra-european themes in her works, which will be more evidence when her entire Opus is published (her film score from the 1920s "B'anda" using several authentic African themes, for example). The voices are more integrated in the orchestral texture in this movement, much in the same manner as the chorus in "Dapnis", with the thematic material presented in the saxophones and high winds (doubling of tenor saxophone and flute for the initial exposition of the Persan theme). After the material is worked into a dramatic outburst with the pianos raging against the brass section, the music quiets to a transition which features a long lyrical solo for the soprano saxophone. The final exposition of the theme has an interesting use of the harp and celesta, an effect that Tailleferre exploited in her Concerto for two guitars much later in life.

The third movement is a fugue, a form at which Tailleferre excelled--her First Prize in Counterpoint was during a year in which Fauré gave a theme with a "false response" (the formal rules of writing a fugue couldn't be followed with this subject!); She wrote several fugues, but this one of the most highly developed of all. The pianos are not part of the contrapuntal materials but rather as a contrasting element, providing a percussive counter element to the linear counterpoint. A contrasting section with women's voices, flutes and rapid piano figurations is quite striking and one of the most interesting passages in the work. After further development of the fugue, there is a sustained vocal cadenza for all eight soloists (or in the case of the BBC performance, a full SSAATTBB chorus), and then a rapid coda which ends, as many of Taillleferre's works do, with an abrupt cadence-rather like hanging up the phone when you have nothing further to say! However, the orchestration of this passage points out a rather "military wind band" texture (especially with the military and snare drums) which point to her later interest in works for winds.

 I carried around the score of this piece for years, showing it to anyone who would look. People must have thought that I was real nut, with my patented "University of Texas at Austin" French accent (unfortunately, I don't have the belt buckle to go along with it, but I'm sure that it's there in most people's minds here!) calling up the top tier orchestras, asking to speak with the music directors, settling for the administrators most of the time....and then going through my spiel about this "unbelievable work", showing the great reviews of the première by Florent-Schmidt (not the nicest critic either!) and Gabriel Marcel. This usually got me an appointment....and then it was always "yes, but she's not very known, is she? And we'd have to hire a saxophone quartet, rent two pianos, hire the chorus....". I pushed and I pushed hard. But nobody budged.

 I also showed the score to composers. My friend Françaix, being the beloved student of Mlle Boulanger that he was, feigned disinterest, other than teling me that Tailleferre's real name was "Marcelle Taillefesse" (which later I found out was true). "She should have kept that name: it would have been much better for her career!", Françaix laughed, always looking out for an excuse to make a "bon mot". Of course, there was no love lost between Tailleferre and Boulanger, Tailleferre's sin being that she lived and Boulanger's beloved sister died. This feud went on for their entire lives, only ending when Milhaud died and Boulanger sent a letter of condolences to Tailleferre, who was not fooled, only surprised. "Look at the score", I said to Françaix. And he did, finally....and pronounced it "much better than anything else that I've ever seen by Tailleferre". I also showed the piece to Aaron Kernis, who was in residence at the time at the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. i remember him saying that it was "like Stravinsky, but in a strange way". One thing was clear to every person who had a look at this piece: this wasn't what you thought of as a piece by Germaine Tailleferre It had a monumental quality to it, while remaining quite aerien in the use of the winds, harp and celesta. It was clear that this piece could change the way people see Tailleferre as a composer.

I also talked to the famous saxophonist Marcel Mule on the telephone about this piece. This was when I was preparing to record the Vellones Concerto (considered to be the first French Concerto for the saxophone with full orchestra---yes, it's a good piece! ) and Rastelli for saxophone quartet and orchestra, both works written for Mule. He didn't have much to say about either work---he hadn't performed them since their premières before WWII--so I asked him about the Tailleferre piece, also written for him. "Oh that...well, that's not very interesting...". I think that if he had asked Tailleferre for a concert that she probably would have written one for him...she was interested in the saxophone as an instrument, even using it in the first version (for 13 instruments) of her First Piano Concerto in the early 20s, crossing out "saxophone in Bb" in the manuscript and adding "clarinet" at the last minute (maybe she couldn't get a descent player?)---the score is in the Library of Congress. However, that wasn't going to get it recorded or even performed. It seemed that even the première had been a concert which was thrown together at the last minute: the French Soprano Ninon Vallin (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZCAXLAzRyo) had just returned to France after a triomphant tour of the United States. Pierre Monteux with his Orchestre symphonique de Paris organized a concert to welcome her back home, and used Tailleferre's new Concerto as a vehicle for eight of Vallin's colleagues at the Paris Opera (which explains why the cadenza in the last movement is for the voices and not for the pianos). Tailleferre played the first piano with her ill-fated colleague François Lang (who was to die in Auchwitz during the Second World War) playing the second piano. There was a poster for this concert in Tailleferre's papers, which I saw at one point--which, as is the case with many things in Tailleferre's papers, is now "missing". In spite of glowing reviews and praise for both the work and the performance, the work hadn't been done since.

Meeting Jean-Thierry Boisseau gave me new energy to try to make a recording happen. I showed the score to Jean-Thierry and we decided on the spot that this was the first project that we were going to do together I had worked with a young American piano duo on a recording of Tailleferre's unrecorded music for two pianos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zaxj-DBA-AY&list=PLTE-CPCv9G1_3haKA4WkDDdFmH9epy4OH They wanted to do a CD with orchestra. I was pushing for them to record in Poland or the Czech Republic, but they wanted to do something in France. I had made the rounds with the usual orchestras and nobody was jumping on board. Jean-Thierry had already produced a number of recordings and thought that we could use a conservatory orchestra as the basis of an orchestra and then bring in professional players, similar to several projects that he had done in the past. My own saxophone quartet, which had just done the première of Françaix's comédie-musicale "L'Apostrophe" would also perform and we used eight singers who were mainly singers who had worked with us on the Françaix production.

The one remaining problem was finding the solo piano parts, which were missing and were not in any of the places where one might imagine that they might be (with the publisher, in the Gold and Fizdale papers at the Library of Congress---although the version for two pianos solo is there!...) but ended up being located in a place where....they should not have been. Finally, we were going to do this. And we did. It was not an easy project and most of the people involved don't speak to each other today....but the recording exists. I must admit that I wasn't entirely happy with this performance, this being a student orchestra and the vocal soloists perhaps were a bit uneven. But the BBC Music Magazine disagreed with me, giving the recording five stars. It's probably the most broadcast recording I ever made and even if I don't make a cent off of it (the recording company doesn't pay royalties to anyone), I'm alway squite happy to see it on broadcast schedules.  You can find this recording here : Tailleferre/Poulenc/Snyder: Works For 2 Pianos


 So when I met the brilliant French pianist Pascal Rogé here on Facebook, quite by accident after an unfortunate incident earlier this year involving a piano competition (I won sever competitions when I was a youngster...I'm against them, so I was on Pascal's side of that discussion), I asked him if he had ever considered doing this piece by Tailleferre. Imagine my surprise when he replied that he was....and was that me on the recording? Of course, there was STILL the problem of the solo piano parts (now being fixed by the publishers, thank goodness!), but I had kept my copies of Tailleferre's manuscript that she used in the performance. I also met his wife, Ami, who will be playing with him on this performance. And in spite of the fact that I'm not involved in the actual music making this time, I'm still extremely happy and proud that this work is finally getting its...third performance And this time with a full chorus and a professional orchestra!

The only issue with which I have reservations is the context of this concert: it's an event organized for "International Women's Day", programmed with works by other French women composers (Holmès, Lili Boulanger, Chaminade, Mel Bonis). While I suppose that "beggars can't be choosers", it would seem to me that perhaps, in a World where Jennifer Higdon and Katia Saariaho are giving many of their male colleagues a run for the money, that maybe we could get beyond these "All Women" programs and start doing this type of repertoire in regular season concerts. I also don't see any real musical connection between the styles of these composers, and especially not the works by Chaminade (whose music Tailleferre hated---when she grew to hate her Ballade for Piano and Orchestra, she said famously "it's as bad as Chaminade!") and Mel Bonis, a composer whose works I have never found to be particularly interesting or well-crafted. Tailleferre herself wasn't particularly feminist, saying to one interviewer "what difference does it make?" to the question about being a woman writing music. Thérèse Brenet feels the same way, insisting that I call her a "compositeur" and not a "compositrice". At least in France, women are composers first. And I don't have a problem with that.

However, it's going to happen. And YOU can listen to it, live or via the web after the concert. The link is here : http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b051zxlk And you know, there's still LOTS more music by Tailleferre that nobody's heard yet!

Forgive me for blowing my own horn, but I am very happy about this!