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!