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...