Our musical life in France (and before)

As I began this Mary and I were nearing the end of another enjoyable week at Val du Séran.  Stéphane Fauth, multitalented musician and composer/arranger concerted this former farm building and has run this residential music centre for over 10 years, and I've spent a week each year there with Mary almost every year since 2010, she playing cello several sessions a day with a variety of chamber ensembles - other strings, sometimes a wind instrument or a piano or all of them.  This year it was a string quartet.  Stéphane usually finds me something to sing one session a day during the week, and this year - this time there were four Galgenlieder (literally gallows songs) a title used for a collection of rather surrealist poems by Christian Morgenstern.  When we came to France we left a rich and varied musical life behind in the UK, and had little idea what we would find here.  We had with us a collection of recorders of many sizes, some mediaeval and renaissance instruments, Mary's cello, a Yamaha electronic keyboard and a huge collection of printed music.  We had little idea what we would find to occupy us musically, and in my case at least wanted to revive singing and playing in my retirement.  After a dozen years we have both found inspiration and frustration in about equal measure, but we do have plenty of music in our lives.

Mary has joined several chamber groups (mainly now linked to the music school in Vauvert) and an orchestra linked to the very active Sommières choir.  The latter play and sing mainly 19th century operatic and instrumental stuff, which she finds if not ideal for her own taste, at least challenging.  Amazingly the choir gets regular huge audiences which is more than can be said for the Bach choir I sing in.  She has made a lot of progress playing the cello since we came, and practises much more regularly than I do!  Her greatest pleasure is probably playing baroque continuo, of which more below.

My two main interests have been singing and recorder playing.  I met Mary when we both played recorder regularly.  In England we were members of the Society of recorder players and went to Saturday play-ins as well as some summer courses like the one where we met.  No such thing here - people are not generally good at sight-reading (déchiffrage) as we were in the UK, but there are exceptions and  we have very much enjoyed playing baroque trio sonatas with friends who have a lot of professional and good amateur experience - for several years we did concerts with friends Pierre and Charles, and now we play quite often with Katharine (keyboard) and Phil (violin) for our own amusement and pleasure - we're not specially bothered about public performance.  But my singing started with a choir, Chorale Franglaise, in Lunel conducted for several years by David Austin then Philip Baxter.  We always tried and hoped to attract French members as well as Anglophone ones, but most were daunted by having to read music and few stuck with us.

Eventually we were left with half a dozen Anglophone singers in a mostly a cappella  group known as Ochoeur, which finds time to rehears regularly in the run-up to the Christmas season with a regular 'lessons &
carols' concert in a local Temple (protestant chapel).  We always mean to do more and have worked more intensively in the past, but lately other commitments and pressures have cut us down to the one pre-Christmas performance each year.  It's a pity, and maybe we'll get back to singing more.  Mary usually accompanies us for the carols which need it, as she did the Lunel choir.

My most regular choral activity now is with the specialist choir B.a.Bach based in Montpellier.  Our programmes are based around J S Bach but include his relatives and composers whose work he used.  We work at the lower 'baroque pitch' (A=415) with appropriate instruments in the main (but usually an electronic organ) and do around 3 concerts a year including motets and cantatas, as well as the occasional larger work when we can afford it!  Highlights have included the St John Passion in 2017, and we'll be performing the extended (E flat major) version of the Magnificat in 2019.  We're led by a talented conductor who lives and also works in Provence, Jean-François Héron.  He is passionate about presenting German texts well, and faces a continuing challenge getting mainly French singers to adapt to more consonants than they are used to!

Any account of our musical life would not be complete without mentioning lessons - my singing teachers and Mary's cello lessons.  And of course we listen to a  lot of music and go to concerts.  But this is enough for one post - more to follow.