MyWikiBiz - User contributions [en]

Directory:Musik Fabrik Music Publishing/Gian Paolo Chiti

2009-01-17T10:54:28Z

Musik Fabrik Music Publishing: removing cats

'''Gian Paolo Chiti''', is an [[Italy|Italian]] [[composer]] and [[pianist]].

After begining his studies in [[Piano]], [[Violin]] and Composition at the age of four, he made a series of appearences as a child prodigy before entering the [[Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia]] in [[Rome]], Italy's most important music school, at the age of ten. His prinicipal teachers include Carlo Zecchi, Arturo Bonucci and Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli (private and masterclass studies). Gian Paolo Chiti was a prizewinner in the Treviso and Busoni competitions.

Gian Paolo Chiti began a duel career as a Concert Pianist, often in the company of his wife the noted [[mezzo soprano]] and president and founder of the Adkins-Chiti Donne in Musica foundation [[Patricia Adkins Chiti]] and as a composer. He has written works for almost every conceivable ensemble as well as for electronic media. His catalogue also includes a large number of [[film scores|film]] and television scores. His compositions have been programmed both in Italy and abroad at such festivals as the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence, Biennale in Venice, Edinburgh Festival, Lutoslawski Festival, Cantiere Internazionale of Montepulciano, Nuova Consonanza, Incontri Musicali Romani, Chopin Festival in Poland, Sacred Music Festival in Chartres, France, Teatro Nacional di Caraccas in Venezuela and the Public Season at the Moscow Conservatory.

Gian Paolo Chiti has held the post of Head of the Composition department of the [[Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia]] in Rome since [[1984]]. More than a generation of important young Italian musicians have been trained through his teaching. In addition, he is also a member of the Italian National commitee for Dance as well as on the faculty of several [[universities]].

==Chronological Works List==

This list includes all serious concert music composed by Gian Paolo Chiti, including works for young musicians. It does not include transcriptions and arrangements, nor does it include film and television scores and popular works.

* Zoological Garden (Solo Piano - Young Performers) (1951)
* O Sacrum Convivium (s-a-t-b- Chorus) (1958)
* Sestetto a Fiato n° 1 (Flute, Clarinet, 2 Bassoons, Trumpet, Trombone) (1954)
* Sestetto a Fiato n° 2 (Flute, 2 Bassoons, 2 Horns, Trumpet in C) (1958)
* Quartetto per Archi (String Quartet) (1959)
* Cinque Preludi per Pianoforte (1961)
* Suite per Pianoforte n° 2 (1961)
* Tre Mottetti per Coro Misto - (s-a-t-b- Chorus) (1961)
* Per Orchestra (for Orchestra) (1962)
* Tre Pezzi per Pianoforte (1962)
* Concerto per Orchestra d’Archi (for String Orchestra) (1963)
* Concerto per Dieci Strumenti/for Ten Instruments) (Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Horn, Vibraphone, Timpani, Harp, Violin, Viola, Violoncello) (1964)
* Due Mottetti a Cappella – (s-a-t-b- Chorus) (1964)
* Inscription (solo flute) (1966)
* Nachtmusik (for Strings) (1966)
* Serenade per Cinque Strumenti (Flute, bass Clarinet, viola, Violoncello, Piano) (1966)
* Divertimento n° 2 (Flute, Violin, Viola, Violoncello) (1967)
* Especially when the October wind (Medium Voice/Piano) (1967)
* Holy Sonnet of John Donne (Medium Voice/Piano) (1967)
* Pilatus (Contralto, Tenor, Organ) (1968)
* Ricercare ’70 (2 Oboes, Bassoon, 2 Horns, Strings)(1968)
* We lying by the Sea Sand (High Voice/Piano) (1968)
* Y Ara Dirè (Two guitars) (1969)
* Conversation with myself (solo violin) (1969)
* Matrona Quaedam (Chamber Opera) (1969)
* Violin Concerto (Solo Vln/Orchestra) (1969)
* In Dateless Night (String Quartet) (1970/1)
* Into my own (solo organ) (1971)
* Lebenslauf (Clarinet, Violin, Viola, Violoncello, Piano) (1971)
* Sie erlischt (Violin/Piano) (1971)
* Yerma (Ballet) (1971)
* A Dylan Thomas (Ballet) (1972)
* Andante (Flute, Bassoon, Pianoforte) (1968)
* Divertimento (Flute/Vln/harpsichord) (1972)
* Elegia (Flute, Piano) (1972)
* Movements per Pianoforte (1972)
* Breakers (four harps) (1973)
* El Icaro (solo harpsichord) (1973)
* Ottetto per 2 soprani, 2 contralti, 2 tenori 2 bassi (For SATB/SATB) (1973)
* Rencontres (Flute/Strings) (1973)
* Spleen (Treble and Bass recorders, Violoncello, Piano) (1973)
* Dal Profondo (Clarinet/Bassoon/Piano) (1974)
* Prelude d’Automne (Flute, Viola, Harp) (1975)
* Replay (2 flutes, 2 Oboes, 2 Bassoons, 2 Horns) (1975)
* Shahed-B (Oboe/Harpsichord) (1975)
* Games Around the Six with Eleven (String Orchestra) (1976)
* Persefone (solo flute, flute in G and flute in C) (1977)
* Piccola Raccolta per Organo (1978)
* Rondeau (solo flute) (1978)
* Anthem (solo violoncello) (1979)
* In Mind (solo guitar) (1979)
* Flutar (Flute/Harp) (1979)
* Pastorale (Flute/Harp) (1979)
* Preludio Romantico (Piano - Young Performers) (1979)
* Piccola Suite per Pianoforte (Piano - Young Performers) (1980)
* Serenata (Flute, Oboe, Bassoon) (1980)
* Around (solo guitar) (1981)
* Melodia (Bb Clarinet/Piano) (1981)
* Adieu adieu (Wind quintet: flute, oboe, clarinet, and bassoon, horn) (1982)
* Rag Prelude per Pianoforte (1982)
* Retour (Solo Violin, Viola and Violoncello/String Orchestra) (1982)
* Trivium (Mezzo-Soprano/String Orchestra) (1983)
* Arion (solo guitar) (1983)
* In the Merry Month of May (Brass Quintet : 2 tpt 2nd=flugelhorn, Horn, Trombone, Tuba) (1983)
* Kammerstück (Clarinet, Violoncello, Trombone, Piano) (1983)
* Konzertstuck (Orchestra) (1984)
* Per Lontane Vie per Pianoforte (1985)
* Ground (Piano Four Hands) (1985)
* Ipodyon (solo harp) (1985)
* Triplum (flute/Violin/Harpsichord) (1985)
* Wintermusik (Flute, Clarinet, Violon, Violoncello, Piano) (1985)
* In Sogno (Two Flutes : doubling Piccolo, Flute, Alto Flute, Bass flute and Piano) (1986)
* Recordari (Trumpet in C/Organ) (1986)
* Tropi per Chartres (Alto Saxophone/String Quartet) (1996)
* Fogli d’Album (Albumblatter) (solo guitar) (1987)
* Abendstucke per Pianoforte (1989)
* Action (Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon, 2 Violins, Viola, Violocello) (1990)
* European Suite (solo guitar) (1990)
* Kinamama (Two Flutes/Piano) (1990)
* Octopus Line (Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, 2 Bassoons, Horn, 2 trumpets, 2 Trombones) (1990)
* Salve Regina (Mezzo-soprano, Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon, Strings) (1991)
* European Lieder Book (High Voice/Piano) (1992)
* Intermezzo (violin/Viola/Violoncello) (1992)
* Arion Suite per Pianoforte (1993)
* Cahier des Reves (violin/violoncello/Piano) (1993)
* Tre Liriche su Poesie di J .Basile (Soprano/Piano) (1993)
* Triple (flute/clarinet/bassoon) (1993)
* Concertino per Sax Tenore e Otto Violoncelli (Tenor Saxophone/Cello Octet) (1994)
* Sur les bois oubliés (solo viola) (1995)
* Rime (medium voice/Viola/Piano) (1998)
* Laudarium in onore della Beata Vergine Maria (SATB Chorus/Brass Ensemble) (2000)
* Plexus (two bass flutes) (2001)
* Envers (Orchestra) (2002)
* Extrême per pianoforte (2002)
* Seagulls per pianoforte (2002)
* En Ecoutant la Nuit (String Quartet) (2003)
* L’età dell’ombra (Clarinet, Viola, Piano) (2003)
* Burlesque (Solo Tenor Saxophone) (2005)
* Capriccio (Bb Clarinet) (2005)
* Counterpoint in F (Bb Clarinet/Tenor Saxophone) (2005)
* Prelude (Alto Saxophone/Piano) (2005)
* Two Liturgical Pieces (Organ) (2005)

==External Links==

* [http://www.gianpaolochiti-composer.it/ The Composer's Personal Website]
* [http://www.classicalmusicnow.com/chitie.htm The Composer's page at Musik Fabrik Music Publishing]

Directory:Musik Fabrik Music Publishing/Gian Paolo Chiti

2009-01-17T10:53:09Z

Musik Fabrik Music Publishing: creating page

Directory:Musik Fabrik Music Publishing/Germaine Tailleferre

2008-09-02T14:21:33Z

Musik Fabrik Music Publishing: Share this added

{{DISPLAYTITLE:Germaine Tailleferre}}
One of Les Six and a notable French composer of the Twentieth century.

'''Introduction'''
Germaine Tailleferre was one of the six French composers who were chosen by the critic Henri Collet to make up the Group des Six, a musical movement centered around a renaissance of French musical style through the filter of both baroque music and popular music styles. She collaborated with some of the 20th century's greatest figures including Paul Valéry, Paul Claudel, Philippe Soupault, Marguerite Duras and many others.

'''Biographical Sketch'''

"A Marie Laurencin for the Ear" was how Jean Cocteau described the music of Germaine Tailleferre, the only female member of the famous Group des Six (which also included Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honneger, Darius Milhaud and Francis Poulenc). This quotation, which brings to mind the essentially decorative watercolors of Laurencin, was perhaps an unfortunate association. Images of naiveté, "freshness" and essentially "feminine" art have been associated with the Music of Germaine Tailleferre since she began her career with the launching of the Group in 1920. If one wishes to play the game of absolutely making a comparison between music and painting, it is more evident to compare the painting of Sonia Delaunay with the music of Germaine Tailleferre, given the rich sound palette that Tailleferre tends to use.

An idea has been put forward is that Tailleferre wrote a series of short charming works, especially for the piano, during the 1920's-1930's and essentially stopped composing after the end of World War II. While Tailleferre did write many shorter works for the piano, as well as songs and chamber music, she also wrote two piano concerti, as well as the Three Études for Piano and Orchestra, a Violin Concerto, Three Vocal Concerti, a Concerto Grosso for two Pianos, Eight Solo Voices, Saxophone Quartet and Orchestra, four full-length ballet scores, Four full lengths Operas as well as many shorter operas, two musical comedies as well as a great deal of orchestral and chamber music. Much of this music was written in the period between 1945 and her death in 1983. The majority of this music has been, up until the recent past, unpublished and unrecorded. It has only been recently possible to have a more complete picture of Tailleferre's work and her value as a composer.

Germaine Tailleferre was born April 19. 1892 at Saint Maur Des Fossés, a suburb of Paris. Her Mother, Marie-Desiré Taillefesse was forced by her father to break her engagement with another man and to marry the young Arthur Taillefesse because he had the same family name. This arranged married proved to be very unhappy, and Marie-Desiré's only solace was in her children. The young Germaine began studying piano with her mother at home and also composing short works. Despite her father's opposition, she began studying piano and solfege at the Paris Conservatory, where she would win a first prize in solfege. This initial success also lead to her father's acceptance of her musical vocation, although he would refuse to support her studies financially. Her revenge came later when she changed her name from the slightly risqué "Taillefesse" to the more attractive "Tailleferre".

Tailleferre met Darius Milhaud, Georges Auric and Arthur Honneger at the Paris Conservatory in 1912 and also began to be seen with the artistic set in Montmartre and in Montparnasse, which included Apollinaire, Laurencin, Paul Fort, Fernand Léger and the sculptor Emmanuel Centore, who married Tailleferre's sister Jeanne. In 1913, she won a first prize in Counterpoint and in Harmony at the Conservatory and in 1915, she won a First prize in Fugue. During her period at the Conservatory, she also became acquainted with the Assistant Professor of Harp, Caroline Tardieu, for whom she wrote the 18 short works in the Petit Livre de Harp de Madame Tardieu.

It was her artistic connections, which by 1917 also included Picasso and Modigliani, however which lead to her initial success It was in the Montparnasse atelier of one of her painter friends where the initial concert of the "Nouveaux Jeunes" took place, which also included Francis Poulenc and Louis Durey on January 15, 1918, with Tailleferre's Jeux de Pleine Aire as well as her Sonatine for String Quartet, which was later to become the String Quartet (with the addition of a third movement). The publication of Jean Cocteau's manifest for a typically French Music Le Coq et L'Harlequin in 1918 paved the way for Henri Collet's articles in 1920 in the French journal Commedia. It was also Collet who choose the name Les Six, in direct reference to the Five Russians of the 19th century nationalist movement. These two articles, which appeared in January of 1920, lead to overnight fame for the famous group Des Six, which only officially participated in one project together, an album of Piano works. The six musicians remained close for the rest of their lives.

The legend that Durey ended the Group Des Six with by refusing to participate in Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel is not exactly true. The work was supposed to be written by Auric who did not have time to finish the commission in time. In order to help their friend, the work was parceled out to the other members of the Group who were available and Durey, who was not in Paris at the time, simply didn't take part. The Group Des Six existed in spirit up to Tailleferre's death in 1983, and even today, the children and friends of the various members continue to see each other.

Tailleferre's First Violin Sonata was written for Jacques Thibaud, a French Violinist with whom she had a close friendship and was premièred in 1922 by Thibaud and Alfred Cortot in Paris. During 1923, her ballet "Le Marchand d'Oiseaux" scored a great success with the Ballets Suédois. The Princess de Polignac commissioned Tailleferre to write a Piano Concerto in same neo-classical style as "Le Marchand" which was premièred to great success by Alfred Cortot.

In 1923, Tailleferre began to spend a great deal of time with Maurice Ravel at his home in Monfort-L'Amaury. Tailleferre had met Ravel in Saint Jean de Luz near Biarritz in 1919-1920 when she spent the Summer with Jean Cocteau's cousin Marianne Singer. Ravel championed Tailleferre's work, even encouraging her to enter the infamous Prix de Rome Competition. This relationship was not romantic, as some sources have suggested, but merely an friendly exchange of professional competence: Ravel was very interested in the music written by Stravinsky as well as Les Six and gave Tailleferre advice on orchestration and composition. These visits, usually in the form of long hikes in the countryside around Monfort, followed by long sessions with Tailleferre playing for Ravel at the piano, mysteriously ended suddenly in 1930 and Tailleferre never saw Ravel again. She refused to give a specific reason, even to her closest friends.

In 1925, Tailleferre married the American caricaturist Ralph Barton and established herself in his apartment in Manhattan. During her marriage to Barton, she also became close to Mr. Barton's best friend, Charlie Chaplin. It was during this period that she composed her Concertino for Harp, which is dedicated to her husband. Barton did not appreciate his wife's reputation as a serious composer and it was difficult for her to compose during her marriage. In 1927, on Barton's urging, the couple moved to France and Tailleferre received a commission from Paul Claudel to write music for his dramatic ode in honor of the Scientist Marcelin Berthelot, which was entitled "Sous les Rempart d'Athènes". The original score of this work has been lost, but a reconstruction has been done by the Tailleferre specialist Paul Wehage. Tailleferre also completed a ballet La Nouvelle Cythère which was intended for the ill-fated 1929 season of the Ballets Russes which was canceled after Diaghilev's sudden death. The work was believed lost for many years, but the two-piano short score is now published by Musik Fabrik. An orchestration for Concert band has also been reconstructed by Paul Wehage.

1929 also marked the end of her marriage to Ralph Barton, who was to commit suicide several months after returning to America. Her Six Chansons Françaises may be seen as a reaction to her divorce, using texts from the XV to XVIII centuries which speak of the problems of women in decaying relationships. Each of the six songs was dedicated to one of her female friends and may be seen as a rather rare expression of feminism in Tailleferre's work.

During 1931, Tailleferre's main project was a comic opera Zoulaina which has never been produced and probably exists in manuscript. In November of 1931, she gave birth to her only child, Françoise. In 1932, she married her daughter's father, the French Lawyer Jean Lageat. Again, this marriage did not have a positive effect on her composition because of her husband's critical attitude towards her musical life. In spite of his opposition, she was extremely productive during this period, composing the Suite for Chamber orchestra "Divertissement dans le style de Louis XV", her Violin Concerto which has been lost in it's original form (the second Sonata for Violin and Piano is a the reduction of the Concerto, without the initial Cadenza) and her masterpiece, the Concerto Grosso for Two Pianos, Saxophone Quartet, Eight Solo voices and Orchestra (1934). She also began her long series of film scores during this period. In 1937, she collaborated with Paul Valéry on her Cantate Pour Narcisse, for solo Soprano, Baritone, Women's chorus and strings.

During the beginning of 1942, Tailleferre completed her "Trois Études pour Piano et Orchestre" which were dedicated to Margarite Long and her friend François Lang. The work exists in two-piano form and has recently been orchestrated by the American Composer and Tailleferre scholar Paul Wehage. The German Occupation of France during WW2 lead to increased hardships and Tailleferre and her daughter were forced to leave their home in Grasse to try to find passage to America. Traveling across Spain to Portugal, they finally found passage on a boat headed for the US, where they spent the War years in Philadelphia. She did not compose much during this period, preferring to devote herself to the upbringing of her child. She did write an Ave Maria for a cappella women's chorus which was premièred at Swarthmore College and has been lost.

Tailleferre returned to France in 1946, and reestablished herself in Grasse, near Nice. Her relationship with Lagaet was deteriorating, but the couple remained married. Her first major work after returning to France was the Ballet "Paris-Magie" which was premièred at the Opéra Comique in 1949 to very favorable reviews. This was followed by her Comic Opera "Il était un Petit Navire" with a surreal book by Henri Jeanson which was not well received due to extensive cuts in the score made by the stage director and the conductor. She also wrote during this period her Second Piano Concerto, which has been lost, her famous Harp sonata, the Concerto for flute, Piano and Orchestra, the musical comedy Parfums, written for Monte Carlo in 1951 and which has been lost, and the Ballet Parisiana which was premièred in Copenhagen in 1953.

In 1955, Lagaet and Tailleferre finally officially divorced and Germaine's daughter Françoise gave birth to her daughter, Elivre de Rudder. During this same year, she wrote her series of five short Comic Operas Du Style Galant au Style Méchant for Radio France. During the following year, she wrote her Concerto des Vaines Paroles (text by Jean Tardieu) which has been lost, except for the transcription of the First Movement "Allegro Concertante". In 1957, during a brief period of experimentation with the twelve tone technique, she wrote her Opera "La Petite Sirène" as well as her Sonata for Clarinet Solo as well as a work for her friends the Piano Duo Gold and Fitzdale, the Toccata for Two Pianos. The decade ended with her opera Le Maître based on a play by Eugene Ionesco.

Due to her daughter's personal life, Tailleferre became the guardian of Elivre, her granddaughter. During the sixties, she composed a large number of scores for films and television as well as her Concerto for Two Guitars and Orchestra, (which has recently been found at Radio France and which is now available through Musik Fabrik) and Hommage à Rameau for Two pianos and two percussionists. In 1970, she became a professor at the Schola Cantorum but soon left the post due to lack of students for her classes. Through a mutual friend she met the composer Desiré Dondeyne who encouraged her to write for the symphonic band and also helped her complete several projects.

From 1970 on, it became increasingly difficult for her to support herself and her granddaughter and in 1976, at the age of 84, she took the post of accompanist for a children's music and movement class at a private school in Paris. It was this financial security which allowed her to complete her last series of works, which include the Sonata for Two Pianos, The Sérénade en La mineur for four winds and piano or harpsichord, "Choral et Variations" for Two Pianos or Orchestra and the Sonate Champêtre for Three Winds and Piano. Her last major work was a commission from the French Cultural Ministry which was intended merely to be a charitable gesture, but which lead the 89 year-old composer to write her Concerto de la Fidelité for high voice and Orchestra, which is a reworking of her harp sonata and an earlier work for high voice and orchestra. Tailleferre continued to compose up until a few weeks before her death, on November 7, 1983 in Paris. She is buried in Quincy-Voisins near Meaux.

See Also :
*[http://www.classicalmusicnow.com/Tailleferrebiography.htm Germaine Tailleferre's page at Musik Fabrik Music publishing]
*[http://knol.google.com/k/paul-wehage/germaine-tailleferre/3v2zrvhozufei/2#view The Germaine Tailleferre Knol, with information about works and publishers]

=== Share this page ===
<sharethis />

Directory:Musik Fabrik Music Publishing/Germaine Tailleferre

2008-09-02T14:20:32Z

Musik Fabrik Music Publishing:

Directory:Musik Fabrik Music Publishing/Germaine Tailleferre

2008-09-02T14:19:47Z

Musik Fabrik Music Publishing: new page

{{DISPLAYTITLE:Germaine Tailleferre}}
One of Les Six and a notable French composer of the Twentieth century.

'''Introduction'''
Germaine Tailleferre was one of the six French composers who were chosen by the critic Henri Collet to make up the Group des Six, a musical movement centered around a renaissance of French musical style through the filter of both baroque music and popular music styles. She collaborated with some of the 20th century's greatest figures including Paul Valéry, Paul Claudel, Philippe Soupault, Marguerite Duras and many others.

'''Biographical Sketch'''
Biographical sketch

"A Marie Laurencin for the Ear" was how Jean Cocteau described the music of Germaine Tailleferre, the only female member of the famous Group des Six (which also included Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honneger, Darius Milhaud and Francis Poulenc). This quotation, which brings to mind the essentially decorative watercolors of Laurencin, was perhaps an unfortunate association. Images of naiveté, "freshness" and essentially "feminine" art have been associated with the Music of Germaine Tailleferre since she began her career with the launching of the Group in 1920. If one wishes to play the game of absolutely making a comparison between music and painting, it is more evident to compare the painting of Sonia Delaunay with the music of Germaine Tailleferre, given the rich sound palette that Tailleferre tends to use.

An idea has been put forward is that Tailleferre wrote a series of short charming works, especially for the piano, during the 1920's-1930's and essentially stopped composing after the end of World War II. While Tailleferre did write many shorter works for the piano, as well as songs and chamber music, she also wrote two piano concerti, as well as the Three Études for Piano and Orchestra, a Violin Concerto, Three Vocal Concerti, a Concerto Grosso for two Pianos, Eight Solo Voices, Saxophone Quartet and Orchestra, four full-length ballet scores, Four full lengths Operas as well as many shorter operas, two musical comedies as well as a great deal of orchestral and chamber music. Much of this music was written in the period between 1945 and her death in 1983. The majority of this music has been, up until the recent past, unpublished and unrecorded. It has only been recently possible to have a more complete picture of Tailleferre's work and her value as a composer.

Germaine Tailleferre was born April 19. 1892 at Saint Maur Des Fossés, a suburb of Paris. Her Mother, Marie-Desiré Taillefesse was forced by her father to break her engagement with another man and to marry the young Arthur Taillefesse because he had the same family name. This arranged married proved to be very unhappy, and Marie-Desiré's only solace was in her children. The young Germaine began studying piano with her mother at home and also composing short works. Despite her father's opposition, she began studying piano and solfege at the Paris Conservatory, where she would win a first prize in solfege. This initial success also lead to her father's acceptance of her musical vocation, although he would refuse to support her studies financially. Her revenge came later when she changed her name from the slightly risqué "Taillefesse" to the more attractive "Tailleferre".

Tailleferre met Darius Milhaud, Georges Auric and Arthur Honneger at the Paris Conservatory in 1912 and also began to be seen with the artistic set in Montmartre and in Montparnasse, which included Apollinaire, Laurencin, Paul Fort, Fernand Léger and the sculptor Emmanuel Centore, who married Tailleferre's sister Jeanne. In 1913, she won a first prize in Counterpoint and in Harmony at the Conservatory and in 1915, she won a First prize in Fugue. During her period at the Conservatory, she also became acquainted with the Assistant Professor of Harp, Caroline Tardieu, for whom she wrote the 18 short works in the Petit Livre de Harp de Madame Tardieu.

It was her artistic connections, which by 1917 also included Picasso and Modigliani, however which lead to her initial success It was in the Montparnasse atelier of one of her painter friends where the initial concert of the "Nouveaux Jeunes" took place, which also included Francis Poulenc and Louis Durey on January 15, 1918, with Tailleferre's Jeux de Pleine Aire as well as her Sonatine for String Quartet, which was later to become the String Quartet (with the addition of a third movement). The publication of Jean Cocteau's manifest for a typically French Music Le Coq et L'Harlequin in 1918 paved the way for Henri Collet's articles in 1920 in the French journal Commedia. It was also Collet who choose the name Les Six, in direct reference to the Five Russians of the 19th century nationalist movement. These two articles, which appeared in January of 1920, lead to overnight fame for the famous group Des Six, which only officially participated in one project together, an album of Piano works. The six musicians remained close for the rest of their lives.

The legend that Durey ended the Group Des Six with by refusing to participate in Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel is not exactly true. The work was supposed to be written by Auric who did not have time to finish the commission in time. In order to help their friend, the work was parceled out to the other members of the Group who were available and Durey, who was not in Paris at the time, simply didn't take part. The Group Des Six existed in spirit up to Tailleferre's death in 1983, and even today, the children and friends of the various members continue to see each other.

Tailleferre's First Violin Sonata was written for Jacques Thibaud, a French Violinist with whom she had a close friendship and was premièred in 1922 by Thibaud and Alfred Cortot in Paris. During 1923, her ballet "Le Marchand d'Oiseaux" scored a great success with the Ballets Suédois. The Princess de Polignac commissioned Tailleferre to write a Piano Concerto in same neo-classical style as "Le Marchand" which was premièred to great success by Alfred Cortot.

In 1923, Tailleferre began to spend a great deal of time with Maurice Ravel at his home in Monfort-L'Amaury. Tailleferre had met Ravel in Saint Jean de Luz near Biarritz in 1919-1920 when she spent the Summer with Jean Cocteau's cousin Marianne Singer. Ravel championed Tailleferre's work, even encouraging her to enter the infamous Prix de Rome Competition. This relationship was not romantic, as some sources have suggested, but merely an friendly exchange of professional competence: Ravel was very interested in the music written by Stravinsky as well as Les Six and gave Tailleferre advice on orchestration and composition. These visits, usually in the form of long hikes in the countryside around Monfort, followed by long sessions with Tailleferre playing for Ravel at the piano, mysteriously ended suddenly in 1930 and Tailleferre never saw Ravel again. She refused to give a specific reason, even to her closest friends.

In 1925, Tailleferre married the American caricaturist Ralph Barton and established herself in his apartment in Manhattan. During her marriage to Barton, she also became close to Mr. Barton's best friend, Charlie Chaplin. It was during this period that she composed her Concertino for Harp, which is dedicated to her husband. Barton did not appreciate his wife's reputation as a serious composer and it was difficult for her to compose during her marriage. In 1927, on Barton's urging, the couple moved to France and Tailleferre received a commission from Paul Claudel to write music for his dramatic ode in honor of the Scientist Marcelin Berthelot, which was entitled "Sous les Rempart d'Athènes". The original score of this work has been lost, but a reconstruction has been done by the Tailleferre specialist Paul Wehage. Tailleferre also completed a ballet La Nouvelle Cythère which was intended for the ill-fated 1929 season of the Ballets Russes which was canceled after Diaghilev's sudden death. The work was believed lost for many years, but the two-piano short score is now published by Musik Fabrik. An orchestration for Concert band has also been reconstructed by Paul Wehage.

1929 also marked the end of her marriage to Ralph Barton, who was to commit suicide several months after returning to America. Her Six Chansons Françaises may be seen as a reaction to her divorce, using texts from the XV to XVIII centuries which speak of the problems of women in decaying relationships. Each of the six songs was dedicated to one of her female friends and may be seen as a rather rare expression of feminism in Tailleferre's work.

During 1931, Tailleferre's main project was a comic opera Zoulaina which has never been produced and probably exists in manuscript. In November of 1931, she gave birth to her only child, Françoise. In 1932, she married her daughter's father, the French Lawyer Jean Lageat. Again, this marriage did not have a positive effect on her composition because of her husband's critical attitude towards her musical life. In spite of his opposition, she was extremely productive during this period, composing the Suite for Chamber orchestra "Divertissement dans le style de Louis XV", her Violin Concerto which has been lost in it's original form (the second Sonata for Violin and Piano is a the reduction of the Concerto, without the initial Cadenza) and her masterpiece, the Concerto Grosso for Two Pianos, Saxophone Quartet, Eight Solo voices and Orchestra (1934). She also began her long series of film scores during this period. In 1937, she collaborated with Paul Valéry on her Cantate Pour Narcisse, for solo Soprano, Baritone, Women's chorus and strings.

During the beginning of 1942, Tailleferre completed her "Trois Études pour Piano et Orchestre" which were dedicated to Margarite Long and her friend François Lang. The work exists in two-piano form and has recently been orchestrated by the American Composer and Tailleferre scholar Paul Wehage. The German Occupation of France during WW2 lead to increased hardships and Tailleferre and her daughter were forced to leave their home in Grasse to try to find passage to America. Traveling across Spain to Portugal, they finally found passage on a boat headed for the US, where they spent the War years in Philadelphia. She did not compose much during this period, preferring to devote herself to the upbringing of her child. She did write an Ave Maria for a cappella women's chorus which was premièred at Swarthmore College and has been lost.

Tailleferre returned to France in 1946, and reestablished herself in Grasse, near Nice. Her relationship with Lagaet was deteriorating, but the couple remained married. Her first major work after returning to France was the Ballet "Paris-Magie" which was premièred at the Opéra Comique in 1949 to very favorable reviews. This was followed by her Comic Opera "Il était un Petit Navire" with a surreal book by Henri Jeanson which was not well received due to extensive cuts in the score made by the stage director and the conductor. She also wrote during this period her Second Piano Concerto, which has been lost, her famous Harp sonata, the Concerto for flute, Piano and Orchestra, the musical comedy Parfums, written for Monte Carlo in 1951 and which has been lost, and the Ballet Parisiana which was premièred in Copenhagen in 1953.

In 1955, Lagaet and Tailleferre finally officially divorced and Germaine's daughter Françoise gave birth to her daughter, Elivre de Rudder. During this same year, she wrote her series of five short Comic Operas Du Style Galant au Style Méchant for Radio France. During the following year, she wrote her Concerto des Vaines Paroles (text by Jean Tardieu) which has been lost, except for the transcription of the First Movement "Allegro Concertante". In 1957, during a brief period of experimentation with the twelve tone technique, she wrote her Opera "La Petite Sirène" as well as her Sonata for Clarinet Solo as well as a work for her friends the Piano Duo Gold and Fitzdale, the Toccata for Two Pianos. The decade ended with her opera Le Maître based on a play by Eugene Ionesco.

Due to her daughter's personal life, Tailleferre became the guardian of Elivre, her granddaughter. During the sixties, she composed a large number of scores for films and television as well as her Concerto for Two Guitars and Orchestra, (which has recently been found at Radio France and which is now available through Musik Fabrik) and Hommage à Rameau for Two pianos and two percussionists. In 1970, she became a professor at the Schola Cantorum but soon left the post due to lack of students for her classes. Through a mutual friend she met the composer Desiré Dondeyne who encouraged her to write for the symphonic band and also helped her complete several projects.

From 1970 on, it became increasingly difficult for her to support herself and her granddaughter and in 1976, at the age of 84, she took the post of accompanist for a children's music and movement class at a private school in Paris. It was this financial security which allowed her to complete her last series of works, which include the Sonata for Two Pianos, The Sérénade en La mineur for four winds and piano or harpsichord, "Choral et Variations" for Two Pianos or Orchestra and the Sonate Champêtre for Three Winds and Piano. Her last major work was a commission from the French Cultural Ministry which was intended merely to be a charitable gesture, but which lead the 89 year-old composer to write her Concerto de la Fidelité for high voice and Orchestra, which is a reworking of her harp sonata and an earlier work for high voice and orchestra. Tailleferre continued to compose up until a few weeks before her death, on November 7, 1983 in Paris. She is buried in Quincy-Voisins near Meaux.

See Also :
*[http://www.classicalmusicnow.com/Tailleferrebiography.htm Germaine Tailleferre's page at Musik Fabrik Music publishing]
*[http://knol.google.com/k/paul-wehage/germaine-tailleferre/3v2zrvhozufei/2#view The Germaine Tailleferre Knol, with information about works and publishers]

Directory:Musik Fabrik Music Publishing/Il etait un petit navire

2008-09-02T12:07:26Z

Musik Fabrik Music Publishing: typo

{{DISPLAYTITLE:Il était un Petit Navire}}

Il était un Petit Navire is an opera in three acts with music by Germaine Tailleferre (1892-1983) and a libretto by Henri Jeanson (1900-1970). Consisting of almost five thousand measures of music and running two and a half hours in performance, the work is by far the longest in Tailleferre’s catalogue.

The composition of this work began in 1932 and lasted almost twenty years. The stage and film decorator, André Boll, introduced the composer to the screenwriter and journalist Henri Jeanson, and the two immediately became friends. Germaine Tailleferre was married at the time to Jean Lageat who was very involved in the political activities of the Radical Socialist party; Lageat served as the secretary to Leon Blum during the Front Populaire. Jeanson was a journalist for many of the leftist newspapers in France, writing for “la Bataille”, the newspaper of the C.G.T. Union and also for the satirical newspaper the “Canard Enchaîné”. Jeanson became close to this couple who shared many of his political and artistic ideals.

Tailleferre and Jeanson decided to collaborate on a lyric work which would have the city of Marseilles as its setting. The choice of the “Cité phocéenneé” was perhaps prompted by the critical and popular success of “Marius”, a film by Korda and Marcel Pagnol, produced in 1931, and the fact that Jeanson was working with Korda on the scenario of another film at the time that he met Tailleferre.

The aim of this project was to “take apart” the conventions of lyric theater, as well as the customs and rituals of the opera-going public. The first version was a one-act “Lyric Satire” entitled Le Marin du Bolivar (The Sailor on the Ship Bolivar) whose composition took several years. Jeanson, who was very much in demand for his film screenplay and dialogue writing, sent his libretto page by page to Tailleferre, who had to write her music “piece by piece”. The work was probably finished by 1935, because a production at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées was announced in “Le Cri de Paris”. This production did not take place, and finally the work was premièred in January 1942 at the Studio of Radio Marseille (in the Libre Zone), just before Tailleferre and her daughter fled France for the United States.

The première was a great success and in 1946, the work was accepted by the repertoire selection committee of the Réunion des Théâtres Lyriques Nationaux, whose president, Henri Malherbe, was director of the Opéra-Comique. Malherbe found the work to be too short and asked Tailleferre and Jeanson to expand it to its final length of three acts. According to the manuscript of the piano/vocal score in Paris Opera Library, the expanded version was finished in December 1948, just six months after the première of Poulenc’s Les Mamelles de Tirésias. The première of the revised work was finally set for March 9, 1951, with staging by Réné Musy, musical direction by Pierre Dervaux, sets by Roger Durand and costumes by Lucien Boucher. The cast included many popular French Opera singers of the time: Denise Duval (Thérèse/Tirésias of Les Mamelles), Jean Giraudeau, (The Husband in Les Mamelles), Emile Rousseau (the Gendarme in Les Mamelles), René Hérent, and Paul Payen. The work’s title was changed just before its first performance to avoid confusion with Darius Milhaud’s opera Bolivar which premièred in 1950.

The premise of Il était un Petit Navire centers around the classic trio of a French vaudeville comedy (the husband, the wife and the lover) but also explores some offbeat variations. Valentine has two lovers: Victor, the rich pharmacist from Marseille, and Valentin, a sailor who is also her fiancé. Victor is married to Constance who is the mistress of Sosthène. Angélique, the daughter of Victor and Constance, is secretly seeing Florimond against the wishes of her parents who want her to remain “a good girl”. None of the characters believe that the others are faithful, but everyone pretends so that things will continue as usual.

This comfortable situation is disrupted by Ferréol, the outsider from Lyon (who bears a resemblance to Monsieur Brun in Pagnol’s films), who is upset by snubs from Victor and Constance and who takes his revenge by forcing everyone to admit the real nature of their relationships. But after ending these somewhat adulterous relationships, everyone is more angry at Ferréol, the person who created the scandal, than at those who were unfaithful. They all ask him to make settlements for his actions, and if Ferréol does succumb to Valentine’s feminine charms, but when Constance arrives and tries to use the same tactic, Ferréol is less convinced and more than a bit concerned with all of this feminine attention.

After Ferréol finds himself with a new “wife” (Valentine) and a new “mistress” (Constance), Victor arrives to collect his “property” and to ask for payment for the damage done to his honor. The imaginary affront is settled by a fictional duel, with transparent “swords from Marseilles” (a reference to the local folklore that people from Marseilles tell tall tales). The two wounded adversaries then make their peace while Victor explains the root of their dispute: “civilized” people do not force other people to see the truth, especially when the others already know what they’re pretending to ignore (which may refer to the “family secret” -- currently the rage of television talk shows and reality shows). The “Love Duet”, sung by Valentine and Valentin right under Victor's nose, brings the two lovers to their initial arrangement: Valentin as the absent lover and Valentine as the fiancée who waits faithfully (at least, in appearence), an allusion to the departure of Marius in Pagnol’s trilogy. However, Ferréol makes trouble again and soon everyone is angry once again. In the middle of this general outburst, the Captain of the Brigandar orders that the departure bell be rung...and this signal prompts the Cigarette Girls from Carmen to make their entrance, obviously victims of a misunderstanding as to what opera is currently playing.

Everyone realizes that this is only an opera and that everything that has happened before is only pretext and not “reality”. Finally, Valentine has the stage manager make the traditional “trois coups“ or “three beats” which begin every French theater performance and invites the audience to begin their performance and reclaim their roles at the coat check. After all, isn’t this story of adultery, artifice, and illusion the same as the story that the opera-going audience “acts out” in their daily real lives? Isn’t the forced ritual and pretense of the audience as false and unreal as that which they are watching on stage? And don’t these same people accept daily the same lies, forced etiquette and rituals? It seems that a mirror has been turned back to the audience. At least this seems partially to be the case, because Jeanson invites the audience to acknowledge their active, though unconscious, participation in the performance that they are watching, creating a connection between the hall and the stage, in contrast to the playwrite Pirandello, who keeps his audience in the position of witness or voyeur. Jeanson’s intention is more subversive, as it forces the audience to consider their own position in this game of truth-telling.

Jeanson begins playing with this intention from the first measures of the work. Taking advantage of a tradition that begins with Greek tragedies, Monteverdi’s Orfeo and continues with Les Mamelles de Tirésias or Les Tréteaux de Maître Pierre of de Falla, (but which is also a convention of cinema in such films as Hellzapoppin (1941) or in the films of Sacha Guitry, as he looks straight into the camera to speak with the audience) the trio sung by Valentine, Coraline, and Sylvia is sung directly to the audience. They tell the the audience that operas are generally difficult to understand because “singers have the reputation of not being very articulate”. Coraline and Sylvie have the function of the “Greek chorus”, commenting not only on the plot but also on the objective production itself; for instance, the third act begins with them commenting enthusiastically on the wonderful sets. They are at once part of the story and also part of the audience. When Ferréol asks Victor to prove that he really caused so much trouble, Victor points to the witnesses in the audience, who not only saw what he did but even applauded! And when the choir sings the same heroic chorus for the third time to end the duel, they ask themselves why and how do the words “Stop now!” (“Halté là!”) also go with this same music. Is this an accident or was it premeditated? “That is the question”, obviously.

As an Opéra-comique, Il était un Petit Navire also has the usual amount of spoken dialogue. These spoken passages are always used when a character is expressing something that is true or real. In the first act, Valentine explains to Coraline and Sylvia that she will be dishonored because of Valentin’s early return, because her bed is not empty. Victor explains to his friend Frédéric that his marriage is not happy. In the second act, Ferréol exposes everyone’s infidelities by speaking. Victor’s tirade in the third act, in which he gives the real reasons of his anger (people are talking), is spoken, interrupting a sung romance in which he describes the calm serenity of the city of Marseilles. Finally, when the characters realize that they are in an opera, they speak. According to Jeanson, one can sing to love, to fight, to be angry or to joke, but one can only express the truth by speaking. “Au fil de l’eau point de serment, ce n’est que sur terre qu’on ment” (“On the water, there are no oaths, It’s only on land that one lies”) sung in 1934 by Lys Gauty in “Le chaland qui passe”, once again, a story about a boat...

Jeanson’s libretto follows certain conventions of French classical theater in establishing a unity of time, place and action (which is presented in the initial trio) as well through double arias for each character and Victor’s third act Tirade. But there are also more “modern” influences, taken from the world of radio and advertising. When the curtain rises on Valentine’s bedroom in the first act, Coraline and Sylvia enthusiastically describe how much they like the interior decoration (“It’s Louis Quinze of today and Henri Trois of tomorrow!”), which is a reference to the ads for the Meubles Lévitan made in the 1930s by Charles Trénet and Pierre Dac for Radio Cité and advertising firm Publicis) before commenting on the next scene in the style of two radio hostesses. In the second act, Ferréol extols the virtues of “de bon, de bon beau, de bon beaujolais”( Du Bo Du Bon Dubonnet, an advertising campaign for a French wine). Valentine’s valse lente in the third act finishes with Il y a un commencement à tout, mon loup ! (a possible variation of other French slang expressions of the time, such as“ à l’aise Blaise”, “relax Max” or “je veux mon neveu”!) Coraline and Sylvia’s “running commentary” in the third act can be seen to prefigure the two old gentlemen in The Muppet Show who discuss the show as it is played out under their balcony seats.

The music uses many conventions of classical style, with two fugues, recitatives and double-arias in the manner of baroque and classical period operas. Of special interest is the scene in which Valentine calculates the total sum of Ferréol’s wrongs against her, similiar to Leporello’s famous “catalogue aria” of Don Giovanni’s romantic conquests, but here giving samples of all possible types of musical cadences; and the heroic Verdian Chorus which is repeated three times in the course of the work. But popular music is not ignored: there is the “player piano” music of the second act, the lively “Java”, the operetta-style “Valse Lente” in the third act for Valentine, and the child-like nursery songs that Coraline and Sylvia sing in the third act to give moral commentary (the title of the work is borrowed from a French nursery song). Finally, there are passages in a more “modernist” style: the atonal passages in the second act when the player piano plays music paid for with a counterfeit coin; the Stravinskian texture of the third act duel and the irruption of Ferréol; and general tumult just before entrance of the cigarette girls near the end of the work. Tailleferre, with a very contemporary spirit of eclecticism, does not exclude any stylistic possibilities, using whichever musical form seems to express most aptly the atmosphere of Jeanson’s libretto. Jeanson wanted this work to have “an atmosphere of the circus and of music-hall.” He recognized the “youth and richness” of Tailleferre’s score and was extremely pleased with the unapologetic modernity of his collaborator.

But even before the work’s first performance, “Le Petit Navire” took to the seas under a rather stormy sky: Constantin Brive writing in the French Newspaper “Combat” in an article published a day before the premiere, suggested that it might be something like “the première of Ernani: The serious people who come to buy tickets for Tosca or for Manon have not bothered to hide their indignation from the woman at the ticket window." In “Le Figaro”, a brief announcement expresses the preconceived idea that “one can certainly guess that the traditional operatic repertoire will not find a new thurifer (????) in the guise of Henri Jeanson”. This would seem to suggest that a scandale had been predicted even before the first note of music had been performed.

As predicted, there was quite a scene at the work‘s première. In “Le Figaro”, Clarendon (Bernard Gavoty) describes “Screams, loud sirens, laughter, polite bravos, booing and general disorder”. Henri Barraud in “Musical America” speaks of “the most exciting first performance that Paris has seen in many, many years. The gallery let loose with a storm of invective against the authors and actors, shouting disapproval and demanding its money back. The people in the orchestra and the first balconies, fortified by a large group of invited guests, tried to offset the hostile outcries with their applause.” . Marcel Schneider in “Combat” wondered whether the audience’s violent reaction was “sincere or faked”, an idea shared by Jeanson himself in article written between the first and second (and final) performances where Jeanson writes that the hecklers, hearing the first “false” version of the Java in the Second Act booed and screamed insults, thinking that this was the “correct” version without understanding the joke. Jeanson uses the French concept of prétérition in writing. "One could imagine (and clearly quite falsely, that goes without saying) that they (the hostile members of the audience) are part of a cabal. However, everyone knows that these types of events are always motivated by the love that they have for music.".

That the audience, from the orchestra to the balcony, felt attacked by a work that not only parodied opera but also the opera-going public, is not astonishing. Does the mirror that Valentine shows to the audience at the end of the work show an image which is so trueful that it shocks?

Concerning the work itself, serious musical critics seemed perplexed: for example Clarendon, of “Le Figaro” recognized Jeanson’s talent in an unexpected, if backhanded manner, as the two men did not share the same political views, by explaining that Clarendon didn’t understand the work, asks the correct question: “Where is the key to this enigma? It is inconceivable that such a writer as Jeanson, that a musician with the talent of Tailleferre should have made such a mistake without any sensible explanation.”

When we began our research into this work and began examining the available source material, we were also confronted with this puzzling mystery. Unfortunately, the orchestral manuscript, the three piano/vocal reductions (except for one copy of the piano/vocal version of the first act) and the typed copy of the libretto which are cited in the catalogue of primary source materials compiled by Robert Orledge in 1992, have all mysteriously disappeared from the Tailleferre papers, perhaps lost forever. The only remaining traces of this work are those in the collection of the Paris Opera Library.

There is an manuscript copy of the orchestral score in the reserve collection of the Paris Opera Library. Luckily, Bernard Lefort (who toured with Tailleferre in the 1950s in a piano/vocal duo) was named Director of the Paris Opera in 1980. He arranged to purchase four manuscripts of vocal works by Tailleferre for the Opera Library. Tailleferre found that the original orchestral score, used by Pierre Dervaux at the work’s première (and remaining in her papers after her death) was in such a bad condition that it couldn’t enter into the collection of such a prestigious library. She decided to make a new, fair copy of her score. Elivre de Rudder, her granddaughter (and now her unique heir) helped her grandmother with the stage directions and other indications in French, but Tailleferre, who was then 89 years old, suffered from arthritis of the hands. In addition, the psychological after effects of the failure of the 1951 production remained quite strong. According to her grand-daughter and other sources, Tailleferre spoke of this failure until the end of her life as “my greatest shame” and never understood why this work, which she considered to be among her best works, provoked such an outburst of anger. To re-examine this score in detail probably forced her to remember things which were difficult to accept. Nevertheless, having promised an autograph manuscript, Tailleferre was determined to honor her promise.

The examination of this document reveals how painful it must be been for the composer to copy the three acts of her score by hand. The handwriting begins by being extremely clear, but is progressively less and less legible. There are incomplete passages in the spoken text and the music. There are musical passages in which Tailleferre’s typically clear musical style becomes difficult to follow (for example, the end of the second act containing a number of passages which clearly do not logically follow each other). In addition, passages which were “borrowed” from the ballets La Nouvelle Cythère, Paris-Magie and Parisiana did not exactly correspond to the shared movements, nor to the typically clear and logical “Tailleferrien” style.

Once the musical text had been copied by computer, we extracted the libretto. The plot was simply incomprehensible. Even after taking into account the fact that there was missing spoken and sung text, it was impossible to follow the story after the beginning of the second act. It was impossible that Henri Jeanson, a journalist and man of letters, would have left his libretto in this state. It became clear that a large part of the work was missing.

The answer was found thanks to Pierre Vidal, director of the Paris Opera Library and Museum, who found three copies of the piano/vocal score of the work in the uncatalogued collection of the Opéra-comique. None of these copies were complete and they did not match exactly, but with the three copies (plus a fourth copy in reserve section of the main library collection), it was possible to reconstruct the complete work, including the spoken dialogue. In addition, there were staging notes which allowed us to understand what the audience saw the night of the première....and also what the audience did not see, which is to say a large part of the work.

A large percentage of Il était un Petit Navire was cut without any plausible explanation. The orchestral score copied in 1980 has a total of 2502 measures of music, divided by acts into 761, 718 and 1023 measures. The piano/vocal score has a total of 4716 measures, divided by acts into 1089, 1208, and 2419 measures respectively. This would suggest that at least 45% of the initial work was cut.

In the piano/vocal scores, there are also cuts which Tailleferre put back into her orchestral score of 1980. These include the first act aria of Madame Isabelle (Oranges des Baléares...); Valentine’s Act 1 aria (Pareil au pélican lassé d’un long voyage...); the second act trio with Victor, Constance et Angélique (Ah! qu’il fait bon d’être garçon...); and the second act finale, all of which contain passages crossed out with pencil, pages folded in the score, or glued together. There are also modifications to the text which do not appear to be the work of Tailleferre or Jeanson: for example, Victor’s response to Valentin’s suggestion of choice of weapons before the third act duel is changed from “fichez-moi l’épée et n’en parlons plus !” to “donne-le-moi” which completely changes not only the sense of the phrase but also the spirit of a work where wordplay and puns are central to the author’s intent.

It is probable that the audience at the première saw less than 50% of the work as it had initially been conceived by Tailleferre and Jeanson. It is also probable that a large part of what remained of the opera was neither the work of Tailleferre nor of Jeanson, but probably that of a third person who was either incompetent, hostile to the authors, or both. In addition, according to the press accounts of the première, the order of certain numbers was changed: for example, the third act “Love Duet” which Valentine and Valentin sing under Victor’s nose after the third act duel, was moved to the second act ball scene, which completely changes the context. Tailleferre’s 1980 copy retains the original order of the numbers in the piano/vocal scores in the Opéra-Comique collection. It is probable that these changes were not made by the composer nor by the librettist.

The first act which was the most successful at the night of the première, remains largely as Tailleferre and Jeanson conceived it. The problems begin with the second act. The scene was cut in which the player piano plays “counterfeit music” for the “counterfeit coin”, important for the plot (the first indications of the infidelities of the principal characters) but also for its atonal musical style. More than half of the second act finale was cut, making the various disputes between characters incomprehensible. In the third act, most of the running commentary of Coraline and Sylvia was cut, as well as Ferréol’s two airs and the fugue (On parle, on parle, on parle...) Most of the confrontation scene between Constance and Ferréol was also cut, making both of these characters much less interesting. In the duel scene, the two large choral numbers were cut, and the polytonal chords in the orchestration of the duel was left out, leaving only the two voices and the bass part, which makes any sense of violence next to impossible. The final of the third act (Mais, alors, nous sommes au théâtre....) was almost entirely cut, effectively taking out any possibility of bringing the work to its logical conclusion.

It is easy to understand why the audience did not understand the plot in the 1951 production. It is also interesting that none of the critics speak of the libretto other than in the first degree: to them, this is a rather silly story of a pretty girl who has two lovers, one of whom is married to another unfaithful woman and their daughter also has a boyfriend. The story within the story (or the mirror that Jeanson turns back on the audience) seems to have been entirely taken out of this performance. Tailleferre’s music is cut without any respect to the composer’s intentions, without logic, and without any care to keep intact the melodic, harmonic and rhythmic elements. The music is so mangled that the aged Germaine Tailleferre could not even get the pieces back together in her 1980 copy.

The work had been expanded and rewritten by the authors, as music which was in “Le Marin de Bolivar” was cut or modified, according to manuscript sources. Looking at the state of Il était le Petit Navire in 1948, the plot is complex because of the number of characters, but is written with a dramatic and logical style, inspired by classical forms. There is also a clear musical narrative seeking to underline the sprit of the libretto in a clear manner with harmonic and melodic forms which are logical and varied. But because of its mutilation before the premiere, one must to come to the conclusion that this work has never actually been performed as its authors intended.

One must ask why these cuts and modifications were made? Clarendon in “Le Figaro” and Constantin Brive in “Combat” both explain that after the work had been expanded as requested Henri Malherbe (the director of the Opéra-Comique), Georges Hirsch (administrateur-général of the Réunion des Théâtres-Lyriques Nationaux, the organization controlling both the Paris Opéra and Opéra-Comique) demanded that the work be cut. Tailleferre said in her “Mémoires à l’emporte-pièce” that Hirsch hated Henri Jeanson, and that he personally cancelled four of the projected six performances in spite of (or perhaps, because of) the enthusiastic response of the younger generation in the audience. How can a 45-minute work which is expanded to approximately two and a half hours and then cut back to one hour and fifteen minutes by people other than the authors have any dramatic and stylistic sense? Especially given the strong possibility that these sweeping changes were made by people other than the authors, it is difficult to imagine how such a radical amputation could have had positive results.

We will probably never know whether these cuts were made to deliberately sabotage this work because of jealousy and professional anger, or because of fear of shocking the traditionalist audience of the Opéra-Comique of the 1950s, or simply because the production team did not completely understand Jeanson’s intentions. But the work Il était un Petit Navire has never been presented in the way that Jeanson and Tailleferre conceived it. It would be interesting to be able to discover this work in its entirety.

Elvire de RUDDER, Paul WEHAGE & Jean-Thierry BOISSEAU

=== Share this page ===
<sharethis />

Directory:Musik Fabrik Music Publishing/Il etait un petit navire

2008-09-02T12:06:46Z

Musik Fabrik Music Publishing: adding title

{{DISPLAYTITLE:Il était un Petit Navire”}}

Il était un Petit Navire is an opera in three acts with music by Germaine Tailleferre (1892-1983) and a libretto by Henri Jeanson (1900-1970). Consisting of almost five thousand measures of music and running two and a half hours in performance, the work is by far the longest in Tailleferre’s catalogue.

The composition of this work began in 1932 and lasted almost twenty years. The stage and film decorator, André Boll, introduced the composer to the screenwriter and journalist Henri Jeanson, and the two immediately became friends. Germaine Tailleferre was married at the time to Jean Lageat who was very involved in the political activities of the Radical Socialist party; Lageat served as the secretary to Leon Blum during the Front Populaire. Jeanson was a journalist for many of the leftist newspapers in France, writing for “la Bataille”, the newspaper of the C.G.T. Union and also for the satirical newspaper the “Canard Enchaîné”. Jeanson became close to this couple who shared many of his political and artistic ideals.

Tailleferre and Jeanson decided to collaborate on a lyric work which would have the city of Marseilles as its setting. The choice of the “Cité phocéenneé” was perhaps prompted by the critical and popular success of “Marius”, a film by Korda and Marcel Pagnol, produced in 1931, and the fact that Jeanson was working with Korda on the scenario of another film at the time that he met Tailleferre.

The aim of this project was to “take apart” the conventions of lyric theater, as well as the customs and rituals of the opera-going public. The first version was a one-act “Lyric Satire” entitled Le Marin du Bolivar (The Sailor on the Ship Bolivar) whose composition took several years. Jeanson, who was very much in demand for his film screenplay and dialogue writing, sent his libretto page by page to Tailleferre, who had to write her music “piece by piece”. The work was probably finished by 1935, because a production at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées was announced in “Le Cri de Paris”. This production did not take place, and finally the work was premièred in January 1942 at the Studio of Radio Marseille (in the Libre Zone), just before Tailleferre and her daughter fled France for the United States.

The première was a great success and in 1946, the work was accepted by the repertoire selection committee of the Réunion des Théâtres Lyriques Nationaux, whose president, Henri Malherbe, was director of the Opéra-Comique. Malherbe found the work to be too short and asked Tailleferre and Jeanson to expand it to its final length of three acts. According to the manuscript of the piano/vocal score in Paris Opera Library, the expanded version was finished in December 1948, just six months after the première of Poulenc’s Les Mamelles de Tirésias. The première of the revised work was finally set for March 9, 1951, with staging by Réné Musy, musical direction by Pierre Dervaux, sets by Roger Durand and costumes by Lucien Boucher. The cast included many popular French Opera singers of the time: Denise Duval (Thérèse/Tirésias of Les Mamelles), Jean Giraudeau, (The Husband in Les Mamelles), Emile Rousseau (the Gendarme in Les Mamelles), René Hérent, and Paul Payen. The work’s title was changed just before its first performance to avoid confusion with Darius Milhaud’s opera Bolivar which premièred in 1950.

The premise of Il était un Petit Navire centers around the classic trio of a French vaudeville comedy (the husband, the wife and the lover) but also explores some offbeat variations. Valentine has two lovers: Victor, the rich pharmacist from Marseille, and Valentin, a sailor who is also her fiancé. Victor is married to Constance who is the mistress of Sosthène. Angélique, the daughter of Victor and Constance, is secretly seeing Florimond against the wishes of her parents who want her to remain “a good girl”. None of the characters believe that the others are faithful, but everyone pretends so that things will continue as usual.

This comfortable situation is disrupted by Ferréol, the outsider from Lyon (who bears a resemblance to Monsieur Brun in Pagnol’s films), who is upset by snubs from Victor and Constance and who takes his revenge by forcing everyone to admit the real nature of their relationships. But after ending these somewhat adulterous relationships, everyone is more angry at Ferréol, the person who created the scandal, than at those who were unfaithful. They all ask him to make settlements for his actions, and if Ferréol does succumb to Valentine’s feminine charms, but when Constance arrives and tries to use the same tactic, Ferréol is less convinced and more than a bit concerned with all of this feminine attention.

After Ferréol finds himself with a new “wife” (Valentine) and a new “mistress” (Constance), Victor arrives to collect his “property” and to ask for payment for the damage done to his honor. The imaginary affront is settled by a fictional duel, with transparent “swords from Marseilles” (a reference to the local folklore that people from Marseilles tell tall tales). The two wounded adversaries then make their peace while Victor explains the root of their dispute: “civilized” people do not force other people to see the truth, especially when the others already know what they’re pretending to ignore (which may refer to the “family secret” -- currently the rage of television talk shows and reality shows). The “Love Duet”, sung by Valentine and Valentin right under Victor's nose, brings the two lovers to their initial arrangement: Valentin as the absent lover and Valentine as the fiancée who waits faithfully (at least, in appearence), an allusion to the departure of Marius in Pagnol’s trilogy. However, Ferréol makes trouble again and soon everyone is angry once again. In the middle of this general outburst, the Captain of the Brigandar orders that the departure bell be rung...and this signal prompts the Cigarette Girls from Carmen to make their entrance, obviously victims of a misunderstanding as to what opera is currently playing.

Everyone realizes that this is only an opera and that everything that has happened before is only pretext and not “reality”. Finally, Valentine has the stage manager make the traditional “trois coups“ or “three beats” which begin every French theater performance and invites the audience to begin their performance and reclaim their roles at the coat check. After all, isn’t this story of adultery, artifice, and illusion the same as the story that the opera-going audience “acts out” in their daily real lives? Isn’t the forced ritual and pretense of the audience as false and unreal as that which they are watching on stage? And don’t these same people accept daily the same lies, forced etiquette and rituals? It seems that a mirror has been turned back to the audience. At least this seems partially to be the case, because Jeanson invites the audience to acknowledge their active, though unconscious, participation in the performance that they are watching, creating a connection between the hall and the stage, in contrast to the playwrite Pirandello, who keeps his audience in the position of witness or voyeur. Jeanson’s intention is more subversive, as it forces the audience to consider their own position in this game of truth-telling.

Jeanson begins playing with this intention from the first measures of the work. Taking advantage of a tradition that begins with Greek tragedies, Monteverdi’s Orfeo and continues with Les Mamelles de Tirésias or Les Tréteaux de Maître Pierre of de Falla, (but which is also a convention of cinema in such films as Hellzapoppin (1941) or in the films of Sacha Guitry, as he looks straight into the camera to speak with the audience) the trio sung by Valentine, Coraline, and Sylvia is sung directly to the audience. They tell the the audience that operas are generally difficult to understand because “singers have the reputation of not being very articulate”. Coraline and Sylvie have the function of the “Greek chorus”, commenting not only on the plot but also on the objective production itself; for instance, the third act begins with them commenting enthusiastically on the wonderful sets. They are at once part of the story and also part of the audience. When Ferréol asks Victor to prove that he really caused so much trouble, Victor points to the witnesses in the audience, who not only saw what he did but even applauded! And when the choir sings the same heroic chorus for the third time to end the duel, they ask themselves why and how do the words “Stop now!” (“Halté là!”) also go with this same music. Is this an accident or was it premeditated? “That is the question”, obviously.

As an Opéra-comique, Il était un Petit Navire also has the usual amount of spoken dialogue. These spoken passages are always used when a character is expressing something that is true or real. In the first act, Valentine explains to Coraline and Sylvia that she will be dishonored because of Valentin’s early return, because her bed is not empty. Victor explains to his friend Frédéric that his marriage is not happy. In the second act, Ferréol exposes everyone’s infidelities by speaking. Victor’s tirade in the third act, in which he gives the real reasons of his anger (people are talking), is spoken, interrupting a sung romance in which he describes the calm serenity of the city of Marseilles. Finally, when the characters realize that they are in an opera, they speak. According to Jeanson, one can sing to love, to fight, to be angry or to joke, but one can only express the truth by speaking. “Au fil de l’eau point de serment, ce n’est que sur terre qu’on ment” (“On the water, there are no oaths, It’s only on land that one lies”) sung in 1934 by Lys Gauty in “Le chaland qui passe”, once again, a story about a boat...

Jeanson’s libretto follows certain conventions of French classical theater in establishing a unity of time, place and action (which is presented in the initial trio) as well through double arias for each character and Victor’s third act Tirade. But there are also more “modern” influences, taken from the world of radio and advertising. When the curtain rises on Valentine’s bedroom in the first act, Coraline and Sylvia enthusiastically describe how much they like the interior decoration (“It’s Louis Quinze of today and Henri Trois of tomorrow!”), which is a reference to the ads for the Meubles Lévitan made in the 1930s by Charles Trénet and Pierre Dac for Radio Cité and advertising firm Publicis) before commenting on the next scene in the style of two radio hostesses. In the second act, Ferréol extols the virtues of “de bon, de bon beau, de bon beaujolais”( Du Bo Du Bon Dubonnet, an advertising campaign for a French wine). Valentine’s valse lente in the third act finishes with Il y a un commencement à tout, mon loup ! (a possible variation of other French slang expressions of the time, such as“ à l’aise Blaise”, “relax Max” or “je veux mon neveu”!) Coraline and Sylvia’s “running commentary” in the third act can be seen to prefigure the two old gentlemen in The Muppet Show who discuss the show as it is played out under their balcony seats.

The music uses many conventions of classical style, with two fugues, recitatives and double-arias in the manner of baroque and classical period operas. Of special interest is the scene in which Valentine calculates the total sum of Ferréol’s wrongs against her, similiar to Leporello’s famous “catalogue aria” of Don Giovanni’s romantic conquests, but here giving samples of all possible types of musical cadences; and the heroic Verdian Chorus which is repeated three times in the course of the work. But popular music is not ignored: there is the “player piano” music of the second act, the lively “Java”, the operetta-style “Valse Lente” in the third act for Valentine, and the child-like nursery songs that Coraline and Sylvia sing in the third act to give moral commentary (the title of the work is borrowed from a French nursery song). Finally, there are passages in a more “modernist” style: the atonal passages in the second act when the player piano plays music paid for with a counterfeit coin; the Stravinskian texture of the third act duel and the irruption of Ferréol; and general tumult just before entrance of the cigarette girls near the end of the work. Tailleferre, with a very contemporary spirit of eclecticism, does not exclude any stylistic possibilities, using whichever musical form seems to express most aptly the atmosphere of Jeanson’s libretto. Jeanson wanted this work to have “an atmosphere of the circus and of music-hall.” He recognized the “youth and richness” of Tailleferre’s score and was extremely pleased with the unapologetic modernity of his collaborator.

But even before the work’s first performance, “Le Petit Navire” took to the seas under a rather stormy sky: Constantin Brive writing in the French Newspaper “Combat” in an article published a day before the premiere, suggested that it might be something like “the première of Ernani: The serious people who come to buy tickets for Tosca or for Manon have not bothered to hide their indignation from the woman at the ticket window." In “Le Figaro”, a brief announcement expresses the preconceived idea that “one can certainly guess that the traditional operatic repertoire will not find a new thurifer (????) in the guise of Henri Jeanson”. This would seem to suggest that a scandale had been predicted even before the first note of music had been performed.

As predicted, there was quite a scene at the work‘s première. In “Le Figaro”, Clarendon (Bernard Gavoty) describes “Screams, loud sirens, laughter, polite bravos, booing and general disorder”. Henri Barraud in “Musical America” speaks of “the most exciting first performance that Paris has seen in many, many years. The gallery let loose with a storm of invective against the authors and actors, shouting disapproval and demanding its money back. The people in the orchestra and the first balconies, fortified by a large group of invited guests, tried to offset the hostile outcries with their applause.” . Marcel Schneider in “Combat” wondered whether the audience’s violent reaction was “sincere or faked”, an idea shared by Jeanson himself in article written between the first and second (and final) performances where Jeanson writes that the hecklers, hearing the first “false” version of the Java in the Second Act booed and screamed insults, thinking that this was the “correct” version without understanding the joke. Jeanson uses the French concept of prétérition in writing. "One could imagine (and clearly quite falsely, that goes without saying) that they (the hostile members of the audience) are part of a cabal. However, everyone knows that these types of events are always motivated by the love that they have for music.".

That the audience, from the orchestra to the balcony, felt attacked by a work that not only parodied opera but also the opera-going public, is not astonishing. Does the mirror that Valentine shows to the audience at the end of the work show an image which is so trueful that it shocks?

Concerning the work itself, serious musical critics seemed perplexed: for example Clarendon, of “Le Figaro” recognized Jeanson’s talent in an unexpected, if backhanded manner, as the two men did not share the same political views, by explaining that Clarendon didn’t understand the work, asks the correct question: “Where is the key to this enigma? It is inconceivable that such a writer as Jeanson, that a musician with the talent of Tailleferre should have made such a mistake without any sensible explanation.”

When we began our research into this work and began examining the available source material, we were also confronted with this puzzling mystery. Unfortunately, the orchestral manuscript, the three piano/vocal reductions (except for one copy of the piano/vocal version of the first act) and the typed copy of the libretto which are cited in the catalogue of primary source materials compiled by Robert Orledge in 1992, have all mysteriously disappeared from the Tailleferre papers, perhaps lost forever. The only remaining traces of this work are those in the collection of the Paris Opera Library.

There is an manuscript copy of the orchestral score in the reserve collection of the Paris Opera Library. Luckily, Bernard Lefort (who toured with Tailleferre in the 1950s in a piano/vocal duo) was named Director of the Paris Opera in 1980. He arranged to purchase four manuscripts of vocal works by Tailleferre for the Opera Library. Tailleferre found that the original orchestral score, used by Pierre Dervaux at the work’s première (and remaining in her papers after her death) was in such a bad condition that it couldn’t enter into the collection of such a prestigious library. She decided to make a new, fair copy of her score. Elivre de Rudder, her granddaughter (and now her unique heir) helped her grandmother with the stage directions and other indications in French, but Tailleferre, who was then 89 years old, suffered from arthritis of the hands. In addition, the psychological after effects of the failure of the 1951 production remained quite strong. According to her grand-daughter and other sources, Tailleferre spoke of this failure until the end of her life as “my greatest shame” and never understood why this work, which she considered to be among her best works, provoked such an outburst of anger. To re-examine this score in detail probably forced her to remember things which were difficult to accept. Nevertheless, having promised an autograph manuscript, Tailleferre was determined to honor her promise.

The examination of this document reveals how painful it must be been for the composer to copy the three acts of her score by hand. The handwriting begins by being extremely clear, but is progressively less and less legible. There are incomplete passages in the spoken text and the music. There are musical passages in which Tailleferre’s typically clear musical style becomes difficult to follow (for example, the end of the second act containing a number of passages which clearly do not logically follow each other). In addition, passages which were “borrowed” from the ballets La Nouvelle Cythère, Paris-Magie and Parisiana did not exactly correspond to the shared movements, nor to the typically clear and logical “Tailleferrien” style.

Once the musical text had been copied by computer, we extracted the libretto. The plot was simply incomprehensible. Even after taking into account the fact that there was missing spoken and sung text, it was impossible to follow the story after the beginning of the second act. It was impossible that Henri Jeanson, a journalist and man of letters, would have left his libretto in this state. It became clear that a large part of the work was missing.

The answer was found thanks to Pierre Vidal, director of the Paris Opera Library and Museum, who found three copies of the piano/vocal score of the work in the uncatalogued collection of the Opéra-comique. None of these copies were complete and they did not match exactly, but with the three copies (plus a fourth copy in reserve section of the main library collection), it was possible to reconstruct the complete work, including the spoken dialogue. In addition, there were staging notes which allowed us to understand what the audience saw the night of the première....and also what the audience did not see, which is to say a large part of the work.

A large percentage of Il était un Petit Navire was cut without any plausible explanation. The orchestral score copied in 1980 has a total of 2502 measures of music, divided by acts into 761, 718 and 1023 measures. The piano/vocal score has a total of 4716 measures, divided by acts into 1089, 1208, and 2419 measures respectively. This would suggest that at least 45% of the initial work was cut.

In the piano/vocal scores, there are also cuts which Tailleferre put back into her orchestral score of 1980. These include the first act aria of Madame Isabelle (Oranges des Baléares...); Valentine’s Act 1 aria (Pareil au pélican lassé d’un long voyage...); the second act trio with Victor, Constance et Angélique (Ah! qu’il fait bon d’être garçon...); and the second act finale, all of which contain passages crossed out with pencil, pages folded in the score, or glued together. There are also modifications to the text which do not appear to be the work of Tailleferre or Jeanson: for example, Victor’s response to Valentin’s suggestion of choice of weapons before the third act duel is changed from “fichez-moi l’épée et n’en parlons plus !” to “donne-le-moi” which completely changes not only the sense of the phrase but also the spirit of a work where wordplay and puns are central to the author’s intent.

It is probable that the audience at the première saw less than 50% of the work as it had initially been conceived by Tailleferre and Jeanson. It is also probable that a large part of what remained of the opera was neither the work of Tailleferre nor of Jeanson, but probably that of a third person who was either incompetent, hostile to the authors, or both. In addition, according to the press accounts of the première, the order of certain numbers was changed: for example, the third act “Love Duet” which Valentine and Valentin sing under Victor’s nose after the third act duel, was moved to the second act ball scene, which completely changes the context. Tailleferre’s 1980 copy retains the original order of the numbers in the piano/vocal scores in the Opéra-Comique collection. It is probable that these changes were not made by the composer nor by the librettist.

The first act which was the most successful at the night of the première, remains largely as Tailleferre and Jeanson conceived it. The problems begin with the second act. The scene was cut in which the player piano plays “counterfeit music” for the “counterfeit coin”, important for the plot (the first indications of the infidelities of the principal characters) but also for its atonal musical style. More than half of the second act finale was cut, making the various disputes between characters incomprehensible. In the third act, most of the running commentary of Coraline and Sylvia was cut, as well as Ferréol’s two airs and the fugue (On parle, on parle, on parle...) Most of the confrontation scene between Constance and Ferréol was also cut, making both of these characters much less interesting. In the duel scene, the two large choral numbers were cut, and the polytonal chords in the orchestration of the duel was left out, leaving only the two voices and the bass part, which makes any sense of violence next to impossible. The final of the third act (Mais, alors, nous sommes au théâtre....) was almost entirely cut, effectively taking out any possibility of bringing the work to its logical conclusion.

It is easy to understand why the audience did not understand the plot in the 1951 production. It is also interesting that none of the critics speak of the libretto other than in the first degree: to them, this is a rather silly story of a pretty girl who has two lovers, one of whom is married to another unfaithful woman and their daughter also has a boyfriend. The story within the story (or the mirror that Jeanson turns back on the audience) seems to have been entirely taken out of this performance. Tailleferre’s music is cut without any respect to the composer’s intentions, without logic, and without any care to keep intact the melodic, harmonic and rhythmic elements. The music is so mangled that the aged Germaine Tailleferre could not even get the pieces back together in her 1980 copy.

The work had been expanded and rewritten by the authors, as music which was in “Le Marin de Bolivar” was cut or modified, according to manuscript sources. Looking at the state of Il était le Petit Navire in 1948, the plot is complex because of the number of characters, but is written with a dramatic and logical style, inspired by classical forms. There is also a clear musical narrative seeking to underline the sprit of the libretto in a clear manner with harmonic and melodic forms which are logical and varied. But because of its mutilation before the premiere, one must to come to the conclusion that this work has never actually been performed as its authors intended.

One must ask why these cuts and modifications were made? Clarendon in “Le Figaro” and Constantin Brive in “Combat” both explain that after the work had been expanded as requested Henri Malherbe (the director of the Opéra-Comique), Georges Hirsch (administrateur-général of the Réunion des Théâtres-Lyriques Nationaux, the organization controlling both the Paris Opéra and Opéra-Comique) demanded that the work be cut. Tailleferre said in her “Mémoires à l’emporte-pièce” that Hirsch hated Henri Jeanson, and that he personally cancelled four of the projected six performances in spite of (or perhaps, because of) the enthusiastic response of the younger generation in the audience. How can a 45-minute work which is expanded to approximately two and a half hours and then cut back to one hour and fifteen minutes by people other than the authors have any dramatic and stylistic sense? Especially given the strong possibility that these sweeping changes were made by people other than the authors, it is difficult to imagine how such a radical amputation could have had positive results.

We will probably never know whether these cuts were made to deliberately sabotage this work because of jealousy and professional anger, or because of fear of shocking the traditionalist audience of the Opéra-Comique of the 1950s, or simply because the production team did not completely understand Jeanson’s intentions. But the work Il était un Petit Navire has never been presented in the way that Jeanson and Tailleferre conceived it. It would be interesting to be able to discover this work in its entirety.

Elvire de RUDDER, Paul WEHAGE & Jean-Thierry BOISSEAU

=== Share this page ===
<sharethis />

Directory:Musik Fabrik Music Publishing/Il etait un petit navire

2008-08-15T14:09:22Z

Musik Fabrik Music Publishing: share it

'''“Il était un Petit Navire”'''

Il était un Petit Navire is an opera in three acts with music by Germaine Tailleferre (1892-1983) and a libretto by Henri Jeanson (1900-1970). Consisting of almost five thousand measures of music and running two and a half hours in performance, the work is by far the longest in Tailleferre’s catalogue.

The composition of this work began in 1932 and lasted almost twenty years. The stage and film decorator, André Boll, introduced the composer to the screenwriter and journalist Henri Jeanson, and the two immediately became friends. Germaine Tailleferre was married at the time to Jean Lageat who was very involved in the political activities of the Radical Socialist party; Lageat served as the secretary to Leon Blum during the Front Populaire. Jeanson was a journalist for many of the leftist newspapers in France, writing for “la Bataille”, the newspaper of the C.G.T. Union and also for the satirical newspaper the “Canard Enchaîné”. Jeanson became close to this couple who shared many of his political and artistic ideals.

Tailleferre and Jeanson decided to collaborate on a lyric work which would have the city of Marseilles as its setting. The choice of the “Cité phocéenneé” was perhaps prompted by the critical and popular success of “Marius”, a film by Korda and Marcel Pagnol, produced in 1931, and the fact that Jeanson was working with Korda on the scenario of another film at the time that he met Tailleferre.

The aim of this project was to “take apart” the conventions of lyric theater, as well as the customs and rituals of the opera-going public. The first version was a one-act “Lyric Satire” entitled Le Marin du Bolivar (The Sailor on the Ship Bolivar) whose composition took several years. Jeanson, who was very much in demand for his film screenplay and dialogue writing, sent his libretto page by page to Tailleferre, who had to write her music “piece by piece”. The work was probably finished by 1935, because a production at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées was announced in “Le Cri de Paris”. This production did not take place, and finally the work was premièred in January 1942 at the Studio of Radio Marseille (in the Libre Zone), just before Tailleferre and her daughter fled France for the United States.

The première was a great success and in 1946, the work was accepted by the repertoire selection committee of the Réunion des Théâtres Lyriques Nationaux, whose president, Henri Malherbe, was director of the Opéra-Comique. Malherbe found the work to be too short and asked Tailleferre and Jeanson to expand it to its final length of three acts. According to the manuscript of the piano/vocal score in Paris Opera Library, the expanded version was finished in December 1948, just six months after the première of Poulenc’s Les Mamelles de Tirésias. The première of the revised work was finally set for March 9, 1951, with staging by Réné Musy, musical direction by Pierre Dervaux, sets by Roger Durand and costumes by Lucien Boucher. The cast included many popular French Opera singers of the time: Denise Duval (Thérèse/Tirésias of Les Mamelles), Jean Giraudeau, (The Husband in Les Mamelles), Emile Rousseau (the Gendarme in Les Mamelles), René Hérent, and Paul Payen. The work’s title was changed just before its first performance to avoid confusion with Darius Milhaud’s opera Bolivar which premièred in 1950.

The premise of Il était un Petit Navire centers around the classic trio of a French vaudeville comedy (the husband, the wife and the lover) but also explores some offbeat variations. Valentine has two lovers: Victor, the rich pharmacist from Marseille, and Valentin, a sailor who is also her fiancé. Victor is married to Constance who is the mistress of Sosthène. Angélique, the daughter of Victor and Constance, is secretly seeing Florimond against the wishes of her parents who want her to remain “a good girl”. None of the characters believe that the others are faithful, but everyone pretends so that things will continue as usual.

This comfortable situation is disrupted by Ferréol, the outsider from Lyon (who bears a resemblance to Monsieur Brun in Pagnol’s films), who is upset by snubs from Victor and Constance and who takes his revenge by forcing everyone to admit the real nature of their relationships. But after ending these somewhat adulterous relationships, everyone is more angry at Ferréol, the person who created the scandal, than at those who were unfaithful. They all ask him to make settlements for his actions, and if Ferréol does succumb to Valentine’s feminine charms, but when Constance arrives and tries to use the same tactic, Ferréol is less convinced and more than a bit concerned with all of this feminine attention.

After Ferréol finds himself with a new “wife” (Valentine) and a new “mistress” (Constance), Victor arrives to collect his “property” and to ask for payment for the damage done to his honor. The imaginary affront is settled by a fictional duel, with transparent “swords from Marseilles” (a reference to the local folklore that people from Marseilles tell tall tales). The two wounded adversaries then make their peace while Victor explains the root of their dispute: “civilized” people do not force other people to see the truth, especially when the others already know what they’re pretending to ignore (which may refer to the “family secret” -- currently the rage of television talk shows and reality shows). The “Love Duet”, sung by Valentine and Valentin right under Victor's nose, brings the two lovers to their initial arrangement: Valentin as the absent lover and Valentine as the fiancée who waits faithfully (at least, in appearence), an allusion to the departure of Marius in Pagnol’s trilogy. However, Ferréol makes trouble again and soon everyone is angry once again. In the middle of this general outburst, the Captain of the Brigandar orders that the departure bell be rung...and this signal prompts the Cigarette Girls from Carmen to make their entrance, obviously victims of a misunderstanding as to what opera is currently playing.

Everyone realizes that this is only an opera and that everything that has happened before is only pretext and not “reality”. Finally, Valentine has the stage manager make the traditional “trois coups“ or “three beats” which begin every French theater performance and invites the audience to begin their performance and reclaim their roles at the coat check. After all, isn’t this story of adultery, artifice, and illusion the same as the story that the opera-going audience “acts out” in their daily real lives? Isn’t the forced ritual and pretense of the audience as false and unreal as that which they are watching on stage? And don’t these same people accept daily the same lies, forced etiquette and rituals? It seems that a mirror has been turned back to the audience. At least this seems partially to be the case, because Jeanson invites the audience to acknowledge their active, though unconscious, participation in the performance that they are watching, creating a connection between the hall and the stage, in contrast to the playwrite Pirandello, who keeps his audience in the position of witness or voyeur. Jeanson’s intention is more subversive, as it forces the audience to consider their own position in this game of truth-telling.

Jeanson begins playing with this intention from the first measures of the work. Taking advantage of a tradition that begins with Greek tragedies, Monteverdi’s Orfeo and continues with Les Mamelles de Tirésias or Les Tréteaux de Maître Pierre of de Falla, (but which is also a convention of cinema in such films as Hellzapoppin (1941) or in the films of Sacha Guitry, as he looks straight into the camera to speak with the audience) the trio sung by Valentine, Coraline, and Sylvia is sung directly to the audience. They tell the the audience that operas are generally difficult to understand because “singers have the reputation of not being very articulate”. Coraline and Sylvie have the function of the “Greek chorus”, commenting not only on the plot but also on the objective production itself; for instance, the third act begins with them commenting enthusiastically on the wonderful sets. They are at once part of the story and also part of the audience. When Ferréol asks Victor to prove that he really caused so much trouble, Victor points to the witnesses in the audience, who not only saw what he did but even applauded! And when the choir sings the same heroic chorus for the third time to end the duel, they ask themselves why and how do the words “Stop now!” (“Halté là!”) also go with this same music. Is this an accident or was it premeditated? “That is the question”, obviously.

As an Opéra-comique, Il était un Petit Navire also has the usual amount of spoken dialogue. These spoken passages are always used when a character is expressing something that is true or real. In the first act, Valentine explains to Coraline and Sylvia that she will be dishonored because of Valentin’s early return, because her bed is not empty. Victor explains to his friend Frédéric that his marriage is not happy. In the second act, Ferréol exposes everyone’s infidelities by speaking. Victor’s tirade in the third act, in which he gives the real reasons of his anger (people are talking), is spoken, interrupting a sung romance in which he describes the calm serenity of the city of Marseilles. Finally, when the characters realize that they are in an opera, they speak. According to Jeanson, one can sing to love, to fight, to be angry or to joke, but one can only express the truth by speaking. “Au fil de l’eau point de serment, ce n’est que sur terre qu’on ment” (“On the water, there are no oaths, It’s only on land that one lies”) sung in 1934 by Lys Gauty in “Le chaland qui passe”, once again, a story about a boat...

Jeanson’s libretto follows certain conventions of French classical theater in establishing a unity of time, place and action (which is presented in the initial trio) as well through double arias for each character and Victor’s third act Tirade. But there are also more “modern” influences, taken from the world of radio and advertising. When the curtain rises on Valentine’s bedroom in the first act, Coraline and Sylvia enthusiastically describe how much they like the interior decoration (“It’s Louis Quinze of today and Henri Trois of tomorrow!”), which is a reference to the ads for the Meubles Lévitan made in the 1930s by Charles Trénet and Pierre Dac for Radio Cité and advertising firm Publicis) before commenting on the next scene in the style of two radio hostesses. In the second act, Ferréol extols the virtues of “de bon, de bon beau, de bon beaujolais”( Du Bo Du Bon Dubonnet, an advertising campaign for a French wine). Valentine’s valse lente in the third act finishes with Il y a un commencement à tout, mon loup ! (a possible variation of other French slang expressions of the time, such as“ à l’aise Blaise”, “relax Max” or “je veux mon neveu”!) Coraline and Sylvia’s “running commentary” in the third act can be seen to prefigure the two old gentlemen in The Muppet Show who discuss the show as it is played out under their balcony seats.

The music uses many conventions of classical style, with two fugues, recitatives and double-arias in the manner of baroque and classical period operas. Of special interest is the scene in which Valentine calculates the total sum of Ferréol’s wrongs against her, similiar to Leporello’s famous “catalogue aria” of Don Giovanni’s romantic conquests, but here giving samples of all possible types of musical cadences; and the heroic Verdian Chorus which is repeated three times in the course of the work. But popular music is not ignored: there is the “player piano” music of the second act, the lively “Java”, the operetta-style “Valse Lente” in the third act for Valentine, and the child-like nursery songs that Coraline and Sylvia sing in the third act to give moral commentary (the title of the work is borrowed from a French nursery song). Finally, there are passages in a more “modernist” style: the atonal passages in the second act when the player piano plays music paid for with a counterfeit coin; the Stravinskian texture of the third act duel and the irruption of Ferréol; and general tumult just before entrance of the cigarette girls near the end of the work. Tailleferre, with a very contemporary spirit of eclecticism, does not exclude any stylistic possibilities, using whichever musical form seems to express most aptly the atmosphere of Jeanson’s libretto. Jeanson wanted this work to have “an atmosphere of the circus and of music-hall.” He recognized the “youth and richness” of Tailleferre’s score and was extremely pleased with the unapologetic modernity of his collaborator.

But even before the work’s first performance, “Le Petit Navire” took to the seas under a rather stormy sky: Constantin Brive writing in the French Newspaper “Combat” in an article published a day before the premiere, suggested that it might be something like “the première of Ernani: The serious people who come to buy tickets for Tosca or for Manon have not bothered to hide their indignation from the woman at the ticket window." In “Le Figaro”, a brief announcement expresses the preconceived idea that “one can certainly guess that the traditional operatic repertoire will not find a new thurifer (????) in the guise of Henri Jeanson”. This would seem to suggest that a scandale had been predicted even before the first note of music had been performed.

As predicted, there was quite a scene at the work‘s première. In “Le Figaro”, Clarendon (Bernard Gavoty) describes “Screams, loud sirens, laughter, polite bravos, booing and general disorder”. Henri Barraud in “Musical America” speaks of “the most exciting first performance that Paris has seen in many, many years. The gallery let loose with a storm of invective against the authors and actors, shouting disapproval and demanding its money back. The people in the orchestra and the first balconies, fortified by a large group of invited guests, tried to offset the hostile outcries with their applause.” . Marcel Schneider in “Combat” wondered whether the audience’s violent reaction was “sincere or faked”, an idea shared by Jeanson himself in article written between the first and second (and final) performances where Jeanson writes that the hecklers, hearing the first “false” version of the Java in the Second Act booed and screamed insults, thinking that this was the “correct” version without understanding the joke. Jeanson uses the French concept of prétérition in writing. "One could imagine (and clearly quite falsely, that goes without saying) that they (the hostile members of the audience) are part of a cabal. However, everyone knows that these types of events are always motivated by the love that they have for music.".

That the audience, from the orchestra to the balcony, felt attacked by a work that not only parodied opera but also the opera-going public, is not astonishing. Does the mirror that Valentine shows to the audience at the end of the work show an image which is so trueful that it shocks?

Concerning the work itself, serious musical critics seemed perplexed: for example Clarendon, of “Le Figaro” recognized Jeanson’s talent in an unexpected, if backhanded manner, as the two men did not share the same political views, by explaining that Clarendon didn’t understand the work, asks the correct question: “Where is the key to this enigma? It is inconceivable that such a writer as Jeanson, that a musician with the talent of Tailleferre should have made such a mistake without any sensible explanation.”

When we began our research into this work and began examining the available source material, we were also confronted with this puzzling mystery. Unfortunately, the orchestral manuscript, the three piano/vocal reductions (except for one copy of the piano/vocal version of the first act) and the typed copy of the libretto which are cited in the catalogue of primary source materials compiled by Robert Orledge in 1992, have all mysteriously disappeared from the Tailleferre papers, perhaps lost forever. The only remaining traces of this work are those in the collection of the Paris Opera Library.

There is an manuscript copy of the orchestral score in the reserve collection of the Paris Opera Library. Luckily, Bernard Lefort (who toured with Tailleferre in the 1950s in a piano/vocal duo) was named Director of the Paris Opera in 1980. He arranged to purchase four manuscripts of vocal works by Tailleferre for the Opera Library. Tailleferre found that the original orchestral score, used by Pierre Dervaux at the work’s première (and remaining in her papers after her death) was in such a bad condition that it couldn’t enter into the collection of such a prestigious library. She decided to make a new, fair copy of her score. Elivre de Rudder, her granddaughter (and now her unique heir) helped her grandmother with the stage directions and other indications in French, but Tailleferre, who was then 89 years old, suffered from arthritis of the hands. In addition, the psychological after effects of the failure of the 1951 production remained quite strong. According to her grand-daughter and other sources, Tailleferre spoke of this failure until the end of her life as “my greatest shame” and never understood why this work, which she considered to be among her best works, provoked such an outburst of anger. To re-examine this score in detail probably forced her to remember things which were difficult to accept. Nevertheless, having promised an autograph manuscript, Tailleferre was determined to honor her promise.

The examination of this document reveals how painful it must be been for the composer to copy the three acts of her score by hand. The handwriting begins by being extremely clear, but is progressively less and less legible. There are incomplete passages in the spoken text and the music. There are musical passages in which Tailleferre’s typically clear musical style becomes difficult to follow (for example, the end of the second act containing a number of passages which clearly do not logically follow each other). In addition, passages which were “borrowed” from the ballets La Nouvelle Cythère, Paris-Magie and Parisiana did not exactly correspond to the shared movements, nor to the typically clear and logical “Tailleferrien” style.

Once the musical text had been copied by computer, we extracted the libretto. The plot was simply incomprehensible. Even after taking into account the fact that there was missing spoken and sung text, it was impossible to follow the story after the beginning of the second act. It was impossible that Henri Jeanson, a journalist and man of letters, would have left his libretto in this state. It became clear that a large part of the work was missing.

The answer was found thanks to Pierre Vidal, director of the Paris Opera Library and Museum, who found three copies of the piano/vocal score of the work in the uncatalogued collection of the Opéra-comique. None of these copies were complete and they did not match exactly, but with the three copies (plus a fourth copy in reserve section of the main library collection), it was possible to reconstruct the complete work, including the spoken dialogue. In addition, there were staging notes which allowed us to understand what the audience saw the night of the première....and also what the audience did not see, which is to say a large part of the work.

A large percentage of Il était un Petit Navire was cut without any plausible explanation. The orchestral score copied in 1980 has a total of 2502 measures of music, divided by acts into 761, 718 and 1023 measures. The piano/vocal score has a total of 4716 measures, divided by acts into 1089, 1208, and 2419 measures respectively. This would suggest that at least 45% of the initial work was cut.

In the piano/vocal scores, there are also cuts which Tailleferre put back into her orchestral score of 1980. These include the first act aria of Madame Isabelle (Oranges des Baléares...); Valentine’s Act 1 aria (Pareil au pélican lassé d’un long voyage...); the second act trio with Victor, Constance et Angélique (Ah! qu’il fait bon d’être garçon...); and the second act finale, all of which contain passages crossed out with pencil, pages folded in the score, or glued together. There are also modifications to the text which do not appear to be the work of Tailleferre or Jeanson: for example, Victor’s response to Valentin’s suggestion of choice of weapons before the third act duel is changed from “fichez-moi l’épée et n’en parlons plus !” to “donne-le-moi” which completely changes not only the sense of the phrase but also the spirit of a work where wordplay and puns are central to the author’s intent.

It is probable that the audience at the première saw less than 50% of the work as it had initially been conceived by Tailleferre and Jeanson. It is also probable that a large part of what remained of the opera was neither the work of Tailleferre nor of Jeanson, but probably that of a third person who was either incompetent, hostile to the authors, or both. In addition, according to the press accounts of the première, the order of certain numbers was changed: for example, the third act “Love Duet” which Valentine and Valentin sing under Victor’s nose after the third act duel, was moved to the second act ball scene, which completely changes the context. Tailleferre’s 1980 copy retains the original order of the numbers in the piano/vocal scores in the Opéra-Comique collection. It is probable that these changes were not made by the composer nor by the librettist.

The first act which was the most successful at the night of the première, remains largely as Tailleferre and Jeanson conceived it. The problems begin with the second act. The scene was cut in which the player piano plays “counterfeit music” for the “counterfeit coin”, important for the plot (the first indications of the infidelities of the principal characters) but also for its atonal musical style. More than half of the second act finale was cut, making the various disputes between characters incomprehensible. In the third act, most of the running commentary of Coraline and Sylvia was cut, as well as Ferréol’s two airs and the fugue (On parle, on parle, on parle...) Most of the confrontation scene between Constance and Ferréol was also cut, making both of these characters much less interesting. In the duel scene, the two large choral numbers were cut, and the polytonal chords in the orchestration of the duel was left out, leaving only the two voices and the bass part, which makes any sense of violence next to impossible. The final of the third act (Mais, alors, nous sommes au théâtre....) was almost entirely cut, effectively taking out any possibility of bringing the work to its logical conclusion.

It is easy to understand why the audience did not understand the plot in the 1951 production. It is also interesting that none of the critics speak of the libretto other than in the first degree: to them, this is a rather silly story of a pretty girl who has two lovers, one of whom is married to another unfaithful woman and their daughter also has a boyfriend. The story within the story (or the mirror that Jeanson turns back on the audience) seems to have been entirely taken out of this performance. Tailleferre’s music is cut without any respect to the composer’s intentions, without logic, and without any care to keep intact the melodic, harmonic and rhythmic elements. The music is so mangled that the aged Germaine Tailleferre could not even get the pieces back together in her 1980 copy.

The work had been expanded and rewritten by the authors, as music which was in “Le Marin de Bolivar” was cut or modified, according to manuscript sources. Looking at the state of Il était le Petit Navire in 1948, the plot is complex because of the number of characters, but is written with a dramatic and logical style, inspired by classical forms. There is also a clear musical narrative seeking to underline the sprit of the libretto in a clear manner with harmonic and melodic forms which are logical and varied. But because of its mutilation before the premiere, one must to come to the conclusion that this work has never actually been performed as its authors intended.

One must ask why these cuts and modifications were made? Clarendon in “Le Figaro” and Constantin Brive in “Combat” both explain that after the work had been expanded as requested Henri Malherbe (the director of the Opéra-Comique), Georges Hirsch (administrateur-général of the Réunion des Théâtres-Lyriques Nationaux, the organization controlling both the Paris Opéra and Opéra-Comique) demanded that the work be cut. Tailleferre said in her “Mémoires à l’emporte-pièce” that Hirsch hated Henri Jeanson, and that he personally cancelled four of the projected six performances in spite of (or perhaps, because of) the enthusiastic response of the younger generation in the audience. How can a 45-minute work which is expanded to approximately two and a half hours and then cut back to one hour and fifteen minutes by people other than the authors have any dramatic and stylistic sense? Especially given the strong possibility that these sweeping changes were made by people other than the authors, it is difficult to imagine how such a radical amputation could have had positive results.

We will probably never know whether these cuts were made to deliberately sabotage this work because of jealousy and professional anger, or because of fear of shocking the traditionalist audience of the Opéra-Comique of the 1950s, or simply because the production team did not completely understand Jeanson’s intentions. But the work Il était un Petit Navire has never been presented in the way that Jeanson and Tailleferre conceived it. It would be interesting to be able to discover this work in its entirety.

Elvire de RUDDER, Paul WEHAGE & Jean-Thierry BOISSEAU

=== Share this page ===
<sharethis />

Directory:Musik Fabrik Music Publishing/Il etait un petit navire

2008-03-01T16:32:44Z

Musik Fabrik Music Publishing: format

Directory:Musik Fabrik Music Publishing/Il etait un petit navire

2008-03-01T16:31:44Z

Musik Fabrik Music Publishing: creating article

“Il était un Petit Navire”, a disarmed opera

Il était un Petit Navire is an opera in three acts with music by Germaine Tailleferre (1892-1983) and a libretto by Henri Jeanson (1900-1970). Consisting of almost five thousand measures of music and running two and a half hours in performance, the work is by far the longest in Tailleferre’s catalogue.

The composition of this work began in 1932 and lasted almost twenty years. The stage and film decorator, André Boll, introduced the composer to the screenwriter and journalist Henri Jeanson, and the two immediately became friends. Germaine Tailleferre was married at the time to Jean Lageat who was very involved in the political activities of the Radical Socialist party; Lageat served as the secretary to Leon Blum during the Front Populaire. Jeanson was a journalist for many of the leftist newspapers in France, writing for “la Bataille”, the newspaper of the C.G.T. Union and also for the satirical newspaper the “Canard Enchaîné”. Jeanson became close to this couple who shared many of his political and artistic ideals.

Tailleferre and Jeanson decided to collaborate on a lyric work which would have the city of Marseilles as its setting. The choice of the “Cité phocéenneé” was perhaps prompted by the critical and popular success of “Marius”, a film by Korda and Marcel Pagnol, produced in 1931, and the fact that Jeanson was working with Korda on the scenario of another film at the time that he met Tailleferre.

The aim of this project was to “take apart” the conventions of lyric theater, as well as the customs and rituals of the opera-going public. The first version was a one-act “Lyric Satire” entitled Le Marin du Bolivar (The Sailor on the Ship Bolivar) whose composition took several years. Jeanson, who was very much in demand for his film screenplay and dialogue writing, sent his libretto page by page to Tailleferre, who had to write her music “piece by piece”. The work was probably finished by 1935, because a production at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées was announced in “Le Cri de Paris”. This production did not take place, and finally the work was premièred in January 1942 at the Studio of Radio Marseille (in the Libre Zone), just before Tailleferre and her daughter fled France for the United States.

The première was a great success and in 1946, the work was accepted by the repertoire selection committee of the Réunion des Théâtres Lyriques Nationaux, whose president, Henri Malherbe, was director of the Opéra-Comique. Malherbe found the work to be too short and asked Tailleferre and Jeanson to expand it to its final length of three acts. According to the manuscript of the piano/vocal score in Paris Opera Library, the expanded version was finished in December 1948, just six months after the première of Poulenc’s Les Mamelles de Tirésias. The première of the revised work was finally set for March 9, 1951, with staging by Réné Musy, musical direction by Pierre Dervaux, sets by Roger Durand and costumes by Lucien Boucher. The cast included many popular French Opera singers of the time: Denise Duval (Thérèse/Tirésias of Les Mamelles), Jean Giraudeau, (The Husband in Les Mamelles), Emile Rousseau (the Gendarme in Les Mamelles), René Hérent, and Paul Payen. The work’s title was changed just before its first performance to avoid confusion with Darius Milhaud’s opera Bolivar which premièred in 1950.

The premise of Il était un Petit Navire centers around the classic trio of a French vaudeville comedy (the husband, the wife and the lover) but also explores some offbeat variations. Valentine has two lovers: Victor, the rich pharmacist from Marseille, and Valentin, a sailor who is also her fiancé. Victor is married to Constance who is the mistress of Sosthène. Angélique, the daughter of Victor and Constance, is secretly seeing Florimond against the wishes of her parents who want her to remain “a good girl”. None of the characters believe that the others are faithful, but everyone pretends so that things will continue as usual.

This comfortable situation is disrupted by Ferréol, the outsider from Lyon (who bears a resemblance to Monsieur Brun in Pagnol’s films), who is upset by snubs from Victor and Constance and who takes his revenge by forcing everyone to admit the real nature of their relationships. But after ending these somewhat adulterous relationships, everyone is more angry at Ferréol, the person who created the scandal, than at those who were unfaithful. They all ask him to make settlements for his actions, and if Ferréol does succumb to Valentine’s feminine charms, but when Constance arrives and tries to use the same tactic, Ferréol is less convinced and more than a bit concerned with all of this feminine attention.

After Ferréol finds himself with a new “wife” (Valentine) and a new “mistress” (Constance), Victor arrives to collect his “property” and to ask for payment for the damage done to his honor. The imaginary affront is settled by a fictional duel, with transparent “swords from Marseilles” (a reference to the local folklore that people from Marseilles tell tall tales). The two wounded adversaries then make their peace while Victor explains the root of their dispute: “civilized” people do not force other people to see the truth, especially when the others already know what they’re pretending to ignore (which may refer to the “family secret” -- currently the rage of television talk shows and reality shows). The “Love Duet”, sung by Valentine and Valentin right under Victor's nose, brings the two lovers to their initial arrangement: Valentin as the absent lover and Valentine as the fiancée who waits faithfully (at least, in appearence), an allusion to the departure of Marius in Pagnol’s trilogy. However, Ferréol makes trouble again and soon everyone is angry once again. In the middle of this general outburst, the Captain of the Brigandar orders that the departure bell be rung...and this signal prompts the Cigarette Girls from Carmen to make their entrance, obviously victims of a misunderstanding as to what opera is currently playing.

Everyone realizes that this is only an opera and that everything that has happened before is only pretext and not “reality”. Finally, Valentine has the stage manager make the traditional “trois coups“ or “three beats” which begin every French theater performance and invites the audience to begin their performance and reclaim their roles at the coat check. After all, isn’t this story of adultery, artifice, and illusion the same as the story that the opera-going audience “acts out” in their daily real lives? Isn’t the forced ritual and pretense of the audience as false and unreal as that which they are watching on stage? And don’t these same people accept daily the same lies, forced etiquette and rituals? It seems that a mirror has been turned back to the audience. At least this seems partially to be the case, because Jeanson invites the audience to acknowledge their active, though unconscious, participation in the performance that they are watching, creating a connection between the hall and the stage, in contrast to the playwrite Pirandello, who keeps his audience in the position of witness or voyeur. Jeanson’s intention is more subversive, as it forces the audience to consider their own position in this game of truth-telling.

Jeanson begins playing with this intention from the first measures of the work. Taking advantage of a tradition that begins with Greek tragedies, Monteverdi’s Orfeo and continues with Les Mamelles de Tirésias or Les Tréteaux de Maître Pierre of de Falla, (but which is also a convention of cinema in such films as Hellzapoppin (1941) or in the films of Sacha Guitry, as he looks straight into the camera to speak with the audience) the trio sung by Valentine, Coraline, and Sylvia is sung directly to the audience. They tell the the audience that operas are generally difficult to understand because “singers have the reputation of not being very articulate”. Coraline and Sylvie have the function of the “Greek chorus”, commenting not only on the plot but also on the objective production itself; for instance, the third act begins with them commenting enthusiastically on the wonderful sets. They are at once part of the story and also part of the audience. When Ferréol asks Victor to prove that he really caused so much trouble, Victor points to the witnesses in the audience, who not only saw what he did but even applauded! And when the choir sings the same heroic chorus for the third time to end the duel, they ask themselves why and how do the words “Stop now!” (“Halté là!”) also go with this same music. Is this an accident or was it premeditated? “That is the question”, obviously.

As an Opéra-comique, Il était un Petit Navire also has the usual amount of spoken dialogue. These spoken passages are always used when a character is expressing something that is true or real. In the first act, Valentine explains to Coraline and Sylvia that she will be dishonored because of Valentin’s early return, because her bed is not empty. Victor explains to his friend Frédéric that his marriage is not happy. In the second act, Ferréol exposes everyone’s infidelities by speaking. Victor’s tirade in the third act, in which he gives the real reasons of his anger (people are talking), is spoken, interrupting a sung romance in which he describes the calm serenity of the city of Marseilles. Finally, when the characters realize that they are in an opera, they speak. According to Jeanson, one can sing to love, to fight, to be angry or to joke, but one can only express the truth by speaking. “Au fil de l’eau point de serment, ce n’est que sur terre qu’on ment” (“On the water, there are no oaths, It’s only on land that one lies”) sung in 1934 by Lys Gauty in “Le chaland qui passe”, once again, a story about a boat...

Jeanson’s libretto follows certain conventions of French classical theater in establishing a unity of time, place and action (which is presented in the initial trio) as well through double arias for each character and Victor’s third act Tirade. But there are also more “modern” influences, taken from the world of radio and advertising. When the curtain rises on Valentine’s bedroom in the first act, Coraline and Sylvia enthusiastically describe how much they like the interior decoration (“It’s Louis Quinze of today and Henri Trois of tomorrow!”), which is a reference to the ads for the Meubles Lévitan made in the 1930s by Charles Trénet and Pierre Dac for Radio Cité and advertising firm Publicis) before commenting on the next scene in the style of two radio hostesses. In the second act, Ferréol extols the virtues of “de bon, de bon beau, de bon beaujolais”( Du Bo Du Bon Dubonnet, an advertising campaign for a French wine). Valentine’s valse lente in the third act finishes with Il y a un commencement à tout, mon loup ! (a possible variation of other French slang expressions of the time, such as“ à l’aise Blaise”, “relax Max” or “je veux mon neveu”!) Coraline and Sylvia’s “running commentary” in the third act can be seen to prefigure the two old gentlemen in The Muppet Show who discuss the show as it is played out under their balcony seats.

The music uses many conventions of classical style, with two fugues, recitatives and double-arias in the manner of baroque and classical period operas. Of special interest is the scene in which Valentine calculates the total sum of Ferréol’s wrongs against her, similiar to Leporello’s famous “catalogue aria” of Don Giovanni’s romantic conquests, but here giving samples of all possible types of musical cadences; and the heroic Verdian Chorus which is repeated three times in the course of the work. But popular music is not ignored: there is the “player piano” music of the second act, the lively “Java”, the operetta-style “Valse Lente” in the third act for Valentine, and the child-like nursery songs that Coraline and Sylvia sing in the third act to give moral commentary (the title of the work is borrowed from a French nursery song). Finally, there are passages in a more “modernist” style: the atonal passages in the second act when the player piano plays music paid for with a counterfeit coin; the Stravinskian texture of the third act duel and the irruption of Ferréol; and general tumult just before entrance of the cigarette girls near the end of the work. Tailleferre, with a very contemporary spirit of eclecticism, does not exclude any stylistic possibilities, using whichever musical form seems to express most aptly the atmosphere of Jeanson’s libretto. Jeanson wanted this work to have “an atmosphere of the circus and of music-hall.” He recognized the “youth and richness” of Tailleferre’s score and was extremely pleased with the unapologetic modernity of his collaborator.

But even before the work’s first performance, “Le Petit Navire” took to the seas under a rather stormy sky: Constantin Brive writing in the French Newspaper “Combat” in an article published a day before the premiere, suggested that it might be something like “the première of Ernani: The serious people who come to buy tickets for Tosca or for Manon have not bothered to hide their indignation from the woman at the ticket window." In “Le Figaro”, a brief announcement expresses the preconceived idea that “one can certainly guess that the traditional operatic repertoire will not find a new thurifer (????) in the guise of Henri Jeanson”. This would seem to suggest that a scandale had been predicted even before the first note of music had been performed.

As predicted, there was quite a scene at the work‘s première. In “Le Figaro”, Clarendon (Bernard Gavoty) describes “Screams, loud sirens, laughter, polite bravos, booing and general disorder”. Henri Barraud in “Musical America” speaks of “the most exciting first performance that Paris has seen in many, many years. The gallery let loose with a storm of invective against the authors and actors, shouting disapproval and demanding its money back. The people in the orchestra and the first balconies, fortified by a large group of invited guests, tried to offset the hostile outcries with their applause.” . Marcel Schneider in “Combat” wondered whether the audience’s violent reaction was “sincere or faked”, an idea shared by Jeanson himself in article written between the first and second (and final) performances where Jeanson writes that the hecklers, hearing the first “false” version of the Java in the Second Act booed and screamed insults, thinking that this was the “correct” version without understanding the joke. Jeanson uses the French concept of prétérition in writing. "One could imagine (and clearly quite falsely, that goes without saying) that they (the hostile members of the audience) are part of a cabal. However, everyone knows that these types of events are always motivated by the love that they have for music.".

That the audience, from the orchestra to the balcony, felt attacked by a work that not only parodied opera but also the opera-going public, is not astonishing. Does the mirror that Valentine shows to the audience at the end of the work show an image which is so trueful that it shocks?

Concerning the work itself, serious musical critics seemed perplexed: for example Clarendon, of “Le Figaro” recognized Jeanson’s talent in an unexpected, if backhanded manner, as the two men did not share the same political views, by explaining that Clarendon didn’t understand the work, asks the correct question: “Where is the key to this enigma? It is inconceivable that such a writer as Jeanson, that a musician with the talent of Tailleferre should have made such a mistake without any sensible explanation.”

When we began our research into this work and began examining the available source material, we were also confronted with this puzzling mystery. Unfortunately, the orchestral manuscript, the three piano/vocal reductions (except for one copy of the piano/vocal version of the first act) and the typed copy of the libretto which are cited in the catalogue of primary source materials compiled by Robert Orledge in 1992, have all mysteriously disappeared from the Tailleferre papers, perhaps lost forever. The only remaining traces of this work are those in the collection of the Paris Opera Library.

There is an manuscript copy of the orchestral score in the reserve collection of the Paris Opera Library. Luckily, Bernard Lefort (who toured with Tailleferre in the 1950s in a piano/vocal duo) was named Director of the Paris Opera in 1980. He arranged to purchase four manuscripts of vocal works by Tailleferre for the Opera Library. Tailleferre found that the original orchestral score, used by Pierre Dervaux at the work’s première (and remaining in her papers after her death) was in such a bad condition that it couldn’t enter into the collection of such a prestigious library. She decided to make a new, fair copy of her score. Elivre de Rudder, her granddaughter (and now her unique heir) helped her grandmother with the stage directions and other indications in French, but Tailleferre, who was then 89 years old, suffered from arthritis of the hands. In addition, the psychological after effects of the failure of the 1951 production remained quite strong. According to her grand-daughter and other sources, Tailleferre spoke of this failure until the end of her life as “my greatest shame” and never understood why this work, which she considered to be among her best works, provoked such an outburst of anger. To re-examine this score in detail probably forced her to remember things which were difficult to accept. Nevertheless, having promised an autograph manuscript, Tailleferre was determined to honor her promise.

The examination of this document reveals how painful it must be been for the composer to copy the three acts of her score by hand. The handwriting begins by being extremely clear, but is progressively less and less legible. There are incomplete passages in the spoken text and the music. There are musical passages in which Tailleferre’s typically clear musical style becomes difficult to follow (for example, the end of the second act containing a number of passages which clearly do not logically follow each other). In addition, passages which were “borrowed” from the ballets La Nouvelle Cythère, Paris-Magie and Parisiana did not exactly correspond to the shared movements, nor to the typically clear and logical “Tailleferrien” style.

Once the musical text had been copied by computer, we extracted the libretto. The plot was simply incomprehensible. Even after taking into account the fact that there was missing spoken and sung text, it was impossible to follow the story after the beginning of the second act. It was impossible that Henri Jeanson, a journalist and man of letters, would have left his libretto in this state. It became clear that a large part of the work was missing.

The answer was found thanks to Pierre Vidal, director of the Paris Opera Library and Museum, who found three copies of the piano/vocal score of the work in the uncatalogued collection of the Opéra-comique. None of these copies were complete and they did not match exactly, but with the three copies (plus a fourth copy in reserve section of the main library collection), it was possible to reconstruct the complete work, including the spoken dialogue. In addition, there were staging notes which allowed us to understand what the audience saw the night of the première....and also what the audience did not see, which is to say a large part of the work.

A large percentage of Il était un Petit Navire was cut without any plausible explanation. The orchestral score copied in 1980 has a total of 2502 measures of music, divided by acts into 761, 718 and 1023 measures. The piano/vocal score has a total of 4716 measures, divided by acts into 1089, 1208, and 2419 measures respectively. This would suggest that at least 45% of the initial work was cut.

In the piano/vocal scores, there are also cuts which Tailleferre put back into her orchestral score of 1980. These include the first act aria of Madame Isabelle (Oranges des Baléares...); Valentine’s Act 1 aria (Pareil au pélican lassé d’un long voyage...); the second act trio with Victor, Constance et Angélique (Ah! qu’il fait bon d’être garçon...); and the second act finale, all of which contain passages crossed out with pencil, pages folded in the score, or glued together. There are also modifications to the text which do not appear to be the work of Tailleferre or Jeanson: for example, Victor’s response to Valentin’s suggestion of choice of weapons before the third act duel is changed from “fichez-moi l’épée et n’en parlons plus !” to “donne-le-moi” which completely changes not only the sense of the phrase but also the spirit of a work where wordplay and puns are central to the author’s intent.

It is probable that the audience at the première saw less than 50% of the work as it had initially been conceived by Tailleferre and Jeanson. It is also probable that a large part of what remained of the opera was neither the work of Tailleferre nor of Jeanson, but probably that of a third person who was either incompetent, hostile to the authors, or both. In addition, according to the press accounts of the première, the order of certain numbers was changed: for example, the third act “Love Duet” which Valentine and Valentin sing under Victor’s nose after the third act duel, was moved to the second act ball scene, which completely changes the context. Tailleferre’s 1980 copy retains the original order of the numbers in the piano/vocal scores in the Opéra-Comique collection. It is probable that these changes were not made by the composer nor by the librettist.

The first act which was the most successful at the night of the première, remains largely as Tailleferre and Jeanson conceived it. The problems begin with the second act. The scene was cut in which the player piano plays “counterfeit music” for the “counterfeit coin”, important for the plot (the first indications of the infidelities of the principal characters) but also for its atonal musical style. More than half of the second act finale was cut, making the various disputes between characters incomprehensible. In the third act, most of the running commentary of Coraline and Sylvia was cut, as well as Ferréol’s two airs and the fugue (On parle, on parle, on parle...) Most of the confrontation scene between Constance and Ferréol was also cut, making both of these characters much less interesting. In the duel scene, the two large choral numbers were cut, and the polytonal chords in the orchestration of the duel was left out, leaving only the two voices and the bass part, which makes any sense of violence next to impossible. The final of the third act (Mais, alors, nous sommes au théâtre....) was almost entirely cut, effectively taking out any possibility of bringing the work to its logical conclusion.

It is easy to understand why the audience did not understand the plot in the 1951 production. It is also interesting that none of the critics speak of the libretto other than in the first degree: to them, this is a rather silly story of a pretty girl who has two lovers, one of whom is married to another unfaithful woman and their daughter also has a boyfriend. The story within the story (or the mirror that Jeanson turns back on the audience) seems to have been entirely taken out of this performance. Tailleferre’s music is cut without any respect to the composer’s intentions, without logic, and without any care to keep intact the melodic, harmonic and rhythmic elements. The music is so mangled that the aged Germaine Tailleferre could not even get the pieces back together in her 1980 copy.

The work had been expanded and rewritten by the authors, as music which was in “Le Marin de Bolivar” was cut or modified, according to manuscript sources. Looking at the state of Il était le Petit Navire in 1948, the plot is complex because of the number of characters, but is written with a dramatic and logical style, inspired by classical forms. There is also a clear musical narrative seeking to underline the sprit of the libretto in a clear manner with harmonic and melodic forms which are logical and varied. But because of its mutilation before the premiere, one must to come to the conclusion that this work has never actually been performed as its authors intended.

One must ask why these cuts and modifications were made? Clarendon in “Le Figaro” and Constantin Brive in “Combat” both explain that after the work had been expanded as requested Henri Malherbe (the director of the Opéra-Comique), Georges Hirsch (administrateur-général of the Réunion des Théâtres-Lyriques Nationaux, the organization controlling both the Paris Opéra and Opéra-Comique) demanded that the work be cut. Tailleferre said in her “Mémoires à l’emporte-pièce” that Hirsch hated Henri Jeanson, and that he personally cancelled four of the projected six performances in spite of (or perhaps, because of) the enthusiastic response of the younger generation in the audience. How can a 45-minute work which is expanded to approximately two and a half hours and then cut back to one hour and fifteen minutes by people other than the authors have any dramatic and stylistic sense? Especially given the strong possibility that these sweeping changes were made by people other than the authors, it is difficult to imagine how such a radical amputation could have had positive results.

We will probably never know whether these cuts were made to deliberately sabotage this work because of jealousy and professional anger, or because of fear of shocking the traditionalist audience of the Opéra-Comique of the 1950s, or simply because the production team did not completely understand Jeanson’s intentions. But the work Il était un Petit Navire has never been presented in the way that Jeanson and Tailleferre conceived it. It would be interesting to be able to discover this work in its entirety.

Elvire de RUDDER, Paul WEHAGE & Jean-Thierry BOISSEAU

Directory:Musik Fabrik Music Publishing

2008-02-29T10:20:27Z

Musik Fabrik Music Publishing: changing phone, adding blurb

{{QuickAdd
| City = Lagny/Marne
| State =
| Zip = 77400
| Country = France
| Phone = 00.33.1.73.58.50.59
| Email = info@classicalmusicow.com
| Web = http://www.classicalmusicnow.com
| Contact = Paul Wehage
| Title = Director
}}

Musik Fabrik is a music publisher speciazed in documenting important music of the past and new music by some of the most exciting composers of the new generation. Our roster includes Germaine Tailleferre of ''Les Six'', Antoine Tisné, Gian Paolo Chiti, Carson P. Cooman, Jean-Thierry Boisseau, Frederick Frahm, Jean-Yves Malmasson, Moyuru Maeda, Paul Wehage and many others.
=== Share this page ===
<sharethis />

Directory:Musik Fabrik Music Publishing

2008-02-29T10:17:16Z

Musik Fabrik Music Publishing: changing phone

Directory:Musik Fabrik Music Publishing

2007-09-27T21:59:53Z

Musik Fabrik Music Publishing: adding summary

{{QuickAdd
| City = Lagny/Marne
| State =
| Zip = 77400
| Country = France
| Phone = 00.33.1.64.30.13.84
| Email = info@classicalmusicow.com
| Web = http://www.classicalmusicnow.com
| Contact = Paul Wehage
| Title = Director
}}
=== Share this page ===
<sharethis />