Welcome to our new series, What the Fact?!
Throughout 2018, we’re teaming up with talent at the Australian National Academy of Music to bring you informed answers to real questions and topics about your music career.
Ever wondered why you feel performance anxiety? What the deal is with tuning to 440Hz – or not? Why you should bother undertaking a music residency? We’re here to tell you all about it.
In this WTF?! interview, we chat with a master of French music, Roy Howat. This is he:
When it comes to French music, Roy wrote the book. Seriously. He wrote The Art of French Piano Music and it was named 2009 Book of the Year by International Piano. He’s a pianist and scholar who graduated from King’s College, Cambridge, and has studied and taught French music in France (as well as hosting lectures in the Juilliard and Eastman Schools). He has edited the Complete Debussy Edition and books on composers ranging from Ravel to Chopin, Schubert to Bartok.
Roy will perform on April 7 in Preludes [Book 1] of the Debussy 100 events with musicians from ANAM. Before he does…
Let’s hack French music!
Roy, French music. Why do you love it?
It’s like French cuisine, and also like French poetry: a brilliant blend of superb craft with an inbuilt sense of spontaneity and sheer beauty to delight the palate.
What makes French music so…French?
It doesn’t preach at the listener (as Beethoven and Wagner do, great though they are). Its elegance often subtly masks the profound emotion it can convey; and the technical skill involved in its structuring draws attention away, so the innocent listeners may enjoy it without observing how skilfully it’s been concocted. And, of course, there’s inherent sensuousness, combined with good taste that avoids going over the top or the edge.
We can often hear music of different cultures and eras associated with surrounding artistic styles, from painting to architecture. How can we see elements of French music cross over into other forms of art or design? Have you noticed aesthetic consistencies?
Top French 19th Century poets like Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Mallarmé were all music-crazy, and sought to make their poetry convey the sort of emotion, feeling, and structure that music could. Then, in turn, composers like Debussy and Ravel delved into poetry and painting to find ways of renewing musical language and composition, which they felt were bogged down in worn-out formulae and procedures.
Debussy has variously been described as an impressionist or a symbolist, with mixed accuracy in each case – but with a nugget of truth, because he’s skilfully transferring from these fields into his musical techniques.
Ravel was similarly steeped in literature, and both of them were hugely marked by Emmanuel Chabrier, one of the most underestimated composers in musical history. Chabrier was the real impressionist of music: a personal friend of Manet (his neighbour for many years), Monet, and Renoir, he bought paintings directly from them at mates’ rates. Chabrier’s house was thus festooned with the largest private collection ever of impressionist paintings. For example, Manet’s now-legendary canvas Le bar aux Folies-Bergères once hung in Chabrier’s music room above his piano.
Outside these aesthetic or stylistic elements, what has performing French music taught you more broadly about the nation’s culture?
Conveying depth with elegance and without pomposity, and a sense of being precise in one’s communication and expression. That, of course, is an ideal – as the French are as human as any nation: French bureaucracy, for example, is like nothing on earth. But even that can be seen as part of the French preoccupation with philosophy and definition.
As a performer, what are some of the things you need to keep in mind when you present French music, especially to an Australian or non-French audience?
Avoid making it sound dreamy and directionless; the composers hated that. It’s easy to get distracted by the nice surface and forget that there’s always a narrative that needs to be kept cogent and moving.
If a listener wanted to experience a quintessential piece of French music, which piece would you recommend they listen to – and how?
Aha! I’m not kidding when I say Bizet’s Carmen or Chabrier’s España, which both epitomise the French penchant for the (neighbouring) exotic. The way they’re thought out is quintessentially French. So is Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (which revolutionised musical history in 1894). Or, if you have more listening time, Ravel’s miraculous ballet Daphnis et Chloé; both these works are inspired by (imagined) ancient Greece.
If Ravel himself seems quintessentially French, it’s nicely ironic because his father was Swiss – from Geneva – and his mother Basque (she spoke better Spanish than French).
Best advice for approaching French music for performance?
Observe closely what the composers marked on the page, and keep it in time. Much of the expression’s already written into the rhythmic shaping, so if we try to ‘make it expressive’ or pull the rhythm around ‘expressively’, we risk fogging or distorting what’s already inherently expressive. Also, spend time in France and speak French; the language is inextricably woven into the music.
Check out Roy Howat’s mad (French) skills in his concert with ANAM students, Preludes [Book 1], 7.30pm April 7 at ANAM, South Melbourne Town Hall.
Check back in soon for our next What the Fact?! with professionals in the music industry.
Emoji via APACHE – License 2.0.
