Minutes from meeting in Paris

4 to 6th of September 2011

Present :

TR :  N.Nilgün EKİCİ,  Barış EKİCİ . Vehbi HOPALI, Özen ŞEKERCİOĞLU, Ercan UMUT

RO : Rodica Victoria Miala, Silvia Cartu, Roxana Gabriela Timplaru, Florin Tudor , Amelia Olivia Botezatu, Bogdan Radu Botezatu

DK : Lise Wille_Jorgensen, Ivan Kemnitz , Martin Cholewa,  Gudrun Kemnitz, Annemari Rommdahl

IT (Lecce) : Anna Aurigi, Stefania Patavia, Francesco Scarcella   

IT (Cupello) : Cerella Renato Victoria, Ciffolilli Pietro, DI Marco Berardino

UK : Dave Archer, Mauricio Velez

 

Sunday 04/09/2011 PM

Concert at The American Cathedral  -

Venue :  23,  avenue George V  75008 Paris

(Battles and love duets : chaconnes cantatas and songs of the seventeenth century in Italy)

By Anna Aurigi – Stefania Patavia  - Francesco Scarcella  (Organ)

from:  Conservatorio di Musica Tito Schipa – Lecce – Italy

 

About the Cathedral : For more than a century, the American Cathedral in Paris has been a center of worship for English-speakers abroad. Located near the Seine in the heart of one of the world's most beautiful cities, it numbers in its parish congregation Americans, Britons and French as well as many other Europeans, Asians, Africans and Latin Americans, all of many denominations. Permanent parishioners total about 400 and their numbers are considerably augmented by students, tourists and business persons here on shorter-term assignments. Classified as an historic monument, the American Cathedral was consecrated on Thanksgiving Day in 1886, but its roots go back even further, to the days when American Episcopalians began gathering together for worship in the 1830s.



This was a wonderful concert, most applauded by more than 200 attendants.
Programme

Pictures of the event

Monday  05/09/2011     

 

Work meeting

Venue : Café des Psaumes  at   14 – 16 rue des Rosiers   75004 Paris

                                                                                                                                                        

Presentation of French music box :

Guy and Roman talked about different kinds of instruments and music in French provinces.

Jean-Michel explained some rules about old French songs.:

Four instruments were  talked about.

 

  1. The violin : Violinist versus Fiddler.

    A fiddler is a term used to describe a violinist specializied in traditional music or folk music. Often,  a fiddler has no formal training in music, but has learned from other fiddlers.He can often be distinguished from the classical violinist in the way he holds his violin, leaning on the arm, just below the shoulder, unlike the classical position,under the chin. The use of vibrato is not welcome.
  2. The « cornemuse » or « biniou »
    The « biniou » is the generic  term to refer to the Breton bagpipes, double-reed wind instrument with a  pocket air supply. )
    Traditionally, the term refers to the pipes used in Brittany  -no t the same as those used in other Celtic countries (Eire, Scotland, Wales…)
  3. The accordion.
    This name includes an accordion family of instruments that uses the free reed, but sometimes are very different.  It is a family of musical instruments keyboard, polyphonic, using free reeds excited by a variable wind provided by the bellows operated by the musician .  It has received numerous aliases, « piano à bretelles », « piano du pauvre », « boîte à frisson », « branle-poumons », « boîte à chagrin », « soufflet à punaises », « dépliant », « calculette prétentieuse », « boîte à soufflets » et « boîte du diable » (Boest an diaoul, in  Basse-Bretagne and Boueze in Haute Bretagne). (Sorry for the french and the celtic!). A diatonic button accordion is  a type of button accordion Where the melody-side keyboard is limited to the diatonic scales in a small number of keys (sometimes only one scale). Usually the bass side contains the main  chords of the instrument's key and the root note of Those chords. In parisian  popular music  the chromatic instrument is rather used and mostly  with a musette tuning.
    For the melody, most instruments have at least two votes flutes, that is, when the musician plays a note, two identical voices will come into play.The first voice recorder, called "flute fair," is, as its name suggests, gives  the pitch of the instrument. The second voice on the other hand gives a slightly different manner to the first one. This slight difference causes a vibration characteristic of the accordion.Each note of the second voice recorder will be given to produce a different rate of vibration.The higher the note (in a close range),  the faster the vibration will be. The  musette tuning  is the one  of the great names of the accordion mid-century, with a very, very  large vibration (or beat), it is inseparable from the musical style.
  4. The hurdy-gurdy (Vielle à roue) is a bowed stringed instrument with a wooden wheel instead of a bow (like a violin). The wheel is turned using  a crank, while the left hand of the musician plays the melody on a keyboard. Today, the instrument continues to evolve: the quality of the old « vielle à roue » is refined again and again and the makers are looking for a pure and accurate sound. The interest has grown and , it can  even be  used   nowadays in modern French music.
    The dual use of the crank.
    The crank of the hurdy gurdy is used both to vibrate the strings melody, but also to trigger percussion. A string  is specifically dedicated to the percussion, the "trumpet". It has the distinction of being supported on a gantry, the "dog" or trompillon (for Narnia fans !). When a sudden shock is given to the wheel by the handle, the shock raises the rope. The dog  then raises and fights against the table briefly before returning to rest. » The trumpet is alive » with this short beat of decreasing amplitude. While the other strings are still ringing at the same height, the shock undergoes the  trumpet and produces  a characteristic sound, like a grasshopper.

 

 

We listened to a number of typical local instrument sounds, pieces of traditional French  music, songs from most famous singers.

Monsieur Pierre presented his work and showed a video-clip that he realized “ My dog and me”.

 

 

Website :

discussion about the website of the SOME project

The name should be “SoulMusicEnergy.eu”.

Each partner should send elements from his local music box to the webmaster.            

 

Next meetings : 

2 to 7th of May 2012 in Denmark

3th to 8th of June in Romania.

 

 

Output of the project :

A CD will be created with all the elements of the local music boxes of all the partners.

Each partner should also made a paper support of a typical  teaching session  (for his instrument?)

 

Afternoon : trip along the Seine with the “Bateaux Parisiens”.

Evening : Dinner in a typical French brasserie called “Flo” with Jugendstil  architecture.


Pictures of the event

Tuesday 6th of September :

Visit  of the permanent collection (instruments) of the Cité de la Musique  (in the parc de la Villette).

 

Tour of  the museum :

From the Renaissance to nowadays , this tour took us on a journey around the world, and through the history of music. The jewels of the  collections: a Stradivarius violin, the Érard piano played by Franz Liszt, Django Reinhardt’s guitar, and an extremely rare Thai piphat mon orchestra.

 

 

We  also discovered cornetts, lutes and citterns, we got to know with the family Sellas, a famous Venetian dynasty of luthiers of whom  the  museum has a large collection. Finally, we admired very precious Italian keyboards (harpsichord,spinet, ...) whose refined paintings and wood working equal the delicacy of the sound (and tuning as we could hezr from our audioguides).

MUSIC  AT  VERSAILLES around the model rooms of the ducal palace of Mantua
(where Monteverdi's Orfeo was created in 1607) is shown a representative set of the instruments used on this occasion (violins, bass viol, theorbo, trombone, trumpet, harpsichord, cornets, positive organ, organ-... regia,(orgue regale).


Alceste (Acaste’s sister ; remember Jason and the argonautes) from Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687), a tragedy in music (1674) represented in the court of Versailles. It  demonstrates the importance of music at the court of Louis XIV (himself a very good dancer and guitarist) . Not a day without music in the life of the Sun King at Versailles ! If flutes, oboes, bassoons and violas, included in the staff orchestra of Alceste, known at that time a boom, they do not all have the same degree of development. The oboe, for example, faces a growing success, while the viola is living its last days of glory. Trumpets and timpani accompany the king in military parades, and even hunting is done in music. The keyboard is a popular domestic  instrument, Harpsichords and Flemish  virginals are often imitated and adapted in France.

Dinner + concert

Le Baroc', 36, Rue de Sambre et Meuse , 75010 Paris

Venue

Parisian  cabaret folk music (piano + voice ) « Les Petits Froufrous »

 

Fred and Nathy interpret the most beautiful songs from the 1920 to 1970:
Piaf, Mistinguett, Gabin, Greco, Trenet, Montand, Maurice Chevalier, Tino Rossi, Bourvil, Fernandel, Dalida, Aznavour, Brel, and many more ...
They take you  into a whirlwind of celebration, filled with joyful emotions and memories of the musette.