A musical summer

Over the past week we have been away from home in the Ain département, in the east of France. Here a gifted musician Stephane Fauth and his wife have a house, a huge converted barn, which they have turned into a centre for chamber music courses with guest rooms and a lovely music room complete with grand piano. The place is called the Val du Séran after the little river that flows past the bottom of the garden.

Stephane's passion, and much of his life's work, is and has been around chamber music. He himself plays violin, viola, double bass, piano and guitar, but he also composes. He taught for many years in Belgium. Now, each year, he assembles groups of musicians who come together for a week of intensive playing, pieces he carefully selects for each group. He occasionally plays during the week but his principal function is to coach the groups and encourage better ensemble playing.

We have learnt over many years that performing music well together in groups is as much about listening to the others as about playing or singing your own part. When you learn a piece to start with you're often buried in your own line and unless everyone counts perfectly things will quickly come unstuck. Once you start to listen you can play together and the pleasure of musical ensemble begins.

In France we've discovered frequently that this not something people learn as a matter of course – frequently, even quite good musicians will work hard to perfect their own line, alone before a rehearsal, but find difficulty in joining it with the others. So this week it has been interesting to mix 3 of us English musicians with three French people and to learn to make music together, to listen more. The English tradition of sight-reading is also quite different from the French habit of thorough learning in advance. I certainly could give more time to learning!

In any case, music is an exercise in tolerance and give-and-take. Everyone makes a mistake from time to time, and if you lose your place you need to find your way back in. And it is far less forgiving than spoken conversation. Even with my often poor French I can make myself understood, but a line of music played even a fraction of a beat too early or too late makes nonsense of the whole piece – the language of printed music is precise and exacting. So even if we're sometimes exasperated by our friends' failure to come in on time or play the right notes, we feel full of admiration that they are prepared to have a go!

This was Mary's third year at Val du Séran. As a 'cellist she was as busy as ever, with often 6 sessions a day of very varied musical styles. The first summer she went alone; last year I went with her and listened during the day although I sang Schubert with the pianist from the group after supper. As a result of that, Stephane suggested I came to work with the group this year, and proposed some folk song arrangements by Beethoven and by Haydn as well as a song with obbligato violin from an opera by Saint-Saëns.

One great pleasure for me was that he also wrote a piece especially for our group – flute, violin, viola, 'cello and high voice. It is a fantasy on 6 songs by the American composer Stephen Foster, arranged with great style and contrasts of mood.   Stephen Foster was a very interesting man who, like many composers, died young and in poverty.  He wrote all his own music although at first hearing the songs seem to be from popular and folk traditions, and most of his own words.  Some seem controversial, even racist to modern ears, but he was anti-slavery at the time of its abolition and wanted to project positive images of black people.  I'm very much hoping to perform it again with friends in the future.

The house is in a beautiful and remote valley near Annecy and not far from the Swiss border and Geneva. Travelling there you pass stretches of the upper Rhône or the Ain, both already splendid rivers winding their way towards their junction near Lyon. The local wines and cheeses are great, and it is a great pleasure to visit this remote rural area of France. The welcome at Val du Séran is also splendid, with lovely meals and comfortable rooms.

It was a pleasure to make music with Mary in some of the groups and also to find my singing voice standign up to more intensive work than I'm used to.  2 years ago I though I might have to stop singing altogether.  Now I'm looking forward to more music in Montpellier and in Uzès over the next few weeks. A real feast all in all!