Isabelle Aboulker

I had a really rough day today and I hadn't planned on writing anything here, at least not anything positive, but I thought I'd talk about my experience with French composer Isabelle Aboulker.
I've had experience with 20th century French composers before. When I was at Lycée Fénelon in Lille we were asked to perform, with a couple other schools in the area, to perform a children's "opera" titled "Gédéon" (it must not have gone very far, because I can't find it on the web, nor the composer). It told the story of a little boy who wanted to be a violin player or something like that, and it was the stupidest musical experience of my life (and I don't say that lightly). The music wasn't great, the text was pathetic (in France, the land of literary geniuses), all over terrible. I'm a bit jaded therefore, and I had a horrible sinking feeling after receiving my art song assignments and the piece of hers that I was doing, titled "L'archet". I had looked her up on YouTube and found a recording of "Je t'aime", which I personally do not like at all (though a few people here really liked it, and that's ok), and thought "oh God....another off-the-wall 20th century composer that uses really lame text." I was very wrong.
I translated my text and was actually pretty interested in the story that it was telling, something about a mysterious woman who captures the heart of...I think it's a huntsman, and commands him to make a bow (as in bow and arrow) out of her hair after she dies. The end result is that he can never let go of her and will always be entranced. I LOVE these kinds of stories. I'm a huge sucker for medieval-type tales of sorcery and seduction and magic and all that, so I started to become optimistic. Plunking through it made me nervous, because I didn't have a recording and I can't play piano so I couldn't get a feel for how it really sounded, but once Professor Added sent me a recording that SHE had made, and I listened to it, that's when I really knew it was going to be an awesome piece. The music itself is CHOCK-FULL of artistic markings: crescendos and decrescendos, staccatos, slurs, all sorts of different accents, it's very detailed. As difficult as it's been getting every nuance right, I feel like I'm being my most artistic ever by singing this piece - kind of a sad thought, since I've been singing for a while, but also a very rewarding thought.
I had a coaching with her one-on-one yesterday, and it was amazing. First of all, another member of the program accurately described Isabelle Aboulker as "my French grandmother", because she's absolutely adorable - you just want to give her a big hug and sit in her house and drink tea and listen to her stories. Secondly, you can tell right off the bat that she is EXTREMELY passionate about the music that she composes, and is not afraid to tell you how she wants it to sound. Her biography says that she considers herself a student of Debussy and Ravel, and it's evident in the harmonies that she uses as well as the sweeping piano parts. My French is good enough that we were able to do the whole coaching in French, which was awesome just in itself (let's be honest, how many times will I ever be able to get a coaching from a foreign composer in his/her native language?) and we discussed the importance of the text. She told me a lot of her pieces don't really have an important story, just a simple poem, but this one actually painted a picture for the audience to imagine, and it was important to keep every aspect of artistic detail and every appropriate syllabic stress to paint that picture. Working with her was, in contrast to my last dealings with music in France, probably one of the most enriching experiences in music that I have ever had, and there really aren't enough words in the world to explain how that coaching changed my mind.
Mme. Aboulker also told me something that has lit a fire in my belly: "L'archet" is orchestrated. Depending on how accessible the orchestral score is (I bought my one single piece from a distributor in France, so I don't know how easy it would be to get her music over to the states), I think I'd like to do this and maybe another piece for the Concerto Competition next spring. I looked at doing "Les Illuminations" by Britten earlier this year but decided against it after realizing it would be waaaay too much work to get done by competition time. But maybe the "Fanfare" and a couple of others would be good to do in a set with "L'archet"....oooh, ideas ideas!

Ok, I'm going to watch an episode of "The Simpsons" and then get to bed early - another long day is ahead of me!