In 1993 "we" knew a little about music that was written by women during the nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century, but there was not much music written by women available on recordings. Some music was published, but not a lot. And much of the music that was published was published by small companies, and/or was out of print.
Most musicians active in the 1990s knew about Clara Schumann, Fanny Hensel (Felix Mendelssohn's sister), Amy Beach, Cecile Chaminade (at least if you were a flutist--but you might not have known she was a woman), Lili Boulanger and her sister Nadia, who was better known as a teacher than as a composer. Some knew about Germaine Tailleferre (one of Les Six), Augusta Holmes, and Louise Farrenc. I knew of only one recording of Pauline Viardot's music that was available on LP in the 1990s, and it was quite a while before her music was recorded on CD. "Viardot" used to be my word to search for in the early days of the internet. What a thrill it was to finally encounter another person who knew about her.
Most musicians knew something about Wendy Carlos because of "Switched on Bach," but she was establishing her career when she went by Walter. People also knew about Ellen Taffe Zwilich, because she won a Pulitzer Prize in 1983.
Relatively few people knew much about Ruth Crawford Seeger, who was highly respected (for good reason) in new music circles, but her music, though recorded by excellent musicians, was too abstract for most people to play on the radio in the early 1990s. There were more recordings available of music by her and other important composers like Grażyna Bacewicz, Vivian Fine, Thea Musgrave, Sofia Gubaidulina and Kaija Saariaho available beginning in the the later 1990s.
As one of only a couple of women on the reviewing staff of a major CD reviewing magazine, I got assigned most of the recordings that had music written by women. And I played those recordings on the radio, including music by Seeger.
Now I'll talk about the movie. Spoilers follow!
My memory of Bleu, which I saw in 1994 (it came out in 1993) was that it was a film about a composer going through a period of grief. I didn't think of myself as a composer at that time, and couldn't fully understand the nature of the protagonist's struggle. Seeing it thirty years later I realized that it is a portrait of Julie (played by Juliette Binoche) who was a ghostwriter for her husband, a composer held in such high regard that he had been commissioned to write a piece celebrating the unification of Europe.
Julie's husband Patrice and five-year-old daughter die in a car crash. Julie survives and as part of her grieving process she gives everything away, puts her (huge) house up for sale, goes back to her birth name, and destroys the manuscript of the work-in-progress attributed to her husband.
Her deepest desire is to do nothing. To be nothing.
But the music, mostly heard in monody, keeps haunting her, particularly while she is swimming. Julie is deeply attuned to a recorder player playing on the street, which is a clue to her musical sensitivity. At a few points during the film (and the beginning, at the middle, and near the end) there is speculation that Julie has actually written the music attributed to Patrice, something that she avoids addressing (perhaps because it is true). When her husband's assistant lets it be known (in a televised interview that Julie sees by chance) that he is planning to finish the piece (he took pictures of the score before it was destroyed, perhaps after the accident), Julie objects to his heavy-handed and opportunistic treatment of the music, and is compelled to complete the piece herself. She does it in her apartment, without a piano, and using the same handwriting that we saw in the manuscript before it was destroyed.
Julie also learns, from a photo shown in that television interview, that her husband had a mistress for many years. The assistant tells her that the mistress is a lawyer. Julie tracks the mistress down, and seeing that she is pregnant, confirms that Patrice is the father of the child she is carrying. Julie is very kind to the mistress, and gives the mistress the house that she, Patrice, and their daughter lived in. The mistress told Julie that Patrice spoke of her kindness and generosity.
The text of the piece, sung in Greek, is the famous section from chapter 13 of First Corinthians.
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.I can't get it out of my mind that in chapter 14, which follows in the King James Bible, we get the passage about women being silent in church.
And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.
Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.
This passage, by the way, is what brought about the process of castrating choir boys during the 16th century (but probably beginning far earlier) so that they could sing the soprano parts in sacred music.
Zbigniew Preisner wrote the excellent music for the film, which is available on Criterion.
1 comment:
That verse about silence — what a find. I think there’s lots in this movie that we still haven’t caught.
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