240110 Translated from French wit Google Translate
1920 – SPIRE, Divine surprise
For my seventh birthday, on February sixteenth, nineteen hundred and twenty, there was a very good lunch ending with a superb candle cake. I also received toys, as far as I remember, a meccano and books. At the beginning of the afternoon, my sister Marie-Thérèse and my brother Etienne came to join me, young French friends, two boys and two girls from my class. We spoke German too poorly to invite our neighbors upstairs who would have been bored to share our games. At snack time, Mom slipped away, claiming I don't know what obligation. I noticed that she took her violin. We lived in Speyer-am-Rhine in a large and comfortable apartment opposite the Zeppelin School, an enormous building which housed a primary school where hundreds of children entered every weekday morning. On Sunday morning, the band of the 2nd Regiment of Malagasy Hunters, which had at least eighty performers, came to line up on the vast sidewalk of the school. My father, who commanded it, and who was already in uniform, opened the French windows of the living room wide and came out with the Chief Warrant Officer, his secretary, who carried the flag. Two lieutenants flanked them. It was often cold, so, dressed in a dressing gown and wearing a woolen cap, I was allowed to attend the ceremony in a small corner of the balcony. After the ringing of the “Flag” salute and the Marseillaise, a concert of the best military marches took place. It lasted about half an hour. A large number of Germans from the neighborhood, music lovers or not, came to gather on the sidewalk at the foot of our building and at the end of this ceremony, after the rites of bringing the flag back to my Father's office, generously applauded the music. who was returning to his barracks playing the regimental march. It was the time of the “Occupation”. SPIRE, an important city in the Palatinate, if not the capital, I no longer remember, was a very beautiful city with vast avenues and a cathedral that was quite dark and austere in its lines, which seemed immense to me. It was brilliantly lit for the Sunday service where we regularly went to high mass. Father and mother spoke German fluently, which allowed them to be on very good terms with our upstairs neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Müller. He was an important person: Director General of the Palatinate Post Office and he was as Francophile as my parents were Germanophiles. Thus, good neighborly relations were established, which was not the general case. An arrogant General Staff, Germans stiffened by the humiliation of defeat, did not maintain a favorable climate. I was still young, but somehow born during the War, History had already captivated me and I particularly felt this composite atmosphere. In class, we easily detected the two clans, depending on whether the parents, when talking about Germans, pronounced the name "Boche" and the others, whose parents forbade the use of this excessively insulting expression with regard to those whose we occupied the City. The good relations we had with the Müllers allowed us to form a group of amateur musicians, either at home or on the floor above.
Mr. Müller on the piano, my Mother on the violin, then a second violin, a third, a cellist, and I experienced the beautiful moments of a chamber orchestra which occupied many Sunday afternoons, constantly improving its repertoire of the best musicians . At lunch on this birthday, Mom told me: “this evening, you will have a surprise.” Who says surprise, says trying to guess which one? No obvious answer, despite my imagination. After a very good snack, a few more games and my friends returned home, accompanied by their parents who had come to pick them up. In February night falls quickly. By a happy coincidence, the winter which was so harsh had softened a little and it was not freezing. At the end of the afternoon, my father told me to get dressed and he himself had taken off his uniform and put on a fairly elegant business suit. I put on my sailor suit, that was the type at the time for boys my age. I saw through the window that a team was waiting for us in the street. My sister and my younger brother were not part of the outing, which was also unusual. As soon as we were ready, we got into the car and quickly arrived at the cathedral. I was beginning to suspect the surprise my mother had spoken of. Entering through a side door, I noticed that the church was full, but above all that the chairs had their backs to the altar. A beadle was waiting for my Father and led us to chairs marked with our names. Through the central aisle, we could see all these people following us with their eyes until we were seated next to our friend Müller, the Burgomaster and the Cardinal Archbishop, recognizable by his habit. They stood up to greet my Father. I was seated between him and Mrs Müller. A moment later, the chandeliers went out and all the light focused on the stand. Exactly at seven o'clock, the titular organist opened the concert with the most famous piece in the repertoire, which I later learned, by hearing it over and over again, to be Bach's toccata. My memory has always been very good, but I no longer remember the three or four works that the Palatinate Philharmonic Orchestra subsequently performed, two of which were with choir. The acoustics were excellent in this enormous cathedral. The religious buildings were created in a way for this and thanks to the fact that all the places were occupied, the sound was even better. Thanks to special stands, we could see both the orchestra and the choirs. These highlighted the sound richness of the German language, more musical than French and even Italian in this particular domain. The great tension in the audience ceased with the intermission. The chandeliers were lit again and tongues were loosened creating a hubbub where we could no longer even hear ourselves breathe. My father asked me if I liked this first part. I didn't need to answer him, he read in my eyes that I was captivated. He said to me: “Now you’re really going to like it!”. The chandeliers gradually went out, silence fell again and the spotlights illuminated the stand. In the middle, I saw that a sort of small platform had been set up to the left of the conductor. He was finishing tuning his various instruments when I saw Mom climb the few steps to the stage. She seemed very small from the distance where I was, but I saw that she was wearing a white blouse and a loose black skirt, she was holding her violin and her bow. A spotlight followed her
Once seated, without a music stand to hide it, the conductor raised his baton and the four discreet strokes of a timpanist sounded, opening the introduction to a work that would be engraved in my head forever. During my wanderings and for decades, I only heard a few snatches without ever being able to put a name to this work. In a little over an hour and in three movements, marked by a brief interval, I knew that God existed who had inspired the author and guided the hand which had transcribed this prodigious work. Terribly difficult to execute, I recognized the passages that my Mother had tirelessly repeated to perfection; I always thought she played like a man because of the vigor of her bow attacks. With the orchestra feeling the full value of these blessed moments, my sensitivity was raw and I did not even feel the tears which were slowly flowing down my cheeks and which I wiped away with a furtive movement. Madame Muller took my hand and squeezed it tightly as if to make me understand that she shared my emotion. My father had forgotten me and I felt that my neighbors were also transported. I did not take my eyes off my Mother and noticed, although I was far away, that she closed her eyes during the times when she was not playing, undoubtedly to absorb the emotion of a silent crowd. She reopened them for a second before receiving the signal from the leader to take up her bow again. At the last chord and the sudden silence of the musicians, the entire crowd stood up and I knew that we had the right to applaud in a church. There was thunder for a time that seemed very long to me. I thought it would never end. I was too small to see the stand. Finally, everyone sat down again. The conductor gestured to his musicians to sit down as well and my Mother took up her bow again. There was absolute silence again and the ensemble resumed the wonderful theme where the orchestra dialogues, as it were, with the violin in three brilliant variations. A great moment of happiness, then thunderous applause again. Mr. Müller, the authorities crowded around my Father and told him of the pleasure they had experienced from this marvelous execution. Shortly after, my Mother, gallantly accompanied by the Conductor to whom she gave her arm, came to join us. She was rosy with emotion at having managed to captivate the attention of this crowd of music lovers and proud (she told me later) that a French artist was able to fill a cathedral without any other announcement than the deep friendship that dedicated Monsieur Muller and the few amateurs with whom she played on Sundays. I threw myself into his arms crying. ********** At the Prisunic store near my apartment, a whole batch of “compact” discs was on sale for ten francs each. Nothing but masterpieces: Mozart, Haydn, Chopin, Beethoven among others. A violin concerto? The concerto for violin and orchestra in D major, op 61 It was him. Divine surprise!!! Seventy years later INemours, July 1993