A Singer’s Notes by Keith Kibler 52: Bastille Day, and Fabulous Fellows
These last weeks there was French music everywhere. An excellent program of alternating Debussy and Messiaen songs at Tanglewood with the Tanglewood Fellows, William Bolcom and Joan Morris at Mohawk Trail Concerts, and a Bastille Day performance of Tartuffe the Imposter at Shakespeare and Company. A lot of ink has been spilled describing, defining, perhaps destroying what is called “French style.” Bad pedagogy of this sort tries to get you to do something less than what you would normally do with a phrase if it were not French music. There is much pontificating about accuracy in the pronouncing of the language. French singers that I have known seem much more concerned with the flow of the language and the connectedness of it. Because a piece of music is easy on the ear does not mean it is less affecting for the heart. All of the performances listed above showed me that this is true. They followed what I would call the “Boulez” idea—how he said that French music is strong, in Debussy’s case, frequently violent—not some kind of shaded, half-felt thing. Very possibly the best exemplar of this is Joan Morris, ably partnered at the piano by her husband William Bolcom. Mr. Bolcom studied with Darius Milhaud, and Ms. Morris sang some Milhaud songs in the same way that she sang old American songs, some from Tin Pan Alley. What was that way? It was buoyancy, it was poignancy; she took the songs seriously, even if they were jaunty. She is an excellent example of a singer who makes no arrogant distinction between a great classical song and a great popular song. There is nothing “artsy” about her French, or her singing. It just comes out like a terrific speech which can, at a moment’s notice, move us deeply. This would be my model for excellent Gallic music-making.

