A few years ago I was playing through Betty Paret’s ‘Second
Harp Book’ and came across the gorgeous ‘Queen’s Music’ by none other than
Marie Antoinette, last Queen of France. It’s actually a song with the title ‘C’est
mon ami’ written for voice and accompaniment, which could quite possibly have
been the harp given Marie Antoinette’s love of the instrument. And as a further
actually, it’s one of two songs written by the Queen, the other being ‘Portrait
Charmant’.
I’m in the middle of putting together a concert programme at
the moment with my good friend Sarah the Singer.
As an aside I have to refer to her as Sarah the Singer as I
have 3 Sarahs in my life: Sarah the Singer, Sarah the Flute and Sarah with the
Twins. What was really freaky was when they were all pregnant at the same time,
especially when I received an invite in the mail to Sarah’s Baby Shower. But
which one??!! Turned out to be Sarah with the Twins.
ANYWAY. Sarah the Singer and I will be doing some performances
in September/October of music from France c.1780-1830 and we would love
to do the Marie Antoinette songs. But to do so we have had to temporarily take
of our musician hats and put on our internet sleuthing hats, for these songs
are not easy things to track down.
So Dr. Watson, let’s work our way through the trail….
There is a beautiful YouTube vid of ‘C’est mon ami’ with
Sandrine Chatron playing harp
I would love to get in touch with Sandrine but haven’t found
an email address or anything like that for her.
www.marieantoinette.org
is a fairly scholarly site to whom I have addressed an enquiring email. I’m yet
to hear back but fingers crossed someone there can help.
There’s a site dedicated to all things Marie Antoinette
which features a page of music connected with the Queen http://www.ladyreading.net/marieantoinette/index-en.html
. From here we were able to get a copy of the vocal line and lyrics for ‘C’est
mon ami’. When combined with the Betty Paret solo harp version we have enough
info to put together our own arrangement. Yah!
Sarah and I have both tried to purchase Mayuko
Karasawa’s recording of the two Marie Antoinette songs mentioned on the
ladyreading.net page, but due to vagaries of the internet which I don’t get at
all we can’t buy it as a digital download in Australia. How this can be I do
not know. Mayuko has very kindly answered an email we sent her but
unfortunately could only refer us to the same iTunes or Amazon downloads that won’t
work for us. So at the moment we are scratching our heads to see if we know
someone in another country who could buy it for us and forward it on. And this technology
stuff is supposed to make our lives easier…
To be honest though what we really need is the sheet music of the
second song ‘Portrait Charmant’ but it seems to be one very elusive little
song.
Well, I really don’t know where to go next with this one, but I am
loath to give up on performing the two songs. Anyone out there in blogland have
any suggestions?
P.S. Since I posted this I had response from Clare at www.marieantoinette.org who is based in Melbourne- wow what a small world! She was very helpful but unfortunately we're still no closer to the elusive 'Portrait Charmant'
No comments:
Post a Comment