Dear Lovely Bate Collection...

A most fun day!  Recently Martin Perkins (www.conservatoire.bcu.ac.uk/profiles/martin-perkins) contacted me about collaborating on a podcast.  Martin has done sterling work cataloguing the instrument collection at the Birmingham Conservatoire (www.conservatoire.bcu.ac.uk/hic) and is in the process of producing a series of podcasts each of which will focus "on an instrument or group of instruments, examining changes in construction and design and how musicians and composers responded to and initiated these changes".  Martin and the Conservatoire had recently hosted the Galpin Society AGM (www.music.ed.ac.uk/euchmi/galpin) and the wonderful Andy Lamb from the equally wonderful Bate Collection (www.bate.ox.ac.uk) kindly invited us to Oxford for the day to play with their instruments!  The results of today will hopefully be a podcast plus a series of short videos. 

One of the many treats of today was playing on a silver Marcel-Auguste Raoux Cor-Solo from 1823.  It really was a beauty.  It made me even more intrigued about the Raoux in the Paris collection as the two instruments are probably not dissimilar.

Back to school

Just had my place at Langue Onze confirmed!  www.langueonzeparis.com  This is an integral part of my stay in Paris and I really want to take the opportunity to improve my French.  I'm afraid I suffer from the English disease of being rather pathetic at foreign languages.  Through working as a musician I have a fair smattering of French, Spanish, German and can follow Dutch and Italian but rarely have had the opportunity to really get into a language or consider myself vaguely fluent.  French is probably the best foreign language I have though I never learnt it at school.  Having studied in France on the Formation Supérieure run by the Abbaye aux Dames in Saintes (www.abbayeauxdames.org) I picked up a fair amount, also through working in France either with French orchestras or with visiting British ones.  With Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique (British based orchestra despite the name) we normally spend a month each year working in Paris at the Opéra Comique (www.opera-comique.com) but that rarely improves my French past "Je voudrais un verre de vin rouge". 

Part of the preparation work for this project has involved me making an attempt at translation Gallay's Méthode pour le Cor (Paris circa 1845).  I've made a pretty good stab at it however one quickly realises what skills are needed in creating a good translation rather than a rough paraphrase.  Going back to French school will hopefully give me enough of a kick up the backside to really improve my French and the intensive nature of the course (daily 9am till 1pm) plus actually living in Paris will hopefully help!  I realise that a month is very little time and I shouldn't expect too much but fingers crossed!

Dear Cite de la musique...

 

(photo by Thierry Ollivier, www.mediatheque.cite-musique.fr)

... go on, be a sport.  Please would you consider lending me this lovely cor solo?  It was made by Lucien-Joseph Raoux circa 1821 for Jacques-François Gallay and is item number E.1531 in your collection.  I'm lucky enough to have a Cor d'Orchestre by Marcel-Auguste Raoux that belonged to the horn player Oppezzi, principal horn of the Opera de Paris in the early 19th century.  However it would be a dream come true to get access to this instrument during my stay in Paris.  Instruments have so much to tell us, something I've learnt even more through having my Marcel-Auguste Raoux horn, and, as I'm specifically investigating Gallay and his horn playing, I'm certain that there will be much to learn from this particular instrument.

And wouldn't it be wonderful it I could use it for the recording of the Caprices?

Go on!  I'll take extremely good care of it!

All the best

Anneke

Dotting the "i"s and crossing the "t"s

So... ploughed through various mundane tasks associated with the trip yesterday.  Now have most of the travel booked and most of the accommodation including travelling to Orleans for the association Francaise du Cor conference.  This conference is being organised by my former teacher the wonderful Claude Maury and (quelle surprise!) I'll be playing some Gallay at one of their "open mike" events.

I've also buckled down and completed my enrolment at Langue Onze - the French test as part of the application form wasn't too bad though I'm certain my written French it utterly lousy.

Things to do include finding accommodation for 15th - 19th of November and 22nd - 24th of November (following up one last lead on this), return after the recording (tempted not to book this until the venue is confirmed just in case it makes sense to leave later or even the following day) and coming and going for the Irish Baroque Orchestra patch around the 13th - 15th of November (technically this could be dealt with by the IBO office but as they'd normally expect me to be travelling to and from London we'll see...).

The man himself (still not doing my French homework)

Roughly two months to go.

Welcome to "The Gallay Project".  This blog is purely a way of me setting down the thoughts and various adventures I have leading up to and during my month in Paris.  Earlier in the year I was fortunate enough to be awarded a scholarship by the Gerald Finzi Trust (www.geraldfinzi.org) which will finance me spending a month in Paris researching the composer and horn player Jacques-Francois Gallay.  The main thrust of this month will be preparing for a recording of the Gallay Caprices which is incredibly exciting.  I've just spent the last 48 hours finalising some of my plans and booking trains, accommodation and contacting various people who I'll be collaborating with - nerve racking business but incredibly exciting.

What I'm finding at the moment is that, though I'm used to having a certain degree of autonomy in my working life, some of the organisational aspects of this project are feeling quite daunting.  I suppose a lot of this is due to the fact that in effect I'm going to be not "working" for that month (bar two little gigs, one in Paris, which just neatly fitted in, and I will nip back to the UK to teach on a couple of occasions) and, though I have this fantastic scholarship, I do have to be careful with the money.  Also I suppose there is no "office" with whom I'm liaising with so I am very aware that the decisions are all 100% my own.

So a few loose ends to tie up with the logistics of the whole event.  Annoyingly I went to enrol on line for the French course I'm hoping to do and discovered I've answer a few questions in French.  A major aspect of this project is to go on a month long intensive French course and improve my woeful French.  Though my understanding of French and my spoken French isn't too bad my written is pretty hideous so what I thought was going to be a simple task (fill in form and send off to the school) is a bit more of an ordeal.

So really I ought to stop blogging and start doing my French homework.