Music and religion

I grew up with music: playing it, singing it, listening to it. Music is closely intertwined with my religious life too; I have sung with church choirs as long as I can remember (including a stint as a paid singer at The Riverside Church in New York City for two years just after college). Music history itself is closely intertwined with religion (something I was able to weave into my college senior thesis). Bach (among others) would not have been quite the prolific composer (I’m guessing) without the need to provide settings for religious services on a regular basis. In moving to Nice, the question of how I would integrate into the musical life of the city for me was a question of when, not if.

I began by looking for a church. The first church I found was an Anglican Church, across the street from my real estate office on Rue Joffre. (A European History major who focused on the middle ages, 20th century history is not my forte, but at the suggestion of a friend, I had read Barbara Tuchman’s book on World War I – The Guns of August, so I actually have some familiarity with the names on the streets around here – lots of French WWI heroes recognized by street namings.) I attended the church one Sunday in September; it was a welcoming congregation, and the Anglican service was familiar and spoken completely in English (when I attended my brother’s church several weeks later on Worcester, Massachusetts, I considered again how small we are as a world family). Typical of Anglican services, there was a cantor for certain parts of the service; in this church there was no choir. Even the organist didn’t get too play too much; and the congregation was the typical English “don’t sing too loud” crowd. I was probably singing too loud.

There was a coffee hour after the service, in the adjoining building (apparently some wettish weather prevented the coffee hour from being held in the garden, as usual), and I went over to mingle with the crowd. There was coffee available, and some salty snacks, but there were also bottles of wine on the table near the coffee; for a Euro you could buy yourself a little after-church wine. How civilized!

The English are an institution here in Nice. I’ll let you look up the history, but the fact of the matter is that the English love the French Riviera (and that’s what they call it, not, like the locals, the Cote d’Azur), and lots of them not only vacation here but have settled here in their retirement years. The French can’t knock the English too much, because they do a lot to keep the economy humming, but what the French can’t stand is that the English make no attempt to integrate into France, with their biggest transgression being the fact that most of them don’t learn to speak the language. In a conversation with a Niçoise woman one afternoon waiting for a concert to begin (all in French!), she asked me if I was Anglais (English), to which I answered yes (taking it as whether or not I spoke English as a native), but later, when I disclosed that I was American, not from the UK, she had a whole different perspective on me. And she was particularly praiseworthy of my French conversational skills!

That coffee hour at the Anglican church was another small world experience: In introducing myself to a woman lingering there, I discovered she was a Presbyterian minister who was vacationing in Nice for the week; I ended up spending the next several minutes grilling her about the goings on at the General Assembly (Annual Meeting of Presbyterian clergy and elected officials) that had occurred the previous month. I made sure she knew about Western Presbyterian in DC before I let her go. (http://www.westernpresbyterian.org/).

I decided I would visit another church the following weekend. This time it would be a French church. If I wanted to integrate into French culture, attending an English church was not going to help. On my meanderings, I had found another church, which appeared to be Protestant, not far from the Anglican church (this one was on boulevard Victor Hugo – another familiar name). I had to go to my dictionary to look up a word; the sign on the door said “Culte – 10:15.” I wanted to make sure I didn’t assume anything: “culte” means “worship” in French. So the next weekend, at 10, I headed over to the Église Réformée. (http://www.eglise-reformee-nice.org/)

I was there a little early, but it didn’t look like too many people were in the congregation. But the group there clearly knew each other; and the guy who appeared to be giving everyone hellos was the same guy who showed up a few minutes later in the front of the church in a black robe and white collar.

It was indeed a Protestant church; the service order was familiar, even one of the hymns was familiar that morning (“Tous unis dans l’esprit” – “We are One in the Spirit”). I liked the pastor, who, happily for me, spoke very slowly – which went a long way to help me at least understand the words he was saying, even if I didn’t understand the whole conceptual idea he was trying to convey. Although there was no coffee hour after this service, I told myself that I would return to this church.

But this church also had no choir – just an organist who played not so much. Actually, that morning, it looked like the organist had rolled out of bed after a late night to play this morning gig – he was a 20-something from the back of him, with hair that hadn’t seen a brush for a day at least. The post-sermon meditational music he played that morning was “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” I smiled.

But if there was no choir, it did not mean that this church did not support the musical arts. That morning I found on one of the tables in the back of the church a brochure for a series of musical programs going on in the church during the year ahead. Suddenly the congregation was feeling a little more like home.

I missed church at the Église Réformée for a few weeks, due to my travels back to the States and a Sunday morning spent sleeping quite late, recovering from my trip to the States. In the interim, I attended a mass at a downtown Catholic church (see previous posting, La Vie en Rose), and found, like I had around the world, that the Catholic service is fairly predictive, whatever language is spoken. I like it at times, but not for weekly fare.

In the interim, I had started looking in the local paper, Nice-Matin (“matin” is French for “morning”), for musical events in the city. I discovered that they published a “cultural calendar” on Wednesdays, so two weeks ago I purchased the paper on Wednesday (I still can’t get myself to by the paper every day here, it seems so expensive at 85 cents [euro] – although I realized when I was in NYC a few weeks ago that even the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal when purchased on the street are $1 or more.)

In the newspaper, I found a free concert to be performed that Saturday by the local professional orchestra (Orchestra de Cannes Provence Alpes Maritime Cote D’Azur – known to locals as ORPACA – http://www.orchestre-cannes.com/) at the Nice Conservatory (http://www.cnr-nice.org/). I had heard ORPACA with Priscilla in another free concert in a small town, Le Cannet, just north of Cannes a week or so earlier. They were a group worth going to hear. (The performance we had heard of Ravel’s Piano Concerto even prompted Priscilla to get the CD.) I called Christiane and invited her to join me at the concert. That weekend was also the monthly concert to be given in the series at the Église Réformée on Sunday afternoon. I had a weekend ahead full of free concerts!

The Saturday concert was pretty impressive. The conductor of ORPACA had come up with the idea twenty years ago of giving Conservatory students the opportunity to play with the professional orchestra, and over the years, many successful students had gone through that experience. The concert featured four of the program graduates, and they were all talented and impressive in their concerto solos.

The next afternoon, at the church, I heard a small Niçoise chamber group. (Beethoven, Serenade in D Major op. 25; Schubert, String Trio in B flat major, D.581 and Mozart, Quartet for flute and strings in D Major, K. 285) The fun thing was to see that the cellist I’d heard do a solo the previous evening was a member of the quartet. I already felt like I knew the Niçoise music community!

While at the Conservatory on Saturday afternoon (we had gotten to the concert hall quite early, given that the concert was free, and wanting to make sure we got a good seat), I had picked up the flyer with all the other concerts going on at the Conservatory in the year ahead. I found that they had Monday early evening series, and the next concert would be the Monday upcoming. So on Monday late afternoon, I walked up to the Conservatory (deciding that walking was more efficient and more economical than taking the bus), and had the opportunity to hear some of the principal players in ORPACA (including the conductor, a flutist) perform some fairly eclectic chamber music. The program featured a harpist, and some interesting and captivating pieces by Ravel and others. (Debussy, Sonate for flute, viola and harp; Faure, Berceuse op. 56 for violin and harp)

So, although at this point I had not yet found a choir, I had certainly found music in Nice!
The season is in full swing, and there continue to be plenty of concert offerings for me to take advantage of. This weekend was the Ensemble Baroque de Nice (http://www.ensemblebaroquedenice.org/) season-opening concerts; I heard them perform Bach’s Orchestral Suites on Sunday afternoon in the Cathédrale Sainte-Réparate in old Nice. I was a little disappointed to be sitting mid-nave in the cathedral; the result was similar as for those who sit mid-nave in Washington’s National Cathedral; lots of notes were left in the rafters. But the group was very good. I left that concert and walked by the Église Réformée, to see if the concert advertised for 18h was still in progress. The Alliance des Lyres, had just begun the second half of the concert; so I got to hear Rossini’s Stabat Mater performed by a quartet of absolutely wonderful soloists (and supported by a lackadaisical chorus, unfortunately).

Just so you don’t think I’m a complete classical music nerd, Priscilla took me to hear a jazz quartet at the local community music center (right next to the Conservatory) on Friday night. The quartet featured Hadrien Feraud , a 24 year old whiz kid bass guitarist who has already played with all the big names around here, apparently. He had three very competent and talented kids (they all looked so young) play with him (drums, lead guitar and keyboards, respectively), and P and I left the concert believers in the kid’s talent.

This coming weekend, the City is sponsoring an entire 3-day weekend (on All Saints Weekend, no less, which is a national holiday in France, the Catholic country that it is) of free concerts at the city’s Acropolis – a large convention center. ORPACA, the Ensemble Baroque de Nice, and a few other orchestras from neighboring areas (including Monaco) will be featured.
As a former arts administrator, I can’t help but note the mechanics of arts presenting and administration I have noticed here. As you may know or be aware, the French state basically supports the arts. The Conseil Générale des Alpes-Maritimes (the region of which Nice is the largest city) gets lots of publicity for making most of the concerts happen (I think every concert I have heard so far was supported by the CG). The byproduct is either that the concert is free, or there is a nominal charge. Amazingly, admission charges to the concerts I have attended (so far, only in churches and community centers) have never exceeded 14 Euros. Barely 20 dollars! As the per-concert price of choral concerts has headed toward $30 in the States, I’m happy to pay to attend concerts here. But lots of them are just free. [The alternative is the “big name” concert promoter-organized concerts that one can attend in Monaco or Cannes for big ticket prices – pop music icons and bands and famous entertainers…]

So, will I find a chorus to join? I read a notice in the newspaper Nice-Matin this week that the Catholic church around the corner from me is looking for “new” voices to join their choir to do special services each month. I think I may just join them.