I was yesterday meeting my friend Pascal Rophé who is conducting the OSR for tomorrow's final concert of the Geneva Piano Competition. A review of the concert will be in Concertonet.
I told him that I am ashamed at not remembering the name of our old common High School music teacher (I think that it is Archambaud but I am not sure ..). With more age, I realise that his course was fantastic and that I owe him a lot. In France, after the mid-class level of "Troisème", around when I as 14 or 15, music became an elective course taken by studentes to get a few points extra credit at the Baccalauréat.The exam was composed of playing a piece (I did Bach's Chromatic fantaisie, at a time when I was sight-reading Schoenberg op 11 ...), a musical dictation (is this the correct English word, this is when one plays a tune on a piano and we have to write down the notes ?) - I was not good and very bad with chords ... - and commenting several pieces - there I was better, not good but better.
Thanks to the work of our teacher, I discovered the pleasure of following a score while listening to a work. We did this for Bartok's string quartets, Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, ... I cannot hear the closing pages's Adoration de la Terre without being sensitive to the timpani's decelerating rhythms ...
or the timpani's subtle pedal in Bartok's second violin concerto ...
Such professors are so important.Countries that recognize this will lead this century.
I am sorry not to be sure of his name and I cherish his memory fondly.
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