Cour Saint-Emilion

IN SEPTEMBER LAST YEAR I produced a blog piece about the Cour Saint-Emilion in the 12^th arrondissement. You can see it here.

Yesterday, on a beautiful autumnal day, I returned to this former ‘Entrepôt des Vins’, the wine warehouses in Bercy Village now transformed into restaurants and shops.

I walked along this 220 metre thoroughfare designed in 1990 by the French architects Valode and Pistre, with shops and restaurants on either side and the remains of the old railway line running along the pavé in centre.

The sounds of Cour Saint-Emilion:

New since I was here last are the traditional wooden games set up for everyone to play and a lot of people were taking advantage of them. As well as entertaining both children and adults alike, they added some distinctive sounds to the air.

Next to the Cour Saint-Emilion is the Parc de Bercy with its three connected gardens, The Romantic Garden, The Flowerbeds and The Meadows. This park is always worth a visit.

The Cour Saint-Emilion is an urban-renewal project retaining the 19^th Century industrial architecture of the area and putting the former wine warehouses to good use. It’s a popular place and well worth a visit.

A Conversation With Victoria Fenner … Documentary Poet

VICTORIA FENNER LIVES and works in Canada. With a background in radio and television broadcasting for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and in community based media, Victoria is now an independent radio producer, sound artist and successful businesswoman.

Victoria runs a production company producing journalistic and feature material for radio, Internet, podcasts and video. Much of her work on the themes of social justice, the environment, poverty reduction and global women’s rights has been syndicated nationally and internationally. She also runs ‘Sound Out Communications’, a media production, training and distribution company, working with video, audio and still images. Victoria has a special interest in community radio and in the exploration of the artistic possibilities of radio.

Apart from her very successful broadcasting and business career, Victoria is also one of Canada’s leading sound artists. She travels extensively collecting sounds, which she uses to compile wonderful works of sound art. In this increasingly important part of her work she sets out to listen to the world and to hear it in new ways expressed in rhythms, words, textures and harmonies.

When I first discovered Victoria’s work I was captivated by it and I knew that I had to find out more about the person behind these fascinating sounds. I approached Victoria and she readily agreed to speak to Soundlandscapes’ Blog.

A Conversation with Victoria Fenner:

My conversation with Victoria would not be complete without including some her work. When I suggested this to Victoria she readily agreed to share some of her sounds with us.  The selection is important because it covers the spectrum of her work. These pieces have not been edited to appear here, they are what they are – full-length, original works.

The first piece is called Restoration Sinfonietta, a soundscape made entirely of sounds made by hammers, saws, rachets, power drills and other implements of mass construction.

Restoration Sinfonietta:

The next piece, You Can’t Miss It, is an audio map about getting lost in the Appalachian Mountains. Victoria produced this piece when she was living in Kentucky where getting lost seemed to be a full-time occupation 

You Can’t Miss It:

This piece, Qui Chante, was my first introduction to Victoria’s work and so it’s a particular favourite of mine. It’s a soundscape based on the Lourdes Grotto, an outdoor 
cathedral in the busy borough of Vanier in Ottawa. It explores the theme of quiet, silence and the sacred voice in the 
heart of the secular city. We are encouraged to 
think about our human voice connecting with the voice of the divine
 in a sea of noise created by a secular world.

Qui Chante:

And this selection of Victoria Fenner’s work wouldn’t be complete without a piece from her vast radio repertoire. In my conversation with Victoria we spoke about documentary poetry and radio as art space. This next piece beautifully encapsulates both of these concepts. After Exile was commissioned by the Deep Wireless Radio Art Festival and one of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s best programmes, “Living Out Loud”.  Steve Wadhams, the award winning CBC Radio producer, co-produced this piece with Victoria. For me, this piece represents the very best of radio – imagery, emotion, involvement and a sense of really being there and sharing the experience. Never have the terms documentary poetry and radio art seemed so appropriate.

After Exile:

In ‘After Exile’ Victoria Fenner was herself and Edward Moll was the ghost of Raymond Knister.

Today, we are blessed with so many sound artists producing individual and original works of sound art. I listen to many of them and enjoy the compositions they produce. Victoria’s work though appeals to me especially because of its simplicity. She takes simple sounds, sometimes words but often the everyday, often ignored, sounds around us and transforms them into poetry … documentary poetry. And please don’t confuse simplicity with being easy to produce. As one who has wrestled endlessly with simple sounds I can attest that simple is often much harder than you think. I really enjoy the way that Victoria makes her documentary poetry seem simple. That is a great gift aspired to by many but enjoyed by few.

I really hope that you’ve enjoyed listening to my conversation with Victoria Fenner. If this has given you as much pleasure to listen to as it’s given me to produce then it will have all been worthwhile. If you’ve enjoyed it please leave a comment. Victoria and I would really like to know what you think.

Victoria has been extraordinarily generous in sharing both her words and her sounds with us so it just remains for me to say a very big thank you! Thanks Victoria … until the next time!

Another Good Read

The Flâneur by Edmund White

A flâneur is a stroller, a loiterer, someone who ambles through a city without apparent purpose but is secretly attuned to the history of the place and in covert search of adventure, aesthetic or erotic. Edmund White, who lived in Paris for sixteen years, wanders through the streets and avenues and along the quays, into parts of Paris virtually unknown to visitors and indeed to many Parisians. Entering the Marais evokes the history of Jews in France, and a visit to the Haynes Grill recalls the presence—festive, troubled—of black Americans in Paris for a century and a half. Gays, Decadents, even Royalists past and present are all subjected to the flâneur’s scrutiny.

In his opinionated fashion, the flâneur visits bookshops and boutiques, monuments and palaces, providing gossip and background to each site, looking through the blank walls past the proud edifices to glimpse the inner human drama. Along the way he recounts everything from the latest debates among French lawmakers to the juicy details of Colette’s life. In this, the first book in The Writer and the City series, Edmund White lures the reader into the fascinating backstreets of his personal Paris. It is an exhilarating adventure with a most seductive companion.

This text was taken from Edmund White’s website which you can find here.

I really enjoyed reading this book. The flavour of Paris simply oozes from the pages. I highly recommend it.

Another Good Read

For more than a generation , Gertrude Stein’s Paris home at 27 rue de Fleures was the centre and of a glittering coterie of artists and writers, one of whom was Pablo Picasso. In this intimate and revealing memoir, Gertrude Stein tells us much about the great man (and herself) and offers many insights into the life and art of the twentieth-century’s greatest painter.

Gertrude Stein’s close relationship with Picasso furnished her with a unique vantage point in composing this perceptive and provocative reminiscence. It is indispensable to understanding modern art.

I bought my copy of this book from the best bookshop in the world, Shakespeare & Company, on the Left Bank here in Paris. I also happen to know someone who lives in the Boulevard Raspail in an atelier once occupied by Pablo Picasso so this book has a special resonance for me. I recommend it to you.

This book was published by B.T. Batsford, London, 1938

Le Petit Garçon

SINCE I PUBLISHED my last post, several people have asked me about the song that I recorded at the Christmas market in Neuilly.

The song is called Le Petit Garçon, and it’s a popular children’s Christmas song in France. Here it is again …

And, in case you feel like singing along, here are the words:

Le Petit Garçon

Dans son manteau rouge et blanc

Sur un traîneau porté par le vent

Il descendra par la chiminée

Petit garçon, il est l’heure d’aller se coucher

Tes yeux se voilent

Écoute les étoiles

Tout est calme, reposé

Entends tu les clochettes tintinnabuler

 

Et demain matin, petit garçon

Tu trouveras dans tes chaussons

Tous les jouets dont tu as rêvé

Petit garçon il est l’heure d’aller se coucher

 

 

 

Another Good Read

This is another of my “good reads”. I have just finished reading for the third time, Ernest Hemigway’s “A Moveable Feast”. This is what Wikipedia has to say about it:

A Moveable Feast is a set of memoirs by American author Ernest Hemingway about his years in Paris as part of the American expatriate circle of writers in the 1920s. The book describes Hemingway’s apprenticeship as a young writer in Europe Paris during the 1920s with his first wife, Hadley. Some of the later prominent people who are featured in his memoirs include Aleister Crowley, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ford Madox Ford, Hilaire Belloc, Pascin, John Dos Passos, Wyndham Lewis, James Joyce and Gertrude Stein. The book was edited from his manuscripts and notes by Ernest’s fourth wife, Mary Hemingway, a respected journalist. It was published in 1964, three years after Hemingway’s death. The memoir has Hemingway’s personal accounts, observations, and stories of his experience in 1920s Paris. He provides specific addresses of cafes, bars, hotels, and apartments, some of which can be found in modern-day Paris. The title was suggested by Hemingway’s friend A.E. Hotchner, author of the biography, Papa Hemingway. He remembered they had a conversation about the city during Hotchner’s first visits there: “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”

I commend it to you.

Galeries Lafayette

I AM NOT A FAN of shopping but even I have to admit that a trip to the Galeries Lafayette is an experience – especially at Christmas.

Located in the Boulevard Haussmann in the 9th arrondissement, close to the Opéra Garnier, the Galaries Lafayette welcomes around 100,000 visitors a day – more than Harrod’s in London or Bloomingdales in New York.

The sound of a walk through the Galeries Lafayette

Compared to its status today as a 70,000M2 ‘Temple of Shopping’ and Paris icon, the Galeries Lafayette had humble beginnings. In 1895, Albert Kahn rented a shop in Paris at the corner of Chaussée-d’Antin and rue Lafayette to sell gloves, ribbons, veils, and other goods. The shop was small, but sales were good. It was eventually enlarged, and in 1898 Kahn was joined by his cousin, 34-year-old Théophile Bader. The partnership flourished and they soon purchased the entire building along with adjacent buildings on the Chaussée-d’Antin. The Galeries Lafayette was born.

The magnificent glass dome and wrought iron balconies dominate one end of the store  - a vivid reminder of 19th century Paris – contrasting starkly with the clean-cut, up-market, brand-named, cosmetics counters that lie beneath.

The Galeries Lafayette is famed for its stylish window displays – no more so than at Christmas when crowds of people gather to see the show.

Today, the Galeries Lafayette is a magnet for tourists with the Chinese leading the way followed by Americans and then Japanese. A walk through the store reveals a cosmopolitan mix of people some of whom come just to look and others who come to spend, spend, spend!

It may have begun life as a modest corner shop, but the Galeries Lafayette, along with the other new-fangled 19th century department stores, Printemps, Bon Marché and La Samaritaine, started a revolution in retail shopping which continues today.

The sound of a walk outside past the window displays.

Les Passages Couverts

LES PASSAGES COUVERTS, or arcades as they are known in English, conjure up a wonderful picture of Paris in the first half of the nineteenth century.

The history of the passages couverts goes back to the Galerie de Bois in the Palais-Royal. Built in 1786 by Philippe d’Orléans, the Galerie was open to the public for a variety of commercial and entertainment purposes – some more savoury than others. Whilst the Galerie de Bois was built in the classical style of French public architecture of the time, the new arcades begun at the turn of the nineteenth-century represented everything that was modern.

“These arcades, a recent invention of industrial luxury, are glass-roofed, marble-panelled corridors extending through whole blocks of buildings, whose owners have joined together for such enterprises. Lining both sides of the corridors, which get their light from above, are the most elegant shops, so that the arcade is a city, a world in miniature, in which customers will find everything they need”. So says the ‘Illustrated Guide to Paris’ of 1852.

The 1820′s and 1830′s marked the heyday of the passages couverts. In all, 150 were built of which around 20 survive today.

Inside Passage Verdeau

In the early nineteenth century, the idea of ‘indoor shopping’, with a collection of shops sitting cheek by jowl offering a wide variety of merchandise, was as new as the arcades that provided it. Before the arcades appeared, shopping in Paris was a hazardous business. There were no pavements, the uncertainties of the Parisian climate and the level of street filth and mud made Paris an unsavoury place – not to mention the constant risk of death in the streets. As Baudelaire said, ‘death comes at the gallop from every direction at once’ . The concept of a group of shops, inside, under cover, was an attractive proposition to the Parisian public. I suppose we can say that these arcades were the first ‘shopping malls’ that our consumer society seems to be so much in love with today – but now we do it on an industrial scale and with far less elegance.

Inside Passage Jouffroy

In the bottom right-hand corner of the 9ème arrondissement there remain two passages couverts – the Passage Verdeau and the Passage Jouffroy. Both are on the north side of the Boulevard Montmartre. Cross that Boulevard into the 2 ème arrondissement, and directly ahead, and in line with the other two, is the Passage des Panoramas, not only the first arcade to be opened but the first to be lit by gas lamps. All three are well worth a visit.

Built in 1847, the Passage Jouffroy was the first passage couvert to be built entirely of iron and glass and the first to be heated. Throughout its life it has been home to shops selling a wide variety of merchandise – from books and post cards to La Boîte à Joujoux, with its magnificent collection of doll’s houses and all things miniature, to G. Segas, famed for its selection of walking sticks and other curiosities.

And speaking of curiosities, tucked away at one end of the Passage Jouffroy is the Hôtel Chopin. Surely one of the more curious locations for a hotel.

At the other end of the Passage Jouffroy is another curiosity, the Musée Grévin – a waxworks museum.

The decline of the passages couverts owed much to Haussmann and the Grands Magasins – the department stores – another French invention. Over the years, many of the passages couverts fell into decay and a good number disappeared altogether. Thank goodness the Passage Jouffroy and others have survived to be restored to their former glory.

Ambient recording made inside the Passage Jouffroy last Saturday afternoon

Lest We Forget …

THURSDAY 11th NOVEMBER – the eleventh day of the eleventh month – Armistice Day. A chilly, wind-swept day in Paris with heavy rain for most of the day.

In the centre of the Arc de Triomphe, the tomb of an unknown French soldier from the First World War, the eternal flame and, on this day of remembrance, a guard of honour.

At 11.00 this morning, the national act of remembrance took place – the tributes were paid and the wreaths laid.

After the crowds had left, I made my way across to the wind-swept Arc de Triomphe as I do every year on this day. 

The Unknown Soldier was interred here and the eternal flame lit on Armistice Day 1920. Originally, the tomb was a memorial to the unknown French soldiers who died in the first world war. The inscription on the tomb reads – ICI REPOSE UN SOLDAT FRANÇAIS MORT POUR LA PATRIE 1914–1918  - Here lies a French soldier who died for the fatherland 1914–1918. Today, the tomb embraces all those who died in the first and second world wars as well as all the subsequent conflicts. The tomb was the inspiration for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Westminster Abbey in London.

One of the things that always moves me is that, after the official ceremonies are over, anyone can approach the tomb and pay their respects either with a simple bow of the head or by offering a wreath to one of the attendants. On doing so the guard of honour, as if by magic, always come to the salute as a sign of respect – the same salute is given to a President as to an ordinary individual paying their respects.

In today’s busy world it is easy to forget the “Lions led by Donkeys” – which seems just as relevant today as it was in 1918.

I always try to remember the first verse of ‘Aftermath’ , a poem by Siegfried Sassoon:

“Have you forgotten yet?

For the world’s events have rumbled on since the gagged days,

Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways;

And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow

Like clouds in the lit heaven of life; and you’re a man reprieved to go,

Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.

But the past is just the same – and War’s a bloody game …

Have you forgotten yet?

Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you’ll never forget.”

A Good Read

I’ve just finished reading an excellent book - The Soundscape – Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World by R. Murray Schafer.

The Soundscape – a term coined by the author – is our sonic environment, the ever-present array of noises with which we all live. Beginning with the primordial sounds of nature, we have experienced an ever-increasing complexity of our sonic surroundings. As civilisaton develops, new noises rise up around us: from the creaking wheel, the clang of the blacksmith’s hammer, and the distant chugging of steam trains to the “sound imperialism” of airports, city streets and factories. The author contends that we now suffer from an over-abundance of acoustic information and a proportionate diminishing of our ability to hear the nuances and subtleties of sound. Our task, he maintains, is to listen, analyse, and make distinctions.

As a society we have become aware of the toxic wastes that can enter our bodies through the air we breath and the water we drink. In fact, the pollution of our sonic environment is no less real. Schafer emphasises the importance of discerning the sounds that enrich and feed us and using them to create healthier environments. To this end, he explains how to classify sounds, appreciating their beauty or ugliness, and provides exercises and “soundwalks” to help us become more discriminating and sensitive to the sounds around us.

The book is challenging but to anyone interested in our sonic environment it is well worth a read.