Before coming to France, I had emailed Céline about the possibility of playing music in Grenoble, as I could bring my clarinet but it didn’t seem as if the University had a music program. Luckily, I got placed with a musical family. My host mom plays the accordion and practices every night in addition to taking a class and participating in a few different musical groups. After I arrived and told them about my instruments and that I had brought my clarinet, she promptly invited me to join the Micromégas, a community jazz band she played in.
I was able to attend four official répètes of micromégas, and two informal practices held at my host family’s apartment. In this time I was able to be involved in a small community and play jazz music for the first time in years.
Although I didn’t necessarily form any close friends with anyone in micromégas, I found everyone to be quite welcoming. My first répète was without my host mom, and I wasn’t able to introduce myself to the director before rehearsal started, but he didn’t even question my presence there. I sat down with the clarinets, and we played through the music.
The band was made up of maybe 30 amateur musicians aged 11 to 82. Although we didn’t rehearse all together often, it was clear that everyone practiced on their own and worked hard and really loved playing with the band. I was surprised to see younger musicians, as community ensembles in America are mainly people who have graduated college, where most students play in ensembles at school from middle school through college.
Another surprise to me was that everyone knew solfège, which is used with fixed do in Europe. Solfège is a series of syllables (do,re,mi,fa,sol,la,ti,do) assigned to each of the notes in a scale. In most of the world, musicians used fixed do, where each syllable always corresponds to a note in the C major scale. In the U.S. and Canada, movable do is used, where do is simply the first note in any scale, and you continue the scale with the other syllables. Solfège also has other syllables for accidentals, and hand signs that accompany each syllable.
Often the director would instruct us or give a new line in solfège, and everyone would just go right into it. At one point I asked the girl next to me (an 11 year old clarinetist who is amazing) what the notes were, and I ended up having to ask quite a few people in order to get the actual notes instead of just the solfège. In my high school music program, solfège with movable do was only used in chorus, where hearing the pitch intervals was more important than translating the syllable into the note on the page. In chorus, solfège was manageable, but in band I am not able to hear a pitch and figure out the note, or translate the solfège into it’s letter components, and was utterly lost.
The knowledge of theory and the work all the musicians put into practicing for Micromégas showed an immense amount of discipline and dedication. Everyone in the band took it very seriously, and had a great deal of fun making music. Often other band members or my host parents would casually ask me “travaillait-tu les morceaux?” a casual question that would be more of a call-out in American ensembles. I have never been great about practicing, unless I knew something was very difficult, and I was a little taken aback by everyone just casually asking each other if they’ve practiced. But I came to realize that it was about group accountability, something that’s really important in an ensemble. Everyone needs to be putting in effort and know their part before coming to rehearsal in order to work on balance and blend when everyone is together. My host mom practiced every night, but would also schedule social practices in weeks where we didn’t have formal rehearsal. A couple of her friends in the same instrument group (accordion and upper woodwinds had surprisingly similar parts) would come to the house and we would work through the parts together before all sitting down to a late dinner.
It was a great experience to be able to be a part of this small community of musicians and play some fun jazz music while I was in France, and it taught me a great deal about French culture and music. The dedication and group accountability of the musicians reinforced the concept of French communautarism, and how the good of the group eventually returns to the good of the individual. As we continue our isolation, I’m not sure when I’ll be able to play in a musical ensemble again, and I am really grateful to have participated in Micromègas while in France.
Julianna Hill 