Vincent Lhermet and his colleagues and pupils Selma Benlarbi, Jonas Battello, Charlotte Le Roux, Emilie Delapierre and Alice Ouary offered at the Liceo Francés in Bogotá, a concert with the best of the different repertoires of the accordion, an instrument shared by both Colombian and French music traditions. While in Colombia, they spent most of their time in Codazzi (northeastern Colombia) and Valledupar, 60 km away, the epicenter of the Festival Vallenato founded in 1968 around vallenato, a musical genre that in the late 1970s and the 1980s became the main source of income for the Colombian phonographic industry.
Vincent and Catherine Surace (Academic National director of BATUTA) explained that their joint project consists of a 'musical, artistic, cultural and pedagogic exchange' between these two musical traditions based on the accordion, as symbol of 'cultural convergence and mutual recognition'.
The accordion is an instrument that belongs to the whole world. No wonder why in 1990 Peter Gabriel invited accordionist Richard Galliano (b. 1950) to participate in his One Word One Voice project. His great versatility, however, is not really present in the emblematic video, but on it, France remained represented by the instrument that became an icon through the title song of the film Sous les ponts de Paris (1951) sung by Juliette Gréco (1927-2020).
However the specific sound of harmonicas, accordions and harmoniums, based on free vibrating reeds, comes from China and Southeast Asia. Using this principle, new instruments were developed in Europe, as the simple symphonium, or the fully chromatic concertina both invented by Charles Wheatstone (1802-75) in London, the first patented in 1829 and the second made from 1831 onwards and patented in 1844. In 1834 came the accordion of a new kind by Carl Friedrich Uhlig (1789-1874) who, working in Chemnitz (Saxony), made modifications to the accordion invented by Cyrill Demian (1772-1849) who came form the Armenian community living in Transylvania (Romania) but patented his invention in Vienna in 1829. The invention of these instruments was, as we can see, a transnational process.
The information about the free reed sound principle traveled from the East to the West with the Europeans who lived and visited the region, mainly the group of French jesuits and other missionaries who lived in China. One of them was Father Jean-Joseph Marie Amiot (1718-93) who arrived in China in 1751 and remained there the rest of his life. After the dissolution of the Jesuit order in 1773 he became a secular priest and continued writing about Chinese culture, leading to the publication of the fifteen volumes of the Memoires concernant l'histoire, les sciences, les arts, les moeurs, les usages ... des Chinois published in Paris from 1776 to 1789. In 1766 Amiot translated the famous Art of War by Sunzi 孙子 (544-496 BC) and sent it to Henri Bertin (1721-92) minister and Secretary of State of Louis XV. It is included as one volume of the Memoires.
Copy sold at Kunstauktionshaus Schloss Ahlden
Ahlden, Germany, December 5, 2020.
In 1776 Amiot, who was named in Chinese 錢德明 (Qian De-Ming), sent to Bertin in Paris some musical instruments, including a sheng 笙, and around 1790 several English travelers met him in China and also made descriptions of local music and surely took some musical instruments back to London. Moreover, Amiot's writings found their way to scientific societies in Copenhagen, Berlin and St. Petersburg, and by 1800m the basic knowledge about the internal structure of the Sheng, as given by Amiot in 1779, was probably circulating among scientists, musicians and musical instrument makers all around Europe.
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| J J Amiot, Memoire sur la musique des Chinois, tant anciens que modernes, Paris: Nyon, 1779, pp. 81-84, pl. VI. |
The program of the concert included arrangements of songs made famous by Yves Montand (1921-91), Charles Aznavour (1924-2018) and Jacques Brel (1929-78) as well as original pieces, notably those by Basque composer Sofia Martinez (b.1965) and Italian composer and accordionist Pietro Roffi (b. 1992). The arrangements were mainly for two instruments, but "La Boheme" for instance, was also sung successfully by Selma.
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| Selma Benlarbi, Jonas Battello |
The first part of the program had music by J. S. Bach and Rameau, who knew about Amiot and his work on Chinese music. This time he preferred to follow the 'imitative' trend in "Le rappel des oiseaux" as Vivaldi had done in his Quattro Stagioni. The French 18th-century keyboard repertoire –with pieces like that of Rameau– is essential in the formation of the 19th-century piano ‘piece de character’, that as generic keyboard pieces are now an important part of the repertoire of players of all types of accordions, organs, harmoniums, etc.
The Prelude for organ or piano by Cecile Chaminade (1857-1944) came particularly to the point in Colombia, because her music was highly regarded by Colombian composer Pedro Morales Pino (1867-1926) as well as that of her teacher Benjamin Godard (1849-95) whose Mazurka op. 103, no. 4 was included in the debut concert of Morales Pino's Lira Colombiana at the Buffalo (New York) Pan American Exposition on August 8, 1901, along with the Serenade, op. 7 by Gabriel Pierné (1863-1937) and the famous Carmen Suite by Bizet. A very good presence of French music in the repertoire of an ensemble representing Colombia in the United States.
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| Le Roux, Battello, Lhermet |
In the Colombian instrumental pieces –and following the imitative trend of Rameau and Vivaldi– the part of the drum (caja) had to be replaced by tapping the bellows of the instruments and the irreplaceable guacharaca (scraper) had to be learnt and played by some of the accordion players,
One of the instrumental pieces, "Esperanza" by Marc Perrone (b. 1951) was composed originally for a diatonic accordion (with three rows and eight basses). Perrone (born in Villejuif of Italian parents) had been from the early 1970s a pioneer of the revival of this instrument in France and Europe. This is the same accordion used in vallenato, as well as in the music of Southern Texas, Northern Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Panamá and Northeastern Brazil. Older models are used in Louisiana and other regions in Europe, Asia and Africa. Perrone's piece should have attracted the attention of musicians, students and teachers alike, in Valledupar and its surroundings.
We hope that in the future, Colombian musicians (vallenato or not) would do as Vincent and his friends did, undertake a difficult and expensive journey to a far off place to get to know a style of music and its people and then engaging in the highly demanding task, musically, linguistically and culturally, of teaching what they know and learning what they don't.
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| Lhermet, Ouary, Dellapierre, Le Roux, Benlarbi, Battello |
The global dimension of the accordion and its music, was vividly present in this concert, from the Isle de la Réunion (Indian Ocean), the place of birth of Alice Ouary (b.2005), the youngest of the performers, to Codazzi, the Colombian village of 68.000 people named after Agostino Codazzi (1783-1859) the Italian military engineer, geographer and explorer who died there of malaria while working for the Colombian government in the Comisión Corográfica, the most ambitious 19th-century project about Colombia, its land, people and identity.
Thanks to Vincent, his colleagues and pupils, BATUTA and the French institutions for this concert.
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| Lhermet, Ouary, Battello, Le Roux, Dellapierre, Benlarbi |
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