Advent Calendar – 10th December, 2021 – Six Noels 3
Merry Christmas!
Danielle and Dave’s Advent Calendar, 2021
10th December, 2021
Six Noëls pour la Harpe ~ op 32 no 3
Marcel Tournier
The third of the Six Noels was revisited by Tournier in 1942 to become Lettre d’Enfant à Noël. The church bell connection is, in fact, made in the words. This song is not generally known today and I found it in the Bibliotheque National in Paris in the early 1990s, copying it by hand in pencil.
The words of this sweet, yet poignant song give a deeper significance to the solo version and are worth giving here. Paris was, of course, under Nazi German occupation at the time the song appeared. Incidentally, it reveals to me that I was not alone as a child, in believing that Father Christmas and God were one and the same:
Je vous écris petit Noël
Le jour où la neige est sur les toits
Et que j’entends sonner la cloche de l’église
Apportez-moi beaucoup de poupées
Avec un grand berceau mon petit Noël
Revenez descendez dans ma cheminée
Où j’ai mis mes beaux sabots du dimanch
Que vous remplirez de belles choses toutes roses
Remportez les gros canons
Qui blessent les maisons
Et font tant de bruit dans la nuit
Me voici a genoux et vous fais ma prière
A Noël qui demeure au ciel.
Que j’entremble Petit Noël
This translates roughly as:
I am writing to you Father Christmas
The day when the snow is on the roofs
And I can hear the church clock chime
Please bring me lots of dollies
With a big cradle Father Christmas
Come back down my chimney
Where I have left my beautiful Sunday boots
For you to fill with all sorts of lovely pink things
Take away the big guns
Which damage the homes and make such a noise in the night
That I tremble Father Christmas
Here I am on my knees and I make my prayer to you
Father Christmas who lives in the sky.
These exquisite miniatures which were published in 1926 were dedicated to Madame Pierre Collet.
Tournier (1879 – 1951) who I have to say is one of my harp inspirations was a student of Alphonse Hasselmans at the Paris Conservatoire gaining his Premier Prix there after only four years of harp study in 1899.
He won the very prestigious Second Prix de Rome for composition in 1909. Other people who had received this prestige included none less than his friend Debussy and earlier composers such as Berlioz and Bizet.
Also in 1909, Tournier won the Prix Rossini and recognition by the Institut de France for his orchestral playing. Tournier subsequently became professor of harp at the Paris Conservatoire himself and held that position until he retired in 1948. Although Tournier’s harp career was wide ranging, he loved above all, to write for the instrument.
I think his understanding of the instrument and its timbres glows through his writing and it is said that he focussed on tone production in his teaching. His compositional style includes many contemporary influences and features and his real accomplishment is in translating these into idioms which sound completely natural on the harp.
Recorded on David Concert Harp
Nineteenth-and Twentieth-Century Harpists: A Bio-Critical Sourcebook.
Wenonah Milton Govea.(Bio-Crit-ical Sourcebooks on Musical Performance.)
Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1995.