Posts Tagged: Phillipe Rombi

Peau d’Ane

Here’s a little Christmas gift for everybody: Peau d’Âne, the strangest film of Jacques Demy’s career, and, by coincidence, probably the strangest film ever made.

For those among my readers who are unfamiliar with the work of the French auteur, allow me to catch you up: Jacques Demy made four or five films in the late 50’s/early 60’s, but his cult following really began in 1964 when he teamed up with the legendary French jazz pianist/composer Michel Legrand on a little collaboration known as Les Parapluies de Cherbourg.

“The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” might be considered a musical, but if we’re being fussy about our nomenclature, it’s really an opera – the dialogue is entirely sung.  It’s become a cult hit, and it’s absolutely worth your while to see/listen to.  If you ask me nicely, I’ll come over to your house and sing the entire thing from start to finish (I will also do this if you mention it in passing.)

[A side note: my mother was 15 when “The Umbrellas” made its way over to the states, and promptly fell in love with it.  She broke up with her high school boyfriend when he didn’t share her ardor for the movie.  In retrospect, it probably would have been a much worse sign if her teenage boyfriend had fallen in love with a campy French musical.]

[Another side note: Stephen Sondheim’s one flaw as a human being is that he doesn’t like Les Parapluies de Cherbourg.  In a sense, he’s right: it’s a ridiculous conceit with a clunky execution (the text setting is particularly disastrous.)  But it’s just like, Steve, you’ve got to get past all of that.  It’s ok though, I still wouldn’t break up with him.]

After “Les Parapluies”, Jacque Demy and Michel Legrand teamed up once again for “Les Demoiselles de Rochefort”, which really is a musical.  Like its predecessor, it stars the incomparably ravishing Catherine Deneuve but it also features a cameos by Gene Kelly (who trots out a few mots de français) and George Chakiris.

This brings us to our special subject for today, the third and final Demy-Legrand collaboration, the incomparably strange Peau d’Âne – “Donkeyskin” – based on Charles Perrault’s incestuous fever-dream of a fairy-tale from 1695.

Where to begin?  Let’s start by saying that this has got to be the single campiest film of all time.  View, for example, the chintzy costumes and sets, complete with rainbow headboard:

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Or this cat bench:

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  Also, it’s basically Eyes Wide Shut

meets The Smurfs

done on the budget of an average episode of Mr. Rodgers  

And a mouth inside an eye inside a rose, because acid flashbacks are so much fun:

I can only imagine that François Ozon came home from school every day and watched this movie from the ages of about 5-12.  Which brings me to the music, because I think Ozon must have forced Phillipe Rombi to listen to the “recipe song” from Peau d’Âne like 20 times before writing the score for Potiche:

I’ve often criticized Michel Legrand for his rather crude job inserting the text of “Les Parapluies” into his pre-existing tunes, but there’s a moment in Peau d’Âne that might just prove me wrong.  Listen to his setting of the word “la situation” in both scores:

I’m still right, but they’re very similar, so maybe he had a particular affinity for that word’s melodic qualities.

Finally, this is basically me as I leave the house before every rehearsal:

How to write a children’s piece

I premiered a new kids’ piece this summer called “How to Become a Composer: The Tale of a Young Musician“.  I’m just now posting it because we weren’t really set up for an audio recording, and I’ve had to do my meager best to clean-up the track.  The narrator is my friend Kyle Ritenauer, NYC percussionist extraordinaire; the orchestra is the house band of the Pierre Monteux School.  They all did a pretty good job on one rehearsal!

This, and it’s sister piece, “Cinderella Goes to Music School” are long pieces, about 35 minutes each, and that’s the point – you’re supposed to be able to perform either piece and have it take up a whole children’s program (at the Monteux School, we follow it with an instrument petting zoo, so the whole morning clocks in at around an hour.)

At 35 minutes, I know that very few people will actually sit down and listen to either of these pieces, but I’d like to tell you a little bit about what I think distinguishes them from the rest of the pack.

OK, so what are the other pieces in the Narrator+Orchestra category?  “Peter & the Wolf” [obvs.], “L’Histoire de Babar”, “La Boîte à Joujoux”.  Then there’s sort of the next generation of pieces, like “Tubby the Tuba” and “Peewee the Piccolo”.  These pieces are all sweet and lovely and educational in their own way, but [hubris alert] here’s why I think mine are better:

My pieces, “Composer” and “Cinderella” are about real people, not animals or anthropomorphic instruments.  The people are adolescents, and if my childhood fascination with “Saved by the Bell” is any indication, adolescents always hold a particular appeal for younger kids.  The clincher is that the characters happen to be musicians, and because of this the music in the story is motivated and integral, and seems more relevant, I would argue, than a set of leitmotifs that illustrate a story just because a composer happened to write them.

The stories are contemporary, though I hope they have a timeless quality to them.  I’ve also tried to do that Disney thing of having enough sophisticated humor in the mix to appeal to adults, and hopefully there are enough musical in-jokes that the stories and music will appeal to orchestra musicians as well.

The music is a mixture of styles – Hollywood, cartoon, Broadway, classical, modern, etc.  The style is familiar from the larger media world, but also introduces the classical sound-world of the orchestra and a number of historic styles (there’s many a pastiche of famous composers.)

Each of these stories starts out with an introduction to the instruments, but I’ve tried to reinforce the particular qualities of the instruments throughout – again, setting these stories in the world of classical music makes that an organic possibility.

Well, that’s my pitch, and I’d love it if you’d listen to these little playlets of mine, because they were a great joy to concoct, and I think kids and orchestras would really like them.  If you happen to be an orchestra programmer and are interested in knowing more, get in touch with me via my contact page.

The last thing I’ll say is this: the opening of “Composer” is my homage to Phillipe Rombi, the ever-inventive collaborator of François Ozon.