In my early teens
I was an ardent fan of hunting the airwaves, fascinated by
radio-technique, but equally keen on catching intriguing content. Living
in Europe in the 60s, I had managed confirmed receptions of stations
from all continents. Though long distance shortwave listening I had largely left behind, I still liked to check out the airwaves. Now on Canada's westcoast, it was good sport to
listen for usually low-powered local US medium wave (AM) stations.
This worked normally only after sunset.
On
this special day I was lucky, something caught my ear immediately
with spellbinding music. It became clear later that I had tuned in on
KKHI, San Francisco. A station entirely devoted
to classical music, not too common in North America, especially for
medium wave broadcasting. With 10 kW power this station was quite weak (European stations often transmitted with 100 kW or more!)
But on this day the reception was ok, good enough for recording! I
hastily fumbled for my little cassette recorder to catch the
music......some kind of choral performance, hard to say if it was
modern or old, maybe even medieval. Definetly music that went
straight to my heart, as I gazed out into the grey and red dawn,
deeply entangled in memories and diffuse thoughts of things to come.
I
was baffled by my difficulty to place the music on a timeline, but
even more by the special ”quality” of it. Angelic voices of
unearthly beauty, side by side with very earthy ”joie de vivre”,
sometimes in the same piece. Who could melt these two aspects so
convincingly into one coherent concept? My contemplations had already
drifted to France, some of the song lyrics hinted at that, but it was
not over-obvious, given the mediocre sound quality of long distance
AM reception. Later the announcer summed up the just presented
content as this:
1)
Divertissement Pastoral (To Accompany The Mass Of The Nativity In The
Abbey Of St. Michel de Frigolet) Composed By Henri Tomasi2) 12 Noëls – Christmas Songs Arranged By Henri Tomasi, Composed By Nicolas Saboly
Maîtrise
d'enfants de la Radiodiffusion-télévision française
Les
Tambourinaires de la Masetto Maïanenco
Jacques
Jouineau, Orchestra
Tomasi was a modern French composer (1901-1971), while Saboly was a writer/composer in the early 16 hundreds. So I wasn't so far off with my uncertainties about the correct time period.
The cassette recording, despite its obvious inadequacies, became the treasured memory of these magic moments in my room at the onset of Christmas Eve. I played it virtually every Christmas since. Of course I tried to get a hold of a record, but no store could help me. And not even the internet yielded any traces, at least in the early days.
It was not before about 2009 when I finally did find some information on the net. The LP disc played on the radio turned out to be a Deutsche Grammophon production from 1962, recorded in the St.Michel Abbey near Avignon. Apparently there had been re-issues on CD, but I never found a trace of them either. I had to wait until December 2018 to stumble upon a complete recording in fine stereo quality on Youtube. It might have been placed there by an organization connected to the state owned French RTF (Radio + Television) itself, who probably held the copyright. But this is just a guess.
Musically, I am a layman. But I'm sure that Tomasi and Jouineau did a great job with the arrangements, the instrumentation and the youthful choir. So sharp, so disciplined, yet so uninhibited and inspired. The undoubtedly hard work apparently did not take away anything from the youngsters' enthusiasm. To listen to this fine 1962 performance in high quality, what a joy. Heartwarming and uplifting. And my personal treasure hunt finally leading to success.
Please note: The "Divertissement Pastoral" is an edited version, leaving out texts of known French writers, which are an integral part of the piece. Highly recommended listening, even more so for non-native French speakers because of the beauty of the texts and the exceptional clarity of the voices! Find it here:
--- Copyright of sound and image material lies with the legal owners or is in the public domain. Fair non-commercial use is claimed for historic and educational purposes ---
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