Marshall Taylor shares with us a few moments of his two year span studying with "Le Maitre," Marcel Mule, and various points of knowledge passed on from Paule Maurice to Marcel Mule regarding Tableaux de Provence. This is the real thing and a treat for all who read and listen. Marcel Mule's kind heart and magnanimous nature comes to us through this offering by Marshall Taylor. Enjoy!



From an October 16, 2009 email from Marshall Taylor:


When I studied the Tableaux with Marcel Mule, he told me that this
movement, which I think he considered the best of the five, was written
by Paule Maurice after the death of a young relative of hers, a niece or
cousin and was the most personal for her. Maurice doesn’t mention this
connection in her letter; perhaps it was still too close.
Lou Cabridan is, of course, the saxophonists’ Flight of the
Bumblebee. Mule told me that when Paule Maurice gave him the manuscript of the
piece, it had no articulations and she had asked him to indicate articulations
as he saw fit. Whereas in the printed editition this final movement has
sixteenth notes articulated predominantly in a slur-two, tongue-two
pattern alternating with four notes under one slur, Mule said that his
ubsequent thought was that in the interest of a faster tempo, he would eliminate
most single note articulations and have more slurs. Thus the markings I have
from that lesson replace the slur-two, tongue-two pattern with slur-two,
slur-two, and retain the four-note slurs. Maurice wasn’t comfortable
indicating woodwind articulations herself, so what we have in the
printed edition is Mule’s articulation which he later second-guessed in this
last movement.

Tableaux de Provence is the only piece of music by Paule Maurice that
seems to be published, available and known. Marcel Mule’s advocacy in
recording it has made the piece and her name well-known, at least among
saxophonists and their audiences. It’s one of the finest works of the
French saxophone repertoire, I think, transcending mere virtuosity for its own
sake and embodying a special and very musical atmosphere. Its five movements’
titles memorialize this ancient and fascinating region of Provence,
adopted and loved by Maurice and her husband, Pierre Lantier. The couple
purchased a house or villa in Sanary-sur-Mer, on the Mediterranean, as a place to
spend summers and later their retirement, a plan subsequently followed by
their good friends, Marcel Mule and his wife, whom I twice visited there
after his retirement from teaching at the Conservatoire in Paris.

Though I never met Paule Maurice, I did meet her husband, Pierre
Lantier, who came to one of my concerts when I was a student in Paris. I had
>discovered that these composers whose names I knew from the works they
had written for Mule were in the Paris telephone directory and I invited
several of them to concerts in which I played their music. I had programmed
Lantier’s Euskaldunak for that particular concert and I played his Sicilienne as an encore. I have his signature on my copy of Euskaldunak, which is actually a copy of the manuscript that Mule had very kindly lent me over the summer between my two years with him. I photocopied it and
extracted the saxophone part before returning it. (This was some time
before the piece was published.)


Marshall Taylor, October 16, 2009