Marcel Mule

Marcel Mule , born the June 24th 1901 with Paddle (Flowering ash), deceased the December 18th 2001 with Hyères (VAr), is a Saxophoniste French.

With François Combelle, Paul Romby and Jules Viard, Marcel Mule is one of the first protagonists of the school known as “French” of saxophone.

Biography

Marcel Mule discovers the Saxophone, but also the Violon and the Piano at the 8 years age. His/her father, director of the brass band of Beaumont-the-Roger, will be its first professor. Mule was also the pupil of François Combelle, soloist with the Republican guard. While carrying out its military service with the 5th regiment of infantry of Paris, it benefits from it to improve with the Academy of Paris, in particular near the class of harmony of Georges Caussade. In 1923, it is received with the entrance examination of the Music of the Republican guard where it succeeds the place of Soliste of Combelle. It forms part in 1928 Quatuor of the Republican guard . It leaves the Republican guard in 1936 to found the Quartet of Saxophones of Paris, more known under the name of Quatuor Marcel Mule . It was engaged for many film musics. Its first wire pol. Mule, born in 1926, flutist and leader, was director of the Academy of Antibes and Jacques Mule, born in 1929, was professor of Flute with the Academy of Nancy.

Teaching

In 1942, the director of the academy of Paris, Claude Delvincourt, reopens the class of saxophone. He entrusts the load of it to Marcel Mule. During 26 years, he will teach at this institution. Its pupils will leave to teach in all France and the whole world. In 1968, it takes its retirement and definitively stops playing of the saxophone.

Some pupils of Marcel Mule

Analyzes of the career of Marcel Mule

N° 1 analyzes - “Against”

Mule trained the most influential professors of saxophone in France (and good number of influential professors abroad) between 1942 and its retirement in 1968 and of the traces of its teaching (vibrato systematic, insistence on the technical side, phrased traditional) are still perceptible in the teaching of the current saxophone. Mule had caused among its pupils such a worship of the personality that, until a recent past, it was unthinkable that a saxophonist can admit not to take to the letter the advice of the “Owner”.

But there is also a strong reaction against this school (in particular in the teaching of the professors such as Claude Delangle or Serge Bertocchi which has a more open design of the instrument on the modern music and the jazz). In his critic of the book of Jean-Pierre Thiollet, Sax, Mule & Co - Marcel Mule or the eloquence of the sound Site of association ASAX, Nicolas Prost expresses his point of view which “this work is more defined on the question omnipresent of the future of the saxophone according to Mule, so pessimistic with regard to the current compositions, the not-integration of the saxophone to the orchestra and the not-recognition of the soloists. Marcel Mule frequently evokes his contempt for the jazz music. With this maintenance, J. - P. Thiollet reveals us the portrait of an intolerant and capricious musician. ”

Mule did not hide its dissension with the modern music. The list of the type-setters who dedicated parts to him is rather in the “neo-classic” tendency, such as Busser, Planel, Welshman-Montbrun and Jean Rivier. The language polytonal of Henri Tomasi seems to be his limit in the avant-garde. The school of Darmstadt and the disciples of Schoenberg seem not to appear in the musical repertory of Mule. Antoine Tisné, by speaking about its work “Spaces Irradiated” with the contest of Saxophone of Gap in 1988 when Mule chaired the contest, remembered grimaces that Mule making to each passage of its work, in spite of a musical language nearer to Alban Berg than of Anton Webern.

Curiously, Mule did not have obviously more affinities for the group of the Six, in spite of the presence of its Quartet of Saxophones to the creation of the Concerto for Two Pianos, Chœurs, Quatuor of Saxophones and Orchestre of Germaine Tailleferre in 1934 and of its engagements in the film musics of Arthur Honegger in the Thirties, because no work of these six musicians carry a dedication to him. In spite of “the Small Quartet” and the opera “Paris with Us Two” (writings for the Quartet Mule), Marcel Mule did not order a work for saxophone solo with Jean Françaix (the Five Exotic Dances of Françaix are dedicated in Mule, but are ordered and created by Jean-Marie Londeix). Only the œuvrette for saxophone of André Jolivet does not carry either of dedication to Mule. How Mule it did not see the need for placing order with these musicians who were the large protagonists of this “neo-classic” mobility of post-war period remains a mystery. Its decision to promote certain works and to drop from different (such as for example the Concerto of Pierre Vellones, first Concerto for Saxophone with Full orchestra in 1934, which is not allowed as works of contest to the CNSM of Paris) also mark an esthetic lack of understanding. No work ordered for Marcel Mule, so far, is regarded as a work of the “standard” repertory, apart from the world very closed of the saxophonists themselves.

Concerning the negative attitude that Mule related to the variety, the evidence is also convincing, In its book Marcel Mule: its life and the saxophone , Eugene Rousseau tells an anecdote of Mule in connection with the saxophonist Jules Viard (Saxophone Solo with the Ball of the Moulin-Rouge in years 20-30) where Mule claims that Viard, not knowing to play with vibrato, vertically tried to have the same effect by moving its saxophone. A hearing of many the discs that Viard had engraved for Pathé shows that Viard was not only at ease with the vibrato, but it was also able to modify speed or to play senza vibrato . Rudy Wiedoeft, the largest high-speed motorboat of the American variety of the Twenties and the first saxophonist to sell a disc to a million specimens (Sax-O-Phobia in 1921, at Edison) does not appear in its universe. The jazz and even all the American music, with the notable exception of the Sonata of Paul Creston, do not have right of abode in its class to the Academy.

In spite of that (or perhaps, because of that), Mule remains an influential musician in the history of the saxophone, with the very strong praises of its American Site former students in English with testimonys of the Anglo-Saxon former students of Mule. The repertory and the history of the saxophone would have been different without Mule? Undoubtedly. But it is certain that these changes would not have all be negative.

N° 2 analyzes - “For”

However, it should be noted that to include/understand the character and his action, it should be replaced in its historical context: at the beginning of the XX° century, the saxophone is before a whole instrument associated with the military musics and with entertainment. It is then inconceivable for a serious type-setter to write for saxophone. The class of the Conservatory of Paris, closed in 1870 due to budgetary war and reasons… is always! It is then necessary to give “its noble letters” to the instrument, to help it to integrate the world of the serious music: the Orchestra S and the conservatory S… and it task are difficult!

Mule will start by transcribing traditional parts, then famous type-setters (Ravel, Pierné…), in order to draw their attention, successfully, to the quartet of saxophone. Thus many type-setters wrote for his quartet: Gabriel Pierné, Jean Françaix, Alexandre Glazounov, Jean Rivier, Eugene Bozza, Georges Migot; Maurice Ravel also planned to do it before being about it prevented by the disease which carried it.

In addition to its very brilliant career of chambrist, Mule was also a musician of very active orchestra: he played with all the orchestras Parisiens and the big bosses called upon its services. It created many radiophonic works and of film musics: its particular sonority and its vibrato are recognized when one re-examines films of Marcel Carné, Rene Clair… and all the production of the Thirties at the Fifties. Within the orchestra, it is useful, often as a soloist, of the type-setters as various as Jacques Ibert, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, André Jolivet, Maurice Ravel, inter alia.

It is clearly however that it neglected the career soloist, appreciating little the long voyages and the bohemian life which imply this activity. It was not either particularly inclined, like its rival and alter ego Sigurd Rascher, to solicit the type-setters in the name of the saxophone, estimating that it returned to them to make this step… Let us not forget only at the time when it was recreated for him the post of professor with the Academy of Paris, its pars regarded it as the “best musician of the place” in Paris… One will thus not be astonished in this context that Mule neglected the musics appearing more marginal: the Jazz and the variety pointed out too a “light” past which it wished to make forget, just like certain “popular” aspects of the standpoint of certain musicians of the Groupe of the six, or the intellectualism of the school of Vienna and its derivatives. And that it chose quite contrary to support the type-setters “installed more”, either by their celebrity, or by their position of being able: leaders, inspectors of the music, directors of academies… of which the history will forget a great number unfortunately…

At the time where it is active, the rare French musicians engaged in what one named the “music of avant-garde” were regarded as soft jokers… and one could provide with difficulty that they would take shortly after the reindeers of a “new contemporary academism”. With the wrong way, many “modern” type-setters hated the vibrato which had allured their elder so much and refused to be played in this manner. As they, like Olivier Messiaen, were not frightened by the “lasciviousness” of the saxophone of jazz… One can also understand that a man who lived up to hundred years, preserved great reserves with respect to the increasingly radical innovations which would be born since the Sixties, certainly worsened by 40 years of musical inactivity…

If an assessment is tried, one can consider that part of the goals that had set Marcel Mule are reached today: the saxophone from now on is taught in all the French academies by specialists (practical who tends to spread in the world), whereas this role was entrusted to the bassoonists or to clarinettists before. The major type-setters of our time do not hesitate any more to write for the saxophone, even the saxophones: this one is even today one of the instruments most requested by the type-setters. The whole of saxophone flowers, their quality is recognized and they are essential in the international contests of chamber music. The great number of high level musicians trained in the academies ensures a perenniality creation, with research and with the diffusion of the most interesting repertory of the saxophone, just like with an incredible diversity of individual steps, but there remains been sulky by the orchestras and the programmers in traditional concerts (including in the modern music, a roof if the share is considered that the saxophone is due to it!). And does the repertory soloist of the middle of the 20th century suffer in France from a certain academism… the price to be paid?

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