Should the deacons buy flowers to decorate the tables for the church’s annual Shrove Tuesday pancake supper?

“Yes!” said our pastor, Susan Quinn Bryan. “Pretty is important!”

Every time I’ve visited France, I’ve said to myself: “Here is a culture that doesn’t need to be reminded that ‘Pretty is important.’

Not that you need to be reminded either. If you didn’t agree that “Pretty is important,” you wouldn’t like my music. And if you didn’t like my music, you wouldn’t permit me to send you these Sunday morning emails. Still, let me share two ‘petites aventures françaises’ that pressed upon me the truth of that aphorism.

Driving along a two-lane highway somewhere in south-central France, we came upon a stretch of road where double columns of sycamore trees grew on either side. They were gigantic, perhaps 200 years old, arching over the highway, a tunnel of green. The double columns went on and on, for maybe six miles. Beyond the trees, on both sides, were farm fields. I don’t recall the crops; maybe yellow sunflowers, purple lavendar or grains, green and golden.

I never imagined that the edges of a highway could be so beautiful.

If that road existed in America, in Ohio, it would be a tourist attraction. People would come from all over to drive the famous six-mile stretch of road with a double lane of 200-year-old sycamore trees on either side.

Any variety of trees thus planted would be grand to see. But sycamore trees -- ah! -- their beautiful camouflage-like bark of gray-beige and palest green, their broad Kelly-green leaves, the sunlight yellowing as it sifts through their abundant foliage. A dendrophile’s dream.

Even if you’re not a dendrophile, you know this tree. Craving water, they spring up naturally at river’s edge and pond’s shore. We sometimes plant them alongside our cities’ sidewalks and on boulevards.

But such a highway could not exist in America. We embrace other values. Owners of farm fields plant every available square foot, right up to the shoulder of the road. No acreage would be wasted on worthless sycamore trees.

And sycamore trees ARE worthless. The wood is punky and wet. It makes poor firewood. Furniture is rarely made of sycamore, cherry and walnut being so much more beautiful.

In France, the beauty of the living sycamore tree justifies its existence. There, beauty often trumps greed. Not always, but often and vividly.

I doubt those trees along the highway are protected by zoning laws. The culture protects them. There is an unwritten agreement that, as the land is bought and sold over the years, the owners will not remove the trees so as to plant more crops. The wider culture would deplore those who cut them down, so much so that cutting down the trees is virtually impossible. But a new owner would never consider doing such a thing. On the contrary, the trees along the highway would be understood as a treasured asset.

“Pretty is important.” France has known this for a very long time.

A second example, s’il vous plait. In the tiny village of Aubeterre-sur-Dronne, inhabited by perhaps 400 souls, there is a bakery on the square. We were the only guests in the village’s only hotel. I arose early and, my wife and children still asleep, I stole out, intending to return in my favorite role -- the father-hero -- re-entering the room in triumph, laden with pastries for breakfast.

When I reached the bakery, what I saw stopped me in my tracks. (Not that I was leaving tracks -- the sidewalk was paved.) In the bakery’s window was an amazing display.

There were the baked goods, each singularly beautiful in itself -- colorful, glistening, a perfect golden brown -- and the baker had arranged the wares with great care, lining up the items in graceful, symmetrical curves, highlighting the contrasting colors and textures. The window display was a work of art.

When we passed by the bakery again just after lunch, the window was empty. Every item had been sold.

This in itself was amazing — few American villages of 400 would support a bakery.

The effort to make a beautiful display was not required. The village would have purchased the baked goods, regardless of the window display.

Yet, the next morning, probably before dawn, the owner would create another display, all over again, after having been baking since 1 am.

Why? Why go to all that trouble? The baker earned not a sou more by displaying the items so beautifully.

The baker displayed the goods that way because that is what French people do.

That is a culture to emulate. It has a deep commitment to the highest values, and to be, in short, France, to live up to its own expectation of itself, to be the radiant beacon of civilization, dazzling and inspiring the world.

As Charles De Gaulle put it so grandly, “France cannot be France without grandeur.”

That baker expressed, every day, the notion of the grandeur of France ... and for such a tiny audience! A few friends, neighbors and the occasional tourist.

Ah! … la belle France!

To hear flutist Barb Sink performing my Pavane Américaine “Homage to Ravel” (and, by extension, to France) with her pianist brother Phil Amalong, click on the link above.

To see a PDF of the score, click on the link above.

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At 11 o’clock this morning our beloved Mt. Auburn Presbyterian Church will commence its first in-the-sanctuary worship service, after fifteen months of ‘zoom’ services with a performance of my “Pavane Américaine” for flute and piano as the Prelude.

Last Sunday another of my flute-piano works served in the same capacity, as the Prelude to the first-time-back-in-the sanctuary service of Peace United Church of Christ in Duluth, MN.

The musicians kindly sent me a youtube link; I sent this message in reply.

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Dear Melanie and Jim --

Heartfelt congratulations from the composer!

You two really grabbed hold of that music and made it splendidly expressive. So many wonderful touches … the little rubatos … and the big rubatos, too! You conveyed the many changes of mood and tempo, sometimes subtly, sometimes boldly.

The emotional content of the piece varies greatly. The piano introduction is probing. The flute enters with a pastoral theme. A contrasting theme is noble, a little like “The Impossible Dream” or “Climb Every Mountain.”

As the music develops, the emotions shift rapidly and frequently. Tender and harsh. Sometimes joyful, sometimes sad, sometimes traversing the dark and foggy regions between those emotions.

The score can evoke an epic journey … but only if the musicians deliver the impetus, the suspense, the tension, the narrative thrust by which I mean the feeling that the music is “going somewhere,” questing after of an elusive goal and then finally arriving.

I would have thought that the length and character of the piece might render it less than suitable to serve as the prelude to a worship service. But when I heard the welcome your pastor gave, right after your performance, I realized that it was just right for that particular service. Your congregation’s first physical gathering in more than a year warranted a deep, strong, almost muscular rejoicing. A return like that is a milestone and this ‘journey’ music is ‘altogether fitting and proper’ for such an occasion.

I don’t think I’ve ever attempted to convey a greater range of emotions in a single movement or piece than in that first movement of my flute sonata. If you had decided to play the whole movement in just one way -- joyful or tender or flinty or heroic -- it would have lost its forward momentum. By accommodating the emotional shifts they way you did, you breathed new life into the music, again and again and kept it moving forward.

It was a thrill for me to hear this piece again. I listened a half dozen times. It was fresh to my ears because I have not heard it for a long time and because I am accustomed to hearing it the way it was played in the only recording I have of it.

Thanks for all your hard work. It was a tall order, a challenge, but you both triumphed, take it from me.

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To see a PDF of the score, click on the link above.

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Who -- or what -- decides the tempo of a piece of music that is being played?

The answer seems obvious: the composer.

The composer chooses the tempo and indicates it as a metronome marking, say 60 beats per minute. The obedient musicians, noting the indication in the score, play the music at precisely that tempo.

No problem, right?

It’s not that simple. I believe that the metronome indication only applies to the opening two or three measures. It serves to get the music “rolling along” until the music ITSELF finds what feels like the right tempo.

I am very careful when I assign a metronome “mark” to a score. I listen many times to the computer’s “playback” of the music I’m writing. A dozen times or more I will adjust the pace of the metronome, faster or slower by single digits, until I find the tempo that seems perfect to me.

However, the “perfect” tempo for “playback” from the computer on the desk in my home is often far less than perfect when the music is played by “real” musicians in the “real” world, as we say.

Many things affect the tempo at which the musicians will play. The time of day, for example. Is it evening? are the musicians and listeners feeling a little tired? Or is it a morning church service or a matinee recital and everyone is feeling rested and enthusiastic?

The acoustics, too, affect the tempo. A carpeted room with no echo calls for a slightly faster tempo while a large, echoing room with many hard, glass and metal surfaces calls for a slower tempo. The ideal is a room with wooden floors, paneling, beams, a warm and welcoming room.

The humidity has an effect; the size of the crowd; the distance between the performers and the listeners. Are the musicians up on a distant stage playing to half a house across several empty front rows? Or are they seated in the midst of the listeners, the closest of whom can almost tap the musicians’ shoulders without getting up from their chairs?

Then, too, there are the differences in the state of mind of the listeners. Are they worshipping on a Sunday morning? or are they gathered in bar on a Friday night? Are they in a concert hall or in someone’s home?

Current events also have an effect. When a tragedy such as a plane wreck or an earthquake occurs and the news is dark with accounts of the many lives that have been lost, the mood of the audience and the musicians will be somber and a “snappy” tempo can seem inappropriate.

There will always be a disparity between the metronome mark I choose and the actual tempo of a performance — and that is just fine. Tempo is pliable and must be “bent” to serve the situation in which the music is being performed.

With all this in mind, please join me in listening to my “Pavane Americaine” sensitively performed by flutist Barb Sink and pianist Phil Amalong. Click on the link above.

There's also a link to a PDF of the score.