Jennifer (Irene) Paull

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jennifer Irène Paull (born Liverpool, England, 24 November 1944), musician, publisher, cultural theorist, lecturer, and author, is the only soloist to have devoted an international career to the oboe d'amore (alto oboe)[1], for which she is the acknowledged reference for the contemporary instrument.[2] Her career has been spent in researching and commissioning works for all the rare members of the oboe family. She is a syna(e)sthete.

Jennifer Paull's first book, Cathy Berberian and Music's Muses was published in 2007 by Amoris Imprint. An anthology of essays, the book explores the career and philosophy of the celebrated American-Armenian mezzo-soprano, Cathy Berberian, based upon her pluri-disciplinary world of the Arts.

Jennifer Paull is not to be confused with the writer of the same name who edits Fodor's Travel Guides today (and did not know Fodor personally). It is purely coincidental that they share the same name. Jennifer I. Paull has introduced her middle initial to prevent confusion in the © of her written work.

Contents

[edit] Background

Jennifer Paull's father (Pavel Schulcz [Paul Peter Paull] 1906-1978) was born in what was the Hungarian-speaking town of Leva (now Levice) in Slovakia, a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (subsequently Czechoslovakia, now independent Slovakia) into an intellectual polyglot Jewish family of printer/publishers. Her uncle was the writer and publisher Francis (Ferencz) Aldor.

Gene Fodor, her father's closest childhood and lifelong friend, was born in the same town and went on to instigate the Fodor's Travell Guide series (formerly Fodor's Modern Guides). Aldor, who, after Budapest, established himself in London, was first cousin to Arthur Koestler CBE. publishing some of his work. [The singer Sting, an avid reader of Koestler's work, named an album with his band The Police 'Ghost in the Machine' after one of Koestler's books.]

Fodor sold his book guide idea to Aldor in London, and '1936—On The Continent: The Entertaining Travel Annual' was the result—the first ever of Fodor's books. Aldor, Koestler, members of the Amadeus Quartet and many central European musicians, artists and intellectuals were interred in the Isle of Man during WWll, forming their own university in detention.

Being refused his first choice of study (to become an artist) by his family, Jennifer Paull's father (an excellent caricaturist and aquarelle painter) was sent to pursue his studies in Law and Engineering at the University of Grenoble, France. Until WWll, Pavel Schulcz took an active part in the Paris cinema scene as one of its pioneering sound engineers. Both he and Fodor were excellent jazz musicians, Schulcz playing guitar and bass in jazz clubs in Paris. He also wrote as an accredited correspondent for the satirical review, Le Charivari. In 1841 Le Charivari the model upon which Punch magazine, subtitled The London Charivari, had been based.

Schulcz' hobby was flying and he and close friend Tony Leenhardt (co-pilot) flew their own biplane together, the de Havilland DH 82 Tiger Moth, as well as working side by side in pioneering sound engineering at the Studios Éclair.

As the inevitability of war threatened Europe, Paull's father volunteered to join the Royal Air Force in which he was appointed as pilot in the Czech Squadrons.

This is how he met his wife, Edna Moss, daughter of a Scottish mother and English/Welsh father, a publican in Liverpool. Her brother, Billy Moss, was an outstanding jazz pianist who accompanied many stars such as Sammy Davis Jr. and directed his own Dance Band Orchestra.

An only child, Jennifer Paull (her father changed his name on acquiring British citizenship) was very close to her surrogate brother, her first cousin Sir Christopher Coville, who was to continue the family Royal Air Force tradition.

Jennifer Paull was educated at the Liverpool Matthey School of Music and the Royal College of Music, London, where she studied oboe and piano. Her celebrated oboe teacher, Terence MacDonagh warned her to abandon her newly found passion for the 'useless' oboe d'amore, which she had first heard in J S Bach's B Minor Mass during her time as his student.[3] This rare instrument was seldom to be found in the early 1960s.

[edit] Musical Career

Jennifer Paull found no encouragement for what she felt had become her mission: to promote and instigate contemporary repertoire for the oboe d'amore, which was so much avoided, rather than appreciated, at that time. Obtaining her own, she dedicated her career to it and became the only oboist ever to have done so.[4]

Léon Goossens, the celebrated English oboist in an interview with Melvin Harris, later, reflecting upon her achievement, said the following of Jennifer Paull.

"That lass has her head screwed on the right way. She's absolutely right to make the d'amore her main instrument. If you want to master the d'amore, you can't afford to be casual with it. It defies dabbling. I wouldn't relish the thought of having to play anything major on it at short notice. It can be a temperamental and tricky instrument until you learn how to humour it properly. It has to be coaxed, and nurtured, but the effort's well worth it when you draw that glorious voice from it.

Yes, she's right to concentrate on it as her first choice. I've heard some dreadful playing from people who thought they could just pick it up and breeze away. And there's a bonus of course. If you enchant people with the d'amore sound, then you'll be sure to attract composers eager to write for you. That's why she shows great wisdom by specialising. Good luck to her!" [5]

Jennifer Paull quickly became established as the oboe d'amore expert, in particular with the BBC Symphony (London) and BBC Philharmonic (Manchester, formerly known as the BBC Northern) Orchestras.

She gave recitals at home and in Europe with John McCabe, who composed both a concerto (Concerto for Oboe d'Amore and Chamber Orchestra Publ. Novello) and 'Dance-Prelude' (for oboe d'amore and piano Publ. Novello) for her. The duo were honoured to give the première of this piece (commissioned by the Merseyside Arts Council and the City of Liverpool at the Royal Variety Performance in the presence of Queen Elizabeth ll, at Liverpool's Empire Theatre (1971). An array of talented artists native to the city took part.

Jennifer Paull was determined to bring her chosen instrument into 20th century orchestral repertoire, chamber music, and soloistic public focus. Many works have been written for her including 6 by both Leonard Salzedo and Edwin Carr.

In 1970, she had become Promotion Manager of Novello and Co, originally founded by Ivor Novello. In this context she was able to come into contact with many composers and encourage the use of the oboe d'amore in their standard orchestration as well as to obtain works written for herself as a soloist.

In the summer of 1971 she befriended Cathy Berberian and Bruno Maderna, the two most important figures in her musical development and artistic education. Whilst the three were at the Festival of Arts Shiraz-Persepolis (1971), Maderna promised Jennifer Paull and Cathy Berberian (who had become close friends) a music theatre piece for them both, and an oboe d'amore concerto. Sadly he died in 1973 before being able to fulfil his promise.

Her work with composers led to her being engaged by Maderna's impresario (de Koos Concert Management) and she opened their London offices in 1972. She travelled to many countries meeting even more international composers, promoting their works and the artists who performed them.

In 1996 she established her own company, Amoris International to publish the works she had collected during her career that had been dedicated to her (which were not published elsewhere), and those she herself had researched and ornamented for oboe d'amore (and cor anglais) in her series Les Tableaux Galants (Louis de Caix d'Hervelois, Marin Marais). He aim was to make this repertoire available to all who wanted to play the oboe d'amore and had hitherto been able to access only a very limited repertoire.

In 1995 she recorded The Oboe d'Amore Collection Volume 1, the first ever CD devoted exclusively to the oboe d'amore[6], and in 1996, The Oboe d'Amore Collection Volume ll and The Amoris Consort Collection. A further CD of the G.P. Telemann Oboe d'Amore Concerto in A Major was recorded (1997) in Switzerland with the Craiova Philharmoic Orchestra (Rumania) under Michel Barras, for the Association François-Xavier Bagnoud.

During the 1980s, Jennifer Paull had begun to experiment with the idea of forming an ensemble of mixtures of the 5 voices of the oboe family, the Oboe Consort. These are the musette, the oboe, the oboe d'amore, the cor anglais (English horn) and the bass oboe. Her published repertoire and CDs include different combinations of these oboes with and without accompaniment and continuo.

Her undertaking to bring repertoire to the forgotten rare members of the oboe family of instruments had spread from the oboe d'amore to the musette and the bass oboe, also uncommon and very rare. She travelled in Europe, the Middle East and the United States giving lecture recitals. Derek Bell CBE of The Chieftains played bass oboe with her ensemble, The Amoris Consort.

Her mission for her instrument having been established with sufficient momentum that, today, few professional oboists can even envisage a time when an oboe d'amore was not part of their normal requirements—she felt the calling to a new direction and the need to explore a further challenge.

[edit] A Selection of Compositions Dedicated to Jennifer Paull

  • John McCabe (publ. Novello)
    • Dance-Prelude for oboe d'amore and piano
    • Concerto for oboe d'amore and chamber orchestra
  • John Rushby-Smith (publ. Simrock)
    • Monologue
  • Wilfred Josephs (publ. Recital Music)
    • Alice's Reverie (oboe d'amore and piano version)
  • Leonard Salzedo (publ. Amoris International)
    • Iberian Improvisations for musette and piano
    • Cantiga Mozárabe, Op. 79, for oboe d'amore and piano
    • Quatro Canciónes Españolas (senza opus), for oboe d'amore and piano
    • Sonata a Tré, Op. 111, for oboe d'amore, cor anglais and harpsichord
    • Bailables, for oboe consort
    • Canto de Sibila, Op.135, for oboe d'amore and string quartet
  • Edwin Carr (publ. Amoris International)
    • Four Pieces, for oboe d'amore and piano (or string orchestra and harp)
    • Two Mansfield Poems, for oboe d'amore and piano
    • Prelude and Aria, for oboe d'amore and piano
    • Ngtaringa Nocturne, for oboe, oboe d'amore and piano
    • Sonatina di Maggio for musette and piano
    • Waiheke Island, for oboe consort

[edit] Recordings

  • The Oboe d'Amore Collection Volume 1
  • The Oboe d'Amore Collection Volume 2
  • The Amoris Consort Collection
  • Four Concertos for Four Instruments

[edit] Writing Career

Over the years she had written many magazine articles about Music and her pioneering work for the oboe d'amore. In 2007, she published her first book in Amoris Imprint, the book publishing section of Amoris International.

It is her cosmopolitan background and artistic liberal free-thinking, she claims[7], that has influenced her development as a musician/author/educator much more than the conventional musical education she received with distinction. Disciplinary narrowness is something she rejects.

"The lens through which I view my subject is one of a musician who delights in the juxtaposition and oneness of all of the Arts: their comparison to my own and the very lack of separation and division between." [8]

As an author, it is again her own trans-disciplinary voice that she expresses as a true follower of Cathy Berberian's philosophy.[9] Jennifer Paull is a dedicated comparative artist. She has two sons and two daughters and lives in the Suisse Romande region of Switzerland.

[edit] A Selection of Writings by Jennifer Paull

[edit] External Links

Amoris.com

Cathy Berberian and Music's Muses

[edit] References

  1. ^ International Double Reed Society 25th Anniversary Conference Programme book, page 58
  2. ^ Jeanne Belfy, THE DOUBLE REED Magazine of the International Double Reed Society, Volume 20 Number 1, 1997
  3. ^ Cathy Berberian and Music's Muses
  4. ^ Jeanne Belfy, THE DOUBLE REED Magazine of the International Double Reed Society, Volume 20, Number 1, 1997; International Double Reed Society, 25th Anniversary Conference Programme book, page 58.
  5. ^ Transcription from the Goossens' tapes located in The Melvin Harris Collection. The Melvin Harris Collection of Leon Goossens' complete recordings can be consulted in the 'Melvin Harris Collection' at the Music Library of the University of Washington, Seattle, USA.
  6. ^ Jeanne Belfy, THE DOUBLE REED Magazine of the International Double Reed Society, Volume 20, Number 1, 1997
  7. ^ Paull's biography in Cathy Berberian and Music's Muses
  8. ^ Amoris International web site: http://amoris.com/jennifer_paull/index.html
  9. ^ Cathy Berberian and Music's Muses