Paul Wehage

Biography, Part 2

Antoine Tisné

It was at a concert in 1992 at the Municipal Library in Beauvais, France with Tempo di Cello that Paul Wehage made the acquaintence of Antoine Tisné, who was impressed with Wehage’s performance of Rudajev’s « Variations et Thème » and approached Wehage to suggest working together. With his Paris Conservatory experiences only recently behind him, Wehage explained that his performances of Tisné’s works had always been extremely criticized during his years as a student. Tisné responded that he wanted to hear his works performed as he imagined that Wehage would performed them and insisted that Wehage telephone him the next day. Their work together began with the première of « Ombres de Feu » in the versions for Saxophone and Piano as well as the version for Saxophone and Orchestra, « De La Nuit à L’Aurore » for Soprano Saxophone and Strings and « Monodie II pour Un Espace Sacrée »., which were documented in a recording with the Brno Philharmonic in 1994.

During the preparation of this initial project, Wehage was struck by Tisné’s frequent use of poetic images and evocations of moods, sentiments etc to express his musical ideas.

Music for Sacred Spaces

Tisné’s use of poetic expresion was further confirmed by work for all Tisné concert during the 1996 Via Regia festival in Erfurt, Germany which lead to the project which Tisné himself considered to be the most direct expression of his musical thought : « Music for Sacred Spaces » organised by the EKT in Erfurt, Germany with Wehage and Françoise Lévechin-Gangloff, organ, which was a series of three concerts during three days at which the same programme of works for Saxophone and Organ was programmed in three different churches (two Protestant Churches and one Catholic Church). The audience followed the performers and the composer in a candle-lit procession through the streets of Erfurt between the Churches

The series of 3 x 3 concerts were completed by a tenth « private » event : the « pilgrimage » to the concentration camp in Buchenwald outside of Weimar by the composer and the performers. Tisné considered this project to have a symbolic meaning outside of the actual concerts themselves and spoke of the event as being a « ritual cleansing for all of the events surrounding the Second World War and the Communist period ». The works involved in this project include « Psalmodies for Saxophone and Organ », « Alta Mra » for Organ, and the works « Monodie I, II et V pour un Espace Sacré ».

Tisné wrote two more works for Paul Wehage before before his untimely death in 1998 : « Labyrintus Sonorus » which is inspired by the Labyrinthe in the Amiens Cathedral and the idea of a « virtual pilgrimage » and the work for Saxophone and String Quartet « Offertorium pour Chartres » which was premièred in November, 1998 (three months after the composer’s death) in Chartres Cathedral itself. Shortly before his death, Antoine Tisné gave Paul Wehage a letter stating that he was authorized by the composer to answer any questions regarding musical interpretation and the philosophy of behind his works.

Jeffrey Stolet

In 1991, Wehage made a new contact with his former professor at the University of Texas at Austin, Dr. Jeffrey Stolet, who had become one of the leading figures in American electro-acoustic music with his Newport Classics Release « Concerto for Orchestra, Chainsaw and Cow ». Wehage arranged to première excerpts from Stolet’s theater piece « To Eat the Last Messiah » at a solo concert in Paris and subsequently arranged for Stolet to write a work for the 1994 MIDEM festival in Cannes, France. When the commissioned Opera « Frankenstein » remained unproduced by the commissioning organization, the Rencontres de Violoncelles de Beauvais, Wehage arranged for the première of the work by the Œil de Tigre Theatre company of Reims France in January of 1999. The work was greeted with critical acclaim and notably compared to Berg’s Opera « Lulu » by the Japanese music journal Onganku No Tomo.

Music by Women

During his 1992 tour of the Baltic States with the Paris/Texas Ensemble, Wehage was asked by the head choreographer of the Riga ballet to find a woman composer to compose an score for a ballet based on Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. Upon his return to Paris, he contacted his former conservatory professor Thérèse Brênet, who gave him the name of Patricia Adkins-Chiti, a noted scholar on women’s music who put him in contact with a large number of female composers. In the subsequent years, Wehage performed works by Libby Larsen, Joelle Wallach, Tina Davidson, Gloria Coates and many other women composers on regular concert programmes.

Paul Wehage with the Donne In Sax Quartet

As a result of this promotion of music by women, Wehage was invited by Adkins-Chiti for the First editon of her Festival Donne In Musica in Fiuggi, Italy in September of 1996, where he premièred works by Sally Reid, Kate Waring and Linda Worsley. Invited back for the 1998 edition, Wehage performed seven World premières in three days and conducted two others, including works by Lejla Agolli, Elizabeth Austin, Beverly Grigsby, Pascale Jakubowski, Jane O'Leary, Ivana Loudova, Indra Rïse, Doris Magaly Ruiz Lastres, and Iris Szeghy.

Paul Wehage with Accordeonist Maria Wärme Otterstrom and Composer Indre Rise

Germaine Tailleferre

During 1992, the 100th anniversary of the births of Arthur Honneger, Darius Milhaud and Germaine Tailleferre of the Group des Six, Paul Wehage came across a catalog of works by the three composers which listed a work by Tailleferre entitled « Concerto Grosso » for Two Pianos, Saxophone Quartet, Eight Solo voices and Orchestra. After calling the publishers and being told that the work was lost, Wehage began research to locate the missing materials. When the primary source materials were located in the hands of the Association Germaine Tailleferre, Wehage began to look for a way of documenting this work.

After showing a number of two piano scores to his colleagues Mark Clinton and Nicole Narboni, an initial CD of works for two pianos was released on the Elan label in the US. After the release of this CD in 1996 to great critical acclaim, including a feature in « Gramophone », the duo decided to record the Concerto Grosso with Wehage’s Saxophone Quartet l’Ensemble XAS and the Orchestre de Conservatoire de Paris-Centre under the direction of Bruno Poindefert. The recording was given five stars by the BBC Music Magazine.

Paul Wehage has been instrumental in the reconstruction of several important works by Tailleferre including "La Nouvelle Cythère" (orchestration for winds), "Three Etudes for Piano and Orchestra" (Orchestration), "Sous le Remparts d'Athènes" (Orchestration) and "Choral et Fugue" (orchestration of "Choral" for Orchestra as well as the version for Concert Band of the work). Paul Wehage is currently working on a reconstruction of Tailleferre's "Il était un Petit Navire" (libretto by Henri Jeanson), premièred in a highly edited version in 1953 and never performed in the complete version.

From Performer to Publisher

On the basis of the success of these productions, the Tailleferre Estate wanted to document the two piano works through publication, but after submission to all of the major French houses, the works were refused. In addition, Antoine Tisné was not able to place the majority of the works in the « Music for Sacred Spaces » programme, in spite of the great critical interest in this project. In order to solve these problems, Wehage decided to found a publishing house, Musik Fabrik Music Publishing with Antoine Tisné and the French composer Jean-Thierry Boisseau, son of the famous French organ builder. The first works published were those of Tailleferre (all of the works by Tailleferre which were unpublished after 1998 will eventually be published by Musik Fabrik) and Tisné, but the catalog quickly became international with composers from Azerbaidjan, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korean, the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as a crop of young French composers.

The house currently has a catalog of over 500 works ranging from works for solo instrument to symphony orchestra and opera, with a focus on music by living composers and important works of the 20th century which have not been documented.

Azerbaidjan

In 1998, Paul Wehage was invited by the American Embassy in Baku, Azerbaidjan to present a programme of American music for music schools, the general public and also for a refugee camp (Azerbaidjan was at that time at war with Armenia). During this tour sponsored by the French instrument maker Henri Selmer et Cie, he met the French Ambassador to Azerbaidjan Jean-Pierre Guinut as wall as his cultural attaché Guy Chevalier who were interested in organizing the same sort of programme with French music and musicians. Upon his return to France, Paul Wehage asked the composer Jean-Thierry Boisseau to create a project which would involve composition and performance practice of French music for winds and organ. The resulting project, entitled « East Wind, West Wind » also included Françoise Lévechin-Gangloff, organist and the French composer Joseph-François Kremer. The week of concerts, Masterclasses, discussions on music and philosophy were documented by a series of works which were published by Musik Fabrik as well as in a series of unreleased sound recordings.

New Directions

Since the Baku project in 1999, Paul Wehage’s work has taken a number of different directions. First of all, several years of work on the music of J S. Bach including the Art of the Fugue, The Goldberg Variations, The Violin Sonatas, Partitas and other works have resulted in new performance editions, a recording of the complete Cello Suites as well as Wehage’s own set of six Suites « Responsio » which are intended to be responses to the Bach works. These arrangements and original works may be seen as a means of reclaiming this musical heritage for his instrument, which has been traditionally excluded from this repertoire.

In another direction, works involving improvisation, tape, spoken work, microtonal intervals and « found sound objects » such as his 2001 work « Podium Piece - American Tryptich » in collaboration with the French Artist Jean-Paul Matifat have added a new color to his musical palette, directly inspired by his interaction with the « online » popular music world in an attempt to acquire a more direct and less structured means of composition.

During the Summer of 2005, he collaborated with the French actresses Claire Deluca and Sophie Lahayville on a new production of a text by Marguerite Duras "Nevers" which is inspired by the notes for Duras' script for the film "Hiroshima Mon Amour". This work, which was formally premièred at the 10th Marguerite Duras Tribute in Trouville France in October, 2005, has been reworked into a concert version as well as in a number of other concert works.

Wehage continues to première and publish new works by living composers, including important works by Jean-Thierry Boisseau, Pascale Jakubowski, Joseph-François Kremer, Philip Goddard and others. A series of works written for him by the American composer Carson Cooman in 2002 will shortly be documented through a recording.