Musical Destinations
Michael White visits an idyllic summer festival set deep in rural France, organised by William Christie, the conductor of Les Arts Florissants
Michael White visits Thiré, France
‘Idon’t like ugliness,’ says William Christie, stating what I can’t help but think the obvious as we sit in August sunshine on the terrace of a far-from-ugly 16th-century manor house. Around us, formal gardens – topiary, gravel paths and clipped lawns – open out onto an artificial lake fed by a winding river. Into the distance stretch the soft farmlands of a more or less forgotten part of rural France.
All this is Christie’s home and he inhabits it year-round like something out of Henry James: a scholarly, expatriate American immersed in European culture. It’s from here, beside the little town of Thiré in the Vendée, that he runs his celebrated Baroque band, Les Arts Florissants, fixing its programmes in patrician comfort and tranquility.
But on this August afternoon it isn’t so tranquil. Christie’s gardens are besieged by people clutching maps and schedules as they scurry from Le Cloître to Le
Pont Chinois or Le théâtre de verdure – exquisitely-named points of interest in the terrain – catching exquisite little concerts in each place that run both simultaneously and repeatedly. Which means that if you don’t hang about and are relatively fit you can, in theory, catch them all.
This sonic workout is the annual festival that taken place here since 2012 under the title Dans les Jardins de William Christie. Essentially it’s a platform for Les Arts Flo (as the band is fondly known) with an extended family of colleagues, friends and younger artists being nurtured under Christie’s Le Jardin des Voix training scheme – which he delegates these days to a co-director, the tenor Paul Agnew.
The concerts run into the night, with meditative, candle-lit events in Thiré’s parish church and grander ones that take place with spectacular panache, despite a certain dampness, on what seems to be a floating platform on the lake. But holding everything is the idea of a meaningful connection between gardening and music. Or at least, the music of the 17th and 18th centuries which is Les Arts Flo’s repertoire. ‘17th-century music makes
constant reference to things floral or vegetal,’ says Christie. ‘And what we’ve created here is something like a version of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens – without the sex, although we do occasionally find couples in the bushes, overcome by the enchantment of the music and the beautiful surroundings.’
As Christie happily admits, it’s a manufactured beauty. When he bought the place in 1985 the house was nothing much to look at and the gardens even less. Through several decades of enlargement and aggrandisement, he turned it into the ordered paradise it is now: an ‘idealised landscape where each detail is controlled by my intentions as a hands-on gardener’.
In that sense, the gardens are a composition, although one that’s taken a long time to realise. ‘It’s something that was on my mind from when Les Arts Florissants was born back in 1979; because although we tend to play in metropolitan venues, we started as a rural venture in a country house not far from here in the Vendée, where we caused local concern. I remember two policemen knocking at the door one night demanding to see our identity cards on the grounds that “les inhabitants du village pensent que vous êtes une secte”. They’d heard us preparing Monteverdi madrigals and were apparently scared out of their wits.’
These days the neighbours know better and are more accommodating – which is Festive partnership: Christie with tenor Paul Agnew as well, because Christie’s enterprise has engulfed Thiré. Quite apart from the 9,000 or so people who pile into the gardens for the August festival, there’s now a shorter, satellite event in spring, as well as year-round residential programmes running in a Quartier des Artistes he’s created in the backstreets. ‘I wanted something like a tiny Banff/macdowell Colony for Baroque music,’ he says, ‘so I’ve been acquiring buildings and turning them into spaces
‘Les Arts Florissants started as a rural venture in a country house not far away’
for musicians to exchange ideas, explore repertoire and work on projects. We’ve just been recognised by the French government as a Centre culturel de rencontre, which gives us access to national funding – and it’s full steam ahead.’
For the festival itself, though, there are no expansion plans. ‘It’s got as big as it can get,’ says Christie. ‘We’ve had 100 concerts this week given by 70 performers who are all more or less on-site, eating communally in a large tent where I make sure they get superior meals, and it’s fun. But more would be unmanageable.’
Christie handles everything with the same thoroughness that he applies to individual concert-giving. It’s a festival where things work beautifully, however complicated the arrangements. On this August afternoon you can hear – at more or less the same time, scattered through the gardens – soprano Sophie Daneman giving classes on English song, tenor Nicholas Scott singing Monteverdi, young musicians over from New York in Rameau, and assorted other dancers, singers and instrumentalists performing repertoire both familiar and obscure. Then Les Arts Flo play on the terrace of the house as doves flutter overhead. In the evening they return with lakeside Handel. At 11pm lutenist Thomas Dunsford calms everyone with Couperin and candles in the church. It’s a full day, but without a trace of ugliness. For further information, visit