Walking Alone in the Forest -- Germaine Tailleferre

Walking Alone in the Forest -- Germaine Tailleferre

I live just a few steps away from Schenley Park, a sprawling urban park in the heart of Pittsburgh’s East End separating our Squirrel Hill neighborhood from the Carnegie Mellon and UPitt campuses in Oakland.  The bulk of the park is comprised of urban forest, through which numerous trails twist and wind.  These very trails are featured in my new short video, Seule dans la forêt (“Walking Alone in the Forest”) by Germaine Tailleferre.

While creating this video, I got a chance to discuss with my daughter Evelyn (who was helping me shoot the film) why our forests are so important to us—why they are important for her, and the generations that come after her.  We are lucky to have a forest a stone’s throw from our doorstep, but there are places in the world where the forests are disappearing at an unprecedented rate.

It turns out that deforestation accounts for the loss of around 18 million acres of trees every year (roughly the size of Panama), according to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).  It’s hard to fathom how this sort of devastation can continue without a second thought to the impact on the global environment.  I guess it’s easy to think that someone clearing away a rainforest on the other side of the world doesn’t really impact my life right here.  But nothing could be further from the truth.  To learn more about why our forests are important and what we can do to protect them, watch this beautiful brief presentation by National Geographic.  

In addition to the work being done to preserve forests globally, I’m so encouraged about what is going on right in my own neighborhood.  Our Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy has an ongoing project to help our urban forests retain their resiliency.  You can read more about the project here. 

Consider supporting the global and local efforts to preserve our green leafy friends.  It’s one way to reduce our carbon footprint, preserve the natural beauty around us, and provide our kids with a better future.
 
ABOUT THE MUSIC VIDEO

I had a lot of fun creating the music video Seule dans la foret (“Walking Alone in the Forest”).  I wasn’t actually alone while making the video because my daughter Evelyn came along to assist.  We had a delightful time throwing leaves up in the air together, catching falling leaves from trees, and we even had an unexpected adventure when Evelyn was bounding down a narrow path and suddenly left her shoe four feet behind her stuck in the mud! 

The music by Germaine Tailleferre is a sneak peek of my Mother Earth album--Walking Alone in the Forest is the opening track on the recording .  There’s not a lot of background information about the circumstances of Tailleferre writing this little gem of a piece.  There’s not a lot of biographical information about Tailleferre in general, which is unfortunate.  It’s clear she was writing a whole raft of large-scale works around the time Seule dans la foret was published and I’m so curious how she came to set this down on paper.  It seems so out of proportion with her other projects at the time.  Did she jot it down for a student or friend?  I haven’t been able to find anything out about Michele Desgraupes-Giraudeau, to whom the piece is dedicated.  Was she just simply bored one afternoon and decided to dash off something quick and delicious?  Did she have a particular experience that inspired it?  None of my sleuthing has turned up any clues. 

Tailleferre did have a special friendship with Ravel for a time in the early 1920s before this piece was published.  Tailleferre would visit him at his beautiful estate Montfort-l'Amaury and in addition to hashing through music together, they would take long walks through the countryside.   Perhaps she would occasionally walk through the woods there on her own.  This is the setting I imagine when I play Seule dans la foret—Tailleferre taking a break from writing to go out and gather inspiration in the fresh air.