BELLOWS FALLS — French and American ties span several centuries, dating back to military and economic support the French gave American colonies as they struggled for independence from the British during the Revolutionary War.
As the first American Ambassador to France, Ben Franklin brought an exchange of ideas in a time of a cultural renaissance fostered by the royal court in the years before the French Revolution.
The twin growth of republican forms of governments in both countries in the late 18th century created a kinship the French have never felt diminished. The French continue to be interested in the American system of governance, and Americans remain intrigued by the French system.
In 2008, the chorale group Houseblend - based in Saxtons River and founded in 2006 as a mixture of Vermont and a few New Hampshire singers - traveled to France.
Cantoria, a choral group based in the region of Touraine along the Loire Valley in a small village called Villaines-les-Rochers, hosted the Americans for two weeks.
Houseblend was feted, toured and sang throughout the Touraine region alongside Cantoria, a group of “young” singers who banded together in the 1980s.
“Now, not so young,” quipped Jean Pierre Breuil, the interpreter for Cantoria. He is a retired professor of English, and a bass singer in Cantoria.
“It was quite extraordinary,” said Charlotte Gifford, chief liaison and Houseblend member. “We were greeted so warmly in each town by the local elué [elected official].”
“They set the bar high,” said Jack Hoffman, Houseblend's board president.
“They were very interested in our republican form of government. We share a lot of the same ideals though there are some logistical differences,” Gifford said.
Gifford said they came away realizing that there was something far more important happening than just visiting another chorus in France.
“It's harder to hate …when you know someone well,” Gifford said.
Cantoria has a tradition of “twinning” [or jumelage], sharing their musicianship, with choruses in Belgium, Portugal, England, France and the United States. The group was intensely interested in a visit to the Houseblend chorus' home, and a natural exchange relationship emerged from the 2008 visit.
Cantoria has approximately 40 members. The director of Cantoria, Fabienne Goupielle, while not a fluent English speaker, used words like “pleasure,” “contentment” and “passion” to describe how they felt about their singing.
“We learn to sing together,” she said.
The two groups
Houseblend features about 23 veteran singers.
One member, Betsy Rybeck Lynd, a science teacher from Plainfield, N.H., noted that its members discovered that most did not read music when the group visited Cantoria in 2008.
“That was unexpected. Here, many children are taught to sight read music from a very early age. They [Cantoria] sing with their hearts.”
The French have a very centralized, standardized, and regulated education system.
The arts are not as emphasized in France compared to Vermont's mostly homegrown interest in arts programs. In Vermont, children start to learn music as soon as they can pick up an instrument or sit at a keyboard, and sight reading is part of that.
Coming together for the first time this visit during last Friday's Bellows Falls Farmers' Market, the two choruses sang and welcomed each other, and later converged at the Town Hall in the Women's Club room, the site of most of the Rockingham and Bellows Falls municipal governance meetings.
A letter to his American counterparts was posted on-screen at the front of the room from Phillip Beauvillain, the mayor of Villaine-les-Roches.
Beauvillain is president of the Association of Municipalities, an association of mayors of small to medium villages that helps them pool resources for projects throughout Cantoria's home region of Touraine.
He sent a slideshow listing the projects the Association of Municipalities focused on in a region where “Ici, vivre est un art,” or “here, living is an art.”
Projects included everything from bike touring paths through wine country, to environmental, historical and architectural preservation projects. Tourism is the major resource in the region.
Similar to Vermont, the Touraine region has many specialty cheeses and wines are produced in small holdings but sold cooperatively. It is not dissimilar to Grafton Village Cheese, Cabot Creamery, Putney Mountain Winery and Sapling Vermont's specialty branding of cheeses, wines and liqueurs, as well as other specialty food and wine makers around the state.
Vermont is starting to embrace the French model of clustering businesses together in niche marketing. Cooperatives also exist here in Vermont as well, particularly with regard to agricultural products.
Touraine also brings in bike tourists, like Vermont, who want to see the Loire Valley. Historic preservation of castles and manors in the region is similar to historic landmarks here too.
Along the Loire River, entrepreneurs are restoring or building traditional merchant sailing craft and offering yet another perspective for visitors to see the region from the river.
The rough equivalent of a mayor in Vermont is the Selectboard chair, Thom MacPhee, who was also present along with fellow board members Ann DeBernardo and Matt Treiber.
MacPhee officially declared July 16 “Cantoria Day in Rockingham,” to a rousing round of applause from his delighted guests.
Toby Young, chair of the Westminster Schoolboard and candidate for Vermont Senate for Windham County, also read a proclamation welcoming the French chorus in a “citizen to citizen exchange,” recognizing that music “transcends language barriers and culture,” providing a “model for future exchanges” for youth groups, elected officials, sports groups and agricultural groups” in the future.
In all, 10 elected officials invited to the ceremony came to answer questions that the members of the French group. Their interpreter, Breuil, fielded a list of questions about everything from how the Vermont region was organized to when foreign languages were taught and what international cultural exchanges went on and where.
They asked how the officials were elected (France similarly uses secret ballots) and how schools are financed (the visitors found the differences between Vermont and New Hampshire education funding of interest).
What brought the most interest from the Vermont politicos gathered was the French health care system. They paid rapt attention as their French guests described a system that takes a portion of everyone's paycheck for a citizen's lifetime, who then never has to pay medical fees or expenses.
This was compared to the Canadian system, paid for out of taxes, and where quality of care was called into question.
State Sen. Jeanette White, D-Windham laughed and pointed at the group of singers. “We want your system,” she said.
But she stated that Vermont was still way ahead of any of the other states in health care.
“It's very important to everyone at this table to provide health care across the boards in the state. Perhaps with a new governor and a more creative thinker, we'll get what we need,” she smiled.
State Rep. Mike Obuchowski, D-Rockingham, told the group the state had hired a health care consultant just recently, the same one who had helped develop Taiwan's single payer system.
“We just started,” Obuchowski explained. “We're funding a study to look into options.”
The subject garnered, by far, the most discussion that evening.
Group effort
Hoffman said that the exchange with Cantoria was the culmination of “about a year's planning. We had several committees to handle scheduling the gigs, do the flyers and brochures, and we have an artistic determination committee who decides what we will sing.”
“It was a group effort,” Hoffman said. “We all made it happen.”
At the gift exchange between the two choruses at the end of the evening, Gilles Murzeau, a retired dairy farmer and one of the point people for Cantoria, presented Hoffman with the symbolic emblem of the Loire Valley's Azay le Rideau - a wicker basket.
Wicker, made from a type of willow soaked in water, is used to make baskets there by residents living in troglobites, homes carved out of the limestone.
A wicker museum was one of the main highlights for Houseblend's visit in 2008, said Houseblend member Susan Rugg, and so it was an appropriate gift to the American chorus and presented with great ceremony.
A toast was then raised, and the voices of the Cantoria singers broke forth with what could only be a drinking song that played back and forth between the French and American choruses, filling the room with laughter and cheer, bringing to a close an evening meet and greet.
A voice could be heard as the singing ended, “Let's go dancing.”
Whether or not dancing occurred, for the next two weeks, it is hoped Cantoria and Houseblend citizen-to-citizen exchange will lead to future exchanges between two countries long tied by a mutual friendship.