Let out the sound, as from an open mouth...
Your fingers are like sticks!
I cannot follow you: you do not listen.
You rush!
Resume, marking the first times.
Resume from the beginning.
Stop! The master made a sign.
The master wishes to speak.
Speak, master...
All notes must finish...
... like dying.
ALL THE MORNINGS OF THE WORLD - You heard him. Let die.
"To die"... Your bowing is too strong.
Remember that each stroke of the bow
is like people infinitely loved
who are fading away into the shadows.
Suddenly, unexplicably, we lose sight of them
and so our eyes are filled with tears.
You're playing in a very singsong way!
Music is like a hunt.
One must accelerate suddenly, appearing before the stag he intends to kill.
And articulate firmly when he devours it.
To retain the moment before the pleasure.
The aim of music is to transport the soul.
To make you lose senses!
Emotion!
The aim is sweetness.
No!
Noooo!
The shadows...
Bring me...
In the shadows...
What do you wish, Master?
A viola! Bring me a viola!
the master is going to play!
A viola for Monsieur Marais!
Give him yours. Move aside!
Leave, all of you!
Leave!
No, Brunet. Let them stay!
I ask for all of you to stay.
Marin Marais is going to give his lecture.
Sit down!
Close the shutters!
Austerity!
He was only austerity and wrath.
He was as mute as a fish.
I am an impostor...
No, master!
... and I am worthless.
No...
I ambitioned nothingness...
... I reaped nothingness...
... sugar...
... gold...
... and shame.
Him, he was music...
He observed the whole world with the bright flame of the torch
that we light for the dying.
I have not fulfilled his desire ...
I had a master...
... and the shadows have taken him.
He was called Monsieur de Sainte Colombe.
In the spring of 1660,
an afternoon,
he went to the bedside of a friend, the dying Mr. Vauquelin
who had expressed his desire to die
with a little wine of Puisey and some music.
That same spring afternoon
Madame de Sainte Colombe died.
Monsieur... It's Madame...
He was inconsolable because of his wife's death. He loved her.
It is in that occasion that he composed "The Tomb of Sorrows".
My master was a viola teacher, which, at that time
woke up great enthusiasm in London and Paris.
He was a reputed teacher.
He was a Jansenist.
He had two daughters.
Toinette! Madeleine! Monsieur de Bures is waiting for you!
Mr. de Bures was a member of the Port-Royal society, in Paris.
He taught them reading, arithmetic,
the Bible, the rudiments of Latin.
Mr. de Sainte Colombe himself had inculcated his daughters
the notes and the keys.
"There was once a young girl,
Noble of heart,
Charming and pretty
And of great worth.
Against her will
she was made a nun
This doesn't please her at all,
So she lives in great pain.
Against her will
she was made a nun
This doesn't please her at all,
So she lives in great pain..."
The memory of his wife was not fading.
Her image was constantly before him.
Her voice was still whispering in his ears.
Little by little, he battened down his door.
He sold his horse and withdrew into music.
Toinette, come back!
Cloistered in his cabin, he practiced up to fifteen hours a day.
He devised a new way to hold the viola
between the knees.
He also added a seventh string to the instrument,
in order to give it a deeper dimension and a more melancholic tone.
He perfected the technique of the bow, by lightening the weight of the hand
and pressing only on the horsehair with the index and the middle finger.
Thing that he did with an amazing virtuosity.
Côme Le Blanc said of him that he could imitate all the modulations of the human voice,
from a young woman's sigh to an old man's sob,
from Henry of Navarre's war cry
to the soft breath of a sleeping child.
Mr de Sainte Colombe feared that his daughters wouldn't be properly educated
by a man who was single.
He was stern, but could not harm them.
He locked them up in the cellar, where he forgot them.
Each rage of her father would leave Madeleine
like a capsized ship which would sink unexpectedly.
His joys were sometimes mysterious.
He was full of confusion.
Where's Mommy?
You must be good, hardworking.
I miss your mother. She was a piece of joy!
I'm no talker.
Your mother could talk
and laugh.
I take no pleasure in language
nor in the company of people or books.
But I love you both,
and that's enough.
Their father saw less and less of them.
He remained in his cabin, sitting on his stool.
Sometimes airs and laments would arise under his fingers.
When his mind was obsessed by them, he opened his red music book
and jotted them down to be rid of them.
When Madeleine was big enough to learn the viola
he taught her the positions, the chords, the arpeggios, the ornaments.
Me too.
No, please...
Neither the food deprivations nor the cellar confinements
could overcome Toinette's frustration
of being too small to play the viola.
No, I don't want...
One morning, before dawn rose, Sainte Colombe got up.
He followed the Bièvre valley to the river Seine,
then went on to the Dauphine bridge.
He and Monsieur Pardoux discussed all day.
For Easter, in the garden,
Toinette discovered a strange bell
wrapped like a ghost.
For years they lived peacefully for music.
The time came when, once a month,
Madeleine put a cloth between her legs.
Toinette outgrew her small viola.
The Sainte Colombes' three-viola concerts were famous.
Regulars at the musical meetings,
Mr. Caignet and Mr. Chambonnieres,
praised them vigourously.
They were a fad with the nobility.
A remarkable musician!
He plays better than I do.
Yes... He does.
And better than the king's own violist.
Sir, you live in poverty and silence.
People envy your wildness.
They envy the green woods above you.
Monsieur... As you are a master in the art of the viola,
I have been ordered to invite you to play at the court.
His Majesty has indicated the desire to hear you.
If he is pleased,
he will appoint you as chamber musician.
If so, I'll have the honour of playing beside you.
Monsieur...
I have trusted my life to grey wood boards lost in an orchard.
To...
To the sound of the seven strings of a viola. To my two daughters.
My friends are memories.
My court is made of willows, running streams, whitebait, elderflowers.
Tell His Majesty his court does not need a wild man.
Monsieur, you do not understand my request.
I belong to the King's Chamber.
His Majesty's wish is an order!
I am so wild, Monsieur, that I think I belong only to myself.
Tell his Majesty he was too generous when he glanced at me.
I'll be back!
His Majesty,
his court, his musicians... We will come back.
Service of the King!
The frustration of not being obeyed increased the impatience of the king
to hear the musician playing before him.
Thus he sent Mr Caignet and Father Mathieu hoping that my master would change his mind.
You hide your name among turkeys, hens and small fish!
You bury in dust and proud misery
a talent God bestowed on you.
Your reputation is known by his Majesty and the court.
It is time to burn your coarse clothes
and accept his kind deeds.
To purchase a periwig!
Your ruff has gone out of fashion!
I have gone out of fashion!
You'll thank His Majesty.
To the gold he offers me,
I prefer the light of sunset on my hands.
I'd rather wear these coarse clothes than your curly wigs!
I prefer my hens to the royal violins,
and my pigs to yourselves.
Monsieur!
Leave me!
Leave me! And speak no more of it!
You're mad!
You will rot in your mud,
rot in the horror of the suburbs,
rotten like a plum in your orchard.
Your palace is smaller than a cabin
and your audience is less than a person.
As it happened, the King liked such an answer.
He said the musician to be left alone
but ordered the courtiers not to attend
to these music meetings
because my master was a sort of recalcitrant
and had consorted with the Port-Royal's Jansenists
before the king dispersed them.
The years went by.
The Sainte Colombe gave only one concert every season.
He jotted down less and less new airs
in his red book.
He didn't want them printed
nor brought before public judgment.
He said these were improvisations written in the moment
and to which that moment served them as an excuse.
He often thought of his wife, of her liveliness in all things,
of her shrewd advice,
of her hips, of her belly that gave him two girls who were now women.
One day he dreamt that he entered and sojourned in dark water.
He had renounced everything he loved on earth.
When he awoke, he recalled his "Tomb of Sorrows"
composed when, one night, his wife left him
to embrace death.
He also felt very thirsty.
So he played "Tomb of Sorrows".
He did not need to consult his book.
His fingers placed themselves on the instrument.
This visitation was not the only one.
My master, after fearing he was going mad,
considered that if this was madness, it made him happy.
If this was truth, it was a miracle.
His wife's love surpassed his,
for it reached him from so far, and he was unable to return it.
He asked a friend, Mr Baugin, a painter belonging to the guild,
to paint the writing table
close to where his wife appeared.
He hid the painting and put it in his room
He told no one of the visions.
It seemed to him that his anger was fading.
Deep inside,
he felt that something had been achieved.
That was when a big seventeen year old boy,
as red as a cock's old comb, came knocking at the door.
It was me.
Monsieur... My name is Marin Marais.
My father is a shoemaker.
At the age of six, due to my voice, I was recruited
by the choir of the church at the gate of the Louvre palace.
For nine years I wore the surplice and the red robe
and I sang.
For nine years I sang in the king's choir
at the matins offices, at the services, high masses and vespers.
But then, hair grew on my legs and cheeks,
and my voice broke,
I was thrown into the street, as my contract stipulates.
For the last time I pushed the great gilt door.
I ran down the steep street to the river bank
and I wept.
The Seine was shining with sunlight.
My dormitory mate, Delalande, still had his voice,
and so he stayed.
I felt alone,
my thick penis dangling between my thighs.
Following the river bank, I went home to my father's.
There, I locked myself into a room
above the cobbler's workshop.
As usual,
my father was hammering and scraping.
The hammer blows made my heart jump
and filled me with disgust.
I hated the smell of urine in which the skins were cured.
The squeaking leather stool. My father's shouts...
Everything to me became unbearable.
I said to myself: I want to leave my family.
I'll get even for my lost voice.
I want to become a famous violist.
I went to Monsieur Caignet, who kept me nearly a year.
He sent me to Monsieur Maugars
who asked me if I'd heard of your seventh string,
... of your reputation.
Monsieur Maugars has trained me for six months
and judged me so good a violist
that he sent me here and to give you this letter.
Let him play! Let him improvise on the "Folies"
Monsieur, would you improvise on "The Folies of Spain" ?
Yes.
I don't think I'll take you on as a student.
Tell me why.
You make music. You're not a musician.
Wait, father! Maybe Mr Marais keeps in mind an air of his own.
Yes.
That was good, father.
Very good.
What do you say?
Come back in a month.
Then I'll tell you if you're worthy of being among my students.
When I arrived for my first lesson,
it was Madeleine who opened the door to me.
Her collar was unlaced.
As I am going for a swim, I'm putting my hair up.
Here is the cabin where my father plays.
Monsieur, you didn't play badly.
Your posture is good. You play with feeling.
You bow is deft. Your left hand jumps like a squirrel
and slides like an eel on the strings.
Your ornaments are clever...
... often charming.
but... I heard no music.
You will help the dancers,
or play for singers on stage...
What you'll write will please,
and will never offend any one.
You will earn a living. You will live surrounded by music
but you won't be a musician.
Can your heart feel?
Do you have any idea what sounds are meant for
when it is no longer about dancing or pleasing the king's ears?
Yet, your broken voice is what moved me.
I'll take you on for your grief...
not for your skills.
Months went by.
One very cold day, we could not work much in the cabin.
Our fingers were numb. We took refuge in the kitchen.
This wine warms my chest and belly.
Listen, Monsieur.
Do you know Baugin the painter?
No, Sir. Or any other painter.
He once did a painting for me.
Do you see?
It's the corner of my writing desk
in my music room. Do you see?
I do.
Let's visit Mr Baugin.
Do you hear, Monsieur?
How the aria stands out over the bass.
All that Death will steal remains in its night.
It is all the worldly pleasures bidding us farewell as they leave.
Listen to the sound of Mr Baugin's brush.
You have learned the technique of the bow.
What are you mumbling about?
I was comparing my viola's bow to your brush.
These are just words.
I like gold.
Dead things pay well.
Monsieur, the secret of our art is surprise.
Monsieur, seriously, do you think that gold stinks?
Monsieur, you have learned how to emphasize the ornaments.
But it was also a chromatic descent!
No.
Maybe true music is linked to silence?
No.
It's late. My feet are cold. I salute you.
Go on!
- Go on! - Wow!
Go on!
Go on, monsieur!
Now let us hear some emotion.
He's furious for yesterday at the chapel, I played for the king.
- Go on. - Go on, Marin.
Look, one of the guards noticed that my viola was burning.
He signaled it to me with his pike.
- Play! - Play!
Look.
No!
Monsieur, you could at least give a reason for what you have done.
Monsieur, what is an instrument? An instrument is not music.
This will buy you a circus horse to entertain the king.
Listen to my daughter's woeful sobs.
They're closer to music than your scales.
Be gone for good!
You are a great tumbler.
Plates fly over your head and you never loose balance,
But you are a small time musician.
You should play in Versailles... I mean, on the Pont-Neuf...
...for drinking money.
Marin!
I'll teach you everything my father taught me.
Your father is a wicked man.
No.
I came back.
Secretly we would go to Madeleine's room.
Madeleine de Ste Colombe taught me all her skills.
Above all, she showed me how to slide under the cabin
so I could hear what ornaments and chords
the master now favoured.
When I turned 20, in the summer of 1676...
I announced Mademoiselle de Ste Colombe
that I had been hired at the court as "Royal Musician".
One day a storm broke when we were hiding.
Stop, father!
Father, I love him!
The storm clouds dispersed as quickly as they were violent.
Soon the long chairs were back in the garden.
I never want to see you again, Monsieur. This is the last time!
You won't.
Do you wish to marry my eldest?
It's too soon for me to give my word.
Toinette went to the music shop. She is working with the young Pardoux and will be back late.
I don't know if I'll give you my daughter.
You've obviously found a lucrative position.
You publish clever compositions...
embellished with ornaments stolen from me.
No matter...
These are just black or white notes printed on paper.
There is something else...
Something worthier...
It is the passionate life that I lead...
You live a passionate life?
Father, do you live a passionate life?
Monsieur, there's a question I've wanted to ask you for a long time...
Why don't you publish your melodies?
I don't compose. I've never written anything.
Every Easter, the Port Royal gentlemen
sent my master a carriage
so he could play at the Ténèbres service
where tall candles representing God's name are blown out one by one.
Then Mr de Ste Colombe couldn't help remembering his wife
and the sorrow at having been absent when death took her.
Nothing could diminish his love for her.
It seemed to him that it was the same love.
Every night was the same night.
Every chill was the same chill.
Now we must go home.
I wish I could offer you some crushed peaches.
I cannot.
I don't know how to say this, Madame...
Twelve years have not cooled our bedsheets.
I came less often.
Madeleine trusted me with everything.
In strictest secrecy she confided that her father had composed
the loveliest melodies in the whole world.
He played them for no one.
There was "The Boat of Charon", "The Tomb of Sorrows", "The Weeping"...
Manon! Manon!
Madeleine, our scales by thirds, our arpeggios.
Yes, father.
What about me ? How do you like me?
Do you want some brew?
You've put too much mint.
The chapel was lovely... this morning.
- I got it! I got it!
My body's wearied of you. I'm leaving.
I leave you because I have seen other faces.
Life is as beautiful as it is ferocious.
Stop talking, go away!
Madeleine grew so weak, she took to bed. I'd made her pregnant.
She was delivered of a stillborn boy.
Madame, how can you appear here after death?
Where is your boat? Where are my tears when I see you? Aren't you a dream?
Am I mad?
Don't worry, my love.
Our boat long ago sank and rot in the pond.
The other world is as leaky as a boat.
It hurts me that I can't touch you.
There is nothing to touch but wind.
Do you believe there is no pain being only wind?
Sometimes the wind brings music to us.
And sometimes, the light brings you... apparitions.
Madeleine fell seriously ill.
Toinette and I chose a place where she would tell me about her sister.
He said his father made them according to his instructions.
I stopped coming.
In time, I lost touch with the Sainte Colombe.
Toinette married with the young Pardoux,
-still my instruments maker-
who gave her five children.
When Caignet died,
I was appointed "Ordinary of the King's Chamber".
I married Catherine d'Amicourt.
The year that Mr de Lully asked me to conduct his orchestras,
I used "The Dreaming Girl" theme, which I had composed for Madeleine many years earlier.
Mr de Sainte Colombe came to her bedside.
He tried hard, but found nothing to say to her.
Father.
Would you like to please me?
I would like you to play
"The Dreaming Girl" which Marin wrote for me.
Yet, soon afterwards,
my master sent Toinette to find me in Versailles.
He ordered me to come at once to his dying daughter's bedside.
No.
My father won't appear.
You won't recognize Madeleine. She can hardly walk.
My father spoonfeeds her.
I don't know why, but... He insists she eat crushed peaches.
You're marvelously beribboned, Monsieur...
...and fat.
Thank you for coming from Versailles.
I would like you to play the melody you once wrote for me
and was published.
You mean "The Dreaming Girl"?
Yes.
You know why?
Yes.
Is the viola still?...
Yes, it is.
Your cheeks are hollow. Your eyes, too.
Your hands are terribly thin.
This is a very delicate observation coming from you.
Your voice is deeper than it once was.
Yours is higher.
Is it possible that you don't feel any grief?
You've lost... so much weight.
I don't recall...
I don't recall any recent grief.
Are you mad at me?
Yes, Marin.
You still hate me for what I did?
Not just you, Monsieur.
I also resent myself...
For letting myself go dry, first by my memory of you,
and then by sheer sadness.
I'm now a bag of bones!
You were never fat.
When I wrapped my hands around your thigh,
my fingers touched.
You're so witty!
To think that I wanted to be your wife!
Your love for me was thinner
than my gown's hem.
That's a lie!
Please play.
Play.
I'd rather you played.
Slowly... Slower.
He didn't want to be a shoemaker...
All the mornings of the world do not return.
Not only didn't he speak for six months,
but my master never touched his viola.
It was the first time he ever felt that disgust.
After hearing of Madeleine's death,
I would wake up anxious each night.
I recalled endlessly the titles that she had secretly trusted me with:
"Hades", "The Boat of Charon",
"The Weeping", Tomb of Sorrows".
I was horrified that my master wanted his works to die with him.
I couldn't stand living without hearing it all... if only once.
I wanted those works.
In any weather, I'd leave Versailles.
At night I'd go to the Bièvre valley.
I followed the ancient trail Madeleine had shown me long ago.
For 3 years, each time, I wondered:
"Will he play these melodies tonight?" "Will this be the right night?"
He never did.
There were long silences during which he was talking to himself.
I heard him dusting his viola or the table.
Where is your boat? Where are my tears?
At last, in the year 1689, in the night of the 23rd day,
it was icy cold, the ground was frozen. The wind stung my eyes and my ears.
Not a cloud in the sky. I'll remember for as long as I live.
I said to myself:
it's a pure crisp night,
with a full moon in the ageless sky.
I hear my horse galloping on the ground: perhaps tonight is the night.
My rear was cold, my penis tiny and frozen.
Have some crushed peaches...
I speak only to aged shadows who no longer move....
Ah!
If only there were someone alive besides me who loved music!
We could talk... and then I could die.
Who is that sighing in the dark silence?
A man fleeing palaces seeking music.
What do you seek in music, Monsieur?
I seek sorrows and tears...
Sit down.
Monsieur, may I ask you for one last lesson?
Monsieur, may I attempt a first lesson?
I wish to speak...
Music exists to say things that words cannot say.
Which is why it is not entirely human.
So... You've found out that music is not for the king?
I've found out it's for God.
You're wrong, for God speaks.
For the ear?
Things I can't speak of are not for the ear.
For gold?
For glory?
For silence?
Silence is only the opposite of language.
For rival musicians?
Love?
No.
The sorrows of love?
No.
Abandon ?
No and no.
For a wafer given to the invisible?
Not that either. What's a wafer?
You can see it, taste it, eat it. It's nothing.
I give up, Monsieur.
I give up
One must leave a drink for the dead.
You're getting warmer...
A refreshment for those who've run out of words.
For the shadow of children.
To muffle the hammering of shoemakers.
For the state in which we are before we're born,
before we breathed or saw light.
A moment ago you heard me sigh.
Soon I'll die and my art will die with me.
I'll only be missed by my hens and geese.
I'll give you a couple of arias that can wake the dead.
Let's begin.
We need a drink.
We also need the viola of my late daughter...
Madeleine.
I'll play "Tomb of Sorrows".
None of my students had enough ear to hear it.
You'll accompany me.
Thus we played from "Tomb of Sorrows",
a piece called "the Weeping".
I'm proud to have been your teacher.
Would you play for me
that air my daughter loved?