Finding Europe in America

Few of us would consider Washington D.C. one of the side roads of Europe—but it can be thought of as a New Rome. I have spent the better part of the year in the D.C. area, becoming acquainted with a city that can hold its own with any of the European capitals in its cultural richness and its multiethnic diversity. What has been not only surprising to me but a fact of some chagrin is that I am more familiar with many areas of Europe than I am with this corner of the United States. And I certainly did not expect to find myself in France, as I did last night.

The French Embassy in Washington offers to visitors, which it welcomes in a particularly charming and very French way, a cultural program of exhibits, performances and concerts that showcase French culture. Last Sunday all the European embassies held open house. Our visit to the French Embassy introduced my companions to wonderful French wines, pastries and cheeses, the varied programs of the Alliance Française, and intrigued a gaggle of children with a display of French aviation achievements sponsored by Air France. French music playing in the courtyard and the Embassy staff greeting visitors made it indeed a step across the Atlantic to French territory.

Last night I visited the Embassy once again to hear one of the last and surely one of the best of this year’s series of concerts offered at La Maison Française in the Embassy itself. The Suspicious Cheese Lords, a male a cappella ensemble, enthralled a packed house with a program of little heard and previously unrecorded works of the Renaissance master composer, Jean Mouton. I was unfamiliar with Mouton, despite the fact that a large population of families by that name live in my Louisiana home town, all descended from a 17th century immigrant to Acadia, now Nova Scotia whose came to Louisiana in the great expulsion from there in the mid-1700s, an early example of ethnic cleansing. This earlier musical Jean Mouton, perhaps related to the Acadian and Louisiana families, was probably born in northern France in the mid-1450s. He is first recorded as a singer and a teacher in a church in Nesle, moving to the Cathedral in St. Omer by 1494 and becoming master of the boys choir at Amien Cathedral in 1500. He ultimately became a prominent member and Master of the Chapel for Queen Anne of Brittany from 1510 until his death in 1522. He compositions were widely influential in France and in other parts of Europe; he was praised by the Pope and celebrated by other European musicians. Now, more than 400 years since they were written, his major compositions are being recorded, performed and re-published.


The Suspicious Cheese Lords


This was a spellbinding concert. The Cheese Lords—their name derives from a corruption of the first line of one of their standard Latin motets—first coalesced in 1996, when Clifton (“Skip”) West III invited some of his friends to join him for food, friendship and singing. They continue to have dinner together during their rehearsals, and their focus on food extended to the cheeses served with wine and good French bread after the concert. The cheeses alone took me right across the Atlantic. An exhibition of Delphine Perlstein’s paintings enlived the atrium for the reception.


From Deborah Perlstein’s Tisse Sa Toile.


If you can’t get to Europe but you can get to D.C., think about a “vacation” in France—or Germany, or Britain, or Finland—attending the cultural programs at their embassies. The Open House at the German embassy last Sunday was particularly good fun as well, with bratwurst, free beer, a Bavarian band and an Alpine horn concert on the patio.

The special exhibition at the National Gallery on the Mall offers another taste of France. In the Forest of Fontainebleu: Painters and Photographers from Corot to Monet displays some 100 nineteenth century paintings, pastels and photographs made in the forest near Paris before 1870. Tracing the development of French landscape painting, it leads the viewer down a romantic road at the very dawn of new technologies as they led to a modern vision.


Claude Monet, Walking in the Forest of Fontainebleu

Europe’s side roads extend farther than we normally suspect! Next week, I think I’ll visit Britain. Until I can get back to Europe, I will seek European experiences here at home, and Washington isn’t the only place to find them. Wherever you live, you can travel a European cultural road until you can actually get there, even if you’re housebound.