Orchestras at school – Orchestre à l’école

Providing musical instruments for schools

At the prompting of the French Union of Instrument Makers, the non-profit organisation Orchestre à l’école finances the purchase of musical instruments for schools with the aim of promoting orchestral playing in primary and junior secondary schools. In 10 years, supported by local music schools, local authorities and the Ministry of Education, the initiative has helped create 450 orchestras – an encouraging start, even if there’s still a lot to be done if we want every one of the 55,000 schools in France to have its own orchestra one day!

In the classes benefiting from the programme, every pupil is entrusted with a high-quality instrument (some worth as much as €6,000), which he or she will keep for the next three years. The children are responsible for keeping them clean and in good condition and can take them home to practice. Apart from introducing them to playing music, the goal is to give the children a way of showing (and showing themselves) that they are capable of effort, discipline and success. The orchestra classes offer another way of experiencing life at school and having one’s talent recognized – after all, the best musicians are not always the best students. Every year, the classes give a concert to which the families are invited. Most of these families have never been to their children’s school, because the parents do not speak French, or cannot read, or are afraid of being brought face-to-face with teachers.

Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is one of the organisation’s sponsors, which is why, after 320 children sang the Marseillaise in front of the flame of the Unknown Soldier (Arc de Triomphe) on 20 May 2009, followed by 100 or so children on the Champs-Élysées a month later for the Festival of Music, 150 budding musicians were invited to perform on 14 July 2009 during the parade and later at the Garden Party at the Elysée Palace. Seventy-eight children from schools in Pont-Audemer (20 of them between 8 and 11) and Fougère (58 children in second year of junior secondary) played the French national anthem with the Army Choirs before the presidential rostrum. Later, 69 musicians from the Nantes and Gorron orchestras played in a marquee erected for the occasion in the gardens of the Elysée Palace.