From singer to French teacher: ‘I kept wondering what a university study would be like’
After a successful career as a singer, Esmee Schoones started studying French a few years ago. It resulted in a national award for her thesis on musical arrangements of Verlaine's poems and a job teaching French.
For a long time, spring meant busy work weeks for Schoones. As a singer, she was a sought-after member of several choirs during the ‘passion period’. Until corona came along. Suddenly, entire concert series fell away and she had more time than ever to think about her career. Was this how she wanted to continue until she retired?
What would university be like?
'I went to the conservatoire straight out of high school,' Schoones says. 'In itself it worked out well: I had addresses where I taught, and projects where I was regularly asked back, but still my work was always uncertain. Moreover, I almost only worked afternoons and evenings, which didn’t always make things more sociable at home. As a result, I had in the back of my mind the idea of maybe going to university after all, also because the headmaster of my secondary school had been so insistent that I go to university: somewhere I kept wondering whether it was the right thing for me. Would I be able to do it? Would I like it? In the second corona year, I started after all.'
Her choice fell on French. Schoones: 'As a child, I often went on holiday to France. I immediately loved the language and the way it sounds. My father spoke a little French, and I was deeply impressed that he could say something in the language. I tried it myself, learning phrases from my children's dictionary.' Her time at the conservatoire further fuelled her love of the language. 'As a classical singer you sing a lot in German, French and Italian, so you have lessons in those languages. In the process, a lot of attention is paid to poems set to music. That's where I really fell in love with the language.'
Love for French
Once at university, that love only increased. 'From day one, all your lectures are in French, which builds your language skills in the first year and a half enormously,' says Schoones. 'I found that very satisfying, but I also really enjoyed doing the literature and culture subjects. In any event, all the subjects I took were of a high standard, which made me enjoy taking them even if the subject didn't really suit me that much.'
She ultimately graduated based on poems by poet Paul Verlaine, which are often set to music. At times, bringing the literary and musical worlds together proved complicated. Schoones: 'Verlaine is a poet of symbolism, but that doesn't exist in music. So I couldn't use that concept one-to-one to bring the two fields together. I solved that by focusing on a poem by the poet Charles Baudelaire, in which he describes an aesthetic that was later considered ideal by symbolist poets. I first examined how these ideals are present in Verlaine's poems and then looked at whether and how they are reflected in music.' With success: her thesis earned her the Prize of the French Platform.
Challenge in education
‘I thought it was a very nice recognition of my work, also because I gave up my summer for it last year,’ says Schoones, who already started working as a French teacher in secondary education during her bachelor’s. 'Especially in the early days, teaching is incredibly challenging. You really have to have your wits about you: so much happens in a lesson. At the same time, the contact with the children makes the profession incredibly fun. The first-year students in particular are still very enthusiastic when they come into contact with a new language for the first time.'