Gildea School of Music

We have availability for vocal and piano lessons starting this September! Get in touch today to begin your musical journey with Gildea School of Music

We are still on the lookout for talented tutors to join our team! If you want to be part of our musical community please get in touch along with your CV

A photograph of his dead daughter stopped the bullet that was supposed to kill him.
It was August 22, 1962. A twelve-man death squad opened fire on Charles de Gaulle’s black Citroën DS as it left the Élysée Palace. Nearly two hundred rounds tore through the car. One passed between the President and his wife. Another slammed into the rear parcel shelf and stopped — embedded in the frame of a small black-and-white photograph of a smiling little girl.
He had carried that photograph for thirty-four years. The girl in it had been dead for fourteen.
Her name was Anne.
She was born on January 1, 1928, in Trier, Germany. Within forty-eight hours doctors diagnosed her with Down syndrome. In the France of 1928 the expected answer was institutional confinement — a quiet erasure from family photographs and public life. Charles and Yvonne de Gaulle refused.
“She did not ask to come into the world,” Charles said. “We should do everything to make her happy.”
In 1934 they bought a simple stone country house, La Boisserie, in the quiet village of Colombey-les-Deux-Églises so that six-year-old Anne could play in the garden without the stares of the capital. That house became the place Charles returned to for the rest of his life.
The transformation was something everyone who saw it never forgot. The rigid, formidable career officer would walk through the door, drop to his knees on the lawn beside his daughter, and sing nursery songs in his deep baritone. He told her fairy tales. He let her bounce on his uniformed lap. He performed silly pantomimes until she laughed until she was out of breath. Anne, whose speech never developed beyond one clear word — “Papa” — would light up at the sound of his voice.
Then came the war. In June 1940 he put Yvonne, Anne, and their other daughter on a ferry to England, knowing what the N**i regime was doing to children with disabilities. For four years he commanded the Free French from London and never once came home. But he carried her photograph in the breast pocket of his uniform. When the weight of exile became too heavy, he would take it out and look at her face.
On February 6, 1948, twenty-year-old Anne died in her father’s arms at La Boisserie. At the graveside he turned to Yvonne and said the words that have been remembered ever since:
“Maintenant, elle est comme les autres.”
“Now she is like the others.”
He kept the photograph.
Fourteen years later that same photograph stopped a bullet meant for him. After the ambush he inspected the wrecked car and said only, “This time, it was a close shave.” He never stopped carrying her picture.
Long before her death, Charles and Yvonne had founded the Fondation Anne-de-Gaulle — a home for young women with intellectual disabilities that still operates today under the same name and the same quiet purpose.
When Charles de Gaulle died in 1970, his will asked for only one thing: to be buried in the small parish cemetery of Colombey-les-Deux-Églises, directly beside his daughter Anne. The stones are simple. One reads Charles de Gaulle. The other reads Anne de Gaulle.
He was the man who told a N**i general to leave France. He was the man who walked down the Champs-Élysées to a million cheering people. He was the man who founded a Republic.
But the victory he seemed to care about most was the one he won in a walled garden in a village of a few hundred people, singing to a little girl who could only say one word.
Papa.

We are excited to announce,from September we will have greater availability for vocal lessons.
Why not start off the new term with a fun, musical journey! 🎼spaces limited so get in touch today 🙂

We are hiring so get in touch with cv if you want to be part of a hugely dedicated, passionate and experienced group of tutors who spread the joy of music 🎶

We are currently hiring so get in touch to avail of this unique opportunity 😊

There’s still time to book a slot on one of our summer camps :)

Do you have what it takes?? We are hiring tutors for September in the following areas: drums, piano, violin. If you want to be part of a close musical community, sharing your musical expertise, this is the music school for you. Contact us today along with your CV and let’s start this musical adventure 😀

Does your little one love to sing and dance around the house?? Why not sign up for our musical theatre camp this summer?? A week of drama and singing with fun and games…what more would a budding little superstar want?? There’s still spaces available so get in touch today to secure your place 😀

Has your little one showed an interest in music? Why not give them a head start and come along to our introduction to piano workshop….learning the fundamentals of music through games, songs, colours and animals you’ll be in for a fun filled week and learning without realising! There’s still some spaces available so book today to secure your place 😊