COMMENTARY
VOX HUMANA Architecture
I
T WAS a stultifying hot and still night. I was sitting on a stone bench in an aisle of the Cathedral (the
Cathedral has always been Washing- ton National Cathedral). Although ar- chitecture had always been a passion of mine (were it not for the math re- quirement, a degree in architecture rather than music may have beck- oned), for somereason on that evening three decades ago, the rapport be- tween place and music grew clearer. Space and sound are unavoidably linked merely through the intermedi- ary of acoustics.
The occasion is long forgotten, but the particular intona-
tion of the E.M. Skinner that night still lingers vividly—a sonic mass so tied to the weightiness of the sultry atmo- sphere, hues of earthy brown, gray, and magenta in stone and glass, sober and solemn tone as a self-same function of the room itself—a purposed enclosure. Gothic, one says. Not quite. There is no more “Gothic” as a sole object as there is “Baroque.” The lines of a Notre-Dame, a St. Patrick’s, a West- minster Abbey, anUlmMunster, or aMilanDuomoeach pro- nounce different dialects and reflect their own characteristi- cally autochthonous sound. A hypothetical fantasy: what if Cavaillé-Coll had been
American? Would his organs have been the same? Would they, furthermore, have sounded as “authentically” in their American environments? Would he have built different in- struments had he lived in Philadelphia rather than Paris? So an essential conundrum: American architecture is
hugely diverse. No two of us play the organ in exactly simi- lar habitats. Even where culture, national origins, language, and religion are levelers, their lodgings can differ vastly. For instance, Roman Catholic European immigrant parishes ought to have somecommonality, right? Italian parishes, say, in Boston, Baltimore, San Francisco, or Chicago should look, feel, and sound the same, correct? Not so, for local variations inflect sounds tied to them.
The late Richard Proulx used to speak of the emerging litur- gicalmusical vernaculars of the late 20th century (ofwhich he was as prominent a contributor as any) as rooted in cities.He’d refer to that “schmoozy”NewYork
style.No in- sult, this. Proulx just understood that religion in New York lived at the nexus of certain cultural expressions and envi- ronments (Broadway, Wall Street, Fifth Avenue) simply different from their counterparts in Chicago or Miami. To wit, my own impressions of churches in New York City in- voke a precise hue of dark wood, dimlight (given the shad- ows of lanky neighbors screening the windows), a specific stone (albeit burnished with a patina of sooty maturity) vaguely insinuating the smell of last Sunday’s incense, and themajestic city-hush in counterpoint to a constant lowdin of traffic. It is soothing, comfortable, and immediately sug- gestive of the organs of Kimball, Kilgen, Skinner, and G. Donald Harrison. Many of us work in new and refreshingly unconventional
places and others in surroundings little more than humble garages with threadbare carpets. Consider the California
18
cathedral trail, a Camino of unobstructed glass and light. Again citing Roman Catholic instances, both Los Angeles and Oakland have imaginative new cathedrals—not only new in shape, materials, form, and aesthetic, but conceptu- ally new. They fulfill, in their own way, that premise of the cathedral as the place on the shining hill, the focal point of a city. San Francisco, decades ago, prophesied this clear-lens idiom with St. Mary’s, and in what is clearly the more ex- traordinary story, the Diocese of Orange County is renovat- ing and consecrating the former Crystal Cathedral for its use. These are all glass houses from which one gazes outward and upward. Remember also the organs in those places (Dobson, Létourneau, Ruffatti, and Ruffatti/Aeolian-Skinner) and the musical programming within. Place and sound together in- fluence distinctiveness. Aconsulting tale sums it up. In this case, a very young and
impetuous colleague (the term “callow” would fit), who is the musician of a newly planted suburban church, phoned me. He needed help in selling the idea of a pipe organ to the church. Sandwiched between an office park and a shopping mall, this multipurpose structure was hidden and uninspir- ing. Perhaps, it stewards wheedled hopes of a dedicated sanctuary in some future time. The existing instrument was a humble-of-humblest electronic organ, a familiar analog model with but two tone generators. The client had focused on some precise goals—a fair-sized
three-manual organwith, in his terms, “a hosanna horn.” All too typically, he had already invented the stoplist. He had “designed” the organ. Where, oh where to begin? I suggested that a ten-foot ceiling was not conducive to a
chamade. He argued otherwise and promoted this notion through a few chords on his electronic mutations. I kept di- recting his attention to his surroundings—little more than a conference room holding about 60 folding metal chairs un- der an acoustical-tiled ten-foot ceiling. He kept visioning a grand worship center that would be on the site someday and his unquenched thirst for “a hosanna horn.” There must be some constants in aesthetics that share the
immutability of, say, the laws of physics. Vision and aes- thetic relativity notwithstanding, if this room inveigled the sounds of a Gothic cavern, it did so in the actuality of a sub- urban conference room and in the mind of a 20-something focused on idealized grandeur. Here, with those two tone generators blaring through brown loudspeakers strewn ran- domly on the red carpet, the conjugal union of setting and tone was never consummated. Some places, one concludes, just don’t command a “hosanna horn.” Twenty years later, I drove past the same address. Ever-
taller office buildings surrounded the humble chapel in this suburban “downtown.” The building had not changed. No grand worship center sprouted. Surely, no “hosanna horn” soloed forth inside. And here’s the rub, as painful to write as to hear. This was
not a space that innately inspired music. While certainly holy to its members, to those whose needs found ministry, as a portal for the salvation of newcomers and its founders alike, it just never sang its own song. Neither Cavaillé-Coll nor Skinner nor even their digital caricaturists could ever have fit there.
HAIGMARDIROSIAN
THE AMERICAN ORGANIST
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84