What I heard of the organ playing at Notre Dame yesterday was nothing short of thrilling, and I am not the organ maven my more educated liturgical music colleagues are.
Our little parish, because of the lovely, (expensive, I'm sure their were complaints back when it was installed!) instrument and the superb acoustics, has had more than its fair share of Sons of the Parish who were terrific musicians, just as it had more vocations to the presbyterate than its size might have predicted. (Men who might be said to have made the Queen of Instruments their mistress rather than the Bride of Christ their spouse?)
There was a time, not so long ago, when the organ and its practitioners were at the top of the musical pile. Virtuosos like Louis Vierne or Edwin Lemare packed out municipal halls, football stadiums and shopping malls with hordes of frenzied crowds; they toured the world, played for political royalty, became household names and indulged in appropriately modish, pop star-ish pursuits.....
It was no coincidence that Leon Czolgosz, a young Polish anarchist, chose to shoot President William McKinley dead with two rounds of his pistol at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo, while McKinley was attending the opening organ recital. It was the biggest audience that Czolgosz would get.
Today, assassinations are less likely at organ concerts — as are appearances from prime ministers or presidents. It is in many ways quite difficult to imagine that previous age where organists and their instruments were so revered that presidents attended dedications, though the recent organ Proms offered up the full Victorian ferocity of the Royal Albert Hall’s Willis organ, a wonderful glimpse of what once was....
Unlike today, there was nothing modest or marginal about the mighty organ in the 19th century. In a time of industrial and scientific revolution, the world’s most complex machine could hardly stand still. Instead it grew mightier and mightier, morphing into ever-grander shapes and sizes, absorbing the latest knowledge on pneumatics, electricity, steam engines and hydraulics to make it doughtier and more durable....‘Organs were suddenly no longer dependent upon a drunken man with a pint of beer,’ says Ian Bell, organ consultant to the Royal Albert Hall, ‘but could produce as much wind as anyone could envisage.’
Like that's a good thing, sheesh....
1 comment:
Thanks for sharing this article. My in-laws once lived in So. Bend, so I've been to Notre Dame before and enjoyed the music in that basilica. Some day, I'd like to hear that Fritts instrument in that new hall.
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