Tales of My Weekend

Before I go to my studies today, I want to summarize the events of the weekend.

On Saturday evening Mama, T. and I took the M48 bus down to the Kulturforum for a concert. The Studiosi Cantandi Berlin were singing two masses and the Prague Symphony by Mozart, in the St. Matthäus Kirche. We arrived reasonably early, bought our tickets just inside for $12 each (we could have gotten a student price but we're not studying now, of course) from one of the choir members. Outside the smallish church where the concert was held seems to be in an Italian, Renaissance style, of stone in alternating bands of muted ochre and terra cotta, with a simple tall tower reminiscent in this very simplicity and tallness, as well as squareness, of the towers in San Gimignano. At least, that's the way it appears to me in retrospect. Inside it is very modern, with a severely unadorned white interior, and a broad modern balcony around three sides forming a second floor, under the light-coloured wide timbers of the ceiling. There was a small organ at the head of this balcony, and small statuettes of religious figures interspersed in the room, or it would have been hard to tell that it is a church from the inside. But it is true that the shapes of the windows -- trios of long, narrow panes in graduated sizes that are rounded at the top -- are rather a give-away. At the top of the large staircase to the balcony there is some historical information, including a portrait of the melancholy face of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (a minister who preached against the Nazis, I think).

Anyway, we took our seats on some of the chairs on the balcony (the ground floor being too full), and then on a bench when other people made way. Slowly the choir and the musicians (only a handful) and the conductor trickled in for the Missa brevis in D minor, to appreciative applause. The very first sound of the music was already absorbing. Either I was in the right mood, or the smallness of the church made the music more immediate, or both. Once again I was surprised how great the volume of a few instruments can be, and how much depth the sort of rumbling hum of the basses (and maybe cellos) adds. The Studiosi Cantandi may not be technically very finished, but it seemed to me that at least they understood the music, and made it considerably expressive.

Then came the Prague Symphony, with the full orchestra. Here the choir could take a rest, but I was pleased to see that the majority of them listened and looked at the musicians with interest -- in different poses; for example, one looked the whole time as if his photo were being taken, sitting at a three-quarter angle or whatever it is, while another smiled the whole time with her chin resting on her hand.

Finally came the Coronation Mass (in C major) -- the only piece I really recognized. The choir was quite overpowered by the instruments, and for some reason they did not sing full, long tones when it would have been necessary. Mama says that this does require intensive training. Here, as in the symphony, a French horn (I think) was sometimes very off and squawked ignominiously, the player, however, continuing with an impressively immobile countenance. Or maybe the culprit was a trumpeter. The solo singers also sometimes sounded off-key. In addition to this, the melody didn't seem to be brought out clearly enough at times, and the ends of the movements were not gently done. My impression at the beginning was that the orchestra had been too ambitious in choosing this mass. But, again, the way they sang and played was expressive enough -- grand but not pompous, thank goodness --, and the music itself highly agreeable, so that by the end it all came together nicely, and the applause (from a very good audience) was long and genuine.

Yesterday I went to the Rathaus Schöneberg with John Locke's letter on tolerance (in German and English translations) in my hand. The way there was lovely. It was not wet or too gloomy. The trees along the way had lost most of their leaves, especially the chestnuts, but the planes and acacias still held on to some of theirs. A grey mist mingled with the various browns of the tangled branches and the yellow remaining leaves. Yellow leaves still littered the sidewalks, as I thought cliché-edly, like ghosts of the past year (though they weren't really pale enough to be ghosts, as I thought immediately afterward). At the corner of the Vorbergstrasse and Eisenacher Strasse the great red cathedral-like brick building of the Riesengebirgsoberschule looked more splendid than ever with the sparse golden-leafed birches in front of it. In the graveyard further up the street the red brick wall glowed agreeably, no longer covered by the large green leaves of the overhanging vines, and the trees there, too, were settling into their winter bareness. As I looked down the path in the middle of the graveyard there was something very peaceful and Christmas-like about the small, well-tended evergreens at the graves, still sheltered by the trees. As I approached the Rathaus itself, I looked toward the Rudolph-Wilde-Park, where the browns of tree branches blended harmoniously with the orange and brown and yellow foliage, and at last I understood the merits of the overly bright golden stag in the park (though I still detest the bare grey column under it) as I saw it gleaming through this woodland scene.

At the Rathaus I sat down and read two introductions to the Locke's letter. I must say I didn't absorb much of the information. All I remember is that one problem with Locke is balancing the rights of man with the observance of religion, and that Locke fled to the Netherlands as the debate over a certain James as the successor of I-don't-know-whom (though I would know if I thought carefully) grew more heated. This reminds me that I was surprised to read in a novel about William Pitt the Younger (which I'm reading for my French Revolution story, of course) that there were virulent anti-Catholic riots in London in the year 1780, though only for five days. I think it's in Charlotte Bronte's Shirley where there are still hints of strong anti-"Popery" feeling, but I didn't know the problem was so intense.

Yesterday I also began to read the letters of Horace Walpole. I must say that, when he is not admiring, he does a lot of sneering. For instance, he laughs at the French for thinking that it is honourable to be in the army, and not dishonourable to own a "gambling-house," then remarks how certain aged princesses who even condescend to own banks are slathered in rouge, then says that, in essence, Louis XIV was a big baby ("great child"), and that the gardens of Versailles prove it. He also describes, with considerable disgust, the funeral procession of an important personage -- lots of flambeaux and friars, not at all to his taste. He adds the following:

"By the bye, some of these choice monks, who watched the body while it lay in state, fell asleep one night, and let the tapers catch fire of the rich velvet mantle lined with ermine and powdered with gold flower-de-luces, which melted the lead coffin, and burnt off the feet of the deceased before it wakened them." He concludes, "The French love show; but there is a meanness reigns through it all," then complains about having to eat puff pastry and so on in lieu of more substantial items at dinner. !

Still, the depth of information Mr. Walpole gives is fine. He mentions a church of the Celestins in Paris. I looked this up on the internet and, as I partly suspected, it has been sacked and destroyed (the most important church of that name is now the one in Avignon). Then I looked up the church of Saint Denis. I really felt my gorge rise when I read how the bones were exhumed during the French Revolution and tossed into a general grave. One of the underlying elements even in the most primitive civilizations is respect for the dead. Besides, how can one possibly blame the earliest kings and queens of France, representatives of a long and interesting history, for conditions in the present day? And, having guillotined Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, the very least one can do is to let their bodies rest in peace. Really. But I think that respect for the dead is among the usual casualties of war, so I'm not trying to make the revolutionaries out to be worse than any other group.

Well, that was, more or less, my weekend; it sounds much more content-filled than it felt, though I enjoyed it.