Gabrieli at St Bart's
St Bartholomew's Church is a jewel of midtown-Manhattan architecture, providing a vibrant counterpoint to a neighborhood of modern towers. It makes no assault on height, but rather sits in the squat manner of the Byzantine churches upon which it is modeled. Because San Marco in Venice is also a Byzantine church, I thought that St Bart's would make a perfect venue for the music of Giovanni Gabrieli (1554-1612), even more than Vivaldi the composer of Venetian music.
Well, I thought wrong. Or maybe it was the vulgarity of my ideas about Gabrieli that needed adjustment. Reading the notes confirms that the concert was designed to counter received unwisdom, which, come to think of it, is what Andrew Parrott is famous for doing. Jeffrey Nussbaum writes in the program,
However, Giovanni Gabrieli did not write his music for trumpets, horns and tuba, and the modern sensibilities of many brass ensembles can leave the listener with an inaccurate idea of his music.
That's what must have happened to me. When I was in college, Gabrieli was the composer par excellence of densely majestic fanfares that showed off stereo systems to great effect. Each of his canzoni appeared to be written for two mighty brass choirs, to be performed from opposite balconies high above the ground floor, and to be played with a highly competitive swagger. No, WE can play this louder than YOU can! It was rousing stuff, and we were having none of that last Friday at the opening concert of the New York Collegium season.
The building itself worked against the music's power, literally. Played in the chancel, in a sort of rainbow arc, the music blew up into the dome and, for the most part, stayed there, producing an underwhelming tone and giving the tricky trombone parts - er, sackbuts - a sound that one neighbor called "tentative." (My hunch is that the right church for this kind of music is...
Continue reading about Gabrieli at St Barts at Portico.
Comments
I have found that it is impossible to judge the acoustics of a church by its appearance. This conclusion was formed after having walked through almost all the churches of Rome during weekday hours, alone, and able to sing at full register without anyone noticing. I'd look up at a dome and think, ah, that's it, that's the bowl that will return my voice to me in gold. I used to sing "Brother can you spare a dime" or Billie's "God Bless the Child that's got his own", or an imitation of Cass Elliot's "Dream a Little Dream of Me" or Johnny Mercer's "Skylark", as my testers. Finally I found the perfect acoustical church: Santa Costanza on the Via Nomentana. I set Cardinal Newman's Sanctus Fortis to music for four voices, and when it was performed there, I think I saw heaven.
Posted by: farmboyz | October 5, 2005 10:36 PM
Interesting side note: The carved limestone facade of ancients was part of the original McKim, Mead and White St. Bart's church building on Madison Square. When they elected to move to the more residential (!) uptown location, the church elders insisted on bringing the carved facade and bronze entrance doors with them. The rest of the church structure was sold to a town in New Jersey to be ultimately used as a local library. The new Park Avenue church was designed to incorporate the original entrance facade; an example of early New York City architectural preservation...or Yankee thrift.
Posted by: Walter Wade | October 7, 2005 11:42 AM