Enlightened Librarian

Portrait of a city and its megaprojects · 113 days ago

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Rough cut Palestrina · 117 days ago

It's a neat trick: some people come in off the street, settle in some chairs, and invisibly align their diverse attentions to transform from a crowd to a choir. The Janet Cardiff/George Miller installation from 2001, Forty Part Motet beatifully captures the metamorphosis. Forty singers of the Salisbury Cathedral choir, each with his own microphone, cough and chatter for a few minutes before inhaling together and delivering one of the most ostentatious motets ever written. (Thomas Tallis's Spem in Alium, composed in 1573, does indeed have 40 parts, and is not recommended as a workshop piece to be learned in an hour.) With each singer proxied by an individual loudspeaker arranged in a oval in a large room, one can wander from voice to voice and take in both the detail and the grand architecture of that acoustic cathedral.

It's that sense of transference from human to musical buttress that has kept me singing in choirs for over 30 years. And gradually you learn how intimately related you are to the space where you sing – the real architecture can help the aural architecture flourish or crumble. As it happens, the best and most accessible acoustics are often found in churches. Currently my wife and I sing in a small but highly competent choir in one of the most beautiful acoustics I've ever heard, the Anglo-Catholic church, St. Barnabas Apostle and Martyr in Ottawa. The church has a Romanesque design with a curved chancel that returns pure sweetness to the ear. Typical church choir repertoire may not be to your taste, but singing Palestrina, specifically his Missa Aeterna Christi Munera from 1590, in a giving acoustic yields a musical and artistic high all its own.

Here's the Agnus Dei from last night's rehearsal:

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High school ruins · 117 days ago

The other day I passed this demolition scene at the corner of Clyde and Baseline in Ottawa. It’s the old Laurentian high school being torn down to make way for a shopping mall. There was something poignant about the cafeteria mural exposed to harsh daylight that I couldn’t resist returning the next morning to photograph. It peeked out like a hidden tattoo, a record of pleasure and excruciation. High schools are always fraught places.

This part of the building was rubble, too, when I passed it this morning.

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Brief recap · 117 days ago

Son Ewan is a few months from three. Recently he appears to be moderating the more addict-like behaviour of the terrible twos. Toddler adrenaline is as strong as heroin, it seems.
Second son Alec was born at the beginning of May. He has been a tormented sleeper, but lately has gone down for stretches longer than forty-five minutes.
Parents are exhausted, but occasionally pierced with mica-sharp shards of wonderment. This seems to make it all worthwhile.
Father is now on a second stint of parental leave until the end of March. Enough time to see if he can resurrect this blog into something worth reading. No coherence promised. The new motto is: Embracing eclecticism since 2004.
There will hopefully be sound and images to break up the monotony of words.

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A return · 119 days ago

Away with moribundity!

Let a trickle of soulular communication recommence.

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