June 11, 2009: Another sacred space

My ongoing frustrations with attending concerts in Grace Cathedral have obliged me to address the broader question of whether or not the whole idea of a "sacred space" can ever do justice to the music being performed, regardless of whether that music is improvised or an interpretation of a composition.  If I find myself adopting the position of a prosecuting attorney, then I should recognize that there have been many admirable advocates for the defense.  Consider, for example, the following passage from Yehudi Menuhin's memoir, Unfinished Journey:

Among the most exalted moments of my life was a performance of unaccompanied Bach in Westminster Abbey:  it was an extraordinary and wonderful sensation, knowing that one's least note must wing and wind its way to every corner of the majestic building, and that the resonance of those vaulting walls, which would only clog a harmonic instrument, aided the single violin, underlying the implied harmonies as a pedal does on a piano, giving the sound radiance and warmth.  In the resonance of a church one must alter one's playing:  a fast movement, for instance, must be taken more slowly than normal;  but such calculations are not often needed.

Closer to home we have SF Classical Music Examiner Scott Foglesong, who wrote last month about a rehearsal of the New Century Chamber Orchestra that took place in a San Francisco church (in all probability considerably more modest than Westminster Abbey):

Hearing the NCCO in the boomy confines of a church provided a revelation for me; I generally hear them in the tissue-dry acoustic of San Francisco's Herbst Theater, where they sound crisp and clean but not particularly luxurious. In the rehearsal venue, the New Century had all of the gut-wrenching presence of the Vienna Philharmonic up close -- lotsa sound flying up to that peaked ceiling, bouncing hither and yon, echoing and reverberating. I'm one of those types who really love reverberant spaces, so I was having myself a ball.

To the extent that a chamber orchestra can be viewed as a "harmonic instrument" on a larger scale, this observation challenges at least one of Menuhin's points;  but, from the point of view of my own position, they both stand for the same "loyal opposition."

From that point of view, there are some interesting questions of context to put to that "opposition."  For all the assets that church may have provided for an NCCO rehearsal, would they have remained assets in the presence of an audience (or, for that matter, recording equipment)?  Similarly, Menuhin says nothing about where the audience (assuming there was one) sat for his performance;  and, for that matter, he says nothing about just where in the Abbey he stood to give that performance.  In a large cathedral location is everything (probably more than it is when you are buying real estate).  Menuhin had no trouble luxuriating over "every corner of the majestic building;"  but he never bothered to tell us where he was!

As far as I have been able to determine, Menuhin's performance was not recorded.  However, EMI has provided us with a "reasonable facsimile" that deserves considerable attention as an effective use of a "sacred space."  In March of 1991 they recorded Mstislav Rostropovich performing the six unaccompanied cello suites of Johann Sebastian Bach (BWV 1007–1012) in Vézelay Abbey;  and they made the recording as a video.  (The DVDs are also included in the EMI CD Box Set of their recordings of Rostropovich.)

From a point of view of musical performance, this space is as challenging as it is visually awesome.  It is probably also worth reviewing the opening paragraph of the Wikipedia entry for the site (which includes some very impressive photographs):

Vézelay Abbey (now known as Basilique Sainte-Marie-Madeleine) was a Benedictine and Cluniac monastery in Vézelay in the Yonne département in Burgundy, France. The Benedictine abbey church of Ste-Marie-Madeleine (or Basilica of St. Mary Magdalene), with its complicated program of imagery in sculpted capitals and portals, is one of the outstanding masterpieces of Burgundian Romanesque art and architecture, though much of its exterior sculpture was defaced during the French Revolution. The church and hill at Vézelay were added to the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites in 1979.

However, once we have given the structure all the respect and appreciation it deserves, the question still remains whether or not one can capture that same magic that Menuhin alluded to in Westminster Abbey.
I would call the answer to this question a heavily-qualified affirmative.  The EMI engineers decided to place Rostropovich in a different part of the sanctuary for each suite, which means that they also took a different approach to microphone placement for each location.  Thus, the "video product" is too much of a "moveable feast" to constitute a true "virtual concert."  What this meant, however, was that each suite had its own physical setting, some of which were more resonant than others.  Furthermore, the microphones could be placed in such a way to either enhance or suppress any natural resonance.  Thus, Rostropovich did not have to deal with Menuhin's tempo issues.  This allowed him to focus on dynamics, primarily as the rhetorical device for sorting out his climaxes according to their relative strengths.  The strongest of these tended to be played by a single open string, which Rostropovich would bring out at an amplitude that would induce the surrounding resonances.  Embellishments, on the other hand, were kept softer, in keeping with the auxiliary role they were playing, dependent only on the microphone placement for perception.

So does this really count as a "virtual concert?"  There is a good chance that Bach never thought of these suites as being intended for a concert setting, any more than he entertained similar thoughts about the preludes and fugues in his Well-Tempered Clavier.  Nevertheless, as I observed when Frank French performed all 48 of those prelude-fugue couplings, "the music is in the making;"  and the concert arises when the music is made.  What EMI chose to make in this particular case was a multimedia artifact, but the interpretation of Bach's manuscripts assumes its rightful place at the core of that artifact.  That interpretation, in turn, plays off of its physical setting;  and EMI engaged a technical team to capture that interplay effectively with both audio and video.  The result provides exposure to how Rostropovich listened to his Bach and how he listened to his own playing in six highly unique acoustic settings.  The prosecution is willing to admit that the defense can make some good points!