Singing in Basilica di San Marco - Choir Tour Day 3

Since I’ve done one other European choir tour before as a grad student, I know that I personally need a lot of time before each concert in order to shift from “vacation” mode into “performing” mode, so this morning after breakfast, I went out into St. Mark’s square (Piazza S. Marco) and walked around the Basilica we’d be performing in,  absorbing the building from the outside and imagining what it must have been like back in the late 1500’s/early 1600’s, when Andrea Gabrieli and his nephew, Giovanni Gabrieli lived, worked, composed, and had their music performed here. They must have walked around outside this building, seeing the same walls, taking some of the same steps, that I was.

Thinking and feeling these things helped me to feel like all those centuries that had gone by were sort of overlapped with ours, and I felt a kind of bridge between the past when this music was first performed and the present time, when we were about to perform it again, during mass, just like it would have been long ago.

As I walked around the Basilica, I saw all the tourists taking pictures and walking around outside, and I really felt how special it was that I get to “vacation” this way... we get to immerse ourselves in the music from this place, perform it, and actually BE a part of the culture we are visiting.  I can’t imagine any other way to visit a country properly.  To sing music in the place it was born... in this case, almost literally... It’s a surreal and moving experience that I can’t compare to anything else.

We all walked over to the cathedral together in our concert clothes, and were led into a side entrance where we had to wait until they were ready to take us in.  Our conductor at the last minute managed to persuade the priest to let us sing up in the choir loft, right where the organ was, above the congregation.  As soon as I saw the ceilings with their complex gold mosaic artwork, all the various choir lofts with their huge archways, and all the other intricate artwork and architecture, and heard the bells calling everyone in to mass, I had an even greater sense of feeling side-by-side with the ancient past.  It’s impossible not to feel something special in a place like this, even if you’re not religious (I don’t subscribe to any one particular faith but music is my religion). I can’t imagine the awe and wonder of people who would come to mass in a place as incredible as this, with so many images in the mosaics to contemplate, and so much gold and colour and intricacy to be moved and humbled by.

 

And, of course, the music.  We had someone cueing us as to when it was the appropriate time to sing in each part of the mass.  I’m not sure if I should even try to describe the experience, for some things just defy words. Actually singing in that space, where these pieces were born, where both Gabrielis had been and heard their own music performed so many times before, sending our sound out and up into those domed ceilings and hearing it echo back to us... it was something else. I was so moved by it all that before the last piece I already had a few tears in my eyes but shook them away as we still had one more piece we needed to focus through before we could fully process the magic.

And it was magic, that performance.  Everything just gelled in a way that it hadn’t quite yet done so before, even though we’d rehearsed those pieces so many times.  I love choir moments like that... pure oneness, with the music, the composer, each other, our conductor, history... there really is no better way to so intimately experience a culture.