performing in churches ?

Subject: RE: performing in churches ?
From: Tim Chesterton
Date: 22 Oct 10 - 12:03 AM

Bob, I'm very sorry to hear that. That should not have happened.

Subject: RE: performing in churches ?
From: Deckman
Date: 22 Oct 10 - 12:20 AM

Tim ... whether you think it should, or should not, have happened ... it DID happen. And it left a lasting impression on me ... a really bad taste in my mouth. Today, in Eastern Washington, probably three hours from my home, I know several "church" members that would agree with what was told to me in 1950. bob

Subject: RE: performing in churches ?
From: Janie
Date: 22 Oct 10 - 12:47 AM

Reading your last couple of posts, Bob, it seems like performing or attending a secular music event in a church is something that you personally experience as toxic based on at least one previous and powerful experience. Don't confuse toxic emotional personal experience with matters of conscience.

However, be true to yourself whether the issues be matters of conscience or related to traumatizing emotional experiences. There is not a right or wrong answer. Do what your own wise mind tells you is appropriate for you.

Subject: RE: performing in churches ?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 22 Oct 10 - 12:49 AM

Leeneia, I lived in Milwaukee eight years and saw St. Josaphat's Basilica hundreds of times, but never went inside. It was a place of legend on the South Side of Milwaukee - click here for a good picture of the building, which was built from the remains of the the old Chicago Post Office. It was a symbol of pride of the Polish community of Milwaukee.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: performing in churches ?
From: Deckman
Date: 22 Oct 10 - 01:19 AM

Janie ... the only place I get my conscience is my experiences ... eh? A toxic eperience influences me as well as a good experience. That's where our values come from. bob

Subject: RE: performing in churches ?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 22 Oct 10 - 04:52 AM

Do you have any experiences like that?

Constantly, but it's not so easy for me to quantify in musical terms. Churches were built as much as acoustic spaces as anything else, though modern carpeting & PA systems seems to have done away with that of late. One mediaeval church I visited recently (in Ely) looked like it was set up for a stadium rock concert - with light show & all. Happily though, many churches remain tiled (those tiles in the Cley Juxta Mare video clip are Elizabethan) and the acoustics glorious, even for solo feral fiddle, overtone flute, whistle or Jew's Harp.

Strange things happen in the Rosslyn crypt; I recorded a Jew's Harp improvisation in there once in which I detected two very high female voies which stopped when I stopped. This was in the pre-Da Vinci Code days - not a soul around; but even so nothing came out on the DAT tape! I'm not suggesting any supernatural agency here, just acoustic resonances and harmonics, similar to the EQ effects you get in certain Chapter Houses - York & Wells being noted in this respect. By the way, the York Chapter house recording plays okay at this end, though its mostly 'minster ambience' + a couple of lowish Jew's Harps. It's rare to get any chapter house to yourself for that length of time, so savouring it's 'silence' is all part of the process. I had the lady chapel of Ely Cathedral to myself for five minutes back in July, that was truly something for both the carvings and the acoustics, though I only recorded a minute or so on account of having a twisted back (a hazard of crawling around photographing the finer details of medieval misericords). I've put it up on my Sundog page but it's taking a wee while to process.

Subject: RE: performing in churches ?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 22 Oct 10 - 08:51 AM

Here we are:

Martini's musicians on the Assisi fresco

And the same sort of instrument played today:

Patsy Seddon and Barnaby Brown at Iona: Deus Auribus

Subject: RE: performing in churches ?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 22 Oct 10 - 11:20 AM

"The Basilica of St. Josaphat, located in the Lincoln Village neighborhood of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, is one of 62 minor basilicas found in the United States. In its grandeur and opulence it is an excellent example of the so-called Polish Cathedral style of church architecture found in the Great Lakes region of North America. Modeled after St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, it features one of the largest copper domes in the world."

Joe, it wasn't the post office, it was the federal building. Acc to Wikipedia, the priest bought the materials, which came up to Milw on 500 flatcars. The blocks of stone were measured and the architect assembled them in a new design. Parishioners did much of the work. Amazing!

During intermission I said to my husband, "How did such a poor community build such an expensive church?"

He said, "Labor was cheap then."

I said, "But this church was built by those poorly-paid laborers."

He didn't have an answer.

One drawback - it took me 15 minutes to locate a restroom.

Subject: RE: performing in churches ?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 22 Oct 10 - 12:57 PM

Doing the "virtual tour" of that, it reminded me of the great mosques Sinan designed in the late 16th century. Looking up a bit of art history, I see that Sinan got some of his ideas from St Peter's, so the resemblance is not coincidental.

But Sinan's mosques weren't designed to be very special acoustically. The biggest sound you'll ever hear inside a mosque is one man giving a sermon. And the sound is deadened by multiple layers of carpet. St Peter's itself doesn't have a great reputation as an acoustic space. So if the Milwaukee basilica works for music, it's probably more due to fluke than architectural experience.

Subject: RE: performing in churches ?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 22 Oct 10 - 01:11 PM

When I was attending a church service, the minister was talking on about the wonders of the universe. I was about 12 at the time and hadn`t developed much social interaction skill. He said that light travelled at millions of miles per second. Big mouth here said loud enough to be heard by most of the Anglicans in attendance that light traveled at about 186,000 mps. I was informed while leaving the church that it would be ok if I didn`t return. I didn`t.

Now, if I go to a church it`s to listen to songs and music, not sermons. However, at the end of the day, Bob, you have to follow your gut. Make what`s the right decision for you.

Best wishes.

Subject: RE: performing in churches ?
From: Crowhugger
Date: 22 Oct 10 - 01:13 PM

LTS, it caught my attention when you said more or less that churches are among the only venues that can accommodate your chorus of 30 or so voices. Interesting variance with my experience around here (Toronto area). The choruses in which I sing or have sung--one is 30 voices, the other 65+ but often only 45 can make it to a weeknight performance--usually have/had difficulty setting ourselves up so that all singers can see the director.

The reason is that the "stage" area typically is too small or obstacle-ridden for our risers to fit; rarely are there stairs wide & deep enough to use in lieu of risers; sometimes those stairs are spacious enough but curved out towards the congregation opposite to the curve of risers. Yes the acoustics are often wonderful even while, as already mentioned, the reverb can be excessive, however these physical layout problems are a notable nuisance which must be weighed with other factors. Not the least of which is, where else is there to sing?

Maybe it's the size of the churches or the local architecture... Anyway it just struck me how funny to have such opposite experiences with the same type of venue.

Subject: RE: performing in churches ?
From: Crowhugger
Date: 22 Oct 10 - 01:25 PM

Deckman, are you comfortable continuing to live with the damage done by the cruel incident from your youth? Or is this thread a way to start re-thinking your reaction? You are an adult now and neither churches nor religious extremism are likely harm you when attending a concert. I'm saying this because you're obviously aware that your present-day reaction is well out of proportion to your present-day experience.

Gosh I fear that might sound smug or preachy but I'm being totally sincere.

Subject: RE: performing in churches ?
From: Tim Chesterton
Date: 22 Oct 10 - 03:20 PM

If I left in a huff every time some folk singer sang 'Imagine' and wondered why I didn't applaud (I'm a pastor - do they really think I should applaud for a song that says having no religion would be a good thing?) - well, I'd never go near a folk club or live music venue. Similarly, if I chose to take offence every time one of my fellow musicians introduced one of their anti-war songs with a diatribe about how religions are evil because they've started most of the wars in history, I'd spend my whole life angry at someone.

Life's too short for that, and there's far too much good music to enjoy.

Subject: RE: performing in churches ?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 22 Oct 10 - 03:33 PM

Well said, Tim. May the force be with you and remain with you.

Subject: RE: performing in churches ?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 22 Oct 10 - 05:29 PM

Leeneia, it's interesting to study the history of construction of Catholic churches in the U.S. during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. We tend to think of church construction in terms of how it's done nowadays, but that's not how it happened.

According to this history of Milwaukee, the parish was founded as an offshoot of St. Stanislaw Parish (with the golden domes) in 1888, and a small building was erected to serve as church and school. The first church burned down the next year, and was replaced by a new brick building that cost thirty thousand dollars to build. That building proved to be too small, and construction of the current building began in 1898. When construction was completed, the old building became the parish school. St. Josaphat's and St. Stanislaus are still the most visible Polish churches in Milwaukee (although St. Stan's is now the center of the Latin Mass community, and is no longer Polish). This page says that there were seventeen Polish parishes built in Milwaukee from 1872-1925. Also, be sure to take a look at this Wikipedia page on the "Polish cathedral" style of architecture (although very few of these churches were actually cathedrals - the seat of a bishop).

The new building used materials from the demolished Chicago Customs House and Post Office (a/the Federal Building). What isn't said in the history, is that I'm sure that everyone involved in the construction of the church was Polish, and that the building contractors were Polish and were members of the parish. Most likely, almost everyone who worked on the building was a member of the parish. The parish served the Lincoln Village community of Milwaukee, which was still predominantly Polish when I lived on the South Side of Milwaukee in the 1960s. Even in the 1960s, the parish served as a Polish community center and the parish still served as a place where people could find referrals for employment, medical care, housing, and whatnot. Lincoln Village had a small Latino population in the 1960s, and it was the only place in Milwaukee where you could get decent Mexican food, and tacos that weren't made with Cheeze Whiz. Lincoln Village is now 55% Latino. I'm sure the Poles have assimilated quite well by now, but the whole South Side of Milwaukee was Polish when I lived there in the 1960s, except for a small strip by Lake Michigan.

So, my point is that the church wasn't just a church - it was the very center of the community, an expression of the identity and life of the entire Polish community. I imagine that members of St. Josaphat's may have come from one part of Poland, and members of other parishes from other areas of Poland.

My home town was Racine, a little industrial city 25 miles south of Milwaukee. I think we had eight Catholic parishes in the center of town, all within walking distance of each other. St. John Nepomuk was Czech, St. Mary's and Holy Name were German, St. Pat's and St. Rose of Lima were Irish, St. Casimir was Lithuanian, and Holy Trinity was Slovak. I can't remember which parishes were Italian. Mass was in Latin, but all other activities of the parish were in the language of the predominant ethnic group. Again, each parish served as a social, cultural, and economic center for its ethnic group. Most times, parishes imported their priests from the Mother Country. St. Francis Seminary, which I attended, was German in origin and taught classes in German, so its graduates weren't of much use to small-town ethnic parishes. By the time I attended St. Francis in the 1960s, I was required to take 6 years of Latin, two years of Greek, and 3 years of my choice of German, French, or Polish. Later on, training in Spanish became a near-universal requirement for American Catholic seminarians.

And since churches were so important to the community, even poor communities could raise the money to build elaborate churches - and much of that construction money stayed right in the community. Thriftiness was usually the rule, however. It wasn't unusual for churches to be built from the remains of older buildings, like the Federal Building that served as the basis for St. Josaphat's. The Germans who built St. Francis Church in Sacramento used parts of the stairway banisters from the State Capitol for the choir loft railing and for statue pedestals - that why you'll see the state mammal, the grizzly bear, all over the interior of the church.

I think that priests of my generation, including many of my seminary classmates, failed to recognize the importance of parishes for anything but religious purposes. For the most part, my seminary classmates were homogenized Americans with no particular ethnic identity, and I remember how we used to joke about all this ethnic stuff. It's too bad we didn't understand and respect it, and work to preserve the best of it. Maybe that's part of the reason why so many beautiful old Catholic churches stand empty in American cities.

As for acoustics, they're mixed. Whenever I visit an old Catholic church, I make a habit of testing the acoustics by singing a little Gregorian chant. Some are terrific, and some are not. I'll bet a lot depended on who was directing music at the time the church was built.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: performing in churches ?
From: Deckman
Date: 22 Oct 10 - 05:30 PM

Crowhugger ... I do believe you are sincere. And I'm going to try to be just as sincere and serious. I've gone full circle on this issue of me and churches. NOTICE that I have NOT said: me and religion.

By the time I was 20, I realized that those preacher wife's comments were pretty weird. I have successfully, so far, navigated through this world of various religions, faiths, perceptions, etc.

But ... and maybe this is why I started this thread ... I now find myself surrounded by Pentecostal churches ... and other churches of extreme beliefs. I watch the rise of religion and politics in my country, and I feel I have to make a statement ... subtle as it is.

For me to walk into a church, I feel, is for me to give validation ro this rise in relgionism ... is that a word?

Again, I'm NOT saying anyone else should feel the same way ... I'm just saying that that is where I am at 174 years of age. bob

Subject: RE: performing in churches ?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 22 Oct 10 - 05:42 PM

Bob, I knew you were well-preserved, but 174 years of age????

your younger buddy,

-Joe-

Subject: RE: performing in churches ?
From: Deckman
Date: 22 Oct 10 - 05:53 PM

Joe ... that's NO MISSPRINT. But it does change frequantly ... yesterday I felt 274 years olde!

Subject: RE: performing in churches ?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 22 Oct 10 - 07:15 PM

Thanks for sharing memories, Joe.

As to acoustics, I've read that acoustics is such a difficult field and interactions between sound and buildings so unpredictable that basically people just built the buildings and lived with the acoustics they got.

Subject: RE: performing in churches ?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 22 Oct 10 - 07:59 PM

I think that's an interesting topic for another thread sometime, the history of acoustic design. I've heard that Roman amphitheaters were designed with sound amplification in mind. Orchestra shells have been around for a long time.
And some old churches have such wonderful acoustics, that I can't believe they weren't designed with acoustics in mind.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: performing in churches ?
From: Crowhugger
Date: 22 Oct 10 - 11:16 PM

Yes I noticed your choice of words, religion vs churches and I, too, feel discomfort when my actions support religious extremism. Your discussions carry a more measured, less reactive meaning for me now that I know that you've long been aware it was "they" who were being weird about your piano practice. Thanks for the clarification!