A Hothouse Chapel in Hurricane Alley ("Ugly As Sin" At Ave Maria U.)

CruxNews.com ^ | 3/26/2004 | Michael Rose

[dangus]

Wow... that looks awesome... I hate to say it, but I think the medieval builders would've done that if they could!

(except I miss a transcept!)

[ninenot]

Agreed that Marini was pretty much the final blow to the Sistines. OTOH, they were just awful (as a chorus, on technique/vocal production/beauty terms) LONG before Marini arrived to nuke worship as a whole.

[ninenot]

Not necessarily. Remember that tuning a piped instrument is a matter of relativity. You tune A=440 at 80 degreesF and it is always so. It's temperature variation that kills tune.

I would also imagine that one would A/C the place to a fare-thee-well, at least mostly eliminating the warp from humidity.

On the point: last night's Handel show went well until the organ developed a cipher about 5 minutes before intermission.

The cipher was a result of the organ being exposed to the unusually humid air in Milwaukee the last few days. It's not quite hot enough to run the A/C, thus cooling is accomplished by "makeup air," which is brought from outside the building direct, with no de-humidification.

The organist gamely went on, simply dumping the Positiv manual work and using the Great--a VERY big difference in tonality/registration, and volume control.

[ninenot]

If there are any recordings, I have NOT made it a point to find them.

It's horrendous: uncontrolled vibrato, voice stick-outs, attack tuning which is (at best) bad, multiple vowel pronunciations (all at the same time) and not all that good a sense of rhythm.

You still want to find a recording?

[ninenot]

What? Rome has declared the Society (Bishops and priests) to be IN SCHISM. And laity who are "particularly attached" (or similar phrase) are ALSO at risk of schism, if not actually so. Mind you, I am quite sympathetic to SSPX's complaints about the Liturgy--in fact, VERY sympathetic. But as Ultima Ratio will show you, SSPX simply is repeating the very first 'schismatic's' words: Non Serviam

[AnAmericanMother]

Uhuh. You just have to run the A/C when you have an organ in the building.

For heaven's sake, I had a humidifier installed for the winter and I have A/C for the summer so my harpsichord stays in tune. Keep it between 40 and 55 percent humidity always. And it's nothing like a million-dollar instrument (just a little Flemish single manual).

[ninenot]

Budget, budget, budget.

They didn't even tune the whole instrument before the show--just the REALLY bad ones got 'fixed.'

There are a lot of little beats floating around in the lower and higher registers, and even beats between manuals.

[AnAmericanMother]

You still want to find a recording?

Only as a matter of morbid curiosity. Maybe I can go on Amazon and listen to sound samples for free . . . that should be enough!

I do have a recording of the last castrato to sing in the Vatican choir. Very peculiar sounding voice, to put it mildly.

[AnAmericanMother]

Oh, ouch. My father used to be the organ technician at St. Philips Cathedral Atlanta (Army Engineers can do ANYthing!) A cipher was a personal insult to him. Occasionally he would scurry out of the bass section to mess with things behind the console.

He used to take us up in the roof (above the sanctuary ceiling) by a series of ladders and catwalks to work on the celeste pipes. We were much more interested in the dizzying height than the pipes though. He even took us up in the top chamber of the bell tower once. That probably cured my fear of heights.

[ninenot]

"Adventures in High Places and Midst Pipes," an American journey, by (ta da) An American Mother.

Subtitle: How to go from nosebleed locations through nosebleed Episcopalianism to not-so-nosebleed Catholicism in only 40 years, taking your harpsichord along for the ride.

[AnAmericanMother]

Oh, man . . . I went and found a recording on Amazon, and the choir is every bit as bad as you say . . . if not worse.

Screechy sopranos with no vocal control at all, a gang of thuggy tenors that seem to be trying to out-shout each other, and everybody out of tune. The first selection is the worst - they never DO quite find the dominant.

Ick. Our small all-amateur parish choir sounds better than that. At least we listen to each other and watch the director.

[Desdemona]

It's horrendous: uncontrolled vibrato, voice stick-outs, attack tuning which is (at best) bad, multiple vowel pronunciations (all at the same time) and not all that good a sense of rhythm.

Ewwwwwww

[TotusTuus]

Any thoughts on the Amici Cantores (sp?) from Milan?

[AnAmericanMother]

LOL! "American Mother Reveals All".

We would have needed a block and tackle to get a harpsichord up there. The architect did not anticipate organ technicians. As far as I can remember the route, you had to go up in the rear balcony of the main sanctuary and unlock a little door in the panelling on the south wall. This led into the organ loft at the rear of Mikell Chapel. A door on the OTHER side of the little organ loft led out onto the roof under the flying buttresses. You walked along that roof to the south transept, where there was a ladder up the west wall of the transept to THAT roof. A second ladder led up to a door in the south wall of the base of the tower. That put you up in the roof above the ceiling of the crossing. I'm a little fuzzy where we went after that, but somewhere a catwalk led to another ladder and a trap door into the lowest tower room. There were three ladders and three successive rooms, and a final caged ladder led out into a little stairhouse on the tower roof. I'm not sure how tall the tower is, but you get a great view of downtown.

[Desdemona]

The cipher was a result of the organ being exposed to the unusually humid air in Milwaukee the last few days. It's not quite hot enough to run the A/C, thus cooling is accomplished by "makeup air," which is brought from outside the building direct, with no de-humidification.

I guess I'm spoiled. We have a separate AC system for the stage alone and when the orchestra is with us, a central humidification system. Otherwise, the temperature on the stage has been measured at 97 degrees with full orchestra and chorus and the organ console stands right next to the sopranos. That thing throws off some heat.

While AC can handle the majority of it, with all that glass, it's not going to do it all. I don't know what happens in Milwaulkee with temperature fluctuations, but here it's a struggle to keep the organs in tune.

[AnAmericanMother]

Don't know them. Couple of albums on Amazon but quite old and out of date. No vocal samples.

[Desdemona]

Don't know the group. But, that doesn't mean anything.

[TotusTuus]

My expert contacts fail me....

What is an uncultured guy like me supposed to do?

[AAABEST]

The Cardinal underlined that Archbishop Lefebvre had never founded a proper structure of his fraternity that could be considered as a concrete act of schism.