Yesterday, I got up uncharacteristically bright and early for a badly needed haircut from a barber in downtown West Chester who opens at 5 a.m. Hence, one can I usually park for free in a metered space right in front of his shop. Then drove to Trenton, and took a train to NYC for a bite from the Big Apple. (Senior fare is $7, less than half the regular rate). I finally got to see two beautiful churches heard about for years. Church of the Intercession intercessionnyc.org/ was for awhile a chapel of Trinity Church Wall St. but now an independent parish in Spanish Harlem with a mainly Spanish-speaking congregation and ministry. They may yearn for the days of being under the wing of the wealthiest church in the world, as they attempt to raise a small fraction of the million dollars needed for repairs on their magnificent building almost a century old. The 80-foot-high bell tower figures prominently in these needs. A large bell has fallen from its hanging to the floor, which is just above the organ chamber and which was never designed to sustain such a weight. I had forgotten that the church houses the tomb of its great architect, Bertram Goodhue. Part of the epitaph is (in Latin): he touched nothing that he did not beautify. How true. For much of his life, Goodhue was the junior partner of Cram & Goodhue, one of whose many masterpieces nationwide was St. Thomas Church. Douglass Shand-Tuccis biography of Cram makes a controversial case that he and Goodhue were partners in more than business. The second church seen was St. Ignatius of Antioch. saintignatiusnyc.org/ This is not a large building (although more impressive than I was expecting) but is famous rather for its churchmanship. After ringing a doorbell for admission, I was greeted as eccentrically as you might expect in an Anglo-Catholic place (and only there): by a man elegantly dressed in white, including a white vest, and carrying a somnolent little dog in his arms. He could grant me only a glimpse into the church proper, because a renaissance music group was rehearsing, complete with portative organ and other period instruments. The acoustics were very fine-- better than St. Thomass, my host said, and I could believe it. Way back in the early 1970s, as I explained to him, the curate at the Chapel of St. John the Divine in Champaign, Illinois had opined that the place to go in New York was no longer St. Mary the Virgin (Smoky Mary) in Times Square, but St. Ignatius. Oh yes, thats still true I was assured. Finally, on to the main event, at St. Thomass. One had heard for years that there remain extant only three pure ecclesiastical residential choir schools in the entire world. Westminster Abbeys is one. St. Thomass is one. Now we were to meet the third: escolania.cat/index.php?md=articles&id=363&lg=3 the Escolania de Montserrat in Spain. The singing of these some forty boys is exquisite, bearing the full fruits of their all-too-rare educational experience. Their concert comprised composers associated with their own institution over its thousand-year history: liturgical compositions first, then folk-song settings after intermission-- including two by their current director, who is also a composer. The repertoire conveyed altogether a wonderful serenity. When I mentioned this impression to Mrs. Mead, the rectors wife, after the concert, she replied, Well, when you live up there in that monastery in the mountains... this should not be surprising.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 21:11:36 +0000
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