SUBJECTS
Digital Collections
Libraries
Life Here
Light
Music
Photography
Readings
Sound
The Information
DEPARTMENTS
About
Archive
Articles
Feeds
Other Writing
Photographs
Resources
Portrait of a city and its megaprojects · 24 November 2009
* * *
Rough cut Palestrina · 20 November 2009
It's a neat trick: some people come in off the street, settle in some chairs, and invisibly align their diverse attentions to transform from a crowd to a choir. The Janet Cardiff/George Miller installation from 2001, Forty Part Motet beatifully captures the metamorphosis. Forty singers of the Salisbury Cathedral choir, each with his own microphone, cough and chatter for a few minutes before inhaling together and delivering one of the most ostentatious motets ever written. (Thomas Tallis's Spem in Alium, composed in 1573, does indeed have 40 parts, and is not recommended as a workshop piece to be learned in an hour.) With each singer proxied by an individual loudspeaker arranged in a oval in a large room, one can wander from voice to voice and take in both the detail and the grand architecture of that acoustic cathedral.
It's that sense of transference from human to musical buttress that has kept me singing in choirs for over 30 years. And gradually you learn how intimately related you are to the space where you sing – the real architecture can help the aural architecture flourish or crumble. As it happens, the best and most accessible acoustics are often found in churches. Currently my wife and I sing in a small but highly competent choir in one of the most beautiful acoustics I've ever heard, the Anglo-Catholic church, St. Barnabas Apostle and Martyr in Ottawa. The church has a Romanesque design with a curved chancel that returns pure sweetness to the ear. Typical church choir repertoire may not be to your taste, but singing Palestrina, specifically his Missa Aeterna Christi Munera from 1590, in a giving acoustic yields a musical and artistic high all its own.
Here's the Agnus Dei from last night's rehearsal:
Get Flash to see the player.
* * *
High school ruins · 20 November 2009
The other day I passed this demolition scene at the corner of Clyde and Baseline in Ottawa. It’s the old Laurentian high school being torn down to make way for a shopping mall. There was something poignant about the cafeteria mural exposed to harsh daylight that I couldn’t resist returning the next morning to photograph. It peeked out like a hidden tattoo, a record of pleasure and excruciation. High schools are always fraught places.
This part of the building was rubble, too, when I passed it this morning.
* * *
Brief recap · 20 November 2009
- Son Ewan is a few months from three. Recently he appears to be moderating the more addict-like behaviour of the terrible twos. Toddler adrenaline is as strong as heroin, it seems.
- Second son Alec was born at the beginning of May. He has been a tormented sleeper, but lately has gone down for stretches longer than forty-five minutes.
- Parents are exhausted, but occasionally pierced with mica-sharp shards of wonderment. This seems to make it all worthwhile.
- Father is now on a second stint of parental leave until the end of March. Enough time to see if he can resurrect this blog into something worth reading. No coherence promised. The new motto is: Embracing eclecticism since 2004.
- There will hopefully be sound and images to break up the monotony of words.
* * *
The Ewan files 7: 1 year on earth · 8 February 2008
In approximately two hours, our son will commence his 366th day in the external world. Much more has happened than I have been able to keep up with in words, relying on some photos to capture changes and to do memory’s heavy lifting.
Every day he is able to gather more strands of himself and gain clarification of his personality. Flat planes have become shapes, and shapes have become objects, and objects have taken on roles as instruments and repositories of other objects. He takes pleasure in the expanding orbits of what is familiar, and he delights in his abilities, many of which involve various talents for making noises with things. Moving his arm back and forth can mean excitement, frustration, music or a ceiling fan. His thoughts involve shifting categories, and the fluid transfer of meaning from face to face. At five months, his personality began to take up a whole room in sheer, formidable baby-presence. Now he has gained the early stature and poise of toddlerdom and boyhood. He has spent nights away wiring himself for the coming epochs of walking and speech. There is no stopping him.
* * *