Dona Nobis Pacem

On our return to England on 13 November, we were privileged to hear a performance of Britten's War Requiem sung in Coventry Cathedral.  Coventry's medieval cathedral was bombed into a ruin on the night of 14 November, 1940.  The magnificent new building, set among the ruins of the old, was completed in 1963, and Britten's requiem was commissioned for its opening.  My sister sang in the chorus this November.  Near her stood a woman who had also sung in the work, with Britten conducting, in 1963.  In the audience were people who lived through the night of 14 November, 1940.

Britten set the requiem mass in Latin, but between the standard movements he set poems by Wilfred Owen, poems written during and about Owen's experiences as a soldier during the first world war.  The work is stark and grand and heartrending.   I sang in this piece when the Minnesota Orchestra and Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra performed it in 2007.  It's beyond me how anyone, having heard this music and text, could contemplate making war.

Britten sets the words dona nobis pacem as a cry in the wilderness.  Before the third Agnus Dei the tenor sings the verse of Owen:

The scribes on all the people shove
And bawl allegiance to the state,
But they who love the greater love
Lay down their life; they do not hate.

After the chorus mutters the agnus, the dona nobis pacem is sung by the tenor: the first five notes of the F# major scale followed by the first five notes of the c minor scale dropping back again to f#.  Dona nobis is major moving up, pacem is minor, also climbing, but twisted somehow and as painful as beautiful. Takes your breath away.  Listen to it.

Last night, we were privileged again to hear, in the York Minster Chapter House, a concert of renaissance English choral music performed by Stile Antico, a group of 13 splendid young singers.  The program was centered on a mass by Thomas Tallis (1505-1585).  Tallis, and the other composers on the program (William Byrd, Robert White, John Taverner, John Sheppard) lived at a time when official religious practice in England was going back and forth between Catholicism and Anglican protestantism.  Up until the 1530s, you got burned for owning the gospels translated into English.  In 1585, Margaret Clitherow, who lived in the Shambles in York, was publicly crushed to death for her part in hiding a Jesuit priest.

So when these guys, who were in many cases writing their Latin settings in secret for secret celebrations, set the words dona nobis pacem they must have really been feeling it.  Tallis's setting,  in rich seven part harmony, lacks the agony of Britten's but is equally quiet.  It's scored low in the singers ranges, undulating, and you feel like you're listening to hearts rather than voices.

York, Minnesota.

Ever since Thanksgiving, it has been snowing, and we've now accumulated about 10 inches.  It's very early for snow here in York where, during a bad winter, they expect less than a month of snowy weather.  So people were a bit glum about it when it started.  But now there has been so much of it that people are getting quite excited.  Every store in Yorkshire has sold out of sledges and Wellington boots, and all day long the youth are climbing up and sliding down the embankments below the walls.

The Ouse from Ousebridge on our walk home

Bus services were curtailed and trains across the county cancelled today as of noon.  The public library (where we spent the morning working)  shut down, the Minster was empty, the streets devoid of the usual crowds of shoppers and tourists.   A good day for a browse in a bookshop, a walk home along the river, and a hot apple crisp for dinner dessert.

Thanksgiving on South Bank

Just a quick post to let people at home know that we had a festive time of it on Scott Street.  A "loose bird" turkey, stuffing sent by Jessica's mom from the states, Gabby's mashed potatoes, parsnips, Brussels sprouts, various juices, various pies, and eight pints of draft cider were consumed.  All over York today, in the picture postcard snow, Yorkshire men and women wished us a happy Thanksgiving, but having Thanksgiving with such a lovely group of people was the real blessing.

Sloe Time in Yorkshire

Looking for a break, and needing to visit the library on campus, I took a modest bike ride out into the country southwest of York yesterday.  The weather was grey, cool and misty but not actually wet.  I thought I could ride out as far as Sutton on Derwent (about 7 miles from York) and then loop around to the bike path coming in from Selby, directly south of the city.  Along the way, I could visit a few old monuments, and I could let the information my computer has been spitting at me soak in a bit, maybe to the point of making sense.

The countryside around York is slightly rolling to flat and at this time of year it is green with winter wheat or other cover crops contrasting with the dark browns of soil, wet leafless hedges and tree trunks.  The architecture of the villages is shown to particular advantage in wet misty weather, the darkened brick and stone setting off delightfully the brightly painted wood trim.

"Class II historic structure"  An elegant bridge over the Derwent

Approaching Sutton upon Derwent, I crossed the river on an ancient single lane stone bridge.  There aren't a lot of bridges across the Derwent in this part of Yorkshire, so I suspect that this was an important one in days gone by.   The bridge is first recorded there in 1396; earlier than that, there's mention of a ferry.

Sutton upon Derwent, Saint Michael's Church.  Three distinct
architectural styles are represented here.

From the bridge, through the mists, I could make out the Saxon style tower of the church in Sutton which surprised me because I hadn't noticed a church recorded on my OS map.  But there is indeed a very fine church, set on a hill overlooking the river, with architectural elements dating from Norman (13th c) and perpendicular (15th c) periods.  The various periods are blended here as they are in so many English parish churches resulting in an architecture, harmonious in itself, that could never be built in one time alone.  The aging, the age, the ages are essential.

Sloes

Back on the road home, I came across some hedgerows lush with sloes, a tiny variety of plum.  They're too astringent to eat directly off their thorny branches, but the English have learned  over the centuries to pick them after the first frost and soak them along with sugar in gin or vodka for six to twelve months, producing a sweet concoction called sloe gin.  So I stopped and picked a saddlebag full.  They're now resting comfortably at the bottom of a jar, relinquishing, I hope, whatever of the landscape and summer of 2010 they were able to capture, into a liter of vodka.  But I'll have to wait.  You can't hurry sloe gin any more than you can hurry the building of an English parish church.

I returned home tired and refreshed.  I'd ridden about 25 miles in two and a half hours.  I'd had a few ideas about my work that I never could have had sitting in front of the laptop, and I had the beginnings of next summer's sloe gin.  My computer had, in the meantime, performed many billions of calculations.  Good for an afternoon of analysis and reflection.  Slow time.

Artist's Copy: Jana Anderson

A small digital image on the internet!

Picasso once said that, “Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.” While I agree with the intent of this statement that a true artist is inspired by the work of others and makes it their own, making copies after famous artists has been a common practice throughout the history of art. I have done this in the Minneapolis Institute of Art, but being in these European museums I feel closer to the history, culture, and landscape that inspired many of the artists.

The works of art I’ve studied and admire are right here in front of me at places such as the Tate Modern, Tate Britain, and National Gallery. Actually sitting before pieces of art by famous artists such as Blake, Turner, Constable, and Picasso, I feel like I can get to know them in more detail – how the artist worked, what the color palette looks like in person, and I can actually experience the size and power of each piece. Some of the paintings are provocative and ever changing in ways one could never discover by viewing a small digital image on the Internet. They were meant to be experienced. They were meant to be looked at. I could spend days in these London museums and keep discovering new things about these works of art. They grow and change with the viewer, and I feel privileged to be one of the thousands of visitors to pass through and take the time to truly look.

Since I'm visiting these museums as a tourist, I feel obligated to experience everything.  Taking it all in at an appropriate pace is impossible, but I find myself rushing through to see as much as I can. When I did take a little extra time to sit in front of some of these works of art and make copies, both my eyes and mind slowed down and I was able to more carefully observe holistically.  Although I felt like a rushed tourist in London, I did make a copy of a Turner drawing and one of a Picasso painting.  It would probably be stimulating to take more than half an hour to do this, but even with the quick sketches I did, I feel like I've begun to really know these works of art. I think art history is half reading history and half looking at and taking in the power of an image. At times, observation might be worth even more than half. It allows for an understanding of art through the eyes of the artist, not the eyes of the art historian or researcher.

Copy or Thievery?

In London I made copies after famous works of art, but I think the act of study and observation that comes from this is valuable despite Picasso’s harsh words. However, my experience of these works of art were brand new to me, and ultimately, I view the sketches that came out of this as recording my own experience of the work as opposed to copying it. Upon coming back to York after this exhilarating weekend, I’ve continued working on drawings of the Minster, and I’ve found that while drawing this building I take a similar approach of observation and careful study as when doing copies of Picasso or Turner. The careful observation that occurs when taking in a masterpiece is the same approach whether the masterpiece is a work of art, architecture, or an existing landscape or figure from life. In every genre I am trying to record what I see and how I experience the world. Picasso may classify this is stealing, but whatever you want to call it, I do agree that this defines true art. Pure copying doesn’t require thought or reflection, but “stealing” or in other words, inspiration, combines observation, reflection, and personal experience to produce something truly creative. The “copies” I did fit the definition of an artist’s impression of a visual experience. So by this idea, even my quickly done sketch after Picasso was an original record of an experience as opposed to a direct copy. In this way, maybe my “copies” don’t make me a bad artist by Picasso’s standards, but rather one artist inspired by another’s work.

More observations and reflections on the York experience by Jana are available on her own blog, found here.

York in November

Taken at 3pm GMT.

At noon yesterday, our shadows stretched almost out of sight down the street in the weak sunshine.  The sun at that time was 16 degrees above the horizon.  At the solstice, the sun at noon will be less than 12 degrees above the horizon.  This makes for very beautiful light, rare light, light imbued with atmosphere. Today, walking around York was like walking around inside a late painting by Turner.

Inside the Top of the Chapter House

Chapterhouse Roof Walkway

 The first tour of the York Minster consisted of examining the inside of the church including the nave, choir room, windows, architecture, and crypt. The second tour of the Minster was mainly focused on learning about window conservation by visiting the glazier’s studio. Both tours were excellent, and what I learned from them truly helped me appreciate all that I learned on the third. This tour was fascinating: we saw the Stoneyard and carver’s studio, and, most impressively, we  got to go up inside the unique roof of the Chapter House. 
 To get to the roof, we had to ascend a narrow spiral staircase.  At the top of this, we passed through the world’s tiniest door and emerged onto the ledge of the chapter house roof. It was raining, the fence around the roof only came up to about knee height, and the wind was blowing strongly, yet despite all that, being on the roof was more magnificent than frightening.  Carefully, we made our way inside where we were met by a labyrinth of wooden beams stretching higher up than we could see. Honestly, the beams didn’t appear to be in any particular order or place, just a mess of wood jutting in different directions, and it seemed only by sheer luck that the roof was holding together. 

600 year old oak trusswork: looking straight up!

 Our tour guides explained to us that this was not the case; the placement of the beams, their angles, thickness, etc. was incredibly strategic and displayed incredible engineering fortitude on the part of its medieval designers. Seeing this complicated engineering amazed me, it wouldn’t seem possible without today’s technology to erect such a huge and complex structure, but here it was, standing for centuries, created without computers, without cranes, without even nails, and I think it is that fact that made the roof such a marvel. The chapter house roof is truly a tribute to man’s ingenuity, even with little, we are able to do so much. To be able to see the original design of the roof in all its glory, up close and personal, as opposed to just seeing a recreation of a statue or a window from afar, is remarkable. It is for these reasons that the third tour of the Minster really did take my breath away.  


--Jessica Churchill

Chapter House from outside. Scaffold levels are
at least 10 feet apart.  We went inside the roof.

From the inside looking up.  We were above this.