Southwark

May 10, 2010

This morning was a revelation. Despite going to bed at 2:00 a.m., I woke this morning at about 7:30 to run in Hyde Park. The sun had just come up and everything was so exquisitely green. Some highlights of the run included the immaculate flower garden with everything in full bloom including the trees, running up to Kensington Palace with an incredible reflection pool in front of it filled with swans, the eerie feeling as I ran through a field filled with ravens (eerie because of the deathly folklore surrounding ravens in England), and of course the quiet that somehow blocks the sounds of the cities from invading you. It was wonderful. With beautiful experiences like these to begin my morning it will be easy to make running a regular habit. After getting ready for the day and a breakfast of the same as recent days past, I marched off to start classes with Michelle in-tow. We meet for class in the Hyde Park chapel, literally in the chapel. It is a different kind of atmosphere. We started class by debriefing about all of the wonderful music we've already heard since arriving here. It was fun to listen to the insights and opinions that the other classmates added to the discussion. We spent some time discussing the history of Handel's coronation anthems that he wrote for the coronation of King George II. Sister Hall is very knowledgeable in choral literature and we all enjoyed her insights. We spent some time analyzing the harmonic and structural form of Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus. It was so fun to do analysis with Dr. Staheli. He brought such great insight into a seemingly simple piece. We got our music and group assignments for this weekend. We're being split up to join with different college choirs in Oxford and Cambridge to sing Evensong. It'll be really neat to hang out there. Before we could leave class, which ended at 2:00, Michelle and I had to attend to our duties. In addition to being called to be the group leaders of our respective Oxford/Cam ridge groups, we have the unique privilege of being masters and commanders of bathroom cleanup in the chapel. Yep, we get to assign who cleans the bathrooms every day after class and make sure they've done a decent job. It makes us feel pretty dang important. When we got back from class I made a quick lunch of sandwiches consisting of bread, butter, pesto and mushrooms. It sounds a little weird, but it was actually pretty good. I’m trying really hard to live thrifty, so my pesto is making everything tasty. We finally hit the road, or rather the tubes and headed off to see a museum in Southwark, pronounced ‘suthick’ (you know, just like it’s spelled). We had heard about a museum called the Victorian Surgical Theater Museum. It was really neat to see some very old medical instruments and artifacts. They had a display on the different compounds and herbs that were believed to be beneficial. They had several organs that had been preserved in formaldehyde from the 19^th century! The scariest things were some of the tools used in different surgical procedures. There were tools used in midwifery that scared me to death, but worse were the tools used to find and eliminate kidney stones for male patients. AAAAAHHHHHH!!!!! It looked awful. I am so glad for modern day anesthetics. The theater was pretty neat to see. It was a theater built for medical students to observe surgeries. The surgeries performed there were usually on the poor who couldn’t afford the necessary treatments. The wealthy who could afford those procedures usually had them performed at home. It was really interesting to see especially the exhibit about Florence Nightingale who is basically the mother of modern nursing. Cool place. I bet Andrea and Gary would have enjoyed it. After the museum, we went to Southwark Cathedral. We were going to attend Evensong at 5:30, but we got there about 45 minutes early. It was really nice to walk around the church, learn some of its history and spend some time in meditation. Southwark Cathedral is actually the oldest gothic church in England. It is the church where Shakespeare and Chaucer attended. English poet John Gower was buried there. John Harvard, founder of Harvard University in the US was baptized there as a child. It was such a beautiful place and so filled with history. It was nice to meditate and spend some time in quietude. There is a rich history of choral music at the Cathedral and the music for the service was part of a festival featuring contemporary composers of church music. The choir consisted of young girls and men singers. The acoustics of the church were incredible. For me, precision and blend were wanting, which says something because the acoustics of such large, live venues usually cover a multitude of sins. In particular there was one tenor and one alto voice that really stuck out. Now, I’m going to pause for a moment to discuss the reviews I give of the concerts I go to. I absolutely LOVE going to the concerts and services. This is such a unique and rare opportunity to study choral music in one of the most chorally active places in the world. I have enjoyed so many gasp moments since coming. So, when I begin to write about the mistakes and problems, they are simple observations. It’s like critical thinking, I don’t dislike this music, but I do seek to view it in its entirety so that I can benefit fully from the experience. One of the interesting things about the choir at Southwark was the reverence observed by the choir members. At Westminster Michelle and I often saw the young boys trying to get the others to laugh out loud. It was really cute to watch. At Southwark, however, the children approached their duty in a very serious way. I cut some serious slack for the choir because of the incredible amount of music that they learn and perform, the limited time to rehearse and the difficulty of the music. They really were singing some hard stuff. It’s incredible to see these young boys and girls who are growing up with such superior musical training such that they can perform these incredibly difficult works with such clarity, expression and real testimony.

The above was written last night. In fact, I had written quite a bit more when my computer died. When I rebooted, I lost a lot of what I had written. In my discouragement I decided not to re-write. I shouldn’t have put it off because now I have a lot to do. But, here I go on a blogging blitz.

After the concert Michelle and I with a few others went on a walk past the Globe Theatre. After crossing the Millennial bridge we took a bus from St. Paul’s Cathedral toward the flats. Michelle and I stopped along the way trying to find a towel for her. (Don’t ask me how she’s been showering until now. Maybe the drip dry isn’t so bad.) There was no way we were going to find one though. After we got back to the flats, it was business as usual; blogging and taking care of the nuts and bolts of life. The best part was taking Michelle on my back all the way to the Laundromat so that she could get her laundry. It was nice to walk there together so we could have a few minutes alone to talk. Those kinds of moments have been much rarer since the program started. They’re the best kind of moments though.