Organ adventures

This post is not about offal, nor anything salacious. (Apologies to those who are disapponted on either count,) Rather it concerns the musical powerhouse sometimes hailed as the king of instruments: the pipe organ.

Our friends Kate and Randy, whose visit I described in the preceding post, had come here from Paris, where they've been staying for a few months. During their time in the City of Light Kate made a startling discovery about her partner: he has a thing for organs. "I feel this should have been disclosed a lot earlier in the relationship," she told me. In Paris he made a point of visiting several famous church organs, including those that had been played by Saint-Saens and Franck, and talked about how wonderful they were, how beautiful the sound, and about his own family's long history with the instrument.

Kate has no objection to Randy's interest, but she has a hard time overlooking the double-entendres that inevitably arise whenever he gets on the topic. Being with me didn't help, since every time Randy said something organ-related Kate and I would snort and snicker like Beavis and Butthead. Admit it: when someone talks about his grandmother's "big organ" and how she "needed two men to help her," could you keep a straight face?

As a good hostess, I hoped to provide Randy with a few organ adventures here in Fidenza. And as luck would have it, the Church of San Michele, down the street from us, was celebrating its 300th birthday with an organ concert during Kate and Randy's visit.

The concert included a small group of instrumentalists, a choir of 12, and several soloists. in a program that included Mozart's Ave Verum and Coronation Mass but centered on a pipe organ that was built in 1764, 42 years after the church was consecrated. You can see it peeking over the heads of the choristers on the left side of the photo.

Fidenza's bishop was in attendance (the gray-haired man in the front row), as well as San Michele's priest (who's at the other end of the same pew). We think the fellow in the middle is Don Benjamin, a priest from Togo who serves one of the country parishes outside of town and was just given Italian citizenship a couple of weeks ago. And that's Saint Michael off to the right, the one with the golden sword.

I was disappointed when I saw the little pipe organ sitting on the stage. I'd assumed we'd be hearing the big sound of a church organ, and in truth when the organist, Matteo Francesco Golizio, launched into the solo program that made up the middle section of the concert his antique instrument sounded quite a lot like a merry-go-round calliope. 

Two men playing with a little organ.

While he played the church's own organist, Luigi Fontana, seemed to be hovering behind him like an anxious stage mother. But then Fontana lunged forward and I realized what was going on: Fontana was pulling out or pushing in the stops on the organ that changed its timbre and tone. This is presumably what the two men helping Randy's grandmother had also been up to. 

Sometimes it took quite a vigorous tug.

All in all it was a lovely concert that we thoroughly enjoyed (except for the not very comfortable wooden pews). More exciting was the up-close-and-personal organ experience we had a few days earlier in Fidenza's venerable Duomo.

Not long before our guests showed up I was telling my friend Pam about Randy's organ obsession and she offered to introduce us to the organist at the Duomo, Giovanni Chiapponi. Moments later Giovanni himself rolled by on his bicycle. Pam flagged him down and in a few minutes we had an appointment for the day after our friends arrived to meet him at the church and get a tour. 

Il Duomo.

The cathedral was mostly deserted on a Thursday afternoon, and because we were with Giovanni we were able to go up behind the altar to the choir loft, where the organ console is nestled. It's a handsome piece of furniture with lots of pedals for both feet and hands, including several new buttons that had been recently added above the keyboard for new kinds of sounds.

While we were there, Pam took advantage of our access to the choir loft to show us a fresco hidden inside one of the wall panels. 

Most of the imagery that once covered the inside of the Duomo was whitewashed over centuries ago during an outbreak of the Black Death, but for some reason this one image was spared. It's sad to think of how magnificent the church must have been before its frescos were obliterated.

Then Giovanni sat down, flipped some switches, and began to play. He showed us the amazing range of musical sounds and nuances the organ can deliver, by pressing foot pedals or turning stops on and off. Because this organ is fully electric, he doesn't need any help with the stops and can do it all himself. The dexterity and coordination of his feet and hands were amazing. 

He improvised a stream of beautiful, churchy-sounding music, with some Bach dropped in here and there. It was most impressive. Randy was entranced.

So was I. I was embarrassed when tears began stinging my eyes. Something primal about that sound in that space momentarily overwhelmed me.   

If religion wetr as simple and as powerful as that feeling, as moving as that soul-stirring sound, I would be a convert. It's unfortunate the words so often get in the way. 

Of course that moment of transcendence didn't last very long. Soon I was once again egging Kate on and annoying our menfolk with a stream of organ-related witticisms. After all, we'd just met the fellow with the biggest organ in town.