Time travelers:
Schickel, Joseph
REPORT FROM AUSTRIA
TIME TRAVELERS
BOUND FOR THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY
A double decker bus heading south to Merano, Italy. Beautiful countryside-red roofs, vine-yards, steeple-centered villages-is seen...
...Then they gathered for rehearsal in the hotel arcade...
...The choir members follow the director, who grew up in this village and parish, into the walled yard and proceed to the Saint Michael Chapel...
...I am a husband, nonsinger, enjoying the tour with my song-filled wife...
...Rolls, sausage, bread, fruit, cheese, wine, and soft drinks...
...I circle the church exterior and drink in the form and structure of this ancient stone embodiment of the Catholic faith wrought by a village of 3,000 people, some five hundred years ago...
...These artists were concerned with the timeless, the immeasurable, the transcendental-a paradigm very different from that of today's artist, who seeks the timely, the measurable, the relevant, and the momentary...
...We are puffed up about our accomplishments and progress...
...Ezechiel Saw the Wheel," "Deep River," Randall Thompson's "Alleluia," Mozart's "Regina Cadi," motets by Maurice Durufle, much more...
...This is the embodiment of a community's vision and its place in the cosmos...
...As Thomas Merton has said, "the oldest thing is the newest thing...
...The space enclosed by the building itself...
...God's primary revelation in the universe of sky, sun, and all life have been overwhelming...
...Shocked to look at our culture and our attitudes in the very midst of God's blinding revelation...
...All shapes and sizes of men and women singers fill the bus...
...We carried our luggage down steep flights of stairs to be loaded in the bus in which we are now traveling...
...All unified by the music...
...Perhaps it is obvious why it is humbling...
...The bus gropes its way to the plaza areas outside the church, stops, and the passengers alight...
...In that light our "backwardness" as a people shocks me...
...At six o'clock this morning we gathered for a hearty breakfast of breads, cheese, ham, hard-boiled eggs, orange juice, and delicious strong coffee, served lovingly by an all-seeing mother and alert grandson in the cafe of the Rebstock Hotel in Rudesheim...
...It is more than ever clear that among Catholics there will not be a new dawn of faith and sanctity without a cultural revival...
...We are leaving that to secular, materialistic society...
...I am filled with new hope...
...Beautiful voices...
...After lunch, the choir members dressed for performance in their dark pants and skirts and white tops and green cummerbunds...
...Clusters of people sitting on the ground in the shade pattern from the trees...
...Why exhilarated and delighted...
...It becomes evident that a group of local people are in the midst of a prayer service, honoring a wedding anniversary...
...A chorus of forty-five voices touring and performing from Rudesheim to Rome...
...Euro-American and one African-American...
...the images-painted, sculpted-are one fabulous work of art after another...
...We travel through lovely town after lovely town in Germany and Italy, where the central cultural symbol is the church...
...They were producing the good, the true, and the beautiful...
...This is not the art world, this is the art of the Christian world...
...JOSEPH SCHICKEL Joseph Schickel, an artist and designer, lives in Loveland, Ohio.n Loveland, Ohio...
...Lonely because I am experiencing an inner journey that is probably not shared by many of those I am with...
...This church was completed just as Columbus set sail for the new world in 1492...
...This is the art of the community of God's people...
...We have been in the heart of the Rhine wine country...
...After circling around the outside and beholding the structure, sculptured details, and decorative elements, I go inside...
...Beautiful countryside-red roofs, vine-yards, steeple-centered villages-is seen scooting past the windows as we go through the Rhineland...
...Suddenly the space is filled with song as the concert starts...
...Glorious sounds pour out and fill the church...
...Forward, reverse, forward...
...The rise and fall of repetitive and rhythmic voices of praying people permeates the wonderful enclosure of faith and mingles with the light and space...
...The scene outside is dairy farms and the Alps in the distance...
...The real reverence and respect and comradeship I feel with these brothers and sisters of the fifteenth century who are still present in the walls, give me a true sense of both the worth and deficiency of my own work...
...They were not conscious, or even less self-conscious of it...
...Thirty minutes of intense rehearsal ends with arrival of the bus...
...Native and foreign, young and old, men and women, sharing a comprehensive experience with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit dwelling among us, and in us, as we experience the good, the true, and the beautiful...
...The sounds of chatter and laughter mingle with diminishing sausage rolls, fruit, beverages, and the bright color of animated faces...
...I am lonely because my whole professional life for fifty years has striven to accomplish-in our time and in a way appropriate to my world-what was accomplished here in this small village in the fourteen hundreds...
...Yesterday evening, Saturday, was a deeply moving experience for me...
...The driver threads his way through the lovely narrow, cobbled streets of Rudesheim...
...As I write this our host just announced we will soon be entering Austria...
...For this Musica Sacra "groupie," the tour, the music, the fifty-nine other gypsies have been an inspiration...
...These artists, designers, craftsmen, and artisans were certainly expressing themselves, but it was coincidental...
...The nonsingers, looking a bit lost, hang out around the church entry...
...I see more clearly a new paradigm for the artist...
...Yet creation remains the only real cultural initiative...
...REPORT FROM AUSTRIA TIME TRAVELERS BOUND FOR THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY A double decker bus heading south to Merano, Italy...
...An hour of antiquity and modernity-united in sight and sound...
...This evening's concert will be in Saint Valentinus...
...Recent college graduates to folks in their seventies make up this group called Musica Sacra from Cincinnati, Ohio...
...It was the sixth day since we landed in Frankfurt...
...The Holy Spirit is with me as I rejoice in my ancestors, on whose shoulders we all stand...
...Sprinkled among the singers are spouses, friends, and relatives numbering about fifteen-bringing the caravan to sixty in all...
...We are headed for the village of Kiedrich, nestled in the Rhine valley, an ancient village with a glorious church, Saint Valentinus, dating back to the fifteenth century, with an enclosing wall creating a courtyard between it and Saint Michael Chapel...
...I look around and there is a great deal to behold...
...This music shares the same ancient and modern vitality as the images and artifacts and architecture-timeless, immeasurable, and transcendent...
...I find myself shocked, lonely, humbled, yet enchanted and delighted...
...Helmut Roehrig, a vibrant and brilliantly talented music director, is leading the tour...
...A gypsy-like scene at the Autobahn rest stop...
...I realize we are largely lacking in direct acts of love and gratitude through our culture...
...As an artist and a Christian, for me the reaffirmation that we are created by a creator to be creators was given new urgency by taking another hard look at the culture created by my ancestors...
...A frantic check for stragglers...
...We pile in and the motors roar...
...Methodist, Jew, Catholic, Quaker, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, as well as the unsure...
...Tomorrow- Vatican City and a concert performance at Saint Ignatius Church-a high point of the tour, which then continues back north and departs from Frankfurt to Cincinnati...
...The concerts reflect the great resources of traditional Catholic music, as well as Afro-American spirituals...
...We have largely abandoned the actual creation of culture...
...We just stopped and enjoyed a picnic lunch organized by the director's long-time friend and superb host in Germany, Heinrich Gerhard...
...Roehrig, chairman of the Xavier University music department, conducts...
Vol. 122 • June 1995 • No. 11
