Anomalies in Paris

...The lighting was harsh but without gimmicks...

...Stephane Caillat conducted the Festival Orchestra in Pergolesi's Slabat Mater and, in the second half of the concert, led his own choral group in a selection of short liturgical pieces by Handel...

...Neither did the seating arrangements for the spectators...

...These intrusive effects should have been handled more subtly and tastefully, as they are in the French outdoor displays...

...Our reactions to these events are inevitably mixed, more so than in other concerts, because we acknowledge that the music and scene are there to impress us...

...Or how we arrived in Paris at 9:00 a.m...

...The staging, too, was unimaginative and constricting: Dressing the singers in shabby robes and squeezing them onto a small platform hardly contributed to the spaciousness of the occasion...

...THIS PARTICULAR CONCERT Was held in the Church of Saint-Merri, nestled among the houses of the Marais—that very old quarter where the association has done most of its work, which stretches from the Place des Vosges to the Hotel de Ville and the Seine...

...A High Mass is, after all, program music, and it is a very difficult kind of program to flesh out...

...The church is basically Flamboyant Gothic, yet a fascinating admixture of styles because of later contributions and alterations...

...The backs are upright, the seats about 10 inches square, the legs short...

...The cathedral entrances were jammed with a variegated crowd of standees and onlookers, gaping and listening...

...one Sunday morning, sour from a rotten night on the plane, got out of the taxi and found three nut-gypsy types playing banjos and guitars and singing with gusto in our street...

...The series consists of concerts, ballets and classical theater—all performed in the architectural gems saved through the efforts of the association...

...If that conjunction of music and architecture sounds impressive —well, it was...

...These are the performances of traditional sacred music, often in a setting of appropriate grandeur, which furnish some of our deepest musical experience...

...The thought seems like a kind of esthetic sacrilege...

...The ladies sang some marvelous duets and arias in the pensive Stabat Mater (for example, "O quam tristi et af-flicta") and responded well to the more powerful challenges of Handel ("Dixit dominus...

...Miss Forrester is still an impressive singer, even if she sounds at times like Ethel Merman and looks, in her Briinhilde way, like the Yellow Submarine...

...The French passion for "sound and light" displays of their historic buildings takes a similar form in their concerts spirituels...

...Finally, I thought of John Col-trane and how he, in his religious feeling, aimed like Handel at pushing secular music to its utmost...

...There is only one way to sit on these uncomfortable things—the way the French do it, ramrod straight and still...

...Deutsche Grammophon made a recording that will probably turn out better acoustically than the live performance, although it can hardly hope to equal the Klemper-er production on Angel—the finest recording of the Mass I know...

...The soloists cried out for anonymity, but there were two stars in soprano Ingsborg Reichelt and contralto Maureen Forrester...

...which are occasions of great pomp...

...Some days later, we were strong enough to undertake another spiritual experience, this time under the auspices of the Festival du Marais, run annually in Paris during the month of June...

...Pierre Moreau, at the Grand Orgue, made a great botch of the introductory Prelude and Fugue in B Minor, though some of the trouble may have been due to sound rebounding...

...Miss Reichelt is not only pretty to look at but has a very excellent, clear voice which she projects with absolute control...

...In a crude and trite way it tried to correspond to the music, flaring up for the "Gloria," dying down for the "Crucifixus...

...Or the Miles Davis background for a film clip on Rhodesia...

...R. P. Martin directed the Saint-Eustache Choir and Concert Orchestra with vigor and precision, especially in the "Qui tollis" and "Credo in unum Deum" sections...

...Still, how many of us have sat through boring, if not butchered, versions of Messiah or St...

...There was no sense of anachronism in hearing the 18th-century master-work of the Lutheran cantor performed in a Catholic cathedral, perhaps the grandest in the world, built in the 12-14th centuries...

...During part of the Handel, I began to think of some of the other crazy anomalies in the musical life of Paris, such as the use of Beethoven's 14th Quartet as background for a television film on Goya...

...A last look down the aisle revealed the choir, apse and vaults of Notre Dame brilliantly lit in a purple-golden glow and filled with beautiful music...

...Of course, there is no more anomaly in this than in Bach-in-Notre-Dame or in any concert spirituel...

...Having said this much in praise of the marriage, I want to complain about the way the ceremony was handled...

...The musical interpretation seemed generally to be a good one, but it was difficult to tell because the acoustics were impossible—understandable enough, given the stone vastness of the place...

...One of the nagging things about the concert was the lighting...

...True, from time to time the garlic incense being burned by the gentleman behind me became quite overpowering, as did the unusual amalgam of heavy sweat and asafet-ida someone else had prepared...

...One can put too fine a point on such matters...

...The choir concluded the "Gloria patri et filio," and we filed out of the church, very well pleased...

...Six thousand people were packed into the nave and side aisles, wedged together, each on his typical French "church chair...

...both continue to exalt the mystery of (among other things) artistic form...

...As the "Confiteor" expired, my wife and I did likewise and groped up the aisle while the organ boomed out the Toccata and Fugue in D as a recessional...

...the performance relaxed and intimate...

...The French have active musical imaginations, and they will try to give any music a proper setting, or vice versa...

...Anyone who has spent two and a half hours on one of these medieval contrivances well understands the penitential rigors demanded by the concert spirituel...

...Most of the audience remained in their places, seemingly transfixed—whether by the Mass, the warhorse Toccata or general paralysis I am not sure—but they were very much moved...

...Its ambiance was somehow reflected in the character and quality of the music presented, a concert spirituel wholly different from Bach-in-Notre-Dame...

...Matthew Passion in the name of spiritual experience...

...Matters were not helped, however, by setting the choir and orchestra in the middle of the transept, near the cathedral's center...

...The vocal soloists were generally undistinguished, while the instrumental soloists were brilliant, including Jean-Pierre Wallez (violin) and Maurice Andre (trumpet), two of France's finest musicians...

...The second, with its two Gregorian can-tus firmus themes, is the high point of the Mass, and the choir treated it well...

...Established in 1962 (the rioting last year forced its cancellation), it is the major public event of an organization dedicated to preserve and restore the city's historically valuable buildings, many of them being seriously threatened...

...But these petty distractions aside, one could find sufficient tranquility for reflection...

...The grandiose variety of the Mass found its perfect counterpart in Notre Dame's spectacular visual forms...

...Or the languishing of rock (except in the discotheques) and the thriving of jazz (everything from Jean-Luc Ponty to Marc Leferriere et ses New-Orleans Stompers...

...Caillat, a rather flaccid conductor in the Pergolesi, became peppy and animated when stimulated by Handel and the presence of his choir, a group that on the whole sang with good dynamics and phrasing...

...On the contrary, it will be very hard to hear the Mass sung again in our secular stalls or see Notre Dame given over once more to the tourists...

...the church grand, discordant, yet fine...

...A friend once remarked, after the annual University of Chicago performance of Messiah in its neo-Gothic Rockefeller Chapel, that during the Hallelujah Chorus he had expected to see Christ Himself descend from the Cross (incarnatus est), and leave by the cloister door...

...Both continue to exert their religious power through a massive complexity and magnitude...

...Christ was nowhere to be seen, but the spectacle was undeniably magnificent...

...In such conditions, the mind was properly free to wander in its choice of spiritual byways...

...Unquestionably, the pinnacle of this year's series would have to be the performance on June 12 of Bach's B Minor Mass in the Cathedral of Notre Dame...

...Under the benign influences of Saint-Merri and the music, even the chairs became more bearable...